(For the context for what follows visit the Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler blog You probably wont be reading all 55 comments under last Wednesdays post but if you haven't been taking part perusing them might help in understanding what follows. Also what follows here should not be interpreted as representing the pastoral team of Reconciler nor the mission of the church. It is the personal reflections on some issues, by one of the pastors. These thoughts are mine and mine alone and I do not know if or to what degree the congregation or pastoral team would be in agreement.)
It is astounding to me how the mention of welcoming gays and lesbians along with those who would view such lifestyles as incompatible with Biblical and church teaching to a church and a church meeting in a funky urban cafe can elicit such intense scrutiny. Yet, I should perhaps not be so astounded, because the moderating position has almost completely disappeared from public discourse in America both in the church and in our social and political life. (Martin E. Marty has written about this I know, I remember a lecture on it in my Covenant Church History class but don't have the reference at the moment). Now there maybe an objection here that Reconciler isn't representing any such via media (the middle way). Yet, it seems that such an objection is most likely a denial of the possibility of a third position (or fourth or fifth, I don't like the label moderate because it assumes that reality is simply dialectical, This is not Christian idea but Hegelian and ultimately dualism and Gnostic) since both sides of the current opposition deny me the via media. Either I am a liberal, or too accommodating to the other side, a conservative in liberal skins.
Further more what strikes me as fascinating is that it isn't that the Baptists, Evangelical Covenanters (Free Lutheran Pietist essentially) and Episcopalians are coming together that gets people's back hairs up, but sexuality. (Jen I think you are on to something with the whole identity and sexuality comment, thank you.) To most our coming together as three differing denominations is almost ho hum. But say that we welcome gay straight, lesbian, homosexuals and do it in an urban socialist cafe where we rent space, where heaven forbid a socialist or hippie might (or even worse a Goth ;-) ) join in the worship service, well the world is coming to an end and I think we found the anti-Christ. This indicates to me that the church has bought hook line and sinker our cultures obsession with sex and I mean those who embrace the idea of various sexualities and those who stick doggedly to precious Biblical prooftexts about homosexuality.
Reconciler may be most offensive here in that we just might be refusing the given sexual identities, their binary oppositions their dualistic and fleshly world view. I will say that I would be very saddened if Reconciler chose to identify as a "gay" church. Not because, I think Christianity is a "straight" religion, but because those categories are themselves an exterior imposition, and cannot lead us to truth. To identify around clear distinct categories of sexuality and gender is the wrong place for the Christian to begin his/her self identification. In fact the guarding of those identities may in fact be contrary to the very underpinnings of the Christian faith.
There are two texts I wish to highlight for the sake of this discussion: "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; all of you are one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:27-29(NRSV) and "Then he said to them all, 'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?'" Luke 9:23-25(NRSV)
Let me first say how I do not take the Galatians passage. I do not take it to mean that these and any other number of identifying markers, sexual, gender, ethnic, racial, national, etc. Are obliterated and rendered without meaning. Rather, I understand Paul here as saying that there is a hierarchy of identity for the Christian, in the end there is only one identity that matters the identity we are given at baptism, that is the identity with Christ. This reorientation of identity is necessary precisely because these other identities remain powerful and wish to subvert and overthrow our baptismal identity. Any and all other identities either serve Christ or they are dangerous and enemies of Christ, for the Christian. Thus any Christian that begins to hold a position, theological or moral, beginning with an identity other than that of Christ and baptism, that position theological or moral cease to be true even if it is technically correct. All serves Christ, any identity worthy of the Christian will die to itself and release itself to Christ. This is where I think one ends up when we place Luke's saying of Jesus about loosing and gaining ones life, along side the Galatians passage.
Thus, I can only conclude that our cultures obsession with sexual and gender identity is idolatrous whether it comes from those struggling to identify as gay, lesbian, bi, transgendered, or those who seek to judge all things from absolutist heterosexuality. If we seek to preserve some pure heterosexuality or if we seek to defend our hard won alternative sexual identity we as Christians may just be missing the truth of our baptism. All these identities must die to Christ, in order that we may live in the truth of our being, which is Christ. We are all hoodwinked the moment we fight for our sexual and gendered identities for at that moment we deny our unity in Christ, not because we are all the same, but because in the end, so I preserve my hard won identity and control my world, so Jesus says I will have in so doing have lost my soul, the very self I was seeking to preserve and defend. Only by giving ourselves up to Christ, allowing the identity of Christ to infuse and transform every aspect of our being, will we find the identity we long for.
Recently, my wife Kate and I were asked at a party if we identified as queer? I was wearing a skirt (as a a man not as someone attempting to imitate the identity of a female) and my usual eyeliner and Kate dyes her hair pink so I suppose it was a reasonable question. We were stumped, we didn't particularly so identify though when given further explanation we could see how the label might fit. We shrugged it off. Now, I know how I would answer that question. "Do you identify as queer?" No, I am a Christian. That would be misunderstood and need the above vast explanation, but I want no other primary identity than that of Christ.
I believe this has deep and profound (perhaps troubling to some implications for child rearing. As parents if your highest goal is the protection of your child, you are just possibly not raising them as Christians, but as having some other identity than Christ's. I will explore this further in part 2.
First, let me say bravo. This is well done.
ReplyDeleteBut I want to play devil's advocate a bit. I can't help myself. You know this. Heh.
