Not The Religious Type

More on Our National "Teachable Moment"

The President had his sit-down over beer with Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley yesterday afternoon.  Apparently Vice President Biden dropped by as well and all the families picnicked beforehand.  But Pres. Obama also said he wouldn't be issuing any statements, so perhaps we'll need to discover the teachings by inference or by subsequent statements from Prof. Gates or Sgt. Crowley. 

I'm strapped for time (and no doubt for insight), but I do have a discussion starter for those who are interested.  The following tidbit was from a CNN.com commentary by Donna Brazile:

"I was not surprised by the findings of a recent WSJ/NBC poll. It found that just 4 percent of African-Americans think Gates was more at fault compared to 30 percent who pointed to the officer. Among whites, 32 percent said Gates was more at fault while 7 percent identified Crowley."

Discuss please.

Clarence Thomas' "Bill of Obligations" / Charles Park

Supreme court justice Clarence Thomas commented in April that we should have a bill of obligations to go with our bill of rights.  I appreciate his point that unbounded pursuit of rights can actually undermine a society built on the bill of rights.

For example, there have been a rash of scandals by high-ranking officials in our country:  Governor Sanford, Senator Ensign, our former Governor Spitzer, Rep. Pickering, Rep. Sherwood, and on and on. 

They were selfishly pursuing their own gratification with little regard to their obligations to the public and their own families.  Each time a high-profile scandal breaks, there is a little more cynicism, little less trust, negatively affecting the bonds of a society.

Spitzer argued recently that this is just a reflection of the wider society.  I’m not sure what to think of that, coming after his own failures.  But, perhaps it’s true their behavior was influenced by the widely shared sentiment in the popular culture that you only live once, you owe it to yourself to seek your happiness and fulfillment, no matter what.

In some of their cases, I guess they went with the popular argument, if you’ve found ‘true love,’ you’ve got to go for it, no matter if you’re already married, no matter what it might do to the people you profess to love the most, like your children.  Focusing on individual rights and self-fulfillment can foster narcissism and loosen the communal bonds.  Granted.  But, I’m not sure the answer is a bill of obligations. 

Governor Sanford held a press conference admitting to his affair.  And, he said ‘I broke God’s law.’  He was a member of a Christian Bible Study group..   He was well aware of his obligations, but that didn’t stop him.  His practice wasn’t consistent with his convictions.  He’s not alone.

Pickering urged President Bush to declare a National Year of the Bible in 2008.  Sherwood was a ‘families value’ politician.  Spitzer got his fame as a moral crusader against things like prostitution and irresponsible corporate behavior.  They were well aware of their obligations.  In fact, much of their success came from pounding the table on morality and responsibility.

A bill of obligations, a code of ethics, a standard to live by, the Bible would call that ‘the law.’  Such things have a well-known history of fostering hypocrisy.  And the New Testament flat out declares it cannot help us.  "All who rely on observing the law are under a curse." Galatians 3:10 (NIV)

Isn’t that surprising?  Perhaps even shocking that the Bible would say something like that?  We think of the Bible as encouraging us to behave better, to live up to a standard.  

Some codes of ethics are full of flaws.  But, the law here is referring to God’s law, so it should be perfect.  But we’re told relying on living up to a set of standards, even if it’s from God Himself  will only make life unbearable.  Wow.

But then again, perhaps this is why we see all these scandals from people who emphasize the need to live up to our obligations, whether from the religious right or from the secular left.  There’s a curse on it.

So then, we’re stuck.  Selfish pursuit of our rights leads to alienation and misery.  But trying to live by a set of code or obligations is under a curse, usually leading to burn-out and hypocrisy.

The Bible tells us Jesus went to the cross for the joy set before him.  That means He lived up to his obligations AND fulfilled his destiny on the Cross.  What made that possible?

Many things could be said on that, but the first thing that comes to my mind is His faith in the living God to come through for Him.  Now, this is different from how ‘faith’ is sometimes perceived as believing a set of doctrines and convictions.   And, trying to live up to them.  That would be just going back to relying on observing the law.  But an authentic experience and relationship with the living God who can deliver resurrection, that’s a different story.

When we trust, like Christ did, at a cost to ourselves to serve those around us, out of faith that the living God will come through to meet our needs, that’s taking on the attitude of Christ.  And when we experience God coming through, that leads to more faith, and that encourages us to do more.  Of course, there is a risk and a cost to approaching faith like that as opposed to an intellectual exercise.  But the Bible tells us that’s the only way to connect to God and make life work. 

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Galatians 5:6 (NIV)

Is this telling us that only stage 4 faith works?

Gates, Obama, Crowley and that Magical Round of Beer

 

Thursday will apparently mark the awaited "teachable moment on race" for our country as President Obama "sits down for a beer" with Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley from the police force of my own beloved Cambridge, MA police force. 

Our local papers and radio waves are filled with strong opinions on the subject, but I've talked about the incident almost not at all with any one I actually know, quite possibly because our church leaders, for one, have been so trained in diversity issues.  And so the perception among that crowd has tended towards "Yup yup yup" with an eye-roll.

Both Gates and Crowley are indignant.  Neither is remotely apologetic.  President Obama made strong statements (saying that the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" and noting America's long history of racial profiling) and then mildly pulled away from them without disavowing them. 

My friends would point to all of this as evidence that all people want their life narrative to be known and validated.  For Prof. Gates, it's being a black man of high status and accomplishment being arrested for being in his own house.  Yes, Sgt. Crowley demanded that he step out of his house, but he didn't (initially) do that because he knew that once he did that , Crowley could arrest him.  Staying in his house (his OWN house, the one he was accused of breaking into) would require the officer to get a warrant.  Evidently he's another black man facing police harassment for being black. 

Sgt. Crowley's narrative is: he was responding to a call of a prospective breaking and entering.  He was being openly disrespected and screamed at rather than cooperated with.  He asked Prof. Gates to step outside his house because police officers lose their lives not infrequently under such circumstances.  Having some regard for his own safety was not inappropriate, and the situation was safer once Prof. Gates stepped outside.  He's by no means a racist--in fact he teaches a class on race relations and profiling and can produce several African-American police officers who will go to bat for him on this point.

