ON ONE--GENERAL
Part IIISOCIAL PRINCIPLES
PREFACE
The United Methodist Church has a long history of concern for social justice. Its members have often taken forthright positions on controversial issues involving Christian principles. Early Methodists expressed their opposition to the slave trade, to smuggling, and to the cruel treatment of prisoners.
A social creed was adopted by the Methodist Episcopal Church (North) in 1908. Within the next decade similar statements were adopted by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and by the Methodist Protestant Church. The Evangelical United Brethren Church adopted a statement of social principles in 1946 at the time of the uniting of the United Brethren and The Evangelical Church. In 1972, four years after the uniting in 1968 of The Methodist Church and The Evangelical United Brethren Church, the General Conference of The United Methodist Church adopted a new statement of Social Principles, which was revised in 1976.
The Social Principles are a prayerful and thoughtful effort on the part of the General Conference to speak to the human issues in the contemporary world from a sound biblical and theological foundation as historically demonstrated in United Methodist traditions. They are intended to be instructive and persuasive in the best of the prophetic spirit. The Social Principles are a call to all members of The United Methodist Church to a prayerful, studied dialogue of faith and practice. (See 610.)
PREAMBLE
We, the people called United Methodists, affirm our faith in God our Creator and Father, in Jesus Christ our Savior, and in the Holy Spirit, our Guide and Guard.
We acknowledge our complete dependence upon God in birth, in life, in death, and in life eternal. Secure in God's love, we affirm the goodness of life and confess our many sins against God's will for us as we find it in Jesus Christ. We have not always been faithful stewards of all that has been committed to us by God the Creator. We have been reluctant followers of Jesus Christ in his mission to bring all persons into a community of love. Though called by the Holy Spirit to become new creatures in Christ, we have resisted the further call to become the people of God in our dealings with one another and the earth on which we live.
Grateful for God's forgiving love, in which we live and by which we are judged, and affirming our belief in the inestimable worth of each individual, we renew our commitment to become faithful witnesses to the gospel, not alone to the ends of earth, but also to the depths of our common life and work.
70.I. THE NATURAL WORLD
All creation is the Lord's and we are responsible for the ways in which we use and abuse it. Water, air, soil, minerals, energy resources, plants, animal life, and space are to be valued and conserved because they are God's creation and not solely because they are useful to human beings. Therefore, we repent of our devastation of the physical and nonhuman world. Further, we recognize the responsibility of the church toward lifestyle and systemic changes in society that will promote a more ecologically just world and a better quality of life for all creation.
A) Water, Air, Soil, Minerals, Plants--We support and encourage social policies that serve to reduce and control the creation of industrial by-products and waste; facilitate the safe processing and disposal of toxic and nuclear waste; provide for appropriate disposal of municipal waste; and enhance the rejuvenation of polluted air, water, and soil. We support measures which will halt the spread of deserts into formerly productive lands. We support regulations designed to protect plant life, including those that provide for reforestation and for conservation of grasslands. We support policies that retard the indiscriminate use of chemicals, including those used for growing, processing, and preserving food, and encourage adequate research into their effects upon God's creation prior to utilization. We urge development of international agreements concerning equitable utilization of the ocean's resources for human benefit so long as the integrity of the seas is maintained. Moreover, we support policies on the part of governments and industries that conserve fossil and other fuels, and that eliminate methods of securing minerals that destroy plants, animals, and soil. We encourage creation of new sources for food and power, while maintaining the goodness of the earth.
B) Energy Resources Utilization--We support and encourage social policies that are directed toward rational and restrained transformation of parts of the nonhuman world into energy for human usage, and which de-emphasize or eliminate energy-producing technologies that endanger the health, safety, and even existence of the present and future human and nonhuman creation. Further, we urge wholehearted support of the conservation of energy and responsible development of all energy resources, with special concern for the development of renewable energy sources, that the goodness of the earth may be affirmed.
C) Animal Life--We support regulations that protect the life and health of animals, including those ensuring the humane treatment of pets and other domestic animals, animals used in research, and the painless slaughtering of meat animals, fish, and fowl. Furthermore, we encourage the preservation of animal species now threatened with extinction. We also recognize the necessity of the use of animals in medical and cosmetic research; however, we reject the abuse of the same.
D) Space--The moon, planets, stars, and the space between and among them are the creation of God and are due the respect we are called to give the earth. We support the extension of knowledge through space exploration, but only when that knowledge is used for the welfare of humanity.
E) Science and Technology--Concerning that which science has offered the world, facts alone can be empty and confusing without an integrating interpretation best accomplished through dialogue with the scientific community. Given the emptiness of scientific facts alone, the church could "bless" the scientific community with depths of interpretation drawn from things of the Spirit. The church has affirmed from the beginning that God is the Creator of all and that God has given us the command to participate in taking care of and enhancing that creation. This age-old belief could take on new life, given the fresh awareness and knowledge of the discoveries of science and the resulting technology which provides new and powerful tools to complete the church's divinely appointed task of saving and transforming the world.
We therefore encourage dialogue between the scientific and theological communities, and seek the kind of participation which will enable humanity to sustain life on earth and, by God's grace, increase the quality of our common lives together.
General Conference Webmaster: Susan Brumbaugh
PETS Creator: John Brawn
1992 Book of Discipline: ¶ 70
1996 United Methodist General Conference