Why Seeing Black and White is Needed (maybe more needed than Bill Arnold thinks) [pt. II]

Two weeks ago, I interviewed Bill Arnold about his new book, Seeing Black and White in a Gray World: The Need for Theological Reasoning in the Church’s Debate Over Sexuality. Go to that interview to see more summary of the book and Dr. Arnold’s thoughts about it.

Last week, I shared Part I of this review, with four things I love about Seeing Black and White.

This part concludes my review.

I said in Part I of this review that I had one disagreement with Dr. Arnold and that he had changed my thinking about one aspect of the sexuality debate in a way that I don’t think he intended.

Is the biblical debate really settled?

My disagreement with Arnold is about the state of the biblical debate. I’ll summarize his presentation first, then explain my disagreement.

Citing Christopher Seitz, Arnold says that we “have seen three separate and distinct phases in the church’s understanding of Scripture [on the issue of homosexuality]” in the past forty years.

He describes phase one as a time for reevaluating biblical passages on same-sex practices. Perhaps these passages had been misunderstood and misread. Maybe they didn’t condemn ordinary same-sex practices. Maybe these were addressing particular problems in particular cultures.

He describes phase two as a time when people realized the phase one arguments didn’t work. They accepted that “[t]he Bible really is consistently negative toward same-sex practices.” Instead, people in this phase pointed to things like the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 as a model. If those church leaders could agree to accept Gentiles as converts without requiring circumcision, why couldn’t we make a similar move now regarding same-sex practices?

Finally, Arnold describes phase three––our current reality––as a time when people see the Bible as irrelevant on this issue. It isn’t able to take into account the newer development of “monogamous faithful homosexuality.” In this phase, supporters of same-sex intimacy simply regard the Bible as “a book of religious development, from one Testament to the next” [quoting Seitz]. But we’ve gotten past those points of development in our “enlightened modern times.”

Because of this, Seeing Black and White approaches the discussion about homosexuality as if the biblical debate is already settled. Arnold confirmed as much in our interview: “the church isn’t listening to the scriptural evidence anyway.” As a result, he focuses on showing why we should heed the scriptural evidence. He largely assumes that we already have agreement about what the scriptural evidence shows––an unqualified condemnation of homosexual practice.

From the discussions I’m hearing, I’m not sure this is an accurate read of the current climate. I see a lot of discussions that Arnold would call “phase one.”

I see a lot of people suggesting that the few mentions of homosexuality in the Bible were about particular problems in those cultures. Several people have asked me if Paul’s references to homosexuality weren’t just as culturally specific as his references to women wearing head-coverings in worship.

I wouldn’t give the book to anyone having those conversations and asking those questions. I think it starts by assuming answers to questions they’re still asking.

To be fair, Arnold doesn’t neglect this discussion entirely. He has an excellent example, showing Old Testament and New Testament writers at a roundtable discussing ethics. While many topics show progress and “deeper formulations” in the movement from earlier to later writings, the discussion of same-sex practices has a flatline consensus around the table. For my friends who aren’t yet convinced about the biblical position, they’ll need to see a lot more like that discussion.

For what it’s worth, I agree with Arnold’s position that the Bible is consistently negative toward same-sex practices. I just don’t agree with him that everyone else is convinced of that.

As he said in the interview, there are already some great resources that deal with this. Arnold cites Richard Hays’s excellent essay on Homosexuality in The Moral Vision of the New Testament along with Robert Gagnon’s The Bible and Homosexual Practice and Richard Davidson’s Flame of Yahweh. His roundtable example recalls William Webb’s argument in Slaves, Women & Homosexuals.

It may be too much to ask one little book to rehash all those arguments and advance the discussion. Just know that Arnold’s work can’t stand on its own. It stands on the conclusions already made in these resources.

For anyone who doesn’t come to the book already agreeing that “the Scripture clearly condemns same-sex practices,” I think it would be better to start with one of the resources linked above. If those convince you, then move on to Seeing Black and White.

How Seeing Black and White changed my mind in a different way than intended

In our interview, I shared this quote from the book: “[I]t can be argued that the church failed to influence culture in the 1960s, losing its voice and failing to condemn nonmarital sexual practices of all kinds.”

That quote has continued to ring in my head. The United Methodist Church’s statement on human sexuality says, “sexual relations are affirmed only with the covenant of monogamous, heterosexual marriage.”