The diversity conversations I've been in would, first, validate President Obama's offer to get them together to talk.  But if it had to pick a narrative to listen to, it would pick Prof. Gates'.  Whatever Sgt. Crowley's intentions, the narrative that matters most here is the one of the historically powerless.  If Sgt. Crowley felt endangered, he could have backed off until the six, count 'em six, squad cars he called for arrived.  This seemed to be the heart of Obama's original, candid comment.  While--as he acknowledged and was then pilloried for--he didn't know the full facts of the case when he quickly and openly commented, it didn't take a genius to acknowledge the long history of racial profiling by police officers and to assess that it was "stupid" for arresting a man for breaking into his own home on the basis of yelling at a police officer. 

I have a mild oar in the water here.  A close friend of mine had a run-in with the local police several years ago over a minor offense that was turned into a major offense by--best as my friend could determine--a strikingly dishonest police officer and complicit assistant DA. Rightly or wrongly, I'm sold by my friend's perspective.  The police and DA behavior seemed egregious and frightening to me.  When I told my friend's story to some African-American friends, they rolled their eyes.  Yes, they knew many stories like this.  One said, "The key lesson here is never to get into the criminal justice system at all.  Because once you do, this (stuff) starts to happen."

Whether my friend's perspective on their experience is accurate or not, the quick, eye-rolling identification by my African-American friends is what strikes me.  Sgt. Crowley may indeed have as many great qualities as have been attributed to him by his friends this week.  Prof. Gates may have escalated the situation.

But am I happy for all the press this episode is getting?  Yes I am.

Are You an Idealist?

I've just come back from a week's writing retreat at a friend's (and reader and occasional commenter on this blog) apartment in New York.  I've been trying to finish this book promised for attendees at the Culture Center Summit--a "how to create a centered-set/ Stage 4 community" manual.  To give you a sense of the magnitude of the challenge, I've written more text in the last week than made up the entire length of Not the Religious Type.  We're talking a lot of words.  And I had a good time catching up on the blog when I went to the nearest Starbucks for internet service. (Did you know that there are several Starbucks in Manhattan?  Who knew?) 

One section I found myself going into in a bit more depth than I expected was what I anticipated being a brief word to the wise on idealism.  I'd remembered a striking quote from Bonhoeffer on the subject that has only seemed more profound as the years pass.  As I revisited the quote, I was floored by how much I understood and resonated with a good deal of his comments, comments that hit me hard when I first read them even as I couldn't believe he was serious.  Idealism a bad thing?

One might regard our endeavor here as idealistic.  And one might, understandably, regard it as a pointed critique of churches.  So I'll be really interested in your response to Bonhoeffer's thoughts. If you end up sold that idealism is a problem, how do you recommend keeping big dreams alive without that devolving into toxic idealism?  I'll start with my preface on the matter, and then it's all Bonhoeffer.

It’s tempting to see idealism as right at the heart of starting any community of faith, much less one in these culture centers we’re describing.  And there’s something to that, but it hits its limits very quickly.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, wrote the shocking line, “God hates visionary dreaming.”  I read that just as I was helping start an ambitious ministry to kids in the city with the highest murder rate in the country.  Our team was living in community.  We were all about visionary dreaming.  Otherwise why would we be there?

And yet Bonhoeffer’s line stuck with me, a line written as he was running his own ambitious community—an underground seminary trying to train pastors who wouldn’t bow to Hitler.  His point was that idealism wars with reality, which is warring with God.  Yes, we start with dreams and pursue them, but then we live in the actual as we see what God is actually up to.

Our early team had its share of idealism which, if held lightly, was charming and helpful, but it held tightly, was unpleasant and hopeless.  A church plant I know was—like all church plants, but much more so—rabidly idealistic on all sides as it got started and, like all idealists, it ended quickly and acrimoniously.  Reality—much less people—rarely lives up to ideals.

Here’s a longer cut of Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on this, which strike me as a gift to all church people, not to mention to all who hope to see, say, a centered-set revival in the secular west.

“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream.  The serious Christian, sat down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it.  But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams.  Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. 

“…The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community, the better for both.  …He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter…

“God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.  …(The dreamer) enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly.  …When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. 

“…If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

“…A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God.  A congregation has not been entrusted to him so that he should become its accuser before God and men.

“…Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification.  What may appear to be weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God.  Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature.  The more thankfully we receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.”

Is he right?  If so, what are the implications of that?

Does Futures Thinking Help Us? / Steven Hamilton

OK, I admit it: whenever I read 'futurist' added-on to someone's name...I snicker.   I mean seriously, 'futurist'?  Have you heard of these guys?  People like Thomas Frey, Matthias Horx, even guys like Len Sweet and Erwin Mcmanus. But, after listening to some of them and reading some of their work, I figured out 'futurist' is not somebody reading palms and doing horoscopes, but someone engaged in something called 'futures-thinking', here what wikipedia says it is:

"Futures thinking or futuring is often summarized as being concerned with "three Ps and a W," or possible, probable, and preferable futures, plus wildcards, which are low-probability but high-impact events, should they occur. Even with high-profile probable events, such as the fall of telecom costs, the growth of the internet, or the aging demographics of particular countries, there is often significant uncertainty in the rate or continuation of a trend. Thus a key part of futuring is the managing of uncertainty and risk..."

In terms of our conversations here regarding Stage 4 Faith, this phrase jumps out at me: "Thus a key part is the managing of uncertainty and risk..."  These 'futurists' are trying to make their way despite some uncertainty.  It immediately strikes me that we have been doing the very same thing in most of the conversation's Dave has hosted here, whether our 'Love is an Orientation' book club, or recent conversations concerning men and church.  I don't want to pat ourselves on the backs too hard, but what was really great about those extended conversations is that we all experimented with good futures-thinking in an environment fostering Stage 4 Faith, which as we have defined it here is wading into deeper waters fraught with uncertainty, risk and doubt.  

 

In a recent conversation I had with friends, we were talking through uncertainty and doubt, and we ask the question: what is doubt?  I think Alistair McGrath has an interesting, possibly provocative, way of explaining it here in this excerpt from his book Doubting:

 

"In the first place, doubt is not skepticism-the decision to doubt everything deliberately, as a matter of principle. In the second, it's not unbelief- the decision not to have faith in God. Unbelief is an act of will, rather than a difficulty in understanding....[i]n the words of Blaise Pascal, "In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't"

I like how he is quick to define his terms, and really I think in the Blaise Pascal quote, we see the tension-filled path of Stage 4 Faith in light and shadow metaphor.  What do you think?  How healthy has doubt and conversations with others regarding their uncertainty been for your own centered-set journey?  How has your faith community at-large dealt with uncertainty and doubt felt and voiced in its midst?  Do you feel safe in expressing and wrestling with doubt?  How might futures-thinking impact or converge with centered-set theory?  Are there other issues you see in futures-thinking, centered-set theory, doubt and Stage 4 Faith?

