Golden Gate District
of the California-Nevada Conference of the
United Methodist Church
News about our District and our Churches.

Congregational Malpractice

By Jim Winkler, General Secretary
General Board of Church & Society

WASHINGTON DC, Sept. 29, 2009 -- Today, we are in the midst of a ferocious battle to secure health-care coverage for everyone in the United States. Everybody should have health care. It is as simple as that. As a denomination, United Methodists say we believe health care is a human right. Our denomination has created many hospitals and clinics around the world, thanks be to God, but there are tasks beyond our capacity alone.

“The fundamental test of our society is how it treats the least powerful among us.” I have been told by some United Methodists that is a partisan political statement because it was made by an elected official. It is not. It does, however, represent a world view with which many of our own people disagree.

Enough Doctors to Go Around?

The United Methodist Church seeks health care for everyone in the United States. And, yet, I have received e-mails from United Methodists complaining that if everyone had health care there wouldn’t be enough doctors and hospitals to go around. So we can’t do it. I kid you not. I believe, however, that if we make it a priority we can actually train enough doctors and build more hospitals, especially if vast sums are not being siphoned off for insurance company profits.

If there are those in this rich denomination who do not believe everyone in the United States should receive health care, consider what they must think of impoverished sisters and brothers in the Global South. Even as we seek health care for everyone in the United States, we are part of a denomination-wide global-health initiative. We are attempting to raise $75 million because The United Methodist Church can “Imagine No Malaria.”

Some pastors don’t want to participate in this campaign. They say they’re tired of being asked for money. Our denomination will continue to try to raise this money, though, because it will save lives.

We are all related to one another. Our safety and security is interconnected. It is not possible to wall off any part of the world from any other part of it, even though such efforts are underway along the Rio Grande and in the West Bank.

The provision of health care for all without regard to status or ability to pay is portrayed in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:24-35). In a conversation that began with the question of how one might obtain eternal life, Jesus asserted that one must love God and one’s neighbor. In response to the next question as to who one’s neighbor is, Jesus told of a Samaritan, an outsider, who coming upon a wounded traveler, provided him with health care. Jesus described the duty to provide health care as owed regardless of the merit or ethnicity of the person in need, and owed to the limit of one’s economic capacity. By the way, this is from #3201, “Health Care for All in the United States,” 2008 Book of Resolutions of The United Methodist Church.

General Conference Made It a Priority

The provision of health care for all … is portrayed in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Occasionally, I will hear from someone that a stance of our denomination does not actually reflect a majority of United Methodists’ opinion. How, I ask, do you know that? These persons consistently respond along the line that they know no one in their Sunday school class or congregation who agrees with the stance — although the stance was approved by their elected delegates.

Everyone in the more than 41,000 United Methodist congregations in Africa, Europe, the Philippines and the United States elects delegates every year to represent them at annual conference. All congregations are represented. Every four years, each annual conference around the world elects lay and clergy delegates to General Conference, our highest decision-making body.

By mandate of the United Methodist Book of Discipline, it is the task of the General Board of Church & Society to seek the implementation of General Conference resolutions on social concerns and the Social Principles. It is not within our purview to set aside General Conference’s actions. The statements of General Conference form the basis for our action and ministry. To paraphrase Bishop James Mathews, we must move from "resolutionary" Christianity to revolutionary Christianity.

A church leader wrote recently to clergy in the district, where he is the superintendent, “The 2008 Book of Resolutions does endorse a single-payer public [health-care] system.” He hastened to add, though, “This does not have the power of church law, and is an expression of the delegates in the spring of 2008, taken before the current partisan wars began.” The District Superintendent wrote that he believes “that were the General Conference to speak in today’s climate, it would be more intentional in taking into account various means to that end.”

Our denomination has spoken repeatedly to this matter, not just in 2008. A look back reveals that our denomination has called for health-care reform as far back as the 1980 Book of Resolutions. At least the past eight General Conferences have called for reform. This is not a matter considered lightly or in a cursory manner.

Malpractice If We Don't Stand Up

The 1980 Book of Resolutions, for example, reads: “For all persons in the nation to have equitable access to needed health-care services, public financing must be a significant part of an overall health-insurance plan. Public funding is necessary to pay for insuring those who cannot pay part or all of the necessary premiums required. This group includes, among others, the poor and the near-poor, most of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled, and those whose care is extremely costly.”

Each of the subsequent General Conference resolutions builds on the previous ones. This agency has not endorsed any particular legislation before the U.S. Congress. But we take very seriously these words of the General Conference: “We charge the General Board of Church & Society with primary responsibility for advocating health care for all in the United States Congress, and for communicating this policy to United Methodists in the USA.”

