Review of Finding Our Way Again: The Return of Ancient Practices by Brian McLaren

January 18, 2010 at 1:08 pm (spiritual practices, spirituality)
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“So what is it exactly that Jews believe?” asked the nice Methodist lady during the “Introduction to Judaism” class at our local synagogue. The rabbi smiled and patiently and not for the first time, I’m sure, answered, “Well, Judaism is not so much a set of beliefs as it is a way of life.” “A way of life,” I wrote in my notebook. The phrase stayed with me and I began to explore the idea of viewing Christianity as a way of life as opposed to a specific set of beliefs to which we must “sign on” in the course of our growth as Christians. As we all know, some of these beliefs, if presented too forcefully at the beginning of the new Christian’s faith journey, can become serious stumbling blocks to the acquisition of faith. Perhaps, I thought, this “way of life” approach would also affect the way I talked about my faith to others and make it a little easier to explain. And it did, actually, for now I could talk about a way of life and personal transformation and avoid those sticky theological quagmires like virgin births, bodily resurrection, and Biblical hermeneutics, at least for the time being. And so I was happy to find McLaren’s Finding Our Way Again not only for its emphasis on Christianity as a way of life but for the introduction of ancient monastic disciplines as means of spiritual growth for the present day Christian. Indeed, the book is a part of the “Ancient Practices” series, edited by Phyllis Tickle.

The book is made up of short chapters each followed by several questions for group discussion making it ideal for facilitating an adult learning experience. McLaren’s style of writing is casual, simple and straightforward making for an “easy” read, but at the same time, he deftly explains the rather complex concepts behind say, for example, via purgativa, in way that clarifies the often painful and seldom used process of self-examination and confession to a struggling new Christian.

McLaren begins with one of many entertaining stories, setting up a theme for the book. The theme suggests that instead of teaching and talking about Christianity as a list of beliefs and doctrines, we might instead approach it as a way of life and a path to transformation. We ought to incorporate our faith into our everyday lives – “making prayer ordinary in our daily schedule or annual calendar; making generosity normal, normative, and habitual so that it is done automatically; making regular time for rest every single week whether we feel we need it or not, as a matter of routine; practicing simplicity instead of consumption; countering violence with peacemaking” (p. 4).  We do this, the author continues, by focusing on the seven ancient practices common to the three great Abrahamic faiths: “fixed-hour prayer, fasting, Sabbath, the sacred meal, pilgrimage, observance of sacred seasons, and giving” (p. 6). In this way we become more alive, awake, alert, and more human! Indeed, the kingdom of God brought to us through the life and teachings of Jesus is a new way of life with new priorities and values, a new vision of peace. Paul, continues McLaren, helps us to live out those new values and priorities in the real world. Living in the tension created by our Chrsitian lives of both contemplation and activity, we become “well-formed disciples” who act in our communities and in the world to create the kingdom of God and to confront the injustices inherent in dysfunctional political and societal patterns. The ancient practices bring many benefits to individual Christians as well, concludes McLaren, for not only do they help us to experience the immense joy of living in the kingdom of God, but they help us through the hard times: “The ancient way is about building up those reserves when they’re not needed so they’re available when they are. Its about practicing things by heart so they’ll be accessible when your heart is broken.”

Reviewed by Barbara Scoville

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What God Has Joined Together by David G. Myers and Letha David Scanzoni

September 6, 2009 at 6:18 pm (Social issues)

What God has Joined Together:  The Christian Case for Gay Marriage

by David G. Myers and Letha Davis Scanzoni

Reviewed by Mark Wenzel

Myers and Scanzoni have crafted a Christian case for same sex that attempts, in their own words, “to bridge the divide between marriage-supporting and same-sex supporting people of faith by showing why both sides have important things to say and showing how both sides can coexist.”  Attempting to bring different sides together on issues so seemingly volatile as same-sex relationships, same-sex love, same-sex sex, and same-sex marriage is noble, indeed, and so worthy of great effort.

Myers and Scanzoni have long involvement as psychologists, teachers, and writers with the many social, psychological, and biblical-textual issues surrounding marriage and are well-prepared to take up a Christian case for same-sex marriage.  They have written for The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Science, and Scientific American. Scanzoni is the editor and publisher of the Evangelical Ecumenical Women’s Caucus publication, EEWC.

There are five fundamental cases capturing different dimensions of their Christian case for same sex marriage.  For reasons of space I set out the central conclusions only.

