Tom Newman Interview 1o5y32

Rev. Tom Newman Interview

Sarah Arney(SA): Thank you for being willing to speak with me. I would like to start this interview by playing you something I heard while at General Conference. This is a Bishop who is about to start some group discussions.

Bishop Palmer: “So I want to tell you a quick story. The Council of Bishops a couple of years ago was having table conversations about some of our most challenging issues in the life of the church and the several cultures that we represent around the globe. One of our colleague bishops at the table where I was sitting said, “We all need to take a step back”. There was a pregnant pause, as you might imagine, not knowing what would be said next by this particular bishop, who I’ll not throw under the bus as we speak. He said, “Why don’t we try telling our story, before we take our stand”. I found those words memorable, and I’m grateful for them to this day, no matter what the subject is before us. So, would you see this as a time for you to tell your story, and you don’t have to give every detail of your life, but as it relates relevantly to this conversation that we’ve been engaged in over many decades around human sexuality. And as you begin that, the statement is coming, that ought to be available at the heart, but think about telling a story, telling your story, before you take your stand.” SA: So, I play that before interviews to set the tone that this is not necessarily about finding a spectrum or placing a camp, but asking you about the formational experiences that have brought you to where you are alongside this debate. So, would you like to say your name, your occupation, and a bit about yourself.

Rev. Tom Newman (TN):

Okay. I’m Tom Newman, I pastor Sunrise United Methodist Church. It’s my fourth appointment, and I’m focused on what’s best for the church.

SA: Could you tell me a bit about your call to ministry?

TN: Sure, I didn't grow up in church. My grandmother did this to me, she prayed for a minister in the family. My mother was the youngest of seven, incidentally by 11 years. There’s 23 years between the oldest and youngest in my mother’s family, so there were grandchildren children older than me when I was born. My grandmother had always gone to the church in Hull River, and it was from Republican Methodist tradition that has now ended up in the United Church of Christ. James O'Kelly and Bishop Asbury did didn't play well together. So, I learned basically Methodist theology from her. It was a vacation Bible school that I went to. My dad wouldn't set foot in the church so my grandmother was supposedly on her death bed, and she used that for several years. We had to go to vacation Bible school. I had to take my sister in. We got there late, the fellowship hall was full, there was no place to sit other than the front row. So, I was on the front row, it was hard to get out, and instead of taking the young ones out first they took the older ones. So, with the youth pastor looking at me, who was a really funny neat guy, I ended up in a classroom in the basement without a window to even escape. I didn’t want to be there, but I had a good time. I thought it was surely a fluke, so I went back a second night expecting thoroughly to be bored to death and prove my point that it wasn’t a place I wanted to be. I had an even better time, and at the end of the week the best I can do is say I was hungry to go back to church.

So, I’ve hungry to be part of the church ever since. Now I say I'm the most blessed man I know because not only can I go any time I want, they’ve got no better sense than to give me a key. I can let myself in any time of day or night.

SA: Is that what led you to be a pastor?

TN: Well that hunger, it expressed itself in many different ways. When I was in youth group, I was 15 at this time, we were doing youth Sunday. I had intended to sign up to assist with the children's message. Somehow or another I misread, or I made a mistake, and I had signed up to do the sermon. By the time I realized that it was very late. Someone else would have to be inconvenienced or the pastor was going to have to speak. I was brought up old-fashioned, if you give your word you keep it. If you say yes you follow through. I had said yes, I needed to follow through. It was with a big swallow that I fulfilled that role, and in fulfilling that role there were four of us dividing the traditional sermon. They preached in that church closer to 30 minutes was more normative. So, the four of us divided up that time. Near as I can say, for the first time in my life, I was extraordinary. In many ways in life I had been just run of the mill, but at that point it's like I knew this is what I have to do for the rest of my life. There have been times I’ve been happier about that than others, but from that moment on I’ve kind of known this was the trajectory that was chosen for me. This is what I was created to do.

SA: How important would you say that culture is in shaping your religious beliefs?

TN:

Well if I was quoting Niebuhr, I would probably be Christ against culture. The culture I see is moving in the direction opposite to biblical values, on a host of issues, not just this one. Culture’s become more secular and hostile towards religion, almost hostile towards religion in any shape, form, or fashion. So that even now there's plenty of people who think the world would be better off, starting John Lennon as sweet a guy as he appeared to be. Imagine, his song from the late 70’s, one of his last, to now people believing the world’s really a better place if we could do away with all religion— Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, doing away with all of us and just be people. I don’t see it that way. There’s such a rich wealth of experience, religion has helped shape our world. Everything from the Veneration of the Virgin Mary leading to women's suffrage and full inclusion. That didn't happen anywhere else. Except from the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and the Veneration of the Virgin Mary, because that didn’t happen in China, that didn’t happen in the Middle East, it didn't happen anywhere else in the world. Now it took a jolly well long time, there are plenty of sad chapters along the way. But yeah, that’s one of the ways that had it not been for the…we can even pinpoint it to the building of Chartres Cathedral in , the Veneration of Virgin Mary, chivalry beginning, taking hundreds of years to get us where we are, but that’s a formative moment where Christianity made the world a better place.