 

Now, all this talk of futurist's and future's-thinking  makes me realize that I myself practice futures-thinking; does that make me a futurist? OK, no snickering at me if I begin adding futurist as an appendage to my last name...)

My Current Takeaway from Our Conversation re: Men and Church

Hi gang.  Wow, this will be our SIXTH straight post on men and church, perhaps a new high mark of sustained attention to anything on this blog.  I'm sure you women readers are feeling so loved and cared for...

So I am feeling just a bit conscious of our women readers and thinking I might take a breather from this topic.  But perhaps some reflection on what I'm taking away from this conversation will be of interest to some of you.

I think what I'm most struck by and perplexed by is the observation that men need a great cause to fight for.  (And could I stipulate something early on in this post?  It's that everything said about men could just as easily apply to many--or all for all I know--women.  These are huge generalizations.  But since that's what we've been talking about over so many posts, I'm planning to run with them on this one.  With the next post, hello nuance!  But not with this one.)

Here's what grabs me about that observation.  When our church needed to buy a building and it seemed utterly impossible, some of the men who most dramatically stepped up to the plate financially were men who'd totally relate to this point.  Many of them got hugely enthused about this great challenge and gave just incredibly to it.  Ironically, what they gave to was...a church.  So we now have the building, and are indeed running a church in it, which to some of them can, I think, seem intrinsically feminine.  Life is crazy sometimes, isn't it? 

I've seen this as well with Not Religious, the organization that runs this blog.  The mission of Not Religious is to empower a Stage 4 revival in the most-secular parts of the Western world.  The feeling in the organization is that this is the single most important question of faith on earth today.  And that it's well-nigh impossible.  And that nobody else is attempting it (I'm sure this is arrogance on our part, but we're men; evidently we need to feel special). 

(We are in process of recruiting women to the board.  We'll see if the ethic there is irredeemably macho or if there's room for all to play.)  (And, for one more parenthetical, any of you want to give your lives to this big dream?  By all means let me know what your particular passion is along these lines.  And, if I may say, come to the Culture Center Summit (the registration deadline is July 31st), which is the place in which we're trying to build that coalition.) 

And some of the people who are most giving themselves to this are men who've been successful in business but haven't found a great place of leadership within our church until this.  But give them this challenge and they're absolutely, sacrificially engaged.

So I'm sold that there's something there.  My dilemma is wondering if this is sustainable as something churches always do--take on vast, impossible but clearly worthy challenges that any man who wants to can sacrificially give himself to.  The building was a unique case--we could keep buying buildings for no clear reason, I suppose.  We do take on big challenges--our goal is to be the single most helpful private enterprise in terms of meeting the needs of our city, for instance, and I'd say we're off to a decent start.  But not all men groove with even something that big.  Starting a stage 4 revival in the secular West?  Some men get that vision, some don't.  I haven't yet mastered the ever-present, easily-publicizable massive, impossible, big vision that all men can grab onto.

But has this gotten me thinking about this?  Yes it has.

Second, it's gotten me thinking about how to teach sexuality, although it might have actually confirmed me further into inaction, which probably wasn't the goal.  I'm sold from these posts that a continued "men's sexuality is bad and needs to be contained" point of view from a church just isn't productive.  It's very easy to rail against the utter and sudden prevalence of pornography (pornography has always been around; it's the internet that's the game-changer) or to talk about the need for men to honor women sexually as they get to know them.  And I'm on board!  But a continued negative message towards men's sexuality just seems counter-productive on all fronts.  It reinforces the need to be good boys; it reinforces passivity.  It seems to be a case where the cure is dramatically worse than the disease.

So maybe what it has me thinking about...hmm, give me a minute with this one...is a sermon or maybe more where we talk candidly about all of this stuff--the cure being worse than the disease, etc.--and still providing some way forward.  And yet that way is...?  Leave Jesus for awhile, head with Araz' co-workers to the strip clubs, let them mentor you in being proactive towards women (even it might well cost you a lasting and happy marriage in the end), then reconvert and take everything you've learned with you as you lose all the bad stuff...?  So, yes, I'm tracking that the "Bad! Bad!" message towards male sexuality is a loser.  But I'm working hard to know what the good way to go is.

And, if I can be candid (and if I can't be candid with you great people, who can I be candid with?), I suppose my final takeaway goes along the lines of "Bitch, bitch bitch."  (This is a quote from perhaps the greatest-ever Simpsons episode--a high bar--in which Homer and Marge leave the kids with Grandpa for the afternoon and by the time they get home the kids are being taken away by child-protective services.  Marge: "We leave the kids with you for three hours and they get taken away by the state?!"  Grandpa: "Oh, bitch, bitch, bitch.") 

But, while a part of me absolutely relates to these concerns (I've been apart of some charismatic churches where the utter encouragement towards ecstatic emotion--most-stereotypically embodied by older women running and twirling around the church with flags and ribbons--has pushed me a bit far), another part of me doesn't at all.  It also seems vaguely unmanly to complain at any length about these things at all, as if we have no power over our own lives.  Maybe it's because I did in fact grow up secular, but I have never felt disempowered as a man, never felt that it was a church's job to "engage" me or give me a purpose for my life.  I've done just fine with having larger purposes to my life and pursuing them.  I've done fine in finding other men in church settings who I liked just fine and enjoyed trying to follow Jesus with.  Whenever I've wanted to take initiative in a church, I've mentioned it to church leaders (always sympathetically to them, never as a critique of what the church is already doing, which would have struck me as not owning my own life--as if it's their job to read my mind and provide some service that I'm hoping to see).  And I believe one hundred percent of the time I've been totally blessed to give my idea a shot, which I've then done and usually really enjoyed. 

I have very much valued getting to follow Jesus with other people, in small group settings and in large gatherings, and have not at all found that feminine--I've found it human and entirely useful, especially for someone who's prone to isolate themselves.  Like many men, worship has come less naturally for me.  Grace starts sobbing as the first chord is struck and I settle in for what I'm hoping will be a pleasant experience--perhaps a gender difference.  But, to my mind, to complain about something so clearly valuable to so many people and so historic in its application in church history would be small-minded.  So long as it's competently handled and not completely bizarre, subculture-driven and alienating (and I've been in those settings, so I suppose that's a judgment call), I have no beef at all with worship.

