How [Not To] Respond to Abuse Allegations: Christians and Sovereign Grace Ministries

[Trigger warning: child abuse]

As you may know, Sovereign Grace Ministries, an association of Reformed church plants, is facing a significant lawsuit that alleges church leaders covered up the abuse of children by discouraging parents from reporting abuse to authorities and requiring victims to forgive their abusers in person. The pending lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, recently added five new plaintiffs, five new defendants, and 28 charges, including the allegation that some defendants engaged in abuse directly. 

As the situation has unfolded, some Christian leaders have called on their fellow Christians to withhold judgment from Sovereign Grace Ministries. Tim Challies took to his blog today to urge Christians to pray for the leaders of SGM who have been facing “troubling days” and to “maintain a hopeful attitude toward others, even, and perhaps especially, those who have been accused.”

While I think we can all agree that Christians should withhold condemnation regarding the abuse allegations until the facts come out in the case and the issue has been thoroughly investigated and subjected to due process, what baffles me is Christian leaders’ continued support of Sovereign Grace Ministries in spite of the ministry’s repeated efforts to evade external investigation into this matter. 

This week, the Associated Press reported that SGM has asked a Maryland court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that courts should not get involved in the internal affairs of church business. This follows SGM’s statement in November appealing to protection under the First Amendment to defend its freedom to provide confidential pastoral counseling.  "SGM believes that allowing courts to second-guess pastoral guidance would represent a blow to the First Amendment that would hinder, not help, families seeking spiritual direction among other resources in dealing with the trauma related to any sin including child sexual abuse," a representative of SGM said in a November 14 statement.

Yes, we should withhold judgment unless the defendants are proven guilty. But what we can judge, and what we should flatly condemn, is Sovereign Grace Ministry’s repeated efforts to evade any external investigation into these allegations.

As David Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told Christianity Today in a helpful article on the subject, "the First Amendment is not—and shouldn't be—a defense against child abuse.” 

I bring this up, not to “sow disunity” or “pass judgment on fellow Christians” (criticisms I’ve already received), but to bring attention to a problem that Christians absolutely must confront.  

Over the past year, I’ve been corresponding more regularly with victims of abuse who have patiently and graciously exposed me to the ways in which the Church routinely mishandles abuse allegations by shaming the alleged victims and protecting church leaders. I’m working with several of these smart, inspiring survivors to post a weeklong series here on abuse and the Church, hopefully this spring or early summer. 

What concerned me about Challies’ post in particular was its disproportionate emphasis on protecting the leaders of SGM over protecting the alleged abuse victims.

He writes, “We tend to believe that the side that is slow or hesitant to release information must be in the wrong, that their silence is an admission of guilt. Keep in mind, though, that Jesus did not protest his innocence and that people took this as a sign of his guilt, though he, of all men, was completely innocent." 

My friend Elora Ramirez was floored. “I wonder if he understands the implications?” she wrote on Facebook. “Does he know what that line of thinking does to victims of abuse? Devastating.” 

As Christians, our first impulse should be to protect and defend the powerless, not the powerful.  Furthermore, by characterizing allegations of child abuse as a sad case of “disunity” and “strife” within the church and urging his fellow Christians not to ask too many questions about the situation, Challies only perpetuates the painfully common narrative that those who raise concerns about abuse in churches are troublemakers, out to sow disunity and dissention, and that we are wise to keep this matters quiet. (I don’t think he intended it that way, but it's how it came across.)

Even if these allegations turn out to be false—which they may be—how Christians respond to them sends a signal to victims of abuse about how they will be treated if they come forward. So we have got to put a stop to these shaming narratives that cast the alleged abusers as innocent like Jesus and the alleged victims as persecutors. The effects of narratives like these are simply devastating.  

Dianna Anderson puts it well here:

"You see, victims – especially victims in evangelical environments – are told that their allegations of abuse are private matters, that opening their mouths and saying that things are not okay is “divisive” and “against Christian unity.” It is no small matter for victims to bring forth accusations and to go to court against their abusers. It is no small feat for them to stand up for themselves and continue to speak."

And the fact remains: “slow to release information” is entirely different than evading external investigation by hiding behind the First Amendment, which is exactly what SGM is doing. If SGM indeed has nothing to hide than its leaders should be transparent and cooperative in this investigation. 

So while we should withhold judgment regarding the specifics of these sexual abuse allegations, Christians should flatly condemn SGM’s attempt to keep the facts from coming out by appealing to the First Amendment. That’s an abuse of freedom of religion and an insult to the gospel, plain and simple. 

***

Note to commenters: Please remember to refer to “alleged” victims and “alleged” abusers. This is an important distinction to make in a pending case like this one, even though the percentage of false allegations in abuse cases is quite small. 

Is abolition "biblical"?

It may seem like an absurd question, especially given the increasing enthusiasm among evangelical Christians for the abolition of modern-day slavery. (Be sure to check out Refuse to Do Nothing by Shayne Moore and Kimberly McOwen Yim, pictured above.) But it’s a question that haunted our evangelical predecessors in the 19th century as they took to newspapers, pulpits, street corners, and staterooms to debate whether or not the Bible supported the abolition movement to free African slaves in the United States.

