Category Archives: LGBTQ

For a year I’m the Anabaptist-Mennonite contributor to a conversation on “Following Jesus” among writers from 12 different Christian traditions. Each month a writer makes a main presentation on her or his tradition and the remaining writers offer responses. Here at Kingsview & Co I’m posting my contributions along with links to the larger conversation.

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Reading Sarah Lancaster’s insightful overview of Wesleyanism and keeping in mind its United Methodist denominational expressions took me back to when it was my responsibility to articulate overlaps between Mennonite and United Methodist teachings and values. The United Methodist University Senate oversees UM higher education, including in non-UM institutions it approves to teach UM students. To maintain the Eastern Mennonite Seminary UM Senate approval for further quadrennials, as seminary dean I needed to validate, on behalf of our students and faculty, that EMS adequately understood United Methodism and was prepared to teach and form UM students accordingly.

I was struck at the time, and now in reading Lancaster, that there are indeed significant commonalities. A key one is the overlap between the Anabaptist-Mennonite emphasis on discipleship and the Wesleyan emphasis on scriptural holiness along with the growth in holiness summarized through sanctification. There are variations in the details (particularly the Anabaptist grounding in believers baptism versus the Methodist affirmation of infant baptism), yet discipleship and sanctification both involve living faithfully for Jesus and not simply articulating doctrines or believing this or that.

This is communally expressed for both traditions. As Lancaster puts it, “Following Jesus to grow in holiness, then, was not finally individualistic and private, but rather took place in community.” And if holiness is not individualistic but public, this in turn leads to what Lancaster calls “social holiness.” In founder John Wesley’s 1700s as in our times, this can lead to opposing slavery, racism, oppression, alcohol production that leads to grain shortages for the poor, and so forth.

As I learned during my seminary dean days, it has also led to the “Social Principles” of the United Methodist Church. The fact that UM student numbers at EMS were second only to Mennonites made sense as I learned, for example, that both the United Methodists and Mennonites are committed to peacebuilding and principles of social justice. Both traditions take seriously the way of peace taught in the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus who stressed love of enemies.

As the UM 2016 version of the UM Book of Discipline affirms in relation to Social Principles: The World Community,

We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ. We therefore reject war as an instrument of national foreign policy. We oppose unilateral first/preemptive strike actions and strategies on the part of any government. As disciples of Christ, we are called to love our enemies, seek justice, and serve as reconcilers of conflict

Throughout my reading of the Social Principles, I’m struck that again and again Mennonites would say amen to the UM social principles related to the natural world, the nurturing community, the social community, the economic community, the political community, the world community. This includes resonating with the UM position on the separation of church and state, a principle dear to many Anabaptist-Mennonites, and affirming, with the UM Social Principle on the Political Community, “the diversity of religious expressions and the freedom to worship God according to each person’s conscience.”

If amid occasional differences in details and emphasis, many Anabaptist-Mennonites will resonate with the UM Social Creed and its celebrations of God, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, natural world as God’s handiwork, the rights of all, the rights and duties of workers amid “elimination of economic and social distress,” and more. Affirmations in response to Lancaster and such principles could go on and on. If anything as a Mennonite I feel a hint of chastening as I encounter the sheer comprehensiveness with which United Methodists address social issues and UM faith commitments.

Yet that does not exhaust United Methodism. Lancaster also highlights effectively the suppleness of a Wesleyan ethos that can catalyze such significant social thought yet also encompass “seeking emotional experiences of God in prayer and worship.” She helps us integrate social principles with John Wesley’s famous and memorable journal testimony that as he was listening to a reading of Luther’s Preface to the epistle to the Romans,

About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins. . . .

This also overlaps with Christopher Gehrz’s thoughts on the Pietist influence across multiple traditions.

There was one area in which I wished for Lawrence’s fuller exploration. She does observe that “There have been divisions over various matters, such as race and slavery, lay rights, women’s ordination, etc. (and we face division now over LGBTQ+ issues), but none of these ‘various views’ are distinctive to Wesleyans.”

There she lets things rest, perhaps understandably and deliberately so. To wade into such matters is to find all too little rest and perhaps often to muddy core convictions. It can be a challenge indeed, for example, to maintain communal commitments as polarizations related to “LGBTQ+ issues” threaten to shred community, at least at the formal denominational level. And Lancaster is understandably aiming to speak not only for United Methodism but also more broadly for a Wesleyanism expressed in but not limited to the UM denominational manifestions.

Yet fragmentation is affecting so many of our traditions, very much including Anabaptist-Mennonite as I earlier touched on. In addition, the UM battles related to LGBTQ+ denominational positions seem to involve significant intertwining with Wesleyan emphases on holiness, perfection, social creeds. When such core teachings confront the acids of controversies in which alternative views of sin and right living are in play, how do they fare? It would be valuable to learn more about how Lancaster sees United Methodists continuing to offer the treasures of Wesleyanism while confronting intense denominational factionalisms.

During my days as seminary dean, such denominational dynamics were omnipresent for both Mennonites involved in Mennonite Church USA and for United Methodists. Several times UM leaders provided resources to the EMS community based on UM dynamics that were not identical to Mennonite ones, given polity variations, yet involved overlapping complexities and sufferings still working their way through both denominations.

Mennonite Church USA is in the final stages of preparing for a May 2022 special delegate session that could “retire” or embrace several resolutions affecting LGBTQ-related denominational positions. And as of this spring, even such a general-audience, non-theological source as USA Today was stirred to report, for instance, that a new Global Methodist Church would split from the UM Church by May and that

The new denomination announced its plans on the same day the UMC postponed its General Conference for the third time, this time until 2024. Delegates were expected to vote on proposals regarding the creation of a new denomination at the General Conference on Aug. 29-Sept. 6 in Minneapolis.

I certainly don’t propose that such developments invalidate Lancaster’s overview. But as an Anabaptist-Mennonite who has experienced the challenges of maintaining communal commitments when divisions erode denominations’ ability to gather around core understandings and practices, I will continue to watch with interest and concern how the United Methodist Church navigates such shoals.

And I’ll be rooting, Sarah Lancaster, for the various wings of the United Methodist Church, whether still officially part of one “United” denomination or fragments of what once was, to continue to offer us what you summarize in your memorable conclusion:

In the Wesleyan tradition, following Jesus means being a child of God and living appropriately in that relationship. However differently holiness may be conceived, it is a common conviction that God empowers us to live in the power of the Holy Spirit so that we may work with God in God’s intention to restore the world to what God created us to be.

—Michael A. King is blogger and editor, Kingsview & Co; and publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. He has been a pastor and seminary dean and is currently participating in Harold Heie’s Respectful Conversation project within which a version of this post was first published.

Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Eastern Mennonite University, LGBTQ, loving viewpoint enemies, Teachings of Jesus

Tenderly Inviting All to Christ’s Banquet

July 22, 2015 Kingsview & Co posts from Michael A. King and guests 13 Comments

For long decades now I’ve dreamed of a setting in which we could learn how—offering each other the tenderness for which every human so longs—to pull out chairs for every single one of us who wish to do so to sit at Christ’s banquet table. I’ve dreamed of Jesus our host and we as his body, with the courtesy such a momentous moment so deserves, together pulling out each other’s chairs and helping each one of us be seated.

In my circle of innermost loved ones, including family and dear friends, are those who as soon as same-sex marriage became legal in their respective states married long-time partners. Others in that same circle are against this and have been troubled that, for instance, my employer Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) opened a hiring policy review and listening process to discern whether to hire persons in same-sex relationships. I wish for all of these dear ones to be at the banquet table. I wish for the table to groan with such amazingly nurturing and varied foods that all can eat with joy.

I speak of this dream now because I’m deeply moved to see confirmed a context for extending such tenderness and for continuing to test and learn how it’s done in ways that honor all at the table. Last Thursday, July 16, 2015, the EMU Board of Trustees voted to pass this action:

Eastern Mennonite University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or any legally protected status. As a religious institution, Eastern Mennonite University expressly reserves its rights, its understandings of, and its commitments to the historic Anabaptist identity and the teachings of Mennonite Church USA, and reserves the legal right to hire and employ individuals who support the values of the college.

In speaking to the EMU community, Board Chair Kay Nussbaum and President Loren Swartzendruber indicated that

Therefore—as we affirm the goodness of singleness, celibacy, and sexual intimacy within the context of a covenanted relationship (marriage)—our hiring practices and benefits will now expand to include employees in same-sex marriages. The Board of Trustees and EMU leadership believe this is the right decision for Eastern Mennonite University as an institution at this time.

