Church - Julie Clawson

Never Pray Again

Posted on May 14, 2014July 12, 2025

This post is part of a blog tour for the book Never Pray Again by Aric Clark, Doug Hagler, and Nick Larson. I received a copy of the book as a participant in this blog tour.

Prayer can hurt. All too often it serves as the easy way to meet one’s spiritual quota for the day. Pray before meals thanking God for the food while ignoring the plight of the impoverished workers who labored unseen to bring you the food, send up prayers for stuff you need much like you would wish upon a star, pray that the people/sinners you don’t like will become more like you and check, you’ve done your duty for the day. This is called being close to God. This is the extent of many Christians’ daily spiritual practices. While it may seem benign this sort of praying can often do more harm than good.

As Never Pray Again delves into, prayer often misses the point of what it means to be a Christian. Instead of following the way of Jesus and living into one’s faith, prayer is used as means to look spiritual but not actually do anything. But prayer is not a substitute for action – for actually living out one’s faith. We can hurt ourselves by restricting ourselves from fully embracing our faith when we merely rely on perfunctory prayers, but we also fail to do God’s work in the world. We are God’s hands and feet in this world, it does no good to ask God to fix something in this world unless we are willing to function as such. We let hurt and suffering in this world thrive when all we do is pray. Faith is about going and doing, not simply making a wish and feeling like we’ve been let off the hook.

It is in the chapter titled “Heal!” that the book explores some of the ways prayer can be the most harmful. It is common in churches to pray for the healing of people – from people with cancer, to those with mobility issues, to even those with mental illnesses. And while it may sound extreme the prayers to ‘pray the gay away,’ or that a man or women would live into their God-ordained gender roles, or even that calamity might befall a person in order to stop them from the ‘sinful path’ they might be on are far more common than we would like to believe. I personally have been told by people that they would pray for me because of my belief that women could be pastors. That I shouldn’t take medicine to help with my anxiety issues but that I just needed to cast my cares on God in prayer and I would be just fine. I even grew up being told in church that if I just prayed enough God would heal my arm (I was born missing my left arm below the elbow). And conference after conference I attend think they are being inclusive of disability when they invite people who work with the disabled (and not the actual disabled) to speak about how they serve (seek to heal) those who are different.

The problem with these sorts of prayers and perspectives, as the chapter points out, is that they assume there is some default way of being in this world and that if you don’t measure up to the default you are deficient in some way and so therefore must be healed to be made whole. People who diverge from the default mold are broken and must be fixed. From gays and lesbians, to independent women, to the obese, to the disabled, to the mentally ill – these are signs of not abiding by a culture norm and so must be things people need healing from. These people are lesser than the default model and so must be changed in order to become whole according to whatever the culture currently happens to be defining that as.

Yes, there are some illnesses that people want to heal from so their suffering ends. Others find that using a wheelchair or prosthetic limb or taking an antidepressant helps them function with more ease in the world. There are steps of healing that are necessary and good and that help people become their full selves. But therein lies the distinction. They do not need healing so that they can be more like the default norm, they seek healing and aid because they want to be fully themselves. There is brokenness all around us and in us that prevents us from being whole or loving others into wholeness. But often it is the very implication that one must be healed (become more like the default norm) that causes the most hurt and pain. When families are kicked out of churches because the church can’t deal with their kid with autism, or a person in a wheelchair is effectively shunned because no one is comfortable interacting with a person they know will never be ‘whole’ like them, or someone prays that you would be healed of something that you consider an integral part of your identity, it is hard not to come to believe that one can never be whole and accepted as they are. They accept their place as broken and inferior and come to despise their very selves for being something other than the culture’s default norm. This is not healing; this is the creation of brokenness.

So as the chapter explores, our perspective of what healing means needs to shift. To heal is not to become like the cultural norm, it is to embrace all people for who they are and to communally help us all to live into wholeness. Being with, truly with, someone in a way that shows you love them for who they are is far more difficult than condescendingly sending up a prayer that people not like you need to be healed, but it is the only way to live into both your and their wholeness.

Transfiguring the Everyday

Posted on March 3, 2014July 12, 2025

This is the text of the sermon I preached at Woodland Baptist Church in San Antonio, TX for Transfiguration Sunday March 2, 2014

Matthew 17

Do you ever wonder why so many tales end with a “happily ever after.” The adventure is over, the battle has been won, true love has been found, so therefore there is no more story to tell. The climax is reached, the excitement is past, and the reader must be left with the contentment that all is well. We don’t need to know about the day to day life of the Prince and Princess after they wed, the PTSD of that soldier who can never quite get over the war – all the storyteller wants us to know is that a grand and beautiful thing happened and everyone lived happily ever after.

If you’re anywhere near as big of a geek as I am, you might know that Tolkien originally had an additional epilogue to his Lord of the Rings trilogy. It takes place years after the events in the stories – long after the ring is destroyed and the true king returns to the land. It is of Sam sitting at home with his wife and children telling the story of his adventures, and one of his daughters laments how sad it is to hear the tales because real life is nothing like the stories her father tells. The day to day reality of life, so easily summed up as “and they lived happily ever after,” isn’t all that exciting. There are chores to do, meals to cook, work to go to. One doesn’t feel like one is living an epic adventure in the mundanity of the everyday.

I’ve always seen the Transfiguration narrative as one of those moments of epic adventure. Peter, James, and John got to see Jesus revealed in all his glory. As Peter later described it they got to be witnesses to the majesty, to hear the voice directly from heaven, and were moved in that moment to be as lamps shining in dark places. They literally had a mountaintop faith experience that could not help but make them want to respond with offers of service.

It is an experience familiar to many of us. We’ve had those moments when we have been on the spiritual mountaintop in one fashion or another. Perhaps the encounter with the full majesty of Jesus is what brought us to faith or renewed our faith. Perhaps reading a book or listening to a speaker awoke in us that desire to shine as lamps in the world of darkness, working to right the evils and injustices in the world. But as many of us also know, those mountaintop experiences don’t last. We only get a brief moment with the transfigured majesty of Jesus and then we are returned to the everyday.