“The tree of Abolition is evil,” declared Reverend Henry Van Dyke in 1860, “and only evil—root and branch, flower and leaf, and fruit; that it springs from, and is nourished by an utter rejection of the Scriptures.”  

Having lived in the South all my life, I’ve long been aware of the stain of slavery and segregation on our national conscience, and I’ve known for some time that many Christians appealed to Scripture to support their ownership of slaves. (This is why we have the Southern Baptist Convention, for example.) But it wasn’t until picking up Mark Noll’s excellent book, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, that I familiarized myself with the rhetoric and logic of the anti-abolition movement. And the results were startling.

I highly recommend reading the book for yourself, but what I found most striking was the familiarity of the various lines of argumentation put forth by evangelicals invested in the debate, particularly the accusation from Christians on the pro-slavery side that Christians who supported abolition were ignoring the particulars of the biblical text in favor of vague generalities regarding love, justice, and progress, thereby discounting the “plain meaning” of the Bible and threatening its authority.

For example, Moses Stuart of Andover Seminary in Massachusetts (who was sympathetic to the eventual emancipation of American slaves, but was against abolition), published a tract in which he pointed to Ephesians 6 and other biblical texts to argue that while slaves should be treated fairly by their owners, abolitionists just didn’t have Scripture on their side and “must give up the New Testament authority, or abandon the fiery course which they are pursuing.”  

Methodist minister J.W. Ticker told a Confederate audience in 1862 that “your cause is the cause of God, the cause of Christ, of humanity. It is a conflict of truth with error—of the Bible with Northern infidelity—of pure Christianity with Northern fanaticism.”

Van Dyke also stated it dramatically: “When the Abolitionist tells me that slaveholding is sin, in the simplicity of my faith in the Holy Scriptures, I point him to this sacred record, and tell him, in all candor, as my text does, that his teaching blasphemes the name of God and His doctrine.”

As you can see, Christians advocating for the preservation of slavery did not characterize their abolitionist opponents as simply disagreeing with them on the interpretation of the biblical text, but instead tended to accuse them of not taking the Bible seriously at all. Christians on both sides, but especially the pro-slavery side, urged followers to simply abide by the “plain meaning” of biblical texts and not allow complicated, nuanced argumentation to cloud their mind.

As Noll observes:

"On the eve of the Civil War, interpretations of the Bible that made the most sense to the broadest public were those that incorporated the defining experiences of America into the hermeneutics used for interpreting what the infallible text actually meant. In this effort, those who like James Henley Thornwell defended the legitimacy of slavery in the Bible had the easiest task. The procedure, which by 1860 had been repeated countless times, was uncomplicated. First, open the Scriptures and read, at say Leviticus 25:45, or, even better, at 1 Corinthians 7:20-21. Second, decide for yourself what these passages mean. Don’t wait for a bishop or a king or a president or a meddling Yankee to tell you what the passage means, but decide for yourself. Third, if anyone tries to convince  you that you are not interpreting such passages in the natural, commonsensical, ordinary meaning of the words, look hard at what such a one believes with respect to other biblical doctrines. If you find in what he or she says about such doctrines the least hint of unorthodoxy, as inevitably you will, then you may rest assured that you are being asked to give up not only the plain meaning of Scripture, but also the entire trust in the Bible that made the country into such a great Christian civilization." [p. 50]

Obviously, this way of looking at things was highly influenced by Enlightenment confidence and its marriage to Christianity, which Noll is quick to point out manifested itself in arguments from both sides.  

But the fact of the matter is, the pro-slavery side had more going for it in the way of proof texts. Slavery apologists could cite passages like Genesis 17:2, Deuteronomy 20:10-11, 1 Corinthians 7:21, Ephesians 6:1-5, Colossians 3:18-25; 4:1, and I Timothy 6:1-2 to support their case. They pointed out that slavery was practiced by the people of Israel and regulated by God, and that Jesus never said a word against slaveholding. Even the apostle Paul instructs an escaped slave, Onesimus, to return to his master, they observed. [Notably, many of the texts in question are the exact same texts—the Household Codes of Ephesians, Colossians, and 1 Peter—that are used today to support gender hierarchy in the home. I touched on this important connection in my post about submission in context and in A Year of Biblical Womanhood.]

“The general result was that by the 1840s American debates over the Bible and slavery had assumed a critical new gravity,” writes Noll. “In particular, those who saw in Scripture a sanction for slavery were both more insistent on pointing to the passages that seemed so transparently to support their position and more confident in decrying the wanton disregard for divine revelation that seemed so willfully to dismiss biblical truths.”

Noll explains that abolitionists had a far more challenging task, for they had to appeal instead to the “broad sweep of Scripture” and to generalities regarding justice, love, and common humanity. As abolitionist Gerrit Smith put it,  “the religion taught by Jesus is not a letter but a life.”

Noll points to an 1845 public debate between Nathaniel Rice (pro-slavery) and Jonathan Blanchard (anti-slavery) which lasted for eight hours a day, for four days! Rice “methodically tied Blanchard in knots over how to interpret the proslavery implications of specific texts” while “Blanchard returned repeatedly to ‘the broad principle of common equity and common sense’ that he found in Scripture, to ‘the general principles of the Bible’ and ‘the whole scope of the Bible’” rather than specifics.

