Scarves

by Nick Miller Kauffman

I'm (still) watching Annual Conference business via webcast, where they just concluded business dealing with a query on decorum, questioning the appropriateness of rainbow and black & white scarves (the former expressing support for LGBT people, the latter supporting a literalist biblical interpretation).  The query was returned, but as I watched the discussion, there were a lot of comments that mentioned both scarves in the same breath.  I think it's important to distinguish between them.

I do not wear a rainbow scarf at Annual Conference (excepting one evening last year).  I actually agree with the sister who compared them (and the black & white scarves) to "gang colors."  I appreciate their intent and am a big fan of shows of solidarity, but I suspect their effect is more isolating than inclusive.  I surely don't think they should be banned, I just don't take part in that particular demonstration.

But we shouldn't compare rainbow scarves to black & white scarves.  The former are intended as a show of support for an oppressed and silenced group; they are a stand against a majority.  The latter are a direct response to the former, which means they are worn in opposition to the display of solidarity with an oppressed minority.  Those with a literalist biblical interpretation may themselves be a minority, but they are certainly not silenced.

In the same way, a White Student Union would be different from a Black Student Union.  Flying a "straight pride" flag would be different from flying a "gay pride" flag.  I am not the biggest fan in the world of rainbow scarves in our particular context, but the black & white scarves seem downright malicious.  Rainbow scarves are a disenfranchised group standing up and demanding they be counted.  Black & white scarves are a powerful group reminding others of their power.

The stakes of our disagreement

by Nick Miller Kauffman

Every time I hear a formal discussion on the "homosexuality and same-sex covenantal relationships" stuff I find myself getting angry.  I hear lots of code words, a lot of "unity of spirit" talk that falls flat on my ears, and what I perceive as a reticence to name what's really being discussed.  And this anger is bothersome to me, because I like to be detached and rational.  I like to pretend I can use reason to arrive at the "right" answer, and when emotions get in the way I wonder if I'm properly understanding what's going on in my mind.

The problem I have with the special response process as handled by the Church is that the Church suffers the same bias I have, which is a desire to treat things with a high degree of rationality--or rather, a twenty-first century, touchy-feely rationality that breeds such comments as "we encourage people to engage LGBT people in conversation," and talk of our "disagreement."

If we are encouraged to talk to LGBT people, it implies that they are a "they," that they aren't part of the conversation.  That we are a bunch of straight people debating what to do with these other people, and though we don't agree, we can at least be high-minded and talk to them.  Much as the vice president of a college might think herself a better person for stooping to talk to the blue-collar workers whose supervisors she supervises.*  This is not a conversational relationship between brothers and sisters, probably because we don't want to admit that while we debate whether to condone LGBT people doing the same things as straight people, some of those people are present at the table.  Awkward!

I think this is starting to get at the second example, which is the language of "disagreement."  That word seems to connotate something academic, like whether one identifies more with utilitarianism or deontology, or perhaps a matter of taste, like whether one enjoys strawberries in the summer.  It's easy to forget just what kind of disagreement we're talking about: namely, whether one party of this disagreement is to be treated as fully human.  While recognizing that analogies can only take us so far, imagine for a second a conversation (many of which assuredly happened) between an opponent of civil rights and a person of color, in which the opponent of civil rights--a person opposed to sharing a drinking fountain, sending his children to the same school, or having to intermingle at the front of the bus--ruminates about the importance of maintaining unity despite a disagreement.

If you find yourself on the conservative side of this question, I'm sure you feel that the comparison is unfair.  But that unfairness is probably born of the same repulsion that I feel at the scenario I've described, so know this: LGBTA people feel that same repulsion, that same injustice, that same exclusion, every time you talk about our disagreement.  When you have a civil disagreement or a polite conversation with someone whose very nature you believe to be sin, whose call to ministry you flatly reject, and whose covenantal relationship you think should never be affirmed, you are sweeping a lot under the rug.  Believe you me, the "trust" we keep being urged to have cannot exist in such a dynamic.

Sometimes, in a fight that concerns justice, you don't get to keep the peace.

I'm not trying to argue for acceptance (at this precise moment).  This post isn't to try to convince people who disagree with me to change their minds.  I just want you, and the Church, to understand the stakes of our disagreement.