I’m moved because through such action I do hear EMU (along with Goshen College, whose board made the same decision) inviting persons and entities like these to that wobbly version of Christ’s table which is the best we know how to offer each other on earth: my own divided loved ones, students who wrestle with each other’s differing understandings, those holding multiple perspectives within EMU, those pained by fractures within Mennonite Church USA and the range of denominations an ecumenical EMU serves, persons forming EVANA as a network of Mennonite congregations both intersecting with but also sometimes providing alternatives to MC USA perspectives, and so many more.

I recognize that it’s right about at this point that things get complicated: Some brothers and sisters in Christ have already had a table setting. A question they’re wrestling with is whether, if they view it as violating faithfulness to Scripture, they can still experience nurture at the table if others fully join them.

This is a riddle I don’t entirely know how to solve. That’s why I addressed it in various ways in my seven-part “Blogging Toward Kansas City” series. That’s why I’ve basically said God, I don’t know how this can be done or if it can be done, give us a Pentecost miracle.

I think Nussbaum and Swartzendruber address the riddle when they say that

We are keenly aware of the deep divide within our denomination—as well as the broader Christian Church—regarding the inclusion of LGBTQ individuals. We mourn the broken relationships and pain for people with differing understandings of Scripture and what it means to live as Christ called us to live. We remain deeply committed to Mennonite Church USA and Anabaptist values as an institution.

They don’t offer a magic wand. But I draw hope from their recognition of the riddle and from their closing invitation calling

for respect and care in our community as people from a variety of perspectives hear about this decision. Thank you for extending grace and compassion as we move forward living and learning in community together.

As dean of the seminary division of an EMU now operating within our new hiring policy, I know there is much journeying to be done. We’ll need at Eastern Mennonite Seminary and EMU to learn more of what it means to experience our new banquet table. We’ll need to discern how to share what we learn in a wider church still wrestling with who belongs at the table and how.

We’ll need to continue to benefit from insights of those who, whether internally or externally, disagree with our new non-discrimination commitments. In fact, I believe we’ll have succeeded in honoring the spirit of our new policy precisely to the extent we’re able to invite persons who disagree to be among those who experience themselves as part of an “us” tenderly pulling out for them their banquet chair.

And so I am daring to dream toward learning more about Pentecost through this EMU/EMS laboratory within which I’m privileged to serve. During that first wild Pentecost, winds gusting and flames falling, those gathered so trembled in the Holy Spirit that they were thought drunk with wine as a miracle unfolded: tribes from countless nations understood each other across so many divisions in culture and thought and language. Might the winds and flames similarly fall on us as we invite all to Christ’s table?

I don’t want to claim we at EMU and EMS already fully know how to embody Pentecost. Even as, starting in 1917, the shapers of EMU have fervently sought the guidance of the Spirit all along, as frail humans we’ve still only begun to grasp how large the Spirit’s work among us might be. But I do view us as committed to seeking, together, to invite the Spirit to use us as a laboratory for testing how we all take chairs at the table. Through the EMU Board decision, I see us as making two critical, historic moves:

First, we’re saying not, as we so often have, that all must hold the same LGBTQ-related theology to be at the table; rather, we’re saying that we’ll start with all at the table. Then we’ll continue to wrestle carefully and discerningly—attending to Jesus, Scripture, the core Anabaptist-Mennonite values of MC USA, and insights of the church universal—with how God is speaking amid our varying and sometimes opposing perspectives.

Second, we’re saying that from now on at EMU those who identify as LGBTQ will not be persons the rest of us talk about and whose presence or absence at the table others make decisions about. From now on those of us who identify as LGBTQ will be part of the new EMU “us” we can all now jointly and gently and tenderly form. Even as disagreements in our community will continue and indeed—as befits an institution of higher learning—be treasured, we’ll find our way together into the future of EMU and of EMS within EMU.

I pray that we’ll experience a few more chapters of a Story in which, as Jesus puts it in Luke 14, those who feel most welcome at the table take the lowest place, and those who feel least welcome at the table are in fact invited first.

—Though not speaking here officially on behalf of EMS and EMU, Michael A. King is dean, Eastern Mennonite Seminary, a division of Eastern Mennonite University; vice-president, EMU; blogger and editor, Kingsview & Co; and publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC.

Anabaptist-Mennonite theology, God, grace, LGBTQ, love of God, Mennonite Church USA, same-sex relationships

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 7: Bending the Curve

July 3, 2015 Kingsview & Co posts from Michael A. King and guests Leave a comment

It’s hard to tell how much and what type of history Mennonite Church USA made yesterday as intertwined resolutions on sexuality were passed. What will it mean to live a.) within the parameters of one resolution that called us to “forebearance,” to living patiently and respectfully with each others’ different views; and at the same time b.) within the implications of another resolution that reaffirms current membership guidelines related to persons who identify as LGBTQ?

I think it’s too early fully to understand what was decided, so I’ll defer detailed comment to another day or wiser analysts. (Meanwhile see news reporting on the wrestling with and voting on the sexuality resolutions from The Mennonite and Mennonite World Review.) Here I’ll mostly underscore my sense that we lived through a day of pain and sorrow.

I’d guess this was true for persons across the spectrum of beliefs, given that divergent beliefs were one cause of the pain. This meant that any combination of decisions was likely to be experienced as gain by some and pain by others.

The pain must have been palpable for any of us who felt that our very ability to honor conscience was in play. Along with anger as its frequent companion, pain must have been particularly intense for any of us who felt that our personal inclusion or exclusion, or that of our loved ones, was at stake. Some have been giving eloquent voice to this suffering on Facebook and elsewhere.

As earlier promised, I did write Part 7, the last in my “Blogging Toward Kansas City” series, on Wednesday for publication in Mennonite Weekly Review yesterday morning, July 2, 2015. This was before we knew the results of the sexuality resolutions discernment. My impression is that today we’re continuing to find our way through some of the dynamics I reported on in yesterday morning’s MWR post but that we won’t fully understand what has happened or what could happen next, for good or ill, until we have a chance to absorb the hurt and grief.

I actually don’t know what comes after this for my own blogging. I need to do some of my own living into what has happened and what if anything to comment on or what other topics to move onto. In the meantime, I’m working with several authors of guest posts and look forward to sharing their writing when ready. Many thanks to those of you who have supported the launch of Kingsview & Co through your interest, comments, provision of guest posts, or shares through Facebook, Twitter, and more.

Now I’ll continue to pray, as I do below, that amid anxiety, chaos, and sorrow the evidence of things we don’t yet see and the substance of things we hope for (to echo Hebrews 11) will become clearer as God continues to bend the curve toward love and life.

Bending the Curve Toward Love and Life

In the middle of Tuesday night, I fell into a sequence of dreams. In one I dreamed that I was at the Mennonite Church USA convention, Kansas City 2015 (as I actually was). In a seminar I attended only in the dream, we were each to remember an experience of God’s grace. My dreaming mind went to this true story:

When I was seven, I ate bananas intended for something else. We lived on a four-lane Mexico City street with a tree-lined median. Racing to the median, I dumped the evidence then ran back—forgetting cars. With screaming brakes and horn, a Jeep hit me.

A nearby stop light had turned red; traffic was slowing; I was more bruised in ego than body. I scrambled up, pretended getting hit by cars was standard fare for me, and ran home as the driver stared.

I won’t claim detailed metaphorical connections while offering impressions from KC2015, but herewith some broad linkages:

First is being launched by a minor decision into near-catastrophe. Small moves can have large consequences. Many of us are feeling this at KC2015. As hymns are chosen, worship leaders decide what to highlight, speakers connect our circumstances with the Luke 24 disciples mourning dead Jesus, we’re attending to the smallest nuances.

We hear of gun-rights exercisers in tension with the local Moslem mosque. We learn of tiny gestures of reconciliation growing between two alienated communities. Are we really who we say we are? Or is ours “an idle tale”? we’re asked. We also engage endless war, drone warfare, abuse, justice amid racism, a remembrance of the Native Americans others of us displaced, and more. But over it all swirl LGBTQ-related dynamics as we wait to learn whether sexuality discernment becomes a Jeep hitting MC USA.

