Reading Chris Seitz on the Biblical Crisis in the Homosexuality Debates (by Alastair Roberts) reminded me of three things I already believed:
Despite the pretentious title, I mean this to be a short post. I also would like to note that I have not read Chris Seitz; I have only read Alastair Roberts’ comments. But his comments are not particularly wild or annoying, compared to other things I have read.
You need to read Alastair’s entire post, but here’s a key line:
The flirting of many evangelicals with forms of trajectory hermeneutics is just one example of the way in which the creedal understanding of the relationship between the testaments has become compromised.
I’ve written before about trajectories, and clearly I believe that there are trajectories in scripture and that we need to pay attention to them. This is part of my belief that we often develop doctrines of inspiration (and a resulting hermeneutic) that ignore the human portion of the communication. I don’t refer here to the prophet, but rather to those who receive God’s communication. The accuracy of communication cannot be stated without noting how accurately a message is received. But that is another topic which I discuss further in my book on the subject.
What I’m interested in here is the suggestion that the debates about sexual ethics in general, and about homosexuality in particular, have done violence to hermeneutics that had not already been done.
So I change the subject. What hermeneutic produces the liturgy and organizational structure of the Episcopal Church USA or the Anglican communion as a whole? How do we get from the New Testament to the cathedral, from the home meeting where everyone participated to church architecture with a raised platform and a privileged few leaders? Might I even go so far as to ask what trajectory permitted these changes?
I note that one departure from scripture, in sexual ethics, is regarded as sufficient to prevent certain levels of fellowship between the United Methodist Church, of which I am a member, and the Episcopal Church or the United Church of Christ. The other, in ecclesiology seems less important to those in positions of authority.
But of course that question is grossly unfair, because I could ask the same thing about the organizational structures and liturgy of the United Methodist Church. Well, as long as everyone is sinning in the same way …
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a theology professor about a colleague who was teaching religion somewhere in the Bible belt. This colleague noted that there was a great deal of tension about his moderately liberal academic views regarding scripture as he taught. He was teaching a general course in basic Christianity, however, and eventually they came to sexual ethics. Suddenly the students reversed positions. The professor took the idea of sexual purity seriously, with sexual relations only permissible within marriage. Suddenly the conservative students thought their “liberal” professor was way too conservative.
Which reminds me of another thing I’ve observed about the human side of doctrine. There are clean sins and dirty sins. Clean sins are the ones I commit. Dirty sins are the ones you commit.
I wouldn’t want to speak for God, but I’m suspecting God’s view might be different.
Dave Black posts a picture of his colleague Alvin Reid (look for 6:56 AM, Thursday, January 21), who appears with Dave’s favorite reptile (and I assume Alvin’s as well, but what do I know?) It looks to me like the Baptists are descending into snake handling. Who could have predicted that?
Actually, the occasion is the release of Dr. Reid’s first ebook, ADVANCE! – Gospel-Centered Movements Change the World (PDF). I have only had time to glance through the table of contents and read a few paragraphs, but it’s on my reading list already. It’s about time we realized as Christians just how important “gospel-centered” really is!
Just as a precaution, however, I did a search for the word “snake” in the ebook, and it does turn up–three times on page 10. So watch out!
I always knew I was a heretic:
Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches. (From MSNBC.com)
Well, actually, I never regarded the Catholic church and the pope as having any authority over me in any case, but I expected this kind of nonsense when this pope was elected, and here it is.
I was reading this story about American Episcopal bishops and their response to the Anglican communion, and it struck a cord in me because of my own experiences. Here we have a conservative Episcopal bishop providing a response to a challenge that primarily resulted from the actions of liberal bishops.
What is making the Episcopal Church USA hang together? I could, however, just as well ask the same thing about the United Methodist Church, of which I’m a member. Why do we all hang around and duke it out year after year and General Conference after General Conference?
I recall a study that suggested that there were really four camps in the UMC on the issue of homosexuality. There are those who believe homosexuality is a sin, and who do not believe we can remain as a unified church with disagreement on this issue, there are those who believe homosexuality is sin and yet think we can get along. On the other hand those who believe homosexuality is not a sin are similarly divided between those who think we can co-exist in a denomination that with those who believe the opposite, and those who think we can’t. Yet year after year the debate goes on.
