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NAT I ONAL NEWS

NAT I ONAL NEWS CHURCHGOERS RALLY AGAINST GOVERNMENT OVERREACH

The John Henry Ensemble, led by the Rev. John Henry on trombone (left), plays a jazz concert on the evening of April 5 during the Peace Conference in Lake Junaluska, N.C. Henry, a United Methodist pastor and director of the music program at A&T University in Greensboro, N.C., also sang and played trombone during the conference’s worship service. Bishop Kennetha Bigham-Tsai, who leads the Iowa Conference and co-leads the Illinois Great Rivers Conference, preaches April 4 at the opening service of the Southeastern Jurisdiction's Peace Conference at Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center in western North Carolina. She preached on the theme of the gathering, "Breaking Down the Dividing Walls."

John and Erika Lusk, members of University United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, also joined in the rally. “I’m not particularly progressive. You don’t have to be progressive to have an opinion about this,” John Lusk said. He wore a green T-shirt displaying the Wesleyan quadrilateral for illuminating the Christian faith of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience. “You can just be, like, the middle of the road and say, ‘You know what? This is just wrong.’ There’s lots and lots of progressive Methodists and lots and lots of conservative Methodists, and The United Methodist Church itself sort of stands astride this fracture line in politics right now. That’s why it’s important for us to speak up.” His wife, Erika, said if not for the Peace Conference, she likely would have attended the rally in D.C. or in Raleigh, North Carolina.

BY HEATHER HAHN

WAYNESVILLE, N.C. (UMNews) — Peace and justice go hand in hand. To pursue both, a number of United Methodists at the April 4-6 Peace Conference joined in a nearby rally to tell the Trump administration to take its hands off government services. The protest outside the courthouse in Waynesville, the seat of rural Haywood County, was among more than 1,200 Hands Off! demonstrations organized April 5 in all 50 states. Demonstrators across the U.S. voiced anger over the administration’s moves to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers, effectively shut down entire agencies, close Social Security offices, deport immigrants, target transgender people and cut funding for health programs such as medical research, Medicaid and veterans’ care. The Waynesville event drew some 1,000 people to a town with a population under 11,000. Rally-goers represented a cross-section of people — veterans,

Photo by Crystal Caviness, United Methodist Communications.

Building peace in a dangerously polarized U.S.

Lake Junaluska first hosted a Peace Conference in 2009. The gathering, organized by longtime peace activists, was both interfaith in nature and focused on the wars then raging in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Peace Conference continued annually through 2019, which the original organizers saw as a good endpoint. Now the circumstances have changed, Crissman said, but the need to foster peace has not. So, she and other leaders in the Western North Carolina and neighboring North Carolina conferences got to work designing a new conference. The intent, she told United Methodist News, is “to reclaim our call as ambassadors for peace, particularly in our highly polarized political environment, which also impacts our churches as we have seen even within our own denomination.” The Rev. Jonathan Marlowe, co-senior pastor of Mount Zion United Methodist Church in Cornelius, North Carolina, attended the first conference as well as the most recent one. “This Peace Conference is more holistic in terms of bringing in aspects of racism that were not much talked about at that earlier one,” he said. As a bishop, Bigham-Tsai told those gathered that she will pastor all people, but not the walls they erect to hold others back. “I am not the pastor of anyone’s racism. I am not the pastor of anyone’s misogyny. I will not pastor anyone’s homophobia or hatred and disrespect toward immigrants,” she said. Instead, she said she looks for the divine within everyone she meets: “I will pastor and seek to grow the Christ within you — the God that I know is in all of us. And I will do that by challenging you to love across barriers of difference and to break down walls.” Polarization erodes democracy and makes violence more likely, said Kristen Wall. She has experience addressing global conflicts for think tanks and the U.S. Institute of Peace, now being dismantled by the Trump administration. “When there is significant polarization, it’s harder to communicate and coordinate to solve shared problems. Grievances accumulate, creating an opening for political leaders who exploit feelings of abandonment or frustration through wedge issues,” Wall said. “Partisan gain becomes more important than playing by the rules. This breaks down an interest in sharing power, which is the bedrock of a democratic system.” Anyone familiar with U.S. history will know such disunion is not unprecedented in a nation still struggling with the legacy of enslaving Black people and brutalizing