SA: Would you say that living in the American South or in the Bible Belt adds a particular context which you’ve noticed?

TN:

Well I have noticed. I have a unique experience in that my wife of 14 years was from upstate New York, almost Canada. So, I know what it's like to worship in congregations far North. So, I’m not just a product of the South if you will. In many ways, I found the Methodist Church very familiar. They sing hymns faster up north than they do here in the south, that’s one of the differences that is readily apparent. Ultimately though, as far as shaping biblical views, not as much. There are pockets of conservative belief in the north as there are pockets of far progressive belief in the South. Believe it or not, some of the rural areas of New York, country music is as popular there as it is here and the good old boys fly rebel flags, as strange as that may seem. So being in the Bible Belt I don't think has produced me. There are certain advantages, there are more churches in the South and they are some of our more vibrant churches, are I think there’s a little less hostility, but I see that changing. I see culture creeping in and the South is going the way of the North, it’s just taking us a little longer.

SA: How would you describe your view of the United Methodist doctrine in the church about human sexuality and the debate that's been going on about the doctrine?

TN: I think the church's doctrine is healthy. I think the debate is unhealthy. The doctrine, without quoting all text whether Scripture or the Book of Discipline, recognizes the humanity, the situation we are, and has a lot of care and concern. People of all sexual orientations are people of sacred worth. They’re not to be abandoned and looked down upon. We are to embrace them as whole people, they are. Gifts of God, I think our

discipline recognizes that. It also recognizes there has to be some hedge on our sexual expression. Not all sexual expression is acceptable to God, and I think it recognizes a very traditional, biblically held, healthy, hedge on sexuality without harsh judgment as some churches have done. The debate however, as I’ve watched it… I entered the conference in 1995. I finished high school at 17 and started college, went straight to seminary, so when I was appointed I was 23 years old. I was the youngest full-time pastor in the North Carolina Annual Conference under appointment that year. So, with that in mind, since 1995 I have seen the debate go from talking about gay marriage and including gay people to the other harder to understand letters of the alphabet soup in this debate. I have watched people become further entrenched, angry. I have watched people who wish to make a change in the discipline to allow more inclusion, more sexual options denigrate others who disagree with them as being hate filled, hateful people. I'm sure there are people who are hate-filled, but I haven’t met them in the United Methodist Church. I don't look at people who are homosexual as being hate-filled, single issue people, and I resent people looking at me that I must be hate-filled because I disagree with them and a single-issue person. I'm not. I am a mix of many different views and beliefs, often traditional, but I’m a systematic guy. In seminary, systematic theology is very, very, very important to me, to have a system of theology that holds together and isn’t randomly pieced together. Part of that led me out of the United Church of Christ and into the United Methodist Church. As said at the outset, my grandmother basically taught me Methodist theology. As I learned more about the United Church of Christ, which is far more progressive than the United Methodist Church has been, there wasn’t a thread of theology that held them together. They were together because they chose to be

together, not because they believed in any way alike. Not just on the issue of human sexuality, the virgin birth, you name the theological perspective. Perseverance of the Saints, almost any major issue you name there was radical diversity. So, I went from my grandmother's church which was from the Christian tradition again tracing back to James O'Kelly. There are others that are part of the Puritan standing order, the Congregationalists to a couple of German groups including the Reformed Tradition. My grandmother's church had an altar call every Sunday. If you walked in and didn’t pay any attention to the sign out front you would have thought that it was a Baptist church. Because it had a 30+ minute sermon, the pastor never wore a robe or any sort of clergy vestment, it was a lot like the average Southern Baptist Church. That’s not bad, that's just descriptive. Versus the Reformed Church I served for 18 months as an assistant to the pastor. They always wore vestments, very high church, very formal. There was a reformed book of worship on the altar from which the pastor read regularly, very priestly in his function, and never an altar call. When I asked curiously, one old fella told me there might've been one in the late 40s but he wasn't real sure. But that was not part of their faith because they were reformed going back to Zwingli who really taught more conservative than Calvin. Some people are going to heaven, some people going to hell, people going to heaven are going to find their way in here, and God’s already settled it so why do evangelism? Needless to say, that was a church that had peaked in its heyday, beautiful facility, but was declining for lack of outreach, because that was not part of their theology. So that bothered me deeply. I needed some denominational purity. I needed some systematic theology, which is what made the United Methodist Church one, familiar to what my grandmother taught me to believe on a host of issues whether it was perseverance of the Saints or, that was just the theology I learned. Incidentally one of