Many churches, ours included, give quite a bit of attention to leadership development and have a plethora of ministry opportunities.  Many churches, ours included, actually preach about risk and heroism quite a bit.  Perhaps they over-weigh the relational (small group leadership), but I've rarely encountered the church, ours included, that wouldn't welcome the man who wants to take those ideas and run with them another valuable direction.

The Eldredge complaint about churches missing men is something I found very helpful when it was first mentioned (I liked and promoted Wild at Heart) and a little tiresome when he made it a cottage industry.  It strikes me as a "duly-noted" rather than a crusade.  And Eldredge is now an open-critic of churches--he's left them--so he's consistent, but I by no means share his critique.  Obviously, I suppose.

So...my third reaction.  I don't entirely relate.

But I have my first two reactions as well.  And saying that I don't entirely relate does say that I relate to some degree.  And clearly this really hits a nerve for many men, so clearly I don't completely represent my gender.

Araz's Insight on Men and Initiative

From Dave:

I'm not sure how many of you noticed Araz' provocative comment right towards the end of the post on "Trends with Men?"  A few other posts had already gone up and gotten their own share of attention.  But Araz''s comment both brought a smile to my face--is he really saying that?  is it true?--and got me thinking.  I wonder if you'll have the same experience.

So, as we continue to compile practical tips about how to make church conducive to men (keep 'em coming!), I'd love to hear your thoughts on what Araz has to say.

Araz said...

I find your blog quite interesting and probably have a counter-Christian-culture viewpoint.

It is true that the Church does not attract 'a certain sort of men' - I would call - the 'Proactive' type. I have met many attractive women who have said that they get the attention they 'deserve' in the world - not in the church.

I disagree that pornography or sexual immorality is the root cause for not being proactive in church. I find that the men who are proactive in the world - have no value system to say pornography or sexual immorality might be wrong. So they go out and experiment with sex and 'achieve'. They are rewarded immensely for their proactive attitude. This in turn ingrains in their psyche that they can conquer anything.

I was at a "worldly" bachelor party recently, where the whole aim of the game was to drink and to go to strip clubs. I had a few drinks but did not go to the strip club with them. Here are some observations from hanging out with them:

• They were not afraid of interacting with pretty women (on the street), since they had seen 'them' naked already. When they were at the club, they actually found women, and initiated conversation.

• They were more accomplished in their age group as opposed to a similar aged average 'Christians'.

• The younger ones learnt from the older ones how to be daring.

Again, I am not condoning their actions. These are just my observations.

In church, a lot of 'proactive' chrisitan men I have met, have been (in the past) in environments that they had experimented with sex, drug and/or alcohol. They learnt to be 'proactive' before meeting Jesus. In the process of 'daring' to break the rule, something gets buildup in their psyche that might be hard to come by otherwise. They come into church with that attitude.

However the good old boys in the church - who grow up in the church - where would they learn to be proactive?
After a boy becomes a 'Christian' he is told not do sex, drugs and not too much alcohol.
He is told to read his bible and pray. He is told to 'surrender' all to Jesus.
How does he learn to 'dare' - and find a place to exert his will?

The few places there might be proactivity in the church - is evangelism and leading bible studies.
Is that enough. The boy tries to tell a few people about Jesus - but then he kinda stops, because it does not seem to go anywhere. The boy also leads a few bible studies, but then what? What is he rewarded with?
Is he able to learn to go to pretty women, and start conversation and date them?

In the bachelor party I was at - the beta men were learning from the alpha males how to interact and 'win' a woman. They were not learning to be husbands or fathers. They were learning how to be proactive with their masculinity and sexuality. In church, it is hard to grow up in those areas.

The 'wild at heart' book highlights three universal desires of men: a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. There are many ways to achieve those principles. Eldredge's favorite way is to go to the woods - and experience nature. Maybe that satisfies the first two universal desires, but I am not sure how that satisfies the third (especially for single men)? The guys at the bachelor party, had the three universal desires incorporated in the getaway.

In the 'world', there are more oppertunities for men to learn to be proactive especially regarding women, than in the church. I find the church culture quite feminine in nature. It is designed to 'surrender' all to Jesus so he can 'lead' you. To 'surrender' is biblical - I totally agree. It is predominently what is being is being preached from the church. However, if a boy - who has not learnt to be proactive, comes to church and is told to 'surrender' all, what is he learning? Is he rewarded for proactivity? Can he grow into that 'go-getter' man from the church's preaching? I would say not.

There is a place to 'surrender all to Jesus' for men, however it comes AFTER he learns the place of proactivity especially regarding women. It is in that place of struggle where men are formed. Men have to know they can 'achieve' and conquer - even in their own ability. ONLY then can they surrender the full breadth of the inner desire, knowing when God says, conquer 'this', they know they can!!

I am not condoning sin, as much as noticing how 'sinful' men seem to have achieved something that I never learnt from 'church'.

These are just some thoughts and observations - take it for what it is worth.

So What Do You Recommend to Create the Greatest Church Ever for Men?

Clearly we’ve hit another point of great interest with our discussion of how well men do or don’t connect with churches.

A number of us have pitched things that might be a bit overstated, but might suggest something really helpful and worth thinking about.  Men hate small groups, because they’re not into sitting in a room and connecting with people.  Men don’t usually go someplace to sing with other men.  Men don’t like community outreach that involves board games (a specific illustration, to be sure, but I couldn’t figure out the generalization here—and in our case, we actually have plenty of men hanging out with homeless people, starting all-city free sports programs to get kids off the streets, building computers for local disadvantaged students, trying to start new churches in nearby towns, and so on).  Men don’t do well in lecture settings—they need to move and need multiple media for optimal learning. 

This could all sound pretty sweeping.  I.e. if you want to help men do well in churches, don’t, say, gather, because men aren’t relational.

All to say, I’m right there with the critiques, if a bit tempered in most cases, but still sympathetic.  But I’m still not sure I’m tracking with what’s being proposed, apart from shutting the doors of churches.  And I’m assuming we’re not suggesting that we segregate men and women, so if this optimal church is to exist for both sexes, what’s your thought on the changes that will make this proposal sing?

Marginalization and Its Discontents

With all of you (even those of you who objected to yesterday's post), I also want to thank Tim for the boldness of yesterday's post.  As Dan (who helps moderate this site and who both solicited for and lobbied for Tim's post) says in his comment to Tim's post, there are lots of folks who very much share Tim's objection.  I initially wasn't going to run Tim's bold post, because I was aware of what, to my mind, are things he's not seeing and I felt it would take us down a track that wouldn't serve anyone, not least the folks Tim is advocating for.  But with some minimal pushback on that choice, it struck me that, hey, here's Tim saying he and folks like him are marginalized by church (If I'm understanding him, by all churches not just ours).  We often talk about marginalization here, not least in our short conversation last week on homosexuality and church.   So, hey, let's hear from another voice.

