While I found a number of the letters personally challenging, the most poignant word for the church (for me at least) was in Peter Rollins’ letter. He writes –

It is not enough for you [the church] to say that you are falling short of your beliefs, for this very confession plays into the idea that there is a difference between your various beliefs and your actions. Rather, if you will permit, I ask you to remember the radical Christian insight that one’s actions reflect one’s beliefs. That you cannot say that you believe in God if you do not commit yourself to what Kierkegaard referred to as the work love.

As part of this blog tour, I was asked to write my own letter to the church which I have found to be more difficult than I thought it would be. There are a million things that I could say to the church, most of which are simply evidence of my own failings and hypocrisy. But as I thought about it over the past few weeks, one theme in particular kept coming to mind which echoed Rollins’ letter in many ways. Hence my letter –

Dear Church,

I’m tired. I just don’t have the ability to keep up with the façade of “church” anymore. Oh, I love Jesus, I am crazy about living into the Kingdom of God, and I desperately want to be with the body of Christ, but I just can no longer keep up with the systems and structures that go along with all of that. I know it’s cliché to talk about wanting to be the church as opposed to merely doing church, but right now all I see are the structural façades and they are overwhelming.

It’s not that any one branch of the church is to blame – megachurch, mainline, or housechurch – all seem bogged down with the idea that the church exists for its own sake. The point seems to be to perfect the performance, hone the ritual, grow the structure so that the church can survive and thrive. It’s all (in theory) so that the church can bless its members and be able to serve the world, but all too often it seems like the forms of church become the purpose of church consuming all of our vision and energy. The actions of church don’t reflect the things I claim to believe and yet they demand all our attention. And I just have to confess that right now I am worn out.

I’m not interested in building structures right now. Or defining boundaries or expressing unwavering loyalty to a tribe. Or even in the survival of any group or gathering (even as I respect and cherish the need for such). Instead of constantly shoring up structures, I feel like I need the space to mourn. Not just for my own personal stuff as it seems every structure in the world exists to help me deal with me, but instead to be able to focus less on strengthening particular forms and more on taking the time to lament the fracturing amidst the forms. To listen to the stories of the body that have been kept silent, to hear the groanings of the body that our choruses and chants drown out, to strip away our beautiful facades in favor of sackcloth and ashes. I need the space to hear of the struggles of the body of Christ and the trials of inhabiting God’s Kingdom without the distractions of having to protect a structure.

Jesus said those who mourn will be comforted and that the weary will be given rest, but dear Church, how can we ever find the comfort that comes from mourning or the rest from burdens when we must constantly be working to hold up your façade? So what I simply ask is this – provide space for us, as the church, to mourn; let us please rest.

Your Sister,
Julie

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If you could write a letter to the church what would you say? InterVarsity Press and Patheos would love to hear your thoughts. Now through May the 4th anyone who is interested is invited to submit a letter to the IVP Letters to the Future Church Campaign for a chance to have your letter posted at Patheos and get some of the latest IVP books. So what is the message that you think the church needs to hear?

Ten years ago I had never heard of the emerging church. Oh, I was reading postmodern philosophy and asking all sorts of questions that were getting me in trouble, but I had no idea that there were other Christians discussing these sorts of ideas. I had just finished my first round of grad-school having studied Intercultural Studies and Missions at Wheaton College. I often had made my classmates (and a few of my professors) uncomfortable by asking why missions concepts like contextualization of the Gospel, socio-linguistic relativity, and intercultural difference could not also be applied to our own American culture. If it was okay to have the Gospel make sense culturally in some third world country, why couldn’t it make sense to all people in the United States?

But this was the era when “purpose driven” churches were cutting edge and where in a post-9/11 flag-draped America, homogeneity trumped authenticity. Facebook and Twitter were still years away, so it was a lot harder to discover that you weren’t the only one asking the crazy questions. Even so, it was early in 2002 when someone recommended to my husband and me that we might enjoy reading a book by this guy Brian McLaren. As others have often mentioned, what I discovered in A New Kind of Christian wasn’t completely new, but more of an affirmation that there were others exploring the same sorts of questions about faith as I was. And knowing that one is not alone holds a special power. Knowing that I didn’t have to ignore those nagging questions or divorce my intellect from my faith saved my faith. Instead of a hollow and confining static system, it had been transformed into a living reality.

Knowing that there were others out there meant I had to find them – which is where The Ooze enters in. I found that community online, and more specifically its message boards. I created a profile with a fake name (MaraJade) and a false avatar and jumped in with both feet. Over the next few years the evolution of my faith played out on those boards. I eventually added my real name as virtual friendships morphed into physical ones, but it was there that I began to re-imagine theology, and church, and what it even meant to be a Christian. While it was not always the safest place to explore such questions in a public forum, it was the only place where such dialogue could even occur. It is amusing now to think as The Ooze shuts down that all these old conversations, these snapshots of a faith in transition, will now be archived at Fuller Seminary. I pity the sociologist of religion who will sift through them someday for her dissertation.