Dr. Arnold has convinced me that conservative leaders in the UMC have no right to a voice on homosexuality until they demonstrate a consistent voice on heterosexual sex. Among our leaders, ministry candidates, and ordained clergy, I suspect that most violations of our standards for human sexuality are heterosexual, not homosexual. Are we taking these as seriously?

If your church’s standards for membership, leadership, or employment treat homosexual and heterosexual indiscretions differently, you’re not taking a stand for holiness, you’re discriminating.

Until your Board of Ordained Ministry will just as quickly ask and remove someone from candidacy for having sex with his girlfriend as for having sex with his boyfriend, you have no justification for your position. This is to address only our beliefs on human sexuality. Perhaps we could go further, but we must go at least this far.

Maybe I’m wrong about this and we’re already taking seriously all issues of sexuality. But I’ve seen enough to believe that we have a double standard that turns a blind eye to many heterosexual indiscretions while railing against any hint of homosexual practice. This is indefensible.

If this is true, I think we’re fighting the wrong fight. We need to get back to a serious stance on heterosexual sexuality first, or we need to give up the whole sexuality debate at once. To fight for a hard-line stance on homosexual practice after we’ve given up that stance on heterosexual sex is hypocritical. We have no right to be taken seriously so long as we’re double-minded on this.

Perhaps Dr. Arnold would agree with all of this. If so, I would have loved to see more ink spilled on our “heterosexual problem.” But this may be again asking one small book to do more than it should have to do.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions. Though I’ve listed two issues here that I would have liked to read more about, as Part I of this review showed, I eagerly recommend this book to most people. Check it out at the Seedbed publisher website.

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Why Seeing Black and White is Needed (maybe more needed than Bill Arnold thinks) [pt. I]

Last week, I interviewed Bill Arnold about his new book, Seeing Black and White in a Gray World: The Need for Theological Reasoning in the Church’s Debate Over Sexuality. I’ll let you go there to see more summary of the book and Dr. Arnold’s thoughts about it.

I should start this review by saying I’m no neutral observer. Dr. Arnold has been a long-time encourager, supporter, mentor and friend to me. I have great respect for him. And on the particular focus of this book––theological reasoning about sexuality and how the United Methodist Church should handle it––my beliefs largely agree with Bill’s.

Given those biases, my long list of praise for this book won’t surprise you, though I hope the things I list would be beneficial to most people, regardless of their biases. I’ll share four things I thought were especially excellent in the review below.

While most of what I have to say about the book is positive, I do have one disagreement with Dr. Arnold. He also changed my thinking about one aspect of this issue in a way that I don’t think he wanted to. I’ll explain both of those points in a post to follow (NOW AVAILABLE HERE).

What I love about Seeing Black and White

For a small book (204 pages) and an easy read, this book is packed with information.

I expect most people would tell you Seeing Black and White is about homosexuality and the United Methodist Church. But I would eagerly give it to several people who aren’t in the UMC and have no interest in the debate over homosexuality. That’s because I think the book is an education in many other important areas. You’ll see that only my fourth point directly applies to the church’s debate over sexuality.

1 – A healthy approach to theological conversation

I belong to a group whose motto is, “People we respect; ideas we beat within an inch of their lives.” I think Seeing Black and White is a shining example of those values.

The book offers a lengthy critique of Adam Hamilton’s Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White. While Arnold beats many of Hamilton’s ideas within an inch of their lives, he also shows respect for Hamilton throughout. You can see more examples of that in the first two questions of our interview.

In a debate that has involved no small amount of name-calling and personal attacks, I think Arnold gives a great demonstration of grace and truth––toward both Hamilton and all other interested and affected parties.

Arnold’s approach is an education in logic––a pleasant surprise to me. He uses the word “fallacy” 29 times. He explains and identifies the Ad Populum Fallacy, the Red Herring Fallacy, the Ad Baculum Fallacy, the False Cause Fallacy, and the Fallacy of False Dilemma, to name a few. If you don’t know what these are, you will after reading, and you’ll be equipped to analyze others’ arguments with greater acumen and ease.

2 – Taking on pragmatism

I’ve been dismayed by the Western Church’s focus on pragmatism. We often seem more persuaded by what works than what’s faithful (though all of us hope for situations where both are true).

I was excited to see Arnold fighting back against pragmatism. He writes,

Adam’s book is firmly rooted in pragmatism. By this I mean decisions about controversial issues are often based on claims about what works or what is believed to be most effective in appealing to the greatest number of people […] The question needs to be raised: Is it legitimate to establish Christian practice along the lines of a business model in which measurable or numerical success determines truth?

