Communion by JD Vance

My wife scoffed when I brought home JD Vance’s new book Communion from the library.  It’s really two books, but we’ll get into that later.  Communion is centered on Vance’s spiritual journey from a childhood in evangelical culture to atheism and back to faith, now as a Catholic.  I really appreciated Vance’s first book, Hillbilly Elegy, it provides a really careful and well-told picture of the rural poor who helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency.

Communion does much the same for the political movement that’s called MAGA - although there should be separation between the political actors and intellectual cadre that runs this movement from the oft-derided rank and file who support it with votes.

My wife scoffed that I’d read what amounts to campaign literature from someone who stands for so many things that I abhor, but I think it’s important to understand people - all people - because I believe deeply that all people are important and valuable and we’ve got to be able to talk to each other.

I say this is two books, because it very clearly started as something different than it became.  Halfway through, right as Vance was debating whether or not to run for Senate in 2020, he mentions turning in the first draft of this very book that would be published six years later.

That first half is a poignant exploration of faith, quite honestly.  Vance recounts his first disillusionment with the evangelicalism of his youth, where people seemed more concerned with talking about God, winning culture ways, and bland platitudes than they did with helping actual people.  No one in his religious community seemed to do anything about the addicts who found Jesus each Sunday and went back to the bottle or the needle the next day.

These are critiques that ring true in my own life and for many Christians across the theological spectrum.  Hypocrisy and empty religion are valid and easy critiques of Christianity in the contemporary western world.

Vance dives deeply into the drive for success that elite society offers as an alternative motivation.  He goes to college and Yale Law School, gets prestigious jobs, finds influential friends, makes some money - and discovers the happiness they promise is empty.  He finds value in a wife and family and searches for deeper meaning and connection, which brings him back to God.

I read that section of the book with some sense of impending doom.  We know the end result, right?  Vance is now Trump’s Vice President and one of the staunchest defenders of brutal ICE tactics, isolationist foreign policy, and the breakdown of democratic norms.  You can’t help but ask, “how does he get from here to there?”

To be honest, he doesn’t really say.  The shift from the portion of the book clearly written before political aspiration and the half written to bolster those same aspirations is like night and day.  In some sense, it is an extension of his religious journey in that he very much roots all of his politics in faith - it’s just that the humility and wonder are completely absent as he embarks on the practical.

There’s a quote from the Epilogue that succinctly sums up Communion and provides the grounding point from which any agreement or critique must arise. 

“I’m proposing that we have now run an experiment of replacing a Christian culture with something else for decades.  And the fruit of that experiment includes rising racial strife, a gender gap among our young people, falling rates of love and partnership, and a society with a declining population.”

Vance is infatuated with Christian culture - but Christian culture as defined by it’s intermingling with political power.  It’s telling that when the book makes its turn, Vance goes from quoting and engaging scripture to quoting and engaging with Catholic political theologians.  He includes Constantine as a central figure in the rise of the Christian culture he lauds and advocates for when an increasing number of Christian scholars point to Constantine as the moment when Christianity lost its scriptural trajectory.

Some of this is theological.  There’s a long strain of Christian interpretation that sees the Eden of Genesis 1 as the pinnacle of human existence - a utopia we ruined with sin and to which we’re struggling to revive.

I tend to see Eden as the perfect beginning.  Yes, subsequently marred by human selfishness and greed, but perhaps necessarily so.  In order to reach the eternal future envisioned by God, human freedom (and thus human error) was assumed.  I differ from Vance, because I do not believe there is some faultless past to which we can and should return, but only a bumpy path forward, in imitation of Jesus Christ, by which people are won over through love and not coercion.

As Vance gets into policy positions, it’s clear he has a very specific, preferred way of life.  He wants all people to live and act a certain way and is willing to use the levers of power if not to force people into it, then to heavily incentivize it - to the point where rejection feels like punishment.

I won’t deny that I also have thoughts on how people ought to live - a perspective that is grounded in faith and scripture, albeit interpreted differently (in some points) from Vance.  The difference is that key to my understanding of this way of life is non-coercion.  Freedom.  I believe people not only have the right to think and decide for themselves, but that this choice is essential to arriving at the correct way of thinking and living.

Vance, for the most part, correctly identifies many of the problems in our modern world.  He sees the danger of prioritizing economic growth, efficiency, and productivity over things that might cost us something, but produce meaning and fulfillment in life.

At the root of the problem is his relationship to power.  I don’t think he’d disagree with me that the best form of human government is a benevolent dictatorship - that a person with near unlimited power and the best interests of the governed in mind is most effective.

We differ in that I simply don’t believe that’s possible, whereas Vance seems willing to give it a try.  Maybe dictatorship is too strong a word for his intentions (although the actions of the administration of which he’s a key player might say differently) certainly he wants to be part of a power structure with benevolent interests.

I think the issue is largely pharisaical.  Vance seems to be advocating for the US to “get it right” and then export the perfect society to the rest of the world.  His vision is necessarily exclusionary.  The quote talked about a declining population due to declining birth rates, but that’s only true in industrial societies.  Overall the human population is growing, but most of that growth is black and brown babies in poor country without a history of “civilization” as Vance would ideally define it.

This is the same reason he can ascribe dignity to both sides of the Civil War without mentioning the enslaved people over which it was fought.  Yes, Vance is clear that the North was the correct side, but he then proceeds into a glossy, nostalgic picture of the European settlers who discovered unlimited bounty in their new world, without ever mentioning the people who were already living here.

He’s happy to have a diversity of faces and religions, so long as they’re willing to live in a society that looks like European Christendom.  I use the word “Christendom” intentionally, although Vance does not.  He’s keen to connect that nominally Christian civilization to Christian faith, when there’s little historical evidence to connect the two.

It’s one of the really disingenuous parts of Communion.  Vance is just too smart not to know what he’s doing.  By rooting the first half of the book in deeply spiritual language and exploration, he’s attached the appearance of gospel to the naked politics of the second half of the book.  I’m not arguing that Vance is using his faith as an excuse for his politics - I certainly understand the logical moves he’s making to get where he’s going - I simply reject the inevitability he implies.  It’s manipulative in the worst sense.

He’s very good at recognizing the complexity of issues without actually critiquing his own position.  He recognizes the emotional challenges of immigration enforcement without ever addressing the actual violence and brutality of ICE agents under this administration.