But as the conversation grew, territories were claimed and lines began to be drawn. Certain groups declared that there was a range of acceptable questions (generally permitting the re-imagining of worship practices but not theological stances) and they (loudly) denounced the rest of us. Others set up camp as either for the Ooze or for Emergent Village – competing for publishing contracts, conference speaking spots, and (of course) advertising dollars. Those of us involved in both observed that tension and felt like we were being made to choose sides. Looking back, it seems so silly that in a conversation about deconstructing the systems of modernism in favor of re-imaging a wholistic and healthy way to be the church such petty fights would ever be waged, but I guess that is the way of man (and I intentionally used the masculine there). For me the conversation was holy in whatever guise it took.

I never made it to a Soularize until this year and I regret that. But there was still something intriguing to enter into that space ten years on and discover where the past decade has taken the conversation. In a struggling economy the trappings of financial success have long since lost the power to sway the conversation. Petty differences have given way to collaboration as those who believe that re-imagining church for a postmodern world is more than just the latest trend to follow. The angst of needing to constantly deconstruct where we all have been has mellowed into a loosely held space where dreams and critique coexist. The urgency to fix the world has passed while the passion to hope for a better world remains.

In short, the emerging conversation I encountered at Soularize this year was one of hope. While it might not burn as brightly as it once did, a bonfire requires too much empty energy to sustain itself. What we have left is a smoldering movement – not in the negative sense of having been reduced to ashes, but of the sort of long-burning coals that warm homes and bake bread. And there are still new people joining the conversation – asking their own questions and desperately attempting to cling to their faith in meaningful ways. But how they enter in looks different now that there are those of us who have matured in this conversation for the past ten years or more there to welcome them in.

Groups like Soularize and The Ooze may be winding down, but that is because the conversation has shifted. We no longer just need space for questions; we need space to build as well. Learning parties are no longer just about questions, they are also about formulating responses with our lives. I am grateful for this last Soularize for serving as a transition in that shift. And I am looking forward to what lies ahead.

“Blessed are the good-hearted, poets and the dreamers. And all us crazy, holy, hungry ones who still believe in something better.”

I went to the Wild Goose Festival for the community. Meeting for the first time this year in the hills of beautiful North Carolina, Wild Goose was a gathering focused on arts, justice, and faith. I went eager to reunite with old friends and to finally translate a few virtual relationships into reality. Oh, I was excited to hear David Wilcox and Jennifer Knapp and learn from respected Christian leaders, but it was the gathering of friends that drew me and my family to the fest. And while it was the community that brought me there, it was the communal experience of commitment that defined my time there. Those lines posted above from Carrie Newcomer’s song “Where You Been,” sum up perfectly the experience that was the Wild Goose Festival.

If anything, Wild Goose was a gathering of those who dream of a better way. A better way to be human, a better way to be the church. Not in a “we want to be better than you” sort of way, but more of a deep felt recognition that the world is not as it should be. It was that wrestling with trying to live into the lives God created us to live that became the conversation at Wild Goose. As part of that, one theme that kept resurfacing in the talks I heard was that of learning to be open to the full range of human emotions and experiences in the world. The typical Christian impulse in our country is to dwell upon the joyful aspects of life and faith. We put on the mask of pretending all is fine to the world. We hold church services oriented around worship, praise, and the uplifting parts of scripture. While there is nothing wrong with doing those things, they don’t allow the faithful to reflect the fullness of reality. As the great civil rights activist Vincent Harding pointed out in his talk, there is pain and suffering in the church. Institutional and social evils such as racism and the inequalities it produces affect the body of Christ – harming both those who commit and who suffer those sins. To pretend that all is well when all is obviously not well is to pretend at joy – not to experience it in reality. As Harding commented, to ever be able to truly laugh, one must also be allowed to honestly weep for all the pain and suffering. Pretending that all is well or to deny that the suffering exists harms our souls, preventing us from being whole healthy people. In his talk Soong-Chan Rah also called for the need to remember the words of lamentations in our churches. The Western church has exorcised such biblical passages of lament from our services, lectionaries, and prayer books, and we would do well to be reminded from the global church (that knows far more about experiencing suffering) that recognizing and lamenting our sins and pain is part of what it means to follow God.