And of course we have to figure out what to do in the aftermath.

It’s fascinating to look at how the disciples tried to cope with something as overwhelming as an encounter with the transfigured Jesus.

Their first suggestion – build tents to house the majesty of Jesus in. Perhaps it was to honor the greatness of the one transfigured, but whatever the rationale, their first impulse was to contain that glory.

They were human. There was a mountaintop moment and they wanted to build a structure to preserve it in. They didn’t want to forget the moment in the mundane everyday, they wanted to keep it close. It was such a significant moment that they needed to impose some order on it to preserve it and keep the experience going.

Is this not how we so often treat our religious experiences? We have dramatic encounters with God, we are moved to care for the least of these, and often our first impulse is to create a structure to contain it. We construct churches and denominations, we develop rituals, we start committees, we plan missions. Not that any of these things are bad things, but sometimes we end up missing the real point because of them. What matters is the encounter – of having our lives transformed by the majesty of God. When we try to preserve that encounter by creating structures around it, our gaze often gets obscured by those very structures. The containers for the encounter become what is most important to us, sometimes even to the extent that we forget the transformative experience itself.

It is like that popular Zen story of the ritual cat which I’m sure many of you have heard. The story goes that once when a spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher would write scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice. What mattered was the meditation and yet it was the ritual that over time became the center of the focus.

Thankfully, Jesus tried to sway his disciples away from such habits on the mountainside. No tents were put up and they were encouraged to focus on that moment of worship instead. At the same time Jesus also knew the danger of the other typical way they could respond to the experience. He had to warn them not to tell about the encounter, for while it was astoundingly meaningful to them in that moment, the telling of it would not have quite the same impact on others. In fact he tells them that many have had the opportunity for such encounters, they saw Elijah, they saw John the Baptist, and it didn’t drastically change their lives. They simply continued to do as they pleased. Maybe they had listened to John speak or had even been baptized, and yet that mountaintop experience was not enough to alter their day to day life.

Jesus knew that the tale could not simply end “and having experienced John’s baptism, he lived happily ever after” or even “having seen Jesus transfigured on the mountainside, his disciples served him faithfully and unwaveringly for the rest of their lives.” Because it simply was not true. We know that not much later Peter denies even knowing Jesus, his disciples can’t stay awake to keep him company in Gethsemane, and almost all of them desert him when he hangs on the cross. This one moment of glory did not change everything. The day to day discipleship proved much more difficult.

On one hand I find this discouraging. If seeing Jesus transfigured before them wasn’t enough to move his own disciples beyond the dangerous tendencies to contain that glory or to lose hope in the everyday, what does that mean for us as we attempt to be faithful disciples some two thousand years later? Oh, we might have our mountain top moments, but nothing compared to encountering Jesus transfigured into glory. How are we as regular people with ordinary everyday lives even to dream of living as hope-filled disciples without falling into the dangers of missing the point behind the known safety of structure and ritual or of simply getting caught up in the everyday mundanity of life? How can we live out that call to daily love God and love others, seeking justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God when even the disciples seemed to have difficulty doing so?

I wouldn’t dare presume to have the answer to that question. But I do want to share a story that gives me some hope.

For those of you who have explored the infrequently read and seemingly daunting Minor Prophets section of the Bible, you may already be familiar with the story of Amos.

A poor herdsman from Judah, Amos was part of a population that was subservient to Israel at the time of the divided kingdom. Judah in that position therefore bore the brunt of the expenses of Israel, with the poor and needy of the land frequently being used and abused to cover the expenditures of those in power. Through the manipulation of debt and credit, the wealthy had amassed more and more of the land at the expense of poor landowners. Some scholars believe that the only thing that would have even brought a poor shepherd like Amos to the big city of Jerusalem was the requirement that he pay tribute to those that controlled his lands at an official festival. It is what happened when he journey to Jerusalem that changed him though. If this was a contemporary event, the click-bait headline would be “Poor herdsman travels to Jerusalem, you’ll never believe what he does next!” For what this struggling working class man saw in Jerusalem was a population that not only lived in extravagance, but one that had stopped asking questions about if they were living in the ways of the Lord. In fact they not only had stopped asking questions about whether their lifestyles based on the oppression of the poor reflected God’s desires, they had been told by the powers that be that it was not proper (or permitted) to ask questions that challenged the ways of Israel.

Seeing this abandonment of the faith in the guise of apathy moved Amos, who was not a religious professional, to speak the word of the Lord to Israel. Although the governing religious hierarchy told him to not prophecy against the ways of Israel, Amos knew he could not remain silent about the injustices he saw. He saw the people going through the rituals of religion as normal while the poor were exploited on their behalf. So this ordinary man took up the mantle of prophet – one who calls people to live into God’s ways. The message he delivered on the streets of Jerusalem was that God hates their worship gatherings and the noise of their praise songs because they have given up on caring about what it actually means to be God’s people. Amos told them – Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches,… who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David improvise on instruments of music; who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!”

Israel was enjoying the prosperity injustice and oppression of the poor gave them and therefore had accepted the injunction against questioning the practices of the government and economic system (because why would they question something that let them live a comfortable life?). Amos, this ordinary guy from the countryside, called them to instead to stop exploiting the poor and let justice roll across the land. He begged them to ask the hard questions of themselves and of their rulers – to be disciples despite the cost to their day to day lives. But, of course, questioning the status quo is dangerous. Jerusalem had no interest in hearing the word of the Lord that challenged their economic prosperity. The powers that be moved to silence his prophecy and evicted Amos from Jerusalem. And yet the witness of this man who was moved by the day to day reality of the world to be a better disciple and to call others to do the same stands as scripture in our Bibles.