Right now, none of the proposed legislation before Congress will provide health care to everybody. We believe that is essential and basic. In fact, elected leaders of both political parties in the United States are competing to be the most punitive against undocumented immigrants, the overwhelming majority of whom are desperately seeking economic opportunity in the richest country in the world. The wealth of this nation is dependent on resource extraction and cheap labor in the poorest nations. Something, my friends, is askew.

There is no value in enriching insurance companies further. There is no value in fining people for not buying insurance. There is no value in denying care to undocumented immigrants.

The United States does not have the best health care in the world. It is not true that anyone can get care if they desire to have it.

I am pleased to say that many United Methodists and even some of our denomination’s leaders have joined us in this struggle. Now is the time to stand up and be counted. Any congregation that doesn’t seek health care for all of the uninsured should be sued for malpractice!

The Role of Faith in Politics

By Jim Winkler, General Secretary
General Board of Church & Society

WASHINGTON, DC, Sept. 22, 2009 -- Earlier this year, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., described the banking industry as the most powerful lobby in Washington, D.C. "Frankly, they own the place," he said.

Sen. Durbin may well be right when he describes the banks as the most powerful lobby. They have sought and received a bailout in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Imagine the outcry that would arise if such an effort was mounted to help impoverished people secure a living wage, decent health care and affordable housing. Of course, you don't have to stretch your imagination too far, considering the brouhaha surrounding the current health-care reform debate.

It seems to me, though, that the banks share ownership of Congress. Several other powerful lobbies hold undue sway in the nation's capital: gun manufacturers, the insurance industry, the defense industry, the Israel lobby, and the business lobby, to name just a few.

These lobbies and others like them lavish millions of dollars of campaign contributions on both members of Congress and their election opponents. These lobbyists coax, cajole and threaten members if they step out of line. Often, lobbyists develop front groups to make it appear their support is broader than it actually is.

Romans 13:1-7 Uncited for Current Presidency

Too many of our own United Methodists are involved in this. For example, when we spoke for peace rather than war with Iraq, the anger of some United Methodists was palpable. Back then, I heard repeated references to Romans 13:1-7 and the duty I had to obey the civil authorities, who are ordained by God.

Interestingly, I don't hear that anymore. Now, I hear wild talk of socialism and government takeovers, of indoctrination and the importance of watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots.

When our denomination has spoken for gun control, the same kind of response has resulted. When we have spoken against racism and for the rights of immigrants, more anger spews forth.
The philosopher Sam Keen has written: "We love or hate our enemies to the same degree that we love or hate ourselves. In the image of the enemy, we will find the mirror in which we may see our own face most clearly."

No United Methodist Ownership of Capitol

Certainly, The United Methodist Church doesn't own Capitol Hill, nor should we. We don't offer campaign contributions, threaten members of Congress with ouster if they do not support our teachings, nor do we pray for the death or illness of Supreme Court justices. We offer a polite, firm, moral and ethical witness in the halls of power. We do not seek to control the state nor do we wish for the state to control the church.

In the introduction to the new participant study guide to his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black & White, United Methodist clergyman Adam Hamilton quotes a 19th century political scientist who said that politics is the process for determining who gets what, when and how. Hamilton writes that if politics is the process for determining this, "then it certainly requires some measure of morality, some sense of what is just and unjust."

This is why people of faith, who have a moral conscience, a sense of what is right and wrong, and who thoughtfully consider the issues, "must be engaged in the political process," according to Hamilton.

Hamilton, unlike many denomination members, is attuned to The United Methodist Social Principles: "The strength of a political system depends upon the full and willing participation of its citizens. The church should continually exert a strong ethical influence upon the state, supporting policies and programs deemed to be just and opposing policies and programs that are unjust." The church must speak on behalf of the people, especially the poor and marginalized.

Despite the incredible power of special interests, I continue to believe in the idea of a government by, of, and for the people. But such a government cannot endure without the active participation of the people. In the face of such powerful lobbies, it is more important than ever that those people who speak out have a strong sense of what's just, and what's not.


Why Is Universal Health Care
'Un-American'?

By the Rev. Jim Rigby
St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, Austin TX

AUSTIN, Sept. 14, 2009 -- Is anyone else having trouble with the fact that we are even having this conversation? Is anyone else having trouble believing this topic is really controversial? I have been asked to talk about the ethical dimension of health care.

Here's one way to frame such a discussion: If an infant is born to poor parents, would we be more ethical to give medicine to that child so he or she does not die prematurely of preventable diseases, or would we be more ethical if we let the child die screaming in his or her parent's arms so we can keep more of our money?