Native Americans, said Derrick Scott III. He is a longtime campus minister and co-lay leader of the Florida Conference. In Luke 4, Scott said, Jesus was confronting historic hostilities when he preached good news to the poor and ended up angering everyone in the synagogue. “One of the things I think is happening in Luke 4 is the recognition that if we bypass history, if we don’t confront the historic hostility, we cannot have unity,” said Scott, a history major. He urged his audience not to get too caught up in comparing one group’s suffering with another. Such comparisons without acknowledging people’s different stories, he said, can lead to “the kind of cheap solidarity that runs away when privilege is threatened.” The Rev. Ismael Ruiz-Millán, the North Carolina Conference’s executive director of connectional ministries, was inspired by Scott’s talk. He cautioned white people not to rush to relieve their guilt about the sin of racism by silencing people of color. He said he has often seen white people interrupt a lament by calling for prayer around the person sharing their pain. “We need to be careful of using means of grace as a means of oppression, as a weapon to silence the lament of the oppressed,” he said. The Rev. Gary Mason — a Methodist minister known to many United Methodists — talked about the threat of Christian nationalism. He spoke from experience in working to end Northern Ireland’s 30-year-long civil war known as the Troubles. About a decade ago, Mason heard a quote from a Japanese scholar on Shinto nationalism that he thinks applies to both his homeland and the U.S. “An incomprehensible act becomes comprehensible when told in conjunction with religion,” he recounted. “It’s that ‘God-is-on-our-side’ mentality.” Addressing toxic religion, he said, will require United Methodists to take their ministry outside church walls. He also suggested United Methodists be willing to talk to men with guns in their hands, including Proud Boys and One Percenters. He stressed that engagement is not endorsement, but relationships are key to changing hearts and minds. “I would say to all of you that even if you feel that America may be in despair, don’t give up,” Mason said. “The oxygen of hope is one of the most essential mechanisms the Christian church can actually bring.” (Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News)

BY HEATHER HAHN LAKE JUNALUSKA, N.C. (UM News) – One thing Americans of all political stripes can agree on is that the people of the United States are deeply divided. In fact, “polarization” was dictionary Merriam-Webster’s choice for its 2024 word of the year. All too frequently, Christianity has contributed to this polarization — erecting barriers between Americans and fueling mistrust. Yet, Christians in general — and United Methodists specifically — also can heal the fractures and help those most likely to be hurt by the nation’s brokenness. That was the overall message of the Peace Conference on April 4-6 at Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center. Some 200 clergy and laity, including college students, attended the gathering. The event’s theme drew from Ephesians 2:14: “For Christ is our peace … and he has broken down the dividing walls, which is the hostility between us.” Bishop Kennetha Bigham-Tsai, who leads the Iowa Conference and co-leads the Illinois Great Rivers Conference, expanded on that theme during opening worship. “All around us, people are building walls — walls to keep immigrants out, walls to keep people of color in their place, walls to hem in the LGBTQ community, walls to shut out the poor. These walls are being built through restrictions on health care, through layoffs and attacks on funding, through violent and dehumanizing speech. These walls are being built through fear.” However, she said, Christ shows another way. Jesus broke down walls throughout his earthly ministry — healing on the Sabbath and eating with tax collectors. He also spoke up for the oppressed and marginalized.

Photo by Heather Hahn, UM News Cheryl Lowe (left) and Andrea Gauldin-Rubio, both United Methodists, hold their signs based on Scripture and the teachings of John Wesley at the Hands Off! rally on April 5 outside the courthouse in Waynesville, North Carolina. They were among many United Methodists who used their lunchtime during the nearby Peace Conference to attend the nonviolent rally decrying government overreach. Lowe is a member of Mt. Pleasant United Methodist in McLeansville, N.C., and Gauldin-Rubio is the director of Christian education at Bunker Hill United Methodist Church in Kernersville, N.C.

The Rev. Beth Crissman, the conference director, told those gathered that the Waynesville protest from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. just happened to coincide with the day’s lunch break. She encouraged conference participants to carpool to the nonviolent rally if they wanted to join in. Among those addressing the rally was Kristen Wall, a native daughter of Haywood County, who also spoke and led workshops at the Peace Conference. Until the night of March 28, she worked at the U.S. Institute of Peace, which is currently being dismantled by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The independent nonprofit was established by the U.S. Congress in the 1980s to provide research, policy analysis and training in international peace efforts and conflict resolution. Wall noted that the Institute of Peace’s entire annual budget of $50 million is significantly smaller than just one of Musk’s SpaceX contracts, which average $212 million per launch. Among the organization’s now- cancelled projects were monitoring human-rights abuses and protecting journalists in Afghanistan and deterring extremist recruitment in Nigeria and Kenya. “I want us in this country to pursue peace and democracy and to support it — not just for some, but for all,” she said to applause from the crowd. “We cannot work for our own enrichment, satisfied in a private kingdom of safety and comfort, surrounded by a sea of deprivation. Our humanity is large enough for all of us.” Meeting Wall at the Peace Conference helped bring home the reality of what’s happening to federal workers to the Rev. Cole Altizer, pastor of Bryson City United Methodist Church in North Carolina. “But you know with all the programs that we have in Bryson City, they’re all going to be affected by many of these cuts,” he said. “Our work is to be with the people in the margins. This is how I do that today.”

