close to my heart

a brutal unity: personal case study

This post follows up on a previous post on “a brutal unity explored”. I highly recommend that you read it first, as it provides the conceptual background for understanding this case study. The original post talked about brutal unity as an individual might apply it to their situation in a church or community context. This post takes a specific conflict at a real church and provides extensive discussion of how one individual (the author) is applying the concept of brutal unity to the situation, as well as some discussion of how the church in question might apply the concept within the larger denominational context.

the church

St. Pea’s Church, located in a large Canadian city, is part of a mainline denomination. While the whole denomination believes in the gospel and in evangelism, St. Pea’s specifically considers itself evangelical and Bible-believing. The leadership is conservative in its views and holds to a traditional view of marriage. While there is a range of views and perspectives on sexuality among the parishioners, the leadership is not affirming of LGBT people.

the church member

My family and I have been attending this church for the past eight years. I hold a more progressive view and believe in the true equality of LGBT people in the body of Christ. The rest of my family has a range of views which are left of center and would be considered gay-friendly. This belief, or standard, is at variance with that of the leadership and many of the parishioners. I can live with this because the community is good and because conservative views regarding marriage are not a focus of the church. Thus, I let my “standards be suffered” for the sake of the church community. This does not mean that I ignore, give up or deny what I believe. It means that I put these beliefs to the side in order to be in relationship with others who may not share my views on sexuality, but with whom I have much in common as we follow Jesus together.

the synod resolution and decision

Along with the other parishes in this geographical area, St. Pea’s is part of and comes under the authority of the diocese. In the early fall of 2012, the diocese held its synod (assembly), at which Resolution G-3 was presented:

Blessing Same-Gender Committed Unions: That Synod request the Bishop to grant permission to any clergy who may wish to offer prayers of blessing for civilly married same-gender relationships.

a brutal unity explored

introduction

In this post I want to explore the concept of “brutal unity”, which I came across in Matthew Shedden’s brief review of Ephraim Radner’s A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church. In his book, Radner writes:

“In this life that is God’s, any Anglican—or Roman Catholic or Methodist or Lutheran—can be a Pentecostal; any Catholic Protestant can be an evangelical Protestant; any member of one church can be a member of another that has separated from the first; any Roman Catholic can be a Protestant. Any Christian can do this not because standards of truth have been cast away but because the standards can be suffered, in their very contradiction by the place where he or she will go with Jesus.” (p. 447, italics added)

unpacking the concept of “the standards can be suffered”

First, what is meant by standards? The term “standards” is used to refer to a range of things believed at a theological or philosophical level: doctrines, statements of faith, liturgical confessions, dogma, religious beliefs, and so on. Moral standards would be included, but as used here, the term does not refer to facts and figures.

Secondly, the term “can be suffered” is not about denying, ignoring or giving up one's standards. Instead, it is about giving the standards second place, laying them down for the sake of one's calling and the community, emptying oneself of the need to hold tightly and insistently to standards as if they are our salvation when they are not. Our salvation is in Jesus Christ who "made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:5-8). Does this mean we change our beliefs or decide that they are irrelevant? No. But we put them second to the greater calling we have, for unity and the community. Because Radner’s use of the word “suffered” is not common, our discussion here will often substitute terms such as “set aside”, “put second”, and so on.

Third, “the place where he or she will go with Jesus” will be understood here as either a calling to a particular church or community, or general involvement with a particular church or community, and will often be referred to as “church” or “community” for the sake of simplicity.

what I wish our churches taught us...

From reactive to proactive. Where does your church land on this scale? When it comes to controversial matters like abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and hell, many tend to be reactive, which means most of the time they ignore such matters. And then when there’s a pressing reason like proposed changes to legislation, an adult club renting the building next door, or a Rob Bell asking questions about heaven and hell, they marshal their resources, preach sermons, picket and boycott, and tweet tweets which they sometimes later regret.

A current example of this is the response churches are giving to the legalization of same-sex marriage in the U.S. or the granting of same-sex blessings in Canada, where gay marriage is already legal.

Take my church, for example.

 At its recent meeting, our diocese held a vote to allow the bishop to give permission to priests who want to provide a blessing to same-sex couples who are in civil marriages. To say it another way, if a legally married same-sex couple asks the priest to give them a blessing, the priest must first ask for the bishop’s permission. Note that this resolution does not oblige any priests to provide such blessings; it simply gives the bishop permission to say “yes” if a priest asks. Now, the church we attend officially has a conservative view on marriage and was not pleased that the vote passed, in fact by a significant margin. In response to this, the leadership discussed the matter at the church’s semi-annual meeting, and will have a task group consider what response to make.

