Gradually, I was pulled into the orbit of this life-giving community by some people who knew what I had been through, where I was at, and shared my hopes and dreams for the future. While they did not have to, the created a wide and generous place for me at their table.

Last month, I attended what may be the last event I will attend with this group of people and it was extremely difficult for me. It was like losing my last handhold to any meaningful ecclesiastical community. It was like being displaced. Again.

I have spent the last few weeks thinking about next steps and I am still not sure what they will be or where they will lead. I have been doing a lot of writing lately and have several books in the queue. I am hoping to get to that soon.

But first, I am hoping to find a day or two to spend in a Rocky Mountain trout stream.

While this particular post is a great piece on the practice of faithfully living real lives with real people specifically as it relates to gender relations, I found myself re-imagining the text in light of ecclesiology. It seems that there is a lot of “academic rhetoric” and “airy theorizing” when it comes to the topic of church. No one is more  guilty of the latter (I am too undereducated to fully participate in the former) than I am, including this present post! But Schwyzer is right. This all sounds hard. But I was particularly struck by Schwyzer’s response to a person asking what he could do to make a real difference. Among other things, Schwyzer states:

… But I’m convinced that the single most important thing that feminist men can do to dismantle the Old Boys’ Network is both far more simple and far more difficult: refuse to join it.

Particularly for young white men working for older white men, the pressure to join the the Network can be both immense and subtle. All of us, as we age and climb whatever ladder it is we are climbing, look to mentor younger folks. The desire for a protege is a common one, and the classic model in the Network is for an older man to look for a younger version of himself — which in journalism, or academia, or law, may mean a middle or upper-middle class white guy in his twenties. Even those male supervisors who are ideologically sympathetic to feminism may find themselves more likely to support and nurture a young man with whom they feel that emotional affinity, that sense of themselves at a younger age. Resisting the “unearned privilege of the protege” is a very difficult thing to do.

… If you are a young man, low in status in a newsroom or a corporate office or an academic department, the senior men will almost always try and assess your suitability for the OBC early on in one way or another; what is often euphemistically called “collegiality” is just code for “willing to play along and not challenge us.”

… In the end, the reason to avoid joining the Old Boys’ Club is about more than just maintaining one’s feminist credibility. It’s about understanding that now, in 21st century America, white male power is maintained less through overt legal structures than through hidden social constructions. White men can no longer exclude women and people of color from leadership positions by fiat alone; indeed, most white men probably don’t consciously want to. But what they do want to do, consciously or not, is maintain an environment in which straight white men — “the Old Boys” — continue to enjoy privilege and comfort. The greatest of those privileges is the sense of belonging. The hard fact is, in order to make most workplaces welcoming to women and non-whites, the Old Boys will have to change the way they do many things. Decades of feminism, decades of civil rights legislation, have done little to dismantle the entrenched resistance on the part of the OBC to surrendering that privilege.

In the end, if you’re a feminist man, the single most important thing you can do is make it clear, in your words and in your actions, that you not only are not looking for OBC membership, but will, politely but firmly, reject it when it is offered.

I include these lengthy excerpts because they explain a lot of my own feelings of being displaced from any meaningful sense of local, embodied, ecclesial community.  When I was attending a Bible college I had an in. When I was co-pastoring my first church plant for 3 years in Denver and could legitimately claim the title of “pastor” I was included. Even when I was filling a role as one of the members of the Executive Council of my last church I had something to hang a hat on. In conversations with other pastors I was considered to be “one of them” and everything was grand.

Now that I have been a displaced, ecclesial dreamer for five years things are a lot different. And as much as I wish I could say my lack of participation in the Good Old Pastor Club was fully a mature expression of my own volition, the fact remains that I no longer get to play in those circles. And things look a lot different out here. And the longer I am outside of the club the more I realize that in some ways, I don’t want to be in it any more. Sure, there is still a very strong pull to be a full participating member in a community of faith. But I am finding that in my context there are seemingly only two ways to accomplish that.