So while at first it may seem that the story of a guy who has his own book in the Bible might not seem like the best encouragement for us everyday people, I find it to be quite inspiring. Why? Because for Amos, the everyday reality of the world was transfigured in a way that led him to acts of worship much in the same way the disciples who saw the transfigured Jesus were moved. Amos saw the suffering of those around him, the injustice of those who lived comfortably at the expense of others, and the silence of the religious community on such matters and his world was changed. This was his everyday world and it moved him to serve as a prophet of God – calling God’s people to actually live in the ways of righteousness and justice that God demands of them.

And just like Amos – this is our everyday world. Our world is filled with injustice. Women trafficked into sex slavery. Workers repeatedly cheated of wages in sweatshops so that our clothes and electronics can be cheap. People who are hungry. People without access to clean water or affordable medical care. If we open our eyes we can see the same injustices in our world that Amos did in his – and if we choose to look in the right way, such can be our daily mountaintop experience calling us to lives of discipleship – not to lose hope or try to contain it in meaningless structures somehow, but to lives as prophets of God turning the world to God’s ways.

For you see, Jesus is transfigured every day at every moment in the world around us. We are reminded in Matthew 25 that whatever we do for the least of those amongst us, we do for Jesus. Jesus is transfigured every day in the guise of the hungry, the poor, the immigrant, the oppressed worker, the homeless, and the sick. We might not have access to one great dazzling mountaintop moment where we encounter the transfigured Jesus, but if we have the eyes to see, we encounter the transfigured Jesus every moment of every day. When we eat food grown by slaves or buy clothes made by oppressed worker we encounter Jesus. When we deny medical care to those who need it or stay silent as aid for the hungry is slashed in our country, we are doing those things to Jesus.

C.S. Lewis referred to this transfiguration of the everyday as being burdened with the weight of the glory of others. If we had the eyes to see we would be overwhelmed he wrote to see that the world is populated with those whom we might refer to as gods and goddesses if we were to see the full glory of God that is in them. To carry the burden of upholding the image of God in our neighbor, to see in them the transfigured Jesus, is our daily task of discipleship. It is not as simple and no where near as easy as ‘happily ever after.’ It truly is a burden to deal with the glory of the everyday but it is far more hopeful.

So when we lament that the thrill of mountaintop experiences may pass or when we get lost in the rituals and structures we build to try and preserve our moments of encounter with Jesus, we would do well to think like Amos instead and see the glory in the every day. To bear that weight of glory by doing to the least of these as we would for Jesus. To transfigure the everyday and become better disciples for it.

Communion and the Church

Posted on January 30, 2014July 12, 2025

In my last blog post, “Giving Up or Growing Up?” I wrote “I love the idea of the church. A group of people who in gathering around a shared meal of bread and wine commit to being one body—one family devoted to the disciplines of love and forgiveness and the commitment to make the ways of the realm of God present on earth as in heaven. I will always be part of that community” even as I declared that I am done with participating in religious structures that harm others. Interestingly, a common response I received to that post was “So, you’re giving up going to church?”

I get that in our culture the term “church” refers to a place or at best an event. I get that trying to hold fast to the idea that the term ecclesia refers to the people – gathered or called together for a purpose (mattering not if they are physically together in any particular place at any given time) – can be a losing battle these days. But this is one of those things I have to hold fast to. We do not go to, get together for, or do church, we are the church.

That matters.

Oh, it is trendy to talk about being the church, but such discussions quickly dissolve into how we do church. There must be rules and schedules and planned activities and (most importantly) codes of hierarchies and etiquette that must be observed. It’s like being roommates with Sheldon Cooper. It’s not about community, but about staying within the bounds of predetermined appropriate patterns of behavior.

With such responses to my post fresh in my mind, I then read (and got really annoyed by) Preston Yancey’s post “When if the Eucharist is just a symbol, to hell with it.” It hit me that we do to church what we have done to the Eucharist. The historical shift in Christianity from the Body of Christ being the people for whom the bread and the wine were a blessing, to the Body becoming the actual elements removed agency and identity from the people. Adding pseudo-magical ideas like transubstantiation and consubstantiation to theologically back-up that shift (yes, I know I just pissed off most of Christendom…) further distanced people from an identify as being the church to those who do church. Now there can be people arguing that if the elements of the Eucharist are just a symbol of who we are and not something mystical in and of itself, then to hell with it.

We have obviously lost ourselves along the way.

But the critique and the confusion got me thinking. If we are the church that lives in community and choose to demonstrate that we are part of this family together by breaking bread and sharing wine together, then maybe we need a third way between mystical elements and mere symbol to think about that act. Something that moves beyond the lists of rules that set strict boundaries for who we permit to share our bread but which also helps us be and not just do church.

(And this is where I let my nerd show.)

Linguists talk about the power of certain forms of language to perform in their utterance that which they mean. Referred to as speech acts, the idea is that by saying something, we do something, as when in saying “I promise” I actually am making a promise or when a minister joins two people in marriage saying, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” We have mystically applied this idea to Eucharist (by saying the elements are blessed they become so), but what if Communion (and yes I used this term deliberately) was seen as being like an actual speech act. In breaking bread and drinking wine together (in whatever form that actually takes) we are performing the act of being a community, a family, the Body of Christ. It isn’t the symbolism of or the rules around the ritual, but the fact that bread and wine are shared that matters.

Communion is more than a symbol because eating with each other is a vital part of life. And it is not something mystically transformed and delivered by only the one invested with the power to say the right incantation over it. It is far more powerful and active than that. We are a community when we commune with each other and since we are human, that is almost always around food. In the church I used to serve, we called this being foodal (a riff on missional). We did life together over food. We were the church when we were being a community around a table. Over the years, I’ve affirmed my identity as part of the body of Christ by sharing Doritos and Mountain Dew with teens in a youth group. I’ve affirmed this identity by raiding a diaper bag and sharing juice boxes and animal crackers. I’ve affirmed this identity at potlucks, in taking meals to families with newborns, and having dinner with friends. I remember the ways of Christ through such communion, but live it directly in simply being in community. And yes, sadly, I’ve had people refuse to commune with me because the bread wasn’t of the correct type, because the food didn’t pass through the hands of an ordained priest, and because I lacked a penis and therefore could not offer them the food of our shared table. But more often than not I’ve broken bread and shared the cup in joyous ways with my brothers and sisters.

