Monday, August 01, 2005

METHODISTS PUT HOMOSEXUALITY AHEAD OF THE BIBLE

A pastor who denied church membership to a homosexual has been banished from the pulpit and denied his salary for one year by the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, despite the admission he acted on his conscience and his action could be defended "in theory" from the Methodist Book of Discipline. Rev. Edward Johnson, former pastor of South Hill United Methodist Church for the past six years, will appeal his suspension to the denomination's highest court in Houston in late October. The action leading to the pastor's "involuntary leave of absence" was initiated by Rev. W. Anthony Layman, retired district superintendent for Johnson's region in rural Southside Virginia, following Johnson's December refusal to allow a homosexual man to join his congregation.

Layman told United Methodist News Service he and other conference officials "did all we could do to help [Johnson] see the inconsistency of his stance in his ministry" before filing a complaint against him in April. "I was trying to show him the church was open to receiving [the member]," Layman said. "He, in turn, relied on his interpretation of the scriptures." Layman's complaint to a denominational board resulted in a recommended one-year suspension for Johnson. The Virginia Conference approved the recommendation for punishment on June 13 by a 418-114 vote, with eight abstentions. "For me, this was the last recourse," Layman said. "Johnson had two opportunities to receive the person into membership himself or allow the associate pastor to do it. He would do neither. It was this act of insubordination that put him on notice." "Our Social Creed says that we as a church would not ordain homosexuals, but they have the right to be received in membership," Layman said. "The church supports homosexuals as part of the congregation and as persons of definite worth. "Johnson has deep beliefs around this issue," Layman said. "He is a man of integrity who is living out his conscience."

The Methodist Book of Discipline directs congregations that membership cannot be denied to anyone based on "race, nationality, economic condition or status." According to Carole Vaughn, director of communications for the Virginia Conference, Johnson could "in theory" use his own judgment in deciding whether "status" applied to homosexuals.

During the June disciplinary session, Bishop Charlene Kammerer was questioned as to whether it was lawful for a pastor to "receive into the membership of a local United Methodist church anyone who is able to receive the vow, affirm the vow and promises to fulfill the vow, and who, at the same time, acknowledges and impenitently practices homosexual relations?" She did not answer the question directly, but, according to the minutes, said the bishop and superintendents were charged with giving guidance, as they had done in Rev. Johnson's case. Kammerer also was asked if the language in the Book of Discipline gave "Johnson the right and responsibility to exercise responsible pastoral judgment in determining who may be received into church membership of a local church." According to the minutes of the meeting, Kammerer ruled "negative in this case."

By suspending Johnson, noted Vaughn, the church's leaders were vetoing the pastor's decision. "In a layperson's terms, it would be sort of like being temporarily suspended," she said. Gary Creamer, a member of Johnson's South Hill church, is standing behind his former pastor and says many other members are as well. "I feel Rev. Johnson was holding to biblical principle in denying membership to that individual," Creamer told VaNCNews. "I feel extremely sad and grieved. I feel a terrible injustice was done." Creamer said the homosexual man at the center of the dispute had been attending the church for some time and sang in the choir. "This person was never discouraged from coming to church. That would be un-Christian. However, actual membership would be another story," he said. "The church is not upholding the biblical principles outlined in Leviticus, 2 Timothy and Corinthians about homosexuality and the sins thereof," he added. "I cannot see how you can take Holy Communion and openly practice that lifestyle. The Bible says homosexuality is a sin. Now everybody sins, but we like to think that everybody who is a member of the United Methodist Church is attempting to repent of their sins. Openly practicing homosexuality is not an attempt to repent of sins, in my opinion."

The decision to suspend Johnson was done without taking the local congregation into account, said Creamer. "I just feel like the congregation as a whole was ignored," he said. "I don't think anyone had any idea of the gravity of what was going on." Bishop Kammerer confirmed Creamer's complaint the congregation was excluded, saying clergy matters are not subject to local congregations' input. "He is accountable to the annual conference as a clergy member. He is not subject to any one local church," she said. "As Rev. Johnson's bishop, I wish he and his family well and pray for healing in the life of the congregation in South Hill." Johnson could, Kammerer says, be reinstated as a United Methodist pastor in good standing if he fulfills recommendations from the conference's board of ordained ministry.