He talks about a holistic approach to pro-life activism, challenging Christian pregnancy centers to do more for babies after they’re born without addressing the outright lies, scare tactics, and shame that’s common practice in many of them.

He says, at one point, “It’s one thing to vanquish an enemy and another to humiliate him.”  Which is incredibly hypocritical for someone who defends Donald Trump rhetoric and himself called Zohran Mamdani “evil” just last week!

It’s not overtly stated in Communion, but it really feels like Vance believes intention is more important than action, at least when it comes to morality.  He’s trying to do the right thing.  He wants the good.  I think I believe that, but he seems to believe the ends can justify the means and that is entirely un-Christians.

He gets all the critiques correct.  He’s upset about the right things.  His examination of post-WWII hegemony is spot on.  He just missed wildly on the prescriptions.

For example, Vance notes that it's difficult for any culture to absorb a large immigrant population without division and violence.  He cites the many struggles of large immigrant groups in the US over the years to back up his point.  All of this is true and valid.  He concludes, though, that the problem in this scenario is immigration and not nationalism.

He approaches ethics from the assumption that the existence of nations is amoral at best.  He often cites the morality of nations controlling their borders, but never the morality of the nations’ existence.  This critique might seem radical, but it gives cover to treat citizens of one country differently than citizens of another - which is perfectly acceptable from the perspective of the US Vice President, but is not theologically defensible.

There’s a focus on “self-sufficiency” both for individuals and for countries.  I think, at its core, this comes from a belief that people need to feel what they do is meaningful.  This was at the core of Vance’s rejection of elite society - people were working for status more than meaning.  It’s a good, valid, and Christian critique.

However, rather than address this theologically, as his set-up would dictate, his solution is entirely pragmatic and insular - countries need to take care of themselves. Scripture pretty clearly teaches community - people engage in meaningful work to provide for themselves and others, while also relying on others to have their basic needs met.

This doesn’t have to be an either/or scenario, but Vance seems keen to choose, perhaps because he’s afraid of what including people who think and act differently, those with different perspectives on the world might have to say - and how including those people might change the beloved western civilization he’s trying to save.

He makes a wonderful argument for prioritizing family and children over productivity, reminding us rightly that a peaceful and meaningful life is better than pure economic growth.  But this is tempered with real-life policies that favor traditional families over non-traditional ones.

He mentions population growth - or rather, decline - noting that most of the western world is not bearing children at replacement rate and some nations are struggling with an aging population.  He doesn’t note, however, that overall, humanity is still growing.  The unspoken reality is that most of those children are black and brown kids from impoverished and non-Christian places.

At its core, Vance’s current theology is pharisaical.  I’m not sure he says it outright, but every implication is that “if we, as the United States of America, would just be Christian and follow Christian principles, everything would be fine,” without any willingness to have actual dialogue about what that means or how it might be implemented.

There’s a sense that if government favored conservative, traditional, Christian families, people would be incentivized to do the same.  This is directly contrary to God’s non-coercive presence in the world.  Even assuming JD Vance knows with 100% certainty the best way to live in the world, he doesn’t have any right to force people into obedience, even for their own good.  This is the fundamental Christian critique to benevolent dictatorship, which is what Trump and Vance pretend to at their best moments.

Both Vance’s theology and politics are also self-centered and insular.  The solution to a good US manufacturing job being outsourced to a cheaper worker overseas is to artificially raise the cost of such a move to keep the job home - rather than, say, improve the economic and working conditions of people in other countries so every worker can compete on a level playing field.

I’m sure he’d argue that his role as Vice President of the United States requires him to prioritize US citizens, which brings up the question of whether a Christian can be in political power at all without compromising the gospel.  If the job requires treating some people differently than others, can a Christian do it faithfully?

I’m reminded of the quote I first heard from Ed Robinson - a professor at Nazarene Theological Seminary, where I attended - although I’m confident it did not originate with him.  He said, “the only ethical use of power is to give it away.”

I’ve struggled with all the same questions Vance struggles with - although, admittedly, my struggles have all been theoretical, while his have real consequences.  Ultimately, though, I can’t get away from the firm belief that Christian faith is entirely incompatible with power.  I don’t like that conclusion, but I can’t find any other place to land.

The entire history of Christianity - at least since it was first recognized by Rome - has been a series of people who think they can wed these two things together and utterly failing.  Does JD Vance think he can be the one to crack it?  Maybe.  I think perhaps he’s just one more well meaning Christian who’s fallen prey to the idea that the only way to fight power is with power when Jesus says pretty clearly the answer is love.

God’s love promises a more beautiful future.  The civilization Vance fears to lose was good for but a few.  The incorporation of those who’ve been left out as true equals in the human project will necessarily be messy.  It will be unfamiliar, perhaps scary - but everything in Christianity, scripture, tradition, reason, and experience tells us it will be better.

Political Theology

I believe deeply the Church of Jesus Christ is called to embody and alternative politic.  Politic defined as, simply, the way human beings live with each other.  The Christian politic needs to follow the example of Christ, who, borrowing liberally from Philippians 2, did not consider power something to be used, but lived in weakness, suffered, and died.  Through this counter-intuitive process, he was resurrected, vindicated, glorified.  Christians believe this model is the purpose and intention of creation.  Our politics must look like Christ.

It's also become pretty clear to me that Christians cannot faithfully critique any system they are trying to control.  That doesn't mean we can't participate in systems of power, but we must be very careful not to attempt to control those systems.

Practically, that means in deliberative bodies - places like local or federal parliaments of one kind or another - that are genuine attempts to seek consensus and work together, align well.  I'm comfortable voting for a representative of my community, if I feel they'll honestly engage this process and not seek to dominate or unduly influence the process.

When it comes to donating towards or working for the election of representatives from other constituencies, that's a clear attempt to control the process and, I don't believe, can be compatible with Christian ethics.  The same goes for participation in "party" politics, where blocs of like-minded representatives seeks to influence the process.  Any deliberative body must seek consensus - simple majorities overruling unwilling minorities are incompatible uses of power.