*If this strikes you as a weird and confusing example, just skip over it.  There are other things that make me angry.

Brethren ethnicity, Brethren confession, and naming abused privilege

by Parker Thompson

So I got a message that there was an interesting conversation going on in the interwebs among some intellectually engaged individuals about the Church of the Brethren, culture, and confession. After reading several lengthy, engaging posts and many interesting comments, I have felt called to articulate these thoughts.

In my engagement with the conversation, I would like to introduce myself as an infiltrating outsider to the Church of the Brethren. This status, after four years of heavy, delightful engagement with the denomination at the local congregation level, at Bethany Theological Seminary, and at the national level, generally seems to be slipping away as I have become more and more acculturated and welcomed into the “community.” But if my experience and conversations are any indicator of future experience, I will probably always have a sense of being an outsider.

The first piece of the conversation, and most central, that I would like to engage is the topic of cultural Brethrenism that both Josh and Carl have been so eloquently parsing. While the dialectic between culture and theology is a favorite interest of mine, I think more specifically that the issue creeping below this entire conversation is that of Brethren ethnicity. It is the key challenge and gift of the denomination. Are you born Brethren? If you are, you are of a higher class in this crew. Deny that statement all you like in the sense of what should be, or what confessed ideal is desired, but I have experienced and witnessed this deeply embedded privilege manifest in more than one situation. It is the experienced reality in comparison to the stated/desired ideal.

It would be a sloppy reductionist approach to bifurcate the ethnic Brethrenism from the confessional Brethrenism. So instead, I embrace the muddling. The blessing of ethnic Brethrenism is that is does provide, what speculatively appears to be a strong acculturation draw for many born into ethnic Brethrenism to comprehend and take on the discipleship and confessions (what ever variation that might be).

The curse of this reality is, I think, what Josh is prodding in his questioning of the difference between “only culturally Brethren” and a “practicing Brethren” (my synthetic phrases, for the moment). A danger of the privilege of cradle Brethren is to lift the Brethren ethnic heritage and confuse it or conflate it with the religious faith confession/seekings initiated by the eight and carried on, explored, practiced, and expanded by three centuries of believers. I think the Pietist influences that launched this adventure are an important heritage to bring into conversation with conflating ethnicity with confession. The whole Pietist movement was about doing examined theology and choosing to believe in that examined theology, and then continuing to work through that ever-evolving faith with mind, body and soul (and in community depending on the root community). This challenging task is done in varying degrees by different seekers and believers, but it is the challenge set forth by our Pietistic forbearers and is a common thread in the antipedobaptism that we share with our Anabaptist brethren.

It all arises out of a double bind that all faith traditions arrive at (at least ones that believe in sex, procreational sex at least). One of the easiest ways, at times, to maintain or even grow your group’s numbers is to make a bunch of babies. The baby boom becomes an evangelical captive market. At the very least the status quo of staying in the tradition of origin has, depending on cultural context, a relatively high success rate at adding to numbers. On the flip side, this approach can be too easy for Christian formation, leaving large groups of a population with a limited set of embedded theology because it looks right and does not require a lot of work. But this lazy evangelism can, not always, but can make for lazy Christians, and in these circles lazy Brethren. Unfortunately, these lazy Brethren wander around with a sense of entitlement that they have been in since birth and therefore have a “special” sense of ownership.

I think that is all I have at the moment. It seems the style around here to leave something unsaid for later, since this is more of a conversation than a more formal publication. I hope that this is received as a well-spirited offering to conversation. I have written these care and tenderness in my heart for this big messy community of the Church of the Brethren, but know that quick writings can have sharp edges. Some of this playfulness is definitely springing from my minds summer stir-craziness that is beginning (despite being very busy in the midst of a summer ministry placement). May these words find a touch of God’s grace as others wrestle with them.

Re-thinking Church: Gifts from the Ruins

by Katie Shaw Thompson

My spouse, Parker Thompson, and I preached this sermon together at the opening worship of Young Adult Conference 2011 at Camp Inspiration Hills, OH. What you'll find here is the manuscript version with all the funky pause marks, punctuations, and paragraph indentations. Of course reading a sermon is never like experiencing a sermon

but this will give you the general idea if you missed YAC (which was a really really fantastic weekend!). We'd be happy to hear your comments and to chat back as we're available.