They also discussed it with the youth. And when our children came home from a youth day, one of them expressed that they didn’t know why the church was making such a big deal about blessing people who love each other when there’s more important things like KONY2012 happening in the world.

Some people might suggest that the leadership needs to do a better job of explaining how this really is a significant issue, and that the church should have been proactive in teaching its beliefs more clearly before a resolution like this one came up.

I would suggest that there’s a bigger picture that’s being missed here. And while it involves being proactive, it’s not about clarifying “what’s right and what’s wrong” before it becomes critical. It’s about perspective, respect for others, and God’s heart for people.

Here are four things that I wish pastors and others in church  leadership were teaching, with some recommendations for each point:


1.  The reality that God loves gay and lesbian people

Of course we are told in church that God loves everyone. When said generally like this, it is easier to forget this reality when we encounter people we don’t like or who are different from us. But when it is said with a specific people group in mind, it has more impact and is harder to ignore.

• State clearly that God loves lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Repeat on a regular basis.
• Affirm that Jesus gave his life for gay people and straight people and transgender people and everyone else.
• Emphasize that loving our neighbours includes loving LGBT neighbours, relatives, and colleagues. Give a similar emphasis to other particular neighbours depending on current events, your city or neighbourhood, etc. For example, emphasizing God’s love for Muslim neighbours would be particularly helpful after 9/11. The goal is not to single out a people group, but to emphasize God’s love for people whom we might find it easier to ignore or hate.

Related to this is the concept that the self of the other person matters more than my truth. As Miroslav Volf says, “I may not sacrifice the other at the altar of my truth. Jesus, who claimed to be the Truth, refused to use violence to ‘persuade’ those who did not recognize his truth.” (Exclusion and Embrace, page 272).

[the last supper for everyone]

A diverse collection of last supper images showing the width and breadth of God's love for everyone.


Jesus is my homeboy by David LaChapelle

David LaChapelle's Website

ecclesia

Because this drawing is explicitly violent, I recommend you read the background information to better understand what it is about:

The idea originally came to me in the context of I Corinthians 12:

12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
 15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. (NIV)

Here, rather than the foot feeling like it is not part of the body because it is not a hand, the foot is feeling like the hand is not part of the body. The additional influences are the idea that the church is missing out on the gifts which other parts of the body bring to it, and the idea of Christ being the head and the church being the body ("Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior" Ephesians 5:23b).

One day, as I was developing the drawing, I had outlined the body and then it came to me that I needed to add a particular implement. Drawing this implement was a disturbing experience for me due to the additional degree of violence it brought. Later, as I considered the drawing and what it meant, the words which are written below it came to me. While they are shocking at one level, there is also an element of hope and safety in them, tying in to Romans 8:38-39:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NIV)

Ecclesia, by the way, is from the Greek word for church or congregation.

So we must ask, what parts of the body of Christ is the main part of the church rejecting? Who are these Christians who are being cut off and called "not body"? What is this costing them, and what does it cost the rest of the church?

rob goetze

[flexible order and changing identities]

From Miroslav Volf's book Exclusion and Embrace, discussing the prodigal son:

For the father, the priority of the relationship means not only a refusal to let the moral rules be the final authority regulating “exclusion” and “embrace” but also a refusal to construct his identity in isolation from his sons. He readjusts his identity along with the changing identities of his sons and thereby reconstructs their broken identities and relationships. He suffers being “un-fathered” by both, so that through this suffering he may regain both as his sons (if the older brother was persuaded) and help them rediscover each other as brothers. Refusing the alternatives of “self-constructed” vs. “imposed” identities, difference vs. domestication, he allows himself to be taken on the journey of their shifting identities so that he can continue to be their father and they, each other’s brothers. Why does he not lose himself on the journey? Because he is guided by indestructible love and supported by a flexible order.

Flexible order? Changing identities? The world of fixed rules and stable identities is the world of the older brother. The father destabilizes this world—and draws his older son’s anger upon himself. The father’s most basic commitment is not to rules and given identities but to his sons whose lives are too complex to be regulated by fixed rules and whose identities are too dynamic to be defined once for all. Yet he does not give up the rules and the order. Guided by the indestructible love which makes space in the self for others in their alterity, which invites the others who have transgressed to return, which creates hospitable conditions for their confession, and rejoices over their presence, the father keeps re-configuring the order without destroying it so as to maintain it as an order of embrace rather than exclusion.

Volf, p. 165