I don’t know how to reweave an unraveling church if we don’t do it together. Precisely the inability to do it together is a key source of unraveling. Can we do it together?
In “Hope as Church Unravels? Part 1, The Unraveling,” I introduced a six-part series on ways the church, denominations, concepts and patterns of ministry, theological training are unraveling. Here in Part 3 I home in on whether we can, in fact, do the reweaving together. I actually don’t know—if anything our ability to work together seems to be declining. So in this post I proceed with no assurance that we can do this even as I ponder how, particularly through functioning in communities of discernment, we might take steps in that direction if so inclined.
From Position Statements to Communities of Discernment
Battle. Win-lose. If we differ, my position should defeat yours.
What if instead we moved from position statements to communities of discernment? Let me test steps and possible outcomes of such a move:
A first step is to take seriously that we all know only in part, as if through a mirror dimly, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians. Then, face to face with God, we will know fully. But now we get some things right—and some wrong. If our main approach to Christian faithfulness is to determine what’s right, then champion it as the position all should hold, we bypass the getting-things-wrong part.
If we accept that we know only in part, we may consider a second step: recognizing that the fullest knowing we can experience now flows from seeking truth together. This is what Jesus invites in Matthew 18, as he promises that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is with us.
Jesus also empowers us to take a third step. That’s to trust that when we gather in his name we form communities of discernment through which in what we bind or loose on earth we are seeking to implement what is bound or loosed in heaven, in God’s realm. We dare not do this frivolously. Just verses earlier Jesus has warned that better to drown than cause one who believes in him to stumble. Still amid ways we can misuse this amazing power, we are to help each other discern what to bind or loose.
Yet how far from knowing how to do this we are, as increasingly we even accuse each other of wrongly binding or loosing. We take stumbling seriously—except that the cause of stumbling is not I but always you.
Is there a step beyond this impasse? Acts 2 offers a possibility. Long before, humans in their pride had tried as one people speaking one language to build a tower to the heavens—but God had scattered them into many peoples babbling countless dialects. Now God’s Spirit falls as tongues of fire on Jesus’ first disciples, and they speak “in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” This astonishes their audience from many nations, because when these Galileans speak, “we hear, each of us, in our own native language.”
Not through human effort but through the Spirit’s power unleashed in the emerging church, Babel comes undone. Here we glimpse a fourth step, which is to trust that still today the Holy Spirit can empower us to speak and hear across the isolating languages our opposing viewpoints become. We won’t become communities of discernment unless when polarized we invite the Spirit to interpret for us. When faced with your seemingly misguided views I need the Spirit to help me hear your language.
If the Spirit interprets us to each other, then maybe we can begin to understand how to take a fifth step, which is to celebrate that in Christ dividing walls of hostility have been torn down. In Ephesians 2, the Apostle Paul celebrates that Christ is our peace. Drawing perhaps on a hymn that had celebrated Christ as unifier of the fragmented universe itself, Paul celebrates miracle: that primal division, a Berlin Wall between Jews once thought to be God’s people and Gentiles once understood not to be has tumbled.
Might that miracle, the reconciling peace of Christ who invites us to love the viewpoint enemies we turn each other into, destroy our walls today? I’m actually not sure. We battle even over whether walls should be demolished, if so how and in whose favor. In the years since I first began to develop the material in this post, theological warfare rather than peacemaking seems to be intensifying. But let me fallibly ponder what might happen if, when we gather around Scripture in the presence of the Spirit, we wrestled with divisive issues as communities discerning what to bind and loose today.
One key thing I suspect we’d wrestle with is the relationship between specific Bible texts and biblical themes or trajectories.
Take slavery, no longer, I hope, divisive, so maybe permitting calm learnings. How could Christians for most of Christian history support slavery? Because specific texts seemed to. But texts gain meaning within larger paradigms or worldviews that have come to be experienced as the common sense of the day.
For centuries worldviews that treated slavery as just the acceptable way things were coexisted peacefully with texts that seemed likewise to assume slavery as normal. Then abolitionists drawing on broader scriptural themes of justice and equality shattered the slavery-is-acceptable paradigm. That’s why we don’t view biblical admonitions for slaves to obey their masters as validating slavery today. Specific texts do matter—and so do the trajectories that sometimes help us interpret given texts anew.
