THE POLITICS OF ENDING CHURCH DISCRIMINATION: The United Methodist Story

This book is about the internal politics of ending United Methodist Church policies of racial segregation of Blacks, institutional discrimination against women, and mandatory negative differential treatment of "gays" and "lesbians." The author articulates a conceptual model, which he describes as an "authentic community of believers in Christ (ACOBIC)," and employs that model to critique historic and current United Methodists' institutional discrimination. With respect to discrimination against gay and lesbian church members, described in the book as " persons with same-gender erotic predispositions," the author constructs a Pentagonal Ethics Paradigm of the Jesus of history; he says that United Methodists' treatment of such members is "incompatible" with imperatives of that Paradigm.