on August 11 2011

Howard Shultz – CEO of Starbucks – Withdraws from Willowcreek Summit: LET IT BE!

There’s a famous song by John Lennon that summarizes my reaction to the withdrawal by Howard Schultz – CEO of Starbucks – from the Willowcreek Leadership Summit. (See CT article here). It is “Let it Be.” I love this song. I find myself humming it all the time when I need to return to some serenity in my life. To me it’s an ascent to the Lordship of Christ – Let it be Let it be.  John Lennon, I’m sure would be horrified.

I have long chastised us evangelicals for our anti-gay rhetoric – for our public campaigns against LGBTQ sexual relations. We should cease and desist from our culture war campaigns. It makes no sense. Instead I advocate “Let it Be”. Let God work out the redemption of our society via communities of faithfulness sorting out what sexual faithfulness looks like on the grounf under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Let God’s salvation forged through the cross and the resurrection take shape in our sexual lives in real communities. And quit trying to control the sexual lives of others in their respective communities. In other words “Let it Be.”

Of course the other side of this challenge is the hostile militant actions of LGBTQ groups against Christian groups. In a way we Christians are getting what we deserve. We are getting a militant reaction to our own militancy. And so when Howard Shultz is forced to withdraw from speaking at the Willowcreek Leadership Summit because “The church has long practiced dangerous conversion therapy to ‘cure’ people of their sexual orientation,” it speaks to the antagonism engendered by the culture tactics of evangelicals over the past thirty years. And so again, I also plead with the gay/lesbian communities, “Let it Be.” Let each community self determine out of its own convictions how to lead a life worthy of those convictions.  Let the results then speak for themselves.

To me the episode at Willowcreek this week illustrates 3 things about this direction we need to go: the direction of “Let it Be.”

a.)   This episode illustrates that : neither side really knows what the other means when it talks sexual relations or sexual formation. And so when Asher Huey dubbs Willowcreek’s attempts at gay/lesbian spiritual formation as “conversion therapy” he is inciting all sorts of ideological angst. Indeed, any attempt at any kind of sexual formation (including the sexual formation necessary for heterosexual/lesbian/gay folk to live out monogamous sexual life) could be dubbed “conversion therapy.” Does Huey even understand that for us evangelicals, “conversion” is part and parcel of our own identity in Christ? But this all illustrates how this conversation gets ideologized instead of worked out on the ground by real people asking real questions and seeking real redemption in our sexual lives. It’s the same non-sense when we start dubbing our churches “welcoming and affirming” or “welcoming and not affirming.” We do not know what we are affirming, nevermind what other communities that claim the LGBTQ label think we are affirming. So let’s put an end to this ideologizing, put a moratorium on policing each other, and allow our sexuality to be worked out as part of our way of life in local commiunities. In other words “let it be.”

b.)  This episode illustrates that: we need to acknowledge there is nurture and formation in whatever sexual stance we are seeking to live out in our culture. Whether it be LGBTQ, American heterosexuality, Christian sexuality, whatever, there is a nurture involved. Even if we affirm 100% that sexual orientation is genetic, no one can seriously deny that our communal culture shapes our sexuality, what it means to have sex, how our bodies shape and move with that (genetically given) desire, how we relate to gender. When we work with heterosexual therapies to re-shape destructive sexual habits in marriage, when gay/lesbians argue for monogamy as a chaste practice (see Eugene Rogers on this for instance), when we prohibit pornography for under 18 year olds, etc. etc, we are all recognizing that sexuality is formed in some way shape and form. Each community should therefore be allowed to foster the spiritual formation of sexual life within its own beliefs and practices. Again, we shouldn’t try to police each other with accusations of “conversion therapy” or the stuff that conservative Christians sling at LGBTQ communities. LET IT BE. Can we then please allow our respective communitiues, including Willowcreek, to have its spiritual formation practices around sexuality. If so-called “conversion therapy” is abusive it shall bring forth an abusive way of life. It will become apparent in time. Likewise, the pluses and minuses of LGBTQ sexuality will bring forth its fruit. And for the “Christian LGBTQ” communities likewise. The beauty, truth and compellingness of each community shall be revealed in its way of life.. Til then, can let us live alongside each other in peace, let God’s hand work in the world, and “let it Be”!

c.)   The episode illustrates: The church should give up trying to call the shots on this country’s morality. Instead, we should as communities of faithfulness seek to nurture a redeemed sexuality in our respective communities. This will be the witness we seek. It will speak for itself.  N. America (the U S and Canada) is not a Christian Nation. The U.S., more so than any other country, is a country built on the so-called “freedom” of each individual to satisfy him/herself “as long as you don’t hurt anyone else (whatever that might mean). With this being the predominant mode of moral reasoning and ethos, it is fruitless to try to influence the country’s morality on these terms. It will always turn into a coercive (and therefore unChristlike) exercise. Instead, let us live faithfully spending our times working out what a sexual way of life is that is faithful to the salvation we have received in Jesus Christ. Then let us live peacefully alongside other communities, in love and care for them. allowing each community to nuture shape its own sexuality in line with its deepest convictions. Our lives will bear witness to the redemption God is calling the world to. We will learn from others as well. And God will do what God will do to redeem the whole world. It will surprise us. So Let it be!

d.)  The episode illustrates (similar to c.)): We should resist trying to control what other communities say and do in the practice of their respective sexualities. Every time we speak a judgment, it sounds like an insult. When we try to control the other in ideological debates, we reveal the insecurity in our own way of life, our own vision and practice of sexuality as worked out in our lives together. This goes for evangelicals. It goes for the LGBTQ, it goes for whoever whenever. Churches (including denominations) need to discern together their our sexual practices and vision for life under Scripture, the Holy Spirit and the gifts in community. We need to do this peacefully, in submission to one another in reverance for the Lordship of Christ. (there’s a 1000 pages to be written on this). We need to do this listening and in dialogue with those who challenge what we are doing. This too, is another part of “Let it Be.”

I am disappointed in Shultz’s decision to withdraw from Willowcreek Summit. To me it speaks to the need for a “Let it Be” stance in our culture.  Perhaps Willowcreek can be the lead voice in calling for such a position. By so doing, we say Jesus is Lord of the world, and that as we work out what that means in terms of God’s call on our sexual lives, the resulting redeemed way of life will be compelling enough to speak for itself to the world of what God is doing in the area of sexuality.

————–

What do you think? Can you be an advocate of the stance of “Let it Be”?  Travelling to Canada for the next few days, so don’t know how much internet I’ll have. But I want to hear the conversation.

 

Filed under Women/GLBTQ 23 Comments

on September 2 2010

Me Vs. Craig Carter on Same Sex Relations: How My Position Differs from the Traditional Evangelical Approach

During the last six months, the blog posts on the LGBTQ, other sexual issues and mission have been by and large well received.  I have had many good conversations off blog and on blog. I started out the whole series of posts by saying, “Is it possible to “be Missional” among the gay/lesbian communities without a clear affirmative stance towards GLBT relations?… Many would flat out say “no.”” I said “I find myself at odds with many of the underlying assumptions that drive these conclusions.” I had seen several instances where Ed Stetzer and others were accused of being “non-missional” because they did not affirm gay/lesbian relations. I had also seen several instances where the lone engagement by the Neo-Reformed on these issues was to preach against something and believe that was sufficient to engage the issue in terms of mission. I was content with neither approaches. To me,  what I called the post Emergent consensus approach to these questions as well as the traditional evangelical approach – and its offshoot – the New-Reformed were both inadequate.

