Ritter points to a maxim popular among Methodists: “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity.”
“I don’t know of anyone who feels that homosexuality is a central issue in the Christian faith, but behind it lies the larger issue of biblical authority,” he said. “It is difficult to see how a house divided on such a foundational issue could stand”” unless perhaps it is a duplex.”
Unity is itself an essential, said Methodist pastor Jason Byassee. “Every pastor has counseled married couples who say, ‘It’s hard to be together,'” said the Duke Divinity School fellow. “We say, ‘I know. It’s called cross-bearing. Figure this thing out.'”
“Staying together or separating is less important than our being a people of grace and truth,” said Renfroe. “That’s when God will bless our witness to the world.”
[blockquote]Such a bifurcation has precedent: Methodists split along ideological lines after the Civil War to ease the North and South into reconciliation.[/blockquote]
I’m curious where the author developed this idea. The split, which had nothing to do with reconciliation, came before the war and lasted well into the 20th Century.
The “maxim popular among Methodists” (and everybody else) has been traced back to a renegade Catholic bishop writing in 1617: http://liberlocorumcommunium.blogspot.com/2010/03/in-necessariis-unitas-in-non.html.
[blockquote]Unity is itself an essential, said Methodist pastor Jason Byassee. “Every pastor has counseled married couples who say, ‘It’s hard to be together,'” said the Duke Divinity School fellow. “We say, ‘I know. It’s called cross-bearing. Figure this thing out.'”[/blockquote]
Byassee is intentionally confusing apples and oranges. The Bible is clear that God doesn’t like divorce, even when there are problems. But the Bible also just as clearly says we as Christians are to have nothing to do with those who claim to be Christians but deliberately disobey God’s commands. The Bible commands that such people are to be expelled from the church (I Cor. 5:13) and that we are not to have fellowship with them. (I Cor. 5:11)
Re. #3, you are quite right. There are many holes in this idea. The Unity(tm) argument, if taken to completion, begs the question of why aren’t United Methodists under Episcopalians/Anglicans oversight, or further everyone of them under the Pope? If “unity” (and this plan sound more like “schism-lite” rather than unity) is the reason to keep the UMC from all-out schism, it holds no water.