With regard to executive positions, where one person is expected to make unilateral decisions, I'm unable to envision a way to do this in imitation of Christ.  If you had a genuinely compassionate, selfless human being, they would either be corrupted or fail as a government executive.  Those jobs are not designed to be done in line with Christian ethics.  I can't, in good conscience, put any human in a position where they cannot succeed.

Now, all of this does not mean I'd advocate disengagement from the process.  Christians can and should still protest and express their views on how people should treat each other.  The line must be drawn, though, in using threats or coercion to convince others of our positions.  The example of our actions, we must believe, are capable of "winning converts," rather than the strength of our arguments.

It comes down to control.  Am I attempting to get my way against the will of another.  That's not how Christ operated; it's not how the Kingdom works; it's not how Christians can ethically engage in politics.

Our priority must be on the politics of the everyday.  How do we treat our neighbors?  Feed the hungry?  Advocate for justice - not with threats, but with pleas to our common humanity?

If the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has both showed us how and enabled us to be truly human, capable of reaching our creative purpose; we must believe a Church, living in imitation of Christ, can facilitate the same transformation for the world at large.

God is in the business of redeeming creation.  It does not come through force or coercion, but through humble, selfless love; a willingness to suffer; and a commitment to engage politics with an open hand and not a closed fist.  It may also come in refusing to exercise "rights" we've been given as citizens of the world, because they violate the duties of citizens of Christ's Kingdom.

The Gospel Changed Marriage, Not the Gays

The following is my essay, excerpted from the book: Why the Church of the Nazarene Should Be Fully LGBTQ+ Affirming.  A lot of people have asked me to explain, scripturally why I feel gender should not be a factor in marriage.  Well, this is it.  Hopefully you'll read it with the spirit of reverence and respect with which it was written.

The Gospel Changed Marriage, Not the Gays

by Ryan Scott

"Surprisingly, the most compelling scriptural argument for Christians to affirm marriage between two men is our understanding of women."

During my time in seminary, I dove deeply into the scriptures for support of our denomination’s stance on gay marriage. If I was going to be a pastor in the Church of the Nazarene, I wanted to be prepared not only with a statement, but with a solid explanation for our beliefs. I found, though, the more I studied, scripture gave me fewer and fewer reasons to oppose same-sex couples and more and more reasons to affirm them.

At the core of everything is our understanding of marriage itself.

When it comes to a theological argument about LGBTQ+ inclusion, you can throw out the issues of sex and biology—the Church of the Nazarene already affirms that the most appropriate context for sex is within a committed, Christ-centered marriage. The answer to who should be sleeping with whom is simple: spouses.

From there, the only remaining questions are ‘Who should be in a marriage and why?’

If you look at the history of marriage and the evolution of theology both in scripture and after it was written, you’ll see a stark difference in how God’s people have answered those questions. There’s an obvious movement from marriage as a social institution to marriage as a fully religious commitment, and it mirrors the movement of women as property to the recognition of women as full equals (at least in theory).

While our wedding liturgy talks about Genesis 2:24 as the foundation of Christian marriage, citing Adam and Eve becoming one flesh, it’s an interpretive leap that may not be wholly appropriate.

There’s no mention of marriage at all in Genesis 2 (there’s no separate word for ‘wife’ in Greek or Hebrew, it’s the word for ‘woman’ that becomes the English ‘wife’ when translators think it’s appropriate). In this passage we find only the kind of holy commitment to one another we now associate with marriage. But it took human society, as well as the Church, a long time to get from one to the other.

Early human marriage was a simple transfer of property. Women were objects to be owned—first by their fathers and then by their husbands. In fact, this social arrangement was so unseemly to God’s people that priests wanted nothing to do with performing or solemnizing marriages until the late Middle Ages, when the power of the Church was waning and requiring clerical approval of a marriage proved a particularly effective means of social control.

The religious rules around marriage all had to do with property rights. Fornication was a violation of a father by ‘defiling’ his property (daughter) and adultery was a violation of a husband by ‘defiling’ his wife—again, a property crime.

There’s no scriptural prohibition of extra-marital sex by men, so long as these other rules are observed. There was no written recrimination for, say, a man sleeping with a prostitute or his own servant girl, until Paul started calling it out by name in 1 Corinthians.

Modern conservative Christian sexual ethics essentially took the scriptural chastity rules for women and applied them to men, where it just as easily could’ve gone the other way (which is essentially what modern liberal Christian sexual ethics look like). In either event, things changed because we went from viewing women as property to viewing them as people.

Galatians says there is “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.” It’s not saying that these distinctions don’t matter, that men and women are the same; it’s saying these distinctions are not of degree. Jews are not better than Gentiles. Slaves do not have a different status from free people. Men and women are not fundamentally different in value.

Many use this verse to support LGBTQ+ inclusion. I do not. I don’t believe inclusion can be proof-texted, just as exclusion cannot be derived from any one or series of verses. Affirmation of gay marriage arises as the necessary theological conclusion of broader arguments made in scripture. Our understanding of marriage has changed because of the massive theological shifts made in the process of God’s people better understanding how God has called us to live.

We see, even in the Hebrew scriptures, the beginning of the marriage analogy for the relationship between God and God’s people that continues through the New Testament. The Church is the bride of Christ and God’s faithfulness to us becomes the template for our marriage relationships with one another.

Paul introduces the notion of mutuality in marriage that was earth-shattering for the time. 1 Corinthians 7 teaches that women share ownership, not only of their own bodies, but of their husbands’ bodies as well, and that sexual practice in marriage should be by mutual consent. He’s tearing apart the notion of marriage as property exchange and recognizing the relational aspect, something we take for granted today, but is a relatively recent development.

Up until the last 100 years, almost no one married for love. Sure, spouses might have loved each other and certainly love can grow in any relationship where it’s fostered. But love as a primary motivation for marriage wasn’t even contemplated at any point in the Bible’s writing.

The point of marriage was to solidify or improve social conditions, to secure peace between powerful families, or to enhance the economic status of one or both parties. This was built primarily around having children. The purpose of marriage was to produce heirs, which is why barrenness is seen as such a curse throughout the bible.

For most of human history, if you wanted love, you looked outside your marriage. This is, again, why Paul’s words are so ground-breaking: husbands love your wives as Christ loves the Church. For Paul, and subsequently for Christian theology, marriage was not just about meeting your wife’s physical needs to enable child-bearing, but to care for her as a person. Your beloved is God’s beloved, and you must care for them the way God cares for them.