Peace,

Katie Shaw Thompson

Picture credit: "Among the Ruins." Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema. Oil on Canvas

Scripture: Isaiah 58

Along with Isaiah we thought we’d like to bring you the voice of another prophet-poet—one from the 21^st century.

George Watsky is a young Jewish slam poet from San Francisco.

His poetry is often filled with out of the box theology that unsettles you and makes you think about things differently.

Neither of us would agree with every single thing he says, in fact he often contradicts himself. Yet, I think his voice is very much worth listening to.

The poem we’d like to bring in to the conversation between us and Isaiah today is called DRUNK TEXT MESSAGE TO GOD, and although it may be a little different I hope you’ll hear it (and us) out to the end.

[At YAC Parker and I performed Watsky’s poem but you blogger types have the advantage of watching the poet himself on youtube.]

Not all of us are like George Watsky.

Not all of us think bar hopping with your church would be so cool.

In fact, some of us may not have sent a lot of drunk text messages…

And some of us would rather not admit how many we’ve sent…

But I think we can all relate on some level

to the yearning for a different kind of church.

As emerging adults many of us are redefining and re-evaluating our relationship to the church.

Some of us still go to church to please our parents.

Some of us go to church because it’s the only place other than the bar to meet people in a small town.

Some of us feel more culturally Brethren than anything else even though we don’t go to church really.

Some of us sit in the pew on Sunday and have a nice enough time, but wonder what else church could be.

Most of us sitting here today have some sort of positive experience past or present with church or else we probably wouldn’t be here.

I would even venture that most of us sitting here today know that the place of church in this culture is rapidly changing,

yet some spark of hope keeps us wondering what might be.

Both Watsky and the prophet Isaiah name this yearning.

In Isaiah we hear it in the cries of the people.

They call out to God, look we’re doing what we’re supposed to be aren’t we?

We cross fasting and humbling and worshipping off our Piety Checklist every week. // But we’re not seeing much action from you. Like, what gives God?

I think this is the situation a lot of churches find themselves in today.

Look we’re doing everything like we always did. We’ve got worship on Sunday—check. We got the love feast twice a year—check. We made the pilgrimage to Annual Conference, ate some ice cream—check.

Yet, uh, we could still use some help here with our dwindling numbers and our big fight over sex. So, uh, what gives God?

God doesn’t seem to dig checklists.

Just going through the right motions doesn’t seem to get us any credit with God.

There doesn’t seem to be any bank where we can cash in our piety points.

It’s to these kinds of problems that Isaiah proclaims his prophecy.

Isaiah writes, “such fasting will not make your voice heard on high.”

The humility that the people practice is no more impressive than the tall grass bending in the wind.

The Israelites had been carried off to Babylon by their conquering empire. A society so defined by acquisition that the people and land of Israel were standard commodities to acquire.

When the Israelites in Babylon finally catch a break a generation later and get to come home to Jerusalem, they return to a devastated city. The city and the Temple are in ruins.

Upon their return, they began to go through the old Temple motions because they thought that was what they were supposed to do.

But it turns out that they only picked up an empty shell of a tradition.

Maybe the Israelites have hung out too long in Babylon or maybe it’s just something in human nature, but it seems the prophet is calling them out on their checklist worship.

The voice of the Holy through Isaiah calls the people out on using worship as a means to an end, as a way to get ahead in the eyes of God and in the eyes of society.

The “right motions” with the wrong intentions are unacceptable to God and the people feel the lack of God’s presence.

Young adults seem particularly perceptive to the emptiness of going-through-the-motions church.

After all we’re a generation that has grown up being inundated by advertisements at an unprecedented level.

So we have particularly keen noses for anything that smacks of being false or fake.

If you’ve ever sat in church and been annoyed by a prayer request that seems more like bragging than joyful thanksgiving—

If you’ve ever swallowed hard how you’re really feeling,

and what you really need help with,

because you can’t trust the people in your church

or you think they’d be ashamed—

Then you know what we’re talking about.

You know that too often church has become a place where we bring a very sanitized version of ourselves.