If I ever want to be in any kind of pastoral stewardship role again, I will have to pay some dues to the Good Old Pastors Club. And since I am under-educated, even if I pay those dues I cannot be a full fledged member. And the other option is to become a consumer (hopefully, the generous, financial giving kind) of the product. This role usually is not expected to say anything other than an occasional “amen” and be sitting somewhere that the attendance counter can see you during the Sunday morning service. It helps if you are friendly, have good hygiene, and will volunteer to do things from time to time, but even those are not required. But if you don’t like the mission or vision statement that has been God breathed to the leaders, you bite your tongue and vote with your feet. You are more than welcome to try the church down the street…

Too be honest, neither of those options are really all that appealing to me. But what do I k now? I am just a husband, father, friend, neighbor, government employee, and dreamer. And truth be told, I am really not doing all that great in any of those roles either. If only there was a place that I could go that would help form me to be a more faithful person in all these areas. A place where I could do more than shake the hand of the person next to me, sing a song or two, and stare at the back of someone’s head for half an hour while listening to a therapeutic, relevant sermon. As Hauerwas says, my spiritual life is in too bad of shape to tolerate bad preaching.

Dare to dream.

The forward from Dan’s wife, Sheila Wilson Brennan, explains that Dan Brennan is using this book to counter the myspace/facebook trend to call everyone a “friend.” She explains:

Daniel’s book attempts to recapture a deeper (and thereby narrower) understanding of friendship and a wider understanding of intimacy within spiritual friendship.

With this goal in mind, I think Brennan’s offering is well worth the read. If there is a target of critique in Brennan’s cross hairs, it is the absurd bipolar counsel that the conservative evangelical community offers to non-married men and women who wish to enter into relationship. Brennan points out that for many in this camp, there are only two alternatives. One is the romantic path that leads men and women down the one way path of becoming “one flesh”. This is acceptable for young, single people. However, if either one or both of the people are married then the only alternative for these male/female relationships is avoidance at all costs.

Brennan argues that between these two very narrow narratives of male/female relationships is a very wide, complex and necessary range of appropriate and deeply intimate expressions of genuine, deep, and faithful friendship that does not need to lead to anything sexually inappropriate.

Brennan explores these sacred unions by looking at history and scripture. While there are areas I felt like he was forcing the sacred text in order to make his case, overall I think the book raises some important questions for those in the conservative camp. While there is nothing in the book that would shock “emerging” or “progressive” Christian thinkers, I feel his book hits his intended target.

There were some great quotes throughout:

When conservative Christians adapt a modified Freudian view of sexuality and conflate the romantic myth with the meaning of one flesh, one wonders how Christian husbands and wives are able to pursue deep intimacy and become companions on the marital journey. Perhaps the greatest enemy of marriage when the notion of one flesh has been made synonymous with the romantic myth is the one flesh vision of marriage itself. (p. 43)

The husband-wife relationship doesn’t cover the range of embodied oneness in this age or the next. In fact, it is not even the ultimate picture of union. Paul Wadell suggests that friends in Christ “will have much greater intimacy and unity between them than they would if they lived together but were united over a lesser good.” he suggests, following Augustine, “the greatest possible intimacy comes not from physical closeness or even physical expression, but from belonging to the body of Christ.” Our union in Christ as men and women then, has profound implications for both married and unmarried individuals. (p. 79)

For more information about the book and a video interview with the author, please check the links below.

viralbloggers.com/2010/04/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-by-dan-brennan/

But he is very old.

Long live the queen!

This is a test of the posterous broadcasting system. If it were an actual post, this would contain important, stimulating, thought-provoking information.

Posted via email from jamestmills’s posterous

Perhaps it was more about my unrealistic expectations. I was hoping that this book would get into some of the things that I think are becoming increasingly important in our pluralistic and complex theological landscape. I was hoping that it would be helpful for Christians attempting to be faithful to their own traditions in the light of so much religious and cultural diversity. For me, it did not.

Perhaps it is because I am admittedly not a very good mystic. I am not wired to let my emotions drive everything. Sweet and Viola tell me over and over in this book that when (or if??) I can finally see Jesus as he really and truly is, I will fall so much in love with him that I cannot help but fall at His feet and give Him my undying devotion (p. xxv of the introduction). They write that all anyone has to do is grasp the truth of Paul’s epistle to the Colossians and we will finally see the true Christ.¹ But they are willing to admit that this is not as easy as it sounds. For them, the worldview presented in Colossians would spin the head of Stephen Hawking and dumbfound Albert Einstein. So what is the third way forward? If we read Colossians and don’t come to the same conclusion of the authors is it because we are not smart enough to “get it” or too smart to submit to it? No. It is that the eyes of our hearts have not been opened (p.40). And that is a work that we cannot do ourselves, so we pray that God will do it for us.