I am not giving up on being the church. I will continue to break bread and share wine as an act of community with those who have chosen to follow in the way of Jesus and live out the dreams of God on earth (or who simply want to join in the community of those who do). For in eating that bread and drinking that wine with whoever so desires to share the table I live into my identity as part of the body of Christ – I am the church.

Giving Up or Growing Up?: Some Thoughts on Church

Posted on January 21, 2014July 12, 2025

Some might call it resignation or failure; I prefer to see it as maturity.

In a recent conversation with a seminary friend, we both expressed how tired we were with churches that continue to give lip service to being welcoming and inclusive of the gifts of all, but which in reality never seem to actually do anything. The conversation was specifically about women in ministry. Both of us have spent years in Christian circles that are still uneasy accepting women as equal participants in the work of the church. In theory they might say it’s okay for women to preach or be ordained and perhaps they might even speak out against the groups that obviously restrict women, but when it comes down to the practical reality of it all, women are never allowed any real voice. So we’ve served as advocates, trying to bring attention to the voices of women, encouraging leaders to open their eyes to their latent sexism, and hoping we can be a source of change from within the realms we participate in. And yet have seen little change.

I admitted in that conversation though that I was tired of that role. How long was I willing to stay within a broken system helping it slowing become more of a life-giving place of welcome when in reality all I was doing was lending a little extra life-support to a system that doesn’t appear to be getting better. So I mused that sometimes we just have to let things simply die off so that that which is healthy has room to thrive.

Hence why some may accuse me of giving up on the church as we know it.

Maybe.

I prefer to think I’m growing up.

It’s not like the church hasn’t been able to do the dignified death thing before. Yes, most change in the church is a long arduous process often plagued with schism and violence. But not always. For example -Following the ban as set forth by Dionysius the Bishop of Alexandria at the beginning of the third century women who were menstruating were not allowed to participate in the sacraments or approach the alter. Except for a brief challenge to this rule by Pope Gregory the Great in 597 (for did not Jesus permit the bleeding woman to touch his cloak?) this ban was near-unanimously agreed upon for most of Christian history. Although the ban naturally did not apply in anti-sacramental Protestant churches following the Reformation, it remained articulated (if not always followed) in Lutheran, Anglican, and Catholic churches until the mid-twentieth century. And then it simply faded away. Most Christians these days have utterly forgotten that this ban ever existed. It died as more life-affirming practices naturally grew up to take its place.

You see, I love the idea of the church. A group of people who in gathering around a shared meal of bread and wine commit to being one body—one family devoted to the disciplines of love and forgiveness and the commitment to make the ways of the realm of God present on earth as in heaven. I will always be part of that community.

I’m just too tired to waste my energy defending structures that do harm in this world, that teach the inferiority of some, that silence the voices of others, that preach selfishness instead of compassion, that don’t bother to welcome and include all, or that care more for trappings of a building, or altar, or style of worship than they do about living as the family that calls itself the body of Christ. I’m fine with participating in the beautiful and cherishing the depth of tradition, but never when it has such high costs.

Maturity for me right now means letting go of that which needs to die and pursuing that which allows life to thrive. I need to grow up.

The Danger of the Light

Posted on February 21, 2013July 12, 2025

For Lent this year the church I attend is exploring the idea of light – of entering into the light, of letting light illuminate the truth. As much as Christians like to talk about the light shining into the darkness, we often forget how dangerous light can be. Light reveals things that we would rather keep hidden. Light forces us to face truths we would rather ignore. We forget in our haste to claim Jesus as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path that carrying a light in the darkness isn’t safe. In the world pre-electricity, to go out into the darkness with a lamp or torch was not an act of the wise. Walking around in a pitch-black night with a torch made you a target for wild animals or other ill-intending creatures of the night. Hiding one’s light under a bushel is safe, shining a light is dangerous.

As I listened to the discussion last Sunday, the illustration that came to mind was the repeated attempts one reads of in the Hebrew Scriptures to remove the lampstands from the Temple. Granted, the scriptures speak of removing the presence of the pagan goddess Asherah and tearing down the poles or trees erected to her in the Temple, but as archeology shows, those poles in the temple were the lampstands or menorahs. Asherah as a symbol of the feminine and embodiment of sexuality and reproduction was depicted by a tree with seven branches in bloom (to represent fertility) as shown in the picture, exactly the way lampstands for the tabernacle/temple are described in Exodus 25. It was this symbol of the female and of sexuality that was repeatedly removed from the temple, only to return again and again.

I couldn’t help but think about the symbolism of this act of removing a lampstand of the feminine from the official place of worship. Light is dangerous. It illuminates structures of oppression and reveals the truth and beauty of women and the body. Such things are scary to a culture trying to cling to hierarchies of patriarchal power. It is easier to extinguish the light, throw the lampstands away, than to gaze upon that which it reveals.

This idea returned to me this week as I was discussing the scriptures read in the early church in one of my classes. The canon of books and letters Christians read pre-Constantine was significantly different than the established canon we have now. Most interestingly was that they included accounts of martyrdoms (like The Martyrdom of Polycarp) in the texts they looked to for worship and comfort. The point was made that pre-Christendom these texts of martyrdom that gave comfort to those suffering persecution as well as encouraged them to resist the ways of empire although popular in the early church were kept out of the canon once Christianity became the official religion of the Empire. Illuminating the oppressions and temptations of empire became too dangerous. It was easier to extinguish that light than to see what it revealed.

Even now to hold up lights illuminating the voice of women, the beauty of the body, or the ills of empire is dangerous. It is scary to have the truth revealed under the light. Doing so makes one a target of ridicule and accusations of heresy. Light makes it impossible to continue in the darkness of the status quo, once truth is revealed it cannot be ignored, only rejected. But that is the risk we take when we embrace the one who claims to be the light.