While I'd love to talk about the issues Tim raises, I also thought I'd pull back the lens just a bit and talk about marginalization in general, which is such a huge topic on this blog and everywhere.  Dana, in his comment on Tim's post, uses some jargon I'm familiar with but which might be new to some of you.  He says something to this effect: "Relative marginalization is often seen as absolute marginalization."  This is jargon from multi-ethnicity, multi-class conversations.  And what it means is that it's in the human condition that, when we feel marginalized, we suddenly see it as THE story of whatever setting we're in.  We suddenly think of all the friends like us who feel the same way.  And suddenly we are the ones on the bottom of the pile, the ones not being seen by the powerbrokers.

A commonly-expressed picture of this: The white man who is victimized by affirmative action.  Let's say that the given white man is indeed the one who would have gotten the scholarship or job except that affirmative action let a person of color leapfrog him.  So "merit" is on the white man's side.  He's being victimized!  White men get no respect in this culture!  PC culture makes it all about minorities who, let's just be honest, can't compete on merit.  And everyone he knows feels just the same way.  It's obvious except to whiny minorities and people hopelessly blinded by PC thinking.

So what should then be just as obvious is that the, say, Latino man who grew up in the barrio should agree with the white man.  He, the Latino man who got the scholarship, should obviously see that he, the Latino man who grew up in the barrio, clearly has all the advantages in American culture today.  He should feel sympathy for the victimized white man who grew up in the suburbs and went to one of the top high schools in the state but still, nonetheless, so has the deck stacked against him that he can't get the scholarship over this Latino kid from the barrio who, after all, scored 100 points less than him on the SAT. 

Relative marginalization--after all, the white man in question did, in fact, lose a scholarship that, on other terms, he would have gotten--is perceived as absolute marginalization (the whole deck is stacked against me; it's unfair). 

A comment made to Tim's post was that the trends are that men are fleeing church.  I'm pretty confident that's actually not true.  The church has always has a preponderance of female participants and male leaders.  Where the church is most booming in the world today--Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps South Korea--is even more-pronounced on this score.  There is a higher percentage of female participation in each of those places than in the States and there is even more forceful male leadership.  (David Yonggi Cho, pastor of the largest church in the world in Seoul--it runs about a quarter million people a week--proudly says that one of his secrets, along with having male top leadership, is having a lay leadership that's 80% female).  What to make of that is a very intriguing question to me.  Does the very structure of church demand this imbalance on both sides?  Are both of those things outrages for their own reasons--one which seems to favor one gender, one the other?

In our own case, Dan and Tim are 100% right that there are young men leaving our church because of the issues Tim raises.  But I'd suspect I talk to a wider swath of people in our church than they do, and I think I can confidently say that--among people leaving our church (and, just to say, I'm not at all threatened by or apologetic for the thought that people are leaving our church with grievances--we're at the size where that category will always be there, and for contradictory reasons; I see my job as to listen, address grievances where I can, and bless where I can't)--the reason Dan and Tim are seeing is actually a minority.  There are SO many reasons why people leave our church.  My guess at the top reason?  That we don't have longer, more-emotive worship experiences that leaves plenty of room for the Spirit to work.  Funny, isn't it?  If we addressed the top reason (perhaps) that people leave our church with grievances, we'd drive away MORE of the folks Tim and Dan run with.  Just today I heard a complaint about how our church marginalizes older single women.

So what's the answer to our marginalization dilemma? 

I wonder if there are at least two tracks worth pondering.  To some degree all marginalization is real.  If we're feeling marginalized, whatever the "facts" of the matter, we are, in fact, feeling marginalized.  So I wonder if all of our task--particularly those leading churches, but maybe also all of us who feel sympathetic to including as many people as possible into everything God has to offer--is to continue to think how to clearly present to all constituencies how they, too, can play.  How exactly who they are is both valued and empowered in our setting.  The great value in Tim's post is to remind me (and perhaps us) that clearly spelling that out to young single men remains a worthy and important challenge. 

And then the second challenge applies to those who, best as any of us can figure out, actually do in every respect have the deck stacked against them.  It does seem objectively true (and I do have the survey along with the anecdotal data to back me up on this one) that if someone in the GLBT community would like the benefits being offered by a given evangelical church, there usually is no onramp to getting those benefits.  That's a pretty powerful marginalization.  Minorities.  People with disabilities.  Kids.  And, yes, women in some settings (top leadership in particular).  In these cases, I wonder if we're still at the "asking systemic questions" stage. 

But what do you think? 

Why Men Hate Church / Tim Abrahamsen

Hi all,

Our last conversation re: men and church prompted lots of conversation (my favorite comment was Scott's--to the effect that "the author of the original post" was out of touch and stuck in the past, but the commenters were really onto something--how true that is).  It also prompted Tim Abrahamsen, who attends my church, to take the bold step of writing a guest post about why this very issue has him considering leaving our church.  While, clearly, this could provide a fruitful internal conversation on our end, it's also full of specific insights and opinions about this topic that I thought you might appreciate.  Take a look.

Why Men Hate Church  
Not only because I happen to be a young single man (which seems to be the target demographic here), but also because I’ve been wrestling with this issue for some time now:  I think the church just doesn’t understand men.  I’ve gone to one or another church my entire life; I’ve been a member of my current church for six years now and can say this is far and away the best church I’ve ever been a part of.  I’ve grown in my relationship with God in these past six years in ways I never thought possible, and I really do owe a lot to this church for that.

But the irony here is that as I’ve grown closer to God and started to learn what it means to be a man of God, I’ve increasingly felt the desire to leave the church.  This is not motivated by anger or youthful rebellion, but by the feeling that the church really, fundamentally does not understand men, and so I’m not going to find what I’m looking for within the walls of any church.  Here are a few reasons why:

1) Sunday services and small groups appeal to women way more than they do to men.