One case comes from the side of social psychology: having the institution of same-sex marriage will allow people to consecrate their profound bonds and deep commitments to one another and so actually strengthen marriage and family and not weaken them.  Civil unions, they argue, actually bestow second or third class citizenship and so do no good for the institution of marriage and only result in unnecessarily stigmatizing those for whom they’re intended.  Another side of this issue: withholding marriage from same-sex couples weakens the legitimacy of marriage and family in general and appears to promote some of the social, emotional, and sexual uproar in the lives of those so denied, as often mentioned by those who reject same-sex marriage.  Opponents of same sex marriage must look much more closely at their case for the stabilising, ennobling, and nurturing functions of marriage: if they actually believe their own claims, they should be some of those advocating the loudest for same-sex marriage.

Here is one crucial bridge between the different sides as they hold marriage and family as highly valuable human and social goods.

A second case comes from the side of biblical interpretation: what can we reasonably claim the Bible says and does not say that is relevant regarding the contemporary Christian debate about people who so love one another that they want to spend their lives together, people who happen to be both male or both female?  Since the contemporary debate over homosexuality, inside Christian churches and beyond them, is not about sexually exploitative or abusive practices, what possible relevance for us do certain oft-cited biblical texts have, texts which appear to make essential reference to those practices?   The canonical passages are Genesis 18-19, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13; Deut 23:17; 1 Kings 14:24, 15:22, and 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7; Romans 1:24-31; 1 Cor 6:9-10; and 1Tim 1:9-10.

The central conclusion of Myers and Scanzoni – and one which I agree with – is that there are very good grounds for holding these texts to be essentially about pagan temple prostitution, prostitution, promiscuity, rape, the sex slave trade, the effeminizing of men, and pederasty.  In other words, about sexually exploitative, abusive, culturally troubling for gender roles, and unethical or morally problematic sexual practices.  What they don’t appear to be about is what we think of as homosexuality and the range of sexual practices within committed, loving, joyful, relationships.  The authors might have concluded that reducing same-sex or other-sex love to a set of sexual practices reveals a poverty of imagination that is startling and wrong.  Those advocating these passages as a moral condemnation of all homosexuality and all homosexual sexual practices appear to be focused on, among other things, bare acts rather than rich relationships in which these acts are practiced.

Philosophical humility requires that we hold that it’s possible that the writers of these texts believed that all homogenital acts between all (male and female) people are to be condemned, morally.  But the evidence of the texts themselves do not provide us with reasonable grounds for believing they held such moral condemnation.  They disapproved, to be sure.  But disapproval is not moral condemnation.  The literature on homoeroticism in the biblical world suggests that what was actually at issue were the gender distinctions between men taking the active role in sex and men taking the passive role – a role thoroughly and culturally condemned.  Gender roles and not homosexuality in the guiding distinction to keep in mind.

If we argue that the Bible finds homosexuality and its associated sexual practices to be disgusting or shameful or dishonorable, all we need show is that the writer expresses just that claim: such evaluative terms point to person-relative or culture-relative judgements.  However, if we  argue that the Bible finds homosexuality and its associated sexual practices to be morally condemnable, then we must have good reasons, reasons that work across persons and cultures, whether it’s God doing the condemning or St Paul.  Without good reasons, we have only an arbitrary condemnation and such cannot ever form an integral part of a rational system for ethical conduct, Christianly understood.  Besides, who can believe that God, who created us rational, makes moral demands on us without the best of reasons?  Arbitrary divine moral demands??

To better understand the interpretive problems with reading Bible passages that condemn certain sexual acts that homosexuals might practice as though they condemn homosexuality itself, we can put to work a distinction philosophers make between the extension of a description or term  relating to desire, want, need, belief, and knowledge, and its intension.  Let’s use the story of Oedipus from Greek tragedy to illustrate.  Recall that Oedipus, in attempting to find out who his real father is, ends up killing his father and (unknowingly) is given to his mother (Jocasta) in marriage by the people of Thebes.