Celebrating the Flesh

Posted on February 12, 2013July 12, 2025

It’s Mardi Gras. Carnival. The days of embodied celebration before Lent. And beyond a few announcements of church pancake suppers tonight, I’ve heard not a word about either from within the church world this year. Oh, I’ve heard people in professional ministry talk (complain really) about planning their Lenten observances for weeks, but as far as I can tell the period between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday is not a time of celebration but merely a prep period for Lent.

Mardi Gras and Carnival are the embarrassing uncle of the church year. The one’s we don’t like to talk about. Those strange grafted-on “pagan” celebrations that root us firmly in this world and don’t let us pretend that we truly are just souls having a temporary bodily experience. In the Western church, it’s fine to focus on ways we can deny our bodies for the sake of spirituality during Lent, but the mere mention of celebrating bodies is suspect. A fest of the flesh just reeks too much of sin to be embraced. Sex and bodies must always be seen as corrupt and evil, not places of joy or truth. And so the age old dualism that separates mind and body remains.

Even those who call for liberation from structures that oppress get uncomfortable when the bodies they advocate freedom for do, well, bodily things. I recently read this great quote from Marcella Althaus-Reid on the ways feminist and liberation theologians still adhere to this view that incarnate flesh is sinful –

If the shanty townspeople go in procession carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary and demanding jobs, they seem to become God’s option for the poor. However, when the same shanty townspeople mount a carnival centered on a transvestite Christ accompanied by a Drag Queen Mary Magdalene kissing his wounds, singing songs of political criticism, they are not anymore God’s option for the poor. Carnivals in Latin America are the Christmas of the indecent, and yet they are invisible in theological discourse.

Catherine Keller refers to this as our fear of incarnate or incarnal love. Love and religious practice have become disconnected from the body except for the habit of denying the body. We have lost the ability to celebrate and express joy in our body and not feel guilty about it. Mardi gras and Carnival are reminders that some have not lost that gift and bought into our Western dualistic disparagement of the body. Perhaps it is time to stop rushing past them or ignoring them in shame and embrace the wholistic worship that we are so desperately lacking in the Western church.

Emerging in Hope

Posted on January 31, 2013July 12, 2025

Following the Emergence Christianity gathering a few weeks ago, there have been numerous conversations on blogs, podcasts, and Facebook around the nature of the conversation and who exactly gets to define it. I don’t want to rehash the arguments here nor do I have time for the ill-informed “the emerging church is dead” comments. The world has changed and the church (whether it likes it or not) is changing with it as it has always done. Yes, there were those who claimed the label “emerging” because it was the latest fad and there are those still trying to apply it like a veneer to a dying institution, but what is happening around the world is far larger than any one manifestation of the phenomenon.

But responding to change is never easy. When it is obvious that the way things have been done are no longer working one has the option of simply staking one’s claim in the past or adapting to the new situation. Yet to adapt implies the uncertainty of change and that can lead to fear. Fear of the unknown, yes, but also fear that in making changes we will just be repeating the same mistakes that have come before.

In the midst of all these discussions on emergence, I came across this passage in Anselm Min’s The Solidarity of Others in a Divided World that helped clarify the situation for me –

William James once spoke of two attitudes toward truth and error. One attitude is that of the sceptic, who is driven by an obsessive fear of falling into error and does not want to believe in anything except of sufficient evidence. The other is the attitude of the pragmatist, who is more driven by the hope of finding truth than by the fear of falling into error and is therefore willing to risk even believing in error in order to find truth. Deconstruction is more like the sceptic than the pragmatist. It is fundamentally fearful of all determinate embodiments of human sociality in history because of the terror of the same. It may offer prayers and tears for the coming of the wholly other and its messianic justice, but it does not want to dirty its hands by working at establishing determinate institutions of religion and politics. In the name of differance it flees, in neognostic fashion, from the historical determinacy of matter, body, senses, objectivity, and sociality; from the world of presence, identity, and totality; and takes refuge in the dream of the impossible. (44)

While I would not be so quick to dismiss the need for deconstruction, I see the danger of getting caught up in its cycle of fear. It is one thing to diagnose the problems in the church and its disconnect from the realities of the world, but while voicing such might be a necessary part of a healing process or the claiming of permission to seek freedom, it can be easy to let fear confine us to the refuge of this dream of the impossible.

We have seen the pain and the problems in the church and we want something better. Yet the idea of imperfect people imperfectly trying to put flesh to the idea of moving forward in hope is scary. They will mess things up, they will create broken systems, and they will fail in their attempts to embody the dreams and ideals of the emerging ethos. Inevitably, structures and institutions will develop as the pragmatists seek to build rather than just dream. And because such things have terrorized in the past they in and of themselves are feared. It then becomes easier to attack those who try to actually do something than it is to take that step into the unknown.

I like to dream and to deconstruct, but I need to have hope. I need to have some solid ground upon which to place my feet as I journey towards that hope. I need to see ideas assume flesh and exist in social actualities. I’m not all that good at making it happen, but at heart I am a pragmatist. I cannot just say that a better world is possible, I need to live it. Even if that means I might fail or (what’s even scarier) never stop journeying towards hope always in the process of deconstructing and building.

I am emerging not just out of something but into something. I am done with talk for the sake of talk (or even for the sake of hearing if my voice resonates with others); I need to do something that affirms hope. That is how I am moving forward these days.

On Disability and Sola Scriptura

Posted on January 16, 2013July 12, 2025

And now for the disability post.

During the Q&A time with Phyllis Tickle at the Emergence Christianity gathering a woman who uses a wheelchair asked what I thought was one of the most important and telling questions of the event. She commented that even though emergence Christians talk about LGBT folks being the last great “Other” that the church needs to accept, in reality it is people with disabilities who are still otherized the most by the church and asked Phyllis what can be done about that.

I applauded her question.

That’s the thing to do in these sorts of gatherings. When someone dares to bring up the elephants in the room or be a voice for unrepresented voices one applauds if one cares.

I was the only one in a cathedral full of people who applauded her question. It was literally just the sound of one hand clapping.