First of all, let’s talk about Sunday services, which are the central part of almost anyone’s experience in church.  A little background on me: I work as a personal trainer, and I think it’s very interesting watching how men and women differ when it comes to exercising in a gym.  Women tend to love group exercise classes, where you have a trainer up top leading a group of people in a proscribed exercise routine.  Men tend to like working out on their own, taking a mentality of “just show me a couple things and let me figure it out.”  I’ve often wondered why this is, and believe me, big corporate gyms like Boston Sports Clubs have invested plenty of money in finding out why.  Their answer?  It’s just the way we are.  Women tend to like the leader/group format, men tend to prefer doing it themselves, learning as they go along – it’s how our brains are set up to work.  This has also been postulated as one reason why boys are underperforming in schools – the typical lecture format you find in school appeals to girls more than it does to boys.  Considering this, is it any surprise that you find more women than men in any given Sunday service, given that it’s format is based that same leader/group format you find in group ex classes and in academia?  I hope not.

Second: Small groups. Imagine this conversation taking place:

Man 1: I really like this Jesus guy!  But I really need someone to discuss it with; my wife never wants to talk.

Man 2: I know, why don’t we get together once a week, drink tea and talk about our feelings?

Man 1: That sounds like a great idea!  I’ll bring the chips and dip!

Come on, guys.  This is the format we’re giving men to grow spiritually and seek a deeper connection with God?  It sounds like a Sex and the City episode.  This highlights another important difference between men and women:  women build relationships for their own sake – most women would feel completely natural calling a girlfriend “just to talk.”  Men, on the other hand, are much more objective-oriented when it comes to relationships.  There’s a goal that we share, so we work together for that goal, and we become friends as a result.  We men do talk about our feelings, but usually as a means to further accomplish whatever goal is in front of us.  So don’t be surprised if men don’t feel the desire to go to a small group “just to talk.”  I’m not:  I’ve been leading a co-ed small group for six months now, and in that time I’ve gotten about six or seven requests from women asking to visit to check it out.  The number of men who’ve shown interest so far: a big fat zero.

2) The outreach and ministry we do tend to be very feminine.

A couple months ago, I got invited to “game night” at an apartment building close to my church.  For those of you who don’t know, game night is a little gathering that some people from the church put on where people who live in the buildings can come down, have fun, make friends, or even just drop their kids off for a little while so Mom can relax.  It’s a great concept, and I hear lots of people have gotten some good out of it, both on the giving and receiving end.  For me, though, it was kind of awkward – taking care of small children tends not to be the forte of most men.  So no big deal, it wasn’t for me, I don’t have to go back if I didn’t like it, right?

Thing is, this kind of typifies a lot of ministry/outreach programs that we do.  We have community gatherings, potluck dinners, quilting parties, arts festivals – all great stuff to be sure, but stuff that women are probably going to get more out of than men.  This is probably to be expected in a community that is predominately female, but after a while the effects start to spiral:  men feel like all the stuff the church is doing is for women, so they stay away, but then there’s nothing going on for the men except to follow the women at whatever they’re doing (ever wonder why churches attract passive men?)

3) The church sees masculinity as the problem, and femininity as the solution.

Men today not only feel out of place in church; many times we feel as though we are the problem.  In our society we get so bogged down with tales of masculinity gone wrong, of corporate greed, gang violence, pornography, etc, that we start to feel like the problem is men.  After all, if it weren’t for men, there would be no Wall Street meltdown, no civil wars, and no child sex trade, right?  If only we men weren’t such junkies for risk and success, if only we weren’t so aggressive, if only we could reign in our sex drives, if only we were more like women, the world would be a much better place, right?

This is how a lot of men feel.  We seem to have forgotten all the awesome characteristics that make men men:  things like fighting to protect those you love, being able to take risks without being paralyzed by “what ifs”, being able to stand strong in the face of adversity and keep your wits about you.  We as a church talk about peace, we talk about love and reconciliation and getting in touch with our emotions, but we rarely if ever talk about the need to stand and fight for what’s right, or how to act in the face of fear, or how to take risks, damn the consequences.  It’s no wonder we see men as the problem.

4) The church rarely talks about sex, and when it does, it goes about it in the wrong way.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that sex is an important topic for men.  Dr. Kevin Leman, a Christian marriage counselor, writes in his book Sheet Music that a woman once asked him, “Do men think about sex all the time?”  His response: “well, not all the time.  Sometimes we think about food and sex.  Occasionally we think about killing deer and breaking ninety on the golf course, but pretty much our minds go back to sex.”  I will say, ladies, he is exaggerating (although not that much).  Nevertheless, it’s easy to say that sex has been the single most important emotional/psychological topic in my life since I hit puberty.

But we never talk about it!  For some strange reason we all act like it doesn’t exist most of the time, and even when we do talk about it, it’s just to say “no.”  Don’t look at porn.  Don’t masturbate.  Don’t make out with your girlfriend.  Don’t check out that girl in a low-cut top.  Don’t pressure your wife for sex: can’t you see she’s tired from taking care of the kids all day?  See the pattern?  The only time I ever hear anyone talk about sex is when someone’s advising me on how to resist the desire (or asking my advice), as if sex is this big cosmic evil, this huge prank that God has pulled on us:  giving men an emotional longing that is so central to our lives and yet supposedly so antithetical to who we’re supposed to be as Christians.  It’s the ultimate Catch-22, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cursed my sex drive thinking that no good would ever come of it.

It’s only been recently that God’s led me to the startling conclusion that my sex drive is actually a gift!  Who’d a thunk?  There’s more to my sexuality as a single man than just denying it, I can actually discover who I am as a sexual being and realize that as part of who I am as a man, AND THAT IS GOOD – it’s part of that wild strength that God gave men, to make us pursuers and protectors.  Sadly, I definitely feel in the minority here:  most men in the church still feel that they have to be “neutered for Christ,” and most men outside the church stay away because of it.  So if we want men to come back to church, we’ve got to accept our own sexuality, and recognize a man’s sex drive as a good thing.

5) The church just doesn’t know what to do with men.

The tragedy of modern masculinity is this:  men feel obsolete.  It used to be that men were protectors and providers, we fought to defend what was ours, we worked with our hands, and we taught our kids, especially our sons, how to be adults, how to be men.  But now thanks to safe suburbs and Brinks Home Security for keeping us a push of a button away from the police, thanks to an increasing number of women working and becoming breadwinners for their families (which isn’t a bad thing, but this is how men feel), thanks to public schools who now take on the role of teaching our children, we men don’t really know what to do with ourselves.  And to be quite honest, I don’t think the church knows what to do with us either – it seems to me that the biggest reason people are even trying to get men back into church is because there are lots of single women who want to get married.  Is that really the only good that men can do for the church?

