Category: Featured
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Where Will You Stand?
It was on the day of my Ordination in 2012, that Rev. Joe Dipaolo presented me with a Book of Discipline from 1956. That deeply personal gift was significant because it was the first year that the Book of Discipline removed the ban on ordination for women. Joe presented it to me as a sign…
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A Call to Repentance from Anti-Blackness & Gaslighting for the UMC
“They were asking for it,” I imagine at least one of those officers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge said, as they rode off with the blood of John Lewis and Amelia Boynton on their bully clubs. They were asking for it. They wanted the club. They wanted the fist. They wanted the teargas. It is…
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The UMC in 2020: God Overrules Our Rules
(On January 1, 2020 legislation went into effect that had passed by 53% at the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in February of 2019. This legislation – if obeyed – seeks to impose harsh penalties on those who stand with the LGBTQIA+ community, and drive LGBTIQIA+ clergy, like myself, out of the church.) “It is…
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Power Exists to be Given Away – Reminders from Movement Living
Power exists to be given away. The reminder of this came as I listened to the Rev. Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson preach at the historic Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn via podcast last week, in a sermon entitled “Another World.” I hit pause when I heard her words, “It’s that exousia power that we…
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Stand With Us Now: An Appeal to My Generation
“Well, we’ll have retired by that time anyway,” they laughed. I remember the first time older clergymen joked with me about the predicted inevitable decline of our denomination, and the reality that it would not be their problem. It would be ours – my generation’s problem – and in that moment, in their joke, it…
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What are you fighting for?
Riding my bike along the narrow inches of shoulder between the paved road and the deep ditch, I struggled not to fall in the water, and thought about the children I was told had walked these same treacherous trails to come to church. It was about a decade ago, and I was in my first…
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Grief on the Margins of UMC General Conference
Amidst the concentric circles that sat within The Dome in St. Louis this week, it was the outer ring that leaves my heart hurting most as I walk away. We gathered for this Special Session of General Conference to discuss human sexuality and bring to a conclusion the battle that had raged in the church…
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We don’t live on crumbs anymore.
Crumbs. Gathering them used to be the first task of sacred ritual with my mother. I would sweep them into a pile, and off the edge of the table into my cupped hand, while my mother put the teapot on to boil. Brushing them off my fingers into the sink, the dance continued as she…
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Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother
“You are the answer to our prayers,” Madre Irene said in delighted surprise as we entered the quiet church yard. She had just finished breakfast with her fellow sister in the Order of Mary the Sorrowful Mother, when we came through the gates of Cristo Rey. The two nuns had been discussing the children in…
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Knit Together in Love
The knit rainbow stole lay warm and heavy across my black clergy robe as I stood in the pulpit of my aunt’s Presbyterian church in West Chester, Pennsylvania. I looked out into the congregation from the pulpit, and down into the eyes of my young cousins, nieces, and nephews. I told them that the rainbow…
Hannah Adair Bonner 