I asked KC2015 participants whose journeys with God catch my attention to offer impressions, hopes, fears. L. Keith Weaver, moderator, Lancaster Mennonite Conference, touches on our mix of feelings amid not knowing what the small or larger gestures of coming hours will produce:

I am feeling an awkward mix of joy and grief as I greet and worship with friends and colleagues in MC USA. It is a joy to experience God’s presence in his gathered people, celebrating God’s redeeming grace and sustaining love. There is also grief in knowing that conflicting values will make it difficult to experience the organizational unity we had hoped could emerge. God grant us mercy and grace as we seek to follow Jesus on the way.

A second broad linkage is loss of control amid chaos. I had some ability to make choices before and after being struck. Yet when I failed to anticipate traffic, chaos took control.

At KC2015, wise folks are paying attention to traffic amid prayerful awareness that a Jeep could wreck our discernment. Still, so much we don’t control. The discernment is unfolding not only across many layers of MC USA but also entities some may join instead of MC USA. Decisions across any layer can cause unpredictable ripples and counter-moves.

Among many naming the consequent anxiety is Theda Good, pastor, First Mennonite Church of Denver. Good anticipates renewing and building relationships at KC2015 but is also “aware of the anxiety in the family system. I feel it.”

Lois Johns Kauffmann, conference minister, Central District Conference, confesses to

anxiety as I think about the weight of our work together and the range of expectations we brought with us. This feels like a pivotal moment in the life of our church. It is a crucial time, not because the way will be crystal clear by the end of the week, but because this is not a business-as-usual convention. Maybe it’s pivotal because we’re aware of our need. Maybe it’s pivotal because we’re forced to face our power and privilege.

Many are experiencing heavy hearts. Echoing Weaver on grief, they doubt any discerners can control an outcome that holds us institutionally together. There is sorrow that this may be their last MC USA convention.

The third broad link with my story—the care of a gracious God—places me on shaky ground. If God’s care spares me, why do countless others, equally deserving, appear not to receive it? Still I believe that in ways we can’t reduce to formula, God bends the curve of Creation toward life and love.

Maybe God didn’t bend the curve toward life after a boy hid banana peels. Yet I’ll trust there was a divine nudge in my dream of telling KC2015 seminar participants that being spared death by Jeep was an experience of God’s care. I’ll trust this amid the longing many feel for God to bend this moment’s curve toward love and life.

Good’s hope is “that we will find ways to love, honor and cherish each and every family member while acknowledging we do not and will not agree on so many different topics.” She believes “The sexuality conversation will not be the last in which we will hold strong divergent views.” Good trusts that as the curve bends “we will find our way and continue to be known as a church of love and peacemakers.”

Harold N. Miller, pastor, Trissels Mennonite Church, thinks the week may “be good for the church. Perhaps it’s trust that our leaders have good instincts for what will hold the church together.”

Perhaps it’s a deep hope that our delegates are committed to “listen to the Scriptures for guidance” (in the delegates’ Table Group Covenant Litany), that we won’t abandon one teaching stance without deliberate, church-wide Bible study to discern whether we should embrace a new stance or affirm the Membership Guidelines resolution.

“The only explanation that is certain,” Miller stresses, “is that my peace was a gift from the Spirit of God.”

Kauffmann concludes,

More than anxiety, I feel grateful to be part of this church I love, participating in the hard and holy work of being in community. A wise person once said that every relationship is an opportunity for spiritual growth, because every relationship forces us to let go of illusions. I wonder what illusions God is asking me and us to release.

—Michael A. King is dean, Eastern Mennonite Seminary; owner, Cascadia Publishing House LLC; and blogger and editor, Kingsview & Co. He is grateful to Kelli Yoder, assistant editor and web editor, Mennonite World Review to MWR for the opportunity to collaboratively develop and circulate this blog post.

Anabaptist-Mennonite theology, communities of discernment, discernment amid differences, faithful dissent, Kansas City 2015, LGBTQ, loving enemies, loving viewpoint enemies, Mennonite Church USA, polity

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 6: “Honoring Conscience”

June 26, 2015 Kingsview & Co posts from Michael A. King and guests 8 Comments

As the Supreme Court declares a constitutional right to marriage (with Scalia savaging Kennedy) and Mennonites begin our pilgrimage to next week’s Kansas City convention and a potentially fateful appointment with history : This is the only way forward, I tell you; I can do no other. No, this is the only way forward, you tell me; you can do no other.

Below I share “Honoring Conscience in Plays and Sexuality Wars” as Part 6 of “Blogging Toward Kansas City” for two reasons. First, it’s my most recent published effort (The Mennonite , May 2015) to engage the latest incarnations of those matters I earlier described as being so intensely in play at Purdue 87 and now again before us at a juncture I’ve indeed heard more than one Mennonite Church USA denominational leader name “historic.”

Perhaps what’s about to happen at the Kansas City, Missouri, MC USA biennial convention will surprise us all with its low-stakes outcome. Perhaps we’ll simply muddle on for however many more years of muddling are called for. Yet it seems possible we’ll be parsing and engaging the consequences of Kansas City over the coming generation in ways comparable to the generation we’ve spent unpacking the Purdue 87 assembly.

Second, this represents my final pre-Kansas City effort to testify to why I see space for variance, or what I’d call faithful dissent, as so critical. I simply see no way forward that doesn’t in some way allow sharply opposing voices of conscience to be honored. We don’t disagree so intensely because we want to be cruel, to make trouble, to dishonor Scripture and God. We’re waging what MC USA Executive Director Ervin Stutzman has rightly, I believe, called “civil war” precisely because the very core of what we truly believe is at risk.

A resolution to be processed and voted on at Kansas City calls us to “forebearance.” Meanwhile another resolution calls for reaffirmation of Mennonite Church Membership Guidelines for at least four years. How might these two resolutions work with or against each other? What if one is adopted and the other not?

Time will tell. But I draw some hope from thoughts on the resolutions Stutzman offers in an FAQ. Agree or disagree (and certainly both responses will be offered!) he provides a rationale for seeking to maintain stability of current denominational teachings on sexuality for at least some years. Then in one comment that strikes me as key to the quest for living together as our voices of conscience offer opposing proclamations, he sees the combination of resolutions as “inviting us to hold the documents more lightly than we hold onto each other as members of the body of Christ.”

I was preparing to post this at noon today, June 26, 2015, to take a breather (and give readers one!) before heading next week to Kansas City and posting Part 7 as a report from there. Then before noon came word of the 5-4 Supreme Court decision declaring same-sex marriage constitutional. I imagine the country and denominations and churches and in many ways the entire globe will be parsing this decision for years to come.

It seems hard to believe it won’t have some sort of context-setting impact in Kansas City. Might some of us see it as underscoring the need for Christians to be counter-cultural? We dissent from a culture of war; do we need to dissent from a culture that undoes what we consider God’s order of creation? Might others conclude sometimes God speaks through culture? Did culture, we might wonder, help a recalcitrant church reach fresh understandings regarding women in leadership? Has something similar happened again here?

Complexity lies ahead for the church and is presaged in the hot contestations within the Supreme Court. Take Kennedy: He will greatly move some and trouble others as he concludes on behalf of those who identify as LGBTQ that “Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

He also takes pains to reach out to persons of faith who will disagree:

Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. The same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for other reasons. In turn, those who believe allowing same-sex marriage is proper or indeed essential, whether as a matter of religious conviction or secular belief, may engage those who disagree with their view in an open and searching debate. The Constitution, however, does not permit the State to bar same-sex couples from marriage on the same terms as accorded to couples of the opposite sex.

Yet hold on, insists John Roberts (whom I’ll focus on as a more temperate critic that some of the SCOTUS dissenters), it’s not going to be that simple:

Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage—when, for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex married couples. Indeed, the Solicitor General candidly acknowledged that the tax exemptions of some religious institutions would be in question if they opposed same-sex marriage. There is little doubt that these and similar questions will soon be before this Court. Unfortunately, people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today.

So there we’ll be in Kansas City, precisely in the middle of these waves. They’ll be crashing from multiple sides against a frail peninsula of discernment jutting out into the ocean of decisions and dynamics that lie ahead for church, culture, and world.

One week in Kansas City can’t clarify for MC USA what next. Yet if anything the Supreme Court decision seems to me to heighten the need for the church to be a zone of peacemaking reconciliation, a gentler and safer harbor than many will experience amid the towering breakers.

I do hope we leave Kansas City with some type of truly mutual forebearance embraced. I hope we provide for all a denominational home that offers foretastes of that Home with its many mansions. I hope we pursue the miracle of providing home, in this world of so much homelessness of body and mind and soul, for consciences entirely at odds with each other to be honored as treasures.