But I’m wondering again just what keeps us working together. How many of the goals of my local church here in Pensacola match those of more liberal churches in the Northwest, for example? Are we really in community or is it just on paper? Those who know me may be surprised to realize that the congregation of which I’m a member is really quite conservative, for a United Methodist Church. It’s not at the hard right, but it’s right of center. I think I’m somewhere in the center range of United Methodist belief right now myself, and I feel that I could work together with some reservations in most of the churches I know. I’m afraid I would have to make an exception for the one church that I know of that removed the cross as a symbol of death.
I’m thinking that a great deal of the glue is simply tradition, whether for the Episcopal Church, with a somewhat longer tradition, or the United Methodist Church, which has certainly had enough history to become respectable. Denominational loyalty goes a long way for people who have lived in a community and gone to a particular church for years and years, or been multigenerational members of the same denomination.
But the current generation isn’t buying that, whether they are liberal or conservative. They want a church community that is going where they are going and in which they can be wholehearted, active, members if they want any church at all. “We’ve always been Methodists” or “We’ve done it that way for years” doesn’t really work for them.
I know I keep revisiting this topic, but it seems still to be a very live one. The membership of the United Methodist Church seems to indicate that we’re not finding the popular answer to these questions whether or not we are finding the right answer. The Episcopal Church has a similar problem.
I think we need to find the glue, on a personal, congregational, and denominational level. If we can deal with the glue, we should be able to deal with the rest. For me, the central message of the love of Jesus who came and died for me is a driving force. I’m interested in social activism because I think Jesus called us through the incarnation to the ministry of reconciliation. Simply being redeemed drives me to want to be with others who feel the same way. That drives other issues into the background.
But I think the question of whether even Jesus and his mission are the central position of our faith is subject to serious debate in many places. I find people both to my right and to my left who, redeemed by the blood of the lamb want to go out and share the gospel through word, deed, and sign as led by the Holy Spirit. Others, well, not so much. I’m not referring to different theories of the atonement. I’m referring to various views that make the atonement less than a central topic.
If it weren’t for the atonement, I’d be carrying out whatever social action I have through a civic organization. I wouldn’t need a church. A church doesn’t just need to serve the community; they need to serve the community driven by Jesus Christ and filled with his Spirit.
When I first thought of writing this I was thinking of a kind of moderate split–let’s take everyone who can exist together out of the center instead of continuing to head toward a left-right split. But I don’t think even that would put together the right combination. I’m looking for a community that wants to carry out the “royal law” and do so driven by and in the name of the royal person–Jesus Christ. So far, in spite of disagreements I have found that I can do that in three different United Methodist congregations. The denomination as a whole? Well, not so much.
Quite frequently I receive appeals for funds from various ministries. This is probably because I head an all-volunteer ministry, Pacesetters Bible School, Inc. and thus am readily connection with Christianity, non-profits, and thus charitable contributions. Now I have no problem with charitable organizations making appeals for funds, though my group limits appeals to people who have attended an event we sponsor or in some way asked to be on the mailing list.
I got one of these appeals today, and the thing that bother me about it, and triggered this post, was that the pledge card inside invited me to pledge some tithe to go to support pastors in this group’s various mission locations. The question comes to mind immediately as to just why I should send tithe to them, and since I have no personal or business connection with them, other than their mailout, why I should regard them as trustworthy. In fact, reading their magazine I’m pretty sure I would not support them were I to make a full investigation. Since my default is to support things I know about, I won’t bother with that lengthier investigation.
Now I’m not a really strict person about tithe. I do believe it’s a good general standard of stewardship, but I believe each person must deal with their own conscience on charitable giving and service. But I also think that the local church is potentially a wonderful institution for giving and carrying out charity. Here’s a group of people you meet with every week (hopefully), and get to know (ideally), and trust (possibly). You can get the idea over a period of time of how they will spend your money.