Having said that, I was surprised that I got little push back from my post-Emergent coalescence friends.  I expected push back from this side because I revealed my conviction that to be transformational in these issues of sexuality, one had to work from a place of redeemed sexuality which revealed that, for me, same sex relations (as well as other sorts of sexual relations) are non-normative for the Christian life. Instead I got the biggest push back from an evangelical – theologian Craig Carter at Tyndale University College in Toronto – who suggests I am sliding down the slippery slope to protestant liberalism. He wrote a full post on it here.

I think it might be helpful for clarifying my own position if I respond to Craig’s post item by item. I think it could clarify how and why traditional evangelical engagemnt on these issues is inadequate for the missional task.Here goes:

______________________
Craig says: “Fitch accepts the story that the pro-homosexual activists and their liberal Protestant fellow-travelers tell” regarding evangelicalism’s stance towards the LGBTQ peoples. Craig says that I agree with those who accuse evangelicalism as judgemental, lacking in compassion and understanding. Craig says “When Fitch writes this sort of stuff he sounds like he learned everything he knows about Evangelicals from reading books by John Spong and James Barr and by watching Kieth Olbermann on TV.”

Me: Craig is right. I think the approach of evangelicalism is flawed. And I think this is revealed in the ways our attitudes and approach have been typecast – for better or worse – as judgemental, lacking in compassion and duplicitous. In just the last decade, witness these NY Times best seller books, Mel White – Religion Gone Bad,  Chris Hedges – American Fascists, Dan Gilgoff – The Jesus Machine,  Sam Harris – Letter to a Christian Nation, Robert Lanham -Sinner’s Guide to the Evangelical Right, Randall Balmer – Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America,  Christopher Hitchens – God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. All these book caricature evangelicals and include the charge of duplicitous judgementalism on gay relations as part of the evidence. True this is a caricature – many times by angry atheists. But if that is not enough then look at LifeWay’s Research on what people think. Read InternetMonk’s great insights on evangelcials. The bottom line is that the huge public opinion on evangelicals must be looked at. When so many people are saying the same things eventually we have to look at ourselves and ask, why do so many people think we are this way? Even if this is a media conspiracy, you have to at least ask why? I think this judgmentalist characteristic is something inherent in our evangelical approach to theology which for me in some ways is illustrated by Craig himself. (I have a book coming out of all this in January - The End of Evangelicalism?) What do you think?

Craig asks: whether “Fitch really thinks that Reformed and Evangelical churches do not acknowledge and embody #1 – that We All Come Broken.” He asks whether I really think this is a new approach.

Me: I know that evangelicalism articulates a commitment “that we are all sinners.” However I think evangelicalism as a church generally DOES NOT inhabit this truth as a concrete posture in the world from which to engage the world. This is more than a problem of individuals in the church. This is a cultural issue inherent in the way we presume Christendom assumptions about our relation to culture. It is a theological problem. It is inherent to the way we articulate and practice salvation as I hope to show in my upcoming book The End of Evangelicalism?

Craig says: It is #2 (No Public Statements) that really sets off alarm bells. We are not to proclaim that sexual sin is sin? Or are we? This is rather unclear. Fitch clearly says that he does not accept homosexual behavior as compatible with redeemed Christian life . . . so why does he say we should make no such statements in public? He apparently thinks that somehow playing down our position on sexual morality until the outsider has come inside the Church will make it easier for the non-Christian to accept our view once we finally disclose it.

In relation to my call for not making public statements on GLBTQ, Craig thinks this “ is just weird because the first thing I thought of when I heard this was Robert Schuller and his approach to emphasizing the positive as his explanation for why he never preached on sin. The second thing I thought of was the seeker-sensitive approach to “re-branding” the church in a way that is less offensive to the secular person. And this is proposed as the way to be “Anabaptist” and “radical”? It is enough to make one’s head spin.”

Me: These statements, to me, are a sign that Craig has become a thoroughly Christendom thinker, a shocking development given his excellent early work on Yoder in his academic career. He assumes that public statements a.) communicate what we believe about sexuality, b.) and somehow witness the gospel. Instead, I argue, in a post Chrsitendom world, amidst multiple sexualities of various cultures and communities, we really communicate NOTHING about who we are and what we believe God is doing among us redemptively in sexuality by making public statements that we are against “such and such.” We instead just distance ourselves over against anyone who does not already agree with us. Putting a sign out, protesting, and identifying ourselves as anti-gay, or pro gay for that matter does the very thing Craig accuses me of. It makes us into a place that attracts only the ones who agree already. It sets us up as a market niche pro-or anti gay church. It separates us from missional engagement with any number of sexual issues. And it does not communicate what cannot be communicated to those who don’t get what our sexual commitments are really about. Of course, internel to the community’s development, understanding who we are and why, and the thick languages of Christian sexuality, is all part of being a community of integrity. Within the communoity, we articulate these commitments, yet we hold these commitments incarnationally, we live them, and we witness to them, and invite people in who are seeking. This is part of being a minority post Christendom world. For those in Christendom, I say go ahead, put up a sign, protest and attract a crowd of people who believe the exact same things you do already. But don’t expect much mission.

Craig says: “The Neo-Reformed position (I criticize) actually is the position of the entire Christian tradition until the past few decades.”

Me: Uh? According to who? I know Craig spends a lot of time in patristic studies, as have I. I would find Craig’s position here to be highly disputed by not just a minority, but a majority of patristic scholars. I think he probably means some broader evangelical commitments in which case I still have to dispute him on some issues.

Craig claims: that I am trying to “go down the middle,” a “compromise position between two positions- liberal and evangelical.”

Me: I couldn’t disagree more. In fact the idea of a centrist way or an Hegelian third way makes me want to puke.  In fact I don’t think there is a middle way between the two approaches I find satisfactory. I think both traditional evangelical (or Neo-Reformed) and the postEmergent positions are the same in their dependence ultimately on modern/Christendom constructs of epistemology and both assume a Christendom posture towards culture. I believe we need to leave these constructs behind and engage the world incarnationally, with the fullness of the wisdom of what we live in Christ in His history as the church and Scriptures. This kind of engagement happens when active living missionary communities inhabit places witnessing to the gospel in humble incarnate ways.  You would think Craig, someone who once studied the great Anabaptists, would get this?

Craig claims: that I take “the the whole idea of sexual “orientations” as a given without being critical of the idea. That somehow I am not critical ( enough?) of the idea of a fixed orientation.

Me: Read this post here where I pose the question Can anyone enter the redemption of the new creation in Christ apart from submitting all desire to Christ for His purposes? Read the comments.  You decide. Enough said.

Craig thinks: that “Fitch takes the issue of homosexuality far too seriously.” That I am “singling out of homosexuality from a vast array of other sexual sins as if there was something different about it that made it an exception to be troubling.”

Me: Hmmmm, read this post here. Read my lengthy descriptions throughouit these posts describing how LGBTQ must be put into the entire sphere of sexual brokenness the church faces among every person in its gathering. There are sometimes when I wonder what Craig was reading here? What am I missing?