You see, everything that men have to offer, everything that has defined masculinity since the dawn of mankind has slowly become unnecessary in this day and age.  And so we men feel like our time is past; like an aging superhero in a comic book who realizes that the world that once called to him for help no longer needs him.  It’s a sad realization to make.

But the reality is there are still battles to fight, we men have just been asleep to them, and to our own power to fight them.  There is still evil in the world, and battling evil just happens to be a man’s biggest strength.  If the church can acknowledge that, if we can awaken ourselves to that untapped resource that is true, Godly masculinity, if we can accept it and learn to wield it and not fear it, I promise that you will be astounded by what you can achieve.

So those are some of my thoughts, and I could go on.  I do have ideas for what the church can do; but that can be saved for another time.  Right now I just hope that we can acknowledge this challenge as it stands; if we can accept men as they are we’ve already fought half the battle.  As for me, who knows if I’ll stay in the church or not, but I’ll be damned if I go down without a fight.

Trends with Men?

I have a conversation every few months that began for me maybe fifteen years ago.  It's some variant on "what's happened to men?"  Let me begin by saying that absolutely none of you awesome men are in any way being described here, I'm confident.  And this isn't a commentary on my church or on any specific church.  Rather let's call it "something in the air."   I'd love your perspective on it.

Here's how the conversation began for me fifteen or so years ago.  A friend who worked with college student Christian groups said something like, "Dave, the young men we're working with now are a different breed than when you were in school.  They're hugely more reluctant, say, to lead.  They hang back and wait for others to initiate things.  The women, by and large, take much more initiative both in leading our groups and in life in general." 

I confirmed with him that he regarded this as different than in my day--which he emphatically did.  And then I asked him for theories about why that change might have happened.  His take at the time: increased divorce among the parents of these young men.  I asked why this wouldn't have equally affected women and his theory ended there, but he still very much held to it.

This conversation has never gone away since then, recurring--as I mentioned--once every few months, it seems.  The version of it I hear in churches has these twists.  (A) "We have vastly more marriage-able and awesome young women than young men." (B) "When we look at our leadership pool (especially among single people),  it's disproportionately female."  (C) "Of the (heterosexual) marriage-able young men who are in our church, they take very little initiative with women."  (D) "It's not that we never meet young, dashing men who seem full of leadership and drive--we just, by and large, meet them in settings other than churches (business settings, the local basketball court)."  This last one has some particular interest, because it would argue that many churches repel a certain sort of man.  (You may have read somewhat recent books like Why Men Hate Going to Church or Wild at Heart which would expound at some length on point (D).) 

Again, let me just say, I'm not talking about you, oh male reader (in fact I'd suspect that this blog ferrets out a particularly motivated, handsome and visionary sort of man).  I'm not talking about my church (or yours, so far as I know).  I'm just talking about conversations that cross many lines. 

Some theories that I hear thrown out for some of these observations.  Why don't marriage-able men take more initiative than they do with marriage-able women?  (A) Widespread access to and use of pornography takes the edge off.  (B) I hear stories of men who have taken such initiative, seen the relationship go bad, and then the woman's friends in the church trash him to all their friends.  Which gets back to the man's friends.  Who no longer feel safe around or attracted to any of the woman's catty friends.  So the men don't ask them out and keep lots of distance from them.  Which gets them criticized by the same women as being spineless and weak.  Which gets back to the guys.  Which reinforces the pattern.  (This would argue that churches are uniquely safe and unsafe settings for relationships.  They give a great context for them.  But if the relationships go bad, it's much harder than it would be if you didn't share all the same friends and show up every Sunday at 11 to the same place.)

As to whether men in church settings are uniquely less initiative-taking and leadership-loving than they used to be, I wonder if that goes back to the subject of this blog.  If our world is rewarding secularism more and more, if secular terms are becoming ever-more compelling than the terms of faith, maybe it's no wonder that some men of a certain sort (did I mention?--NOT you and your male friends in your church, who rock) turn their attention to work or fame or hard partying.

All to say, this is a conversation I keep having.  What's your take?  Are these observations bunk?  Do you have theories about them?  (And, needless to say, given that you may well have friends from your church--which in some cases will be MY church--who READ this blog, I'll trust your delicacy not to trash them in your comments.  But I'd, again, love your thoughts.)

Thoughts on Celebrity Funerals / Jeff Heidkamp (Minneapolis, MN)

It's been interesting watching the reactions to Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett.  I grew up in a very conservative home, so I literally had no exposure to Jackson or Fawcett. 

I was at Costco yesterday and found a DVD with a bunch of Michael Jackson music videos for 8 bucks, and thought I'd pick it up (my wife nixed the boxed set of Charlie's Angels reruns, however).  The production is obviously dated, but I found that several of them were quite moving- particularly "Black or White" and "You are not alone".  At first they seem corny, but he seemed to have that knack for putting universal issues in very broad, approachable terms. 

What really interests me about the remarkable public response to these deaths is the degree to which both Jackson and Fawcett clearly connect to flawed aspects of humanity.  With no judgment intended, it is impossible to think about Jackson without thinking of the rather public personal unraveling in his later years.  And I don't think it takes Jesus to think that while there is something harmless about the sex-symbol status of a Farrah Fawcett, there is also something of misogyny at work in that persona.

And yet, both figures are beloved, and in a way that seems to me to reflect something good rather than bad about society.  I can't imagine not being moved by the image of Jackson's daughter weeping and proclaiming, against all public sentiment, that she loved her dad and was glad he was her father.  And while I know less about Fawcett, her courageous battle with cancer resounds with so many struggles I've watched even in my relatively short life.

Perhaps there is something important about faith in all this.  We look at Jackson and Fawcett and we see ourselves- yes, we are flawed.  Yes, there are things about us that are deeply embarrassing.  There are responses in us, sexual or otherwise, that at times we'd rather not admit to.  And yet we are capable of courage, beauty, love, and compassion, even in the midst of our flaws.

And, perhaps, this insistence is something of the reflection of the divine within us.  We will not be owned by our flaws, by our mistakes, or our personal demons.  We are made for something larger, something better, something infinite.  There is an almost messianic streak in some of Jackson's music- heal the world, we are the world, we don't want to be alone.  I wonder if some of that resonates in everyone.

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Are You a Patriot?

So, okay, we've got this conversation on homosexuality going, which I interrupted just a skosh yesterday, and I'd love to keep that ball rolling if there's any more to be said at the moment than what we've said.