The version of ourselves we bring to church doesn’t swear, drink, smoke, have sex, eat red meat, own a gun, or any number of things that might be shameful in our particular church.

The version of ourselves we bring to church ALWAYS washes our feet before love feast, brushes our teeth, recycles plastic bottles, kisses babies, humors old people, is happy to be there, troubled by nothing, ready to sing and whatever else is good and honorable in our particular church.

It’s not that we need to be an open book to everybody we know, but when our churches become so sanitized that we can’t bring our real selves to worship, we stop being church.

We stop being community.

It’s not like God doesn’t know how many cavities we have, how many people we’ve slept with, what our carbon footprint is, or what we’re really worried about.

So when we swallow our real selves in favor of a sanitized version, we are either protecting ourselves from people we can’t trust, or we are trying to get ahead by trying to be the people we think everyone else wants us to be.

That’s not individuality.

That’s conformity.

And conformity is not community.

Conformity is not church.

And when this happens,

deep down in our guts,

where God so often speaks,

we know something is broken.

In the tradition of many other prophets, Isaiah makes it a priority to tell the people what their call from God is.

It is right back into the broken down ruins of the Temple that God calls the people.

Despite the rubble—all these checklist intentions…

In fact because of the rubble that needs removed from these ruins, we are called into them. It is in these ruins that we can find the foundation that we can build on.

Like the ancient Israelites our tradition too contains something of God.

We are called to re-imagine church yes, but we don’t need to start over from scratch.

Instead we are called into the rubble to sift through our heritage for what can be built upon,

for what is useful,

for what our ancestors have left us.

From the midst of the rubble Isaiah proclaims:

loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke,

let the oppressed go free, break every yoke.

This is where so many of us in the Church of the Brethren really wake up. When it’s time to pray with our hands, backs, and feet, we’re there.

God’s call is for peace and justice, and this is a central gift, a strong piece of foundation upon which our church seeks to stand.

That kind of peace and justice work that feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and brings justice and freedom to the oppressed—that kind of work makes sense to us.

And it has an honored place in our particular heritage.

The call to this kind of holistic peace work that seeks the well-being of all creation, runs like a thread through our tradition.

It is the very life-blood of what our spiritual ancestors have handed down to us.

But service and activism in the name of peace is not enough in itself.

Isaiah’s prophecy from God does not end with passionate peace and justice work in the streets.

For this work too can be done out of an acquisition model.

You can try and put in some time and money for some more of that social credit, but that’s not the call.

It is when this work is God’s call—that makes us a peculiar people.

Scholar Stanley Hauerwas likes to say atheists can do peace work but that doesn’t make them Christian.

I (Parker) like to put my own spin on that when I say, Bono’s doing great AIDS work in Africa but that doesn’t make him my Jesus.

For as people of God we have the unique opportunity and call

to care not only for the physical well-being of our world

but also for its spiritual well-being.

And becoming a vehicle for God’s work of spiritual healing,

that work starts close to home.

You can run as far as you want from who you are and where you come from,

But until you stand and face that truth,

REAL, RADICAL, ROOT transformation cannot take place.

We need to turn all that transformative energy not just out into the furthest, darkest corners of the world.

We need to turn it on ourselves too.

We need to turn it on our own neighborhoods,

on our own churches,

and even on the darkest, grittiest corners of our own hearts.

Doing that kind of holistic work takes the help of real community that can hold you when you need held,

that will see you for who you really are,

that will forgive you your shortcomings,

that will help you forgive yourself,

that will listen with you for the calling of the Holy.

This kind of transformative work

that fills you up so you can go back out

to transform the world

is exactly the work of a strong church community.

It is the work of a church community that comes together to build each other up, not to get ahead of each other, or to tear each other apart.

It is the work of a church community that can handle real differences and real non-conformity.

Sifting through our heritage we do find an emphasis on real, strong community.

Even if we also find that it has always been plagued by the specter of a painful conformity.

While the ban and the tradition of conformity it engendered haunt us yet today, we are also a people who are deeply geared toward and concerned with creating community.

From the earliest group Bible studies of our spiritual ancestors to the intentional communities of our BVSers today, our tradition, at its best, has highly valued real community.