Craig says: that “for a long time (over 20 years) I (Craig) thought it was unproblematic to accept women’s ordination and maintain the traditional position on homosexuality, but now I have changed my mind. I think that there is a good reason why these two issues have been linked right from the start of second wave feminism and the sexual revolution in the 1960s.”

Me: I think the two issues are linked due to the Western habit of thinking out of the political structures of Western liberalism of individual rights, autonomous authority etc. Once we escape that logic, which I think neither complementarians or egalitarians do, this problem goes away.

Craig says “I suggest that we take a long, hard look at John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.” I agree, it’s a great text, and

Me: I regularly draw on Roman Catholic theology. See this post here where contraception and procreation are talked about. Notice some of the comments.

Craig says: in his comment to me in his post that he’s most concerned for “those struggling with homosexual temptation who need pastors who love them without compromising the teaching of Scripture and encourage them to stand fast.”

Me: I think that Craig does not “get” that indeed I am trying to provide a place for that kind of sanctification. For me, Craig represents the ensconced Christendom habits of evangelicalism by the way he engages culture from a posture of power, presumed hegemony of language, and that we need not engage people relationally and try to understand the issues that go so much deeper than saying “You are wrong and must change your behavior.” I know he wouldn’t be this way in person. But his approach doesn’t deal with any nuances that are sadly missing in our traditional evangelcical account of cultural engagement. I have muy theories as to why this is a glaring blindspot for many evangelicals. That will have to be a post for another time. For now, I suggest that the passing of Christendom in many parts of the world demand we take an incarnational position in the world. This is what I have been trying to construct in our relation to sexual issues, sexual brokeness in the world. More than holding a Bible out in front of someone and declaring a few statements and then help that person “white knuckle” it, grit their teeth, and “hold fast,” I suggest sexual redemption comes from a true spiritual and bodily formation. Anyone who reads this post here should be able to get that eh?

All in all, I respect Craig Carter. In his career, he’s done a lot of work, work I have drawn upon. I love the school where he teaches and the world of Toronto and that part of Ontario. But I think Craig’s post on me was just not careful enough. I think it does clarify however some of issues we evangelicals face who have a heart for the victums, the hurting and the lost among the LGBTQ peoples among us. What do think of the differences between Craig’s position and mine? In what way does Craig represent the traditional evangelical stance on same-sex relations? Its positives? Its flaws? In light of the above, where does his criticism still hold? What am I missing?

Thanks Craig for interacting!

Filed under Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 11 Comments

on August 30 2010

The Welcoming and Mutually Transforming Community Among the LGBTQ: An Example and Some Questions

I’ve written enough on this subject already. But I sense a need to summarize some thoughts especially in light of this post by Craig Carter. I think Craig’s got me wrong and frankly inhabits a position that does not meet the demands of mission to a sexually broken society. I’ll respond to Craig’s post in next few days when I get a minute. For now, I’d like to put forward a summary of the whole thing by posting a comment from the last post. It’s by Jon Trott. Jon encapsulates the challenges, the practices and the shape of the “welcoming and mutually transforming community” as it seeks to incarnate the sexual redemption of Jesus Christ.

Living in an intentional community of very imperfect people, of which I am certainly one, I might add that sexuality within a Christian community ought to entail confession, transparency, and restoration. This could also be formulated as repentance / restoration, but that implies sexual failure, which is not always the case; one can be tempted without falling. But the need for others walking alongside — others who also transparently admit their own struggles sexually and otherwise — is one of the great lacks in the Church today. It startles me how dishonest we are individually and corporately about the near-universality of sexual temptation. How do we minister to one another? Living as I do, I have the amazing luxury of being able to walk down the hallway on most days to a friend’s room, pull him aside, and ask for prayer and/or counsel re being tempted sexually. These days, it is more often just “Five minutes to live by” — a quick confession of feeling weak or even entertaining sexual thoughts — followed by a prayer. Why do this? Why not just do it on my own? Because the act of becoming transparent before my brother also makes me accountable to him as a representative of Jesus. I know the difference — he’s not going to rescue me or condemn me. But looking into his eyes and telling the truth about myself sexually is a place to start facing my own struggles in a deeper way than I otherwise might.
There’s so much more to this… as someone who does believe in the work of mutability groups such as Exodus International (in part because I know people — see them daily — who have changed their orientation), I do bear witness to what the Scriptures say regarding homosexuality. But I don’t think homosexuality is where the conversation starts or ends. Rather, it is part of the human journey toward wholeness that Jesus uniquely enables us to walk into.

In this simple comment, Jon describes what I think gets at some the essential elements of a “welcoming and mutually transforming community” that I have tried to articulate in this long series of posts (you can read them all by clicking onto the Women/GLBTQ category).  Jon’s community (the JesusPeopleUSA Community of Chicago) manages to occupy the broken position thereby inviting everyone to see their brokeness not from a position of power (making public pronouncements). We’re all in this together. This hopefully becomes a place where we do not engage “the other” from platitudes which mean little in this age where the words “heterosexual,” “gay,”  “lesbian” mean any number of things. Jon’s community engages in regular concrete practices where the examination of one’s self, desires and the reshaping of those desires is all part of a communal language, liturgy and practice. Jon’s community appears to do all of this while continuing to live within the historical wisdom of the Christian tradition, that same sex unions and many other kinds of sexuality miss the purposes of God’s creation and His work for sexual redemption in our lives. I don’t know everything about JPUSA community in Chicago. I am sure there is some dirt here too. Yet Jon’s words give a little vision of what is possible through incarnationally inhabiting a context for the sexual redemption God has begun in Christ for the world.

My questions are: 1.) Is this possible in non-proximal intentional communities? say in “groups of three,” or other forms of redemptive community. 2.) Why does my brother Craig Carter have such a problem with this? If anything I expected more push back from the traditional Emergent folk who I consider my friends but have been largely silent on this particular approach I am pushing for. What’s going on here?

Filed under Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 22 Comments

on August 12 2010

The Witness of a Transforming Sexually Redemptive Community: Mission and GLBTQ Relations#3

In my last post on this subject, I said “One of evangelicalism’s biggest problems is we have no compelling sexual vision … We have little or no sexual ethic except the glorified desire of Hollywood lopped onto heterosexual monogamous marriage. We have no theology of desire formation. It is “lust,” and enjoy it, only do so while married to one person. We have no concept of the “ordering of desire.” This is why our witness is so vapid among the sexual brokenness of our day.” I said this is perhaps why we have nothing else to say to the GLBTQ peoples except “hetero-sexual sex is right” and “same-sex relations is wrong”.

It seems then that the first task of a “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” missional community, ministering among the sexual brokenness of today’s society (whether GLBTQ or heterosexual or otherwise) is to recover a Christian vision of sexuality. There’s no way to describe what such a vision would look like in a blog post. Yet if I were to summarize the direction I think we need to go, it would be with the sentence, “human sexuality is a reflection of the Triune Relation that we are created to experience in the image of God.” But this really does not translate to those outside of Christian faith easily apart from a community living a sexuality in process of being redeemed. It would take a twenty page essay (or my sexual ethics class at Northern ?) to begin to describe this vision theologically.

So instead of that, I offer four ways God transforms our sexual desire and thereby our experience towards his created purposes. Then I make a comment on the practices we need for such a community to become this kind of place where we can be transformed by the Spirit. In describing these 4 areas for transformation (this is just a start) there’s almost a sense here, that if we allow ourselves to be shaped in these ways through confession, prayer, liturgy, truth telling etc. and thereby live them out, the GLBTQ issues will sort themselves out along with all the rest of the sexual issues the church is facing in today’s society (although I still recognize the necessity of articulating our sexual commitments internal to the Body of Christ).