Cut to that battle-surrounded word homosexuality and such successors as LGBTQ. Among reasons we’re at each other’s throats in this area of discernment is a clash over whether to prioritize specific texts many understand to condemn same-sex relationships or such classic scriptural themes as God’s love for the stranger, alien, slave, outcast of a given era or context. Some believe that unless the specific texts bind us, we evade God’s call to costly righteousness. Or they may point more broadly to the primal order of creation as being union of man and woman.
Others wonder whether Jesus wants to surprise us today by turning those we marginalize into heroes, as he did the Good Samaritan or the woman who wept on his feet, frequently turning upside-down expectations of who belonged among God’s people. This reversal was then extended as some of the early Christians, such as Peter in Acts 10-11, came to see Gentiles as belonging among God’s people. Previously Gentiles had been deemed unclean but now, as Peter is told in a vision, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
Whatever our overarching paradigm ends up being, it will guide our giving greater or lesser weight to given scriptures even as careful study of and wrestling with specific texts continues to be essential.
Maybe we should try a cooler topic, though it was once white hot and still is for some: the role of women in the church. When I was growing up, I understood specific texts to make matters clear: women are to be silent in the church. Hence women can’t be pastors.
But by the 1995 Confession of Faith in Mennonite Perspective, the Mennonite church was teaching that all leadership offices are open to women. After generations of agonizing discernment, many had shifted to a paradigm in which, for example, Jesus’ empowerment of women took priority. Now texts that seemed to forbid women pastors were understood as tied to specific New Testament circumstances. Yet others of us believe that in loosening the ties that bound us to literal application of specific texts we’ve taken a broad path leading not to righteousness but to destruction.
Then let’s ponder peace and war and the implications in such a setting as Eastern Mennonite Seminary, both Mennonite and ecumenical. Roughly half of our students are Mennonite and perhaps mostly believe Christian participation in war goes against Jesus’ teachings and his Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) call to love enemies, to do good to those who persecute us. But half are from other denominations and may believe the Bible makes space for some just wars to be fought precisely to free the captives and liberate the oppressed, as Jesus preached in his Luke 4 “inaugural address.”
Across our traditions, we take specific texts with implications for war and peace seriously. But which ones we treat as literal guides to daily decisions or as dreams of what may yet be in the already-but-not-yet of the kingdom of God depends on the broader paradigm within which we approach them.
Does this cover the issues for discernment? Not remotely. We need to discern whether the Bible offers explicit or at least thematic guidance on abortion. The death penalty. Gun control. Care for the earth. Global warming. Whether God is biased toward the poor or if not how we honor biblical warnings that the mighty will be brought low. Whether government is part of the problem or the solution in caring for “the least of these.” Whether to be Christian is to prophetically challenge capitalism, constructively embrace it, or both.
Is the point that any view is as good as another? No. It’s that when we see only in part we need to wrestle things out together. If I’m too quick to focus on specific texts when the debates rage, you need to remind me of classic themes of Scripture that could complexify my engagement with such texts. If I’m too quick to ride on viewpoints above the fray, I need you to call me down into the muck and sometimes God-ordained suffering the specifics call for. To wrestle it out together is to become the communities of discernment Jesus invites us to embody.
At EMS we already teach discernment, which threads its way through our curriculum. Yet at EMS and in many congregational and denominational contexts we can more proactively name the importance and nature of discernment and the need to train each other in the discernment process.
This is ever more crucial in a church and culture addicted to offering position papers even when what will truly bless us is the reconciling peace of Christ. That blessing can come as walls of hostility are replaced by bringing our warring views to Scripture in the presence of the Spirit who empowers us to understand each other’s foreign languages. Then truly we might be within range of learning how redemptively to bind or to loose without causing each other to stumble.
Though not speaking here officially on behalf of EMS, Michael A. King is dean, Eastern Mennonite Seminary; blogger and editor, Kingsview & Co; and publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. This post has roots in an August 2012 EMS convocation presentation and provided some of the seeds for the seven-part series of summer 2015 posts overviewed in “Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 1: Introduction.”
Michael, let us engage is a thought experiment.
Imagine that on the second Sunday of a month in the near future, every Mennonite congregation that is linked through an area conference to MCUSA would request its members to complete a simple ballot consisting of a “yes” and “no” choice to this question: “Should our district conference teach the Mennonite Confession of Faith in its entirely and support that Confession in all of its actions?”
I ask because I expect a resounding majority would vote “yes.”
If you agree, Michael, then what does that say about the great Mennonite unraveling of which you write? Of the current exercise of leadership within MCUSA and its district conferences?
