A Journey Toward Reconcilation with LBGTQ+ Friends

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Elaine Eberhart and I have been friends since the mid-1980s when we served together on the pastoral staff of First UMC in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. As a delegate to General Conference in 1984, I regrettably voted for the legislation that prohibited the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.” A few years later, Elaine surrendered her ordination in an act of integrity and courage.

Elaine’s grace-formed life and faithful witness contributed to my conversion and growth as a person, a Christian disciple, pastor, bishop, and teacher. In 2018, I wrote a short blog on why I changed my mind. Though Elaine was not specifically named, she is prominently among those who contributed immeasurably to my changed perspective and commitment. The blog received more than seventy thousand views. You may access it here: https://shiftingmargins.com/2018/09/25/why-i-changed-my-mind-about-homosexuality-and-the-church.

I continue to repent of the harm inflicted on LBGTQ+ siblings by my complicity and failure of leadership. Elaine has graciously extended her forgiveness, and our friendship has deepened. Although she has had a marvelously productive ministry as a lay person in such institutions as Emory University, Mayo Clinic, and the University of Tennessee, I regret that her exceptional gifts as a United Methodist pastor went unutilized.

In June 2025, I was among those who shed tears of joy as Elaine’s clergy credentials were restored by the Holston Annual Conference. It was a momentous occasion, a visible sign and foretaste of God’s reign of justice, reconciliation, and transformation.

You are welcome to join us on December 9 by zoom as Elaine and I engage in conversation. On this webinar, we share our story in hopes that our journey might be helpful to others who seek to experience the reconciliation so desperately needed in our world and church.

This free webinar is for both laity and clergy and will be held December 9, 2025, from 2 pm to 3 pm. To receive the link for the webinar, please register here https://clergyeducation.com/events/2512carder/.

Autumn’s Grief and Gift

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I’m ambivalent about autumn. On the one hand, the cooler temperatures and multicolored leaves invigorate and inspire. Yet, such gifts hint of approaching starkness and death. Daylight diminishes as darkness lengthens. Cool will soon turn to cold as winter inexorably draws near.

Autumn’s ambivalence is now poignantly personal. As I participate in nature’s relentless cycle, autumn is my lived reality. I turn 85 soon. An aging body, diminishing capacities and narrowing engagements bear the signs of autumn. Intimations of loomng winter abound.

But there is more to autumn’s story! Priorities shift! Love thrives! Beauty flourishes! Life thrives! Hope intensifies! Nature regenerates!

Parker Palmer and I are about the same age. He expresses the realities of autumn much better than I; and his reflection is a profound gift, adding to my own gratitude for this season of life:

https://open.substack.com/pub/parkerjpalmer/p/autumn-a-season-of-paradox?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=66jk9

A Beautiful Gift of Love and Hope

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My artist daughter, Sheri, recently presented me with an invaluable gift. It’s a brilliant renderning of a breath-taking scene and profound experience from August 2020. The story behind the painting compounds its beauty and meaning.

It had been ten months since the death of my wife, Linda. She had lived with the ravaging losses of dementia for at least a decade. Still adjusting to the loss of her presence, I was spending time at our home at Lake Junaluska, a place filled with joyful memories.

All the stages of grief were still in play, with varying degrees of intensity. Those who have experienced the loss of a spouse know that the grieving doesn’t follow a clear linear path. It zigs and zags, dips and spikes, ebbs and flows, with shattering sadness always nearby.

On that August morning five years ago, sorrow jarred me awake before dawn. It was one of those anxiety dreams, the details of which dissipated as I awoke. After drinking my morning coffee, I headed for a predawn walk around beautiful Lake Junaluska. As I walked westward peering into the fading darkness, the first glimmers of the new day began to peek from behind the hills behind me.

I turned toward the emerging light that began dispelling the night’s darkness.Gradually, bursts of brilliant radiance pushed through the fluffy clouds and greeted the mists gathering over the serene water’s gentle waves. The lingering shadows of night receded and the emerging light and beauty pointed toward the promise of a new day.

Awe snapped my grieving soul to attention. The haunting grief from a lost yesterday was wrapped in a new garment of pervasive beauty, relentless love, and renewed hope. Though loss and grief lingered, I felt part of something much bigger than personal loss. I was reminded that I am a participant in creation’s rhythmic dance of darkness and light, holding on and letting go, death and resurrection.

Wanting to capture the experience, I snapped a photo with my phone camera. The picture became the background for subequent blog posts. However, something was missing from the photo. It couldn’t capture the LOVE and belonging that accompanied the experience.