FOUR AREAS FOR SEXUAL TRANSFORMATION

1.)    From “sex for me” to “sex towards Oneness.” Sex is dying to self in order to become one.  There is a reflection of the Triune God here. There is a reflection of the way of the cross here. “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her …” Eph 5:25.  Sex is the act of our own self-giving to the other for the sake of becoming one. And yet, the sexual malformation of our society often does the exact opposite – turning the other into an object for sexual satisfaction. The attraction that is nurtured is primarily the fulfillment of libido “for me.” Anytime this happens, we are duped and in a trap. When having sex becomes about who I am, my “sexual identity,” my ego, “how many notches on my belt,” “he/she wanted me,” “I feel desired” and  any of the other numerous ways society perverts sex into self fulfillment, I suggest we’ve become trapped into objectifying and being objectified. Instead of oneness between two, there is now an awful distance. We’ve lost the formation that makes the deeper purposes of God’s creation possible. We therefore must gather into community (I suggest groups of threes) to confess and discern how we make others into objects in the way we think about them, sexualize them. (I’ve been in powerful men’s groups where this kind of therapy revolutionized men’s lives). We must examine, bring out into the light, confess, and be healed of these inordinate desires deep within the soul that seem so “natural” yet war against the purposes of God for our lives. Once released of these enslavements, our own desires are not only freed to be re-oriented, but also those who have been victimized by these sins can also be free from the way their desires have been shaped by these sins.

2.) From dominating the other to being with the other. Our society trains us to make others into a fantasy for me. This is where the patriarchal dominance of the male over the female is a reflection of sin. Christian sexual redemption however overcomes difference WITHOUT OBLITERATING IT. This is the mystery (Eph 5:28-33). The two very different persons “become one.” Anytime we obliterate difference, to avoid the difference, any dominance or control exhibited therein, is the manifestation of sin that will lead to addiction. As a reflection of the Triune three in one, God created sexual life for the bringing together of difference. In some respects, I contend this is where same-sex relations can only fall short of God’s purposes. We therefore must examine ourselves, submit ourselves to Christ for the ways we seek to avoid difference, dominate or control those who are different in our sexual lives, play off ways we have stereotyped the opposite sex.

3.) From pursuing pleasure as the first goal to seeking pleasure as the after effect of true union. I take it that in Eph 5 the love of agape (Eph 5:25 committed covenantal self-less love) is joined together with the love of eros (Eph 5:31 the love that seeks union).  Marcus Barth in his commentary of Ephesians says this is the only place in Greek literature where this happens. To me this says pleasure/attraction/the desire for union is not necessarily first, but often the afterwards development of a love that pursues the covenantal purposes of God in marriage. To seek pleasure as an end itself, to make the other an object for pleasure, to somehow take any short cut to pleasure by making it an end in itself, deforms one’s sexuality. It dissables the growing of our sexuality so that, over a life time monogamous relationship, sex becomes less and less about pure physical attraction and more about the pleasure of union. The pursuit of pleasure/attraction as an end in itself therefore must be confessed as sin. We must gather in some helpful way to submit ourselves to the disciplines (many of them liturgical within the rites of the church) that shape us for a lifetime of growing into One with the person God has given us for marriage.

4. From sex as personally generative to sex as procreative, extending beyond me into life and mission.  Of course, I understand that sex can and perhaps should be personally generative (giving life). But what the Catholic tradition has truly understood, is that personal generativity is only generated out of the giving of oneself over to the procreative act that is beyond me in Mission. As Bob Hyatt has said so well here, the first command in the Bible to have sex is “be fruitful and multiply.” That sex should be always tied to procreation is something beyond the social imaginary of our current society. Yet to say that sex is physically tied to the unselfish act of giving oneself over to the future, to being obligated to the out-of control act of giving birth to something beyond one’s self is to ultimately say that sex, in the Christian sense, is missional. Yes I said sex is missional. For to give birth to and raise children, not as idols to our selves but as a belief and commitment to God’s future, is missional. Tying sex and procreation together in this way changes the very experience of sex. To detach it from the giving one self over to creation (even if biologically having children is not possible) changes sex. This is why Catholics have said that once you have contraception you shape and discipline desire totally differently.  In this way then, we must allow our bodies to be shaped by God’s call to procreate biologically. Now there are obvious implications here for same sex relations as well as adoption. Don’t have time to expound here. In addition we must come to see celibacy as a discipline that orders our drives towards God’s mission in the world. We must see our singleness, whether short term or life time vow, as a time for the spiritual disciplining of our bodies for God’s mission.

THE HABITS OF A SEXUAL REDEMPTIVE COMMUNITY

In order for a missional community to offer sexual transformation in Christ, it must offer a place where spiritual disciplines can be practiced for the shaping of desire into Christ. Admittedly, the received standard view is that desire is natural/given tied to biology. And of course, desire is tied to the body in some ways. Genetics have something to do with it. And yet so much of sexual formation is developmental. The reshaping of desire is inconceivable in our society because of the modern construct of desire.  Yet the contradictions inherent in saying desire is or cannot be shaped are so obvious it is hard to carry out this assumption in any meaningful way See Sarah Coakley’s can’t miss work on this here (HT Kinnon, Ben Myers)

In order for any of the above areas to be transformed, we need a regular practice of confession of sin, examination, space for the Spirit to shape imagination, healing prayer, liturgy and worship. (I recommend groups of three). We must have places where we can study Scriptures, talk openly and cast a vision for what God has created in sexuality. We must practice the renouncing of certain negative habits sexually (think of how we have renounced the domination of women in patriarchal patterns), how we look at each other, how we practice friendship, how we nurture our teenagers towards sexual fidelity. We allow the Holy Spirit to train ourselves into new habits that will often be at odds with society. Yet they are a profound witness to the sexual redemption God is bringing to the world in Jesus Christ.

Has anyone experienced such a sexually redemptive community? In my attempt to boil this down into a (long) blog post, what elements have I missed that are essential for such a transformative community?

Filed under Incarnational,Missional,Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 30 Comments

on July 28 2010

Why Pre-Labeling A Church Community’s Stance on Same-Sex Relations is a Bad Idea: Mission and GLBTQ Relations #2

I’ve been building an argument here on this blog for a posture I call “welcoming and mutually transforming” (WMT) towards GLBTQ peoples among us. I suggest that this is the incarnational posture of mission as we engage any culture, but especially as we seek to embody the sexual redemption made possible in the person and work of Christ in the world. I said last post that such a community would be based on three commitments that reflect this embodied (incarnational) posture in the world.
1.) We All Come Broken
2.) We Make No Pre-Set Public Statements
3.) We Embody Spiritual Disciplines that Nurture the Life in Christ for God’s Mission in the World.

This post I want to explore the Second commitment: We Make No Pre-Set Public Statements on What We are For or Against in Sexual Relations.