Many Bible-believing Christians, including those who were uncomfortable with slavery, just weren’t buying the abolitionist argument that placed the “spirit of the law” over the “letter of the law.” As Connecticut Congregationalist Leonard Bacon put it: “The evidence that there were both slaves and masters of slaves in churches founded and directed by the apostles, cannot be got rid of without resorting to methods of interpretation that will get rid of everything.”

I see Bacon’s dilemma, don’t you? Frankly, I’m glad I wasn’t trying to make a biblical case for abolition in the 19th century. I’m not sure I could have…or would have. Which is kind of sobering, right?

[Noll also points to arguments put forth by some abolitionists that said that while the Bible never condemns slavery per se, it does condemn the kind of slavery practiced in the American South. This was a strong argument, but suffered because of its nuance. “This position could not simply be read out of any one biblical text,” Noll says. “It could not be lifted directly from the page. Rather, it needed patient reflection on the entirety of the Scriptures; it required expert knowledge of historical circumstances of ancient Near Eastern and Roman slave systems as well as of the actually existing conditions in the slave states; and it demanded that sophisticated interpretative practice replace a commonsensically literal approach to the sacred text.”  Thus, that argument never  took off.]

Things didn’t really turn around until the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which struck an emotional chord with readers and once again appealed to the general sweep of Scripture rather than the letter.

Noll points to a great scene from Uncle Tom’s Cabin in which Mary Bird tries to make the case for taking in runaway slaves based on Christ’s teachings in Matthew 25. John Bird’s response to his wife’s perspective made me laugh out loud: “But, Mary, just listen to me. Your feelings are all quite right, dear, and interesting, and I love you for them; but, then, dear, we mustn’t suffer our feelings to run away without our judgment.”

I underlined that bit and wrote in the margins of my book, “sounds familiar!” Reminds me of a few book reviews I've received.

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis is a short but dense book, and I’m only halfway through it. (The next chapter deals specifically with race, which was a profoundly important element in the theological debate surrounding slavery.) But I wanted to share these initial thoughts because I think it’s important to remind ourselves now and then that we’ve been wrong before, and that sometimes it’s not about the number of proof texts we can line up or about the most simplistic reading of the text, but rather some deep, intrinsic sense of right and wrong, some movement of the Spirit, that points us toward truth and to a better understanding of what Scripture really says. 

The clearest association I make, of course, is with the gender equality discussion within evangelicalism—not only because it’s an issue near to my heart, but also because we are dealing with many of the same biblical texts. But I wonder about other things too—about homosexuality, for example—and I confess I spend some nights lying awake, watching the lights from passing cars make strange shapes on my walls, wondering if we’ve done it again, if we’ve marginalized another group of people because we believed the Bible told us to.  

Now, to be clear, I’m NOT saying that slavery is the same as the gender debates or homosexuality. So please don't hear that. Each situation is different, and each should be discussed and debated on their own terms. It’s not fair to the people involved to treat them all the same or to make an unqualified comparison. 

But the impassioned, Bible-based rhetoric delivered by both the abolitionists and those who opposed them sure does sound familiar. 

And that should give us pause.

***

See also: “Alright, Then, I’ll Go to Hell”

Guys and Dolls: Exhibit B for the absurd legalism of gender roles

A couple of weeks ago we discussed the absurd legalism of gender roles, as exemplified by John Piper’s illustration that a woman with a black belt should not intervene if she and a male friend are attacked, for according to Piper, it is the man’s divinely ordained role to protect her.

Piper is one of the founders of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood—a flagship organization for the complementarian movement in America—which is now led by Owen Strachan. (Strachan made headlines not too long ago when he referred to stay-at-home-dads as “man fails.”)

This week Strachan provided yet another illustration of legalistic gender roles by critiquing an episode of Sesame Street in which the character “Baby Bear” is told he should not be embarrassed for playing with a baby doll. Strachan pointed to this scene as an example of how “the basic foundations of the Protestant worldview are under assault.” Sesame Street, he says, is on “the frontlines of the gender wars” and this scene represents a “disastrous teaching on sexuality and gender.”

Caryn Rivadeneira wrote an excellent response at Her.Meneutics that says just about everything that needs to be said about why we shouldn’t shame little boys for nurturing and caring for baby dolls. (As did Kristen Rosser.) But I also want to point to a response from Micah J. Murray entitled “Boys and Dolls: A Father’s Response”

Micah writes:

At the heart of Owen Strachan’s argument is the idea that Baby Bear’s actions are contrary to Biblical manhood and womanhood. I’ve read the Bible. And I agree with Owen that God created men and woman as equal but distinct, with unique strengths and callings. The problem is, “biblical” as Owen Strachan uses it, really means “Protestant America in the 1950′s according to Norman Rockwell” (my words, not his). The Bible never says “boys shouldn’t play with dolls.” That’s a cultural construct that Owen is projecting back onto the Bible.

