Layman Says UMC Cleric Abused Office for Political Ends
by Jim Brown
February 24, 2005
(AgapePress) - A United Methodist bishop is being accused of using church resources to lobby civil officials in Virginia -- an act the accuser considers both an abuse of power and a breach of church discipline.UMC Virginia Conference Bishop Charlene Kammerer recently made use of a church mailing list to contact clergy and staff in her jurisdiction and urge them to voice opposition to a Senate bill that would allow dissenting churches to retain their property when leaving their denominations. That bill has been turned down for now and set aside for further study.
But Mike Barker, a lay member at Trinity UMC in King George, Virginia, has been following the actions of the Virginia Conference closely, and he thinks Kammerer may have acted illegally under Methodist Church law. Specifically, he believes the bishop behaved improperly by making personal appeals to the bill's sponsor, Senator Bill Mims, and later convincing him to amend the legislation in her favor.
"She's doing so with very little awareness by rank and file laity," Barker says, "and I daresay that if Virginia laity were better informed about this through their local church, that laity would be quite upset about it." He maintains that United Methodist officials or bodies should be subject to a conference or church vote before heading off to make appeals to civil officials.
The Trinity UMC member says Kammerer abused the power of the Episcopacy, just as other Methodist bishops have done recently. He says such clergy "are very much an activist body on the left," whose politics are evident in their actions, "from making junkets to Palestine to visit Yasser Arafat, to Bishop Kammerer herself and others traveling to Puerto Rico to demonstrate against U.S. military presence in Puerto Rico."
Barker feels Bishop Kammerer has violated church discipline by using church finances to lobby state lawmakers. He says she has no authority to use the funds, staff, and other resources of her office to engage in political lobbying efforts or speak on behalf of the Virginia Conference in matters that have not been put before the Conference.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