I hope we ask what it would mean for every single one of us to be understood to enrich the body of Christ. What would we offer ourselves, in a world of beheadings in the name of God, if we built this home not only as isolated individuals but as part of a larger community of discernment and faithfulness and love? Might we then in amazing ways, as a roaring sound comes from heaven like a mighty windstorm and tongues of fire descend, offer clues to the mind of a God whose ways are so much more wonderful, as Job came to understand, than any of us alone can grasp? Might a startled world gasp that oh my, they seem to be drunk?

Honoring Conscience in Plays and Sexuality Wars

Should pastors be forbidden to officiate at same-sex weddings? Or forbidden not to? I draw lessons from a first-grade play.

“But my parents won’t allow me to be in the play because it’s wrong to hold a gun,” I explained, barely pushing out the words against racing heart and tightening throat.

Mrs. Navarro, coiffed white hair not softening stern features she said traced back to Mexico’s most revered president, was not about to budge: “Is there a problem with your brain, young man? What could be wrong with pretending to carry a gun in a play?”

I was in first grade, son of Mennonite missionary parents who had just moved our family to Mexico City. Between culture shock, theological shock, and sheer terror, I had about used up my explanatory resources but tried one last time: “My parents say war is wrong. We’re Mennonites, and that’s what we’re taught. They say because war is wrong even carrying guns in a play is wrong.”

Mrs. Navarro snorted. “I’m not impressed; you are strange people. If you just won’t carry a gun, fine, fine, unhappy boy. But you must be in the play. You’ll get a tiny part and be bored while your classmates have the fun you could be having.”

Half a century later, I can smile at the memory. But I still recall the sting. And it took me decades to shift from blaming my parents for the misery they could have spared me had their consciences been more flexible. It was only a play! Did you have to make me a laughingstock in first grade, not to mention seventh when you made me exercise on a gym floor mat while my classmates learned dancing, another seduction of evil culture? Or college, when I had to confess I’d never been to a movie theater because that too was bad? Yet now that my parents are gone, I’m thankful for their great gift: teaching me that pearl of great price which is obeying conscience.

I’m grateful also for the tradition undergirding my parents’ treasuring of conscience. For centuries Anabaptist-Mennonites have believed with the Peter of Acts 5:29, and the radical reformers inspired by Peter, that when human rules and God’s clash, “We must obey God instead of people!”

This matters today as denominational battles over same-sex understandings rage on. It matters because, I believe, the root cause of the war and our inability to extend ceasefire is conscience. No matter our perspective, most of us are convinced that to believe other than we do is to violate conscience. Any ceasefire must then solve the riddle of how more than one voice of conscience can exist in the same faith community.

In Mennonite Church USA, which I serve as dean at an Eastern Mennonite Seminary confronted with how we form and honor consciences amid voices so at odds, the way forward is unclear. Yet finding a path is critical as divisions roil us.

Some congregations or regional conferences are voting to leave MC USA because same-sex relationships are sinful, they must obey God at any price, and they believe MC USA is not adequately maintaining dikes against sin.

Convinced justice and obedience to God require it, other congregations or conferences are, in effect, engaging in civil disobedience. Even as it goes against current MC USA teachings, they are installing pastors in same-sex relationships or their pastors are officiating at same-sex weddings.

At EMS, students preparing for ministry must wrestle with which theological convictions they may hold without running afoul of one denominational layer or another. How do they navigate when at times theology or practice of one layer—whether congregational, conference, or national—is at odds with another? Dare they candidly express their theologies (on any side of the spectrum) except at high cost? The price can involve external consequences for holding the “wrong” position— or internal soul, conscience, integrity consequences of blending in by sublimating convictions.

There is talk of somehow restructuring MC USA to take us beyond this wilderness. I don’t pretend to be sure how, but it will have to address opposing voices of conscience. Such efforts may then further incite those wanting to exclude or marginalize Mennonite Church USA voices judged to be obeying humans over God.

As tensions mount, my faith in a reconciling outcome is shaken. But I know what I wish for: the non-negotiability of conscience somehow to be named and honored. So for example, MC USA is debating a.) whether our newest polity handbook should forbid officiation at same-sex weddings and b.) whether the handbook offers rules or more flexible guidelines. Meanwhile some—pointing, say, to the Cour D’Alene, Idaho requirement that the for-profit Hitching Post Lakeside Chapel serve all comers including LGBTQ—worry that someday a polity flip-flop could make same-sex wedding officiation a requirement. I yearn for an outcome that doesn’t in effect “criminalize” ministers who make the “wrong” choice—whether conscience calls for refusing or embracing officiation at same-sex weddings.

A complexity of Mennonite—and often broader Christian—history is that commitment conscientiously to obey God has repeatedly foundered on opposing hearings of God. So generation after generation we face a paradox: Mennonites whose tradition sprang from commitment to hear God even if this required dissent to the established church in turn marginalize or sever relationships with those who dare dissent to current Mennonite understandings.

The war over theology and polity of same-sex relationships has brought MC USA and many denominations (including United Methodist, to which the second-largest cohort of EMS students belong) to a watershed. We can do the usual thing. Putting our own consciences first, we can sanction or refuse to honor as faithful Christians those we believe hear God wrongly. Or we can ask whether this time—this time at last, confronted with a historic test—we could try a new thing: structuring ourselves in ways that honor multiple voices of conscience.

In any denomination facing this riddle, many congregations, pastors, members, and denominational entities are convinced they must obey God in ways anathema to the others. A striking MC USA example: one pastor’s officiation at a gay son’s wedding generated widely circulated open letters from family members offering contrasting—yet passionately Christian and scripturally based—expressions of conscience. In other denominational settings, some resonate with Frank Schaefer, United Methodist pastor defrocked for officiating at the same-sex wedding of his son before being re-frocked. He explained his inability to uphold the UM Book of Discipline:

Frankly, my conscience does not allow me to uphold the entire Discipline, because it contains discriminatory provisions and language that is hurtful and harmful to our homosexual brothers and sisters. It denies them their full humanity. I simply cannot uphold those parts of the Discipline.

And some echo Michael Bradley, who in the Witherspoon Institute Public Discourse (“Between Magisterium and Magistrate: Notre Dame’s Choice on Marriage’s Meaning,” Oct. 28, 2014) opposes same-sex marriage and approvingly cites these words from the Roman Catholic 2003 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons”:

In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws. . . . In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.

It may be impossible for such opposing voices of conscience to remain in fellowship. Solving the riddle will take something like the Pentecost inbreaking of the Spirit that enabled understanding across a babble of languages. {Just yesterday—as of the insertion of this update on June 26, 2015—Meghan Good offered in-depth thoughts on how the Tower of Babel and Pentecost might connect with our current circumstances.] Yet I pray that instead of emulating our culture’s fragmentation into an individualistic affiliation only with our own kind, we contribute our individual voices to a divine project larger than any of us alone can build.

To echo Ervin Stutzman (The Mennonite, Nov. 24, 2014), I pray that we learn how to honor “both individual conscience and the value of Gelassenheit (yieldedness) in the face of disagreements.” [Stutzman also elaborates on this in just-published June 23, 2015 comments on the polarities of freedom and mutual accountability.]

I dare imagine that in the reconciling and peacemaking power of Christ there is neither LGBTQ nor straight and even that in Christ there is neither traditionalist nor progressive. I imagine the Spirit descending even on today’s speakers of different and often battling tongues. I imagine Christians, guns holstered not only in plays but when loving LGBTQ-viewpoint enemies, able still to shake hands, to pray together, to break communion bread together. I imagine us able to look into each other’s eyes and to see on the other side this paradox and this treasure: one whose conscience is thoroughly at odds with my own yet who remains a faithful Christian and in some way, however creatively or miraculously this is structured, a member of my faith community.

—Michael A. King is dean, Eastern Mennonite Seminary; publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC; and author, Fractured Dance: Gadamer and a Mennonite Conflict over Homosexuality (Pandora Press U.S., 2001), which analyzes the difficulties of understanding opposing voices of conscience. This article was first published in The Mennonite, May 2015.

Anabaptist-Mennonite theology, communities of discernment, discernment amid differences, Eastern Mennonite Seminary, human finitude, LGBTQ, loving viewpoint enemies, same-sex relationships, worship

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 5: “Double Conversion”

June 24, 2015 Kingsview & Co posts from Michael A. King and guests Leave a comment

As tears surrounded the cross, heaven didn’t fully come down. Some flinched from too much emotion, and I respect that. But I at least had rarely experienced burdens of alienation so palpably laid down.