You know what is Biblical? God says that He will comfort His people “as a mother comforts her child.” (see Isaiah 66:13) Jesus says that He longed to gather the children of Jerusalem “like a mother hen gathers her babies under her wings” (see Mathew 23:37). The Apostle Paul described himself as a mother in labor, struggling to give life to the church. (see Galatians 4:19). The concept of gender differences is Biblical. What’s un-Biblical is the idea that caring for a baby is somehow not masculine...

This is why it matters, Owen.  Because you and the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood are in the midst of a very important conversation about how to live out our masculinity and femininity in the twenty-first century. But instead of approaching it as a conversation, you’ve defined it as a battle. Those on the other side of the issue from you sometimes accuse complementarians of wanting to revert to outdated patriarchal notions of gender roles. And when you write things like this, you validate their accusations.

Because this isn’t about “what the Bible says about masculinity”, it’s about your assumption that “dolls are for girls” and your assertion that anyone who disagrees is attacking our moral foundation. If you want to blog about that, about your opinion that we should raise our kids according to some rather arbitrary gender stereotypes, that’s your business. But you dragged the Gospel into it. You claimed that the Bible supported your assumption. And it doesn’t. Read the rest of the post.

It was encouraging to see someone from a more conservative perspective weigh in on this…and with a wise and thoughtful post.  But it does point to the problem of inconsistency within the complementarian movement.

When I write a post about gender equality, for example, I try to point to very specific quotes from complementarian leaders in order to avoid creating a straw man and to focus the conversation around one or two ideas. But it never fails: Any sort of engagement with complementrarian ideas is immediately followed by the accusation that “that’s not what complementarians really believe” or “you’re pointing to an extreme example” or “you’ve created a straw man.”

Now, today’s example comes from the leader of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which I (and many others) consider to be a mainstream expression of complementarian values. And yet I have a feeling that there may be complementarians out there, who, like Micah, do not consider it “foolish” for boys to play with dolls and who are concerned by how these sort of gender stereotypes are put forth as “biblical manhood.”

So my question for complementarians is this: Does the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood represent you? Does Owen Strachan? If not, what organizations or leaders do? What do you see as the future of complementarianism? If I’m not engaging folks like Strachan, Piper, Driscoll, and Grudem, whom should I be engaging? Mary Kassian? Tim and Kathy Keller?

And, by way of a challenge: Since there is diversity within the movement, I think we could all really benefit from seeing more of it in the form of complementarians calling out the most extreme expressions of that view. Sometimes I get the idea that there are complementarians who are concerned by some of what is being taught, but are afraid to speak up.

I’m sticking to my position on gender equality in the home and Church—(which doesn’t mean I don’t think there are differences between men and women, by the way; it just means I am reluctant to declare those differences universal and prescriptive or indicative of some sort of God-ordained hierarchy between men and women)—but I want to “fight fair” if you will, especially with folks I consider to be my brothers and sisters in Christ.

So who are complementarians looking to for leadership these days? I know what the internet says (by way of stats), but I’d like to hear what you say.

Ask Shane Claiborne...(Response)

Today I am thrilled to share Shane Claiborne’s responses to your questions for “Ask Shane Claiborne.”

Shane Claiborne graduated from Eastern University and did graduate work at Princeton Seminary. In 2010, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Eastern. His adventures have taken him from the streets of Calcutta where he worked with Mother Teresa to the wealthy suburbs of Chicago where he served at the influential mega-church Willow Creek. As a peacemaker, his journeys have taken him to some of the most troubled regions of the world – from Rwanda to the West Bank – and he’s been on peace delegations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Shane is the visionary leader of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner city Philadelphia that has helped birth and connect radical faith communities around the world. He is married to Katie Jo, a North Carolina girl who also fell in love with the city (and with Shane). They were wed in St. Edwards church, the formerly abandoned cathedral into which homeless families relocated in 1995, launching the beginning of the Simple Way community and a new phase of faith-based justice making. where everything started back in 1995.

Shane writes and travels extensively speaking about peacemaking, social justice, and Jesus. Shane’s books include Jesus for President, Red Letter Revolution, Common Prayer, Follow Me to Freedom, Jesus, Bombs and Ice Cream, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers – and his classic The Irresistible Revolution. He has been featured in a number of films including “Another World Is Possible” and “Ordinary Radicals.” His books are translated into more than a dozen languages. Shane speaks over 100 times a year, nationally and internationally.

His work has appeared in Esquire, SPIN, Christianity Today, and The Wall Street Journal, and he has been on everything from Fox News and Al Jazeera to CNN and NPR. He’s given academic lectures at Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Liberty, Duke, and Notre Dame. Shane speaks regularly at denominational gatherings, festivals, and conferences around the globe.

Shane did a fantastic job responding to your questions, and I enjoyed talking with him about faith, community, marriage, and non-violence. (This interview was a little unusual in that we did it via phone and I transcribed it afterwards.) I hope you enjoy Shane's thoughts as much as I did. You asked some fantastic questions! 

