Posted this brief snippet on an online course and decided to re-post here.
I've known intellectually for a long time that "God isn't a man or a woman." Pretty much everyone (or rather, everyone with whom I interact) agrees on that. They still squirm at any suggestion that they should avoid saying "he," though.
My new year's resolution for 2009 was to refer to God in the feminine for that year, to try to offset my ingrained assumption that God was masculine. I figured once I got that down I could move to gender-neutral language and mean it. By 2010, however, I still thought of God as male, no matter how consciously I used feminine pronouns. So I decided what I really needed was a 21-year-long project to offset my 21 years of referring to God in the masculine.
So, my goal is that by 2030 I will have successfully driven out my underlying assumptions about God's maleness, at which point I will move to non-gendered understandings.
-Nick Miller Kauffman
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Remember the healers
In the past few weeks, I've been hearing various people saying things along the lines of "It's too bad our Elgin leadership doesn't speak more prophetically regarding [name your issue]." I want to respond to that.
One Brethren "hero" many of us are familiar with is John Kline, a subject of both song and children's book. Kline is remembered for, during the American Civil War, crossing the border between North and South and providing medical assistance to both sides.
I must beg forgiveness for the violent imagery, but I think in some senses the Church of the Brethren is engaged in a sort of civil war. A culture war between the progressives and the fundamentalists, most notably between the "gay supporters" and "gay opposers," as sociologist Carl Bowman categorizes us. Many of us have strong moral and spiritual beliefs that put us on one side or the other of this proverbial Mason-Dixon Line. And thus we find ourselves called to take up arms and fight for what we believe is right.
While this struggle occurs, though, we are still a church, and a church needs its leaders. Elgin is not the headquarters of the Progressive Church of the Brethren or the Conservative Church of the Brethren; it is the headquarters of the Church of the Brethren. Our denominational leaders are responsible for leading all of us, and to do that they need to cultivate relationships with and avoid alienating people on both sides of the line. While many of us are drawn--and perhaps rightly so!--to be fierce and prophetic, we must recognize that the arrogant purism espoused in our admonishments to our leaders to be bolder comes from a position of privilege. In some roles--roles that need to be filled--such purism is simply not an option.
The sin of slavery, after all, was a massively important moral issue in the spiritual life of our nation, I daresay as big as the sin of (to some) homosexuality or (to others) exclusion. We might imagine John Kline felt the burning, holy call for freedom from the shackles of slavery--surely a cause worth fighting for!--yet we celebrate his decision to pursue a path of healing that transcended the conflict.
When you take up arms for one side or another, you give up the ability to transcend borders, to build relationships, to earn the respect that gives weight to your voice. Many of us, often myself included, stand proudly as soldiers. But we should not neglect our healers, for they, too, are doing God's work.
One Brethren "hero" many of us are familiar with is John Kline, a subject of both song and children's book. Kline is remembered for, during the American Civil War, crossing the border between North and South and providing medical assistance to both sides.
I must beg forgiveness for the violent imagery, but I think in some senses the Church of the Brethren is engaged in a sort of civil war. A culture war between the progressives and the fundamentalists, most notably between the "gay supporters" and "gay opposers," as sociologist Carl Bowman categorizes us. Many of us have strong moral and spiritual beliefs that put us on one side or the other of this proverbial Mason-Dixon Line. And thus we find ourselves called to take up arms and fight for what we believe is right.
While this struggle occurs, though, we are still a church, and a church needs its leaders. Elgin is not the headquarters of the Progressive Church of the Brethren or the Conservative Church of the Brethren; it is the headquarters of the Church of the Brethren. Our denominational leaders are responsible for leading all of us, and to do that they need to cultivate relationships with and avoid alienating people on both sides of the line. While many of us are drawn--and perhaps rightly so!--to be fierce and prophetic, we must recognize that the arrogant purism espoused in our admonishments to our leaders to be bolder comes from a position of privilege. In some roles--roles that need to be filled--such purism is simply not an option.
The sin of slavery, after all, was a massively important moral issue in the spiritual life of our nation, I daresay as big as the sin of (to some) homosexuality or (to others) exclusion. We might imagine John Kline felt the burning, holy call for freedom from the shackles of slavery--surely a cause worth fighting for!--yet we celebrate his decision to pursue a path of healing that transcended the conflict.