But Independence Day got me thinking about patriotism and my muse is so astoundingly fleeting, I thought I should run with this for the common good.

And, for one more note in the preamble, I'm away again for the rest of this week.  (I'm taking my three young boys on a "boys trip" to New York for two days, upon which the left-at-home girls will join us for three more days.  A Mets game awaits!  [For one thing,  the Mets are at home while the Yankees are not.  And it's probably for the best, as many years of Yankee-revulsion could be hard to overcome as we stepped across the threshold.  But there's probably another great post on the Yankees/spiritual darkness theme, so I don't want to spoil that here.])  All to say, please indulge your "I want to write a post for this blog!" instincts and get them to dan@notreligious.org. And thank you very much to the couple of you who have indeed submitted posts recently that we haven't yet run.  I'll get back to you!  I haven't forgotten.

All to say, I'm not sure why patriotism has repelled me from a pretty young age.  It's not a Jesus thing--though these days I have lots of Jesus-based ammunition for it.  I had it at least by my atheistic mid-teens.  Graduating seniors in my high school could pick a quote to go under the picture in their yearbook, and for whatever reason mine was a political comment from the noted firebrand Neil Simon.  It was from his flop early play The Star-Spangled Girl and went thusly: "I love absolutely everything about this country except people who love absolutely everything about this country."  Somehow that was what I wanted to be remembered by.  It's a mystery.

if you track with some of the terms of this blog, you've probably jumped ahead of me and diagnosed my anti-patriotism as a stage 3/stage 2 thing (note the button on "Stage 4 faith," above, for a description of this).  And you're probably right.  I'm sure patriotism represented a world I was eager to leave behind.  (I was recruited by three service academies.  My dad said I should take them up on it--they would make a man out of me.  I looked at him with wonder, thinking that he profoundly didn't know to whom he was talking.)

Transitioning to follow Jesus included an easy transition on this front.   As followers of Jesus, our loyalty was to God's kingdom on earth, not to one nation or another.  Yes, we were to obey the ruling authorities, but clearly Jesus wasn't a cheerleader for Rome (or for Israel--he left that to Simon the Zealot). 

And July 4 reminds me that I remain in this uneasy place today.  On the one hand, I'm a massive America fan.  I'm so glad to have been born here.  I love Boston, just as I loved San Francisco before it.  I couldn't imagine living in a repressive country (Iran seeming to carry the banner for that in the media at the moment).  I couldn't be happier that America won the Revolutionary War and that Hitler was defeated, and I feel a big thank-you to all those who fought and died in those efforts.  (Some other conflicts are harder to cheer for, through no fault at all of the servicemen and women who fought in them.)  My family had a truly fantastic time at a local fireworks celebration on Saturday.  So in all those ways, I suppose I'm a patriot.

But I nonetheless don't feel like a patriot.  My loyalties flow much easier towards Jesus than they do towards America.  Maybe those two things aren't at odds, but they can stubbornly feel at odds to me.

So help me out.  Are you a patriot?  Why or why not?  Help me out of my muddle.

My Bad

Thanks so much to each of you who've participated in this past week's conversation about the challenging question of homosexuality-and-faith.  It's been really noteworthy to me that, thus far, we've had quite a high degree of agreement here--maybe because we've done the pre-work of reading Andrew Marin's book together.  I'll very much look forward to keeping this conversation alive, particularly if we can learn from one another about actual ways forward.   Thanks so much.

That said, I think I got caught betwixt and between with my last post, which I've pulled from the blog.  Like a basketball player caught betwixt and between--deciding, say, to cut left when they've committed to go right--I may have snapped an ankle.

My mistake probably was in mentioning this article I was putting together before it had actually happened.  Once I mentioned it, when it turned out not to be helpful to run in the magazine in question, that left me feeling I owed it to you all to run it, just because I'd mentioned it.  The problem was how to do that without lobbying against or embarrassing the folks at the magazine in question, whom I respect entirely.  I entirely understand the reason why this article might not be helpful for its mission at the moment.  My thinking at the time was, while that was completely understandable, perhaps a setting like this one might be the place for whatever conversation it was hoping to get started.  The problem was that, at this point of the storyline, "the article" was tied up in its publication history, so it was hard to run neutrally.  So I think I was naive to post it--and in point of fact it's not clear that it says much that our previous entries haven't already touched on.

All to say, it seems to me I owe an apology to the good people at this magazine, Cutting Edge (a complete favorite of mine and a must-read each month--if you're not a reader and you like this blog, you should run not walk to get your subscription).  I one hundred percent understand and respect their decision in this case and have had endless history with all of  the folks involved, all of which has reinforced that we are absolute partners in these sorts of things. 

To reiterate: My bad. 

Tomorrow, another post.  Thanks again so much to each of you for such an engaging conversation this past week.

PS: I'm not especially trying to stop whatever conversation this article might engender.  I'm just sold that for the moment I've made this blog a particularly unsafe setting for it.  If you have any interest in the article, feel free to email Dan Littauer at dan@notreligious.org and he'd be happy to email it to you.

Why Is the Homosexuality-and-Faith Question Important to You?

I'm not being facetious or provocative with this question.  It's an important question to me, for reasons I started to detail in the last post.  And, if you're gay or lesbian, of course I understand why this issue is important to you.

But, continuing on the theme of the Love is an Orientation book club that we launched into (and if you've read the book and haven't commented, please do), I know that for so many of my friends this is a really important issue, and I'd like to hear more.

For one thing, this was a question that was pretty much off the table, say, ten years ago.  The point of view then was largely that, whatever one's personal sympathies, the Bible itself made some things clear that preempted the conversation.  Even today, according to a recent exhaustive Duke University study on congregations in America, we're told that 23% of American congregations would permit someone in a committed gay relationship to hold a volunteer leadership position (that might seem like a large number to some of you, but when you consider the Protestant mainline, which presumably would be supportive here, not to mention Unitarian/Universalist congregations, this number seems small to me).  This is compared, say, to the number of congregations that would permit someone with outspoken pro-choice views to hold a leadership position--41%.  So, all to say, this is still a dramatically minority position.

So...why is this question important to you?  (And, if I could ask just a bit more from you.  On the one side of the issue, you might well answer: "justice."  On the other side of the issue, you might well answer something like: "loyalty to the Bible."  Fair enough, but if those are your answers, could you fill them out a bit?  Why is this sort of justice or this sort of loyalty to the Bible important to you?)  Whatever your answer, was this issue important to you ten years ago, when it wasn't engendering much conversation?