In an atmosphere where numerical success receives more attention and accolades than anything, Arnold provides a needed corrective. He also demonstrates that while the world may want a church that acts as a mirror, “reflecting the values of the world back upon itself,” the world has no need for that kind of church. He provides a much richer version of the church––the kind that will continue to be relevant in our world precisely because it doesn’t mirror the world’s values back to itself.

3 – How to read the Bible

I would love to give several friends chapter 3, “The Fork in the Road.” It could stand on its own as a clear and concise essay on “reading the Bible the Wesleyan way,” as Arnold calls it.

In this, Arnold confronts popular ways of reading the Bible and shows their flawed logic. For example, he addresses the common idea that Jesus’ words carry more weight than the rest of the Bible––and even that Jesus’ silence on certain issues carries more weight than anything the rest of the Bible says. So he writes, “Jesus also didn’t mention genocide or rape. To argue that his silence on these topics means he approves them is of course nonsense.”

Arnold instead offers three principles of biblical interpretation that we would do well to keep in mind.

In the first, he explains understanding texts in context––arguing against proof-texting specific verses but also against dismissing certain texts as irrelevant. I hear plenty of people today cautioning against proof-texting. I don’t hear enough cautioning us not to dismiss texts that prohibit lobster-eating and beard-trimming. Arnold’s insights here are important.

The second principle teaches a different understanding of the Bible’s purpose than I usually see. Arnold writes, “As sacred canon for the church, we believe the Bible is not primarily inspired for us to know things (epistemology),” instead its primary function in and for the church is “to know God through personal and corporate salvation (soteriology).” This point could change the life of anyone who hasn’t grasped it yet. The primary function of the Bible is to cultivate a life-giving relationship, not to help us win a trivia contest.

The third principle focuses on the primacy of Scripture. Arnold is concerned (and for good reason, I think) that many have neglected this principle, especially in ethical debates. He presents a healthy model for understanding the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” in light of its many abuses today.

4 – Framing the debate about homosexuality

I think Arnold provides an exemplary framework for the debate about homosexuality, even for those who disagree with his conclusions.

In chapter 3, he describes without bias the general positions of the two “camps” in this debate––naming them the “Holiness” and “Hospitality” camps (an improvement on the titles I previously used: “Holiness” and “Openness”). In chapter 5, he shows why we make a category mistake to pit these two against each other.

The sixth chapter is another that could stand alone as an excellent essay. In it, Arnold deconstructs three common myths about the debate: that it’s about orientation, liberation, or civil rights. The discussion of sexual orientation is more researched and nuanced than what we typically hear in the public discourse. The discussion about liberation is a profound critique of “sexual liberation” in all its forms. The discussion about civil rights provides a historical understanding of civil rights movements and why this debate doesn’t fit.

These are only a few highlights. As I write this review, I’m again made aware of how many high points this book has. I’ll let this review serve simply as a small sampler, and I’ll urge you to go buy the book.

I’ll leave you with this great quote that serves as a nice summary of Dr. Arnold’s constructive proposal for moving forward:

Unlike Adam, I believe the holistic gospel we need today is not something to be created in the twenty-first century by Christians who are able to discern gray. I believe it emerged in the late eighteenth century in the Wesleyan revival, whose leaders scrutinized afresh the black-and-white truths of Scripture in the context of ancient church tradition. And I believe the holistic gospel they preached continues to offer the world the best understanding of Christianity’s apostolic faith.

See part II of my review here.

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On clergy compensation – a prophetic voice, or a young idealist? – My interview with Wesley Sanders

I met Wesley Sanders in 2010. He was just out of college and preparing to start seminary at Candler School of Theology.

Wesley is unusual. Already in 2010 he had sharper theological insight than most seminary graduates and a more thorough understanding of the United Methodist Church than I will ever have. (He said he had watched every second of the last UMC General Conference on his computer—like it was an edge-of-your-seat movie. I told you he was unusual.)

So I wasn’t shocked to hear that just out of seminary, Wesley was already influencing major decisions in the North Georgia Conference where he serves. Last year, he urged his conference to alter its budget—rejecting several proposed raises—and they accepted his proposal by a wide margin. This year, the conference is again proposing raises, and Wesley has again urged voting members to reject them. This time he sent a written letter to members of the annual conference and plans to speak again when they discuss the budget.