Phyllis responded that disability is not a truly otherizing or controversial concern for the church because it doesn’t challenge the conception of sola scriptura, next question. I think Phyllis is spot on with her theory that the issues that challenge the church the most are those that shake up our perceived understanding of scripture. If we cling to sola scriptura and our interpretation of that scripture is that slavery is okay, women cannot teach in church, or that same-sex relationships are a sin then to accept those things is to disrupt our entire conception of the scripture. Given the philosophical framework of most Protestants and the lingering predominance of sola scriptura, I fully agree with her description of why such issues caused such turmoil for the church.

What I don’t agree with is that disability is not a challenge to sola scriptura.

I would argue that people with disabilities are in fact the most otherized group of people in the church. Whether it is dealt with well or not, most Christians would agree that racism is wrong and that we should love people of all colors of skin. Many churches would also say that sexism is evil and quite a few even allow women to serve as pastors. It’s trendy to engage in interreligious dialogue and LGBT advocacy is the undisputed cause of the moment. Not so much when it comes to welcoming and showing support for the differently abled.

Basically, we are not and never will be cool. While I fully acknowledge the damaging effect positive stereotypes can have – there is something to be said for the hip factor of Queer folk in advancing their cause. But no one brags about their cool disabled friend they go shopping with. We don’t have Pride parades that end up being the most fun event of the season. There are no sitcoms about witty and fabulous disabled people. Not that this is a competition, just the facts that we are hard to like. We are the awkward ones. We are the ones who are so used to the stares and the pointing fingers and the laughter that we’ve learned to brace ourselves as we enter most social situations knowing that we make other people uncomfortable. For better or worse we have never had the option of a closet to hide in to escape the taunts of the world. We are the freaks and it will never, ever, be trendy to advocate for us much less see us as something other than Other.

Secondly, standing in solidarity with us is costly, literally. If a church starts talking about offering programs for the disabled or even putting in an access ramp they quickly encounter the hard data of the cash it will cost them. Most decide that it is more fiscally responsible to just ignore us. Yes, I get that churches that chose to be welcoming and inclusive of the LGBT community know that there might possibly be a financial cost to that decision. But as members leave and take their tithes with them, the blow is softened by knowing that the loss of income came because the church chose the moral high ground over bigotry. It is easier to accept potential cost than swallow the price tag up front.

But beyond those factors, what I have discovered regarding why disability advocacy is not a cause emergence Christianity (or any form of Christianity really) cares about is that the traditional biblical notions about disability have not yet been challenged the way ideas about slavery, women, and Queers have. Instead of seeing people with disabilities as whole people to be equally welcomed in the body of Christ, there is still a ruling belief in the church that we are broken people in need of healing. We are people to be served and changed, not people to be included and fought for.

Think about the songs we sing (even last week at the Emergence Christianity gathering). The lyrics are all about the poor and the blind being made whole or about rejoicing that “I once was blind but now I see.” If we were singing “I once was gay but now I’m straight” or “I once was Native but now I’m civilized” there would be an uproar, but no one sees any issue in singing such about the differently abled. It is still permissible to assume an absolute normative and cast anyone who appears different as the incomplete other that must be healed and made whole before they can be accepted like everyone else.

The church still repeats the cultural mores of the biblical worlds. Those with imperfections of the body were barred from serving in the Tabernacle and the Temple. Even animals with defects could not be offered up to God in sacrifice. Only those who appeared normative, unblemished, could be accepted as pure and holy sacrifices to God. People with disabilities could not even enter the Temple to worship, but had to remain in the courtyard of the women and the Gentiles. The imperfection of our body made us unacceptable to God. Over time Gentiles, women, and slaves came to be seen as whole persons made in the image of God and therefore worthy of service, but the stigma of incompleteness remains on those with disability.

Phyllis was partially right in her response. Disability isn’t an issue challenging sola scriptura. But that’s because there has yet to be a vocal and vibrant call within the church to challenge ancient cultural assumptions that continue to cast us as Other. And honestly, I don’t know if there ever will be given how “uncool” we are and how costly it is to welcome us fully. That one could even state that how the church conceives of disability isn’t an issue is quite telling of how little attention is given to us at all.

It’s uncomfortable to be the sole person clapping for this cause in a room full of people who generally seem committed to being as welcoming and inclusive as possible. And it’s indicative of how far we still have to go.

–

Emergence Christianity, Women, and the Fall of Christendom

Posted on January 14, 2013July 12, 2025

Last week I was able to attend the Emergence Christianity Gathering in Memphis, TN. In truth, I went mostly to see old friends and to get the fix that comes from surrounding myself (for a few days at least) with people who ask the same sorts of questions I ask. Not that we all think the same, but sometimes I just need that freedom to be myself for a few days. So on that level, the Gathering was amazing. I had some great conversations, heard some good Blues bands, and ate enough barbeque to last a lifetime.

And for the most part, I enjoyed the content of the conference. Yes, there was a serious lack of diversity on stage and amidst attendees. Yes, meeting in a cathedral makes for a very uncomfortable venue. But for what this event was (a celebration of Phyllis Tickle’s life and work), I was prepared to deal with those.

And then came the final session.

There’s no denying that the final session was just weird. Even those who weren’t offended by what was said there thought it was a very odd way to end a conference. I’ve had both people who were there and who were following along on Twitter asking me what the hell happened. I can’t really explain why it happened, but I want to spend some time responding.

A big part of the problem was that people coming to an emergence Christianity event, especially to hear such an intelligent woman as Phyllis, were not expecting to disagree with her much less hear her say such confusing and hurful things about women, people with disabilities (more on this one another day), and African-Americans. From what I gathered, people came there hopeful for what is emerging in the church and left feeing bewildered. They expected to perhaps disagree with some speakers, but Phyllis is beloved and so the disconnect was far more jarring. I’ve heard Phyllis give versions of these lectures before, but never draw the conclusions she did at this event, so even to me, it was unsettling.

