After retiring, in 2011, as a chaplain at Boston Medical Center, I was later rehired to provide coverage, as needed, for the present chaplains. My most recent work led to an encounter with a person that brought to the fore the transforming power of human love. The interaction was not with a patient, but with a staff person.
She is a white woman, about to retire after many years of service to the hospital. As we reminisced about our relationship over the years, she said, “Would you like to see a picture of my new granddaughter?” “Sure,” I replied. With that, she took an album from her purse, and proudly showed me photos of a beautiful little black baby. She then handed me pictures of her white daughter and black son-in-law. As I admired the photos, she lovingly said, “Mixed children are beautiful.” I enthusiastically agreed—marveling at the power of her love that transcended the once- traditional non-black enclave in which she lives.
This proud grandmother reminded me of certain retired ministers in the New England Conference of The United Methodist Church, who, in 1998, formed a Conference-wide group called Reconciling Retired Clergy—with their number growing to 100 over the years. Their mission: to work for the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) persons in the life of The United Methodist Church. It meant challenging The Church’s Book of Discipline’s belief that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” They supported ministers who were brought to church trial for being gay or lesbian, and those brought to trial for performing same-sex marriages. They also began performing same-sex marriages, and called for the ordination of LGBTQ persons. Their work, and that of other reconciling ministerial and lay groups in Methodism, has made performing same sex marriages more tolerated. They have helped to turn United Methodism’s exclusionary policies into a state of flux, with their influence also seen in several United Methodist bishops now openly challenging the Church’s anti-homosexual doctrine—enabled, no doubt, by the influence of same sex marriages becoming legal in several states.
What led some of these Bible verses-influenced, culturally-conditioned, United Methodist Book of Discipline-believing ministers to change their minds? In time, certain of them discovered that they, themselves, had a son who is gay, or a daughter who is lesbian—or the son or daughter of a relative, or ministerial colleague, or family friend. The issue had hit home—or close to home. It was now about bonding, not The Bible or The Book of Discipline. Their heart told them that sexually “mixed children are beautiful .” Just as “beautiful and loved and worthy and creative and moral as any other child—or adult.
Appreciation is expressed to friend and colleague Rev. Richard E. Harding, founder of the New England Conference’s Reconciling Retired Clergy, who contributed information for this article
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Bill Alberts, CPSP diplomate and member of the Concord, NH chapter, was a hospital chaplain at Boston Medical Center from December 1992 until he retired in July 2011. His book, A Hospital Chaplain at the Crossroads of Humanity, based on his visits with patients at BMC, is available on Amazon.com. An occasional contributor to Counterpunch, the ramifications of the gay marriage he performed at Boston’s Old West United Methodist Church in 1973 are detailed in “Easter Depends on Whistleblowers: The Minister Who Could Not Be ‘Preyed’ Away,” Counterpunch, March 29-31, 2013) The photograph is of Bill and his almost two-year-old granddaughter, Aoife.
Email: wm.alberts@gmail.com