Because I’ve written about clergy compensation (see the “Related Posts” below), I’ve received several messages about it from people in the North Georgia Conference. I think this is important. North Georgia is the largest conference by membership in the UMC and one of the wealthiest. If they begin to change their attitudes toward clergy compensation, they could lead the way for many other conferences.

So I asked Wesley if he would share more. Here’s an interview I just did with him (Note: It’s long. I didn’t want to cut it short for those of you who are interested…)

Last year, you were all of a few months out of seminary, and you decided to speak up against raises for your conference’s Cabinet (who happen to be, in many ways, your boss[es]). This year, it seems you’ve gone a step further, writing a letter in advance to urge people to vote against raises. That doesn’t seem like the clearest path to ordination and career advancement. Can you say some more about why you’re doing this?

Quite frankly, I am doing this because I think our current practices as a denomination, as they relate to clergy compensation, are far too influenced by American capitalism. This is not unique to the United Methodist Church by any means, and we do better than some others—the nature of itinerancy actually helps to keep our highest-paid clergy in our largest churches at a much lower salary than the pastors of the largest churches of more congregational denominations.

But in my opinion, when we talk about clergy compensation we are not influenced enough by Scripture or the Wesleyan tradition, both of which recognize the real danger that wealth can present. You’ve written extensively on this, so I won’t rehash the arguments you’ve made, but I think this subject has been ignored for far too long in our denomination and in American Christianity as a whole. So, even if I don’t succeed and the raises pass, I hope that by speaking about this, it can begin conversations among clergy and laity alike about how we most faithfully use the resources God gives us.

The raises will have little actual impact on me. I did the math; it will cost my congregation about $45 more in apportionments next year if the raises pass. But the danger of not having a theological conversation about clergy compensation is much bigger than the actual financial impact.

Both our denominational average compensation and our conference average compensation went up consistently even in the depths of the recession, while our laity suffered job losses and US household income declined significantly, as did income in Georgia. At the local church and conference level, we cut staff positions, turned away clergy candidates because there were not enough appointments, and reduced spending on missions, all the while full-time clergy continued to see pay increases (not universally, of course, but the average compensation level continued to rise). It’s not just about the cabinet—it’s about the whole nature of compensation of clergy. In some ways, I worry that we’ve made itinerancy primarily about salary sheets and tenure rather than about matching the right gifts to the right ministry setting.[1. Notes on the chart:

1. The DAC and CAC are lagging indicators – for example, the 2012 DAC is the average for 2010 compensation data. Thus, in this chart, DAC and CAC numbers are adjusted accordingly, so in other documents that reference the 2012 DAC, for example, this chart places that number alongside 2010 data.
2. DAC and CAC also include housing (either cash compensation for a housing allowance, or a 25% factor for clergy living in parsonages). The cabinet figures factor in a steady increase in housing allowance––from $19,000 in 2001 to $37,749 today]

As far as career and ordination, last year I raised an objection at conference that we shouldn’t obligate ourselves to a series of proposed raises because we hadn’t paid our denominational apportionments in full for many years; I’ve got the same concern this year––that we shouldn’t be giving out raises while we aren’t meeting our obligations. As you mentioned, the proposed raises didn’t pass last year, and after my speech on the floor of conference, several people told me that they like what I’m saying, but I should have waited until I was ordained to say it (I had been commissioned as a provisional elder less than 24 hours earlier). I didn’t take that advice lightly, given who some of those people were, but I concluded that I could not wait until I had a lifetime job guarantee to begin speaking about issues that I am convinced the church must address.

I’ve seen a bit of what our Cabinet in the Kentucky Conference has to do. It seems like a tough job. A thankless job, in many ways. Do you not think these people are due a raise?

Let me be clear: this isn’t really about the cabinet or a sense that they are undeserving of honor or a fair salary for doing such a challenging job. Having been only on the side of receiving appointments and knowing how stressful that process is, I can’t imagine the weight of being on the other side and having to assign clergy to all 930+ churches we have here in North Georgia. I’ve seen superintendents have to take the brunt of some very unchristian behavior from both laity and clergy when something was wrong, and I’ve rarely heard of a case where someone calls the DS just to say how happy they are with the pastor and how glad they are that their apportionments went up; it’s a tough job to try to be both the pastor and supervisor to all the clergy under one’s care. These are just a few of the things that make it an unbelievably challenging task they have, and I don’t envy them one bit.

However, I believe the package offered right now is generous. Assuming their spouse does not work, the current package puts the members of the cabinet in the top 5% of income-earning households in our state when you include the housing benefit (and I think you have to, since all other household income in the state includes the portion of the income used to pay for housing). It’s already a well-compensated position, and I can’t help but think that we need to realign our financial priorities.