My fear is that we will be/are fighting the trend that you dislike, the identification of ourselves as in a camp. We will be identified one way or another simply beacuse people will not know what else to do with us. The world is binary. Left or Right, Liberal or Conservative, Evangelical or Catholic, Free or Orthodox...Nowhere does journey have a home, or struggle for that matter. There must be an answer, a stance ortherwise we are thoughtless.
Now, I can be thoughtless, and the poles can illuminate a missed point/opportunity. Yet your claim is a good one, and true. I worry that worship will never be enough.
AngloBaptist, your point seems to think, one, that battling the binary view of the world to be a bad thing and two, that we only have binary oppositions.
ReplyDeleteIs "Free" and "Orthodox" truely in opposition? Are they truely binary? If I were advocating an actual moderate position, it would be some synthesis between thesis and antithesis, and were back with Hegel.
Thoughtless is interesting for I could take it in a positive sense or negative sense. Positive would be something along the lines of Mysticism (western and eastern though perhaps most appropriately Buddhist) in which one arives at "truth" through the casting asside the various categories and oppositions of thoughts until one's mind comes to rest (In Christian Mysticism in Christ, in the east Nirvana). Or I could take Thoughtless as heedless as anti-inelectualism as an unwillingness to give an account for my position.
I don't think I am actively advocating for either in regards to Reconciler (though I do approach Christianity from a mystical point of view.)
How is seeking ones primary idenity in Christ thoughtless? How does refusing the binary view of the world thoughtless?
To my view it takes more thought (and work) to resist the thoughtless ease by which most people simply go arround categorizing everthing in sight without refelction or criticism. Ask people to think a moment theologicaly about X and your are immediately doing so because you have an agenda for position A or B. Can it be that I am suggesting a possible position D or E or F? No, that is relegated from the start as an impossability. That to me is thoughtless. That to me is what creates the divisions that we face in the Christian church.
So, to oppose thoughtless thesis/antithesis and to not seek a synthesis is extreemly thoughtful, one just might not beable to ever be understood. But thoughtless no, it is the absolute belief in a binary world that is generaly thoughtless.
Hey.
ReplyDeleteI was rambling. Who knew? The poles of Free and Orthodox was unintentional. The two words came to mind together. I have never paired them up before. It is an interesting dichotomy. It may be a false dichotomy on some level or another.
What I am trying to get at is this: How much fighting will Reconciler really have to do. Will the people who want to box us in a stance (gay, liberal, neo-orthodox, emergent) ever be convinced otherwise? Perhaps. Perhaps it does not matter and all that matters is that Reconciler seeks to understand where God is calling us. That may be all we need...and all we can hope for simply because others will want us to fit a type and thus will assign us to one. We will not have to choose. We will most likely be in the position of saying "yes, but..." a lot.
Maybe I'm naive, but I see a church affiliated with three denoms as a big, expansive, rich thing: why should one denomination have all the good tools for worship and study and service? Fact is, none of ours has them all, so with three denominations, we've got three times the tools to work with. I once heard an Old Catholic bishop give a rousing (and ultimately very moving) sermon in which he read us some of the most powerful liturgical texts and told us of powerful spiritual practices of a wide range of Christian denominations, then invited us to think of ourselves as very fortunate Christians who have all of these things at our disposal for the praise of God, the edification of our own character and community, and the service of others. Deo gratias!
ReplyDeleteRe: Binarism
ReplyDeleteThe New Testament is full of it: darkness and light, wheat and tares, who who does not gather with me scatters, and so forth.
We do well not to call darkness light, tares wheat, or scatterers gatherers.
I might well add, that the Scriptural witness is also replete with sexual binarism: male and female.
We also do well not to confuse the two.
Scott,
ReplyDeleteI at least do not see you as naive in thinking that three denominations coming together like this is significant. It was just odd to me that this fact doesn't seem to get peoples dander up. Despite the direction the conversation took on the church's blog, it is the ecumenical effort that is the point of Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler.
Re: Binarism
ReplyDeleteWhile I do not deny the binary oposition of light and dark, wheat and tares etc. in the New Testament(NT), I would not call such an ism. I would see these binary images in the NT as on a different order than "liberal"-"conservative" say. I simply find that I don't fit into this dichotomy and labeling system.
My criticism was not of destinguishing light from darkness, good from evil. Though the parable of wheat and tares suggests that it might not always and at all times be possible to destinguish between wheat from tares. Thus if the workers of the feild had attempted to remove the tares from wheat too soon some of the wheat could come along with the tares. Also one could extrapolate that some of the tares would be left. There seems to be an ambiguity suggested by this parable, not an ultimate one, but the possibility that before the final harvest making quick judgements might be at best ineffectual and and worst destructive.
It seems to me though that this dialectic, if you will, has to do with the issue of identity I was speaking of in this post: is one identified with Christ or not. So I would agree either we are identified/identifying with Christ or we are not. However, if this being so identified is a process, of theosis or sanctification, if the life of faith isn't accept jesus into your heart and viola it's all done, then this seems to suggest movement and thus continuum and not simply either/or. Though ultimately it is either/or and one's oreintation should be toward the light.
We are to look toward the dawn and live as though we are in the light. But Dawn is an in between, a neither/nor a both/and. To admit this though does not mean seeking to live there just admiting that there is such a thing as twighlight. The world isn't simply made up of deepest darkest night and brightest starkest noon day sun. Thus the need for spiritual discernment.