In principle, it seems to be that a great way to do your basic charitable giving is through a congregation or local group. Taking that principle and asking you to apply it to essentially random people far away, without accountability is questionable at best. I’m assuming that most people who receive such solicitations treat them as I do. But inevitably, just as a few people get caught by “African dictator” scams in e-mail, so some people get caught by various ministries asking for money.
But as a follow-up thought, I have to ask just how accountable your local church is. Do they, in fact, spend your money in a way that you would regard as good stewardship? I’ve written recently about authority and accountability (Why Authority Issues are Important), and like many, I spoke more of accountability from above. But I think the focus needs to be a general accountability to the members–the people who produce the cash and suffer through failures of leadership.
In Christian churches we have too long lived with the idea that the pastor and the elders are above the rest, and should not be questioned. Even in churches with very democratic structures you will generally find a group of people in leadership who are informally considered above reproach and questioning. I believe that there should be no such time. Everyone should be accountable in what they do, whether they have served the church for 5 minutes or 5 decades.
This is true of financial accountability, of one’s moral life as a church leader, and of teaching and doctrine. In one church I attended I found that people were running around passing on things that I had said about the Bible. Now the fact was that I did have the strongest credentials in Biblical studies in the church, and I had often been able to provide answers and references. I was criticized for giving too carefully qualified of answers (people don’t want all that detail, just give them the answer). Some people even misquoted me back at myself, so that I was the authority behind something I never said.
I would regularly say, “Don’t take my word for it. Study it out and come to your own conclusions.” Some people in the church leadership told me I was unreasonable. Why shouldn’t folks depend on the Bible “expert” among them? Well, there is a simple problem there–accountability. There was nobody else in the church who knew Biblical languages, or who had studied the history of the ancient near east, or Biblical exegesis, or a number of other fields as I did. If I was in a seminary setting, there would be someone questioning what I said all the time, and justly so. I should be prepared to defend what I say. But in that local congregation, it was just one man–me–and my errors were getting perpetuated. I might correct them later, but they were already a tradition for some people.
The same thing happens with the finance committee. It’s too complicated and time consuming to check up on what they’re doing and to see how my money is being spent, so I just assume it’s being done well. But I think that’s irresponsible, and it denies accountability to those leaders.
Check your chuch budget. Find out, for example, how much is being spent on service to the community, and how much on maintaining the church structure. Consider whether those are appropriate numbers and what might be done about it. Consider how much is spent on children and youth, the future of the church, and how much is spent entertaining the older members. (As a grandfather approaching age 50, I think I can say that!) Don’t forget that taking care of the church facility and existing members does cost money, but consider how the church can maximize outreach and service.
One last thing–this isn’t a call for whiners and complainers. Quite the opposite! Whiners and complainers don’t hold people accountable, they just have fun complaining and gossiping. The difference is in who you talk to and how you do it. If you go to your finance committee to talk about the budget with some specific point in mind and a suggestion for positive action, that’s accountability. It’s still accountability if you go to them with a specific problem, along with evidence to support your claim. If you go to them just to say, “I hate this budget,” but don’t have anything concrete to suggest, that’s just complaining. No matter what you have, if you gossip about it around the table at Wednesday night dinner, that’s whining and complaining. Don’t do it. If you hear it happening, hold people accountable. Say, “I don’t think we should talk about this here and in this way. Let’s take any issues we have to the right people.”
That’s enough time on the soapbox for me today.
I’m not sure how to react to this story, but I think it’s a good one for discussion. On MSNBC I found the following story: Sex offender can worship – with conditions. I find the story troubling. As a grandparent of 5, I have to ask whether I would regard it as safe to have my grandchildren at church with him. At the same time, I would also have to ask what alternative I would propose to minister to such a person.
The church made a covenant of restrictions on his activity, monitoring, and accountability. But one church member expressed the question quite well:
Mary Carlson, a single mother of an 8-year-old girl, has fears despite the covenant. “He is a pedophile, and this pedophile might be fantasizing about this little girl across the aisle,” she said.