***

From Nish: Shane, thanks so much for stopping in here at Rachel's place to answer questions. I love the phrase that you coined, the Ordinary Radical. However, after reading your book(s), it's pretty clear that you live anything but an ordinary life! You've done huge things for the Kingdom in both your own community and around the world. My question is in regards to becoming an ordinary radical in the midst of ordinary, everyday life. I'm a stay-at-home mom and I struggle with fulfilling my duties and calling to care for my children full-time, while being an active Kingdom-builder in my city & community. Do you have any advice or ideas for those of us at home with small children, or working the daily grind 9-5 jobs, or in school full-time to honor our commitments to family, work and school while simultaneously working to benefit our communities? What are some good first-steps toward engaging the needs of our cities, and how do we do that while juggling the everyday?

I love this question.  What pops into my head is that Scripture that says, “let us not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds.” And to me, that’s invitation to live with imagination. Non-conformity doesn’t mean uniformity. Choosing non-conformity doesn’t mean we’re all going to end up doing the same thing, that we’ll all find ourselves working in a soup kitchen, or sleeping under a bridge. This is an invitation—a call— to re-imagine who we are and how we are to live in light of Jesus. And I get excited because I see folks who are doing that everywhere, in all kinds of different ways.

You also see in Scripture that when people encounter Jesus, they don’t all walk away to pursue the exact same lifestyle. For instance, Jesus dealt with two tax collectors—Matthew and Zaccheus. Matthew chose to sell everything, but Zaccheus, from what we know, sold half of everything, paid everyone four times what he owed them, and then went on. So they both reimagine their life and their economics, and they both challenge the system, but they did it in different ways. And you’ll notice that Matthew didn’t get all upset and come out and tell Zaccheus how to do it! (laughter) 

So what this means is that every one of us is called to love our neighbor—including our global neighbor—as ourselves.  I know a suburban mom who, for every biological kid she and her husband send to college, they’ve create a trust fund—kind of like another scholarship—for a kid that’s not biologically theirs, but is financially hard-pressed. I know another mom from California who was in this collective with a group of other parents who said they wanted their kids to learn compassion, so once a week they would gather together in a local park to discuss issues related to social justice and also to serve lunch to whoever might need it. One day, the police came and said that they couldn’t serve food in the park, so then it became a lesson on civil disobedience!

Now, while there are a million different ways to respond to this invitation, we do see  compelling patterns in the gospel. So even if we don’t all respond in the exact same way, we can all, for example, see the suffering of this world as something we are called to enter into instead of flee from. We can reject the patterns of, for example, suburban sprawl that are often built around moving away from pain, or away from neighborhoods of high crime, or away from people who don’t look like us, and respond instead to the gospel inertia that invites us to enter into that pain. So this means we also have to challenge some of those patterns of consumerism and insulation, and sprawl, and homogeneity.

There are families in my neighborhood who have relocated here with their kids, and one thing they tell me is that they want their kids to grow up knowing that not everything is okay in this world—that racism exists, that injustice exists, that just because someone smells doesn’t mean we have to be afraid of them, and so on. So a big question we have to tackle is this: What do we shelter our kids from, and what do we allow them to see? And how do we allow that firsthand experience with pain and suffering affect how we spend our money and how we open our homes in hospitality. We all answer those questions a little differently, but there are patterns to be on the lookout for.

From Karen: Having lived in intentional community for a few years, I understand the challenges of sustaining a community. I’ve heard that Simple Way doesn't exist in the same way it did when it started. How many people actually live there in community? What is the community set up like? Does everyone share a home, are there multiple homes in the same neighborhood? Is there a lot of turn over of re-locators or do you have quite a few still living together who have been there for several years? Do you live in the same house with others in this Simple Way community or do you and your wife have your own home?

The forms of our community have certainly changed over the years, but the spirit of community and sharing and doing life together hasn’t, and that’s what we’re committed to. The forms change, but the spirit, I hope, stays the same.  

Coming out of college, a half a dozen of my friends joined together and we pooled our money together, rented a house, and started sharing food and time with other people in the neighborhood. Over time, and as we grew, and we realized we weren’t just an intentional community house anymore; we were building a village!

So now we have a little more elbow room, because we’ve been moving into abandoned houses and growing the neighborhood together with indigenous neighbors. Some houses we’ve gotten for a dollar! We’ve been able to grow into abandoned drug houses like the kind my wife and I live in now, for example. All said, we have about a dozen properties in the same neighborhood. So now our goal is really growing the neighborhood. Today we celebrated a neighbor who was able, for the first time, to get his own a home.

[See Shane’s post at Red Letter Christians, “Building a Better World One Home at a Time”]

Obviously, it’s a little harder now to create a shared rhythm in life. (When you’re living on top of each other, it’s almost impossible not to!) Still, we have morning prayers together every morning, we share meals together, we tend shared gardens together, we’ve got kids coming over after school this afternoon to get help with homework, we’ve got food bags we distribute. But what’s cool is that now the food bag projects, for example, are run by neighbors, so there’s a lot less “us” and “them” now, and a lot more just “us.”

