ON BEING A FALSE PROPHET [M, 2-8-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

ON BEING A FALSE PROPHET     [M, 2-8-21]

 

Way back in 2004, I wrote an article that caused Prof. Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University Divinity School to call me “an illuminating false prophet.” I still haven’t decided whether I should feel complimented or insulted.

The article was titled “It’s Time to Disband the United Methodist Church: Why a Denomination Must Lose its Live in Order to Save it.” [1] It got a lot of response—positive response from the wrong people and negative response from the right people. That’s the dilemma, I guess, of an illuminating false prophet.

In a “Peanuts” comic strip, Linus tells Charley Brown that he has decided to be a prophet. Charley affirms that, sort of, but reminds Linus that “prophets almost always turn out to be false prophets.” Linus says, “Well, maybe I could be a sincere false prophet.” I think it’s probably better to be an illuminating false prophet than a sincere false prophet, although I really was sincere.

I’m going through old files, discarding stuff that is no longer relevant to me and would be of no interest to my heirs. I kept all the articles and columns and letters that either praised or excoriated me for what I said in that article, but now it’s time for all that to go into the recycling.

I thought I was getting a good conversation going about the future of the denomination. Not so, for all the readers and responders were “just” lay people and preachers and professors—not bishops and denominational officials, the ones who had the power actually to change things.

That was understandable, of course, for basically in that article I argued for doing away with bishops and denominational officials, so that we could focus on the place where the church really gets its work done, the local congregation. Understandably, folks don’t like to be told they are useless, or irrelevant, or—much worse, as I did—that they are a hindrance.

I didn’t expect us to become totally congregational, of course. We need connections. But I thought it was time that we rethought church structure in terms of putting function [mission] first.

I’m used to be ignored by church hierarchy folks. About 20 years ago a District Superintendent in my conference said to me, “To show you how far the church has declined, we’re now taking seriously ideas you put forth twenty years ago.” Taking them seriously apparently did not mean doing anything to implement them. Imagine how past-the-possible-moment those ideas are now!

I was aware, of course, in 2004, that we had a homophobia problem in the church, but that wasn’t the reason I suggested doing away with the church’s hierarchy. I thought the denominational structure had become an end in itself and thus was getting in the way of the congregations instead of helping them to do better ministry. [I think that is still true, but for different reasons in different ways now.] Now the same issue of denomination structure and identity has become front and center because of homophobia. Everyone pays attention to whether LGBTQ folks are welcome and ordainable, but with the assumption that after they are finally either embraced or shunned, the denomination[s] will go on with the same super-structure as always.

We clearly must deal with homophobia. It’s a problem we have to solve. But including gay folk in a church with a counter-productive denominational structure is like welcoming them fully for the maiden voyage of the Titanic.

But what do I know? I’m a false prophet. But… remember… an illuminating one.

John Robert McFarland

1] It was published in “Zion’s Herald.” The editors told me the publicity generated by my article was probably why it won an award as best church magazine in 2004. Like most church publications of the print era, it is now defunct.