While the church of course has a long way to go in regards to becoming balanced and healthy in such ways, it was encouraging to get a small taste of what that might look like at the Wild Goose Festival. I can’t speak for everyone there, but from the conversations I was a part of it truly did seem to be a gathering of folks who deeply dreamed of a better way. People who desired for our faith to mean something tangible. People, who, as Richard Rohr said there, don’t want to settle for the easy shallow faith of merely worshiping God – putting God on an idealized but distant pedestal to be admired but not known. They want to follow God in ways that transform their lives and therefore the lives of others as well. People who desire to follow God in ways that bring about justice, that seek to restore broken relationships, that always orient around caring about the needs of others. But also people who don’t trust in their own strength to do such things, who know the world and the church are messy, and that we need time for lament and repentance as part of our experience of following Jesus.

It can be easy to talk about such things, and I know I’ve done my fair share of talking before. But what I appreciated about the Wild Goose festival was that it forced us past the point of posturing to a place of transparent honesty. At most of our church gatherings, conferences, or cohorts we can easily erect a façade of self and allow others to see only what we desire them to see of who we are. We can talk grand ideas, look as pious/hip/committed as we desire, and then escape back into our solitary lives without anyone glimpsing our rough edges. But there is something about camping in close proximity in sweltering weather in fields crawling with ants and ticks, where the nearest water is a spigot several fields away, with your communal shit stinking up the port-a-potties and your children sleep-deprived from the excitement of camping and the loud bands that play into the wee small hours of the night that violently rips away any façade one might have attempted to hide behind. Everyone sees you crawling dishelved out of your tent in the morning desperate to concoct a coffee-like-substance over your tiny camp stove. Everyone hears you yelling at your kids to stop (literally) bouncing off the tent walls and go to sleep. And I’m pretty sure half the people there witnessed my tired, hot, and hungry children having a grand royal meltdown in the food area one day at lunch. It was just a few days, but it was real.

So when we came to worship together and share our passion for following God in transforming ways in this raw state of discomfort and exhaustion, it was more than just talk. We were those crazy, holy, hungry ones who believe in something better. It was a glimpse of the Kingdom of God that went far beyond just friends gathering to have fun together at a festival or to posture at caring for others. It was a gathering of the most committed Christians I know – those who long to follow God wholly. And that gave me great hope for the church. I had to laugh when I read after the festival that some opponents were deriding the festival, questioning our faith and referring to the event as Apostate-palooza (because *obviously* anything to do with art, camping, and justice can’t possibly be Christian). Yet I realized that they were right in a way. This was a gathering of apostates of the church as it has become – a often meaningless and impotent entity beholden to civil structures of culture and politics that cares more about power and privilege and shoring up hollow rituals and traditions than it does about loving others and believing in God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Wild Goose was a gathering of those crazy folks who are committed to a better way. We are apostates of meaningless religion, ready to strip away the facades and get at the real work of following God.

That was my Wild Goose experience – leaving me raw and tired and strangely full of hope.

Since leaving yesterday, I’ve been walking around with an ache in my heart. I feel wounded and broken – my soul has been permanently changed and now feels alien in its own skin. What we heard these last few days changed us. And I am beginning to realize that we can’t unlearn what we heard this week, the stories we heard have altered our very being. We can choose to deny what we heard or refuse to let what we heard move us to action, but there is no going back to the people we were before this conversation – for us as individuals or for the organization Emergent Village.

Strange thing is, I wasn’t expecting this conference to affect me so strongly. I knew about the horrors of colonialism. I’ve read books on liberation and postcolonial theology. I speak up for justice and believe the call for Christians is to end oppression. I admit my complicity in ongoing oppression and colonialism and strive to repent of such sins. All those things I knew in my head. But sitting down and listening to the stories and the prophetic words of people who speak the truth about their own experiences with such things is something entirely different. I hope over the next few weeks to write about some of what I heard there, but for right now all I can do is attempt to process the space I am in at the moment.

This ache in my heart, this realization that opening myself up to hearing these words means that I can never return to who I was before is difficult. It is an uncomfortable liminal space to inhabit. And it is in that uncertain space of discomfort that we ended the conference. No moments of feeling theologically astute for chatting with some famous theologian, no triumphal feeling of understanding the emergence of the church in postmodern times – simply people stripped raw, uncertain how to move forward. For me, the uncomfortable strangeness of that discomfort was manifest in how the event wrapped-up.

Here we had spent three days discussing the effects of the colonial project. The speakers had led us to see how the Bible is used as a colonizing text and how the rituals and trapping of the Western church have colonized the minds of indigenous peoples. Their dream is to find ways to do distinctly indigenous theology and develop spiritual practices that are native to who they are. They pleaded with us to stop seeing Western theology, philosophy, academia, and liturgy as the norm that all others must aspire to or at least subjugate their spiritual language to. And above all to not just allow native peoples space to pursue those paths, but to join in with them valuing their voices just as much as we value Western voices.