“But I’m glad we’re able to be here at this gathering and be a part of it,” she said. “I just think one of the things that’s been a reoccurring theme this weekend is we need to be outside of our churches, not just in our church on Sunday mornings. We need to be bringing the word by speaking out against what’s wrong and standing up for the least of these.” The Rev. Rhonda Grant Jordan, director of peace building and outreach ministries for the North Carolina Conference, said so many concerns drew her to the rally, including the effort to eliminate the Department of Education and threats to Medicaid. “I have to be here because, as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I am concerned about the least of my brothers and sisters. I’m concerned about them no matter who they are. And it’s my responsibility as a Christian, as a minister, to do anything I can to support God’s people … Jesus tells us to care about each other.” A number of signs at the rally proclaimed Christ’s call to love our neighbors. That message was also shared throughout the Peace Conference, including at its closing worship the day after the Hands Off! rallies. “Justice alone cannot fix injustice. Hearts must be transformed and love should empower all Christians to struggle for the self-affirmation that is intrinsic to the struggle for justice,” preached Bishop Robin Dease in the closing sermon. Dease is bishop of both the North Georgia and South Georgia conferences. “Justice without love is just merely self-righteousness, and love without justice can become nothing but mere sentimentality,” she said. “Peacemakers are people who breathe grace. … They draw on the goodness and power of Jesus Christ, and then they bring Christ’s love and mercy, forgiveness, strength and wisdom to the conflicts of daily living.”

nurses, teachers, office workers and pastors. Some of those in attendance had brought their children with them. Among those at the protest was Western North Carolina Conference Bishop Ken Carter. “There’s so much at stake for the community in terms of children and nutrition and young people’s education and older adults,” he said. He distinguished between policy objections and partisanship. “To me, this is not anti-person, but it is saying that there are policies that do real harm to real people,” he said. “It’s just encouraging. Mountain people care about each other, and they are resilient. And that’s what you see here.” Whenever drivers passing by the rally registered disapproval by revving their motors or flashing hand gestures, the protesters would respond in good Southern fashion: shouting “Bless your heart.” Carter had been one of the organizers of the Peace Conference at Lake Junaluska — planned long before the April 5 protests.

Christ demonstrated, the bishop stressed, that peacemaking does not mean keeping silent or accommodating injustice.

Bigham-Tsai and other speakers at the conference were addressing an audience mostly from a region still reeling from the fallout of church divisions. From 2019 to 2023, more than 7,600 U.S. congregations left The United Methodist Church — prompted largely by conflict over LGBTQ inclusion. About half of those disaffiliations were in the Southeastern Jurisdiction. Those disaffiliations as well as current U.S. political strife played a role in this year’s revamp of the Peace Conference, said the Rev. Beth Crissman, the conference’s director. Crissman is a district superintendent and director of peace building ministries in the Western North Carolina Conference.

Federal judge ruling allows immigration enforcement at houses of worship WASHINGTON, D. C. — A federal judge ruled April 11 that immigration agents are allowed to conduct enforcement operations at houses of worship for now, despite a lawsuit filed by religious groups over the new policy.

the legal right to sue, since only a handful of immigration enforcement actions have been conducted in or around churches or other houses of worship and that the evidence at this point doesn’t show “that places of worship are being singled out as special targets.” The plaintiffs are reviewing the decision and assessing their options, said their lead counsel, Kelsi Corkran.

Photo by Crystal Caviness, United Methodist Communications Kristen Wall speaks April 4 about finding understanding through recognizing our common humanity. Wall worked at the U.S. Institute of Peace before Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency fired the board of the congressionally funded agency, which led the way to Wall and other staff being let go. The takeover of the institute and its building is currently the subject of litigation.

U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich refused to grant a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs, finding that the more than two dozen Christian and Jewish groups representing millions of Americans lacked standing or

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