the sore spots in my life, my grandmother gave a very Methodist point of view that she was taught from the time she was a little girl in Sunday school, that one could backslide out of one’s salvation. Almost within, I say deathbed, within months of my grandmother's death, I , I wouldn’t say an argument as if it was heated or angry, but a theological disagreement with her pastor, who came from a different part of the UCC, who was very much arguing and preached from the pulpit Perseverance of the Saints, that once you’re saved you’re always saved. As a kid, I didn’t understand that. When I went to seminary and learned, I was angry about that. He should've been able to acknowledge he was serving a church that came from a different tradition than he did. Why pick that issue to argue with on a lady whose more than 80 years of age and has just months to live? Why is that an issue you want to pick and pull at? It really did bother my grandmother to be at theological odds with her pastor, and this is a time when you need your pastor. So, I was angry, and I embraced Methodist theology because it is more systematic, and we follow John Wesley's theological bent. I can give an altar call every Sunday. In fact, every Sunday that I have preached in my life I have given an altar call, and will until I retire. It’s a part of who I am fundamentally, that you need to make sure that you’re in a right relationship with God, and part of that may require a trip to the altar on your knees. And I’ll pray beside you if you need it, or you can pray where you are, you don’t have to come forward, nothing magic about the coming forward. But yeah it’s important. So, the systematic theology is very important to me. I think I’ve digressed a bit from your original question.

SA: No, not at all, that was great.

TN: Occupational hazard.

SA: So, we’re going to go back in time a little bit, which you have some already. When you were growing up, was there any discussion of the debate at the time when you were growing up either in the church you were at previously or when you went to the United Methodist Church?

TN: No, the debate really happened in my awareness through the 90s. I was born in 1970. So, the world was simpler then. Yeah there were debates, and I’m sure there were people who debated it, it was part of the Methodist debate. I was unaware of that, blissfully unaware. I grew up in a very rural section of Alamance county, where the nearest neighbor was over a mile away on dirt roads. I didn’t have shoes through most of the summer, kind of way I grew up. You didn't need shoes, you’d outgrown them, I grew up very poor. We heated the house with wood. We had electric heat, but couldn’t afford to turn it on. We were interested in survival, not debating those sorts of things. I graduated from high school in 1988. Yeah, that was not part of our…’gay’ was bad, if you were called ‘gay’ that was not good, no one wanted to be gay, it wasn’t questioned. I'm sure some people looking back there were some people who were effeminate. Not all of them were gay, I’m talking about guys primarily. One of them turned out to be the most heterosexual man I’ve ever met, and he used it to his advantage. He would talk to girls about maybe they could be the one to help him change and he’d use that to have relations with them, but he was definitely not gay. He just liked soap operas and Duran-Duran, and “Ooh

child” he’d do like that, I think he used it to his advantage. But he wasn’t gay in the least bit. Some I think may have been more or less effeminate than he was. And of course, entering the church. The church that I grew up in, near as I could say, because I was 12 before I entered the church, it wasn't a debate. The theology was very conservative. The first major theological debate I was over perseverance of the Saints, and I forget his name, but was a very famous basketball star who died of an overdose who had claimed to be Christian. Did he go to heaven or not? The pastor said very much absolutely because he had professed Christ, no matter how far he strayed from it. So that was a burning issue for us, not whether you're gay or not. I was really unaware of, like I said until the 90s going to college. College always opens up a realm of thought and ideas, and so it was in my college. And Elon college is not a conservative place, very progressive on many fronts. So that's where I was exposed first to homosexuality and thinking about it. Is it right, is it wrong? So that's where I entered, it was in the late 80s, but really early 90s.

SA: What was that like in college? TN: There again, I was not the traditional college student, I was younger than most. One of the things that had been preached from the pulpit was 88 Reasons Why, I forget the author, I probably should know, but the author of that book had decided that Jesus was returning in 1988 and we were all going to be raptured. So, I starting college walking across the campus with my book sack on my back thinking, ‘I’ve at least got to start college before Jesus comes back and we all get raptured away’. I was in a very different place. Naturally, the rapture didn’t occur and the author subsequently