This modern, thoroughly scriptural, thoroughly Christian understanding of marriage is then read back into Genesis 2. As God declares “the two become one flesh,” we understand a far deeper meaning than anyone at the time of its original writing could’ve comprehended.

Genesis communicates the human need for connection and community. We are not designed to be alone. We need partners. We need each other. Marriage has become our best earthly approximation of the connection we were created to have with each other.

We embrace Jesus’ teaching from Matthew that in the Kingdom “people will neither marry nor be given in marriage,” because we’ll be able to love everyone as God intends. Until that time, we commit to focusing on one relationship above all others.

Thus, our understanding of Christian marriage is about as far from the social regulation of female property transfer as it could possibly be. We have completely transformed the institution into something beautiful and important and good, but also something unrecognizable to the writers and first readers of scripture.

So, no, Paul doesn’t talk about gay marriage, likely because he couldn’t en- vision it. It wouldn’t make any sense in his social context. He was just beginning to apply Christian principles to what was an entirely secular economic and social system. At the same time, though, gay marriage makes perfect sense in our contemporary context, largely because of the ways in which Paul himself reframed the Christian understanding of marriage.

The final piece of this puzzle is gender. Genesis talks about a man and a woman. Male and female biology fit together for procreation in obvious ways. The analogies in scripture are gendered, referencing husband and wife. But, if Christian marriage, as we understand it, is two people committing to God, and to each other, to love their spouse as God loves God’s people, does it matter what gender those two people happen to be?

It can’t matter—not unless we’re willing to require men and women to inhabit specific and differentiated gender roles. If there is some innate difference (beyond our sex organs) that makes men and women truly unique from each other, then there’s some reason to make a gender requirement in marriage.

But scripture doesn’t support that differentiation, not anywhere from Genesis to Revelation.

Sure, scripture was written in the midst of a patriarchal society; but much like the theological evolution of marriage, it also challenges the faithful to a broader, more egalitarian understanding of men, women, and humanity in general.

There’s insufficient space here to fully explain the equality inherent in Genesis 2, but the literature is voluminous that the spouse God crafted for the first human was an equal and complementary being. For years, we’ve gendered this complementarity, relying on stereotypes that women are sensitive and men are strong, women are carers and men are conquerors, that women and men possess uniquely different traits that must fit together for marriage to work.

We don’t have to deny this complementary picture of marriage to expand its definition beyond a man and a woman. If anything, those gendered stereotypes limit both men and women from being the full, beautiful creation God intends them to be. How much pain and misery have we caused by communicating there are only certain ways to be “real” men and women?

Things are never that simple.

I do most of the cooking in our home. I do the shopping, and I stayed home when our daughter was young. My wife asks for power tools for her birthday, makes most of the money, and enjoys getting her hands dirty far more than I do.

Yet she’s also the decorator, finely attuned to aesthetics, while I spend much of my
free time watching sports. We don’t fit any gendered stereotype or its opposite. We’re unique individuals who happen to be male and female. What’s more important is that we complement each other in ways that make our marriage stronger than either of us could be on our own. We got married because we were convinced we could do more for God’s Kingdom together than we could do separately.

I know plenty of same-sex couples for whom the same is true, whose marriages are a blessing to them, to God, and to the world. I see no reason to deny them an equal place in the Kingdom of God or in the Church of the Nazarene. Christ calls us to break down barriers, cross lines of division, and embrace that self-giving love of God which is the only hope for the salvation of the world.

The Church should be at the forefront of recognizing, affirming, and embracing marriage for all people as it is the natural next step in the Spirit-led transformation of marriage from misogyny and oppression to freedom, equality, and love.

Adam, Isaiah, and Paul may not have understood what they were starting at the time, but God is always at work among the faithful to transmit and trans- form God’s world into what it was created to be. Recognition and affirmation of LGBTQ+ couples is not a capitulation to culture, but a gospel-infused counter-cultural movement to further welcome God’s coming Kingdom.

Christians and Violence

 

What makes the Christian perspective on violence different is the goal. Christians believe the future is a world without fear or death, a world in which violence does not exist. Our goal is not to minimize violence – we have not succumbed to the death-dealing notion that it is inevitable – we believe there is an end to violence, that it will be completely eliminated.

Christians take a long view on these things. The world which is coming may not (almost certainly will not) be realized in our lifetimes. We are committed to a lifestyle that may produce no visible results before we die. It may seem pointless and foolhardy in our present; this is why it’s called faith.

In light of that, killing can never be justified. Taking a life should be something with which the killer wrestles for the rest of their days. It should be conflicting and troubling; feelings of guilt should not be unexpected. Whether it is abortion or war or self defense, killing may, in fact, be the preferred option in a given scenario, but that does not make it “right.”

It’s never heroic to kill, even in the name of justice or the defense of innocence, even if you never regret doing it. Heroism is an action of discipline or creativity or plain dumb luck whereby someone stumbles into a non-violent means of making a real difference in the world. No action ever makes a person a hero or a villain, because no human being can ever be entirely defined by what they do.

History has shown us that opposing violence with violence only compounds the problem, even if some short term benefits are realized. If the goal is to minimize violence, there’s some argument for force opposing force, but if the goal, as it is for followers of Jesus Christ, is to realize a world without violence; it is never the answer.

Yes, we live in a world where killing exists and one where there will continue to be people who kill with the best of intentions. Our response, though, should not be to absolve them of guilt or normalize those actions – it should be to wrestle and grieve alongside them as they process the primal violation of existence that is the taking of life. Our job, as it is at all times, is to love unconditionally, because it is only love – especially love of those we would like to kill – that will ever end violence.

A Spirit of Pain and Optimism

I spent the past weekend at Mid-Atlantic District Assembly - the annual gathering of Church of the Nazarene congregations from DC, Delaware, Maryland, the panhandle of WV, and Central PA.  It was our first opportunity to be together in person since 2019.  We were in a new location, with a new schedule, so a lot of the weekend was feeling things out.  I definitely didn't get to have the same kinds or the same number of conversations I've been used to in the past.

Those conversations I did have, though, were really interesting.  COVID has allowed a lot of congregations to break bad habits and engage in loving people creatively and with intention in ways that previous structures didn't allow very well.  I felt a real sense of emphasis and attention on connection - which makes total sense after a prolonged period of being separate.