Or, let's say someone who worked for Enron, and now is penniless, contracted bone cancer. I've been asked to discuss whether we are more ethical if we provide such people medicine that lessens their pain. Or would we be more ethical to let them scream through the night in unbearable agony so we can pay lower taxes?

I can't believe I am standing today in a Christian church defending the proposition that we should lessen the suffering of those who cannot afford health care in an economic system that often treats the poor as prey for the rich.

I cannot believe there are Christians around this nation who are shouting that message down and waving guns in the air because they don't want to hear it.

Heresy in Many Churches

But I learned a long time ago that churches are strange places: Charity is fine, but speaking of justice is heresy in many churches.

The late Brazilian bishop Dom Hélder Câmara said it well: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist."

Too often today in the United States, if you talk about helping the poor, they call you Christian. But if you actually try to do something to help the poor, they call you a Socialist.

Some of the other speakers today have been asked to address what is possible in the current political climate. I have been asked to speak of our dreams.

Let me ask two questions: How many of you get really excited about tweaking the insurance system so we just get robbed a little less? How many of you want universal health care?
I realize that insurance reform is all that's on the table right now. It can be important to choose the lesser of evils when that alone is within our power at the moment.

The American Dream

But we also need to remember our dream. I believe the American dream is not about material success, not about having the strongest military. The American dream is that every person might have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It's amazing to hear Christians who talk about the right to life as though it ends at birth. They believe every egg has a right to hatch, but as soon as you're born, it's dog eat dog.

We may disagree on when life begins, but if the right to life means anything, it means that every person, who has finished the gestation period, has a right to life. And if there is a right to life, there must be a right to the necessities of life, such as health care.

'Mercy More Than Life'

I believe the American dream was not about property rights, but human rights. Consider the words of this national hymn:

O beautiful for patriot's dream that sees beyond the years.
Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears.

Doesn't that sound like someone cared about the poor? There are those who consider paying taxes an affront, but listen to these words:

O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life.

"Mercy more than life." Have you ever noticed those words before? Supporting universal health care does not make you socialist or even a liberal, it makes you a human being. And it makes you an ambassador for the American dream which, in the mind of Thomas Paine, was a dream for every human being, not just Americans.

As we struggle to get health care to all people, we may have to settle for the lesser of two evils. But remember your dream: the true American dream, a human dream.
Whatever we win through reform is just the first step toward a day when every human being truly has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.


This Is My Witness:
A Miraculous Answer to Prayer

By Martha Parker
Mount Tamalpais UMC, Mill Valley
[From the Church Newsletter, Ridgelines]

August 2009

I don't know how this really happened. I only know that when I prayed with a young girl in Cambodia, the prayer was answered. I would like to tell the story from my point of view.

My daughter Katherine Parker is a missionary in Cambodia working to improve the lives of the poor. I am a community health nurse in California, serving the elementary schools of Mill Valley, my home community. The schools have a long break during the summer and I volunteered through the UMVIM program of our church ("United Methodist Volunteers in Mission"). I raised money for my expenses and to provide funds to carry out the work of the CHAD program within which Katherine works. "CHAD" stands for community health and agricultural development.

While in Cambodia, Katherine and I visited a newly formed congregation in rural Kompong Chhang province. At the end of the Sunday worship service, the pastor told us that one of the families that was present that day had lost all hope of finding help for a 12-year-old daughter who had a heart that was not healthy. The mother said she had been to many doctors in Phnom Penh and that the girl needed to have surgery, but the family had used up all its money. In fact, she said she had sold all her land to try to get help for her daughter. She said her husband had deserted her and that she and her three children were destitute.

What I had learned from Irene Mparutsa, the nurse with the CHAD program, was that the government hospital in Phnom Penh would care for the very poor if they had documentation from their village chiefs. I also knew that CHAD had pastors who were trained to assist families with the process of going through this system. I asked the mother if we could pray about this, and the congregation and the family prayed together. I asked the mother to prepare her documentation and gather what she needed and that we would contact her. Then, I talked directly to the young girl through an interpreter. The girl said she wanted her heart to be healed, and we prayed together.

Being a nurse, I knew she probably had lived with the condition her entire life. The mother said the doctors just told her not to drink coconut milk; they did not say anything else she could do. I could feel a murmur when I placed my hand on her chest, probably something that would have been corrected as a young child in the US. It was like looking at medical books that were 50 years old about children who had murmurs that kept them from activities and that meant they always would be tired and weak. This girl had difficulty breathing and her muscles were not well developed, because she had to rest so much.