The extension of the two descriptions Oedipus wants to marry his mother and Oedipus wants to marry the beautiful and fair Jocasta are the same: they have the same reference, Jocasta.  But the intensions of the two descriptions have different meanings, different senses.  So, while it is true that Oedipus wants to marry Jocasta, it is false that Oedipus wants to marry his mother.  To hold these intensions as equivalent is to commit an intensional fallacy – this fallacy, like fallacies in general, has the distinct property of making our claims false.
Analogously, to say [1] that Paul wants to condemn certain sexually exploitative practices is one intension and is well-grounded in the texts; to say [2] that Paul wants to condemn homosexuality, in general, as we understand it is quite another intension.  These intensions mean different things and, so, when we hold them as equivalent expressions we  thereby commit a fallacy which ends up making our second claim false.  Both intensions likely refer to the same bare sexual acts but what’s missing in the first intension, among other things, is any mention of a special kind of relationship in which these sexual acts are practiced.  Moreover, to condemn certain sexual practices because of ritual purity laws or because of their relation to religious identity is not to condemn them as sexual practices in themselves.  To confuse those two intensions is fatal to making true claims.

In Romans 1 Paul ends us saying nothing about ‘women burning for one another’, unlike how he puts the case with men who do are said to burn for one another.  Yet, if he’s making reference only to men and to the sexual practice of anal sex (most likely) and, so, leaves women out altogether, then it’s simply false that Paul wants to condemn all homosexuals and all sexual practices between them: we’re imputing to Paul an incorrect description (incorrect intension) of what he wants to do.  The terms homosexuality and heterosexuality are fast becoming useless in this discussion.  We need better terms.  Myers and Scanzoni and I agree that there are no good reasons for believing that the above texts have our conception of homosexuality in mind and so, all the more strongly, believe that they can not be used to morally or socially condemn homosexuality as it is understood in our times.  Again, the evidence points to gender roles being paramount in these texts, rather than some idea of constitutional sexuality.

The bridge here is the shared goal of understanding the meaning behind Paul’s letters.  To attribute to him something he did not want to do is to bury the actual meaning of what he attempted to tell us

.

A third case comes from a fundamental human need for belonging: the essential fact of our basic need to be in relationship with others, including that comprehensive relationship that comes with profound bonds and deep commitments that we celebrate with the institution of marriage.  And, so, the high importance of giving public recognition to cementing those bonds and commitments in and through that highly regarded and status-bestowing institution of marriage – marriage for all those who are ready to commit themselves to one another responsively, lovingly, freely.

This case establishes a third bridge: all rationally recognize that tremendous human and spiritual importance of celebrating such deep and abiding love.

A fourth case comes from the idea of sexual orientation: contemporary understanding of sexuality and its directedness strongly suggests that whom we are attracted to, whom we fall in love with, whom we want to spend our lives with, is an indwelling and constitutive feature of the self and the personality and exists outside the realm of significant moral choice.  Evidence points to biology as playing a major role in sexual orientation as it does in handedness and eye color.  Of course, biological expression requires environment for its realization.  I’m not sure that I agree with our present understanding of homosexuality, however, but don’t want to use space to pursue that.  Classifying people in this way likely reflects a radical difference from how people were classified in earliest biblical times up to Jesus.

Following this is a fifth case from the side of changing sexual orientation.  The weight of evidence strongly implies that changing the nature of sexual desire and longing is likely impossible.  Some have claimed to have achieved such a change, to their relief.  If so, good for them.  For a good many others, including leaders of organizations once dedicated to helping homosexuals change their basic sexual desires, attempted ‘conversion of desire and longing’ most often ends up simply controlling their expression and so merely amounts to suppressing it.  That does not describe the fundamental change claimed on behalf of ‘reparative’ or ‘conversion’ therapies.  To not distinguish between controlling the expression of desire and changing its essential direction is to be outside the debate altogether.

The bridge for cases four and five is our commitment to the rich human good marriage brings about for adults and their children and, so, the communities that bestow that honor on them.  In our most reflective moments, none of us actually wants to deny the institution of marriage to those who enter into it with love, responsibility, commitment, joy, selfless giving.

A note on shame. In Romans 1: 24-32 Paul nowhere appears to call consensual same-sex relations ’sinful’.  Shameful, dishonorable, [atimia or aschemosyne], yes, but not sinful (harmatolos).  In addition to same-sex sexual acts  being degrading/shameful [atimia], also degrading/shameful in the eyes of Paul and others are men with long hair (1 Cor 11:14) and  “atimia” as applied by Paul to himself in expressing how some see his commitment to the Messiah (2 Cor 6:8; 11:21).  Being shamed in the eyes of others is obviously not thereby to commit sin.  What is sinful can also be shameful and conversely, but there’s no conceptual link between them – the concept of one does not contain the idea of the other – and so we must keep the terms separate.