So after all that we closed with a time of communion where we stood serving the broken body of Christ to one another. And as we served someone started singing hymns. Old hymns. Traditional hymns. The hymns of the great Western churches. As others shakily joined in, I sat in my chair stunned and silent feeling that something was deeply wrong. And then Musa Dube, the Botswanan biblical scholar who had been sharing and challenging us about the need to re-imagine our theology and rituals started singing “How Great Thou Art.” She later shared how singing is how she has always been able to connect with God. And it was in that moment that the tears started to fall. I couldn’t help but weep that when confronted with our own complicity in the sins of empire the only way we knew how to respond was by singing the songs of Babylon. That in even this moment of worship all we knew to do was speak the language of empire. Part of me wanted to believe that in that moment it was enough to be who we were, but part of me also wanted to stop the whole thing and beg Richard Twiss or Musa Dube to give us the language to move beyond ourselves. Yet all I could do was weep at my inability to do anything but sing the songs of Babylon as an offering of reconciliation to the God who brings freedom to the oppressed. And that has left the ache in my heart that has stripped me raw.

What I find more of are the (white) people who automatically get defensive when it is suggested that perhaps there might be something wrong with the colonial past and that it might be beneficial for Christians to listen to the voices of all the members of the body of Christ. Apparently by suggesting that there may have been ills in colonialism we are demonstrating that we are deluded by “white guilt” which invalidates everything we have to say. What a convenient excuse – for avoiding whatever this “white guilt” is has become a valid reason to avoid responsibility. The defensiveness then proceeds in one of two directions.

The first is for the objector to claim that they are color blind – they don’t see race, so how dare I be racist by saying that people of other races or ethnic groups should be listened to. The underlying argument is that if we are all one in Christ, then all voices should matter. So to them to have to stop listening to (all) white voices in favor of hearing the perspective of an African or an Asian (or a woman for that matter) is a promotion of racism against whites. They convince themselves that race shouldn’t matter, so that they can feel comfortable never interacting or learning from anyone who isn’t white. (please see Bruce Reyes-Chow’s recent piece on this whole issue)

The second common defensive response is for someone to give the, “how dare you imply that Christianity needs changing, it is heresy to abandon the established truths of the past!” While there may be a decent argument somewhere in there, what it generally implies is that the person thinks that the church has existed in stasis since the day Jesus floated up into the clouds. Any perspective that is other (different to what they know) must obviously be pagan or an attempt to corrupt timeless truth. Once again a very convenient way to avoid the truth of history or actually assuming responsibility for one’s theology.

But by far the most disturbing response I have encountered so far is the “why bother?” response. It will come as no surprise that registration for this year’s conference – where instead of hearing from some rock star white male theologian we are hearing from an African woman and a First Nations man – is significantly less than usual. Granted, some of this is to blame on the economy, people just don’t have the funds to travel to multiple conferences anymore. But I’ve heard over and over again that this conversation just isn’t important enough to “waste” limited conference funds on (I heard the same thing leading up to Christianity 21 last year with its all-female line-up). Sadly, listening to the voices of those questioning the theology our ancestors thrust on them to manipulate them with and who engage in dialogue regarding how the faith of those who claim that we are blessed to be a blessing can truly bless all the nations of the world just isn’t relevant enough to the American church.

Hearing those responses helped me see the narrow boundaries the American church permits for the conversation of race and reconciliation. It is fine to throw the emerging church under the bus for being for whites only, but when conservations start to occur where the goal is to simply listen to supposedly neglected voices – the passion around that issue disappears. It is fine to say we want diversity, but not to actually work for it. It made me wonder if much of that conversation stemmed from people who want to claim the token minority in their church as “diversity” but who aren’t willing to give up enough privilege to actually listen and learn from people with differing experiences. And I fully admit – I cling to my privilege in a million ways and have been guilty of tokenism more than I would care to admit. But, I have to wonder why people are so afraid to care and make changes where it would really matter.

It reminds me of a Delta Airlines ad I saw recently. It had a picture of a woman sleeping on an airplane with the caption “Sleep Shouldn’t Be a Perk.” The copy went on to explain that since sleep is a basic necessity that on a (very) select number of International flights (to places like Dubai or Sydney) Delta now provides fully horizontal beds – in their Business Elite cabin. So apparently if it is in First Class it is a perk, but if it is in Business class then it is a necessity. Those of us who can barely afford economy class will continue to be treated like crap and packed in like cattle. Privilege can be admitted and the playing field equalized, but only within certain very narrow boundaries.

I wonder if the same is ultimately true of the (white) church. We like to talk about overcoming racism and how much we love Martin Luther King Jr., but it seems like we are willing to accept others only if they are already almost exactly like us. We don’t want to do the dirty work of admitting privilege and how our theology has been used to oppress others. We will make a million excuses why we dislike the very conversation, but in the end I thing we are just afraid. Afraid of what is other, afraid of change, and afraid of having to give up some of the perks we hold so dear.