When you take up arms for one side or another, you give up the ability to transcend borders, to build relationships, to earn the respect that gives weight to your voice. Many of us, often myself included, stand proudly as soldiers. But we should not neglect our healers, for they, too, are doing God's work.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Carl Bowman's new blog
A few weeks ago, Brethren sociologist, Carl D. Bowman, started blogging about the 2006 Brethren Member Profile, among other things. Check it out: Brethren Cultural Landscape
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Recovering the Love Feast
by Brian Gumm
The seminary careers of Paul Stutzman and myself overlapped for one year at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. He was finishing up his last year of an MAR degree while I was starting my dual degree project at the seminary and Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. So now two years later, his master's thesis work has been picked up and published by Wipf and Stock, and it has profound relevance for Brethren! Check it out...
Recovering the Love Feast: Broadening Our Eucharistic Celebrations
by Paul Fike Stutzman
The foreword is by Eleanor Kreider, who has done considerable work on worship practices at the London Mennonite Center and is now - with her husband, Alan - at the "other" (to me, I say that lovingly) Mennonite seminary, AMBS. The endorsements include a word from Bethany president, Ruthann Knechel Johansen; Brethren sociologist, Carl Bowman; and Brethren historian (and my mentor and former pastor), Jeff Bach!
Paul said it should be available directly off the Wipf and Stock website linked above, and on Amazon within a few weeks. Definitely on my list...
[Note: Cross-posted on my RT blog.]
The seminary careers of Paul Stutzman and myself overlapped for one year at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. He was finishing up his last year of an MAR degree while I was starting my dual degree project at the seminary and Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. So now two years later, his master's thesis work has been picked up and published by Wipf and Stock, and it has profound relevance for Brethren! Check it out...
by Paul Fike Stutzman
The foreword is by Eleanor Kreider, who has done considerable work on worship practices at the London Mennonite Center and is now - with her husband, Alan - at the "other" (to me, I say that lovingly) Mennonite seminary, AMBS. The endorsements include a word from Bethany president, Ruthann Knechel Johansen; Brethren sociologist, Carl Bowman; and Brethren historian (and my mentor and former pastor), Jeff Bach!
Paul said it should be available directly off the Wipf and Stock website linked above, and on Amazon within a few weeks. Definitely on my list...
[Note: Cross-posted on my RT blog.]
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
For the irreverent among you
In my non-existant free time I started a video blog companion to my personal blog, the first installment of which I used to (somewhat satirically) describe substitutionary atonement. If you're interested, here's the link to the video on YouTube.
Monday, October 4, 2010
A pastiche tribute to Art Gish
by Brian Gumm
Fellow Brethren folk may be interested to see my attempt to honor the life of Art Gish over at the Restorative Theology blog: A pastiche tribute to Art Gish. I'm basically trying to honor him by channeling his social-technological critique found in Beyond the Rat Race and focus it on the digital age. Here's the closing paragraph:
Fellow Brethren folk may be interested to see my attempt to honor the life of Art Gish over at the Restorative Theology blog: A pastiche tribute to Art Gish. I'm basically trying to honor him by channeling his social-technological critique found in Beyond the Rat Race and focus it on the digital age. Here's the closing paragraph:
From top to bottom, pledging allegiance to the digital age comes with serious implications that most people are not even remotely aware of. A consistent post-Christendom critique of this system in the tradition of Yoder and Hauerwas exposes it as a neo-Constantinian political-economic industrial complex. The poor rarely have voice in this system, as the economic and educational barriers to entry are high. Christians of means are lulled into a slumber by the flashing lights and excited voices, deaf to the despairing cries of a fallen world, deaf to even the cries of those closest to them. If what Gish states is true (and I think it is), that “(u)ncontrolled technology helped us get us into our mess and shows no sign of getting us out” (p. 118), then where to from here?
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Is the Mennonite Church USA doomed? Should Brethren care?
by Brian Gumm
One of my friends from seminary just made a post on Eastern Mennonite Seminary's new blog, "Work and Hope," that asks a few tough questions for the Mennonite Church USA:
Is MCUSA Doomed? (And Does it Matter?) - by Jeremy Yoder, editor
One of my friends from seminary just made a post on Eastern Mennonite Seminary's new blog, "Work and Hope," that asks a few tough questions for the Mennonite Church USA:
Is MCUSA Doomed? (And Does it Matter?) - by Jeremy Yoder, editor
- Do we know what it means to be Mennonite or Anabaptist?
- Are we really committed to following Jesus?
- Is MCUSA prepared to be an urban denomination?
- How Serious Are We to Sharing the Gospel?
- So is MCUSA doomed?
As a Brethren sojourning with Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley, I'd be interested to hear some Brethren reactions to these questions, especially from Bethany folks. What are some of the similar realities facing the Church of the Brethren? What are some that differ?
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