For example, I received a fundraising solicitation just a few days ago, describing the need for bicycles and Bibles for UMC pastors serving in the villages of Africa, and I found myself wondering whether our priorities are straight when, on the one hand we have clergy who don’t have the very basic tools for ministry, while here we have clergy who have turned down an appointment to the cabinet because the compensation package was too low. I think it’s hard to reconcile that with the call of the Gospel.

I’ve had a lot of friends tell me they could be making more in the business world. Maybe their feeling is best captured in a tweet I saw a few weeks ago: “Pursuing a call should not require one to resign oneself to a less than competitive salary. #umc” What do you say to that? Are you advocating for “less than competitive” salaries?

I suppose in a sense I am advocating for less than competitive salaries, if you assume that we as clergy are simply one profession competing against others for the best people for a given job. In that sense, we very well may lose out on some very talented, gifted people who could probably do some fantastic things for the kingdom of God, but feel their talents are better used in an environment where they can earn a salary directly commensurate with what the free market would set for their experience and education. There’s a valid argument to be made for that, and it was made very well by Dan Pallotta who gave a TED talk on the issue of nonprofit compensation last year. And if we were a secular nonprofit, I am wholly convinced that high compensation levels would be appropriate and perhaps even necessary.

From a secular point of view, salary and benefits are the primary way you attract good talent, and we might lose some good talent by paying less than the business world might pay for comparable jobs (setting aside for a moment the question of whether that assumption is even true when you consider our housing, pension, disability, and health benefits which are often unstated when people complain about clergy salaries). But, of course, our theology of ordination and calling doesn’t say we want the most talented people for ministry. We want people called by God for the life and work of ministry, trusting that by God’s grace and through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they will be empowered with the gifts and the grace of God needed for the task.

We pay clergy not so they can become wealthy and experience the dream of upper middle class American life. We pay them so that they can be free to devote their whole time to the work of ministry.

And, frankly, we pay full-time ordained clergy well. Even minimum salary clergy in most conferences make around the median household income in the US when you factor in the value of housing. We won’t become wealthy, but if we use our resources wisely, it is plenty to live off of and plenty to retire off of. I am grateful to serve in a denomination that has minimum salary standards, a defined benefit pension, disability benefits, and healthcare, and I am grateful for all that the church has given me to do my ministry.

If you got to make the rules, what would you do? What’s the right answer here for clergy compensation?

That’s an interesting question, and I have two answers.

If I were starting a denomination from scratch, I think I would have a standardized pay scale for all clergy based on education and perhaps number of children, with an adjustment for higher cost of living areas, paid centrally by the annual conference (of course apportionments would be much higher, but churches wouldn’t have localized clergy salaries, so the new cost would theoretically be the same). This would really free us to do itinerancy more freely, and recognizes the cost of education and the additional cost of raising children––it brings us back to what I think should be the fundamental idea of clergy compensation, that we are providing for the needs of our brothers and sisters who are leading the church.

There are, of course, a lot of practical problems with this idea that make it almost impossible to implement, and I’ll name just two. The first problem is that the Judicial Council has consistently ruled (Decisions 213 and 461, in particular) that the charge conference has sole authority to set clergy salaries, and any attempt at standardization from the annual conference is dead in the water from that perspective. The second is that central deployment coupled with centralized salaries begins to weaken our argument to the IRS that for income tax purposes, the local church is the employer of clergy rather than the annual conference. That has some huge tax implications that would make our clergy and annual conferences subject to certain mandates under the Affordable Care Act and other laws, and that could end up increasing the cost of regulatory compliance substantially. Those are just a few of the reasons I can’t ever see something like that coming to fruition.

So, I support something like Holly Boardman’s proposal that came to General Conference in 2012 and is likely to return in 2016 (assuming we talk about anything besides human sexuality at GC2016!). Rev. Boardman’s proposal, based on 1 Timothy 5:17, would have assessed an apportionment on any local church that paid its clergy more than double the minimum salary standard of their conference: a dollar-for-dollar surcharge for any amount above minimum salary. So, for example, in my annual conference the minimum salary for full connection elders is currently $34,000 (plus housing and benefits). So, if you paid the pastor $70,000, your church would have a $2,000 apportionment surcharge in addition to the regular assessed apportionments. That surcharge would have to go to equitable compensation funds, which could then help to support ministry either within your annual conference or to support central conference clergy.

