Over the Labor Day weekend Lake Junaluska Assembly provided conference facilities for the Reconciling Ministries Network, a group that seeks to promote the full inclusion of homosexual persons into the Methodist Church. More than 500 individuals from around the U.S. attended the three-day event, which ended Sunday.

Much had been said and written before the conference regarding both the event and the decision by the Assembly to act as host. During the conference there were activities outside of the conference itself by individuals who were critical of the event and its members. Likewise there were many supportive individuals, especially from the lake community, who worked during the three-day event to make those participating in the Reconciling Conference feel welcomed.

There is, in fact a long theological history leading up to the decision to host this event. This historical strand of Methodist theology has formed church doctrine and the social principles that are contained in the United Methodist Book of Discipline.

Before turning to this historical strand, I should note that those opposed have seen the event as subverting the sacred, universal and immutable rules of personal piety. This view is grounded in early sacred writings that are shared by Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions. It is further reinforced by traditional church teachings and a present-day reaction to a perceived decline of social purity.

Others, including this writer, believe that God’s providential grace called us this Labor Day weekend to welcome those sisters and brothers with hospitality powered by the spirit of Christian generosity that dwells in and among all who faithfully call Jesus Lord. Our belief is based on centuries of humble discernment of God’s continual and constructive revelation to all people in the context in which each generation lives.

A great gift of the 16th century European Reformation and the English protestant movements that followed into the 18th century was the Unity Commitment, first adopted by the Moravian Unity of the Brethren, then later by John and Charles Wesley as they began the Methodist tradition. Simple and yet ultimately profound it is: In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love.

Essentials are few in number and bedrock in power. They begin with the affirmation that God, whose very essence is love, has created us, provided for our salvation in the fully divine and fully human Jesus Christ; and, in the poetry of Charles Wesley, is “my God who should die for me!” the heart of a uniquely Christian relationship between the worshiped and the worshiper and is the basis for our atonement opportunity with God. We also affirm that we experience God as real presence within and among us through the gift of the Spirit. It is God who, as Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “through the power at work within us, is able to do far more that we think or ask.”

The second essential is that in granting to Christ the status of Lord we give over to God total authority over everything that we think and do. By this servant commitment, we renounce the ultimate authority in our lives, our own self-centeredness and of all earthly kings, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, bosses and church officials, and the enterprise which each represents.

The final essential for those who place themselves in the extreme center of the Protestant tradition is the acknowledgement that the whole Bible, in its entirety, is the Word of God and therefore the authoritative source for Christian teachings. In their unified wholeness, the Holy Scriptures are, as Susanna Wesley wrote and we in the extreme Protestant center believe, “the anatomy of faith that tells the story of salvation.”

Non-essentials give liberty to the choosing individual, with consequential burden or reward. Another great gift of the church reformation and cultural renaissance was the notion of the thinking individual as the ethical locus of society. Martin Luther in the 16th century taught his congregation that, in faithful response to God’s direct gift of grace, their path to sanctification should begin each day by first making the sign of the cross saying “God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, watch over me,” next to say the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and then to go about their work joyfully.

Jan Amos Comenius, the 17th century German who founded modern elementary education, taught that all learning, including study of the Holy Scriptures, should be rooted in sense and experience, and that the great social benefit of a liberal education is the tolerance and generosity of spirit it can instill in its students.

In the 18th century, John Wesley made reason and experience the co-equal with church tradition as means of discerning the story of the whole of the scriptures and the blessings of God’s continuing revelation to the church and across all generations. In the 19th century Presbyterians founded a liberal arts college in our state on the principle that learning should arise where liberty is cherished. The liberty we are given in non-essentials therefore becomes an obligation that each of us has, to use our minds and our experience to fulfill God’s expectation of us; which is that we will lovingly care for all of divine creation.

We now come to the third element of the Unity Commitment; that in all things, in all human endeavors, in everything that we think or do, there should be only love, and that there should be a total absence of anything that is not love. Luke describes love as total devotion to God with every fiber, including even our physical strength; and, Luke adds, the commitment to love all other human being as we love ourselves. We describe this love as unconditional, as pure, and as perfect. Jesus described it as loving others without qualification as he told the story of the Samaritan, who, knowing nothing about the victim of highway banditry, loved without condition. This love relationship that we Christians call the great commandment is both vertical with God and horizontal with each and every child of God, and for each of us is the most assured path to the perfection of salvation and eternal life.

Love is more. It is, as Paul said to the Corinthians, first among the marks of a Christian because without love, faith and hope are nothing. With love, faith becomes the good news of release to all of us who are captive to the fear of those things that we do not know. With love, hope becomes good news of salvation to all of God’s children who are blinded by gloom. In love is found the mercy and justice and humility that Micah prophesied nearly three centuries ago. Finally, Christian love has no space for condemnation of neighbor. John Calvin taught his 16th century parishioners that neither human being nor church, but God alone was the arbiter and judge of their salvation, and their neighbor’s as well.

As we who participated in and supported the Reconciling Ministries conference began our Labor Day weekend, we sought to ensure that there was no room for anything other than unconditional love manifested in a spirit of generosity for everyone who came to our community. We believed that we must always make ourselves a welcoming community marked by loving hospitality, even for those with whom some among us may disagree, because our love and fellowship in Christ is more important than the matters upon which we do not all agree.

For United Methodist it is particularly important that we extend a generous welcome to those who come to be a part of our community, in the same way that we welcome all who want to receive the grace of Jesus Christ into our churches. As the Labor Day weekend ended and our sisters and brothers returned to their homes, we wished for them God’s speed on their journey with the certain hope that we shall all be reunited, if not in this life, then in the life to come.

(McFarland is a lay member of the Board of Ordained Ministry for the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. Professionally, he is a managing partner of SCG Technology Advisors, LLC. He specializes in corporate finance.)