“A Call to Discipleship: Living as Disciples of a Non-Violent Lord in a Time of Violence”

The following is a letter from Bishop Ken Carter, president of the Council of Bishops

August 6, 2019

“A Call to Discipleship: Living as Disciples of a Non-Violent Lord in a Time of Violence”

To the People of The United Methodist Church:

As president of the Council of Bishops, but more fundamentally as one who professes faith in
Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, I write with a call to discipleship.

What is God’s dream for us? How can we become the answer to the words we say in
worship, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done”? (Matthew 6). In Wesley’s words, we
are being called “to reform the nation, particularly the church, and to spread scriptural
holiness over the land.”

The United States has witnessed a steady occurrence of mass shootings across our nation, this
past weekend in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. I commend the statements of Bishop
Gregory Palmer and Bishop Earl Bledsoe to the people of their residential areas (West Ohio,
New Mexico/Northwest Texas). The carnage following these acts of violence reminds us of
Sandy Hook and Orlando, Sutherland Springs and Charlotte, Las Vegas and Parkland,
Charleston and Pittsburgh, and on it goes.

Underneath the violence is a culture of white supremacy and a fear of immigrants (xenophobia).
These are expressions of our sinful nature, and deny the image of God (Genesis 1) that is in
every person. Christ died for all (2 Corinthians 5), and in this he loved us and gave himself up
for us (Ephesians 5).

I also join my voice with Bishop LaTrelle Easterling of the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
The president’s disparaging comments about an honorable congressman and a major
northeastern city (Baltimore) are rooted in a cynical desire to divide us along racial lines. The
use of the presidential role granted for the purpose of serving an entire people for white privilege
does great harm to us. According to counterterrorism experts, the president’s racial rhetoric is
fueling an incipient and violent white nationalist movement in our nation.

The majority of our membership in the U.S. is Anglo. If you are a white person reading this and
you find it troubling—in my own self-examination and confession, I do, as I am under the same
judgment—I urge you not to write me, but to contact a friend who is African-American or
Latino/a and ask them, “What did you hear in these statements?” and “What do you perceive in
these mass shootings?”

I write less to reinforce our very real political partisanship and more to say that we can have a
better civil dialogue, and perhaps United Methodists who are Democrats and Republicans in the
United States can contribute to this. We are in desperate need of leadership that does not pit us
against each other. And we are in need of a dialogue that is deeply rooted in our discipleship in
the way of our non-violent Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Jesus is calling us to love our neighbor (Mark 12). To love our neighbor is to work for a church
that does not exclude anyone, that welcomes immigrants, that reckons with the systemic
realities of racism and that honors the faith of people across the political aisle from wherever we
are sitting.

To love our neighbor is the cost of discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). To love our neighbor may
be our most powerful form of evangelism at the present moment. To love our neighbor is to
move beyond our fragility toward repentance and reform. And of course, all of this leads to the
question asked of Jesus by the lawyer in Luke 10, and his surprising and unsettling response.

For Jesus, questions of eternal life had nothing to do with separation from or superiority toward
the other. As disciples of Jesus in the Wesleyan tradition, holiness is not separation; holiness is
love of God and neighbor (Plain Account of Christian Perfection, The Almost Christian). And we
cannot love God, whom we have never seen, if we do not love our brother or sister whom we
have seen (1 John 4).

It turns out that the neighbor we are called to love is the one we have profiled and labeled as
our enemy. And it turns out that by teaching us to love our enemy (Matthew 5), Jesus is forming
us in a holiness without which we will not see the Lord (Hebrews 12).

The Council of Bishops is a global body and The United Methodist Church is a global
church. I call upon our brothers and sisters in Europe, the Philippines and Africa to
intercede for us in this struggle (1 Thessalonians 5), that we would be faithful, nonviolent and courageous in our discipleship.

And so, I call us to be the people we profess to be: disciples of Jesus Christ for the
transformation of the world (Book of Discipline, Paragraph 120). We pray for healing
among those who are grieving, amendment of life among those who have done
violence, and judgment upon our human hearts when our spoken words have
contributed to violence (Matthew 12). We commit ourselves to the transformation of
systems and laws that reflect the life that Jesus promises (John 10).

The good news is the very peace of Christ that breaks down the dividing walls of hostility
(Ephesians 2), and the promise that disciples of Jesus who are peacemakers will receive the
blessing of God (Matthew 5). And in this way, we will bless all the families of the earth (Genesis
12).

The Peace of the Lord,
Bishop Ken Carter
President, Council of Bishops
The United Methodist Church

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