Way back when, I started a series of posts aimed at unraveling the two issues of “women in ministry” and GLBTQ relations in terms of the three post evangelical theological streams – Neo Reformed/the post Emergent Coalescence(pEC) and the Neo-Anabaptist Missional. I said that key to understanding how they each came down on these issues was understanding how sanctification, community and Scripture worked in each one.
Sanctification deals with the question of how salvation changes us, grows us, transforms us into Christ – personally and socially. I find the Neo-Reformed and pEC understandings on this inadeqaute. To over stereotype each one -the traditional evangelicals say that the Bible says A, you’re doing and desiring B, So Stop Doing B and go do A! Go and rely on the Holy Spirit to help you tell your body “no!” In relation to GLBT relations, this is the welcoming but not affirming position. Meanwhile, the pEC’s generally look more generously on desire (and science) and encourage its flourishing towards a concept of love and flourishing as modeled by Christ. In relation to GLBT relations, this is the welcoming and affirming position. In both cases, they ignore, even bypass, the body and the issue of desire. One says just have your mind conceptually learn the Bible and then tell your body what to do. The way in which your body is formed into desire and how deep that runs within the body, is ignored. The pEC approach ignores the body as well by saying its alright, desire is inherently good, so again learn conceptually what it means to use this desire to love and flourish in the world by learning about Jesus and then all will be well. Both are intensely cognitive (heavily indebted to modernist Cartesian subject). Though spiritual disciplines are present in both emerging post evangelical traditions, there is a stark lack of appreciation for the mortification of sin and of desire that goes hand in hand with the historic Anabaptist understanding of the role of suffering and discipleship. Have I mischaracterized? If so how?
The incarnation demands that God’s salvific work in Christ is intended for real live bodies. God in Christ took our human flesh so seriously He entered into it and subordinated Himself to it in order to redeem it (Phil 2). Thd incarnation demands we acknowledge that our bodies are both good as created (as the pEC’s do) and disordered (as traditional Neo Reformed do). We acknowledge that we cannot save ourselves. We do not always know which parts of our desires are good and which have been corrupted. We are broken. We have to enter the process of the way of Jesus Himself, the way of death and resurrection, of baptism into the new order (2 Cor 17-21) in submission to God to even know what that might look like. This order of salvation is not aimed at any one desire, all are invited in for the renewal in the resurrected life. Yet it seems to me the basis for entering into this Kingdom transformation is the subordination of our entire selves into the cross and resurrection. Desire and the KIngdom cannot be separated (Gal 5:16-26). In other words, it requires the subordination of all desire together for the sake of the world. This is the welcoming and mutually transforming position. In this process, there will be desire that will have to be put to death, there will be desire that can be received as is and given to God for His flourishing, and there will be desire that inherently is good but needs reformation into the fuller purposes of God in life and mission.
I admit this way of sanctification is an affront to the GLBTQ populations. So my question is simply …
Can anyone enter the redemption of the new creation in Christ apart from submitting all desire to Christ for His purposes? On what basis might we withhold any desire in our entire beings from submission to Christ?
By “desire” of course, I am not talking only about sexual desire. (I admit I have been influenced by the analysis of desire so prevalent in postmodern critical theorists). I am talking about all levels of desire: greed, lust for power and ego, and of course sexual desire. When I say “ anyone” I include myself, and first and foremost any who are in positions of power. I admit that I cannot see how the Mission of God can be advanced apart from this kind of spiritual formation. For so many (not all!!) of our desires, formed and shaped within advanced capitalism, work against the Mission of God. I am of course talking about consumerist desires by which we desire many strange things (like a BMW) as identity markers. So powerful are the market shapers of desire, I am 100% convinced that the way money forms us, the way power in multiple settings forms us, and of course the way sexuality has been formed via the consumptive politics of the West, cannot be escaped apart from the subordination of all desire into the death and resurrection of Christ. Within these structures of formation are of course all the horrific ways we have been abused, victimized and shaped to believe this too is the way things are. All of these resulting formations misshape us in ways we fundamentally are unaware of (the Freudian hypothesis).