wrote another book explaining why he was wrong, sold a bunch more books, and so he laughed all the way to the bank. That was the debate in the church that I was part of, so homosexuality wasn't… And in college you meet people with different lifestyles, people from different places. I didn't live on campus, I was commuter. I also was in business for myself; I was automotive reconditioning. I had a partner, we had several contracts including one with the local Cadillac dealership. We washed and waxed and detailed their cars that came in used before they were sold. We did other private clients. So, I was actually one of the first people to have a cell phone. I was able to call my partner and if necessary pick up a car on the way to our shop rather than have to drive all the way. So, it saved a lot of time and money to have that cell phone and make those calls. But yeah, homosexuality wasn't a big part of…I was focused on surviving, living, running a business. An academic scholarship is what got through Elon. I was able to graduate without debt, which most of that was academic scholarship, so I had to maintain very high GPA, and I did. So that was not a burning issue. It’s kind of like you’d come up and you’d listen and think, “Huh”, and just go on without judgment. You’d just say, “This is interesting, those are ideas”, because we all try out different ideas when we’re in college. So, I wasn’t hostile to people, I’ve never hostile to people who are of a different sexual orientation than me. Part of it is I just don’t understand. I think that I'm genetically predisposed to be heterosexual, and I just never looked at a man in a way that would make me… I just don't understand how another man could look at another man. I think women are beautiful, this is who I am, so if I’m going to be sexually involved…so I just hear that, that’s really odd, I don't understand. But no hostility.

SA: Was it at all a part of your training as a pastor? Did any of your professors talk about it or your peers talk about it in divinity school or seminary?

TN: It came up. There's a wonderful article written by Stanley Hauerwas, “Dispatches from the Front”, and it's this short little article that says gays are morally superior than Christians. And as he unpacks his argument, and of course it’s satirical. Stanley Hauerwas is a brilliant man, I can’t say enough positive about him. He’s like the Howard Stern of the theological world; he’s a shock jock. He says things to be intentionally overthe-top, grab your attention, and make you think. Some of that can be very good and healthy. But his argument was gays at least have managed to get themselves kicked out of the military at the time for being gay. Some of the arguments about what happens in shower and locker rooms. He actually says it’s a shame Christians couldn’t get themselves kicked out of the military. Spontaneous baptism, you’re here in the shower we could baptize lots of folks, this whole peaceful notion of ‘turn the other cheek’. So, gays have managed to do what Christians can’t. Making this really more than homosexuality, that article to me has us think more about pacifism, because Stanley Hauerwas is a pacifist. And war, military, those sorts of things. But yeah it was mentioned and talked about. There was a group called Sacred Worth that I assume is still functioning at the divinity school, which is the LGBTQ group if you will. A place to and belong. And there can still kind of, okay. Because I was working 35 hours a week, third shift in a homeless shelter before I became Methodist, when I was still part of the United Church of Christ. So, I didn’t have a whole lot of time for frivolous debate. I was carrying an academic scholarship, getting me through Duke. And 35 hours a week is a lot of hours, and for that to be third shift

there were days I was a walking zombie. I can tell you stories outside of this, that I was doing my best to keep myself together. Again, it was one of those the debates that were interesting. I listened, but I never heard a theologically compelling argument. The best argument I have heard, that resonated with me, is the genetic predisposition. If some people are homosexual because they’re genetically created be that way, just like I'm 5’8’’ or I have a certain hair color or eye color, I understand that. I can’t change my eye color, or hair, I guess I could dye it. You know what I mean. I could color it, but I wouldn’t change it. It would still be underneath the color; would still be the color it was created to be. I understand that. That's the argument that resonated with me. Not some of the other. Because I really do have a hard time scripturally explaining homosexuality.

SA: So, you’ve talked about this a little bit also, but how would you describe the course of the debate? Over perhaps your time in college through your time as a pastor, about the trajectory you think the debate is taking?

TN: Further and further entrenched, I think is the trajectory. Here I was not intimately involved with it until I became Methodist. If we were Baptist, each church could choose to do what they wanted to do. Pullen Memorial Church has been doing gay weddings 20+ years, maybe 30, I don't know, but for a long time. Long before it was legal. My understanding is that Pullen Memorial Church in Raleigh has been doing that. and they’re Baptist. They’re not part of the Southern Baptist Fellowship but they are Baptist, and so as an autonomous unit able to do what they do.

Methodists, we’re not autonomous units. So, you’ve got a General Conference that writes the Book of Discipline that is normative for every Methodist Church in every place throughout the world. So, it kind of got thrust. And then it's the various groups that push the issue so that it can't be ignored; whether it’s people with the little rainbow stoles they wear or the tables that are set up, there's lots of displays. And of course, the debates are far more heated because we have to elect delegates to send, and those delegates are going to vote one way or another on this issue. Among others, but this seems to be the hot button issue. So, this is not something I could look at and say, “Okay, well I agree or disagree” and move on, it’s something you’ve got to make your stand about. I have also seen it move from the debate about “do we have same-sex unions or marriages?” to all the other letters. I having a real candid conversation, I forget the person's name, but well-intentioned, someone I believe loves Jesus as much as I do, but happens to be homosexual. I said, “If we can just backup, if you could draw some lines, you would find a lot of people to be ive. If we could talk just about same-sex weddings, marriages, unions, whatever we call that. If those sorts of partnerships, you would find a lot of from the people you’re alienating because we’ve got to take about bisexuals and trans-genders. At the time, I think it was mostly transvestites, but that of course now that technology’s increased so the T means a lot more than it used to mean. Having said that, that person along with the movement has been unwilling to draw any lines. As far as I can tell. I guess the only line they're willing to draw is that pedophilia is not good. But apart from that, we keep adding more, and that's where I said, “I’ve got to check out of the debate, because I can't go all the other letters”. I watch more letters be added, and I’ve found myself pushed further and further and further