What Paul appears to condemn as sinful is the act of knowingly rejecting God and goes on to say of men inflamed with passion for other men that the consequence of following through on those desires, the bare sexual acts themselves, is a divine punishment for their rejection of God. Paul appears simply to have nothing to say about committed male followers of the Way who also happen to burn for other men.  Yet, Paul does counsel those who burn that it’s better to be married, lest your burning get you into trouble.  If we were to ask Paul whether it would be possible for men to be both Pauline in their commitment to Christ and burn for other men, it’s likely that he’d deny it was possible.  But we just don’t know what he’d have said.  How many Christian men find themselves in that very way of living?  Or, Paul might have replied that he’s not discussing such men as these.  Since sex between men is claimed to be a divine punishment for rejecting God, Paul might balk at male followers of Christ burning for one another.

In a related way, when translating passages that appear to condemn as shameful same sex acts, I think we have to insist on undertaking translation in fidelity to the sexist, patriarchal times in which biblical texts were written.  Women held second class standing in ancient Hebrew culture, amounting to being  property of the man.  Considering that Hebrew culture made shameful many things about the body when they might be seen by others and absolutely condemned acts that seemed to effeminize men, not to have this background in mind when interpreting the above texts is to be completely remiss in our obligations as Christian activists and scholars.

It is not too strong to say that Myers and Scanzoni, like me, believe that to use the Biblical sources – which carry reasoned doubt as to their meaning – to stigmatize and marginalize others, to keep them from consecrating their love for one another in marriage, to keep them from public celebration of their joy, is morally wrong, or an offense greater than love between men or between women is thought  to be.   Here’s the moral principle involved: when a claim comes with reasoned doubt about its truth and public recitation of that claim ends up harming others in various and serious ways, we take on a moral obligation to stop reciting it. There is reasoned doubt about the truth of the claim that certain biblical texts morally condemn all homosexual love and all sexual practices between homosexuals.  If that’s correct, then continued public recitation of that claim is a moral wrong.

The criteria for a moral condemnation of homosexuality in general are [1] a concept of homosexuality inclusive of men and women and transgender folks, [2] must be inclusive of all homosexual sexual intimacies, [3] must give substantive reasons for their moral condemnation.  Each is necessary and together they’re jointly sufficient, so we must have all three or there’s no moral condemnation of homosexuality in general.  What is clear at this point is that there are reasoned grounds for holding that biblical texts do not satisfy any of these conditions.  Readers can see the implication, if that’s true.

I imagine, possibly along with the authors, that every time two people fall in love and commit themselves to one another responsibly, joyfully, and lovingly, the heavens erupt in celebration!  You can hear the musicians and the clowns, the jugglers and the acrobats whirling around in total excitement, with the Holy One, the Spirit, and Christ leading the way.

Towards the end of the book, Myers and Scanzoni, use a beautiful metaphor of the covenant relationship between God and us in Hosea 2:21-22, a metaphor just waiting to be used to describe the divine ideal of marriage.  The Lord declares this:

And I will espouse you forever:

I will espouse you with righteousness and

justice,

And with goodness and mercy,

And I will espouse you with faithfulness;

Then you shall be devoted to the Lord.”  (Jewish Study Bible)

As with other-sex couples, there is no intrinsic bar to same sex couples realizing each and every one of those Hosean qualities in their own relationships.

Myers and Scanzoni could not include every possible dimension of the case for Christian-blessed same-sex marriage.  Surely one such case – one I use myself – comes from the theology of special creation and providence: it is our deep belief that the Holy One created us out of pure and unselfish freedom and deemed that it would never be good for us to live alone.  Can it be, though, that the Holy One created certain women and men to be forever denied consecration of that profound bond and deep commitment we call marriage, an institution designed for our highest human good and flourishing?  If it was not good for Adam to live alone, then it is not good for anyone to live alone, not good for anyone who seeks it to be denied the divine institution of marriage.  Let the wedding bells peel out.

Myers and Scanzoni are absolutely right to enlist the good sense of Reta Halteman Finger who advises us ever so wisely to focus attention less on the canonical texts above and more on Romans 14 and 15 in which Paul discusses what Christians can and must do when facing deep and bitter divisions like the one we’re facing now.  Simply recall the bitter division over whether Gentile ‘Christians’ had first to be circumcised or whether they had to follow the dietary laws so important to the Jews of 1st-century Palestine.  Romans 14 and 15 hold out far more importance about today’s debate over homosexuality than the texts above.  In a real way, we’ve been talking about the wrong texts. A over-long shining of the light on the canonical texts mentioned and briefly discussed above has kept us from the spirit of moral reconciliation Romans 14 and 15 were written to address.  The Church’s fight is about moral repair, not homosexuality.