Here, I am asserting that as a community inhabiting a locale, we do not make any public statements concerning what we believe concerning sexual issues to people outside the community. Sexual redemption is witnessed to others through the telling of stories, humble listening and relationships. In post-Christendom cultures public statements on what we have come to believe concerning GLBTQ and any other sexual issue can only be misunderstood. Positive public statements towards GLBTQ relations (welcoming and affirming) only serve to niche the church (as a GLBTQ church). Negative public statements or public protests against GLBTQ issues only serve to be misunderstood and put the community over against those struggling with these issues. I recommend that a WMT community Make No Pre-Set Public Statements on What We are For or Against in Sexual Relations.

Of course, this is more than a policy recommendation. This is all about the incarnational missional disposition we take in a sexually broken world for the bringing in of the Kingdom. Here are three comments about this disposition

1.) There’s a difference between judging (condemning) someone and discerning alongside someone out of love for that person. To put a sign up, or announce our position against GLBTQ relations, or to somehow protest all GLBTQ issues in front of City Hall, in essence puts us in a judging position towards those we do not even know. This forecloses witness and the possibility for God’s work. I believe evangelicalism’s tendency to publicly judge and condemn on these issues forecloses the possibility for discerning alongside not only GLBTQ peoples, but the many who are struggling with sexual brokenness even inside our church communities.

1 Cor 5:12 makes the distinction between judging those in the community and those outside. Paul says we do not judge those outside the community, those we do not know. Yet Paul calls the church to “judge” those inside the community in the same passage. LET US THEREFORE QUIT JUDGING THOSE OUTSIDE THE COMMUNITY. I believe James 4:11,12 tells us not to speak evil or judge a brother inside the community. Here we are told to not take the Law under our own control, and judge our brother from a position as “judge.” The seeming contradiction between Paul and James here is solved when we realize that James’ mode is to encourage the posture of submission and humility to God.  James in speaking against the judgment out of a position of superiority. In other words, there is a difference between judgment – whose goal is to condemn – and discernment alongside someone in mutual submission to Christ  – whose goal is the restoration and redemption of one another out of love and humility (1 Cor 5:5). It is the latter position that we are called into as Christians. We cannot be in such a position when we have already pronounced condemning judgment. Jesus commands us towards this posture in Matt 7:1-5. The point of “take the log out of your own eye first” is that we approach one another out of the humility of our own sin. “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.” One of the biggest issues for evangelical mission among GLBTQ is the lack of this awareness of the log in our own eye. We come off judgmental. So let me say this – there is a delicate sense in which no judgment can be made against GLBTQ or any other sexual issues, until we have a redemptive sexual community that can humbly invite and listen and ask the GLBT to join us in repentance and renewal of all sexual desire. This is the essence of the position I am arguing for – Welcoming and Mutually Transforming. For these reasons I suggest no public statements about what we are for or against in terms of GLBTQ.

2.) Likewise, Pre-labeling One’s Church as “Welcoming and Affirming of GLBTQ” undercuts missional engagement as well. For we really have no way to know what that might mean? Are we in essence affirming all sexualities, which in essence means we are saying nothing about sexual redemption at all? Are we simply affirming sociologist Jodi OBrien’s recent statement on sexual relations – ”I support the fight for everyone to make choices regarding how they wish to author their own lives (in their sexuality) and the meaning they seek for themselves and those they wish to define as “family.”” If so, is there any possibility for incarnational transformation left in the area of sexuality? If a church community’s first allegiance is to Christ and the calling of one another and the world into following Him and His Kingdom, it is easy to see how these “welcoming and affirming” words – even if one took a pro-gay Christian stance – have no way to be defined. Instead, they serve only to “niche” the church. They in essence market the church and create an attractional dynamic that almost guarantees the loss of the transformational dynamic of the missional community.

Of course the same goes for those who wish to make public statements about “welcoming but not affirming.” Besides the obvious ways this communicates pre-judgment, there is simply no way we can communicate the positive Christian sexual vision, to those outside it. To prove my point, try to explain to someone outside the church why “celibacy” is part of the compelling Christian vision for sexuality. Of course, people inside evangelicalism can’t even get this. One of evangelicalism’s biggest problems is we have no compelling sexual vision which makes sense of celibacy as a fulfilling calling. We have little or no sexual ethic except the glorified desire of Hollywood lopped onto heterosexual monogamous marriage. We have no theology of desire formation. It is “lust,” and enjoy it, only while married to one person. We have no concept of the “ordering of desire.” This is why our witness is so vapid among the sexual brokenness of our day.  This is perhaps why we think saying “no” to GLBTQ is enough. Yet it isn’t enough. Saying “heterosexual is God’s norm” says next to nothing in the climes of post-Christendom. It does not define the sexuality Christians are called into.

Since the vision of Christian sexuality cannot be communicated outside the community in words only, since this kind of redeemed sexuality can only be offered with embodied witness, I again strongly suggest that WMT missional communities not make public gestures that pre-label the community sexually amidst the world of sexual brokenness.

3.) We hold our existing commitments humbly as witnesses to redemption not enforcers of a morality.
That we make no public pronouncements, does not deny we carry pre-existing  sexual commitments that are creation grounded, redemption filled, and desire reordering. Our community has not been brought into being ex-nihilo. We are part of a story 1000’s of years old. The wisdom in Scripture towards gay relations, pre-marital sex etc. should not be easily discarded because of science or other presumed modernist authorities. There are large parts of wisdom here which have little to do with whether Scripture actually prohibits pre-marital sex, gay sex. Protestants keep looking for Scriptural proof texts while we should be reading the depths and wisdom of the Fathers, the Pope etc… which reveal the profound meanings behind things that the world simply cannot understand (like no contraception, celibacy). It is part of being incarnational to participate in the historical development of Christ’s witness that has been given to us. We do not seek to escape history. I don’t see how we can be missional amidst the sexual brokenness of our day without a recognition that God has been working to redeem creation, and human sexuality in Christ for 2000 years.

Having said this, we must become communities that hold our commitments with a confidence sufficient to listen to those outside our commitments. We must listen and dialogue. We must so trust the Holy Spirit that Jesus is Lord that we can hear the depths of what is going on in the lives of GLBTQ peoples. Part of our problem as evangelicals is that we have been so insecure in our own sexual commitments and sexual lives that we live these commitments defensively.

Is it possible that, even while assuming the prohibition against Gay relations (which I assume), that we will discover some parts of gay sexuality that we can affirm? That there is much we can affirm about same sex friendship, never mind cross-gender friendships. Can we see understand the depths of the reasons why heterosexual relations have become so formed within gay relations, can we understand and affirm some of the qualities of love that GLBTQ peoples have searched for and found within gay relations? Can we listen? Can we search and uncover together. In the process learn about our own brokenness? All of this requires, the holding of our own commitments (those of us who are committed to the traditioned sexual ethic of Christian life) humbly, vulnerably, so as to listen. To me, such an engagement makes possible the Holy Spirit’s work in transforming us together out of submission to Scripture, mutual confession, and healing prayer.

In summary, for all of the reasons above, I am arguing that a Welcoming and Mutually Transforming Missional Community must avoid gestures that would pre-label the community’s stance of sexual relations in the neighborhood.
Is this playing games? talking out of both sides of mouth? Can there be any avoiding of pre-judgment?

My next post on the WMT community is on the Spiritual Disciplines of such a community.