For instance it is hard to advance a truthful theology of suffering when we are the ones forcing others to suffer. In our country where some Christians say they are being persecuted if a salesperson says “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” we often lack even the most basic point of reference for understanding how people from different cultural settings who’ve lived through oppression and grief approach their faith.

For example theologian Chung Hyun Kyung comments on the influence on Asian women’s theology of Western colonizers telling them God is love while beating, staving, and raping them. This experience and twisted message affects how they view God and what questions they ask of God. She writes that their challenging of God on his silence during their oppression cannot help but shape their theology. They ask of God, “Where were you when we were hungry? Where were you when we called your name as our bodies were raped, mutilated, and disfigured by our husbands, policemen, and the soldiers of colonizing countries? Have you heard our cries? Have you seen our bodies dragged like dead dogs and abandoned in the trash dumb?” (Struggle to be the Sun Again, p22).

Questions must be asked as theology is done in such postcolonial contexts in attempts to differentiate the message of the colonizers and the message of Jesus. For instance, when oppressed people are told that a good Christian is quiet, subservient, and accepts suffering and poverty by the very colonizers who live in luxury and benefit from the service and poverty of the people, some serious theological reconsideration is in order. A theology that is only ever applied to women or oppressed peoples in order to keep them subservient is highly suspect. Truth and worship are far more important than such self-serving twistings of God’s word. But it takes hearing from these voices from the margins and wrestling with the same questions they wrestle with in order for the church as a whole to move towards a healthy and truthful theology.

But to do so requires humility. It not only requires some of us to give up our positions of power and privilege while admitting that we do not have the corner on Christianity, it may also require repentance and reconciliation. It requires admitting that our privilege came at the expense of others – that the poverty in the world today has its roots in forceful conquest of land, the outright theft of natural resources, and the enslavement of peoples around the world. It requires admitting that the life we now enjoy has its historical roots and present reality in the blood, sweat, and tears of others. It is only after we repent of these sins that we can be open to embracing a fuller theology which we can only learn by listening to the voices of others – often the very others we must ask forgiveness of.

Being open to hearing and believing these truths is difficult. It is far easier to mock the theologies of others and call them heretical than to humble ourselves and repent in the name of truth. But it is vital for the health of the community that is the universal body of Christ. The eye cannot say to the hand that I have no need of you – or that I am more important or more connected to God than you. We must embrace our whole body, even the parts we have abused or neglected. To truly be the body of Christ we must listen to the voices of the oppressed and the colonized – for we can never be whole without them.

For full disclosure, I haven’t fully read Hipster Christianity yet – just extended excerpts (thank you Amazon "look inside"), summaries and reviews and articles and blog posts McCracken has written. I don’t know McCracken, but I do have to say that discovering recently on his blog that he was a fellow Wheaton College grad who lived in Traber dorm (a stereotype that only fellow Wheaties will understand) helped clarify his cultural influences for me as well as explain his obsession with C.S. Lewis (who at Wheaton was referred to as St. Jack or “the fourth member of the Trinity). But I did take his “are you a Christian hipster?” quiz, which of course told me I was a hipster. From what I could tell anyone who isn’t fundamentalist or Amish and has a pulse in the 21st century would be labeled “hipster” according to the quiz – including McCracken himself who seems far cooler than I will ever be. As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, I am the definition of uncool. I have no sense of style, I don’t know how to do my hair, I don’t listen to music, I am not artistic, I’m a freaking stay-at-home (mostly) mom for crying out loud. But apparently (according to McCracken) since I read non-male/white/Western theologians, think the church should discuss something as important as sex, attend a church that meets in a warehouse and uses candles, like Stephen Colbert and Lady Gaga, believe we can learn truth from literature and film (I got the same Wheaton College English degree as McCracken after all), desire to steward God’s creation, and think oppression, human trafficking, and modern day slavery are wrong I am a self-centered hipster and therefore in danger of compromising my faith for the sake of being cool.

And so once again I state, “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding, right?” The logic there is so horrible I don’t even know where to begin. I’m struggling to tell if he is just another one of those Christians who lashes out at anyone who has a different faith journey than him (and I’m sure he would poke fun of me using the term “faith journey”), or if he is truly ignorant of how deeply rooted in faith much of the stuff he criticizes actually is (or if this is a disguised theological attack that chooses not to use theology). I just don't know. I don’t deny that the people he describes exist, or that there are people who desperately just try to be cool. But why he feels this obsessive need to label and therefore dismiss entire sections of the church who are simply trying to faithfully follow Jesus is beyond me.

