As of late, your social media and inbox may keep referencing a particular paragraph in the Book of Discipline, paragraph 2548.2. But what is this paragraph about? When did it originate and why? Is it useful to us today or not?

GUESTS:

Rev. Mark Salvacion senior pastor of Historic St. George’s UMC in Philadelphia and as of 2019, he was the founding Executive Director and Legal Policy Director of Justice For Our Neighbors of the Delaware Valley, which provides low-cost and pro bono immigration legal services to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the Eastern Pennsylvania, Greater New Jersey and Peninsula-Delaware Annual Conferences.

Thomas Starnes, Chancellor of the Baltimore-Washington Conference since 2004. He’s served as litigation counsel for that Conference, and for the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, in several lawsuits brought to enforce the Wesleyan “trust clause”.

Lawrence Hillis, PhD student at Drew University, candidate for ordination in the GNJ annual conference, and research consultant for GCAH. He specializes in the intersection of religion, politics, and economics, with a particular focus on violence against children.

HOST:

Dr. Ashley Boggan Dreff, General Secretary of the General Commission on Archives and History of The United Methodist Church. Dreff earned her PhD from Drew Theological School’s Graduate Division of Religion, specializing in both Methodist/Wesleyan Studies and Women’s/Gender Studies. She is the author of Nevertheless: American Methodists and Women's Rights (2020) and Entangled: A History of American Methodism, Politics, and Sexuality (2018).