But the LOVE absent from the photo permeates the painting done by one birthed and nurtured by Linda. Sheri and her sister, Sandra, embodied that LOVE as they accompanied Linda and me on the “long goodbye;” and they continue to generously share that LOVE with me and others.

The painting has become a constant reminder of the LOVE, BEAUTY, and HOPE to which creation itself testifies.

Economic Justice and the Common Good: Ken Carder and Tex Sample in Conversation:

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What does God have to do with economics? The short answer is EVERYTHING!

The current economic turmoil exposes and exacerbates the economic injustices that have resulted in gross inequalities, exploitation, and new forms of slavery.

Though the conversation with Tex Sample was recorded prior to the dramatic downturn in the stock market, the discussion addresses such questions as What is the biblical/theological understanding of justice? What is the nature of “God’s economy?” How can people of faith contribute to justice and the common good?

We are planning follow up conversations on this issue as well as others. I hope you will join the conversations!

Conversation with Phil Amerson

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Podcasts have become an important medium for conversations and sharing of experiences and ideas. Phil Amerson is effectively using podcasts to bring people together in conversation on important issues and challenges. Phil’s “Be & Do” introduces the mission and vision of “Belonging Exchange” podcast in which he reflects on faith and life in conversations with friends. I was honored to participate in this week’s segment.

https://www.podpage.com/BelongEx-PhilipAmerson/exploring-shifting-margins-love-belonging-and-moving-beyond-fear-and-exclusion-w-bishop-ken-card/

The conversation focuses on experiences which I share in the book, “Shifting Margins: From Fear and Exclusion to Love and Belonging.”

.We live during a time when fear and exclusion dominate the agenda of prominent political and religious leaders. Bullying, fraud, greed, deception, cruelty, and violence are increasingly normalized and acceptable behaviors and policies.

.As I understand the Christian Gospel, God’s vision for the world is LOVE AND BELONGING for ALL! Shifting from threatening and excluding those deemed as “the other” toward God’s mission of compassion, justice, hospitality, and peace/shalom is the priority challenge of our time.

Let’s join together in countering bullying, hatred, and exclusion with acts of kindness, mercy, and justice! Phil Amerson helps us focus on what really matters, being and doing that which fosters belonging to one another and to God.

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

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Dr. Bill Holmes (right)

As I continue my daily reading of the Sermon on the Mount and reflections on its resonance and dissonance in my daily experience, I share this story about my friend, Dr. Bill Holmes. While war rages in Ukraine and elsewhere, Bill was presented with the Muslim Americans for Compassion award “In recognition of service to compassion, promoting peace, and interfaith harmony.”

As the media is filled with news of violence and war as the way to lasting peace, Bill Holmes contributes to peace through compassion, non-violence pursuit of justice, and promoting interfaith harmony.

Bill is a highly regarded pediatric neurologist and an ordained Baptist hospital chaplain. Our friendship was forged through shared grief as we journeyed with our late spouses in their dementia. He is one in whom I see the Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount validated and at work as a counter to hatred, division, and violence normalized in the modern world.

With his permission, I share Bill’s response to receiving the award. His brief statement captures his deep commitment to justice and compassion which are at the heart of Jesus’ “inaugural sermon” in Matthew’s Gospel.

Remarks to Muslim Americans for Compassion and the 15th Annual Interfaith Iftar Dinner after receiving an award “In recognition of service to compassion, promoting peace, and interfaith harmony.”  March 6, 2025

 I stand here this evening wondering why I, of all people, should get an award for peacemaking. If my mother were alive today, she would be astounded.

Jeremiah of ancient times cried “Peace! Peace! But there is no peace.” Patrick Henry borrowed those words a few thousand years later to let his country men know that the battle against tyranny was already here.

We all long for peace within our hearts and souls and peace in the community around us.

But there is a pre-requisite to peace: First there MUST BE JUSTICE.  Where there is justice, all in the community have what is needed for dignity, freedom, health, joy, and security.

There can be no justice when this group or that is singled out and treated harshly. Nor can there be justice when the safety and health of our children and grandchildren are being threatened.   

We cannot have peace while ignoring injustice.

Where there is no justice, peace becomes a mirage.  

Please know this: Hate and fear are the parents of injustice.

Furthermore, without justice and lasting peace, we might well lose hope.

It is now our task to somehow bring hope, even in the midst of despair that might befall as we see the scales tipping toward injustice all around us.