towards the more traditional or… any word I use here is going to be polarizing and not helpful. I don't know the better language to say the traditional view of the church. I have been pushed further and further, and part of that I resent because I’ve had to kick in my heels. But you’ve got to draw a line somewhere, and it just doesn't seem to be… The latest issue, germane to your question, is the “Q”. Does that mean queer or questioning? I haven't been able to get a clear sense on what the “Q” means. Because if it’s queer, I don’t understand how that simply different than gay. If it’s questioning I'm back to wait a minute. When I first came into the conversation I was understanding some people are homosexual because they're made that way. I understand that What I don't understand is why you question, because I don't, I have never questioned throughout any of the debates. Growing up I was a small kid and sometimes in high school I got called queer, it was a term of derision, but I never question my sexuality, I’ve just always known. Kind of like my youngest son wasn't eating in a restaurant in Greenville, we were in Greenville at one point. He wasn't eating, wasn't eating. Finally, his mother and I said, “You’ve got to eat, you’ve got to eat”, and he said, “But Mom, the waitress is so pretty!”. So fundamentally, he was like three or four, there’s a fundamental part. I think he's natured to be heterosexual, it’s who he is and I understand that. I’ve never questioned. So, I don’t understand the “Q” and that's where I in the debate feel pushed.

SA: One of the things I’ve heard other pastors talk about is the importance for them of covenants, in the specific context of marriage covenants, and why gay marriage or unions for them, they were willing to have that as part of the conversation because it is within that kind of covenant which I believe matches more closely with other biblical ideas of what relationship between two people should look like. I was wondering if that

was a similar distinction for you, if that was what was important to you, about human sexuality is maintaining that covenant relationship? Or if there was a different reason to distinguish between different letters of the alphabet?

TN: I understand covenant, and that's where I think there is room at table to have conversation for lesbians and gay people, homosexual people who would like to live in lifelong monogamy. Because the objective reality is us heterosexuals are not doing so well with lifelong monogamy. Even those of us who hold traditional values and consider ourselves biblically literate, divorce happens. I find myself divorced when I didn’t think I would be. So, lifelong monogamy, if I choose to remarry at some future point, and I've not ruled that out, then by definition I can’t have lived lifelong monogamy. So, with that in mind I understand, and there's a place to have that conversation. In some ways, to piggyback on Stanley Hauerwas, if a homosexual couple can pull off lifelong monogamy they may be morally superior to a vast majority of heterosexuals who haven’t been able to pull that off. So, I understand in a host different ways. Now personally, if there had been some reasonability in the debate, civil unions I think could have been accepted. Whether that was a stepping stone or a terminal point I don't know, if we could go there first with civil unions, not called marriage, it would've been a lot less polarizing and would help to move the needle. Where I see things as unreasonable is the whole all or nothing. Either it’s all okay or then you must be a hateful person, filled with hate speech, and all negative things apply to you. That's where it really stymied the debate and further entrenched. That kind of language doesn't give us room to have to debate, to grow in our position, to change our understanding. That has just polarized and entrenched and that's exactly where you see us.

Now the notion of covenant is secondary to some of the polarizing sort of…even to the point of the absurdity of saying we want to honor the lifelong covenant of marriage with homosexual peoples, and in so doing we’re going to break the covenant that we made when we were ordained to the discipline of church. We’re going to subvert the conversation, the discussion. We’re going to jump to the end that we think is best and do what we want to do. Which is a breach of covenant. There is no way to look at it other than a breach of covenant when you’re breaching the discipline. At this point its just total anarchy. We’ve got whole Annual Conferences, Jurisdictions, bishops being elected, that…it’s just not compatible. Our denomination has already split, and it's a matter of acknowledging that and how do we divide assets? I feel like we need to go to divorce court.

SA: Have you or in any church you’ve been in taken any steps to try and facilitate a discussion about the debate?