The main content of the gathering was Phyllis doing her whole overview of church history to explain where the church is today and how we got here. It’s a fantastic, albeit cursory, survey of church history which far too few Christians have any knowledge whatsoever about. In her talks, she is always one to make snarky comments or sex jokes that no one but a woman pushing 80 can get away with, but the unsettling pattern in her storytelling this time was to blame women for the demise of Christendom. In the final session Phyllis described the rise and fall of Constantinian Christianity and pointed to the emancipation of women in the 20th century as a catalyst for that decline. While most of us there would agree that the fall of Christendom is a very good thing and that women’s liberation significantly changed our culture, it was where Phyllis went with from there that caused the discomfort.

Phyllis described the freedoms working outside the home in WW2 and the ability to control our cycles the Pill brought women and argued that such things led to the destruction of the nuclear family and therefore the foundation of the civil religion of Christendom. While it is a narrow assessment of causality, I can agree with the descriptive observation that such things changed our culture. But then she jumped from these changes as that which brought an end to Christendom to describing how such changes led to the destruction of the ways the faith is passed on to new generations which thereby resulted in a biblically illiterate society. As she described it, when mom is not at home weaving the stories of scripture and the church calendar into her day to day activities in front of her children, they do not receive the basics of the faith. One cannot apparently have a sacred family meal over Papa John’s pizza picked up on the way home from work the same way that one can if one is baking bread, doing family crafts, and eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Phyllis ended the session by encouraging us to discover ways to be back in the kitchen with our children and finding crafty ways to import the rhythms of the church year to them. Essentially to focus on the family and all that. That is the great emergence. The end.

You can see why people left bewildered.

The story as she told it made sense – constructed narratives work that way – women are to blame for the post-Christian era and if we just got back in the home the faith could thrive again. But it is important to note that in her narrative instead of focusing on what has emerged that brings hope in this world, she was telling the story of why things have changed – which are two vastly different perspectives. At some point in telling the story of change it is hard not to get nostalgic about one point or another and hold a sugar-coated vision of that time up as the period we must all try to harken back towards. The problem with such an approach is that it ignores the underside of said period and it imposes guilt upon those who find hope outside that period’s restrictions.

In making the argument that religion was far stronger when the nuclear family (as defined by a working father and stay at home mother) reigned one not only limits the definition of who gets to represent proper religion but also romanticizes a system that was far more broken than is often realized. The truth is, not all Christian families had the luxury of living such a white middle-class, middle-America lifestyle. Even ignoring the patterns of faith outside the Western world, it is only a small demographic of people who ever had a mother at home teaching the children the church year as she cooked their supper. To hold such up as a goal for contemporary Christians to return to privileges white, middle-class, liturgical faith as the only true or acceptable way to be a faithful Christian. While there is nothing wrong with living in such ways, it is not nor never has been the only way to live one’s faith or impart it to one’s children.

To lament that our culture ever changed from such a family structure (even though only a few ever lived it to begin with) also ignores the ills of that very structure. The shift in the Reformation period that empowered women by making them the spiritual leader in the home has over time not only ostracized men from spiritual practices (because such things are “just” for women) but also restricted women’s service to God to just within the household. This way of thinking does a disservice to men, women, and the Kingdom of God. Perpetuating the notion that it is the role of women to care for the spiritual development of their family in their home ignores the fact that it was causing problems for the faith long before the practice began to decline.

Similarly, upholding this family structure ignores that the development of the modern nuclear family wasn’t exactly a healthy historical development. Prior to the Victorian era’s turn to individualized nuclear family dwellings, people lived far more communally. Multiple generations lived together and villages functioned as extended family. There was no such thing as a woman keeping house herself. No one ever had to cook, clean, manage the house, watch the kids, and educate the kids on her own. Younger teens helped around the house. Kids could wander the village knowing that most people there would take care of them and that they too were expected to help others as needed. Crying babies were watched by the tween girls or elderly women while the women devoted themselves to other tasks. The development of the nuclear family took all of those support structures away from women. Those who were not rich enough to afford servants to help them were expected for the first time in history to bear the burden of all the household tasks alone. A few enlightened men in recent decades have begun to lend a hand, but it is rare that extended families much less the community (including the church) feel any need to help women with these tasks – expecting her instead to be some sort of supermom who can do it all. At the same time the turn toward isolated nuclear families took away the safety that being in community provides. When generations live together and everyone in the village knows each other’s business it is a lot harder for abuse of women and children to be hidden. Not that it didn’t happen or that women weren’t treated as property during those periods, but the façade of the nuclear family hid many ills that a nostalgic romanticized view ignores. It was not a sustainable system, and it is no surprise that by the mid-twentieth century women were both “running for the shelter of mother’s little helper” and seeking freedom from such unrealistic expectations.

But just because the story can be told in such a way that explains why things have changed in a regretful fashion doesn’t mean that is the only way the story must be told. Allowing women to lead family devotions was a huge hopeful step forward in empowering women once upon a time. The freedom that working outside the home and the Pill brought women gave them hope of being fully themselves and the ability to stand on their own two feet apart from abusive and controlling husbands and fathers. I think many of us at the Emergence Christianity Gathering were shocked that such stories of hope were ignored in favor of one that piled on the same stale guilt that we have come to expect from traditional religion. I’m not saying that Phyllis Tickle can’t believe whatever she wants about the role and place of women or tell the story of history through her own particular biases, but what dawned on many of us during this final session was that she was no longer telling a story of emergence. The end of the story as she told it was not one of hope and promise, but one of restrictions and guilt that we are already well acquainted with. It hurt to hear that from her, and many couldn’t bring themselves to admit that they had problems with how she told the story – just that it felt like a really weird ending to the conference. It is like we were waiting for permission to disagree, to state that was not the only way to tell the story.

So here I go – as much as I am grateful for Phyllis and admire much of her work, she does not possess the only truth regarding what is emerging. It is okay to tell the story of where we have been as a story of hope and liberation instead of merely one of regrettable change. We are still figuring out how to live within this emerging world and what were once whispered ideas and conversations are now unquestioned facts about the evolution of our culture. Not knowing where we came from is dangerous, but so is staking our claim in a misunderstood past. We are constantly negotiating what it means to witness with hope within this present moment without simply re-iterating the past. How we tell our story determines the shape of that witness.