Berry, indeed it would be interesting to see what results your experiment would yield.
I hope it’s clear that my descriptions of unraveling are intended to be precisely that—descriptions of, not a rooting for.
As I’ve been articulating, I do see various unravelings I’ve then been seeking to address. And I wonder how your thought experiment would account for complexities of the faithful dissent through which all confessions of faith continue to develop across generations.
But I’d be glad to see evidence of what we both appear to wish for, which is not for things to fall apart but for them to hold together. Or if they do fall apart for them to be rewoven in whatever fresh ways the Holy Spirit is guiding us toward.
I notice that other responses to this post have subtly or less so continued advocacy. I want to attempt a different approach to see if I can identify as step the might lead to rapproachement rather than entrenchment.
As I observe the unraveling of the denomination, conference and congregation of which I am a member, I with you ponder what steps, if any, can contribute to manifesting the unity that is ours in Christ.
I had earlier wondered if we could reengage in the model of past decades, when dealing with the issue of divorce, have a study conference in which scholarly papers were assigned in advance and then engage in discussion until a consensus document could emerge that would anchor the church. However, I think that has already happened. Books have been written with sparring positions and no consensus seems to be attainable. Hence the contradictory resolutions of the Executive Board, Constituency Council, and delegate body of MC USA.
I think, Michael, you have correctly analyzed the problem, esp. in this: “Yet how far from knowing how to do this we are, as increasingly we even accuse each other of wrongly binding or loosing. We take stumbling seriously—except that the cause of stumbling is not I but always you.”
It appears to me rather than being one discerning hermeneutical community we have at this point conflicting advocacy communities at loggerheads. It likewise seems to me that this theological warfare results in more deeply entrenched positions.
The divergence of the communities of advocacy seems to belie the possibility of reaching a Jerusalem consensus. It appears to me that the heart of the matter is the divergence of the way Scripture is used. I’m wondering if a description of what is going on might pave the way for some agreement.
Would it be possible and helpful to construct a description of the hermeneutical issues as expressed in the advocacy communities in a way both sides of the argument could agree that this accurately describes their dynamic. It seems to me that clarity with regard to what is going on would contribute to mutual understanding and possibly pave the way for greater mutual acceptance. As it is, discussion often degenerates to accusations of the other side being unfaithful to the message of Scripture. Accurate description of the hermeneutical issues might allow understanding without total rejection of the other.
I think you’re right, John, about responses to Michael’s post lining up more as “conflicting advocacy communities” than “communities of discernment.” I unfortunately fall into that. Not that I feel good about it. This morning my heart was full of a prayer that we would know when to “hold loosely” our convictions on same-sex (after listening to a group of pastors worrying that their congregations’ missional energies might get derailed by conflict over same-sex).
You suggest that “the heart of the matter is the divergence of the way Scripture is used.” And you wonder if we could come up with a description of a hermeneutical method for working through this issue that both sides of the argument could agree on. Two quick comments. 1) I understand that MC Canada has been trying to do that very thing with their Being A Faithful Church; and that they are getting close to the end of a 5-6 yr process. Does anyone know of any summary of their process and how it has worked? 2) One reason I responded to Michael yesterday was to affirm his description of the needed hermeneutical process in this week’s blog (that we must pay attention to “biblical themes and trajectories”) and then show one conservative’s application of that process. I thought it might have been helpful in moving the conversation forward, but maybe it was only advocacy.
Harold, I agree that this issue consumes much energy and appreciate the way you are confronting the issue. I’m glad you put “hold loosely” in quotes, because I’m not real comfortable with the implication of holding convictions loosely, but I’m not sure I can find better words. What I long for is an attitude that holds highly our relationship as follower of Jesus Christ even when we have different understandings. I also sense that at this time the question of how we understand the gospel in relation to those of different sexual orientations is a question of God’s mission.
I, too, wish I had more information about how MC Canada is working to build understanding. I’ve been told that they (and I think Jack Suderman has been a key figure in this) decided to make this a 15 year effort to understand the discernment issues. We in MC USA face different dynamics, among which are the pressure of Lancaster Conference and Evana. (I don’t know that the latter has an impact in Canada, though I can’t rule that out.)
Nevertheless, I think that if we can apply Romans 14:1-15:7 to this and consider the differing views of fellow-believers equally committed to being faithful to God, it allows us to sincerely and firmly hold divergent views and yet maintain our unity in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
John and Harold, the conversation the two of you are conducting is proceeding well in its own right, so I won’t say much more except this:
First, thanks for these further insights into the process of discernment.