TN: I have some. My second appointment we actually wrestled some with homosexuality. What has, especially in this appointment I have not let it be an issue in my congregation, part of that is it’s just become so polarized. If you go back 10 or 15 years we could talk about it without people getting so angry and hotly contested. But now, even in this church, if we were to have a conversation it would quickly devolve into, “You’re denying my child the right to live their lives the way they want to”. And suddenly now were hurting people’s children to even talk about it, and I just don't care for that. It is too polarized and there’s no room for debate, a healthy debate. At this point you either

agree with me or you’re a bad person because you disagree with me. I don't know how to facilitate beyond that. You’ve seen it in our culture around us. The whole House Bill 2 debate and the just animosity, acrimonious, it’s just ugly. Even down to we’re going to punish you financially unless you fully include. There’s no debate possible, people have already made up their minds, we’re deeply entrenched. Now my role here is to keep the church focused on mission and ministry, moving forward on things that we can agree with and let the denomination sort this out. And if the discipline changes then there's decisions we’ll have to make. If the denomination fractures, we’ll have to decide where we’re going to go on that. But until something big like that happens, I’m not letting it be a topic. There’s more important things to talk about. There's hungry people. There are people that need help. There are, in this affluent community, women who are being beat senseless by their husbands that need a place to go, they need shelter. I could keep naming other big human needs. That's what we’re doing. We’re doing the work we are called to do, and I’ve said for many years now, when the left and the right are finished arguing over this issue I hope they leave a church for me to be part of.

SA: So, have you ever in any of these conversations you’ve facilitated, had someone who is a part of the LGBT community be a part of it, and if so, how has their perspective changed the conversation or contributed to the conversation?

TN: Not someone from the… a representative. I’m not quite sure what that would be, whether that would be somebody outside of the church or inside of the church. You

bring in the outside token gay person, I don’t think that would really be fair to the “outside of a gay person”, to put quotes around that. There are clearly people who have friends or relatives who have a different sexual orientation, so that's where we've had representation if you will. Maybe not direct, might be indirect. In this congregation, there may well be people who are homosexual. I don’t want to ask, and really don’t care. Do you love Jesus? Do you want to help me feed hungry people? Do you want to help me take care of folks who are being beaten and battered or abused? Do you want to do the work of the church? Let’s do that, I don’t care what you are. I’ll let God work out the sin and not sin. We’re all are sinners. I’m a sinner, condemned, unclean, saved by grace of God, not in a position to judge anybody just because they sin differently me. So, it’s just not an issue. Interestingly enough, in my third appointment, I’ve only had four, that makes me a little bit unusual. I’ve been serving full time for 21 going on 22 years now. In any case, my third appointment was probably the most theologically conservative congregation I served. The first one I served, this wouldn’t be a debate because they don't see that it should be, and they would with open arms would've embraced people of all… and wouldn’t have any problems with same-sex marriages and stuff. So that would be the first. The second one was far more conservative. Third one was way conservative, and in that very conservative congregation they had no less than three lesbian couples living together. At the time, you couldn’t call it marriage, but they were as committed and as together as any married couple could be. One had even adopted a biracial child, they were of course Caucasian. The whole church wasn’t Caucasian, but that couple was. They adopted a biracial child who had some developmental issues, and the whole church was raising that little child and put up

with outbursts and all sorts of things. Because he, I don’t know if he had fetal alcohol syndrome or what, but he had some issues, and probably ADHD or something else. So, we embraced them and loved them; they were fully included, served on committees, assisted in children's ministry. That church did a lot of cooking, a lot of eating. They were able to, one of them, one of that couple was able to, with the most conservative person in the church that ran the kitchen, partner every week, show up. And they were good friends. It was kind of “don't ask don't tell”, because we all knew, it wasn't hidden, but it wasn't talked about. And because it wasn’t an issue there was a lot more common ground they could continue to serve on. I think that was very healthy for everybody, because they kept coming; they didn't ask us to change the discipline, they didn't have to ask ‘don’t preach on the topic’ because there’s just so much more to talk about. I don’t know, I’d have to go back and look, there are people who are more scholarly than I am, but I don’t think there's an anti-homosexual age as part of the lectionary text. I think you’d have to go out of your way to preach an anti-gay sermon. So, I’ve never preached an anti-gay sermon, and have no plans to ever preach an antigay sermon. Folks I think are convicted of their sin, whatever it is, that’s between you and the Holy Ghost. If you’re convicted, you don't need me to stand up and beat you over the head with it. You and God will get it right, and I'm okay letting you and God get it right. I’m going to preach a message of grace and hope and new possibility every single Sunday. Or Saturday, I have Saturday service now too.

SA: Great, thank you. So, what values or aspects of your faith do you lean on most when you either have a conversation about this debate or watch it happening within the denomination?