And so it seems to me that homosexuality is precisely not the issue for us but has been inducted only to conceal the real issue: how we, as people who’ve pledged themselves to following Christ, deal with one another in times of bitter and deep divisions.  Circumcision faded, dietary laws faded, homosexuality, too, shall fade.  The texts we should be pouring over and over and over are Romans 14 and 15.  Re-read them for yourselves.

Inclusiveness is the mark of the activity of the Spirit and it appears that the Spirit has a lot of work to do to bring together the different sides on same sex marriage.  The divisions in the Christian church are deep and bitter.  Myers and Scanzoni have invoked this Spirit of inclusiveness with their case for Christian same sex marriage.  They end their cases with this wise counsel:

“When torn between judgement and grace, let us error on the side of grace

When torn between self-certain conviction and uncertain humility, let us err

on the side of humility

When torn between contempt and love, let us err on the side of love.”

There are bridges to be built and, so, common ground to be discovered.  Isn’t it true that there is far more that unites us than divides us?  What possible stake do we appear to have in showing the very opposite?

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March by Geraldine Brooks

July 21, 2009 at 8:23 pm (Fiction)

Geraldine Brooks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, March, reconstructs the Civil War service of Mr. March, the absent father of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.  Alcott’s Mr. March is modeled on her own father, Transcendentalist educator Bronson Alcott, but Brooks’ March is, according to the author, almost entirely imagined, although she drew on the Civil War writings and letters of both Louisa May and Bronson Alcott in her reconstruction of his character.

In the novel, which is told through March’s letters and in his voice (and later in Marmie’s), March’s service as a chaplain for the Union Army is juxtaposed with his visit to the South, twenty years earlier, as a traveling salesman.  As a young man, he encountered and developed deep relationships with both slaveholders and slaves, developing sympathy for each, an abhorrence for slavery, and a repugnance for his own helplessness to change the institution, despite his abolitionist convictions.  When he returns to Virginia as a chaplain in the Union army, he finds himself of little use to the wounded and dying men that surround him.  He also is a thorn in the side of his superiors, who eventually send him off to educate the children of former slaves on a plantation that has been seized by the Union army and is now being managed by a Northern entrepreneur in hopes of turning a profit.  A witness to brutality and violence, who is forced (and sometimes chooses) under difficult circumstances to save his own skin rather than sacrifice himself on behalf of others, March is a complicated character who embodies a common human failing:  idealism unaccompanied by heroism, the failure to live up to his own standards.  A seeker after truth, he writes deceptive letters to his beloved Marmie, omitting the scenes of violence he witnesses out of regard for her sensibilities but also out of shame for his own cowardice. Committed to racial equality, he struggles to reconcile his sexual attraction to Grace, an enslaved woman, with the realities of nineteenth-century racial attitudes and his own marriage vows.

March is a book about a “good man”–in the words written by one of his students on a note that accompanied him to the hospital ship when he was himself delirious with a malarial fever–a good man, who cannot reconcile himself to his own failures, to his own weakness.  His willingness to stand by, thinking, while others suffer; to seek his own ease and comfort over the well-being of others; to deceive rather than be honest–all of these failings are accompanied by thoughtfulness, insight and intelligence, genuine compassion, and good, even noble, intentions.  March reminds us that hypocrisy isn’t possible without high ideals.  It also reminds us of the  lengths we, too, are willing to go to in order to avoid our own psychic or physical discomfort, even if it requires sacrificing those ideals.  Finally, it is the lesson that Marmie teaches March that we all need to learn:  to admit our failures, to be compassionate with ourselves, and to mend our ways.  Sometimes, the only way out is through.

Reviewed by Christine Modey

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Welcome to St. Clare’s Book Blog!

July 21, 2009 at 7:23 pm (Uncategorized)

St. Clare’s Episcopal Church has many members–children, teens, and adults alike–who like to read and whose reading informs their faith, their spirituality, and their daily lives.  What better way to strengthen the community of readers at St. Clare’s–and to spur each other to deeper thinking and even more reading!  We welcome your comments on the reviews and reflections that you read here.  (Please note: comments are moderated.)  If you have the urge to write and wish to become a contributor, just send an email to me, the blog administrator, at chrismodey@yahoo.com.  I’ll be happy to add you as a contributor!

Happy reading!

Christine

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