Second, thanks for hinting at ways such a process can unfold through working at it with each other. I’m struck reading your interchange that you exemplify how discernment partners who don’t begin at the same point can nevertheless wrestle constructively toward mutual learning from which the rest of us can also benefit.
You put your finger on the heart of it, Michael, when you set homosexuality amid other examples the church has dealt with (slavery, the role of women in the church, and war), writing that we need to wrestle with “the relationship between specific Bible texts and biblical themes or trajectories.”
You are right that themes and trajectories should guide the weight we give to specific texts. When we see God repeatedly moving persons in a particular direction, that direction shows us God’s will for humanity, gives us guidance. In contrast, specific instructions may be intended only for specific situations.
One main New Testament trajectory is the Good News of Jesus leading us to value all people. Jesus loved—and died for—all people, including the least and the last. So all people, even the marginalized and the powerless, have worth.
This is why the New Testament church was more progressive than the Greco-Roman world on slavery, women’s roles, and war. The church was moving in the direction of valuing all people—including slaves, women, enemies. We today celebrate this movement!
There is also a second trajectory to pay attention to as we discern “what is bound or loosed in heaven” regarding same-sex relationships, a second main trajectory: the Good News of Jesus deepens our obedience to God’s moral Law. Isn’t that a strong theme through the Scriptures, calling us away from external compliance and toward deep obedience from the heart? You’ve heard, ‘don’t murder’; I say, don’t even hate (Matt. 5:21-26). You’ve heard, ‘don’t commit adultery’; I say, don’t even look to lust (27-30). This becomes possible as the Spirit writes the Law on our hearts and as the News that Jesus loved and died for us moves us from obeying because we have to do so to obeying because we want to do so. We want to love and please God because we are first loved by God.
Further, due to this second trajectory, it seems that the New Testament church took a stronger line than the Greco-Roman world in areas like sexuality. Wasn’t that the movement: not toward freedom from the Law but toward deeper obedience of it? In areas like women’s roles and slavery, there is a clear gospel trajectory toward freedom; but in regard to observance of God’s moral Law, the gospel trajectory is toward greater obedience. And we rejoice: this Law is our good Creator revealing the way in which we as humans flourish.
As you say, “specific texts do matter” as we interpret them in light of the trajectory in which they come to us. If that second trajectory (a deepening obedience to God’s moral Law) is indeed present, then the crucial question does end up being about two specific texts: do the lists of sins given in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6 suggest that all forms of same-sex sex are against our Creator’s intent for our lives? Or does Paul (and the Spirit) only have in view same-sex relations involving exploitation and domination (and not have in view loving, committed relationships between same-sex attracted persons)?
As Ted Grimsrud said in his Mar 30, 2014 blog (“Why Eastern Mennonite University should quit discriminating”), “the only possible reason [to not hire faculty and staff who are in covenanted same-sex relationships] is theological (that is, that God declares such relationships to be sinful).”
I know that you are not speaking officially on behalf of EMU in your blog, Michael. Nonetheless, I will say here that I’m deeply troubled to be unaware of EMU weighing the biblical arguments that lead many alumni and supporters to deeply oppose a policy of hiring those in same-sex marriages. Perhaps the university leaders did that weighing. But we who support the church’s historic stance were not made privy to it. We never saw EMU carefully and openly, out of love and trust in Scripture, examine the exegetical arguments that lead some of us to believe that indeed “God declares such relationships to be sinful.” That makes it appear that deliberate and thorough Bible study by a “community of discernment” was not part of the process when the university made its hiring policy revision.
Harold, as one grateful for opportunities over the years to converse with you in some depth, both in disagreement and agreement, I appreciate your usual thoughtful engagement.
I take careful note of your perspectives on EMU hiring policy while also, I imagine no surprise, needing to be careful not to speak officially on behalf of EMU, given that such communications come from the EMU Board, formal EMU news releases, or our president.
Speaking more informally and personally, maybe this much yet: as I noted in my post on “Tenderly Welcoming All to the Banquet Table,” http://www.cascadiapublishinghouse.com/KingsviewCo/?p=431 I’m glad for all, including those most personally affected, to be at the employee table. As I also touched on in that post, I see this as extending and deepening our ability to discern with each other rather than ending discernment.