I share this post as part 5 of “Blogging Toward Kansas City” because it does two main things: (1) offers some thoughts on ways to hear the story of Peter and Cornelius potentially pertinent to our current divisions; and (2) reports on an actual effort to implement, through worship, a commitment to meet Jesus at the foot of the cross beyond our divisions.

One additional comment: after this post first appeared in Mennonite World Review, it was criticized for the linkage of elephants with persons who identify as LGBTQ. As I responded then, the intent was by no means to imply a linkage between elephants and people but to label the issue—divisions over LGBTQ-related understandings—as the elephant in the room.

However, I also saw how easily the image could slide from issue to people and apologized. I’m maintaining the imagery here because it’s part of the historical record. But I agree with the critics who pointedly and prophetically reminded me and us that what we’re addressing are not merely dry bones of doctrine but, to echo Ezekiel, real people “with skin on,” as I heard a child once put it, real people with real flesh and blood, with real hearts and souls and minds and feelings.

Double Conversion

At the 2014 School for Leadership Training at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, we planned to offer keynotes, case studies, and workshops on discernment. As SLT neared, churchwide rifts between same-sex-attraction theologies were deepening. We didn’t want to make things worse; we didn’t want to claim we knew the right discernment strategies. Yet not to name LGBTQ-discernment links would be to ignore a giant elephant in the room.

So we planned an “Elephant in the Room” worship service (as movingly reported on by Laura Amstutz, photo by Lindsey Kolb). We didn’t provide discernment guidance. We simply sought a context within which to offer LGBTQ-related hopes and fears to God.

The service wasn’t perfect. Some on opposite LGBTQ theology sides thought there was an appeal to emotions when the focus should have been on the hard scriptural and theological wrestling the times cry out for.

Yet what happened seems a story worth telling. First, however, let me link it to the Acts 10 story of Peter and Cornelius. When asked to preach on this just after the “Elephant” service, I found the two stories almost demanding to be joined.

Particularly illuminating seemed the worship planners’ request that I ponder “double conversion.” On two sides, in this riveting narrative from the early church, the Holy Spirit is at work.

Cornelius, though a military officer outside the faith communities Acts highlights, prays constantly and wants to live faithfully. When in a vision an angel tells him to visit this stranger Simon in Joppa, he is both terrified and obedient. He sends two slaves plus one of his devout soldiers to find Simon.

Meanwhile Simon Peter, his quest to follow Jesus often blending confusion, passion, betrayal, and love, has a vision of “something like a large sheet” coming down from heaven with all kinds of creatures on it. A voice tells him to kill and eat the animals.

Shocked and horrified, Peter objects. Not only are the animals unclean (as Lev. 11, Ezek. 22:26 and 44:23, or Daniel 1 insist) but the clean/unclean distinction is key to his people’s counter-cultural witness.

Scarier yet, as we often stress to each other today, Peter knows visions must be tested against God’s word. As both Deuteronomy 13:1-5 and Galatians 1:6-9 underscore, angels, prophets, or any of God’s people swayed by dreams that go against God’s commandments are to be cast out, even killed. No wonder “By no means, Lord” is Peter’s response to the command to eat unclean animals.

Amid his bewilderment the visitors from Cornelius show up. Finally Cornelius himself arrives and falls at Peter’s feet but is told to get up, Peter is just mortal. The two dream-addled mortals sort things out. I had this strange vision, says Cornelius. Oh my, and I had the oddest one myself, reports Peter.

Finally it all falls together for Peter. Each vision interprets the other. He sees what God is meaning to do. He reports to those gathered to ponder the unfolding mysteries, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

Cornelius, a Gentile, a man outside the boundaries of the people of God as then defined, has to trust a vision breaking in from beyond. Peter, thoroughly within the boundaries, has to trust a vision insisting age-old walls need no longer keep Cornelius and other Gentiles outside. Together Cornelius and Peter must learn that in Christ both can experience God’s welcome. But what travel adventures, whether physical or in faith understandings, each must undergo to achieve such a dramatic double breakthrough.

This takes me back to the Elephant service. As our LGBTQ-related theological divisions deepen, commitments to faithfulness are only strengthening. The cries of conscience are intensifying. People are dreaming dreams and seeing visions.

Some are convinced a hedonistic culture is driving an emotional contagion seducing the church down precisely the wrong path. They dream of a church faithful, cross-shaped, counter-cultural even if the price is to be called a bigot.

Others are certain the there can be no avoiding confrontation with those hate-filled aspects of culture that have led to suicide, torture, and even killing of some of us deemed today’s unclean. They dream of Christians being faithful even when the price is to be called disobedient to the church.

I don’t know how many people were dreaming which dreams at EMS the morning of January 22. I do know this: Some were having visions in which God said one thing; others were dreaming of a voice from above commanding something different. Scores to hundreds of dreamers dropped into a basket at the foot of a cross (beside which was an elephant) LGBTQ-related fears and hopes written on paper. And I know that tears were falling. And falling. And falling.

Why the tears? I can only guess this: What we’re doing to each other is traumatizing us. We don’t wish to destroy each other. Yet we don’t know how to obey the God whose voice we are hearing and honor the person who hears God saying the opposite. So we continue toward a house divided.

Yet for those precious moments at the foot of the cross, we were united in our anguish. We were like the soldiers singing “Silent Night” across the trenches at Christmas before they picked up their weapons once more.

I don’t know how we build on such evanescent moments of unity. Even the story of Peter and Cornelius, even that SLT worship service and whether it met or hindered its goals, is part of the LGBTQ-related battleground. So I can only testify to my own fallible dream. In my dream, a voice says no one in the LGBTQ-related wars is unclean. God shows no partiality based on our views. Rather, God is inviting each of us not only to weep for a minute together at the foot of a cross in Martin Chapel but also to linger there for days, for months, for years—until we learn what a double conversion even across this divide might look like.

—Michael A. King is Dean, Eastern Mennonite Seminary and publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. This post was first published in Mennonite World Review, March 3, 2014.

Anabaptist-Mennonite theology, biblical interpretation, discernment, discernment amid differences, evolution, Hans-Georg Gadamer, hermeneutics, human finitude, LGBTQ, same-sex relationships, sexuality

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 3: “On Not Knowing”

June 20, 2015 Kingsview & Co posts from Michael A. King and guests Leave a comment

Watching my grandchildren get to know God’s great world is one of the most magical things I’ve ever experienced. I’ll never forget my infant grandson crawling on a dock by the Olympia waterfront tracing and retracing with a tiny index finger a knot he spied in the wood.

Or my granddaughter at a similar age, not yet able to talk but saying so much with her gestures and face, slamming shut my unacceptable book choices (she knows what she wants read and reaches down for another option from the book pile if I choose wrong) before agreeing Richard Scarry’s book on rabbits was worth her time. On one page in the middle of rabbits a yellow bird shines out. I had earlier pointed the bird out to her. Now I asked her, “Where’s the bird? Can you show me the bird?” Tiny index finger headed toward the yellow. Miracle.

These two know so little. And yet as minute by minute they take in more and more, they’re touching so much grandeur. I want to learn from them. I want to learn how to do less seeing the world only through the fog of what I already know. I want with my mental index finger to do more tracing with awe the knots and birds I’ve barely begun to understand.

That’s why I include the column below, “On Not Knowing the Truth Before We Find It,” as Part 3 of “Blogging Toward Kansas City.” Though written in 1995, it touches on several factors still affecting my thinking and connects for me as well with the fresh new lessons my grandchildren are teaching me.

Ohe factor is the focus on finitude, on how much we can’t know and the consequent humility and need for each other this calls us to.

I wrote this column in the latter stages of completing a PhD in rhetoric and communication at Temple University, where I was exposed to and influenced by the thought of Hans Georg-Gadamer. His project was philosophical hermeneutics or, to put it more simply, the process of how we come to understand something.

Gadamer was convinced that for finite humans there could be no universal, God’s-eye-view, because, as I quoted in Fractured Dance, “One perspective darkens another. A universal perspective comprising everything is a contradiction in itself which at most the metaphysical concept of God could assume” (Gadamer, Truth and Method, 1997, 95-96, in Fractured Dance: Gadamer and a Mennonite Conflict Over Homosexuality, 2001, 270).