But this is not without its challenges. It raises questions about the distinctiveness that holds us together, for example. So there are always new challenges that come with new seasons—just like in our individual lives. It’s like, having a new baby is exciting and wonderful and new, but you’ve also got dirty diapers to deal with too.  Teenagers go through that time when they feel like anything’s possible, but it’s also kind of awkward and uncomfortable. In the same way, community is an organic thing that continues to grow and evolve and become something new, and with that evolution comes new challenges.

I think it’s important to not grow too attached to one form of community. At Simple Way, we’re inspired by the monastic tradition—although most monastics would probably flip if they find out we do morning prayers at 8:00 when they’re nearly to midday prayers by then! (laughter) Some communities have more structure; others have less. At the Simple Way, we’re not trying to spread a franchise or start a brand. But we value that same community spirit. I think all of us are made in the image of community. Our God reflects community, so we hunger to love and to be loved, whether the starting point is a half dozen friends in an inner-city rental or a small group in a suburban congregation. It’s not like you either have community or you don’t have community. It’s more amorphous than that, and we’re all on a journey to find it.

Follow-up from Rachel: A lot of people were surprised--hopefully pleasantly--to hear you got married. Were you surprised by that too? How has marriage changed you?  

Well, its funny because after I got married, people kept quoting my book [The Irresistible Revolution]  to me, and I thought, well, maybe I need to go back and read what I wrote! (laughter) So I went back and read it and everything I wrote, I still feel so passionately about—for example, that our deepest longing is not for sex but for love and that what we really long for is community. You can live without sex, but you can’t live without love. That’s something I’ve learned from my celibate friends.

I’ve also learned that, in a sense, you’re not ready to married until you’re comfortable being alone. In other words, I don’t need another person to make me whole or to complete me. I think that’s a healthy attitude to have.

On the other hand, I still believe there is tons of work to do in the Church, and the world in general, to support celibate singles. So many champions of our faith have been able to live extraordinary lives, in part because of the freedom that singleness afforded them. No one says: Wow, wouldn’t Mother Teresa’s life have been more complete if she’d found a husband?! So I still believe passionately that we need to celebrate singleness, as well as marriage, and I suppose that, especially now, I don’t see those things as being at all mutually exclusive. In our community, we’re trying to do both—to support singles and married couples, to support gay and lesbian folks too, so that they find a community where they feel loved.

So, to be clear, I never took some kind of vow of celibacy. But I still believe there’s a lot of work to do, especially when the Church tends to place a disproportionate emphasis on marriage and families. I mean, you go to some of these Christian festivals and they have speed dating on the schedule! And I remember a pastor giving a sermon once in which he held up a picture of a mom and dad and two kids and prayed that everyone in his congregation would find that for themselves.  That’s hogwash! It’s too much pressure, and it’s skewed theology.

Let’s teach people that whatever allows you to seek the Kingdom of God with your whole heart is what you should pursue. So if you do that better with another person, go for it. If you do that better within a certain structured community, go for it. At the end of the day, the point is to choose Jesus. So we have to do whatever allows us to pursue Jesus with our whole heats.

From Gerald: I struggle with balancing non-violence and self-defense. In theory I would like to think I would respond non-violentingly for myself. The idea however of someone endangering my family really challenges my willingness to turn the other check. Since being married have you noticed a change in your willingness to "protect" your family that perhaps have challenged you our attitudes toward non-violence?

Part of why I think Jesus talks so explicitly about loving our enemies and turning the other cheek is because it isn’t our knee-jerk reaction; it doesn’t necessarily come naturally to us. So I really believe that part of what it means to become more Christlike is to create disciplines and habits that cultivate the fruits of the spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—and to empty ourselves of other pollutions that keep us from being filled with the spirit.

My wife and I watched Les Mis the other night, and there’s that scene when Jean Valjean steals the candlesticks, and the Bishop covers for him and says they were a gift. Now, that sort of grace is not necessarily our first impulse. It certainly wasn’t my first impulse when someone stole our power drill! (laughter) I didn’t run after the person and say, “Hey, here are the drill bits!”

So, we have to practice non-violence. We have to train ourselves to produce the fruit of the Spirit. And a big part of that is surrounding ourselves with others who share those values. I like to say that it’s important to surround yourself with people who look like the kind of person you want to be. They rub off on you. Community can create a sort of compelling, positive peer pressure—an inertia toward non-violence—that you might not get on your own.

And my wife is a big part of that. Obviously, I would not have married someone who didn’t share my priorities as they relate to non-violence. And if anything, Katie has reinforced my convictions. In a lot of ways, she’s more non-violent than I am!

Now, non-violence doesn’t mean getting stepped-on. The call to non-violence is to disarm violence. A part of the way we do that is suffering with those who suffer. I’ve learned a ton of lessons about that by living in a neighborhood that has all kinds of reasons to hope, but also really struggles with an epidemic of violence, averaging about one homicide a day. That violence is something that we actively combat. We do it on our block, but we also believe in calling out the government. Violence anywhere is a threat to the love of Jesus that we see on the cross. So we try to teach our kids that, and we try to teach our presidents that.