At its best, our tradition has always valued highly the role of each uniquely gifted individual in that community through our belief in the priesthood-of-all-believers.

At its best our tradition has empowered every member to take responsibility for their own spiritual growth, for the spiritual growth of their community, and for the healing of our world.

This is the gift of the church.

This is the gift the church has to give to itself, to us and to the world.

Although church like every other institution or organization is flawed, when we sift through that flawed rubble

we find the foundation of what we yearn for,

we find the foundation of the church of the future,

we find the foundation upon which to build the kind of real transformative community that has the potential to open the way for the healing light of God in our world and in each individual heart.

We find in this foundation the transformative energy that is the life of abundance.

Instead of the checklist mentality that tells us we must acquire to be happy, to be spiritually fulfilled and saved,

We find a foundation for a transformative church, one that can teach us to live in abundance, to delight in the glory and love of God, which we never have to earn and which never ends.

So yes, re-imagine church.

Call out the places where individual congregations and our larger church body falls short of the calling of God.

Shout it out! Do not hold back.

But also be willing to get your hands dirty by getting down into the ruins of all that is wrong with church,

sift through the rubble,

cast aside that which we no longer need,

in order to reach what is good and worthy about our tradition, in order to find the foundation upon which to build the church of the future.

THEN, when we are standing on that strong foundation,

when we have faced all the good and the bad our tradition has to offer,

when we have committed to non-conformity,

when we have committed to real, unsanitized community,

when we have been fed and watered by our heritage,

then our dreams have a real chance of becoming an exciting reality.

Then we shall take delight in God.

Then we shall live into being the body of Christ in the world.

So dream.

Dream a big dream for what the church could be and should be.

Take risks.

Risk being yourself and voicing your perspective.

Stand firm on the foundations of this tradition but look and listen for the ways God is calling us to grow, for what we can leave behind and for what we can reclaim.

With a strong foundation, the sky is the limit.

If you thinking sharing a brew,

Playing Star Foxx,

Throwing foam parties in elevators,

Taking Mondays off for religious reasons,

Climbing a Mountain together,

Screaming at the top of your lungs,

Laughing or crying with the people who will let you do either,

Will build real community

and you think God is calling you to that—

then do it, dream it, make it happen.

Because re-thinking church will take all of us

and all of our individual quirkiness

standing firm on our foundation

and dreaming into the future

to make it happen.

I believe this is the calling of our generation.

Isaiah writes, those who build upon these ancient foundations, “you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”

So dream,

risk community,

be fed by your heritage,

take delight in the calling of God,

and lead us into the church of the future.

Do you vow?

I just got back from Young Adult Conference (it rocks, you should go) and have several potential blog posts churning around in my head.  And y'all may get nag e-mails from me to get you to write as well.  But since it's 1:20 AM and I'm packing for California, I'll keep this one brief.

We closed our final worship by reciting a vow.  Unfortunately I can't tell you what it was, as the slip of paper seems to have removed itself from my pocket between then and now, but it definitely included the word "vow."

For me, this stirred up some dissonance with my understanding of the Brethren tradition of declining to swear oaths, such that I decided not to participate in the reading.  But I'm curious to see some discussion:

• What have your experiences been with the issue of swearing oaths?  Do you consider refusing to do so an important part of your faith tradition, or is it something that doesn't seem to matter much?
• Are there some circumstances in which swearing an oath is more acceptable than in others?  Is making an oath to God OK, since it's not binding oneself to an earthly institution?
• Is saying "I vow" different than saying "I swear?"

Do contribute!

(Update 5/31/11)

I found the paper.  It reads as follows:

We vow to serve and follow Christ as children of God.  We realize the road ahead may not be easy all the time, but we, as the future of the church, strive to hear the call, and go.  We say yes to God, but realize that saying yes comes with a responsibility.  As we leave this place, may we go re-thinking church by the way we live, the things we say, and the actions we portray.  Christ leads and guides us, but we have a choice.  Will we walk in his footsteps?  Will we press on with courage and hope?  Even if we're still waiting, let's enjoy the call of the journey that is before us right now as we continue the work of Christ living peacefully, simply and together!

A 21-year project

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

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.