An Excerpt from Bishop Hopkins’ Episcopal Address, 2005

I want to tell you as your Bishop that our first loyalty as Christians and United Methodists is to God.  And our first political responsibility is to the church.  And the church has to be involved in politics.  But get this very clear:  The church has got to be involved in a way that we can be civil with out being soft;  to be engaged without being used; and to be political without being partisan. 

Now let me unpack that a little bit.  I think that one of the gifts that the United Methodist Church in Ohio—and I’ve talked to Bruce Ough about this—the Bishop of West Ohio—is that our church, in meeting all of the needs of East and West Ohio and the State of Ohio—we might be able to provide a gift for this state if  we would just have a place for civil discourse about issues confronting the State, and not allow it to be partisan in the media first. 

One of my dreams—and I’m not sure I can pull it off—if you can find a way to help me, do that—one of my dreams is that Bishop Ough and I would have hearings all across the state on public education and we would ask United Methodist educators—superintendents, teachers, teachers’ aides—and we would ask United Methodist legislators—to join us in these hearings where we would let people have an open mic to talk about what they thought the problem was and what solutions the State of Ohio ought to do, in a civil way of civil discourse. 

But we need to be civil without being soft. The United Methodist church cannot let the current school systems in Ohio continue as they are. …

We need to be engaged without being used.  This gets a little dicey, but I think it’s true, and if you’re a student of religious history, you can talk to me later.  It’s my feeling—and I got some of this concept from Stanley Howross—that since the time of Constantine the nation-states have tried to control Christianity—…by doing [one of] two things:  either by trying to make Christianity the state religion, and control it that way, or to privatize it and to say “Keep out of politics.”  Do you understand what I’m saying?  Our relationship to the State is crucial—that’s why I’m saying we need to be engaged without being used because there’s a lot of church people being used today [by the] political parties – on the left and the right!  … and we have to find a way to be engaged without being used in either making us have a theocracy where we try to put Christ on the throne and make the State—the nation state—a Christian state, or on the other hand, privatize it so that we don’t have any interface. 

And we have to be political without being partisan.  There are times when we are going to make the Democratic party so angry that they’re not going to like us, and there’s going to be times we’re going to make that Republican Party so angry they’re not going to like us, either.  And there’re times when both of them—we’re not going to like either one of them, and that’s exactly the way we want it.  That’s exactly the way we want it.  Because—Because our first loyalty has to be to God if we’re Christian—and our first political responsibility has to be to the church.