I know the last two years were a real struggle for a lot of pastors.  There were internal battles over QAnon and mask wearing perpetuated by the continued alignment of fundamentalist evangelicalism and far right politics.  I heard very few of those discussions, though.  While that kind of conversation will not be going away any time soon, the pastors I call peers are really dedicated to the gospel and, as hard as it is, have generally found ways to speak into the encroaching cultures with gospel truth.

The place where that's not happening though, is in how we deal with LGBTQIA+ conversations.  It's an issue becoming increasingly relevant to Nazarene congregations, who have a pastoral necessity to engage in tough conversations about sexuality, chastity, and morality in an atmosphere that encouraged entrenchments on extreme positions with an existential fear that allowing for a consideration of the opposite position equals defeat or betrayal.

As I've explained to my local mainline protestant pastor friends, "The Church of the Nazarene can't even have calm, rational theological conversation about the sinfulness of consuming a drop of alcohol; we're definitely not ready for discussions of human sexuality."

We are, after all, an extremely conservative denomination (80+% of Nazarenes in the US voted for Trump - and many of our other world areas, where the vast majority of members live, are often even more conservative in both theology and politics), that only just recently removed the word "abomination" from our core language about queer folks - a statement that falls distinctly into "Side B" language, despite common practice that won't even allow that much leeway in most contexts.

I heard a number of anecdotal references to the conversation our General Superintendents have with candidates before they're ordained.  I'm hesitant to share them without real confirmation, but it's in line with the institutional shift, so I'll do it for now - but if any recent ordinands or General Superintendents want to disabuse me of this notion, I'll gladly apologize and amend.

I've been told the GS will make clear that ordinands can't drink alcohol and that they must be in line with the current statement on LGBTQIA+ issues.  This is interesting, because it makes a distinction between practice and belief.  They're not asking pastors to agree with the statement on alcohol (which could be much better, as I've discussed before), just to follow it.  They seem to be setting a higher bar when it comes to queer people.

I disagree with the position of the Church of the Nazarene.  I think it should be changed.  I've written about it before and will continue to advocate as we move forward.  I disagree with the position, but I've also committed not to perform a wedding my accrediting denomination doesn't allow me to officiate.  It's essentially the position they seem to be asking of clergy in terms of alcohol - you don't have to like our position, but you need to follow it.

That they're taking a harder line when it comes to LGBTQIA+ issues is completely in line with the institutional conservation model the Church of the Nazarene has been operating in for a while now.  They're doing and advocating for things that best aid the continued function of the denomination, even if they're going to make the far future more difficult.  Yes, its short sighted, but it's also about the only thing they can do without turning the whole thing into chaos.

It's a tough position to be in - just like the position of our Nazarene colleges and universities - stuck between an existential rock and hard place.  Offering grace and engaging publicly in conversations will create tears in the fabric and endanger the continued existence of Nazarene institutions.  That danger is real and scary.  I don't envy the people making those decisions.

At the same time, though, while this feeling of institutional retrenchment pervaded the weekend, I had conversation after conversation where pastors told me to keep pushing, keep asking questions, keep advocating for conversation and consideration.  Even those pastors who agree with the official denominational position understand the real complexities that exist in the practical living out of ideas in congregation and community and want to be free to talk about an issue that's long been a third rail.

From my perspective, it is an existential reality.  The only people I know who'd be comfortable with the human sexuality stance of the Church of the Nazarene are those currently participating in or who've been raised in conservative Christianity.  This group is growing smaller with every passing year.

I don't think we should change our position simply because its less popular.  If you know me, you know I gravitate towards unpopular ideas.  I go out of my way to find and embrace them.  I've changed my mind on the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ folks because of my study of scripture in an attempt to better defend the Nazarene position.

I've been converted by the Holy Spirit through the careful study of scripture.  I've been confirmed in my decision by working with a lot of really great, young pastors in my local congregation.  We've had a succession of queer pastors and pastoral students working in congregations in town.  Most of them have come from Baptist, Wesleyan, and Evangelical contexts where their ministry was not welcome.  They're some of the best example of holiness people I know - fervent in pursuit of the gospel and the Kingdom, willing to serve and learn and love like Jesus.

I still have great hope because the Church of the Nazarene continues to be full of similarly humble and committed servants - clergy and lay, young and old - committed to scriptural holiness and determined to live outrageously counter-cultural gospel lives in the world around them.  I know it's going to be a tricky process moving forward.  I don't know what the outcome will be, but I have great faith the God who has seen us this far will continue to lead and guide if we follow passionately and graciously.

I don't think the future is something to be feared, even if it requires difficult conversations.  Close relationships don't exist without tough and honest conversation.  I hope we continue to make space for them to take place - in our own homes, congregations, and lives, as well as in our communities, districts, and denominations.

Are We Too Dependent on Miracles?

This is a sermon I prepared for our weekly Refresh worship time this past week.  I felt very convicted by it and thought it could use a share. 

On the surface of it, this seems like a pretty straightforward miracle story – a reward for belief.  The prophet said the flour and oil would last and the widow trusted they would and they did.  But, as you hear it, is there anything that doesn’t sit well with you?  Any questions or problems that come up?

Maybe its just the time we live in, but I’m bothered by the power dynamics here.  Widows and children are the most vulnerable people in society.  This woman is ready to watch her son starve to death – she’s that desperate – and yet this random prophet shows up and asks her to bring him water, and she just does it.  The servant class is so baked into her, she’s ready to obey whatever this guy asks.

I have to ask myself, who is this guy to impose this upon her?  Yes, I get that God has orchestrated this whole thing, and he trusts that God will work it out, but it’s awfully mean, isn’t it?  I mean, I get the story and why it’s there, but I also wonder if we haven’t heard too many of these miracle stories.  I wonder if we haven’t become too dependent on the idea of miracles.

Think about it.  We use all the fossil fuels and minerals on our planet under the assumption that, by the time they run out, technology will have figured out a way to do what we need without them.  This is why climate change has lingered for so long – it wasn’t that people didn’t believe in it, but that they believed in a miracle more – that science would figure a way out of it that didn’t require sacrifice.