As a United Methodist, I uphold “Open hearts, Open minds, Open doors,” at least insofar as I can make any real meaning of the slogan. But this open?
Any thoughts?
Via Pandagon I found this story, also reported here. These are serious accusations, and more and more people are coming forward.
Such a story should emphasize several things to those of us who are in ministry, including how transparent our ministry practices should be. Teach and behave in such a way that an accusation such as this would be implausible in your ministry. In my view that includes not claiming excessive authority over the spiritual lives of others, and in fact teaching them to use their own discernment with respect to claims of spiritual authority. It also means practicing accountability, both to let the congregation know that you really mean it and to make sure that the opportunity doesn’t arise.
Christians should also be very conscious of efforts to force them to give up their judgment to another person. Even demands that one “prayerfully consider” something that you have already rejected (for good reason), can be efforts to break down your own good sense and rational judgment in favor of a church leader. If you haven’t prayerfully considered something, of course, it’s a good idea to do so. But when you have, remember that your decision is between you and God and don’t let yourself be pushed around.
All of this reemphasizes the point I made a few days ago about the dangers of authority, especially the type of church teaching that makes women spiritually inferior in authoirty to men, such as the teaching that a woman can never have authority over a man in the church. I discussed these issues in Women in Ministry: A Shock and Gifts Ministry and Blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
Note what I wrote in the first of these entries:
God doesn’t like his children lording it over one another.
I have taught this repeatedly. Authority, especially spiritual authority, is dangerous. You create the potential for abuse as soon as you place them in charge and insulate them in any way from accountability. This is true in the home when a man is made “head of household” answering only to God, with his wife answering to him. It is true when one of the church offices is placed above all others. There are a number of teachers who emphasize that the pastor is the final authority in the church and insulate him from challenges because one cannot touch God’s anointed. But all of these options fly directly in the face of the gifts teaching of 1 Corinthians 12-14. God gives the gifts as he wills. They are all important, they are all needed in the church. None of them are to make one of us Lord over another. To fail to recognize this will ultimately result in abuse. If you’re teaching it, though you may not be abusing anyone yourself, you’re opening the door. [Emphasis from original.]
Now notice the teaching that was apparently involved in this particular pastoral abuse, from The Dallas Observer Blog:
Allen’s practice of paddling adults has been widely known in local COGIC circles for years, but a common teaching in black Pentecostalism is that a church member should never make an accusation against a man of God. Instead, he or she should pray privately that God deals with the minister’s sin. The two women I interviewed, in fact, each cited this teaching, which is apparently based on a biblical statement, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm,” that is mentioned twice in the Old Testament.
I don’t by any means believe that everyone who teaches a questionable view of authority is engaging in this type of abuse, but I do believe that any teaching that tends to remove accountability from someone in spiritual leadership is terribly, terribly dangerous and must be vigorously challenged by all Christians.
Unfortunately, in some charismatic and pentecostal circles, the belief that God’s Spirit can come upon everyone in the church and that God can speak to anyone sometimes gets perverted into the idea that God puts an unaccountable authority on certain church leaders. When you have that teaching, abuse of authority, whether spiritual, emotional, or finally physical will not be far away. (Note that I do not mean that the abuse is limited to or especially bad in charismatic and pentecostal groups; rather, that in those groups it is this particular doctrine, and related doctrines about “anointing” that are often abused in this way. Other groups have their own avenues into sin.)
I have long been an advocate of the full involvement of women, indeed of all people in the ministry of the church. It is the essence, I believe, of gifts based ministry. If you believe that the Holy Spirit gives gifts for service, and then you deny the use of those gifts to certain members who have them based on race or gender (amongst other things), then I believe you are flying in the face of the very concept of spiritual gifts.
In fact, to deny the work–any of the work–of the Holy Spirit in certain members of the body of Christ, is a step along the road toward blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Such denial is to say that the Holy Spirit has gifted and chosen someone, but you know better. If it is now “Christ living in us” rather than us living our own life, how is it that you justify making these distinctions. The clear trajectory of scripture is toward erasing such boundaries.