Filed under Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Women/GLBTQ 38 Comments

on July 22 2010

The Mission and GLBTQ Relations: Three Commitments of a “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” Missional Community #1

Way way back last March I started a series of posts on the two issues of a.) women in ministry and b.)the normative status of Gay/Lesbian sexual relations, and their relation to each other theologically in the post-evangelical landscape. (The entire series is here) I saw the post evangelical landscape as divided between the NeoReformed missionals (NRm) and the postEmergent Coalescence(pEC). In relation to the church’s position on GLBTQ relations, one side (NRm) took what has commonly been termed the “Welcoming but Not Affirming” position while the other side took the “Welcoming and Affirming” position. I viewed both positions as inadequate for our post-Christendom times. I asked if either position was missional? See that post here. As an alternative, I wanted to explore the incarnational logic of Missional community, a logic I believe drives the Neo-Anabaptist missional engagement of culture. I called (with the help of Brad Sargent) this position “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” (WMT).

I left off the last post by saying that the only way to witness to and to live this WMT position was through a “welcoming and mutually transforming” community (WMT) of sexual redemption that finds its very identity “in Christ” for the Mission of God in the world. I want to flesh out what this might look like in three posts, this one and the next two to follow. I want to propose that such a sexually redemptive community is based on three commitments that reflect the embodied (incarnational) posture of such a community in the world.
1.) We All Come Broken
2.) We Make No Pre-Set Public Statements on What We are For or Against in Sexual Relations (please do not jump to conclusions on this).
3.) We Embody Spiritual Disciplines that Nurture the Life in Christ for God’s Mission in the World including Listening, Reading Scripture Together, Confession of Sin, Repentance, Dependence Upon the Spirit and other practices that affirm Life, Sexuality, Friendships, Creation and place them all within what God is Doing for Restoring the world and Reconciling it to Himself (missio Dei).

For today’s post, I offer some comments on commitment  1.). Then I’ll go quickly to 2.) and 3.) in the next two posts.

WE ALL COME BROKEN.
The overriding assumption of the “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” community is that all are welcome, and everyone who comes must come to it as broken, in need of transformation. If there is no acknowledgment of our brokenness, of our sin and need for God, it is not possible to receive the Kingdom of God. “Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” If we say we are not broken, if we have no recognition of our need for transformation, why then come?

As I said here in this post, the condition of transformation in Christ, i.e salvation, is that all of our desires are submitted to Christ for renewal, orientation transformation. This is the beginning of discipleship. This is not to say apriori that all our desires are corrupt and inappropriately ordered. It merely acknowledges that there are desires in our lives that are broken and in need of healing, and we do not always know which ones these might be. Furthermore, all desires find their rightful end in God and so all desires are in essence incomplete til they are ordered in this final way.

Yet this posture, of coming to Christ as broken, must be modeled before the world in community. We, the church must be first in the confession of our brokenness. This is not just a tactic. This is the first and necessary step towards the redemption, the dying and rising with Christ,  that births the renewal of all things. We must be living this “way” that we are inviting the whole world into.

The biggest problem with the evangelical church’s witness regarding sexuality among our society, nevermind among the GLBTQ, is that we ask others to change their sexual behavior without seeing the duplicity in our own sexual behaviors and orientations. We therefore come into a context, whatever its sexual issues are, from a power position, claiming everyone else is screwed up but us. This defies the incarnational logic of Christ, and the way the Triune God works in the world in Christ by the Spirit.

In the case of evangelicals and gays, evangelicals have typically baptized all heterosexual attraction as good and then offer “getting married” as the solution to anyone who cannot control him/herself.  We never deal with the stunning amount of screwed up heterosexual/monosexual desire that lies resident in our churches which heap abuse after abuse upon one another and sap our sexual lives of God’s purposes.
As the community of Christ, i.e. a “welcoming and mutually transforming” community, we must lead the world into redemption by first leading the way into humility, brokenness and confession. This communal embodied posture is the defining starting point for missional engagement with a culture’s sexual issues in Christ, no matter what they might be. It embodies what it is we are inviting all people into including those who call themselves “gay.”

I think the major objection to this from the GLBTQ advocates in our midst is that “this is a power play.” By saying all desire must be submitted to Christ, the argument goes, you are pre determining our sexual desire as sin. I’ll address this more in the next post. But for now, I wish to say that Jesus and the entire New Testament insists that those in power and those with the gospel must be those who give up power, in essence go and inhabit the world powerless, live in submission to one another, and to the “other” in submission to the Lordship of Christ. Instead of saying to the gay/lesbian “you must confess your sin ________, let us instead say “let me confess my sin to you” and invite you to join in with me (discerning sin in and among my life), as we seek what redemption might look like as we submit our lives to Christ. To anyone who might seek that a particular desire be classified as sacred over the supremacy of Christ, to those who are not yet ready to enter into the death and resurrection of Christ, we grieve. This, nonetheless, is what we live incarnationally as witnesses to. This is all we have to offer. The Triune work of God in the person of Jesus Christ. The way of renewal through the death and resuurection of Jesus Christ. We are not demanding that anyone follow this path. We are not pre-judging anyone. We are merely witnessing to (and offering non-coercively) to the world what God is doing and in and through Jesus Christ.

My question to y’all, is this posture of the WMT community a power play? Is the very giving up of power a power maneuver? If so, how?

Filed under Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 25 Comments

on April 28 2010

“Being Missional” and the GLBTQ #2: Mission and the Nature of Desire

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?

————————————————-

Brad Sargent has done a marvelous job responding to my posts. See his work here.

Filed under Women/GLBTQ 24 Comments

on April 12 2010

“On Being Missional” with the Gay/Lesbian Peoples Among Us

imagesIs it possible to “be Missional” among the gay/lesbian communities without a clear affirmative stance towards GLBT relations? Said another way – Is it possible to participate in “God’s Mission” in today’s world while making a clear statement that would not affirm GBLT sexual relations as normative for the Kingdom of God? Many would flat out say “no.” For many, to be missional/emerging is to not only accept but affirm gay and lesbian sexual relations as normative. Any other position is judgmental, positivistic (even primitivistic) towards Scripture and sets us apart and over against the gay and lesbian communities among whom we seek to minister God’s grace.

Although I may agree with some of this, I find myself still at odds with many of the underlying assumptions that drive these conclusions. I’m asking for a rethinking of this question for Mission.

I have been unhappy with the evangelical proto-type response to the gay/lesbian communities in United States. There has been a “sick enjoyment” present in pointing to the sin of GLBT sexual relations on behalf of evangelicals. It’s a defensive and protective reaction. Many times, subtly, the gay/lesbian is used as an object to justify our sense of moral status which so often proves duplicitous. It is like pointing to the sin of the gay/lesbian sexualities enables us to cover up our own deep complicity with the same sexual malformation in ourselves. I tried to say all of this here in this post over here.

On the other hand, I find the approach of the post-Emergent Coalescence (pEC) unsatisfying. It most often proposes a loving acceptance, an affirmation and further conversation (this is an quick stereotype of the dominant stream).  Although there are positive elements here, after years of engagement, prayer, reflection, this approach remains insufficient for me to the missional task.