FOR ALL THESE REASONS I DON’T BELIEVE THOSE OF US WHO ARE MISSIONALLY MINDED, I.E. SEEKING TO ENGAGE OUR EMBODIED CONTEXTS FOR THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE GOSPEL, CAN AVOID THE ISSUE OF DESIRE! At this point it simply is not about the specific cases of GLBT peoples among us. There are multitudes among us never mind so many more around us, who have been victims of multitudinous forms of sexual abuse and societal sexual malformation. Many of us have learned sexuality is the most perverse of ways. It seems that the alternative two post evangelical streams have little to offer those caught in the darkside of sexual desire – deep patterns of behavioral abuse, patterns of objectifying or being objectified, pedophilia, pornography. This is not heterosexual, G,L,B.T or Q. The reality is “THIS IS US.” If we would take on the redemption of the incarnate Christ, if we would minister incarnationally among the largest social psycho problems of our day, we must be able to invite those lost in these various ways into the process of death to life, dying and being resuurected to new life, as in Rom 6-8. For this is about more than personal sexual preference, this is the shaping of a way of being together, a politic of sexual redemption we bring to the world in Christ who came into the world in the flesh.
I see three objections to inviting our GLBTQ brothers and sisters into this kind of community of sexual redemption. They might say:
1.) This is a power play … I respond that Jesus and entire NT insists that those in power will be the first ones in line.
2.) This is a pre-judgement …I respond that there is no judgment, no discerning possible until we first love, trust and care so much for one another that we might be able to both know each other, speak truth and be humble to simply be used by the Spirit in each others’ lives.
3.) This denies who I am- created by God to be. I respond that we join in the making of all things new. Some desires may be restored, some be put to death entirely others transformed … We cannot know who or what we will be in Christ, only that our identity be found more truthful in Him.
All this requires a community, a unique incredible community of incarnational redemption and missional disposition in the world. In the end, this is what I think is most important. All the talking, blogging will convince no one. We must embiody a new way of sexual redemption in the world that is as compelling as the gospel we proclaim. This will be the subject of my next post on this subject.
With that, I open it up these questions to your comments.For the Neo-Reformed and pEC, tell me where I have this wrong. How do you deal with desire in your understanding of salvation?
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Brad Sargent has done a marvelous job responding to my posts. See his work here.
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David, I like the nuancing that you are doing with this piece regarding the different streams… I would suggest that there is another stream on the horizon, that which is flowing in a Wesleyan/missional paradigm. We have roots in the Anglo-Catholic worldview, the Eastern fathers and Anabaptist practices that shaped Wesley; concern for transformed lives & transformed neighbourhoods via accessing the “means of grace” (works of piety & works of mercy). We read/listen to Hauerwas & Willimon, Howard Snyder, Hal Knight, Pinnock, Callahan (all Wesley-oriented); and we don’t ignore the fact that NT Wright is an Anglican bishop, not an ‘emerging’ guru. And this is nuancing our explorations in comprehending our way forward on this topic at hand.
Dave, if I am reading you right, what this amounts to is not so much a statement on whether or not a particular sexual orientation or practice (or any other desire) is in and of itself sinful or righteous, but a suggestion for the way in which all of us ought to submit our sexual orientation and practice (along with all other desires) to the Lordship of Christ in the context of community. Is that right?
If so, then maybe part of your response to the hypothetical objection that, “This denies who I am,” ought to include the possibility of some desires being affirmed under the Lordship of Christ. Or are you already implying some nuance of that idea in the categories of “restored” or “transformed?”
Dan,
being heavily indebted to Hauerwas and friends, as well as one raised within and staying within my “holiness roots,” I’m already there with you … indeed part and parcel of my own Neo-Anabaptist Missional commitments is the role that liturgy plays in the formation of desire …
JR … you’re exactly right … I was trying to make a point of this when I said “there will be desire that will have to be put to death, there will be desire that can be received as is and given to God for His flourishing, and there will be desire that inherently is good but needs reformation into the fuller purposes of God in life and mission” … Indeed the incarnatiuonla way does affirm creation, and created desire … it is not a blanket one stroke denial of all desire as corrupt
David
Your point, “The reality is ‘THIS IS US,’” seems to boil it down to the essence. Seems to be very Pauline. That is the dilemma many face, I think, how much of self do I feel like surrendering to Christ and still be me? The answer to that question is as you put it, making all things (and that includes ourselves) new (some may remain, some may go, etc).
As to the power issue, sometimes it is a little too much. While I am working my way through Hunter’s text, and am so far in sharp disagreement with him in his analysis of the Neo-Anabaptist position, his end points about power and the pursuit of power are compelling. The issue is not about power for ourselves or our groups, whatever, rather the power is Christ.
I really like the direction in this post. The only objection I would see coming from the PEC crowd and the like is the issue of identity. You prefer to place all sexual urges under the category of desire, and I would imagine that others would say that the issue is deeper and involves identity rather than desire. I don’t know if I agree with that or not, but I can imagine the objection.
I do very much like the focus on transformation through the context of a local, relational community, and the much needed, “this is us” perspective as well.