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MORE FAT FOLLIES

By Radley Balko

I have a confession. Though I cover obesity issues as a journalist, it turns out that I myself am obese. Really. At six feet, 222 pounds, the federal government says I'm obese. Now, I could certainly lose a few pounds. But I'm hardly unhealthy. My blood pressure and heart rate are great. My cholesterol is a bit above average, but still well within the "healthy" range. I put in over an hour at the gym a couple of days ago, and plan to head there again upon completing this column. Here's a picture. Judge for yourself.

I'm not alone. According to the federal government, about half the National Basketball Association is obese. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are obese. Scrawny Johnny Depp is "overweight." Even the president, whose White House doctor recently pronounced him to be in top physical condition, is "overweight" by government standards.

You're probably fat, too. The average woman is 5 foot 3 inches tall. By the time she hits 141 pounds, the government says she is officially "overweight." At 170, she's "obese." The average man of 5 feet, 10 inches hits "overweight" at 174 pounds. By 209 pounds, he's "obese." Something is wrong here. When people like Cruise, world-class athletes and a fit president are being told by the government that they need to lose weight, perhaps there's something wrong with our metric.

And indeed there is. The government's method of telling us whether or not we're overweight is the Body Mass Index. It's a crude system that even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concedes on its Web site shouldn't be used by itself to determine individual health. It doesn't account for age, gender or ethnicity, and it doesn't distinguish between muscle tissue and fat. That's why the people whom the government says we should strive to look like are actually unhealthy by the government's own standards. Or to put it another way, if we all followed the government's advice and joined a gym, we'd probably make the obesity and overweight statistics worse, not better.

So when the government, the media, or nutrition activists make bold pronouncements about how two-thirds of America is overweight or obese, it might help to keep in mind that this is the standard they're using. And it gets worse.

Before 1997, present-day Radley Balko wouldn't be obese. He'd be a bit "overweight" (which sounds about right). But in 1997, the government redefined what it means to be both obese and overweight. It lowered the bar. Twenty-nine million Americans went to bed at normal weight and magically woke up overweight the next morning. None of them gained a pound.

Suddenly, the government said, these people were at risk for a host of ailments and illnesses they weren't at risk for the night before. When you hear about how many of us are overweight or obese now as compared to the early 1990s, keep in mind that a large number of us became overweight not by snacking on corn chips, but by government fiat.

Since 1990, the government has also been telling us that 300,000 people die each year due to obesity. A few years ago, they revised that figure upward, to 400,000. That number is everywhere. Time and again we were told that obesity was soon to overtake smoking as the number one cause of preventable death in America. A Lexis search for the terms "obesity" and "400,000" turns up thousands of media hits.

But last April, a study commissioned by the National Institutes of Health urged by critics of the obesity hysteria confirmed what less hysterical health researchers had suspected all along. The 400,000 figure was wrong. And not by a little bit. The actual figure is closer to 100,000. And guess what? According to recent research, people who are slightly "overweight" are actually healthier than those who are normal weight. When you factor in the number of lives saved by being modestly overweight, the number of people who die due to obesity drops to around 25,000.

The CDC has been reluctant to embrace the new study's figure. That might have something to do with the fact that the CDC's director, Julie Gerberding, was co-author of the 400,000 study. In fact, a subsequent internal investigation revealed that the CDC may have actually known that the original study was flawed! It seems the study was published over objections from peer-reviewers due to internal politics. In other words, because the boss wrote the study.

When we see a study on the health effects of smoking that was funded by Philip Morris, we rightly read it with some skepticism. The numbers may still be right, but we're more cautious about verifying their accuracy. But when we see alarmist data from the federal government, we always seem to take it at face value. If the government says everyone's getting fat, everyone must be getting fat. If the government says obesity is killing us, obesity must be killing us. We assume the government always has our best interests at heart.

The truth is, government public health agencies are plagued by the same biases and politicking as privately funded groups. Federal agencies charged with securing the "public health" have an interest in making "public health" prospects appear pretty dim. If they can establish that the public health is at risk, there's more reason for them to get a bump from Congress come budget time. This isn't to say all government health researchers are corrupt. But these studies aren't published in a vacuum. The Gerberding saga alone is proof of that.

Lawmakers then use these studies to formulate public policy. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a nutrition activist or Congressman cite the "400,000" figure just before calling for some kind of immediate government intervention. Usually, those laws are aimed at limiting the kinds of choices we're allowed to make as consumers. Make no mistake, these fallacious studies have immediate, real-world consequences for you and me. Perhaps it's time we applied some accountability to government agencies and their leaders who abuse science and statistics. It's certainly time our lawmakers stopped biting on every alarmist health study without a hint of suspicion or skepticism

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