TN: Well, without getting into quoting the scriptures whether from Romans or… I really don't like to go too much into the Old Testament because there's plenty in the Old Testament that the law has been fulfilled in Christ, and those ages aren’t as binding. I love ham for instance, so I don't want to preach against eating pork because I eat a lot ham and I don’t think it’s wrong to eat ham. But without getting into the texts themselves, one thing that is formative for me in the debate is it seems clear from beginning to end, big picture, big paint brush, god created a natural order. Some folks when they hear me say that chafe and some folks get angry, but I do believe there’s a natural order that God created. And the further we step outside of God's natural order, the more hardship we bring on ourselves. That's one of those, as a systematic theologian, that holds a theme from genesis to revelation. There is a divine creator created that created us a certain way. Sin entered the picture and that’s where the sickness and disease and all sorts of things come, and now the just and the unjust are punished. So, there’s not a clear line between ‘If I commit sin A that sickness B is always going to apply’ it doesn’t work that way. I think we all suffer, many of us unjustly. But having said that there is a natural order. Germane to the question you asked, when it comes to human sexuality, we are created man for woman, and woman for man, and for that's how we’re created to be. Since even the natural debate has changed among the homosexual community, the LGBTQ so forth community. Even they are not willing say they are genetically homosexual. I’m not sure you could prove that, science may one day prove that, but you know at some point, what if science genetically proves we are not natured to be monogamous? There some scientists now talking about serial monogamy, that we were natured to pair bond for a certain number of years to raise a

child to certain level of self-sufficiency, and then move to the next partner. What if science proves that? Will we jettison life-long monogamy? Will marriage no longer be valid? Will we move past it? I’m kind of hoping not. I hope to be more than the sum of my genetic programming. What if I'm genetically programmed to be just not a nice person? What if I'm genetically programmed to fits of whether its sarcasm or just nastiness? I think the vernacular we might use if we all understand, what if I’m just natured to be an asshole? Is that supposed to be okay? Oh well he’s natured that way. I hope I would still be called to rise above that, and somebody put a polish on me a so little bit to get the rough edges sanded own. You need to exist in polite society and not be hateful and mean spirited, and even if your genetics…because this is probably a bigger battle for some people than others. So, I do believe there's a natural order, and sin has entered into that. The further we get away from that natural order the more hardship we’re going to bring on ourselves. So, with that in mind, the original plan for us was to be natured heterosexual, and those who are not natured heterosexual, outside the bonds of a traditional marriage, may need to consider lifelong celibacy. I don’t say that with a hatefulness or the desire to deny somebody something. Now as a divorced man, I'm struggling with lifelong celibacy. What if I don't remarry? I'm not asking the church to change their stand and tell me it's okay if I a sexual partner or multiple sexual partners. I’m not asking for any of that to change, which means to my honor commitment to the church and the vow of ordination made that I am committed to living a lifelong celibate life if God doesn’t send a spouse. So, in that sense, I don't think I’m asking more of someone who may find themselves homosexual than I’m asking of myself. So, I hope no one listening to this hears any

mean-spirited judgment in that. I stand under the same judgement. This is something that’s hard. Part of what makes me angry with culture, going back to one of my first answers of Christ against culture, is that culture is teaching us that if we’re not sexually involved in the moment we’re less than whole people. Culture is teaching us that I can’t fully express my love for another being unless somehow it becomes sexual. That I think is a lie, it’s a heinous, ugly lie. Two men I think can love each other very deeply. I have loved some of my mentors coming through ministry. I deeply, dearly loved two field ed. supervisors, deeply loved these men. Were this not controversial I would name them because I respect them to this day and learned a great deal from them. But that didn’t mean I needed to in any way be sexual with them, I never felt any call. To this day if any one of them called me on the phone and asked me any outrageous thing to do, I would do it because I love them. But that love doesn’t have to be sexual to be full. Because I think that is a full and complete love I have for those men. But that is the lie society puts on us. We’re robbing our children of their innocence. I'm raising two little boys. As I see mainstream TV now, when I was their age in the 1970s would’ve been pornography. We’re making them think about sexuality, they’re bombarded with sexually. Now of you hand your 10-year-old an IPhone he has the sum total of human knowledge at his fingertips in any place, private or public. And it comes at them so quickly. If you do a google search you have to be so careful, because you can get pornographic images on perfectly innocent search for something totally unrelated, and here it comes. The White House for instance. I have never done this, but I've been told if you google the White House you get things related to the president and things that are very unrelated to the President. So, I’m angry about the sexual images that are bombarding my little boys and denying them their innocence. They have their

whole lives to be sexual beings. Let them be innocent children for at least 10, 12, 13 years before nature takes over and they develop sexually. So that's where culture, I’m really angry about that. And that's more homosexuality. Those are the heterosexual images that come too. I’m angry that culture is teaching our children they have to be sexually involved people at such a very young, and increasingly younger age. And where, germane to homosexuality, kids in Cub Scout now you have to deal with gay and straight. Those little boys in Cub Scouts are not equipped to think about that, leave them alone. That's not an issue they should be having. Nor in my mind in elementary school, in any of the grade schools, their sex ed. when it comes to fourth and fifth grade shouldn’t be covering these sorts of things. It should be talking about changes in their bodies not whether they’re gay or straight, or having sex, host of contraception. I just think we should leave our kids alone.