Our economy is built on debt – we encourage people to borrow.  These billionaires out there, they don’t have any actual cash – they just borrow against the value of their stocks, with the assumption that value always goes up, that there’s always more money out there.  It’s miracle thinking.

I was reading a lot, earlier this year, on Amazon’s hiring practices, because I guy I went to high school with ended up being a sort of whistle blower from the Amazon HR department.  They realized that people’s productivity goes down after a few years at a menial job, like stacking shelves or packing boxes, so they’ve set up their system to be really attractive at the beginning, but pretty terrible after three years.  They’ve designed their system to run through employees quickly and now they’ve run out of people.  They’ve burned out to many low wage workers, no one will do the job anymore.

Elijah didn’t worry about food, because God always provided for him – but that kind of put him in a position to impose on this poor widow, whose whole life has been nothing but suffering and imposition.  When we have this miracle mindset, it’s the people at the bottom of the pile who suffer – and in our society, we’re seeing some of this come home to roost.  We’ve got a lot of upheaval, because there are a lot of people who don’t see miracles.  They’re stuck with nothing and, like the widow, expect nothing.

When I worked at an urban youth center in Kansas City, during seminary, we’d always have volunteers (usually white, middle class, suburban) who’d wonder why these kids always had expensive sneakers and satellite TV, but they rarely had enough to eat.  There were complaints about their priorities.

I had to learn myself, and then teach them, that those priorities only make sense, when you plan to have a long term future.  If money or a job or a place to live could be gone tomorrow, you’re not thinking long term – you’re going to do what you can for yourself right now.  This is a different kind of miracle thinking – only a miracle will make this situation right, so I’m going to do what I can when I can.

Whether its a polluter tossing more coal into the furnace or an impoverished kid in line to buy Jordans, they’re both just banking on a miracle down the line.  For the rich, though, its an assumption “things will all work out;” while, for the poor, it’s a pipe dream, “we’ll gather a few sticks, make one last meal, and die.”  One assumes there will always be enough and the other is assuming there will never be enough.  Two sides of the same problem.

The gospel lesson here – where the Kingdom of God breaks in to the story – is that there is already enough.  It’s not about expecting the best or the worst of the future; it’s about believing that everything you need is already here.

Sometimes these biblical miracle stories make it seem like God is creating the problem God later intends to solve, right?  He asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, then provides a ram from the bushes.  He asks Elijah to take this woman’s last meal, only to give her more.  But that’s not what’s happening.  God is taking a common scenario from the world in which these people live, and changing the narrative.  Everybody in Abraham’s day sacrificed their firstborn to the gods; that was common practice.  God didn’t set up the scenario only to save the day; God radically changed the story.

Here it’s the same thing.  The prophet was a revered figure, someone with power.  It only made sense for him to take from those who couldn’t defend themselves.  That’s how society worked.  People who had things deserved them and people who didn’t have things didn’t deserve them.  The poor were just unworthy people.  Bad things only happened to bad people.  That was how society operated.

Here, God is changing the narrative.  Rich and poor.  Powerful and helpless.  Both are being served and fed and saved.  Both get the same meager meal of flour and oil, but both get to live.  It’s not about the miracle.  It’s not about God coming through in ways we couldn’t predict, it’s about God re-framing how we look at the world: there is already enough.  The flour will last, if we are responsible in its use!

We have to approach our world with this concept in mind.  It’s not about the future.  God has provided; we just have to be willing to share.  We have to be willing to be vulnerable, to make sacrifices.

Our society tells us there’s not enough.  That’s why we’re encouraged to consume.  Buy this TV now.  Limited time offer.  This deal won’t last forever.  You’re going to miss out!  How many people have more money than they’ll ever need saved up?  We feel like nobody, but the reality is very different.

Everybody thinks they’re middle class, because we’ve created this notion of scarcity.  We won’t raise taxes on people making under $250,000, because that’s “middle class,” but even $200,000 a year puts you in the top 10% of households in this country.  $10,000 a year is average for the whole world.

We have to figure out what it means to create a system, a society, where we can all live sustainably here and now.  For us, the rich – and everyone in this room is massively wealthy when measured on a global scale – it means being willing to sacrifice, do with less, and absolutely change our mindset.

Typically, those of us in power want gradual change.  We tell people who’ve been left out or oppressed, “wait your turn, go slow, we’ll get there eventually, let’s not shake things up too much” but that’s just more of the same miracle mindset.  Something in the future will change the situation so everyone can be equal with no one having to give up anything.  That’s not reality, though – that’s miracle thinking.

The poor in our society, the oppressed minorities, they live in a world where there’s no expectation things will get better or change in any meaningful way.  We have to be able to see the world with those eyes as easily as we can see with our privileged “it’ll all work out” eyes.  We shouldn’t need to depend on miracles for everyone to survive.                           

So, then, how do our lives need to change?

Open and Relational Theology by Thomas Jay Oord

My first impression upon beginning to read Open and Relational Theology, the newest book by philosopher Thomas Jay Oord* was simply that it feels like a lot of the same material covered in his recent book, God Can't.  In many ways, it is repetitive.  For those of us who read and study theology and philosophy quite a bit, there's not a lot of "new" in Open and Relational Theology (although I believe its the introduction of Oord's new word "amipotent" - which alone might be worth the price of the book, especially for the curious).  However, for the intended audience, whom I believe to be "regular" folks struggling with some of the "big" questions of life and belief, it's probably really helpful.

While God Can't deals specifically with the problem of evil - why evil exists in a world where God also exists - Open and Relational Theology addresses the whole of faith more broadly.  It comes across as an evangelistic tome, of sorts - not one in which Oord is attempting to covert traditionally theological Christians to a new way of looking at God and the world, but one in which he's attempting to provide a path to faith for people who may be struggling or have given up entirely on a Christian world view.

It is, as the subtitle explains, a mere introduction - probably more basic and less deep than even God Can't and certainly a good entry point for those looking to explore different ways of answering religion's big questions.  If you're already familiar with Oord's writings or those of other Open or Relational thinkers, Open and Relational Theology probably shouldn't be a high priority on your "to read" list - but if you, like me and many others, struggle to explain these unique and different approached to theology to other people, it may be a book you should buy multiple copies of to keep on hand and pass out.

