5/10/98

To the Editor, the Wesleyan Christian Advocate:

I hope you will try to publish this letter. I think it is a way of keeping the homosexual members from losing faith in the UMC (along with Bishop's wonderful, recent, pastoral visit to St. Mark). Furthermore: I would like my own: prm@mindspring.com and also www.kantwesley.com/ to be attached to my signature in the Avocate, if possible, so that people who might want to explore ideas further together can do so. That would be a very good service of our newspaper. This letter could easily be titled:

Open letter to the homosexual UM's.

After considerable study of the scriptures, I am convinced that we are now called upon, like the slaves known to Paul, to return to, and remain in, a subservient role (but only in the church!) until the weak in faith are made more strong.

In Romans 13 and 14 we discover first that the strong in faith are those who obey laws of man only because they do not conflict with the Golden Rule. And so speed limits are obeyed by the strong Christian only because they suggest the best safe speed, which the strong Christian is desirous of anyway, due to his or her existing and lively desire to incorporate the Golden rule in one's own life, and not merely from prudent fear of detection and subsequent punishment.

And then we learn (on in Romans 14) that the weak in faith are those who cannot do that, or at least not in the unimpeded way intended by Jesus in Matthew 7:12 and by Paul in Romans 13, especially 8 & 10, and so who seek, in their spiritual fear and weakness, also to discover specific things from the scriptures; and so in this way supplement the "deficiencies" of the Golden Rule; and where some will say: you must be circumcised; and others: you cannot seek to engage in a homosexual relationship; and others: men must wear short hair; and the count and the details of which will vary from one person to another. [Of course we expect these early saints to say things like "don't murder" because murder is wrong as everyone can determine him- or herself by simple derivation from the Golden Rule; and so the strong don't avoid murder because the saints of old said: don't murder! but because they agree with them in this regard per a common understanding of the one Rule.]

How happy are those who are strong in faith, for they are secure per Romans 14:22. But those who are strong, in whatever regard, must not seek to offend or push too much those who are weak in their faith, for if these weak-in-the-faith accept homosexuality, for example, when they think they are violating some specific law of God in doing so, then they actually do in fact commit sin (Romans 14:23), and that no Christian can ever wish.

[The weak may rest just as easily in the assurance of the love of God as can the strong in faith--this, of course, is never in question.]

In this spirit therefore I say to the homosexual: let us withdraw again into our own community within the church, and give God a chance now to strengthen those who are so weak in their faith that they cannot trust the scriptural insistence that it is the clear mind and heart alone that stand easily in the presence of God (14:22). In other words: let us not ask any UM preacher to join us in ritual nor seek to use an UM church to do so.

But we should continue to say to the weak-in-faith on this (homosexual) issue: work in your communities to secure all rights equally before the law, and do so in conscience. And be open to the development that will come from trusting God in this regard.

The Church will sooner or later come to the conclusion that it is placing an unwarranted restriction on the conscience of the pastor and the trustees of the church's property. It should clearly state its position but leave the UM free, as every Protestant has a birthright to be, namely: captive to his or her conscience under the guidance of the Golden Rule alone (Matthew 7:12).

Yours in Christ!

Philip McPherson Rudisill