You identify well some of the factors that make discernment conversations challenging. I see such depth of conversation as a mark of discerning communities. Thanks for modeling, Harold.
If there is one thing that has become clear to me in the last couple years as I have re-engaged with the Mennonite communities (here in the USA after a 20 year sojourn in Evangelicalism) is that the “progressive” perspective regarding human sexuality among Mennos is rooted to a large extent in the experience of the developed tradition(s) that have coalesced around the belief that the best any church can do is decide amongst themselves what God’s will seems to be–Jesus did say “where two or more are gather…” after all. It isn’t surprising perhaps that given the fractiousness of churches, no less so among Mennonites, that is all we can do: get together, read some scripture, pray a bit, and move into mutual discernment and decide for ourselves. After all, what else can we do in our “discernment contexts”? The problem with this gathered community authority perspective is that in the absence of a vehement commitment to “the Apostles teaching” combined with serious acceptance of historical consensus regarding what that was regarding sexual relations there is nothing left of the Apostles’ teaching in the discernment process. Hence, the wholesale abandonment of biblical teaching in many congregations and some regional associations of Mennos regarding sexual relations. IF there are “two or more are gather in Jesus’ name” then his authoritative person and teaching are there; if his teaching regarding human sexuality is not there, neither is his authority to “bind and loose.” .Just saying’
Richard, thanks for these thought-provoking perspectives. Part of the unraveling I’m addressing in these posts does include, I believe, the trend you point to of literalizing “two-or-three together” both in relation to sexuality and also the many other issues in relation to which we’re polarized.
Perhaps the challenge is even greater in that my impression is that even at the two-or-three level we tend not so much to form communities of discernment as echo chambers for those of like mind.
Certainly I don’t see us as truly reweaving what is unraveling unless we engage in what ultimately causes us suffering: amid mutual yielding to the Holy Spirit in the presence of Scripture and in accountability to the teachings of Jesus, discerning beyond our echo chambers. Such work can be excruciating because it involves not simply reaffirming the views we start out with but also opening ourselves to the risk of learning from others.
As your response implies, my current post only starts to travel toward the complexities of doing that work not only as individuals or small groups but also in and between congregations, conferences, denominations, and more.
The action of the delegates in Kansas City moved our church from singular reliance on position statements to reliance on a combination of such statements with communities of (dissenting) discernment. However, to the best of my knowledge, you have not publicly affirmed what the delegates did as a step in the direction you espouse. Indeed, you appear to regard the delegate effort to be a failure. I wonder why.
You refer in passing to the church’s authority and responsibility to “bind and loose.” It is one of the “trajectories” in Scripture, wouldn’t you say? So I ask: have you written to affirm a specific instance of today’s church acting in such a manner? Acts 15 provides a text for such an affirmation. As you seem to prefer poetic renderings, Isaiah 60-62 is another potential text.
Like you, I see a self-correcting dynamic within Scripture. This is an aspect of its divine inspiration. But I am baffled by how one discerns that dynamic when, as in the case of the “position paper” authored by the Central District Conference, a consistent scriptural valuing of heterosexuality is simply denounced as “sin” without the citation of any supporting scriptural authority. Might you write an essay that helps us with that one?
Berry, thanks for your thoughtful comments and questions. I may disappoint on some of your questions in that I have, in fact, sought to comment specifically on this or that primarily when I’m directly involved. I try not to be overly intrusive on commenting on discernment contexts others are more directly responsible to engage.
This is why in writing of the resolutions passed at Kansas City 2015 I aimed to point readers to links that gave them ample information if they wanted to pursue it while being restrained in my analysis once the resolutions passed. As I put it in “Bending the Curve,” http://www.cascadiapublishinghouse.com/KingsviewCo/?p=234 my final post on Kansas City, “I think it’s too early fully to understand what was decided, so I’ll defer detailed comment to another day or wiser analysts. (Meanwhile see news reporting on the wrestling with and voting on the sexuality resolutions from The Mennonite and Mennonite World Review.) Here I’ll mostly underscore my sense that we lived through a day of pain and sorrow.”
I still hesitate to comment further, for the reasons given and also because it will take time for given case studies to help us understand how we move from resolutions to their on-the-ground implementations.
But maybe just this yet: Yes to the self-correcting dynamic of Scripture. With you, I do see potential for the resolutions in dynamic interplay (and in conversation with the texts you mention and others) to provide space for the communities of discernment I speak of in the current post.