i was speaking at Edina Lutheran Community Church on Sunday as part of the #c21 conference weekend and we were talking about the relationship of more traditional, denominational congregations to congregations on the more emergent end of the spectrum. I started talking about how i could not stop thinking the night before (as i lay in my hotel bed totally exhausted and totally unable to make my brain stop) about how i have all these issues with the church as an institution, but the thing is that the church is a body too. That reality makes my usual clear-headed power analysis, cut-like-a-knife insight into systems effect on individuals messy. very very messy.
i've been on a month-long trip around the US for my paid work holding conversations with folks in communities about how to start thinking about social justice and their role in change in this society. one big point that comes up in every place is how to hold a tension between naming & imagining...between resisting and creating. i think this has something to do with this mess i'm in with the church.
The Institution - naming & resisting: *the church has harmed me and many that i love - like real harm that effects mental health, inspires suicide, and destroys relationships *the church has been complicit with power - with the state, with oppressive ideology such as racism, classism, homophobia, and xenophobia *the church continues to primarily view its role in the world as being right and announcing morality *the church continues to perceive itself as persecuted, while holding enormous privilege in US culture
The Body - imagining & creating: *the church is james dobson and nadia bolz-weber and sara rosenau and lloyd gestoso and brian donovan many many other people who are broken and wounded and beautiful and loved *the church is a venue for god's word to me - flesh and blood - the body *the church i need - to be called out on my shit, to learn what it means to be loved and held, to confess, to be affirmed, to be served bread & wine, to eat with, to make art with, to practice anything that has more to do with anything besides myself *the church, because it is a body of people, is going to feel just as complicated as any other human relationship in my life - turns out that's how i end up being transformed - when i have to rub up against other people and they rub up against me all uncomfortably and rudely like in an overpacked elevator
"The church is a whore, and she is my mother" ~Augustine
"Love in reality is a harsh and difficult thing...it's complicated to be in relationship with flesh" ~Debbie Blue #c21
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