Oord provides discussion questions at the end of each chapter, and links to accompanying videos, as well as an extensive list of further reading resources, all of which are great starting points for additional exploration.  I'm not really the intended audience for a book like Open and Relational Theology, but I'm really glad that one of our best thinkers is dedicating so much time and effort to writing books accessible to everyday people.

*Full disclosure: I was given a free copy of in exchange for this review - although no preconditions were placed upon said review.

Fraudulent Giants

This is a sermon I preached June 20, 2021 on the David and Goliath story.  I don't typically share sermons here, but I think this one came together particularly well and I've already heard positive comments about how it's helped some people with a new perspective - so here it is:

 The Israelites and the Philistines are in a stalemate. They’ve lined up on opposite ridges with a valley in between. Neither side can attack, because they’d be giving up the high ground – you just can’t win and uphill battle. They’ve been staring at each other for months – neither side can see a solution.

Goliath comes out and challenges any Israelite to single combat. Remember, he’s almost seven feet tall, which is more intimidating when you know the average height for a man of this time is just over five feet. In today’s equivalent, Goliath at over eight feet. And David is not an average man – he’s still a boy. Someone a head shorter than me up against a veteran Navy Seal who’s eight feet tall. Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone vs Andre the Giant – this is what we’re looking at here.

Goliath is a battle-hardened, proven fighter – wearing armor, the very best defensive technology – lightweight kevlar, head to toe. He’s also got a traditional sword, like you imagine from the movies – the blade might be five feet long, a spear with a razor sharp tip, the size of a softball – and a sharpened iron javelin, something he can throw a long distance – strapped to his back.

What Israel sees is almost no way out. It would take a miracle to beat this giant.

That’s what we face, sometimes. There are giants in our lives – cancer, unemployment, racism, loneliness, addiction – whatever it is, we see in front of us an insurmountable giant that can only be defeated by an act of God. It’s a problem too big and too tough for us to face on our own.

Although, maybe – just maybe – the problem is not the giant in front of us, but the way we see it.

Did you know we see things upside down? Our eyes invert what we see – when that data reaches your brain, it’s upside down. So why don’t we see everything upside down? Somehow, our brains have learned that we see upside down and they adjust for us. Our brains – and we don’t know how they do this – turn those images back over, right side up, so we can go about our days and live in our world.

Imagine how hard it would be for me to preach if the podium in front of me were actually right in front of me, but I saw it hanging from the ceiling. We don’t actually have to imagine. Some scientists made it happen in the 1920s. In what’s called the Innsbruck Goggle Experiment, a guy named Theodor Erismann had his research assistant, Ivo Kohler, wear glasses with special lenses that inverted everything we saw – his eyes saw what the brain sees: everything upside down.

At first, Ivo couldn’t do anything. He could function pretty normally if he closed his eyes, but with them open, that first day, he couldn’t feed himself, walk across the room or even sit down. Even if you can feel the chair, if it doesn’t look like its there, its pretty tough to sit down.

While we might take it for granted, how we see is far, far more important than what we see. This, I think, is the real lesson of David and Goliath. The writer Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book a few years ago – called David and Goliath – where he outlines some of the details we may miss in the story. I don’t have time to go into all the details, but there’s a 15 minute youtube video you can find about it.

Anyway, for a human to be so extraordinarily large, Goliath would almost certainly have to have something called Acromeglia – its a pituitary disorder that essentially makes you keep growing forever – or at least until you get too big for your body to support. When I used Andre the Giant before, that’s not too far off – this is the same disorder he had, which lead to his great size. One of the realities of acromeglia is that in your teens and early 20s, you’re bigger and stronger than everyone, but you age quickly. Your joints break down and your back gives out – Andre the Giant could barely move at 30.

You see where I’m going with this? Goliath had been the mightiest of warriors, but it was likely, by this point, that he could barely move, that his vision was nearly gone, that his strength was failing him. The spear and the sword and the armor were probably doing him more harm than good at this point. Yeah, if David got within five feet of the guy, it probably would’ve been curtains for him, but as we know, David never intended to get close to Goliath at all.

Yes, a young Goliath could have picked up his shield and fended off the rocks coming from David’s sling, getting closer and closer, until his sword or his spear or his javelin or his bare hands would’ve been enough. This is what Saul was thinking, when he tried to make David wear the armor – give the kid a fighting chance – but Saul is not seeing the right way.

But nobody saw what was right in front of their faces: the giants in our lives are not always what they seem. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say God can’t do miracles or that God doesn’t do miracles – I’m just trying to say that miracles are miracles because they’re rare. They don’t happen very often. More often than not, if we’re going to tackle the giants in our lives, it’s not because God takes care of them for us, it’s because God gives us eyes to see them differently – to see them properly.

Let’s go back to Ivo Kohler, wearing the inversion goggles. He can’t do anything for himself. He’s got to be fed and led around by the hand everywhere he goes. He experiences some pretty severe psychological trauma right off the bat – but he’s committed to the experiment and he continues. Within three days, he says he’s starting to see things right side up – not that he’s getting familiar with his surroundings or learning to deal with mixed up vision, but that his vision is actually changing.

You see, it takes only a short time, a few days, for the brain to recognize this change in vision and catch up to what our eyes are seeing. By the 10^th day of the experiment, Kohler can tell no difference – he rides a motorcycle through the crowded streets of Innsbruck all on his own. His vision had completely changed. And when he finally took the glasses off, it was only another three days until he was back to normal. The human brain is one amazing thing. It can be wildly adaptable, but its also easily fooled.

The world we see around us is not as it seems. That’s the message of God’s Good News. Where we see might giants – eight foot tall, Kevlar-covered Navy Seals – God’s Spirit reveals half blind old man ready to fall over at the slightest push. Where we see brooding, dangerous strangers around every corner, the God’s Spirit reveals beloved children of God who only need one conversation to become a friend. Where we see need and poverty and desperation, the God reveals an abundance of resources if we’ll just trust each other and work together.

God is not calling us to sit back and let God handle the giants, God is calling us to step out on faith and see differently, to put on the inversion goggles of God’s Good News and look at the world upside down. Yes, its scary, and it can really mess us up for a while, but if we’re faithful to keep on it, despite bumping into furniture and spilling our dinner down our shirts, eventually we’ll learn to see this new way, God’s way, and those giants won’t seem so tough anymore.