If not, we will always be stuck replacing Christ with things. Things like, rules, regulations, doctrines, duties, causes, etc. They urge us to stop proclaiming things about Christ and simply proclaim Christ. And here is where the wheels fall of for me. How are we to adjudicate between these competing proclamations of Christ? We are simply not told. The closest we get to a specific example is this:

This culture loves causes, and it lionizes those who died fighting them. There is nothing wrong with causes. Archbishop Oscar Romero took up the cause of victims displaced in the Salvadoran civil war, and was assassinated during his homily as he was giving mass in 1980. Now “San Romero,” as he is often called, is one of only ten twentieth-century martyrs honored above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey in London. On the other hand, Brother Roger Schutz, founder of Taize, was killed on August 16, 2005, not for a cause he was promoting, but because of who he was, a follower of Jesus.

Just what makes Schutz a follower of Jesus and not Romero is not clearly explained. And for Sweet and Viola, it cannot really be explained without falling into a ditch on either side if the one true path of yielding your self in such a way that Christ is the one living in you. To try to explain that simple truth one either falls into theological rationalism, on the one hand, or, theological ethics, on the other. But, for the authors:

According to Scripture, Jesus Christ (and not a doctrine about Him) is the truth. In addition, Jesus Christ (and not an ethic derived from His teaching) is the way. In other words, both God’s truth and God’s way are embodied in a living, breathing person–Christ.

Later they clarify that even further:

Jesus cannot be separated from His teachings. Aristotle said to his disciples, “Follow my teachings.” Socrates likewise said to his disciples, “Follow my teachings.” Buddha said to his disciples, “Follow my meditations.” Confucius said to his disciples, “Follow my sayings.” And Muhammad said to his disciples, “Follow my noble pillars.”

But Jesus said to his disciples, “Follow Me.”

In all the religions and philosophies of the world, a follower can follow the teachings of its founder without having a relationship with that founder. But not so with Jesus Christ. The teachings of Jesus cannot be separated from Jesus Himself. Christ is still alive, and He embodies his teachings. This is what separates Him from every other great teacher and moral philosopher in history.

While I accept the authors’ conclusion that Christ is indeed living, I do not follow their line of argument here. While Christians do have the ability to share in the divine life, in this moment of history we see only in part, and know only in part. (And here I will reveal in all its glory the claim I made earlier that I am not a good mystic…)I do not believe that I can see Jesus “face-to-face.” I cannot literally fall at his feet and put my finger in the scars from the cross. In this moment of history I relate to him through the mysterious body of his church as it lives out its witness. And this brings me, whether I like it or not, into a historically complex, culturally rich, theologically multifaceted, doctrinally diverse, and pluriform embodiment of practices that offer a multi-vocal proclamation and witness of Him.

All of this leaves me unable to follow Sweet and Viola entirely. There are some good things in this book, and I am sure a larger audience that will enjoy and benefit from it.

**Disclosure of Material Connection: I’d like to thank Thomas Nelson Publishers for providing me this Book free as part of their [...] book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

1. which begs the question, why write 178 pages and not just reprint the book of Colossians? [back]

There are a lot of great bullet quotes worth commenting on in this piece but one thing I find interesting is that it seems to point out that too many of us who claim to live into the Faith of Christ seem to be dying on the wrong hill. Many of my “progressive” friends cannot stand the commentary of Palin, and Beck and others cut from that cloth. So they are quick to embrace the quote from the article that is attributed to Kurt Vonegut:

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere … “Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

While I do find that quote to be a pointed critique against the politically conservative “religious right” I do think it is not entirely accurate. While the politically progressive religious left(??) may not demand the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes be posted anywhere, they do in fact seem to express a strong conviction that the church in this country cannot embody the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes unless the political left of the United States of America (the Democratic party) is in control. I know a whole lot of progressive Christians who invest a lot more of their resources into the Democratic United States political party than they do in their community of faith. Some even see their contribution to the political party as contribution to their community and faith.

From my perspective it seems that in some ways we have lost sight of the politics of Jesus. What we practice and participate in is a contemporary and Americanized version of the Pax Romana. My progressive friends are quick to condemn Bush, Palin or other conservatives who claim divine sanction for their political agendas but don’t realize that they often do the same thing, just for the other party.