Why is the conversion of the girl who had her perspective changed by the art history prof in college who now creates non-Thomas Kinkade Christian art as part of worship more suspect as being inauthentic or not truly Christian than the drug dealer who read a Chick-tract and now works in a soup kitchen? Is God not working for transformation in her life too? Or why is believing that Kwok Pui-lan, or Musa Dube, or Richard Twiss, or Gustavo Gutierrez might have something to teach us any different than believing we can learn from C.S. Lewis, or Francis Schaeffer, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Or why is the guy who wears thrift store or fairly made clothes more in danger of having caring too much about his appearance interfere with his spirituality than the youth pastor who spends hours describing to his group (in great detail) the exact sorts of bathing suits or the exact width of shoulder straps the pretty young high school girls are allowed to wear during summer camp? Or for that matter than the middle-aged women who have self-appointed themselves the modesty police or even Richard Foster who devotes a large section of Celebration of Discipline to the clothes Christians should wear? Why is it okay for their ideas about appearance to be faith-based and biblically-sound, but not the so-called hipster’s? Why are emerging forms of spirituality automatically suspect as being more culturally influenced and therefore harmful to Christianity than those that emerged twenty or thirty years ago?

I know I am not a creature independent of my culture. No one is. Anyone who claims otherwise needs some serious re-education. But to claim that we so-called hipster Christians are the way we are simply because we are self-centered "all about me" folks who are trying to be cool and relevant utterly misses the point. I attend a church of broken misfits who are desperately trying to live faithfully. I don’t attend my church because we are so cool that we meet in a warehouse and sit on couches, I attend it for the community that has formed around each other in that particular environment. Sure the environment influences who we are, but it isn’t the sum of who we are – just like gathering by a river or in the catacombs or sitting in pews or a cathedral influences but doesn’t not ultimately define other churches. I don’t read postcolonial voices because that makes me relevant; I read them because I believe the body of Christ cannot survive without all its parts. I don’t buy fair trade because it’s trendy; I buy it because the Bible tells me to care for the poor and to not cheat a worker of his wages. I don’t fight human trafficking because it makes me feel good, I do it because it is wrong that six year old girls are kidnapped and forced into prostitution where they are repeatedly raped by men who have a sick and twisted view of women and sex (two topics that churches apparently should avoid discussing because they are just trendy shock-gimmicks). (And by the way, when we’ve reached the point in the conversation where people are questioning opposing the enslaving of children as sex toys because it might be too trendy and relevant of a topic then I’m done with that conversation – God is nowhere in it).

I am a cultural creation, I freely admit that. But don’t for one minute project your disapproval of my culture trappings onto me and assume that I have uncritically allowed such things to put the “realness” of my faith in peril. If you want to criticize such things or suggest another type of popular culture that you think is more appropriate for Christians to embrace (cuz, we all embrace something) then do that. Let’s disagree, but for the sake of respectful and truthful dialogue please don’t naively dismiss my lived faith as merely an attempt to be cool when nothing could be further from the truth.

What I found fascinating though was seeing a picture of Evangelicalism from this time period that mirrored exactly what I grew up with in the 80’s and 90’s and that still exists today. The young evangelicals of the 1970’s did influence certain streams of evangelicalism, but this more fundamentalist variety retained a dominant voice. Interestingly enough, the streams had so diverged by the end of the 1970’s that people today in either camp are often surprised that the other exists. It’s like how repeatedly on this blog when I share my personal church experience there are always a couple of people who say that I am misrepresenting evangelicals with my portrayals. Of course, not all evangelicals are the same, the stream they know and the stream I know are just very different. I just wish the discussions could sometimes get past the debate of “whose evangelical experience is correct?”

So for instance, take this passage from the book on the role of women in traditional evangelical churches (note – Orthodox here refers to the new orthodoxy of doctrinally correct evangelicals)

Orthodoxy has not yet taken Women’s Liberation seriously. In almost all non-Pentecostal Evangelical or Fundamentalist denominations, women are not ordained to the ministry. “Unmarriageable” types, however, may be encouraged by their churches to make the ultimate sacrifice – to become a missionary. Single females are welcome on the mission field, but not in the home pulpit. Alternatively, an aspiring young lady with a graduate degree in theology might be called by an Orthodox church to become an unordained director of Christian education – for less pay than her ordained male counterpart would get for the same job. But, for a marriageable young lady in the typical Fundamentalist or Evangelical congregation, the highest vocational aspiration she can have is to become the wife of a minister. Every Orthodox pastor – lest he be regarded as a playboy or, worse yet, a homosexual – must have a wife. In taking on a minister, the young woman will lose her identity completely. The ideal pastor’s wife is simply an extension of her mate – sweet, sociable but not aggressive, talented, above reproach in her behavior and, above all, entirely submissive to the will and career of her husband. As such, she becomes a “nonperson” in every sense of the word. P.58-59