This leads me to put forth what I see as a third option to the above two options (as I have admittedly stereotyped them). Over against position 1.) which “welcomes but does not affirm” (common among the Neo Reformed missionals), and position no. 2 which “welcomes and affirms”(an admittedly simplistic summary of many in the pEC) I propose a 3rd position, the position of “welcomes and transforms.” This position is driven by two key theological drivers to the Missional logic: the incarnation and its model of cultural engagement and the Kingdom of God (in ways different from the Niebuhrian “transformational logic” that seems common among the streams of Emergent. In the three posts to follow, in the coming weeks, I would like to address the three themes within this whole series of posts (see here) following this Missional Logic. The three themes are a.)sanctification, b.)the way the community works, and c.) the way we interpret Scripture. I’ll talk about

a.) The Place of Desire in the Kingdom, and the Incarnation’s Affirmation of the Body
b.) The Way Witness Works Through Incarnational Redemptive Community
c.) The Redemptive Hermeutic that Guides a Missional reading of Scripture

I’m going to offer a post for each one of these starting this week. This series of posts concludes a series of posts that began here (and continued here and here and probably should include this post here as necessary background). The three posts to follow all deal with this last and probably most controversial of all the issues regarding GLBT relations.

But first, before I dive into this controversial water, what do you think? Can One Be Missional and Not Be Affirming of GLBT defining peoples? Can you be an Emerging Christian in N America and NOT Be Affirming of GLBT Relationships? Is there something inherent to the Emerging and/or Missional movement which requires affirmation of GLBT as the basis for life among these communities? that requires making no defining statements at all on these issues? Have I disqualified myself from being Missional and/or being “Emerging” by posting on this issue in this way?

Peace …

___________________________________

Following the lead of “T” in the comments, I am now changing the name of this position from “Welcomes and Transforms” to “Welcomes and Mutually Transforms.” This gets at what I’m after in way Community works redemptively in all transformation. It also gets at the difference between the kind of “transformed” implied by Niebuhr versus Yoder …More to come on this in the posts to follow … Thanks “T” …

Filed under Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 75 Comments

on March 29 2010

Woman and Men in Ministry Together: Affirming Women and Transforming – The Missional Way

A couple weeks ago I began a series of posts on the post-evangelical landscape regarding two controversial issues – women inimages ministry and the normativity of gay/lesbian relations. To reiterate, I contended that how a church/movement comes down on these two issues together reveals much about the assumptions that drive their theology. The manner in which the Neo-Reformed missionals reject women in ministry and/or GLBT relations together reveals much about the way they do theology re: Scripture, authority, sanctification etc. Likewise, the way the post Emergent/emerging coalesence here in the U.S. (heretofore referred to as pEC) affirms both reveals the underlying assumptions that drive the way they do theology. As I see it, getting at these assumptions improves the conversation in the post-evangelical landscape moving us further together into the Kingdom of God.

The Missional Way I have been proposing is a third way of doing theology. It is an incarnational logic that drives much of Missional practice. It has some similarities to the pEC’s in that it is non-foundationalist, post Christendom, driven by cultural engagement and community life, wholistic in salvation. Yet there are differences as well which I tried to make clearer previously over at this post. This incarnatiuonal, post Christendom driven understanding of life and truth in the gospel leads, so I argue, to certain directions on the two issues of “Women in Ministry” and “GLBT sexual relations” – what I’d like to call Position No. 3 “Yes to Women in Minstry/ and Transforming of All Relationships” (this phrase was tipped off and influenced by Brad/futurist guy in the comments on this post).  FYI for the theologically driven reader- the transforming logic here comes from Yoder’s Authentic Transformation idea as opposed to Niebuhr’s transforming logic here which is where I see both Neo-Reformed and pEC coming from. This view a.) affirms women alongside men as equal participants in the ministry of Christ’s church in the world, and b.) calls for a redemptive community by which we explore together and witness to the sexual redemption God is working in the world in relation gay/lesbian sexuality and sexuality in toto.

In terms of the way this works out on the women in ministry issue first, according to the Missional Way, women are full participants in the ministerial authority of the church, including ordination, because:

1.) Authority by its very definition is flattened and thereby includes All! The Missional church understands authority in the church as manifested in a flattened leadership within the community – the priesthood of all believers. The Kingdom has begun. The Holy Spirit has been poured out on all – men and women alike, your sons AND DAUGHTERS shall prophesy (Acts 2:17). Men and women therefore partake together in the gifts and the authority of the Lord in the community. In so doing however, the very nature of this authority has been transformed. It is not exercised as the power of the world (Mark 10:42-45) – top down hierarchically. (This was part of what Christendom did to the church’s power). This power is exercised via the humility and vulnerability of the Incarnate Christ. In distinction from Reformed ways of thinking about authority, there is no senior pastor! Women and men participate equally. In that certain forms of church power has taken on hierarchical structure, we should not fight for women to enter authority on those terms. It is an outmoded Christendom way of authority in the church. Neither should we see authority as derived from democratic legitimation.  Communal authority emerges out of the gifts within communal discernment. There is difference and roles. Equality is based on the mutual participation in one Body (1 Cor 12). It is not an equality that obliterates our differences. This way of authority and power spreads out into the world instead of centralizing authority in a professionalized top down hierarchy. Under these terms, how can women be excluded from full participation in ministry? (The Anabaptist, as well as holiness and pentecostal influences here are obvious.

2.) Ordination recognizes those gifted and entrusted with the gift of teaching preaching. From this vantage point, ordination is still important for the gifts recognized for maintaining the theological integrity of the community (preachers, teachers, apostles and others as well). There’s a succession going on here. And yet it is not an ordination of hierarchy but of service. On these terms, there is no reason to exclude women from ordination? Of course there is the issue of Scripture’s pronouncements which leads to my next point.

3.) The Kingdom Has Begun and This Helps Us Understand the Tension in Scripture Between Roles in the Church and Roles in Marriage: The Missional Way is driven by Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom – that it has begun in Himself – His life death and resurrection and Rule as Lord. It has begun, yet it is not yet consummated.  For this reason gender and bodies have not disappeared yet (as the Gnostic Corinthians suggested). Marriage continues until Jesus returns and the new age  consummated (Mark 12:25). Gender difference and the roles within marriage continues to exist ALTHOUGH THE KINGDOM TRANSFORMS THESE ROLES OUT OF THE PATRIARCHAL ABUSES OF THE PAST! The main point I want to make here therefore is, given this dynamic at work in the NT, we can now understand many of the texts which chasten women from teaching over men in the NT to be the chastening of women who did not honor their marriages in the exercise of their new found authority in the church- e.g. women who did not cover their hair while teaching (1 Cor 11) or who took out their newfound authority against their husbands (1 Cor 14:34) etc. So whereas the Neo-Reformed tend to take Scripture as plainly outlawing women in ministry over men, and pEC’s tend to dismiss these Scriptures as culturally obsolete, the Missional appreciation of the dynamic of the inbreaking Kingdom allows for a fuller appreciation for the eschatological tension of the Kingdom that must be upheld in these dynamics. This inevitably extols the full participation of women alongside men in the ministries of the church while guarding the maintaining of the community’s marriages in “the in between” time.  Women are welcomed alongside men in the full authority of the Kingdom as long as they each maintain their God ordained marriage callings (1 Tim 3:4-5 if they are married that is, if not then this does not matter for women or men which is why Paul is always urging people to remain single and unentangled). This is all I can say on this here (I have a long unpublished paper on this). This all illustrates how the three ways often approach Scripture.

