The United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline reads: “The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” For Ann Brown, those words are unjust and outdated. She and 50 other volunteers from Foundry United Methodist Church in Northwest D.C. traveled to the denomination’s General Conference in Tampa, Fla., this week to try to change the church’s stance on homosexuality. Brown heads Foundry’s LGBT Inclusion and Advocacy Ministry Team; The historic church adopted the cause in 2010, when it also voted to support same-sex weddings. A finance lawyer originally from Mobile, Ala., Brown lives in the District with her husband and has two children in college.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I am a Christian, and more specifically I am United Methodist. I appreciate the tradition of the United Methodist Church, because it is historically a very inclusive tradition. The denomination was founded by an Anglican minister in England who later spent time in America, too, John Wesley. And Wesley’s focus was on bringing the Christian faith to what we would today call underserved populations: The working class people, who were often overlooked by the institutional Anglican church in the late 18th and early 19th century. That sense of social mission really permeates the Methodist church.
Do you think this could be the year the church affirms homosexuality, after numerous attempts failed?
I certainly believe so. This year there are even more people involved, and there has been a lot more public discussion. There are a lot of forces working against it, and there are some issues particularly with the connectional nature of our church with the church in Africa. There are some cultural obstacles in Africa. We’re hopeful, and we and many others are working very hard for change, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that we’ll get the decisions we’re hoping for.
What led you to activism for this cause?
The friends that I lost to the AIDS epidemic, who were extraordinarily talented people from backgrounds exactly like mine. I believe that the church failed them. We’ve learned a great deal in the 20 years since then, and we are really overdue to make some changes as an institutional church. The other major driver in my activities is my own children, who have grown up with lots of friends who are gay or lesbian and who are completely accepted and appreciated for the individuals that they are. And there’s simply no sense at all that those friends should be treated in any way as somehow unworthy of God’s love.
Your opponents want to keep the Methodist church tied to its traditional doctrines and the Bible. How do you approach doctrine and the Bible? Are they less important to you?
I wouldn’t say that biblical doctrine is less important to me. What I believe is that the Bible has to be read in the context of its time and in the context of our time. I think the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, was very clear that as Methodists we need to read Scripture with an open mind and without the notion that every single word is infallible as written. The real, critical message of the Bible is that God loves everyone and that he created everyone in his image and that his grace is boundless. By attempting to designate anyone, whether it’s women or racial minorities or LGBT people, as somehow not fully loved by God, to me is the wrong reading of scripture.
Many say that if the United Methodist Church does approve the resolution affirming homosexuality, doctrinally conservative congregations will leave in droves, splintering the church. Is disunity something you’re willing to stomach?
I don’t actually believe that will be the result. I think the Methodist church is a very resilient institution. It has met every other challenge to modernize itself in a very positive way. I don’t think that the church will splinter over this. I think instead the real challenge is that the church may wither away because young Methodists and progressive Methodists will consider it to be an inhospitable place. Twenty- and 30-year-olds are our future. We need to be on the right side of this issue in order to thrive.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
One of my defining beliefs is that we as Christians must work for justice. We cannot be comfortable with a purely private relationship with God. We need to take our beliefs into the wider world and work for human equality.
– Liz Essley