Thanks for listening—  As-Salamu alaykum, Peace be with you.

Peace, my friends, will always be tenuous, will always be fragile, and must be protected like a newborn baby.

Let’s Have a Conversation

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I’ve been encouraged by responses to the sharing of my journey in “Shifting Margins: From Fear and Exclusion to Love and Belonging,” including requests for conversation around shared personal struggles and ministry issues. I am delighted that Kevin Slimp of Market Square Books has arranged a webinar for Thursday, January 9, during which we will engage in a discussion of challenges and opportunities confronting us as people of faith.


I hope you will join us for the conversation. It will be helpful, but not necessary, for you to have read Shifting Margins prior to the webinar. The book is available from Market Square Books, Cokesbury, and Amazon.

Here is the link to information and registration for the webinar. You do not need to be clergy to register. Laity are welcome and urged to participate. There is no charge.
https://clergyeducation.com/events/kencarder2501/

Honesty: The Core of Character Matters

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 My grandfather, Dave Walker, was one of my heroes. He died at age 67.  He was a simple man who could neither read nor write; yet, he was perhaps the kindest, wisest, and most honorable person I have known. The memory of an incident during my childhood recently resurfaced.

I was about eight years old. Granddaddy asked if I would like to walk to the store with him about a mile away. He bought me a candy bar along with his purchase of a bag of flour. After we were almost back home, he counted his money in the change purse he carried in the pocket of his overalls. He discovered the clerk had given him a nickel more change than he should.

“We have to go back to the store,” granddaddy said. “I have to return this nickel.”

“But it’s just five cents,” I said. “He’ll never even know he gave you too much!”

“But I’ll know,” he responded.  “You’re only as good as your word,” he added.

The most frequently heard compliments at my grandfather’s funeral in 1961 were these: 

            “He was honest as the day is long!”

            “His word was his bond!”          

“If he promised something, you could count on it.”

            “He never lied; he always told the truth.”

            “You could trust him with your life.”

I’ve thought a lot about my grandfather during the current climate of runaway dishonesty. Lying is being normalized, justified, trivialized, and weaponized in high and low places. Distortion of truth has become a contrived means of achieving desired ends.

In the current political climate, character has been disjoined from policy, as though favorable policies override personal integrity. Without character-embedded honesty, however, promises related to policy are fickle, hollow, and manipulative.

Granddad considered honesty the core of character and dishonesty as symptomatic of a malignantly diseased character. He learned that from Jesus! “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much” (Luke 16:10).

Fred Craddock shared an experience while in the buffet line at an airport food outlet. Dr. Craddock saw the man in front of him slide a small pad of butter under his plate, hiding it from the cashier. The butter only cost five cents! A harmless or inconsequential dishonest act! But Dr. Craddock commented that he kept his eyes on his own luggage when that man showed up at the same boarding gate. Trust was gone!

Dishonesty is a deadly infection of the soul that poisons every aspect of life. It destroys trust, corrodes character, fractures relationships, undermines community, and subverts the common good. Lies are like termites eating away the foundation or malignant cancer cells destroying vital organs, within individuals and society.

 Would you trust your children with the man who hid the pad of butter under his plate? Would you hire him as your financial advisor or banker? Give him a key to your car or house? Buy a used car from him? Give him the combination to your safe? Vote for him? Provide him with the nuclear code?

Albert Einstein is reported to have warned, “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”

Character matters! Granddaddy was right: “You are only as good as your word!” He not only believed it; he also LIVED it. He was as good as his word. I would trust him with my life!

Granddaddy’s change purse

Choosing Leaders

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This election season challenges me to clarify the qualities of leadership that most closely reflect the core values of my faith, whether those being chosen are for government, the church, or institutions/agencies. Here are some qualities I look for. What’s on your list?

1. Personal Character and Temperament: truthfulness and reflections of “Fruits of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Leaders greatly influence the culture of the entity they lead. Power divorced from honesty, moral character, and mature temperament becomes manipulative, coercive, self-serving, and destructive, thereby thwarting the common good and inflicting suffering on others. 

2. Demonstrated Commitment to Justice as Equity, Fairness, and Enabling the Least and Most Vulnerable to Flourish as God’s Beloved Children. Developing and implementing policies that protect and enable the powerless to have access to God’s table of abundance strengthens the whole society. Merely protecting and advancing the privileges of the privileged fails the justice test and results in exploitation, inequity, abuse, and even death.