Todd,
I think there’s a problem with separating identity from desire. If I understand David’s position, it’s that identity itself is a complex construct of our desires, histories, cultural contexts, relationships, etc. So the question is, how do we determine which of these things are so central to our identity that the relinquishment of them would be self-destruction? Or put another way, how can we trust our own judgment of which parts of us are peripheral “desires” and which parts of us are core “identities?”
I agree, by the way, that the primary objection is going to say sexual orientation is something deeper than desire. And I think this poses a real challenge for churches that aren’t clearly “welcoming/affirming.” That’s the remaining question I have. David, how does the posture you articulate hear work itself out in a way that opens the door to a mutually transforming relationship? I hear you articulating the “mutually transforming” part really well. How do we “welcome” a community that has been hurt and rejected and marginalized, and has its suspicions about anything besides a clear affirmation of all sexual orientations?
Thanks so much for this conversation David. I am excited by what you are describing and feel that you are giving me helpful new language to talk about this way of mutual transformation in submission to the Lordship of Christ and the witness of scripture.
I do have one question.
You write: “In this process, there will be desire that will have to be put to death, there will be desire that can be received as is and given to God for His flourishing, and there will be desire that inherently is good but needs reformation into the fuller purposes of God in life and mission.”
I am not sure what desires fit into the middle category – “received as is.” I know that in my life, I have yet to find a desire that is sufficiently uncorrupted that it can be received as is. I think that part of the beauty of the pattern you are advocating is that all of us must submit our desires (and even our identity) before God.
I think that the third category you offer is sufficiently affirming and is perhaps more helpful. Rather than examining ourselves to see which parts of our desires don’t need to change, we offer our whole selves up for the transforming and renewing work of God’s spirit. Trusting that nothing in us will be left untouched. That all that we are must die so that it can live.
Perhaps that view is too pessimistic and creation denying, but I think that it creates a context of a level approach to the cross.
Thanks for your ministry and your thoughts.
Ethan Magness
Two ideas/questions come to mind.
First, given this understanding is embraced by community, it seems to me that it would also challenge heterosexual marriages- not as a whole, but in their assumed inevitability. Should these marriages be subject to more discernment than they are already? (From my view, they should- not on merits of morality, but as you say, with respect to submission of desire to God’s redemptive purposes).
Second, can you flesh this out in context? What might this look like? If a community became convinced of this, where would they go from here?
Peace,
Jamie
Nate,
It is problematic on many levels to separate identity from desire … I have hesitated to go into the critical theorists on this one – but gay or lesbian sexuality is a whole communal construction … would anyone deny that? The question then is by what communal construction shall we be formed … this leads to a bunch more questions … Can I be part of two or more commuities at the same time … Revised prot liberalism (say ethicist James Gustafson) would say of course … the modern subject today is a member of multiple communities … Yet this falls apart for postmodern theorists like Kenneth Gergen where we have proposed a sort of post modern fragmentation of the self … Hauerwas et al … see the church … and when pressed … the local church as the primary formation the self for the Christian. Ana baptists like myself … ask what else can baptism mean except a dying to old allegiances and a rising into a membership in the Body, a new political order, which changes everything … “Everything Must Change” to borrow a phrase from Mclaren.
Now, where I want to go in the next post is – none of this can make any sense whatsover … apart from an embodying community .. which inhabits the world as Christ … and offers to the world the Kingdom … and of course becomes engaged in it in a way that brings it into visible reality wherever God is working.
Jamie …
I’d offer 4 things … and I would say … that the biggest sexual disorder in the church is not GLBTQ … it is in the heterosexual populations among us … our marriages … our singleness… incredibly deep patterns of abuse, pornography, objectification, adultery, that have largely been accepted and/or smoothed over… or worse accepted as part of every day fallen Christian life…
Since no one knows what to do with all this stuff .. we simply make it part of us … and then use the gay/lesbian person to make us feel better in a false kind of enjoyment … “at least we’re not them…”
the 4 things … would be
1.) A Sunday morning service which leads us into owning together “that we have all sorts of things going on that are working against God in my life” … upon which we are absolved from sin and loved in Christ Jesus .. and invited to enter into the resuurected life via the proclamation of Truth and the Eucharist …
2.) Groups of 3 or 4 where we joruney together following some basic Benedictine (or even Weslyan) rules which enable us to go deep into what is driving our most inner desires … and cast vision for the ways of Christ into sexual redemption … and thereby confess, submit and open our lives to Holy Spirit realities …
3.) Friday night groups … where we come together to teach and discuss the deeper realities of celebacy and marriage that God is calling us to … and to awaken in us a desire for God … by which new desires we have never experienced begin to shape in our beings …
4.) Teaching the basic core spiritual disciplines … of The Lord’s prayer … and the opening of my Body to dependence upon the Spirit fro the day’s labors and relationships …
These days .. every church needs to find someone, or a group of people who can lead “sexual redemption” in their churches in these ways .. it would take of course much coaching of these groups … I teach a sexual ethics course at Northern … that I hope to make more and more a prep for these kind of practices …
Hey Dave,
Wow–I really want to make this approach work. I mean I really, really like all the stuff you’ve done on sanctification and community. But when we arrive at the GLBTQ question, it still seem qualitatively different than the sexual disorders of heterosexual marrieds/singles. Because those of us who are messed up sexually in the heterosexual camp can have a clearly stated biblical vision of a framework which our submitted/redeemed desires would fit into. But the question would always be out there–”Will I ultimately be asked to be celibate?” *Theoretically* that question is out there for heterosexuals as well (and Paul makes much of this option), but the reason a GLBTQ person may be called to celibacy could be something other than the reasons Paul points to in his letters. That’s a qualitative difference to me.
