Methodist Church Troubles

I'm reading in the news, and seeing on YouTube, etc, that the United Methodist Church (UMC for short) is undergoing great organizational disruption.

It's been decades since I left the church, so the present problems the UMC organization is facing does not affect me personally.

What is happening, to oversimplify, is that the UMC is tearing itself apart over how various clergy, and various parishes, handle the problems of same-sex marriage: officiating them, and tolerating same-sex couples in their congregations.

Every denomination has to have rules that govern the behavior of the members, the leaders, and how the property of the church is to be managed; after all, every Sunday a certain amount of money is collected in each church, and the members contribute financially to the church, and there are rules as to how much is sent to the central state or regional church office from each of its churches.

The members of the UMC are, like Americans generally, a diverse lot.  They vary from extremely liberal members---and clergy---who are impelled to welcome all descriptions of members; and members---and clergy---who are very strict in their attitudes towards LGBT++ folks; how much time must be given to congregations that vote to leave the denomination, and so on.

It is impossible to imagine that the members of any congregation could be united in their attitudes towards anything, let alone their attitudes towards people of alternate preference.  There could be extremely religious individuals seeking to continue their church membership, surrounded by quite intolerant members regarding them with hostility.  This is a tragic situation, because church is so often regarded as a spiritual refuge from an intolerant society.

In certain states, the central organization of the UMC (of that state) has been extremely impatient towards congregations that have become unable to make their payments to the mother ship.  This is unsurprising, especially if the majority of members are senior citizens, or poor people, and they have been closed down, which means that the church is shuttered, and the members have no place to meet on a Sunday.

To some extent, church real estate is becoming a major stumbling-block to the denomination holding together.  In situations like this, legal minds within the church leadership have to take control, to enforce church rules, and they are often draconian in how they do this.  Cruelty is inevitable, because legal action must proceed according to a schedule, which is difficult for a congregation that might be accustomed to only meeting on Sundays, and most of whom are elderly, and unaccustomed to fraught situations where quick decisions are expected.

So, despite my disinterest in the denomination from a philosophical point of view, thinking of Methodists in the abstract, it really appears that they are sheep without a shepherd.  The same goes for all the protestant denominations.  The exception is these mega-churches, each of which is a single congregation, where I expect that the çhurch is not at all run in a democratic way, which of course makes it easier on the leadership!  It is a sad time for Christians.

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Major Repair

I just noticed today that the post on 'Kim's Game' had been left incomplete, and terminated abruptly in the middle of a sentence.  I fixed this.

Gene Sprechini

Gene Sprechini, 1952--2023, was one of my closest friends.  He died last week, after a painful illness.  He leaves behind a wonderful family: a loving and beautiful wife, at least two sisters, and brothers, and nephews and nieces, and a score of grateful and adoring friends and students.

Before I was hired at Lycoming College, in Williamsport Pennsylvania, I had come up for an interview, and met some of the faculty.  My daughter (who was just six) was pleased with the place, because--as she said--"They have a mall!!"  (The mall is now in extreme decline, and has been bought by a real estate developer.  Where would we be without them?)  As we were preparing to leave, the chair of the department was talking to me, and was saying he wished that we could stay longer.  I asked why.  Because, he said, there was a colleague he wanted me to meet, namely a new hire from the previous year, called Gene Sprechini, who had gone out of town for some reason--meet with his advisor, or for a family event.  I wondered what could be so important about meeting someone, since I had met the most senior faculty already.  It wasn't until a year or so after I had been teaching here that I got to know Gene, because his area was statistics, and my area was analysis (OK, calculus, and that sort of thing), and I had been stashed on the third floor with the English department, while Gene was on the first floor with all the other math guys--there were only guys in our department back then.

When I returned the following year, Gene helped me find a place to stay, my temporary home having been reclaimed by the music professor who had let us stay for a year while he was on sabbatical.  It was in those days that I discovered how funny Gene was.  In addition, he was intimately knowledgeable about all matters having to do with popular culture of the fifties, sixties and seventies: TV, radio, most of which I had gotten familiar with through reruns.  Shortly after, while I was getting my feet wet teaching nurses computer science (don't ask), it became necessary for Gene to take up some analysis, such as Calculus 2, and Calculus 3.  There must have been some complaints about my teaching these courses; in retrospect, I was probably being too hard on our students.

Once Gene moved into teaching calculus, he wanted to bounce some of his ideas off me, and we got very close.  Then he took up the chairmanship, and he could take a greater control over what he taught, and soon we were making changes in the middle-level curriculum, to bring it in line with the degree of difficulty that was tolerable to our students.  Gradually, all of us in the department were teaching a huge variety of courses, for various reasons, and I got the impression that most of us were happy, eventually, with our course-loads.

Gene was a wonderful guy, loved alike by faculty and students.  I don't have an insight for why, but he just was.  He was the one to whom anyone would go if there was a problem, and he would discover a creative solution to it.  The faculty in our department were probably the most creative problem-solvers in the nation, and I hope our graduates realize just how lucky they are to have known Gene, and David, and Charlie, and Eileen; and Chris and Jason, and Andrew.  Some of our beloved faculty have left: Ed Wallace, Melissa Sutherland, and Joanne Schweinsberg.

Gene's passing is a huge blow to many; he was a great resource for the school, and for many of his colleagues, and certainly for his students.  His departure, more than the departure of anyone else, be it through retirement or through death, is likely to change the nature of the school itself, and certainly the nature of the mathematics major; and the school will have to work very hard to recover.  It has managed to bounce back from the loss of Charlie Getchell, and David Haley, and it will bounce back from this loss.  But it will be painful.

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