I like that idea because it facilitates the sharing of resources with others. I might modify it so that it doesn’t just support equitable compensation funds, because I’ve sometimes seen equitable compensation used as a way to simply bolster ineffective clergy or dying churches, and I don’t think that’s the best use of church money, either, particularly if you are taking it away from a vibrant ministry. But I think something that disincentivizes unfettered growth of salary packages would go a long way toward making sure we are using church resources in the way that most honors God.

You’re not even 30 years old yet, and you have no children to support. I’m sure some people have called you young, naïve, and idealistic. What do you say to them about that?

They might be right! This is an ideal, and I have no illusions that I am going to fundamentally change the system. I may very well be naïve and idealistic, but I think a little idealism is sometimes a necessary check to a system driven by pragmatism.

But to answer a few possible objections: although I don’t have children, I do have a wife who is in graduate school for neuroscience and has several chronic health problems which last year cost us about 20% of our household income in doctor’s visits, prescription costs, hospital stays, etc. So, my cost to support a two-person household is higher than the typical two-person young adult household. That doesn’t probably approximate the cost of raising a few children, but there are a lot of pressures on my finances that some other young adults may not face. All that to say, I am not totally naïve as to how expensive life can be.

I have also become very aware of how easy it is to let your lifestyle rise with your income. Last year, I went from being a part-time local pastor to a full-time provisional elder, an increase in annual pre-tax income of almost $30,000 when including my housing allowance (though I am now in a parsonage). I thought the substantial increase in income would make life a lot easier financially, (and it did!) but I managed to let my lifestyle rise with the increase in income in many ways, even with our medical expenses tempering it to some degree. I’m the first to admit that I have a long way to go before I have begun to live up to the gospel’s ideal for money. Every time I read John Wesley’s sermon “On the Use of Money,” I am convicted, especially when he lays out his fourfold test for whether a particular expenditure is appropriate––I can think of a few expenditures just this week that fail that test miserably. This realization, that despite my best efforts my lifestyle rose with my income, has forced me to more carefully budget and to rethink my relationship with money. Thinking about this issue on a personal level has made me see how easy it is for me to let my life be ruled by money and how easy it is to waste money.

So, I am sympathetic to the concern that a pastor who is making $200,000 a year plus housing has planned his/her life around that kind of income, and so to reduce it to $118,000 plus housing by asking him/her to become a superintendent would require a substantial lifestyle change, and that is not easy. But, I also know it is possible because many of our laity have faced those kinds of circumstances, whether through layoffs or through a decline in their business income. It requires us to rethink our relationship with money, and it requires us to change our priorities. It also requires us to take much more seriously the question we are asked at ordination, “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?” I wonder what would happen if all of us as clergy had to ask ourselves that question a little more often.

You started with a concern that we’re too influenced by American capitalism and that wealth presents some real dangers. What do you say to the successful business person in your congregation who comes to you and says, “So you think I make too much money?”

Let me begin this response by saying that I love capitalism, probably more than a lot of my United Methodist colleagues and friends. I disagree with a lot of the assumptions that underlie our section in the Social Principles about the Economic Community. I think capitalism really is the best economic system there is so far, and although it isn’t perfect by any means, I really believe it can generate the most financial security for the most people in the long run compared to other economic systems.

And so, to the successful businessmen or women in my congregation, I would tell them that as long as they are not ruled by their money and are earning it through honest work, (not exploiting their workers, not engaging in some inherently sinful trade, etc.) and giving away enough so that it actually hurts (which probably means more than a tithe!), I have no problem with them making lots of money. I once again return to John Wesley’s “On the Use of Money” as a guide; probably he or she, like me, could stand to re-evaluate how much they spend on certain things, but I think gaining all one can through honest capitalism is not inherently bad.

But there is a big distinction between a business person making money through his/her trade and the use of church revenue. Once someone gives money to the church, it is, as John Wesley described it, “sacred to God and the poor.” Although all money should be seen as God’s, money given to the church has a very particular function, and that is to do the work of the Kingdom of God and to take care of the needs of our brothers and sisters. Part of this should be caring for the needs of pastors and their families who devote their whole lives to ministry. Ben Witherington makes a good case in his book Jesus and Money that Paul never intended tentmaking ministry to be a required norm for church leaders, and so I see nothing wrong with salaried clergy in principle. But when we begin to go far beyond caring for the needs of our brothers and sisters to a money-driven ecclesiology, we’ve got a problem in my opinion.

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