SA: If you could speak to or ask a question of someone who does not share your view point, what question would you ask them?

TN: Why can’t you draw some lines? Why is it all or nothing? So, entered the debate pretty much a middle-of-the-road moderate, a moderate-moderate. And I’ve watched myself be pushed. No one allows me to be a moderate in the debate. It’s so polarized you got to go to one extreme or the other. So, I’ve been pushed as a systematic guy. I can't jettison my Scripture, so I've been pushed further and further to right as the debate has become more and more polarized. Why can’t you take some low hanging fruit? Why can't you just draw some lines and say, “We’re not going to talk about bisexuality or transgender, or any other letters that are coming. We’re going to keep with covenant of

lifelong monogamy for people who are homosexual”. Why can’t we just have that debate and not all the other? That's what I’d like to know. SA: I asked this question of some of the other pastors that I’ve spoken to, and one of them said, what is at stake for you in this debate when you think of the potential, if discipline changed for whatever reason, what would be at stake for you in whatever outcome of this?

TN: If we made it more judgmental to people who are homosexual or made it more plain that we oppose that, I think we will alienate. I would lose partnerships with some people who may either be homosexual or have children who are homosexual. I like it as it's written now. If we change it so that we’re fully inclusive of homosexual persons, it’s okay to perform same sex unions, I see a loss of systematic theology. I also see a split church. I also see the anarchy that we currently have. There's no way. We’ve broken covenant with one another. We’re not abiding by the discipline by whole conferences and jurisdictions now. I feel like I'm losing my church. I feel like the Methodist church as I know it, the United Methodist church is ceasing to exist, and that’s so painful. I was excited when I first took my Methodism class, which was one of my A’s in seminary if I can brag. That was a hard class I had Heitzenrater which, wow, I think he knew more about John Wesley than John Wesley knew about himself. Having said that, we were courting merger with the Pan-Methodists—all of the CMEs, the AMEs the AMEZs, because really we believe the same thing, there’s no reason color should divide us. I was excited about one day being part of a more United Methodist Church that would include the Christian Methodists and African Methodists, and that was exciting to me. And to see all that just evaporate. Now we’re on a whole other, we’re going to divide

again after hard-fought unions to pull us together with the Methodist Protestants and the Episcopal church South and North. And that's really sad. Now, on a real nuts and bolts level, I'm sure some colleagues would criticize me for not having enough faith. I also fear and think I will lose financially from a smaller church. We will have less resources. It's probably going to affect my pension. I’m having money deducted from my salary even when it was meager, because I entered with minimum salary barely above $20,000 a year. Yeah so when you’re taking percentages of that, I think it’s going to hurt that. It’s probably going to hurt our ability to ensure each other, so insurance rates with a smaller group probably higher I’m going to pay for insurance. Yes, I see that hurting my golden years because of this debate and that makes me angry. It also makes me angry that as hard as I’m trying to put together a coalition for Jesus Christ in this congregation, this new, that when it’s thrust upon us, choose. Draw your line hard. Either or. When that line, that time, and I don’t see a way around it, it’s coming, you’re going to have some folks like me in the middle and they’re going to be pushed one to one side, one to another, and I think I’m going to serve a smaller congregation. It's going to hinder this congregation's ability to continue to build facilities, to fund ministry, to feed hungry people, to shelter those who are being abused, and name all the other many good things this congregation is doing. Even to the point of how it’s affecting me now. I have been holding a break on our next big building project. Because when this time comes, and 2018 seems to be the time, when it comes and we lose people, we’ll still have a mortgage to pay. If we max out our mortgage potential and then lose people, what happens if we can't make our mortgage? This is where I’m sure there are colleague who say, “pastor, have more faith, and I do have faith in Jesus Christ, but also see where this debate is polarizing and

losing people. And I also know dollars and cents, and Jesus said, “You should count the cost before you consider discipleship”, and in this case using Scripture I need to count the cost of what it’s going to be like to lose people and have a mortgage on a milliondollar facility. That's what I think of all this. And I think it's senseless. We don't have to do this. Like I said, my third appointment was a great example of how, as a whole, the church is far more traditional and conservative, but there was an active welcome space. Not like you can come and sit in a pew and we’ll ignore you, but there was an active full inclusion of three lesbian couples that were in that community. They were not judged, they were not looked down upon, and we did good work together. It can be done. This doesn't have to divide us.

SA: That concludes my official set of questions. I there anything else you would like to say, or that you wish I had asked you about?

TN: That's a very good question, I appreciate you asking. No, think I probably told you a lot more than you wanted to know.

SA: No, not at all. Alright, thank you.