Thoughts?
[...] in an ongoing series from David Fitch on the mission-shaped church and the LGBT communities: “Being Missional” and the GLBTQ #2: Mission and the Nature of Desire. This particular post is on sanctification, and how desire and identity relate to it in three [...]
Dave –
I really do appreciate and agree with much of what you wrote here. However, as one who pastors in a community where the GLBTQ question is forefront, I feel myself compelled to ask, “But on what grounds do we say THIS particular desire is out of bounds and must be re-oriented to X?”
As I am wrestling with this here in our community and with my gay/lesbian friends, it becomes increasingly clear that they are not saying, “My desires are off-limits to the Lordship of Christ” but “The way the Church has historically told us our desires must be oriented is not sufficient or necessary.” I.e., they would say, “Of course! Our desires must be crucified and submitted to the Lordship of Christ… ergo, monogamous G/L relationships!”
At that point, we are driven back to what I think is probably the 1000 pound gorilla in the living room, which is the historical-theological and exegetical issue. But of course, there issues there too, which I know you are quite aware of…
SO MY QUESTION IS: How would you respond to the GLBT community that does in fact advocate for the mortification of their desires TOWARDS monogamous gay/lesbian relationships? On what grounds will you make your case? That’s the question I’m interested in.
Thanks.
Andrew
Andrew basically asked the question I am wondering.
I could be misreading here, but it seems that the underlying assumption in this post is that all desires are a choice of some sort. Perhaps not a conscious one, but a choice nonetheless. Furthermore, the “desire” that members of the GLBTQI experience seems to fall, within this post, under the category of the “desires” which will be changed. Am I misreading your post?
The question is, what would the new/reformed/redeemed/sanctified set of desires encompass? Sure, celibacy for some and marriage for others. Sure, relationships that are not abusive (be they sexual, financial, etc.). However, do you think monogamous, committed, covenantal, homosexual relationships are included in the ideal, or do they inherently contain some element that must be “redeemed” and therefore changed?
It’s great to show that everyone has issues and that we all must be willing to surrender all to Christ (“for we have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live, but Christ lives in us”), but it seems that you, and again I could be misreading you, have this underlying message that our GLBTQI fellow believers have misread God’s plan and will for their lives in a way that heterosexuals have not.
Thanks for all the good questions …
just some quick responses here …
Is GLBTQ a choice? I certainly would not deny that there is some issues of choice intertwined within the construction of all sexual formations … but of course it is much much thicker than that … there is massive cultural formation as well as genetic psycho social proclivities … much more is given and/or culturally formed… I’m thinking here of the way all sexualities are formed … the way sexuality is shaped in say the east … in Japan … say … the way men relate to woman ..as sterotyped in Memoirs of a Geisha … It is just a very thick matrix … to me … the GLBT world is a cultural world where many different things are going on …
… it is therefore not a simple matter of just saying “it’s a choice “… it’s a matter of engaging all the whole cultural matrix .. Does this make sense ? … I have much more to say .. as to why a sexually redemptiv community is necessary for such a missioanl engagment …
as to answering some of these more speciifc questions … obviously the Christian way .. the 3000 years of history .. in which God … has revealed Himself to us … finally in Christ … must be brought to bear … on our lives … but to those who are outside the faith … we come in a posture of humble powerless engagment … offering what we have ourselves come to experience as redemption … It is not like we offer an edict … it is a witness .. a martyrion …
to those among us who are in same sex relations … here again … we must engage in all the why’s what brought you here to this point? … We cannot singulalry universally address these very complex issues from a transcendent point of view issuing an edict … for this is not witness …
So for me .. all this points to an embodiment, and a posture … which changes the modernist pretention to get to a predisposed outcome…
… how we do not deny our history as Christians … in Christ and history (the Scriptures) … I hope to address in a final post in this series
enough for now …
Thanks Dave. Looking forward to the last post. What is becoming clear to me is that even “mortification” is not specific enough to serve as a normative criteria for directing our sexuality. Interested in what you have to say about Christ/history/text as weighing one way or another.
