Dan J. Brennan

Disputable Matters and Never-Ending Conversation Pt. 2

I thought Tony Jones' response to David Fitch was perceptively honest. IMHO, it's what Dave was so disappointed about one particular cluster in the ECM. To quote Tony, "We've taken a pastiche approach to church and theology -- we take a little bit from here and a little bit from there."

It boggles one's mind to consider the diversity of interpretations among Christians who revere the Bible--Christians who are evangelical, post-evangelical, post-conservative, post-liberal, or emerging or whatever label we use to identify ourselves in the second decade in this millenium. Some no longer want to be identified as evangelical, even though they are committed to Christ.

So, if I understand Dave right,  there are two levels to his frustration with the ECM, disptuable matters, and the "never-ending conversation"

1) The never-ending meta conversation existing within a particular cluster in the ECM. For Dave it never was grounded in a robust ecclesiology in concrete resolution and formation. 

2) The possibility for "never-ending conversation" at the local level--particularly the Anabaptist community.  According Dave, formation   requires  (yes, "requires"--the synonyms for require are demand, insist, urge, order, dictate) "ground resolution" on "disputable matters." 

Disputable Matters and Never-Ending Conversation

I was inspired to launch into this topic by three other posts. First, by my friend David Fitch's post on Questioning The Great Emergence--What Emergents Don't Understand About Us Anabaptists. Then Dave wrote another post, What Has Become of the Emerging Church? The Problem of a Never Ending Conversation. The third post was Wendy VanderWal Gritter's response to Dave's "disputable matters":Another Take on Disputable Matters.

I deeply resonated with Wendy's response. Wendy has a specific calling as building a bridge between the LGBT community and "straight" Christian communities. I think there is a place for that and I respect Wendy's call. I think Wendy raises some good questions when it comes to hermeneutics, faith, and sexuality. I am all for a deeper conversation on hermeneutics, faith and sexuality. For me, obviously, it comes as no surprise to regular readers of Faith Dance, there is a separate and distinct place when it comes to faith and sexuality, for a deeper conversation on male-female love inside marriage and outside that relationship: male-female love in friendship. Sexual ethics covers a wide range of issues in the faith and sexuality conversation. The gay conversation and the male-female love conversation are two separate issues. As Victor Luftig and others have pointed out, simple but deep cross-gender friendships challenge the status quo on gender issues but from a different angle than the LGBT conversation.

Here I Stand: Mark Driscoll

Here is a repost of something I posted May 3, 2007.  I strongly objected to Mark Driscoll's posture toward my friend, Jennifer Roach. Rachel Held Evans' post today reminded me of this:

It's my blog.

I normally write provocative posts about ideas and relationships, not people.  This is a short rant.  I don't pretend to be "objective" even if there was such an animal. 

I stood by and with Jennifer when she and her husband left Mars Hill. 

I told Jennifer the other day when the response to her video started mushrooming, "We are always going to be connected together, Driscoll, you and me."

I stand by, and with Jennifer and all women who feel alienated and offended by Driscoll's posture. It's his  posture towards women that  negatively drives women away from Christianity. 

 

Jesuit Priest James Martin on Friendship

In his recent book, The Jesuit Guide to (almost) Everything Jesuit priest and author James Martin delves into the topic of friendship. Martin does not gloss over friendship and love.  As he notes, living intentionally in community, in friendship can be a source for great joy and grief. Choosing to live with others, choosing to befriend others deeply "requires a great deal of love, patience, and wisdom."  He does not glamourize friendship.

Friendship is "the human bond of union." A good goal for friendship, is a "union of hearts and minds."

That is a reverence of friendship, a reverence for friendship people are hungering for in Christian community and beyond. In pop culture and sadly in many contemporary evangelical communities "the human bond of union" might be limited to only relationships involving sex. However, in Christian spirituality there has always been a rich stream embracing friendship as a deep humand bond of union as James Martin points out for example, in Ignatian spirituality. 

Understanding "union" as a goal--emotional and cognitive--in friendship is essentially why I chose the rather provocative title, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions for a book on cross-gender friendship. 

 

Love, Boundaries, & Friendship: The Mystery of Oneness

"The soaring intimacies of love and faith only make sense to those who participate in them." Eugene Peterson

Clearly one of the most provocative themes I touch on regarding cross-gender friendship in Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions is the mystery of oneness between men and women in non-romantic relationships. Many contemporary people don't speak of oneness and friendship in the same breath. This is especially evident in some evangelical circles where love and marriage are the pinnacle of "one flesh." Unlike many Christians throughout the centuries, modern evangelicals  rarely see friendship as a school for deep love and oneness. 

Part of what makes SUSP so thought-provoking and controversial, is that I not only plunged into the depths of love and friendship, which itself pushes some hot buttons, but I did it exploring friendship between men and women! 

This is why I was deeply curious about Richard Beck's perspective on love and boundaries in his new book, Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality. Beck's blog, Experimental Theology is one of my favorite blogs to read. In Unclean, he explores the rather fascinating subject of how "disgust" shapes and regulates how Christians think about holiness, purity, sin, and atonement. Beck believes disgust is an obstacle to the Christian call of hospitality.