How do you define “the church”? There are two …

Comment on Northern California Conference Votes to Act Independent of the General Conference by Sean Pitman.

How do you define “the church”?

There are two options in front of me. 1) Give my tithe to the local conference that has stepped away from the church body or 2) Give my tithe to a conference that is still in line with the church body.

I’m not suggesting a withholding of tithe from the church. Not at all. What I’m suggesting is that tithe should be given to those elements of the body that are still attached to the body. As an extreme example, would you still give your tithe to a conference that happens to vote to reject the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus? Would such a conference truly be in service of the church that we are to nourish and support? Obviously not.

Again, I’m not talking about a minor point of contention here. I’m talking about a conference that has chosen to act as an independent entity outside of the organized church body as a whole. Why should I support an appendage that has deliberately separated itself from the main body? Even if I agree with all of the reasons why the appendage separated itself from the body, I cannot agree with the decision to actually remove itself from he main body – over a non-fundamental issue. I’m sorry, but I don’t see how your argument addresses this point?

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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.