Repeatedly I found in Gadamer’s thought echoes of the Apostle Paul, particularly 1 Corinthians 13 in which Paul highlights faith, hope, and love as the greatest of these—and points to the boundaries of human understanding. We see the limits especially in that ageless verse 12 reference to our seeing now as if in a mirror, darkly, because we will only be able to see in full—or, as Gadamer might put it, as if through God’s eyes—then, face to face with God.

If this is so, then how profoundly we need each others’ partial glimpses of truth. How truly we need to journey toward understanding anything together—amid and toward faith and hope and above all love. Otherwise we lock ourselves into that tiny slice of truth which is all any given person can individually grasp.

Researching and reporting the story I tell in Fractured Dance—of what befell Germantown Mennonite Church, the congregation I had pastored eight years before, including when I wrote Part 2 of “Journeying Toward Kansas City”, also affected my thinking. I felt that my own understanding of how to proceed while pastoring at Germantown looked ever more fallible in hindsight.

And I concluded that a great tragedy of the process that culminated in Germantown’s excommunication was how little evidence, as Gadamerian researcher, I could find that participants (including me as delegate in addition to researcher) in the discernment truly understood—or even sought to understand—each other across our differences. Great trauma ensued for many, the wounds still often raw to this day. This intensified my aching for approaches that honor the finitude of all positions taken in relation to a divisive issue, draw us toward affirming commonalities even amid differences, and jointly put our index fingers on the knot whorls and golden birds of God’s universe.

A second reason I include the column is that it seems to me to take us at least a step or two beyond the stereotype (and sometimes reality) that highlighting how little we can fully know of God’s truth in this life is more a progressive than a traditionalist move. The column gives us respite from our apparent current impasse in any quest to understand sexuality together by gnawing at a different riddle: amid various understandings of how the earth and life came to be, might views grounded in evolution or intelligent design generate some common ground for mutual learning?

I realize divisions in this area at times remain as fierce as ever. Yet sometimes instead of declaring war, adherents of various views actually work with each other. My favorite example of this is in a “Statement on Creation and Natural Science” prepared by science professors at my own alma mater and current employer, Eastern Mennonite University. The statement carefully notes various ways of understanding creation. Yet precisely because it does not impose stark either/or choices it leaves me with a sense of the wonders of God’s handiwork far grander than if I were told either affirm God’s creative work in precisely these ways or choose evolution and nary the twain shall meet.

Perhaps some would assess that the statement does favor the progressive over the traditional in acknowledging the factors a theory of evolution foregrounds. Yet on the other hand ardent materialists would likely flinch from the powerful foregrounding, throughout the statement, of God’s creative work. For me, at least, all positions touched on contribute to an outcome far more magnificent than if perspectives were primarily placed in combat.

I see perhaps less rather than more evidence that this type of magnificence emerging from pooling our finite understandings is emerging in relation to sexuality. There we do seem caught more in battle than in a project of thinking and praying and discerning together in which all perspectives contribute to a breadth and depth of understanding grander than any of us alone could achieve. There we do seem to be doing more knowing the truth before we find it than actually seeking it in the whorls and birds. Still I dream toward the type of approach the EMU statement on creation exemplifies. I worked at this in editing the 2007 volume Stumbling Toward a Genuine Conversation on Homosexuality, and I see it in embryonic form in the 1995 remarks below.

On Not Knowing the Truth Before We Find It

The conference speaker’s proposal startled his audience. There at a Temple University rhetoric conference, John Campbell told fellow secular scholars that if they really believed what they claimed to believe, they’d want both creationism and evolutionism taught in public schools.

Many of Campbell’s listeners were academics whose project is to show how scientific thought isn’t based entirely on facts but includes the same forms of argumentation we all use when we try to convince someone our view is right. One way we persuade another, for example, is through choosing appealing words.

This is why the labels in the abortion debate have changed over the years. People are no longer anti-abortion but pro-life, because who wants to be against life? People are no longer pro-abortion but pro-choice, because who doesn’t want freedom to choose? Even if there are unchanging facts hiding under each label, the way we view these facts changes according to which name we use for them.

Campbell’s own project has been to show that Charles Darwin was aware of this power of the right words to make one view of the facts seem more persuasive than another. That’s why Darwin chose the label “natural selection” to describe his theory of evolution.

What Campbell stressed at the conference was that based on the facts he had observed, Darwin could as reasonably have chosen the phrase intelligent design. Natural selection isn’t itself a scientific fact. It’s a name intended to make persuasive Darwin’s view that something is in charge, but it’s nature rather than God. If Darwin had been comfortable including God, he could have been true to what he was seeing by describing it as the result of intelligent design.

The scholars squirmed. Many agreed with Campbell’s understanding of science. They agreed that science is made up as much of subjective interpretations of what humans observe as of provable facts. They agreed that to apply this reasoning to evolution was to conclude evolution was only one of several ways of interpreting the evidence. But they sure didn’t like the notion that this meant creationism should be taught as a legitimate alternate view of the evidence.

At least some of these academics, whose lifework has been to show how you can’t be sure of anything, had no interest in holding lightly to evolution. When push came to shove, they were fundamentalist evolutionists. Evolution was just plain the way it had to have happened, and that was that. Period.

But as discussion of Campbell’s proposal continued, it became clear that one reason the scholars were fundamentalists was fear of other fundamentalists.

Campbell had argued that public schools waste the energy of millions of Christian parents and students by trying to cram evolution down their throats. Such schools convince Christians you just can’t reason with secular humanists, so you have to fight them tooth and nail. Campbell dreamed of the creativity that would be released if schools instead aimed to teach the facts without the labels—then invited students across America to wrestle together with what theory best made sense of the facts.

The scholars liked this vision. But they couldn’t buy it, they said, because Christians wouldn’t genuinely search for the best theory. Instead they’d take over the school boards and the schools. They’d cram six-day creation down everybody’s throats, whether this fit the facts or not. “You just can’t reason with Christians,” the scholars said.

As I listened to the scholars and thought about Christians, I concluded each had a point about the other. Whether fundamentalist evolutionists or creationists, we’re so sure we know our destination before we start the voyage you wonder why we bother to travel at all.

I wished, that day, that with Job we’d all hear God thunder, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? . . . Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding” (Job 38:1-4). I wished that with Job we’d realize how often we utter what we do not know (42:3). Then we could begin the adventure of journeying toward truth without knowing it before we find it.

—Michael A. King is blogger and editor, Kingsview and Co; dean, Eastern Mennonite Seminary; and publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. This column was first published in Christian Living, September 1995. King is grateful to the late editor David E. Hostetler for being willing to support this type of writing in the original Christian Living Kingsview columns.

LGBTQ, Mennonite church, Mennonite Church USA

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 2: “Who Are You?”

June 17, 2015 Kingsview & Co posts from Michael A. King and guests 2 Comments

Does our precious Lord still lead us on through storm and night? I lean toward “yes” as I review our survival of prior tumult.

As introduced in Part 1 of “Blogging Toward Kansas City,” below are reflections I offered 28 years ago on Purdue 87, a biennial convention of what was then the (Old) Mennonite Church. I’m pleased to note that I managed not to comment only on sexuality—even as toward the end the references inevitably, given how central discernment of these matters was at the time, do arise.

Though it was already fading into the mists of time and memory for many (even as for others the way of life continues to this day) I’m struck by how much closer 1987 was to an era influenced by (Old) Mennonite Church plain living and Swiss-German ethnicity. At the same time, the 1987 Purdue participants have moved far enough into various forms of diversity that their quest for ties that bind amid the differences is strong.

Amid it all, at least in my own fallible take, there was some confusion. Who are we? Where are we going? If anything, the questions seem only more intense as we head toward Kansas City 2015, the biennial convention of Mennonite Church USA, and its processing of new resolutions on sexuality. So I’m comforted to experience that the effort mutually to allow our precious Lord to take our hand still seems a vision worth pursuing.

Who Are You, My Audience?

I am a writer. A writer needs an audience. The audience I care about most deeply is the Mennonite Church. But who are you, my Mennonite audience? I ask that question all the time, trying to refine my understanding of who you are so that what I write can be ever more accurately aimed. I particularly asked it as I stepped into the Amelia Earhart Residence Hall to begin my six days as a delegate at Purdue 87 and collector of observations for this article (which the Gospel Herald editors have agreed may be an “impressionistic” piece).