That perfectly describes (in far more blunt language than anyone would ever use today) the sort of evangelicalism I grew up in and still encounter on a regular basis. But many of the women I encounter online (i.e. those who already are educated and progressive enough to be participating in discussions about theology and religion), do their best to deny that women are ever treated that way within the evangelical world they know. While some of them do eventually take the time to reflect and admit that their voice has at times been silenced, they have never had to truly be seen as a “nonperson.” In my experience though women that are taught to lose their identity are also told that they shouldn’t think for themselves, and therefore rarely are present in conversations on religious matters. But it breaks my heart to see generations of women continuing to be taught to be nothing. I grew up in that environment and still have a foot in that world so I know it’s out there. But for many progressive evangelicals (or at least those with progressive evangelical roots), it can be easy to forget history and not grasp the nuances of our differences.

In some ways, just getting a glimpse of this history and understanding differences is helpful. I also wonder though if finding ways to say engage these "nonperson" women and help the ones who are cracking under the pressure of years of suppression of the self would be easier if we all were just open and honest about the sorts of pain that occur in the church without fearing tainting our own church’s reputations due to guilt by association? I don’t know, but sometimes a good understanding of where we all have come from helps mitigate that fear.

I understand that in many ways this is just one more example of those who follow postmodern philosophy being misunderstood and opposed by others.  In deconstructing the idea of power most postmoderns value flattened structures over hierarchical ones.  In their mind to create a system where one person is empowered implies that other people will be disempowered.  To avoid such cultural stratification, they choose to employ symbiotic instead of hierarchical leadership structures.  In symbiotic systems all voices are valued because we all need each other to survive.

Naturally, this conception of power meets resistance, some of it well deserved.  Postmodern philosophy and conceptions of identity and power have been harshly criticized by some proponents of feminist and liberation theology.  As they argue, it isn’t fair that right when previously marginalized groups like women, minorities, and queers were beginning to gain a distinct voice and power within the theological world this new philosophy comes up and challenges the very idea of identity and power.  It is hard for an identity based group to essentialize themselves and say that the power held by white men needs to be given instead to ____ (women, the poor, immigrants, queers, Asians, Latinas…) when the very idea of reducing oneself to such a category is being questioned alongside the very conception of power itself.

In truth, I am conflicted on this.  I agree with the need to not essentialize.  Who I am cannot simply be reduced to my gender, or sexuality, or economic status.  And I fully support the idea of flattened leadership where all voices are valued equally.  I promote the biblical idea that in Christ there is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile, male nor female.  At the same time I know how easy it is for a new philosophy that questions power roles to simply become an excuse to preserve the status quo without ever actually hearing the voice of the other.  If one isn’t aware of how one’s philosophy preserves the exclusion of others, laziness can become another means of oppression.  As a woman I’ve fought this.  I’ve repeatedly been annoyed when in discussions asking men to stand up against misogyny in the church by supporting women’s ordination I am told, “well, we shouldn’t waste time on that issue since we really just need to rethink how we do church altogether.”  That response obviously doesn’t grasp what it means to live symbiotically with each other.

I’ve also encountered those that approach power openly who tell me, “step-up, we’d love to hear your voice.”  It took me a long time to actually trust those voices and to take them up on it, mostly because I didn’t fully understand that there were people who truly did hold power in an open hand.  I expected there to be hoops to jump through, votes to be taken, and popularity contest to be won, but when it came right down to it, none of that stuff actually existed.  I think this is where the emerging conversation is most often misunderstood.  People just don’t believe that an open power structure really can exist and so they demand we force our supposed leaders to take responsibility and start acting like leaders by setting the boundaries for this conversation.  They want us to play by their rules, and when we don’t they feel like we are deliberately excluding them even as we repeatedly ask them to construct the conversation with us.  I think a lot of work truly needs to be done to communicate this open shared power system more fully, but I also implore the critics to take the time to understand the real philosophical beliefs about power that many emergents hold.

At the same time, I understand that traditional assumptions of power will always be projected upon even those who try to subvert it.  Yes, there are people in the emerging movement who do develop followings and that gives them a certain sort of power under traditional notions of leadership.  It doesn’t help that some elements loosely associated with emerging do things like charge extra at conferences for passes to the speakers lounge where the lowly attendee can hobnob with the powerful speakers.  But for those that actually do value shared power, they constantly face accusations of greed or selling-out if they try to act like a leader.  They have to choose to remain true to their own belief system and get crucified by outsiders wanting them to hold power more tightly, or compromise their beliefs and get mocked from within.  Navigating amidst diverse philosophies and demanding factions while seeking to love and respect all is a difficult task.