The Good News of God is not the solution to all your problems. It’s not the path to an easy life or the answer to every question – but it is the path to engage the world in an open and life-giving way, to be human as we were created to be human, to tackle our challenges and setbacks by moving forward rather than cowering in the dark. So many of us spend our lives in a stalemate, staring across the valley at a giant we think is unbeatable, when God calls us to see differently, to live differently – and those giants may not always be what they seem.

Some Thoughts on ENC in a Particularly Troubling Week

I went to Eastern Nazarene College.  I really, really enjoyed my time there.  It was the perfect place for me to work out what it meant to be an adult in a supportive, but not overbearing environment.  I know that’s not a universal sentiment and there are lots of good reasons people have problems with whatever college they attend – ENC is definitely far from perfect – but it was a really great place for me.

I would really have liked to be more involved over the years.  I spent a lot of time halfway across the country at Seminary and now live six hours away.  I can’t be there for shows and games.  I can’t use the library or grab a coffee and sit.  I’d love to be a presence on campus and in the lives of students and I have some measure of envy for those who have that opportunity.

I long to be there, because it was the atmosphere, the people, the community that was so valuable to me – and I’d like to be able to give back.  My wife and I have given money, I think every year, for quite a while now.  Not a lot, for sure, but we’ve tried to be faithful in our support.  It’s been 18 years since I spent more than a day or two on campus – outside of those big, old, falling apart buildings, almost nothing is the same – but I do believe the community remains.

As in my time (although I was largely blind to it then), there are people who don’t feel welcome or supported in that community.  That’s truly, really sad.

Recently, it seems, the same tensions over LGBTQ+ issues that are roiling conservative Christians across the US have reared their heads again at ENC.  I won’t share the details, because I really only know them third hand, but whatever they are, they’re representative of dozens and hundreds and thousands of other details over the years, dating back to well before my time.

The fact is, there are lots of faithful queer Christians out there, people who take the Bible and the Kingdom of God as seriously as anyone else.  There are lots of congregations and denominations and traditions that are supportive and nurturing of these Christians and many of those are represented by students at ENC.

When most attendees were Nazarene, it was easy enough to toe the party line.  Even if it wasn’t the healthiest or the best for students, there was some logic to it – let the Nazarenes figure out their own junk – but that’s not reality any longer.  Most students come from non-Nazarene traditions and an increasing number have no problem with the idea that gay people could also be Christians; really, an increasing number have a hard time fathoming why anyone would think differently.

Even within the denomination, those views are changing.  I’m an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene and I would sure like us to stop using the gender of our spouses as some litmus test for faith.  That’s not a majority opinion just yet, but I know I speak for a lot of ministers who don’t feel safe expressing a real opinion on the matter, and for an increasing number who feel a moral compulsion to speak out for change.

Fear, though, is the other side of the issue.  The school relies on funding from congregations, many of whom already feel the school is “too liberal” and not accommodating to what they want for their kids.  The sad truth is: if ENC changed its stance towards gay faculty or students tomorrow, the school would close by Fall (if, in fact, there were a viable mechanism for change, which doesn’t really exist).

There is a growing gap between what students want out of a college and what parents and donors want the school to be.  That’s not just true at ENC, but at Christian colleges all over the country.  As generous and as hopeful as those of us who’d like to see change might be able to be, it’s VERY unlikely it would be enough to sustain the school outside of more conservative support.

This is where I feel the most conflicted: On the one hand, if ENC is not willing to step up and lead in difficult conversations about the theological and ethical formation of young people, then maybe it shouldn’t exist.  Advocating for the health and well-being of students in its care is certainly a worthy hill on which ENC could die.

On the other hand, there’s still a lot of great stuff being done in and through ENC.  The top evidence of this is that these movements towards change aren’t coming from outside the community; the very people ENC produces are those speaking and standing up.  The spirit of support and encouragement I so valued as a student must be alive and well, because ENC’s students and alumni continue to reflect it!

There’s always been a tricky balance between fear-based prohibitions and the risk of allowing students to fail in the pursuit of truth.  It’s especially true of sexual ethics in evangelical environments.  Fear usually wins out over hope.  Regardless of your beliefs on any controversial topic, we should all agree that fear reactions are not compatible with Christian life.

If the Spirit of truth guides us into all truth, we shouldn’t be afraid of asking questions.  I learned that growing up in the Church of the Nazarene and it was reinforced at ENC.  As a parent, I know we’re desperate to spare our children harm and pain in that journey towards truth, but as a former child, I’m not sure the harm of that protection was any better than the potential harm that protection avoided.

It’s a risk either way.

LGBTQ+  Christians probably don’t feel welcome in the Church of the Nazarene or at ENC and I don’t blame them for leaving or writing us off, but, for me, as a 5th generation Nazarene, as a straight white male who isn’t actually being harmed by the slow pace of change, sticking around and continuing to push in the right direction seems the only ethical thing to do.  I love both those messed up institutions; they are a part of me, and I cannot and will not abandon them.  I want to work to help make them places of welcome for more and more people (and more kids of people) than they’ve been before.

There are limitations and complexities and financial considerations.  There are legal and political and theological issues that just aren’t going to be resolved overnight.  I’m encouraged by the students and alumni willing to speak up and whatever happens, I’m here in support as we move forward together.

Because of my faith in Jesus Christ, I believe profoundly that wherever we’re going, we’re going there together, or we’re not going at all.  Loving your enemies is kind of what this whole Jesus thing is about.  You can’t browbeat your opponents into submission.  Shame and guilt and anger might work in the short term, but they’re poison down the road.

We may have learned this the hard way in the Church of the Nazarene, but I do think we’ve learned it.  Other denominations are tearing each other apart with anger and recalcitrance and lack of trust.  As much as we disagree, as much as “the other side” might seem backwards and sinful, we have, so far, managed to maintain a belief that we’re all pursuing God in the best way we know how.

ENC needs a little more of that belief at this moment – maybe a lot more – to recognize all the gifts possessed by all members of the community.  I may not be as connected or influential as I’d like to be right now and I may have leaked ignorance and privilege all over these pages, but I can’t remain silent.  We’ve got to do better and we’ve got to do it together, without fear, in the Spirit that leads to truth.

Lets include ALL members of the community and encourage them as they work out their faith in an environment like Eastern Nazarene College!