So my question for Emergence Christians is – how can we use this awkward moment to push us to start telling this story of hope?

Wild Goose 2012 Reflection

Posted on July 1, 2012July 12, 2025

The 2012 Wild Goose Festival East wrapped up just under a week ago and I am still trying to process my experience there. As I tweeted as I drove away from the fest, I left feeling exhausted, hopeful, and blessed – that strange combination that reflected the emotional impact of my time there. And it was a truly blessed time. I was honored with the opportunity to speak on The Hunger Games and the Gospel as well as do a Q&A on everyday justice issues at the Likewise tent. I also was able to join Brett Webb-Mitchell on a panel discussion about living with disabilities in religious communities. But beyond those conversations I was able to help initiate, I also found a generous and safe space to connect with friends, wrestle with difficult questions, and dream of a better world. Such spaces are so rare in my life these days, that finding such at Wild Goose was a precious gift.

There are, of course, the expected complaints about the festival. It was brutally hot (and that is coming from a Texan). I never ceased to be sticky, sweaty, and stinky and there were bugs everywhere. Camping in a field where every action (and parenting attempt) is on constant display is stressful and uncomfortable. And, as with many religious gatherings, there could have been greater diversity. For the first hour I was there as I nearly passed out trying to set up a tent in the sweltering heat, I was in a panic mode wondering why I was stupid enough to subject myself to the discomfort and imperfection of it all again this year. Yet as I entered into the experience of being a part of this crazy wonderful gathering, those issues (although ever-present) faded in significance as I found myself fitting into a place where I felt I belonged. It would be hard to give an all-encompassing report of the Wild Goose since all I have is my particular experience of it, so all I can initially do here is describe a few of those points that provided that resonance of belonging.

I saw people moving past the trivial distractions of the Church to attempt to live authentically in the way of Christ. Last year Wild Goose was a new thing in search of its identity. It was edgy, it was controversial, it was hip. None of that mattered this year. The point wasn’t to have debates over controversial issues, but to do the real work of the church. So collectively it seemed like the festival grew up, got over its fears and struggles to define its identity and decided to stop feeding the infighting within the body of Christ and start being Christ instead. I’m sure there were some people upset by that act of maturing, but I doubt many of them came back this year. There also were far fewer people there who just came to be seen in their own sessions but who refused to attend and learn from other sessions. Being in conversation and humbly letting others speak into our lives was more the norm this year. Wild Goose grew up. I personally found it refreshing to be a part of something that didn’t direct all its energy at defending the rightness of one particular theological ghetto. It was also nice to be amidst people who spent more time living in the ways of the kingdom of God than they do making theological excuses for why the church needn’t bother following the way of Christ. There was also no need to grow any particular church or hold tight to a denominational allegiance. This was a truly ecumenical gathering of Catholics, Mainliners, Evangelicals, and Emergents coming together beyond their tribal boundaries. This is not to say that hard questions weren’t wrestled with at Wild Goose or challenges to privilege issued, but it was done (as far as I could tell) from a respectful and welcoming attitude. I needed to see that to regain some faith in the structure of church itself.
I got to see my children thriving in community. Last year at Wild Goose we were the hovering parents. Our kids had to be in eyesight at all times which severely limited their ability to make friends as well as our ability to attend sessions and have conversations. This year we, for the first time in their lives, let our kids roam free. Like children from past generations who roamed the neighborhood finding friends and adventures alike, the safe space of the Wild Goose gave our kids the opportunity to be a part of community on their own. I saw them come alive as they made the experience their own. From my son donning his Batman cape and finding a wooden stake somewhere so he could roam as “Vampire Slayer Batman” as we sipped boxed wine and made fair trade s’mores at our tent with friends to my daughter finding quartz rocks on the path and trying to get the food vendors to accept her “diamonds” as payment for ice cream and lemonade – they had the time of their lives. Yes, we got a few disapproving reactions from other parents there and I heard a family was asked to leave the supposedly “open-table” Eucharist because their kids were playing nearby, but I am grateful for this opportunity my kids had to be children in a way kids these days rarely do – and that there is a space for that within a community of faith.
I was able to be moved by a worship experience for the first time in a very long time. While there were opportunities to enter into worship provided throughout the festival – ranging from contemplative prayer times, to interactive creative worship, to liturgies, and even a good old-fashioned hymn-sing (appropriately held at the beer tent), it was the final Sunday morning worship processional that had me literally choked up with the beauty of being a part of the community of the body of Christ. Proclaiming that every worship processional should in fact be a parade of celebration this call to worship consisted of a ringleader and band leading a parade through the festival grounds as the people of God with painted faces and waving banners danced and sang out “When the Saints Go Marching In.” There was a blessed relief in being amidst a group of people who weren’t worshiping just to be fed or to consume a religious good or who don’t see the rituals as church as the limit of worship. There also was a deeper joy in having been through the festival and hearing of the passion of this sliver of the church to truly live in the ways of Christ by seeking justice for all and loving the whole world sacrificially that made me actually want to sing “Oh how I want to be in their number when the saints go marching in.” In the back of my head I heard all the critics’ voices telling me in that moment that worship must be solemn, that we had sacrificed tradition for novelty, that we were simply being foolish. But the sense of utter rightness and overwhelming hope I saw as I danced along with those committed to marching against injustice in the name of love drowned out the toxicity of those messages I am usually surrounded with and I was able to experience God again. I agree with Bono that the right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear – sometimes it takes foolishly resisting the trappings of church in order to find the strength to resist the injustices of culture. It set my soul free and dismantled the box we so often force God to dwell within.

I could ramble on and on about the wonderful people and conversations I had at Wild Goose. It was a place that revived hope in me for the body of Christ in our world today. And I find myself infinitely grateful to have spent a few sweltering and uncomfortable days amidst these saints in order to catch this glimpse of the Kingdom manifest in this world.