what bugs me about this? : general conference blog reflection & challenge

so i've been doing a lot of general conference blog reading. mostly cause i have to keep up with the methoblog while jay is out of town. one blog added to the mix was/is the ird's blog for conference. they've got some folks who are teaming up to post, so ideas and topics cover a wide range. this is the most recent posting and it doesn't ring right with me.

On the Sunday before General Conference, my pastor mentioned the Conference in the morning announcements. He added his hope that the “special interests” that have besieged past General Conferences would be set aside along with divisive issues like abortion, human sexuality, the environment, and immigration. Indeed the Rev. Tom Berlin, the lead clergy delegate for Virginia, mentioned the same hope in a commentary for UM News Service. “The curtain may be rising on a new act in our story as a Christian movement—unless forces of the past conspire to jam it shut.”

Sadly, the hope expressed by my pastor and Rev. Berlin have not been exhibited at this General Conference. There is little agreement on social issues like human sexuality, abortion or the war in Iraq. Each day there are anti-war protests, pro-homosexuality demonstrations, immigration reform rallies, one anti-Bush Library protester, and over a dozen daily leaflets available from various caucus groups. 

There is little theological agreement either. On a quick walk through the official UMC bookstore, Cokesbury, one can find monographs by radical Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, Jesus Seminar author Marcus Borg, and “dissenting” United Methodist Bishop Joseph Sprague. One can also find a few evangelical authors like orthodox Oxford don Alistair McGrath, Jesus Seminar critic and New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, and Mere Christianity’s C.S. Lewis. And there are those from the so-called “extreme center” like UM Bishop Scott Jones (who, by the way, has a curious habit of avoiding taking all leaflets offered to GC delegates and visitors each morning—as a former professor, perhaps he’s already read enough).

my thought.. "hi pot, meet kettle" is it odd that someone as a voice for the ird is calling others divisive? i'm on the mailing list, i read your newsletters and emails. their stuff is divisive. sure it covers itself in saving the conservative values of the church.. whatever that means.. does that make you more righteous? thus right? if you actually think that then you are much too proud to see your lack of humility.

also, how do so many people come  together and not have disagreement? that is unrealistic to expect that. i read borg and nt wright.. so am i in your good graces one day and not the other?

the ird folks do have a collection of some of the slamming cartoons that people have done of them. that's a pretty funny post.

other than that, i encourage all at gc get a pic of the bush library protester. we will make a full photo post of submitted pics with the lone protester at the methoblog. why? because i think that would be funny.