There are a lot of hot-button issues that are easily fanned into a flame in our current two party system. This system tends to polarize these issues into opposite extremes that makes it difficult for any real, meaningful dialog to take place. When those who claim to carry the name of Christ step into the debate on one side or the other they continue to use the faulty political paradigm, hoping for some miraculous end.

The article sums things up nicely (and in ways that tie neatly into the Heim book I am currently reading, Saved From Sacrifice):

According to Jesus, who said that it is out of the heart of the man that proceeds his evil deeds, the real enemy is our own greed, lust, and the desire to hold on to our things in which we put our trust, even if it means other people are dying all around us because they do not have what we have — money, housing, food, health care.

That may well be the crux of the point. It’s far easier to politicize spiritual life and to blame and scapegoat someone “out there” — the homosexual, the socialist, the leftist, the fundamentalist, the African American, the atheist, the Jew, the illegal alien, the other — than it is to blame oneself, and to actually strive to be virtuous.

As Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Who indeed? It is easy to pontificate on either side of a polarized issue. In the end, I don’t know that whatever a political nation state chooses to do about its social issues should dictate how the church lives out its calling in the world. There are plenty of faithful people throughout history who have been persecuted for following a different body politic than that of their government. We should not mistake our nationalism and commitments to “freedom” as a divine mandate to support our favorite political parties and social agendas.  I wonder if it is time to expand this observation from Hauerwas to other social issues as well:

I often call attention to that Mennonite poster that says, “A modest proposal for peace: Let the Christians of the world agree that they will not kill each other.” If we could get that, that would be a lot. Christians of the political left often want to get the government to do what we can’t get Christians to do. I want to get Christians to do it. That’s where I start.  (Quoted from here.)

Maybe if Christians start clothing each other, housing each other, feeding each other, and providing care for each other, instead of looking for nation states to do it we would be better off. Of course, that might prohibit us from building that new 2000 seat sanctuary that shows the world how blessed we are because we are doing things God’s way. In the end I don’t think Pax Americana will be any longer lasting than Pax Romana no matter how much we may long for it. There is no lasting city, no “one nation under God,” in this moment of history. But there is a community made up of pilgrims and resident aliens who is about the business of embodying the great prayer, “May your kingdom come, on earth, as it is in heaven.”

I want to be part of that community.

The group is great and the primary facilitator is doing a wonderful job of coordinating the discussions, creating space for all the participants voices to be heard and keeping things moving. I was invited to this group by a member of the very inconsistent Emergent Village cohort group (more on that later) and I am thankful that she thought to invite me along for the ride.

In our last session, we spent some time discussing Brian McLaren and some of his work. We discussed some books and watch a few brief videos on youtube. Tonight, we followed up with a short discussion on two books that were published through the Emergent Village publishing partnerships: An Emerging Manifesto of Hope, and The Justice Project.

I am finding the dynamic of this group to be fascinating. My observation is that this group is much more comfortable with progressive readings and imaginations of the sacred texts than my more conservative, evangelical, non-denominational friends and acquaintances. They are comfortable thinking through theological questions that would make the people in the last church I was in squirm. So I expected this group to not have any challenges with embracing and exploring some of these progressive Christian themes.

However, I am finding that in many areas they are still resistant to certain things and using similar vocabulary to my more conservative friends. They are hesitant to say things that they “really” believe because they are not sure how others will interpret that and they don’t want to cause offense. There are some things that are still “untouchable.”

Tonight, in the small group that I was part of our discussion turned towards the last paragraph of C. Rene Padilla’s contribution to the Justice Project:

Christians living under the aegis of a global capitalist system, which takes for granted the benefits of “the invisible hand” of the market, need to take seriously, in both their reflection and in their action, God’s call to the power-holders to do justice. In faithfulness to the teaching of Scripture, their mission includes a prophetic stance against every form of institutional injustice and a lifestyle that illustrates in concrete ways the beaning of the beatitude, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matt. 5:6).

I made the comment that prophetic stances against every form of institutional injustice may place us in opposition to some forms of embodiment of the institutional church. I suggested that it will be difficult for some communities of faith to offer biblical justice to the world when they themselves are embodying injustice. It seems that while this particular mainline church is open to some progressive things, questioning the institution of church itself may be one of the untouchables.