3. Proven Recognition of and Respect for the Inherent Worth, Dignity, and Wellbeing of Every Person. Leaders set the tone for how those they influence treat others. Using a biblical image, leaders are shepherds who know, defend, nurture, preserve, and guide others. On the other hand, “hirelings” fleece, exploit, abandon, deplete, and may even slaughter the sheep. The shepherd recovers and restores the weak; the hireling scatters and disregards the vulnerable. 

4. A Disciplined, Tough Mind and a Compassionate, Empathetic Heart. This is what Jesus described as being “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Leaders must exhibit both intellectual and social intelligence. Intellect without empathy humiliates and demeans; empathy without intellect risks enabling destructive behavior and being co-opted for nefarious purposes.

5. Compelling Vision for the Common Good and Sensible Strategy for Moving Toward the Vision. For me, the vision is defined in the biblical images of “the kingdom of God” and “the New Creation;” and it is embodied in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Components include these:

▪ the dignity and worth of ALL persons are respected, preserved and nurtured.

▪ the interrelatedness, interdependence, and mutual flourishing of creation is respected.

▪ the oneness and unity of the human family is reflected in actions and policies.

▪ service ranks above profits, restoration surpasses retribution, and hope defeats despair.

I realize that no one fully embodies these qualities, and they may seem idealistic and unattainable. Admittedly, they are more aspirational than concretely visible in our polarized, fragmented, and violent world.

Yet, we need leaders at all levels whose aspirations transcend mere self-interest, acquiescence to things as they are, and cynical scorning of such ideals as freedom, compassion, respect, and justice for ALL.
                

Trying to Make Sense of My Life

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I’ve spent much time in recent years remembering and reflecting on events, relationships, and stories that have shaped who I am. It says a lot about my station in life. I’m poignantly aware of having exceeded by more than a decade my biblically allotted “three score years and ten.”

A few colleagues and several family members, including grandchildren, urged me to share stories from my life and more than sixty years of ordained ministry. It has been a daunting, emotional, frustrating, and yet healing process.

Reliving past struggles, mistakes, failures, hurts, griefs, disappointments, and losses resurfaces unresolved guilt and regrets. The grace I have proclaimed for six decades has been put to a test as a lived reality. Accepting forgiveness for myself is sometimes harder than extending it to others.

But the process of remembering, reflecting, and writing has been predominantly a source of healing, thanksgiving, and hope. I am in awe of the ineffable mystery and resilience of life. Each person’s finite story is mysteriously interwoven into an Infinite Story with limitless connections and possibilities.

Seemingly inconsequential events, encounters, or decisions in retrospect were life-transforming. “What ifs” are part of remembering: What if I had not gone to that conference? What if I had said “no” to a particular invitation? What if I had not enrolled in that school, or taken a different class, or entered an alternative vocation?

Life is a mysterious combination of choices made and conditions prescribed, situations over which we have control and circumstances beyond our control, the “givens” of nature and the influence of nurture.

Life is simply too complex, too interrelated, and mysterious to be fully described. Memory never records the totality of any incident and recall always reflects current contexts as much as the event itself.

Therefore, writing a memoir requires a stance of vulnerability and humility in remembering and interpreting the circumstances, experiences, events, perceptions, and relationships that constitute one’s life. The process is risky and fraught with temptations for distortion and misrepresentation.

The book, Shifting Margins: From Fear and Exclusion to Love and Belonging is my attempt to make sense of my own life. It began with simply putting memories on paper, starting with my earliest recalled experiences and moving through seven decades. Reviewing journals and accumulated files of correspondence and other documents resurfaced forgotten events, transitional experiences, and relationships. The result was almost six hundred pages!

With the help of a skilled editor (who happens to be my daughter), identifying themes, and creating a coherent and readable manuscript followed. Reducing the manuscript by two-thirds became symbolic of my reality. Life’s experiences are narrowing. The circle of engagement and involvement is diminishing. Physical energy is declining. Cognitive functioning remains but with less quickness and retention. The end is far closer than the beginning!

After all this remembering and reflecting, I have concluded that perhaps the goal isn’t to make sense of life. Rather, it is to participate in its unfolding mystery with love, perseverance, and hope.

Whatever the stage, there are opportunities to give and receive love. There are challenges to confront with determination and courage. There is hope that our stories ultimately fold into God’s Story of Endless Love and Resurrection Life.

To order Shifting Margins, https://www.marketsquarebooks.com/store/p123/Shifting_Margins.html