From Kelsey: I hear often of non-violence & would consider myself a pacifist However, I have noticed that many of the voices of pacifism are men with unexamined privilege and and thereby do not address the street harassment and threat & fear of rape that women face frequently. I've heard about loving people through beatings and muggings - but there is something so dignity shredding about sexual violence, that the thought of it makes me want to forget I ever read the sermon on the mount. Do you have any women pacifists in your life who have touched on this issue at all?

We absolutely do have women in our community committed to the principles of non-violence.  But I do want to be careful of using binary language here—like pacifist or non-pacifist. Polarities and labels can be really unhelpful in this conversation because the world is just so much…squirmier…than our categories. 

What I do see is Jesus as a living, breathing, existential incarnation of love that challenges so many of our categories and camps. And when it comes to the patterns I see in the Kingdom of God, which are perhaps best expressed in Mary’s Magnificat—the mighty are cast from their thrones, the lowly are lifted, the hungry are filled with good things, the rich are sent away empty—what seems really clear to me is that God is deeply and profoundly protective of the vulnerable and marginalized.  Jesus is very critical of those who step-on and exploit. In fact, Jesus’ harshest words were reserved for the religious elite and self-righteous, who, in many ways, made their religion violent in that they used it to exclude and oppress and marginalize.

Joan Chittister—I love her!—likes to say is that Jesus consistently challenges the chosen and embraces the excluded. So what does that mean for us?  It means that we should be near to those who are hurting. We should do everything in our power to lay down our life if we must to get in the way, non-violently, of that which might hurt another person.

Now, I absolutely do not think that Jesus is pointing to a sort of pitiful, masochistic toleration of abuse, or suggesting that a woman caught in abuse or violence should simply love her abuser or allow such violence to continue. Not at all.

What I try to point to in Jesus For President, and also in Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream is what Walter Wink and others call the “third way,” a way that exposes evil without mirroring it. So a big part of responding to injustice is exposing evil and making people uncomfortable by it. You don’t have to be violent to expose evil; sometimes you just have to get out and make some noise.  And it’s important that we do this in community. When a community responds to injustice together, there are a lot more options for the marginalized and abused. So, if we’re doing it right, a person caught in abuse will know that they are not alone. That’s a big part of the good news: that you’re not alone in those situations.

Christians of all people should be the most suspicious of violence. We should be the whistleblowers against violence, not the drum-beaters for it! We should be the last people calling for the death penalty because we have a God who died on a cross to save us from death! So one thing we have to be careful of is finding the hardest cases for non-violence and then using them to justify violence across the board. We have an entire culture that is infected with violence—we’re talking 10,000 homicides a year in America, $20,000 a second spent on war. So maybe not all of us come out saying we’re pacifists; maybe some of us simply make more deliberate moves toward non-violence.  (For example, we have a great partnership with Hunters Against Gun Violence. These are folks who say, “we want to hunt, but we don’t want guns that can shoot a hundred rounds a minute in the streets.”)

So let’s be the champions of non-violence even when we find it difficult to know exactly what we would do in specific situations.

From Registered Runaway: Shane what is your position on same sex relationships? I remember a clip I saw of you and Boyd and Colson discussing this and sounded like you supported celibacy for gay folks. Am I correct? Also, what are your thoughts on the state of the culture war raging over gay rights? How do we redeem it? Where do you see it headed?

Frist of all, I think we have to begin by acknowledging that part of the reason this is a difficult topic, and part of the reason we have disagreement on it, is because Jesus never really talks about it directly. There are other things that are made much clearer in Scripture and in the teachings of Jesus, so we all have to start with a posture of humility, and a posture of listening, and maybe even a commitment to disagree well. That’s what we’ve had to do within our community.

Now, having said that, there are certain things that we would say, the first being that God is love. So when people are holding signs that say, “God Hates Fags,” that doesn’t look like the God we see in Jesus. So we have a duty in that regard to move the world closer to love and closer to Jesus.

Second, there is this tendency we have to think that it is our job to point out what we believe other people are doing wrong….on whatever issue it may be. Billy Graham has a great line on this. He said, “It’s God’s job to judge,  the Spirit’s job to convict, and our job to love. And we dare not mix those up.” I think that’s a good posture to have—to trust that God is working in people’s lives and to keep in mind that people are known by their fruit. So in any relationship, I think the question is, “Does this have good fruit? Do I see the Spirit in this friendship or in this community?”

But in the end, when the studies (like the recent Barana research) show that the #1 answer from young non-Christians about their impressions of Christianity is that they think Christians are anti-gay (followed by judgmental and hypocritical), we’ve gone terribly, terribly wrong. It must break God’s heart that this is what we have become known for. Jesus said they will know we are Christians by our love. So my admonition on this is that we become known for our love again. And that’s not limited to this issue, but applies in a lot of areas—whether it’s in the Occupy movement, or anti-war movement or picketers outside an abortion clinic. They’re not going to know we are Christians by our bumper stickers or our protest signs, but by our love.

And finally, I think it’s important that this is not something we discuss simply in ideologies or rhetoric, talking at people and around people, but rather that we begin talking with people. That’s when the conversation radically shifted for me. I had plenty of apologetics on what I thought Scripture said about homosexuality, but then I met a kid who became a close friend of mine and he’s gay, and he told me he wanted to kill himself because he thought he was a mistake, that God had made a mistake. If people like him can’t find a home in the church, and if they can’t find a friend to confide in without that friend rattling off a list of what they should or shouldn’t do, I think we need to reexamine what our faith is and ask if it’s really embodying good news for these folks too.