One idea I have of who you are lingers in me from the days when I was growing up as an eminently ethnic Mennonite, with a lineage traced by one of my aunts all the way back to Berne, Switzerland, and the fifteenth century. This is who you are to me whenever I don’t stop to critically ask who you are, who you have become: you are women in cape dresses, hair up, coverings on; men in plain coats, mainly black or a deep dark blue.

You know who you are, what the Bible says, what God wants from you, or at least you look like you do, each plain line of your clothing quietly stating your clarity. You are my father, who knew, when we youngsters pleaded with him (sometime during the ’60s) to buy a guitar, that God wouldn’t want that (he later changed his mind). And my mother, who once knew when my hair was too long and my sisters’ too short. You are the bishops and the preachers—all men—lined up at the front of the church, who knew what was wrong and exactly how to fix it.

Then I worshiped with who you are today, there in the Elliott Hall of Music. I looked around. A handful of plain coats. A scattering of coverings. The women’s hair cut, and certainly not up. Some men in shorts and sandals. Youth everywhere, youth who remember not what I remember, who certainly show little outward evidence of being Mennonite, gearing up to tell me how outdated I am when I’ve barely gotten done telling my parents the same. And on stage . . . oh, onstage! Big black boxes hooked up to awesome amplifiers. Guitars. Electric basses. Saxophones. And more. Then the music, booming, thumping, dancing out, interspersed with drama and liturgical dance.

Are you my audience, you Mennonites comfortable with the things I never expected, as a boy, to see in my church? And if you are, who are you? What do you need me to write about? Or is that who you are? The coverings and plain coats are vanishing, but I remember them. You remember them, you even wore them, many of you. Who are you, you who remember these things even as the big black boxes shake the floor? Some of you look like all this is a little jarring; your bodies seem to shrink away and your faces seem a little stony and I wonder if you’re trying, as I am, to hold yesterday and today together.

And I listen to some of you who came with me from Germantown Mennonite Church in Philadelphia. You are not ethnic Mennonites. You have many feelings. The worship is freer, wilder, more exhilarating than you expected. But you wonder, did you get here too late, after what you might have loved most about being Mennonite has long passed? Then the beat turns slow and deep, the saxophone comes out and mourns, and a musical form alien to our tradition manages, hauntingly and paradoxically, to capture and speak to the heart of our tradition as the notes and words of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” [Thomas Dorsey] weep in our midst.

Over in the Stewart Center you delegates gather many times to ponder many things. On the day you talk about human sexuality (which turns out to mean mainly homosexuality), one wonders if guards will be needed to hold at bay the hordes trying to crowd into the auditorium. You seem to feel that while some old things have been let go, here is a place to hold firm, to remain clear, to keep the boundaries tight. Some of you clap whenever someone suggests the boundaries should be tightened even further. Are you my audience?

I leave that session. The first person I see is you, a woman I know and care about. You are lesbian. I don’t know what, precisely, you are feeling. I do know pain shimmers in your eyes and trembles across your lips. You are a human being, who hurts and fears and yearns to be loved, as do we all. You have just listened to the clapping resounding whenever statements that feel to you like rejection are made. Are you my audience, oh sister I dare not name?

You deal with women in leadership, with whether Mennonite institutions dedicated to peace should be withholding payroll taxes dedicated to war, with what Mennonite Publishing House should be publishing, with so much more. You are not of one mind, not at all, on these things. Who are you, my audience? Maybe I should give up writing to you. I don’t know who I’m targeting. You’re confusing me; I, who am part of you, am confusing me. Especially after I talk with you non-ethnics accompanying me, and you tell me there’s beauty among us, if only we could better value and articulate our heritage.

What I observe in you, what I feel in me, is that we’re a little lost. Oh, we’re striving forward, grasping toward the Goals for ’95, and that’s fine. But still, “who are we? what are we becoming? where are we going?” we keep asking each other. We can be grateful that, according to the story we are living out, the story we came together to celebrate, those that know they are lost are the ones most likely to be found and led home to who they are by their precious Lord.

—Michael A. King, is blogger and editor, Kingsview & Co; Dean, Eastern Mennonite Seminary; and publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. These reflections were first published in Gospel Herald, July 1987, p. 548. In 1987 King was pastor of Germantown Mennonite Church and the editor of Gospel Herald was Daniel Hertzler. King is profoundly grateful to Hertzler, who played a central role in helping King develop his writing voice.

Anabaptist-Mennonite theology, biblical interpretation, communities of discernment, discernment amid differences, faithful dissent, LGBTQ, Mennonite Church USA, same-sex relationships

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 1: Introduction

June 14, 2015 Kingsview & Co posts from Michael A. King and guests 10 Comments

Recently both Ron Sider and Tony Campolo have been commenting on LGBTQ relationships. They hold opposing views. Nothing unusual about that these days—but their lives have long intertwined and only recently did Campolo announce he no longer shared Sider’s perspectives. Both were professors at Eastern Baptist (now Palmer) Theological Seminary in the 1980s, when I was drawn there partly because of them (and became Ron’s student assistant and later co-author of a book on preaching).

When Campolo announced his change of views, he said, “Rest assured I have already heard—and in some cases made—every kind of biblical argument against gay marriage, including those of Dr. Ronald Sider, my esteemed friend and colleague at Eastern University.”

Meanwhile Sider has been articulating his understanding that on the one hand a church too often homophobic needs to be clearer than it has been that welcome is extended to anyone who is “an openly gay, celibate Christian.” On the other hand, Sider underscores this foundational understanding: “the Bible affirms the goodness and beauty of sexual intercourse—and everywhere, without exception, it is sexual intercourse between a man and a woman committed to each other for life.”

I think of these colleagues, leaders, mentors reaching such different conclusions. I think of circles of loved ones, including my own, in which the Campolo/Sider differences are woven into the very fabric of souls and relationships. God’s gracious arms reach out to welcome those of us who identify as LGBTQ and seek profoundly committed relationships within which to love and be loved, say some members of the circle. Yes, and I join you in extending that embrace, say other members. No, says a different member, sometimes a parent, sometimes a child, sometimes a sibling, sometimes a dear friend. That’s a false grace, an erosion of faithfulness to the Bible; if I support you in cheap grace, I’ve failed truly to love you.

It’s because I think of these faces and relationships, so dear and yet so torn, that I can find no other approach for myself than to yearn for a community that tries for the miracle of embracing us all, in all our oppositions, in all our alienations. I ache for a community that asks us to live in the pain of holding dear even the other I believe so wrong.

How we address these matters has long been crucial for Mennonite Church USA, the denomination to which I belong, which has in recent decades joined many other denominations and faith communities in struggling to discern, amid deep divisions, how to view same-sex relationships. A number of times, particularly since the early 1980s, MC USA or its predecessor denominations have reached high-voltage junctures.

Now we’re approaching another one: “Kansas City 2015,” a biennual convention of Mennonite Church USA, its opening worship slated for the last night of this month and key discussions of sexuality resolutions scheduled for July 2. At Kansas City the stakes may be historically high as some would wish for full and unambiguous inclusion of persons who identify as LGBTQ, others want MC USA to maintain a traditional position reserving marriage and full expressions of sexuality for men and women, and some speak of a “forebearance” in which we agree to walk patiently with those holding views with which we disagree.

The fact that I’ll be among writers providing Mennonite World Review with a blog post on Kansas City 2015 got me thinking about “Purdue 87″—the last time I reported on a denominational assembly. I wondered what I would learn from reviewing my impressions 28 years ago in preparation for this 2015 reporting. I was struck, to use an unoriginal line, by how much has changed and how much has remained the same—including in relation to LGBTQ relationships.

So I want to draw on the angle of vision shaped in me through being a reporter on and delegate at Purdue 87. I also want to test the perspectives I’ll be taking to Kansas City, because some of them may be wearing out. It’s not clear to me, for instance, that the dream I’ve articulated above, of somehow including all in the MC USA wing of the body of Christ, whether straight or LGBTQ, whether or not we agree, will survive developments that may lie ahead.

To work at such testing, let me first say more about the potential cross-connections between Purdue 87 and Kansas City 2015. Then I’ll overview the seven-part series of “Blogging Toward Kansas City” posts through which I envision working at the testing.

Many of us expect Kansas City 2015 to be a difficult convention. Blogging for The Mennonite, pastor Jessica Schrock Ringenberg has said that “I am dreading convention” and that even though she normally loves conventions, “this year I have a pit in my stomach that makes me feel sick every time I even think about it. ” This, she explains, is because so many of us are confronted with how we answer “The Question” amid awareness that the stakes are high and depending on setting any answer can get us in trouble.