I personally believe that the emerging church needs to be more transparent about our open power structures.  We can’t get sidetracked in discussions about how to dismantle other people’s power structures, instead we need to be proactive in working on how we build and grow and rely on each other.  If we truly need each other, we need to admit that openly and seek out the other to learn from her.  Waiting for others to come to us and telling them to “please, step up already” is too unsettling for those still clinging to traditional conceptions of power.  For symbiosis to really work, we must always be in flux, being challenged and fed in mutually beneficial ways.  The point isn’t to essentialize or include the token other, but to admit we cannot survive apart from the whole body of Christ.  This goes beyond, while still embracing, the need to give up privilege for the sake of the other.  The point isn’t to simply shift power and privilege from one group to another and then deal with the vicissitudes of that structure, but to move towards this symbiotic ideal.

I appreciated Eliacin Rosario-Cruz’s comment to me on this topic recently on his blog – “I think we need to confront the myth of lack/giving away power. What I mean by that is, our power does not disappear just by thinking we do not have or we are giving away. Kenosis is performative.”  All sides in this discussion need to take a step back and consider how they view power.  Some need to acknowledge and respect the postmodern mindset, others need to understand that that mindset can never be passive.  Sharing power must be active and never become an excuse to exclude by inaction.  We all have a lot to learn about how to make this work, but I would hope the conversation can develop in a way that that doesn’t mock or silence any contributing voice.

A topic that I’ve repeatedly returned to this past year or so are the ways we have to contain the voice of the other in a safe and nonthreatening package in order to begin to hear it. In its most negative fashion this involves the essentializing and the trivializing of the other. We reduce other cultures to just the physical artifacts of their culture – their food, their music, their dance, their tourist appeal. Being open to the voice of the other simply becomes being willing to eat a new type of food, watching a film about an African safari, or putting on a cd of “world beat” music. On one hand, I know people who are so closed off to understanding anything outside of themselves that they can’t even accept these essentialized versions of the other. From those who think it is too exotic or weird to try new foods to those who think it is un-American to eat tacos, stepping outside of the known can be difficult for some people. That said it is often far easier to contain different voices in our interpretation of their cultural trappings or in an amusing stereotyped version of themselves than to actually engage.

So I find it interesting that one of the few places in American culture where the non-white male is allowed a central role and non-essentializing voice in the realm of sci-fi and fantasy. I first started think about this awhile back when I read the plea to Pixar to make movies about “non-princess girls and the adventures they go on.” So many of the movies and books targeted to children are about boys and their adventures (with the occasional girl sidekick). If there is a widely popular story of a girl going on an adventure it almost always takes place in a fantasy world. Lucy steps through the wardrobe into Narnia, Alice falls down the rabbit-hole into Wonderland, Dorothy is whisked away in a twister to Oz, Meg travels along the tesseract. Apparently little girls doing strong things like adventures can’t happen in real life, so they must be told in the realm of fantasy. (all those character’s mental stability is questioned when they return to the real world as well). Women having a voice and strength and power is a safe topic if it is contained by fantasy.

This ability to safely present the voice of the other under the guise of fantasy is well known in the world of Star Trek. When the first Enterprise embarked on its five year mission it truly went where no one had gone before by challenging the way race was portrayed in Hollywood. Women and minorities were cast as scientists and officers instead of in stereotypical roles (even as they still made use of stereotypes). The first interracial kiss on television was between Captian Kirk and Lt. Uhura (although to do so they had to pretend Uhura was possessed by a white alien at the moment). Challenging those boundaries through the setting of  futureistic outer-space was the safe way the conversation could be handled by the average viewer.

I recall reading an interview with one of my favorite actors, Alexander Siddig, on why he appreciated his role at Dr. Bashir on Star Trek: DS9. He said that for the first and only time in his life he wasn’t cast as “the Arab” instead Star Trek gave him the chance to play a brilliant doctor who just happened to be Arab. Since the series ended (and especially since 9/11) he has only been offered roles of strictly Arab characters – generally as some sort of terrorist. (since the interview he has played the non-race restricted roles of the Angel Gabriel in The Nativity Story and Hermes in Clash of the Titans – once again both roles set in the realm of fantasy and the supernatural). In the “real world” we are only comfortable seeing the Arab man as a terrorist, it is only in fantasy that he can have a voice as a person and not just a racial stereotype.

I am really torn with this “safe packaging” approach to listening to and respecting the voice of the other. It is demeaning and essentializing to say that women or minorities can only have a voice in the most trivial of ways or in futuristic or fantasy realms. But at the same time, presenting visions of the way we want the world to be through story form is the easiest way to get people’s subconscious to change. There is power in story and certain people who might resist respecting someone different from them in real life can suspend disbelief within the confines of the “impossible.” I guess what I am wondering is, can we even say the subaltern has a voice if it only appears within these sorts of safe packaging? Is that a real voice? Should this habit be undermined, or is it the best we have to work with at the moment?