Andrew
David, this post is incredibly thoughtful and is a much needed perspective in the conversation.
Nevertheless, unless I have missed something I think your analysis fails to address key issues that are dividing factors between who you describe as neo-reformed on the one hand and post emergent coalescence on the other – that is, the issues of biblical authority and the role of the Holy Spirit.
This is important, in my opinion, because unless we address this, people from both sides will continue to talk past one another. Unlike some, I do not believe one side of this debate cares more about biblical authority than the other. Instead, I think it is a matter of how we define biblical authority and discern the work of the Holy Spirit.
I could be wrong, but the way you describe neo-reformed and post emergent coalescence seems to describe one camp as being biblical foundationalists without much concern for the Holy Spirit while the other puts desire and sociological bias over the authority of Scripture, thus veiling themselves to the work of the Holy Spirit in their midst.
If this is accurate (there is a good possibility it may not be), on one level, addressing this would indeed work in favor of your call to a more relational ecclesiology. However, it is my opinion that who you describe as being “post emergent coalescence” are actually practicing this to a radical degree… especially in their reading, interpretation, and application of Scripture and discernment of the Holy Spirit in their midst.
Nevertheless, some questions I would like include concern communities who are sexually diverse. Because, let’s admit… many of our conversations about GLBTQ issues in the church are just that – issues. Often, our conversations exclude the people who are immediately affected by this matter. So, let’s bring sexually diverse communities to the table and ask:
When we embrace a relational ecclesiology in every part of community life, including our reading, interpretation, and application of the Bible and discernment of the Holy Spirit, what happens when communities that are sexually diverse together determine (through relational engagement with the Bible and discernment of the Spirit) that GLBTQ persons can in fact be true to and exercise their sexuality in redemptive ways?
Or, what happens when the practice of a relational ecclesiology in the context of sexually diverse communities people are led by their understanding of the thrust of the biblical narrative and by the Holy Spirit in their midst to welcome, affirm, and include GLBTQ persons to fully participate in the life of the church?
As I said, I may be missing something here, but it is my view that emergent communities are practicing the relational ecclesiology you describe in very diverse settings and, in doing so, have actually come to conclude that which is frankly unacceptable to many Christians who have little experience of being in relationship with GLBTQ Christians.
So my question is, what do you do with communities that implement your Anabaptist Missional ethic and yet conclude something different than you on the subject of GLBTQ persons in the church?
Dave,
Do I hear you correctly in saying that rather than front-loading an edict (neo-reformed: “if you come to Christ you must give up your gay identity-desire-practice” or pEC: “if you come to Christ you don’t need to give up your gay identity-desire-practice”) you would rather all be invited to participate in an incarnational local community to submit all identity-desire-practice to the lordship of Jesus and see what results?
I can see the skeptical saying, “the neo-anabaptist missionals may not front-load an opinion as to which desires get killed and which make it through albeit refined, but they probably have a hunch my gay identity-desire-practice will get killed”.
Is this a fair skepticism? Don’t most of us have the assumption that our heterosexuality as an orientation is not at stake in our submission to Jesus. Our sexual practice perhaps, but not our general orientation.
So while I think it wise not to front-load an edict and, instead, to invite people to experience an embodied community that is seeking to submit all identity-desire-practice to Jesus, I still find there to be practical issues that need working out in how this is received by the GLBTQ community and how this is practiced by the christian community.
[...] “Being Missional” and the GLBTQ #2: Mission and the Nature of Desire [...]
Friends,
Thanks for all the recent comments … I’ve learned much from these questions .. I hope to incorporate some of my responses in the post to come on the nature of the incarnational community of sexual redemption.
What happened to all the comments? There was a wonderful dialogue and some really important questions being asked. Any chance they can be restored?
Yay! Thanks. I see them now (perhaps I should have practiced more patience). Looking forward to post #3.
[...] left off the last post by saying that the only way to witness to and to live this WMT position was through a “welcoming [...]
[...] Read this post here where I pose the question Can anyone enter the redemption of the new creation in Christ apart from [...]