The following week, I started my volunteer teaching of the nurses at a hospital in Phnom Penh. I found out from CHAD's Irene Mparutsa that a team of Methodist missionary heart surgeons from Korea were coming the following week. All was very vague and we had no easy way to communicate directly with the woman and her daughter other than by going to the village that was a three-hour drive for us.

We reported to the pastor and made plans on our end to help the girl come for the heart clinic, but were disturbed to hear back a few days later that the girl's condition had worsened, that the mother was also sick, and that they had set out from their rural village for Phnom Penh with their letter from the village chief, but without the information from us as to the specific hospital to which they should go.

I was so upset! I had so hoped to connect the girl with the heart surgeons from Korea, who I had learned were doing their surgeries at Phnom Penh's large public hospital. All I could do was continue to pray, and I asked my home congregation and healing prayer group in Mill Valley also to pray.

Another week went by, and still no one had word of the woman and her daughter. The surgeons had come and gone. Katherine and I visited the village again and we all continued to pray together.

Two more weeks passed and, one day, the pastor called Katherine and me with the joyful report that the girl had returned to the village! She had had open heart surgery and was better! We drove the three hours to the church that Sunday . . . and, who was there? The girl herself and her mother arrived by bike at the small bamboo-stilt church, beaming and praising God for the miracle of the surgery.

We asked where she had the surgery and it was at the hospital where the missionary team of Korean heart surgeons had been, and it happened the week that they were there. Did they do it? No one knew, except that the girl now had a heart to provide her a normal life.

If I have ever seen a miraculous answer to prayer, this is my witness.
1960s Religious Culture Shock Grows

Robert Putnam - author of Bowling Alone (2000), on America's retreat into individualism and away from social involvement -- will have a new book in 2010 entitled American Grace: How Religion Is Reshaping Our Civic and Political Lives. In it he will contend that church-goers are happier and friendlier than non-church-goers.

But church-goers are becoming fewer. A shock to American religion came in the 1960s. The sex and drugs culture became an alternative to religion for Baby Boomers, Putnam says, and brought a "very rapid change in morals and customs." That was the big shock, and one aftershock was the rise of the religious right in reaction to that change. But then came a second aftershock: In the 1990s young people said, in effect, that if the religious right is religion, "I'm not interested." Thus, Americans in their 20s in 2009 are even more secular than the Baby Boomers were in their 20s. Putnam says a polarization has resulted: "There are fewer liberals in the pews, and fewer unchurched conservatives."

The political implications are huge: Democrats must appeal to secular Americans while not alienating the church-goers, and Republicans have just the opposite problem.

[Future book reviewed in a column by Michael Gerson, Washington Post, May 9, 2009.]
Calvin: Through It All, Living God's Grace

John Calvin, the second greatest Reformation theologian, was born 500 years ago [July 10, 1509] in France. Calvin's assessment of the human dilemma - caught between being created in God's image and also fallen in the image of humanity and its sin - explains so much about who we are and how we behave. Unlike John Wesley, Calvin believed that salvation was only for those whom God chooses, but, like Wesley, he taught that there is much we all can do in the world to advance God's will. "If we throw our trust on God, admitting that we have done all we can and the rest is in God's hands, then we can be less worried about the results," says Evans Presley-McGowan, a student at San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS) in San Anselmo.

Every arena of life, especially helping people at the margins of life, "is to be reformed and changed so that it comes more closely into alignment with God," says SFTS professor Gregory Love. Calvin's great work, Institutes of the Christian Religion, follows the four divisions of the Apostles' Creed: knowledge of God, knowledge of Christ, receiving grace through the Holy Spirit, and teaching, through the church, the availability of grace. James Goodloe of the Foundation for Reformed Theology in Richmond, Va., says the Institutes are "a coherent and expansive articulation of the gospel that not only addressed the concerns of Calvin's day but did so with a clarity and incisiveness that continues to inform us." The 2009 legacy: 75 million members of Reformed churches around the world.

[Adapted from Chimes, SFTS magazine, Winter 2009.]

News Briefs: Golden Gate District Churches

Updated October 1, 2009

Diane Jackson of Novato UMC led a team of 23 for flood recovery work in September in Cedar Rapids, Iowa...The Rev. Becca Jordan-Irwin of Healdsburg Community Church is on leave, recovering from Lymes disease, contracted from ticks on a hike in Minnesota five years ago. She reports that her body at times felt like it was on fire. "I wish I could say that my faith and trust in God was incredibly strong and that I had an inner peace throughout...but I felt scared and exhausted... I am actually surprised and very thankful to be alive right now. I feel that the Lord is bringing healing to me physically, emotionally, and spiritually"...