From DeeBrew: Dear Shane, I got to see you in person on your "Jesus for President" tour stop in Dallas. My son, then 16, begged me to take him to see you. Not really knowing who you were, I agreed to make the drive from Tulsa. We pulled into the parking lot of the church where it was held just in time to witness several guys dressed in what looked to be home-made clothing, jumping on top of an old bus, I glanced over at my son wondering what exactly he had gotten us into. (It turns out this was helping the used vegetable oil that the bus burned for fuel!) But that night changed my life. It changed my son's life. You spoke about things that our family had been discussing for several years but had never been able to verbalize within our church or to our families. You gave us the words.

My question is - what should I do now? We have come full circle in our search for what it means to follow Jesus. I teach in a Christian high school. The Bible teacher was concerned when I gave the Seniors "Irresistible Revolution" for graduation presents. My children graduated from this school. I have known these people for years but now am completely at odds with how they see the world. Do you think that being an "ordinary radical" is to stay in this situation and try making small strides in opening students' eyes about issues such as -why do they just accept that Christians should be for war, etc? Or am I contributing to the problem by helping support this institution - one that has some amazing people but are dedicated to teaching students more about how evolution is wrong than in following the call of Jesus to love your enemies. I desire to use my life to bring others to the understanding that following Christ is radical. I know others are in the same boat as I am, some in churches, jobs, etc who see the great need for change, and are unsure as to how to proceed. Do we change everything or do we work for little victories where we are already and hope for long term change. Or are we just contributing to the problem, maintaining the status quo. As someone in her 50s, I realize just how short life really is. With your broader view of where America is going - Christianity and the Church in particular - I would like to know where you think we as Christians should be dedicating our time and resources most.

Remember that movie, “What About Bob?” and the line about “baby steps to the bus…”? I think maybe there’s something to that! (laughter)

I do think it’s important to keep in mind that conversion is not just about a moment; it’s about a movement, about continually changing into the people that God has made us to be. So we need to have the same sort of patience with one another that God has with us as we move through that process.  Sometimes, when I speak at a mega-church or something, someone will ask, “How do you come here, after being in Iraq or Calcutta? How do you speak into a culture like this with love?” And it’s because I see myself in the mirror!  We’re all in process and that should give us great patience and peace with one another.

….That and the fact that the Bible is full of really messed-up people! Saul of Tarsus was a terrorist, for example. David was a womanizer who pretty much broke every command there was in two chapters of the Bible. But that’s part of the story—that God uses not only our gifts, but also our brokenness and our history. Desmond Tutu says that the love of God is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free. What a beautiful reminder that we should should never write anyone off.

A guy came up to me when I was speaking in Texas the other day and said, “I’m a redneck, and I mean a textbook redneck—NRA card-carrying, gun-toting, pickup truck-driving redneck. But I’ve been reading your stuff, and it’s really messed me up. It’s got me reading the Bible and rethinking some things.” So you never know how your life might impact people.

And when you look at Jesus’ ragamuffin group that included a tax collector and zealot, you can’t help but approach this whole thing with a little more humility.

But still, I think it’s important not to compromise on the cost of following Jesus. I don’t want to get so wishy-washy that I gloss over that and say you can just do anything with your life. One of my mentors says that a Christian can do any job as long as they’re willing to get fired at any point.” So if you’re a soldier, or if you’re working for a company that has a history of exploiting workers, well there may come a point when you might lose your job.

At the end of the day, we need the prophetic word both inside and outside. We need the voices in the wilderness, like John the Baptist, but we also need the Daniels. Daniel worked inside the king’s court, but he never compromised; even though he was in the king’s court, he wasn’t drinking the king’s Kool-Aid. This is why it’s really good to have a group that keeps us accountable, a community that helps us grow. And sometimes, if you’re the only one growing, it may be time to move on.

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Be sure to check out the rest of our "Ask A..." series here.

An important post from Mary DeMuth: “The Sexy Wife I Can’t Be”

Trigger Warning: sexual abuse

If you have a moment today, please stop by A Deeper Church and read Mary DeMuth’s post today entitled “The Sexy Wife I Can’t Be.”

An excerpt:

“I walk with a giant limp in the sexy wife arena. I still feel outright rage when I read that for the sake of my husband, I’m supposed to be adventurous and wild, that to be this way represents true spousal godliness. Because honestly? Those words just make me feel less than. Those are a set of guidelines I’ll probably never meet….

It’s okay to struggle in this area. It’s normal. I give you permission to say it’s frightening and bewildering. I pray you’ll find the words to communicate with your spouse how you feel, how this is hard for you. I hope for an understanding spouse who loves you utterly for who you are, not how you perform. I want to tell you that it does get better, but that you won’t improve by simply trying to on sexy clothes or offering your body as a fruit plate. True sexual liberation comes from the inside out, where Jesus walks into those terrible memories and mourns alongside you...."

Read the rest.