Time to choose sides

If you’re Methodist, especially United Methodist, you have probably seen this photo several times in recent days, on Facebook and other venues.

It shows the Methodist Church’s 1956 General Conference, meeting in Minneapolis. On May 4, delegates voted to make women eligible for full clergy rights.

Remember this photo, and the great advancement for human rights and Christian identity that it represents, because those rights are under attack by an evil movement known as Christian nationalism.

It may be nationalistic, but it is not genuinely patriotic, and it is certainly not Christian. It is far, far from Christian, though it cloaks its agenda in Christian language and tries to work its way into churches to solidify its political standing.

And its adherents have made it crystal clear in recent days that one of its agendas is turning back the clock on women’s rights by 100 years or so.

Repealing women’s right to vote.

Right to hold property in their own name.

Right to serve as judges in our court system.

Right to have any voice but an echo of a man’s – specifically their husbands, to whom they are bound until death do they part, or until the husband decides that she is no longer a useful appendage.

There are other ways that this movement is profoundly evil, but this one is enough to mention for now.

Remember that it was only 70 years ago that women became eligible for full clergy rights in the Methodist church, and there are still denominations that deny women these rights, allegedly on biblical grounds but really on the same grounds on which this evil movement has always been based, whatever it calls itself: the notion that certain men are endowed with more rights than others and they can do whatever they want to whomever they want whenever they want, just because.

Those are the stakes in our current political and religious “debate.” Whose side are you on?