The banner went up during Holy Week on the side of my United Methodist church in Nashville. Color-coded in bright hues, it proclaimed our welcome to persons of all “genders, races, sexual orientations, economic or family status, mental or physical ability.”
It was beautiful.
Our church has another banner, smaller and etched into an old stone tucked into the church's cloister garden. It commemorates the founding of the congregation.
“West End, M.E. Church South, 1887.”
It is from another building, another time. “M.E. Church South” is code echoes across the chasm of time. The Methodist Episcopal Church South was born when America’s largest Protestant denomination split in 1844 over slavery — or, to be more accurate, over whether one could own people and still claim to be Christian. Some Methodists, including some of my forebears, said yes. They divided over a chattel war rather than challenge the powers and principalities of this world.
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