(26) You’re all God’s children through faith in Christ Jesus. (29) For as many as have been baptized into Christ are wearing Christ as a garment. (28) There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. — Galatians 3:26-28
I know many deride the idea of trajectories as being too loose a form of interpretation, allowing people to go anywhere they please. But with such a clear destination point for the trajectory as that, how can we possibly miss the trajectory? There had to be a difference in Paul’s churches between Jews and Greeks because of the culture. That was the one element he personally fought in his lifetime. Slave and free took somewhat longer. Male and female is one that we’re looking for today. But I think that God’s desire, God’s goal for all his children has been plain to see all along.
God doesn’t like his children lording it over one another.
I have taught this repeatedly. Authority, especially spiritual authority, is dangerous. You create the potential for abuse as soon as you place them in charge and insulate them in any way from accountability. This is true in the home when a man is made “head of household” answering only to God, with his wife answering to him. It is true when one of the church offices is placed above all others. There are a number of teachers who emphasize that the pastor is the final authority in the church and insulate him from challenges because one cannot touch God’s anointed. But all of these options fly directly in the face of the gifts teaching of 1 Corinthians 12-14. God gives the gifts as he wills. They are all important, they are all needed in the church. None of them are to make one of us Lord over another. To fail to recognize this will ultimately result in abuse. If you’re teaching it, though you may not be abusing anyone yourself, you’re opening the door.
I come to this position from an entirely positive point of view. My mother was a professional woman, a Registered Nurse who worked in missions with my father, who taught and led in churches. My father was an MD who did much less public speaking than my mother, and yet was behind her all the way. So I grew up with the idea that a woman could be strong and could take a leadership role. Similarly, I married a woman who is a spiritual leader, and is also a Registered Nurse. We sometimes teach as a team, and people are blessed by the different perspectives on the same subject we offer. The positive feedback on those sessions reinforces my belief in ministry.
This morning when I looked over the blogs I normally read, I found Suzanne McCarthy’s entry at Better Bibles Blog. Suzanne has arrived at similar positions to my own, as far as I can see from reading her blog entries, but now I know that she got there the hard way. It is one thing to know that there are potential problems. It is another to have the testimony that such things are real. It is important, however, because people will avoid the danger signs as much as possible. Just as the church has avoided the issue of giving equal weight and authority to women for two millenia, so humanity in general will avoid the idea of giving up their improper authority over others. As my wife frequently says, Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
The rest of us would like to pretend these things don’t really happen, that it’s all just theory. Theory is nice, when you can avoid watching it play out in practice. But there is no such thing as “good in theory, bad in practice.” A valid theory works out in practice, and this one does so on a regular basis. I’m tremendously thankful to people such as Suzanne McCarthy who find the courage to give their testimony on an issue such as this. There is so much shame involved, though there should not be. The only appropriate shame should be that of the abuser, not the abused. It is a comment on how far we are still from Paul’s ideal of being all God’s children, one in Christ, that we can still reflect shame on the victim.
And that’s another trajectory in scripture–reconciliation. Jesus Christ wants to bring us all closer. He places his Spirit in everyone, not just the guys, not just the older folks, not just the ordained, and not just the church elders. Everybody shares in God’s Spirit. When we deny this to our fellow-believers, I repeat again, we are starting down the path to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. At the end of that path is the complete lack of reconciliation, the inability to even hear the voice of conscience or the voice of God, and finally spiritual death.
Thank you, Suzanne, for your courage in bringing this forcefully to our attention.
John Meunier (Trouble Enough) has been reading William Abraham’s book Waking From Doctrinal Amnesia and making a few comments. Since the Wesleyan Quadrilateral was one of the things that attracted me to the United Methodist Church in the first place, I’m not sure that this is an amnesia I’d like us to wake up from.
John has a few interesting comments in two posts: Why Not Divorce and The Incarnation and the Ad Council. Sorry John, I don’t have an answer to your main question in this one. I have heard so many forms of church organization taught as scriptural that I’m beginning to think that the most unscriptural thing to do is to claim that the structure of your congregation or denomination is “scriptural.”
Both posts are worth reading.