Meanwhile Purdue 87, held at Purdue University in Indiana, has become famous (or infamous) in Mennonite circles for its adoption of what was to become known as the “Purdue statement.” This was when two denominations, the (Old) Mennonite Church (MC) and the General Conference Mennonite Church (GC) were still years from finalizing their merger and reconfiguration into Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada. Thus the GCs, still holding separate assemblies, had the prior year adopted their own similar statement in Saskatoon. The overlapping statements were thereafter often referred to as “Purdue/Saskatoon” and continue to be referenced in MC USA’s current membership guidelines.

There was plenty to confront at Purdue. The July 28, 1987 issue of the Gospel Herald reported that this is what happened when the delegate sessions turned toward consideration of sexuality: “Ushers had to turn people away at the doors . . . as debate got underway on the final report of the Human Sexuality in the Christian Life Committee.”

The report highlighted that on these matters “Mennonites express considerable diversity and can’t agree on what the Bible teaches. . . .” It explained that by a large majority delegates approved the Purdue statement, which both affirmed that full expressions of sexuality are reserved for heterosexual marriage and articulated a covenant “to study the Bible together on the subject and to dialogue with each other.”

The full text of the Purdue statement actually said much more about dialogue:

We covenant with each other to mutually bear the burden of remaining in loving dialogue with each other in the body of Christ, recognizing that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace and that the Holy Spirit may lead us to further truth and repentance. We promise compassion and prayer for each other that distrustful, broken, and sinful relationships may experience God’s healing.

We covenant with each other to take part in the ongoing search for discernment and for openness to each other. As a part of the nurture of individuals and congregations we will promote congregational study of the complex issues of sexuality, through Bible study and the use of materials such as Human Sexuality in the Christian Life.

The Gospel Herald summary of those paragraphs entirely through the word dialogue points to the possibility that delegates may not have grasped, as was exemplified in To Continue the Dialogue, edited by C. Norman Kraus (Pandora Press U.S., 2001), just how momentous, complicated, and contentious the covenant to dialogue would prove to be. For long years and through many interpretive permutations the church wrestled with what it had committed itself to. Was it to continue conversing about how to care for each other even as the reserving of marriage for a man and a woman was non-negotiable? Or was there readiness to allow the Holy Spirit to shed further light on how holy sexuality might come to be viewed as extending to same-sex relationships?

The report on sexuality ended with these words, in parentheses: “(Gay and lesbian Mennonites in attendance at Purdue 87, through a statement they issued later, said they felt ‘rejected’ by the action.)”

A number of thoughts emerge as I ponder what happened at Purdue 87 combined with Ringenberg’s dread (along with countless more, I’d guess) of Kansas City.

(1) A first thought is that we might want to be sobered. Again and again Mennonites have sought paths for putting divisions over sexuality to rest. Yet as Ringenberg’s comments highlight, no such destination seems in view. Whatever resolutions are adopted or rejected at Kansas City, it may be instructive to ponder to what extent the Purdue delegates could have forecast developments they wittingly and perhaps mostly unwittingly contributed to.

(2) As one whose own belief in my ability to see the future has been chastened, I want to underscore being much more uncertain than I once was that I grasp which choices will yield which results 28 years from now.

(3) In the aftermath of Purdue it has long seemed to me that there will be no putting behind us divisions over sexuality unless we find some clean, clear, genuine way to live with diversity of understandings. I see no way forward that fails to provide for what I’d call “faithful dissent” or some call “variance”—a term not yet common in 1987 but now pulled to the forefront by the reality that any effort to forestall variance has ultimately only energized it.

In relation to sexuality, Mennonites faithfully seeking to submit to Scripture, God, the teachings of Jesus, and the sanctity of conscience continue to reach different conclusions. And far from shrinking through the passing of time, through efforts to finalize sexuality-related discernment, or through the hope that just one more statement will permit us to move on to other things, the differences have widened year after year. If Kansas City 2015 doesn’t provide in some way for variance, I expect the struggles that led to the Purdue statement and then were fed by decades of conversation over what Purdue (and Saskatoon) really meant will unfold once again.

Simultaneously, I recognize that precisely my conviction that space for faithful dissent is essential for moving beyond the decades of impasse is in the end an ingredient of the impasse. Others believe that a clarity not muddled by the faithful dissenters is key. Thus we find ourselves impaled once more on the horns of the dilemma.

(4) Finally, amid all the pre- and post-merger streams of MC USA have faced during the past generation, here we still are, often saddened if not wiser (that remains to be seen) but still traveling on.

On the one hand, there is plenty to mourn. We’re so at odds that MC USA entities are deciding to leave MC USA and to invest in alternative denominational structures or networks. Total MC USA membership is down by thousands when contrasted with 1987’s comparable statistics.

On the other hand, beyond the dread Ringenberg understandably articulates, I also detect ongoing passion and anticipation. And even dread is a marker of intense investment in the church. Many of my Mennonite colleagues and friends report a sense, which I share, of readiness to trust the Holy Spirit, to let go of dreams that may prove unworkable, to dream new dreams, to contribute to the fresh ways of shaping the body of Christ that may emerge if old ways come undone.

So I believe Purdue 87 is instructive. Looking back may help us understand what we do or don’t want to decide next. Yet precisely because we’ve been at this for decades now, Kansas City and the journey beyond will likely not simply reenact Purdue. Kansas City can take us into new fields and forests and cities and churches of that better country, God’s country of Hebrews 11, awaiting those who by faith leave behind what has been and travel toward “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

As I seek to be a voyager to that better country and to report on it at Kansas City, I want to prepare myself. That takes me back to this “Blogging Toward Kansas City” series, which I conceptualize this way:

Part 1 is this introductory post. Then I envision six more posts, five of them reprints with contemporary introductions of past essays or columns. This one and the last are intended to offer largely new writing.

Part 2 will focus on “Who Are You, My Audience?” my original report on Purdue 87.

Part 3 will reprint “On Not Knowing the Truth Before We Find It.” Here through evolution and “intelligent design” (as framed by lessons from my grandchildren) I explore how, if we truly believe our knowledge is fallible—as I do—we might establish models for pooling our insights to achieve something grander than any of us alone can manage.

Part 4 will feature my article “Painholders on Holy Ground,” in which I ponder the riddle of the “open” being closed to the “closed” and the “closed” being closed to the “open” and wonder if “painholders” offer us hope for a way forward.

Part 5 will reprint “Double Conversion,” in which I draw on the story of Peter and Cornelius and a worship service to yearn for ways we could lay our divisions at the foot of the cross.

Part 6 will offer my recent article on “Honoring Conscience in Plays and Sexuality Wars.” Here, amid rising doubt as to whether we can find reconciliation across such different voices of conscience, I still yearn for the Holy Spirit to offer us a Pentecost miracle.

Part 7 will be my new blog post from Kansas City, “Bending the Curve,” deadline 6:00 p.m., July 1, slated to appear both in Mennonite World Review and here in Kinsgview & Co. I look forward to journeying with you.

—Michael A. King is blogger and editor, Kingsview & Co; dean, Eastern Mennonite Seminary; publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC; and author, Fractured Dance: Gadamer and a Mennonite Conflict over Homosexuality (Pandora Press U.S., 2001),

Editor’s note: As was also the case with its prior incarnation, DreamSeeker Magazine, Kingsview & Co is not intended to be mostly about our divisions over same-sex relationships. But for the next few weeks, amid the potential for major developments in my denomination, it often will be.

Kingsview & Co

Category Archives: LGBTQ

Celebrating Wesleyan Treasures and Rooting for United Methodists to Continue Offering Them

Tenderly Inviting All to Christ’s Banquet

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 7: Bending the Curve

Bending the Curve Toward Love and Life

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 6: “Honoring Conscience”

Honoring Conscience in Plays and Sexuality Wars

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 5: “Double Conversion”

Double Conversion

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 3: “On Not Knowing”

On Not Knowing the Truth Before We Find It

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 2: “Who Are You?”

Who Are You, My Audience?

Blogging Toward Kansas City, Part 1: Introduction

Extending DreamSeeker Magazine through posts from Michael A. King and guests

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Bending the Curve Toward Love and Life

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Honoring Conscience in Plays and Sexuality Wars

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Double Conversion

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On Not Knowing the Truth Before We Find It

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Who Are You, My Audience?

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Extending DreamSeeker Magazine through posts from Michael A. King and guests