Reconciling Dissent
The July issue of The Lutheran is now available on-line. In it you will find my article about dissent within the church. My task was to summarize my STM thesis in 800 words. In the end, I'm not certain that I did that successfully for the targetted audience. The article feels simultaneously incomplete and yet too full, to me at least. The basic gist of it (and my STM thesis, which you can purchase at the link to the left ~ LOL Bill!) is that faithful dissent serves the church's mission. The church's mission is to discern and participate in God's reign. God's reign reconciles all things to God. Therefore faithfull dissent reconciles. If the means of our dissent does not serve to reconcile with those who believe and act contrary to our own position, then our dissent does not serve the mission of Jesus' church no matter how holy our intentions may be. Check out the article here:
A Theology of Dissent: We're called to dissent faithfully through reconciliation
Look for a hard copy available soon at an ELCA congregation near you.
1 comment:
This is a great article Kevan. Don't sweat the space issues. You had to say a great deal in a very little space.
But your comments are not diminished. Framing dissent as a faithful way of being the church is novel; but even better, it calls those of us who dissent to be faithful in how we go about our disagreements. And this may be the greater witness to God's reign. We hang in there with one another, even when we'd rather walk away in disgust. It's not easy; it's just our calling, to be reconciling, forgiving, forebearing, AND dissenting when the church isn't point with its life to what God is doing in and with the world.
So, we'd better get busy living, or just get after the dying. In either case, Jesus has us doesn't he?
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