4.) The principle of revolutionary subordination. In Christ a new authority has begun and all are invited into it. Yoder called this the principle “Revolutionary Subordination.” The idea here is that just as Jesus our Lord incarnated himself, humbling himself, giving up the right to power, God exalted Him, the Truth was vindicated and empowered (Phil 2). We operate in all ways under this principle subordinating ourselves to powers, false authorities, ways of exercising power with the peaceful witness of character, truth and Scripture. God will manifest the truth.  This extends into the practice of mutual submission one to another in the community (Eph 5:20, Matt 18:15-20) Jesus himself inhabits this submitting of ourselves and works in each conflict, each leader to further His Kingdom via the way of peace. We therefore reject past ways of abusive power, and do not ask women to become part of the them. For many of us, the ways we have exercised power in the church is not incarnational and must be rejected period, not just for the ways it has excluded women.

So women are of course invited as full particpants in this new way of power. Yet there is an incredible transformation here that not only affirms women’s full participation in ministry but transforms the very power structures that have hardened the church and sucked the life out of its witness. Instead, all who come into the Kingdom as a community are empowered to participate in a way of revolution that spreads the power and leadership of the church into the world for Mission.

In the past I have complained how the bland politics of Western democracy obliterates difference. I have also complained that the NeoReformed evangelicals have excluded women from authority in the church thereby foreclosing the incoming Kingdom of God. To me the Incarnational logic of the incoming Kingdom -that drives the Missional church – is a way forward out of both of these malaises.

My next post on this subject will address how the Missional Approach of Welcoming/Transforming plays out in the GLBT Sexual Relationships Issues in the church today.

Filed under Ecclesiology,Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Neo-Reformed,Post-Christendom,Women in MInistry,Women/GLBTQ 23 Comments

on March 12 2010

A NEW KIND OF INCLUSIVITY: Before I Talk about Women in Ministry and GLBT Relations

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I’ve been suggesting recently that there is a parting of the ways in the post evangelical landscape. This terrain, once dominated by the all encompassing rubric of “the emerging church” has parted into different ways, exacerbated most recently by the publishing of Brian McL’ New Kind of Christianity. This is all good because it enhances conversation as long as we do not demonize or casually dismiss those among us who disagree with us.

In a post last week, I was setting up how I think these three emerging ways play out in relation to two issues: the women in ministry question and the GLBT question. Some have contended, both in the comments on the blog post and off, that the word “missional” should encourage a wider inclusivity – that to define positions towards gay/lesbian sexuality is to exclude – to hijack the word “Missional.” Others suggest that doing any of this kind of parsing is polarizing. Over against these folk, I’d like to argue (put forth for discussion) that there are some inherent theological impulses in the Missional way that – if adhered to – lead not only to some unique positioning on these two questions but a new kind of inclusivity as well, one admittedly different than the one most associated with (what was) the emergent church as I articulated over here. So before I actually outline pos. 3 on these two questions, I’d like to show why Missional argues fr a new vision of inclusivity. Here goes.

This “new kind of inclusivity” is driven by the logic of Incarnation – one of three core ideas that drive Missional Life ( along with Missio Dei and embodied Witness). This logic of Incarnational implies four principles about the way disagreements/ disputed matters are engaged. In each, I contend there is a potential for a new kind of inclusivity.

Principle 1 – On The Ground: Incarnational means that the gospel takes root on-the-ground in concrete real life. This is where truth is manifest. Just as orthodoxy has been worked out in the midst of historical contingencies in the past, it will always be worked out in pastoral situations involving real people and real issues in a people of Christ. DISAGREEMENTS THEREFORE WILL BE WORKED OUT IN THE CONTEXT OF OUR REAL LIVES, engaging one another in mutual listening, communal prayer, study of Scripture, submission to one another and the Spirit. This is the place where God works. This is where Jesus comes saying, “there am I in the midst … what ever you bind here is bound in heaven.” We don’t work our lives out through books/theology detached from real pastoral engagement. Books come after pastoral engagement.  If we do not meet with a resolution, we go an as before until the Holy Spirit works a new consensus. On the other hand, we can’t put off issues of injustice and pastoral care indefinitely for these are our real lives we are discerning. People are hurting!  This approach, I suggest, breeds “a new inclusivity.” Because we see all disagreement – not as the means to antagonize – but as the place where God is taking us further into places we have not yet figured out. This breeds a new openess to what God is doing. We must be open to what God is doing here to manifest Himself incarnationally into new territory.

Principle 2 – No Power. We enter the world with no power – at least power as seen in the flesh. We come to all disagreements as in Christ, weak, humble and vulnerable. God is the one who exalts (Phil 2). We submit one to another.  There can be no violence. There can be no presumption. Indeed we dialogue because we know “Jesus to be Lord.” This demands that we dialogue with an open mind to others believing we have stuff to learn. This is what it means to believe Jesus is Lord. Any other posture is Constantinian. This breeds “a new inclusivity,” an openness to the world. It is not an imposing of truth, not a rejection of the truth of our well-worn history in Christ either (orthodoxy). It is a diligent pursuit of the truth that extends Christ (and the historical work of Him in the church through orthodoxy) into new territory humbly inviting others to become partners with us in this.

Principle 3 – Open Discernment We enter the world not to reject the world but to be transforming agent of the Kingdom. We can neither reject all desire and culture nor embrace it all. We cannot be set off and apart from the world because the church is in the process of becoming that very world renewed in Christ. Neither can we merely blend into the world for then all Mission and renewal is lost. This is what it means to take on the incarnational nature of Christ. It is this very incarnational nature that requires the church to be a discerning community which at times both refuses conformity with the world while at other times joining in (with what God is already at work doing Missio Dei)). As Yoder puts it, loving the world as well as refusing conformity to it are “two sides of the same coin” of incarnational presence in the world. This breeds a new kind of inclusivity because we do not just blend with the world, nor do we merely reject/exclude the world, but as one of them in the world, we seek to participate in God’s transformation of the world in the Kingdom.

Principle 4 – Communal Enfleshment (Embodied Witness) Lastly truth and salvation is best communicated by being enfleshed in a community. We are His flesh – the body of Christ in the world. Through our own repentance, restoration, reconciliation, the renewal of all things begins in this social space of our communal life together. His reign has begun and through the visible reality taking shape here, His Lordship is extended in our lives and into where we live where God is already at work. This community however provides the hermeneutic for people to understand in embodied form what God is doing in the world.  This social embodiment is incarnating Christ in the world. Through the ministry of this gospel among our neighbors the Reign of God begins (but does not end). And so we always look at ourselves first, never making judgment on others, yet always inviting others “to come see.” This breeds a new inclusivity, one enfleshed in a community, not one enforced by procedural rules of democratic tolerance.

Admittedly this is a POSTURE OF INCLUSION as opposed to a CONCEPT OF INCLUSION. Nonetheless, I suggest that four elements of the logic of incarnation (and Missio Dei and Witness) lead to an approach to the women in ministry issue as well as GLBT relations that in essence amounts to a different kind of inclusivity and yet looks different than either the harsh exclusivity and/or bland democratic tolerance that we all have become tired of. I hope to post next week on Position No. 3 towards Women in Ministry/GLBT relations mentioned in this post.

Until then, do you buy this kind of inclusivity? It is admittedly Anabaptist. Does that turn off the Reformed among us? Why? Is it just a guise for another form of exclusion for “Emergent and friends”  thinkers? Is it too soft? Any suggestions for improving/clarifying this incarnational logic of Mission?

Filed under Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 18 Comments

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