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.

Dissent as Reconciliation

My STM thesis proposes that faithful dissent within the church is expressed as a means of reconciliation. (See the link in the lefthand sidebar to order your copy.) Many readers ask how dissent as reconciliation would look like in practice. Below is an email I posted on our synod's listserve after a week of exchanges arguing about the pros and cons of a constitutional amendment to ban marriage and unions between two people of the same gender. My email in response is an example of how dissent happens in such a way that participates in God's reconciling reign:

To my Christian brothers and sisters, fellow workers in God’s reign:

Peace to you in the name of our crucified and risen messiah, Jesus. It is with great joy that I write to you this day to share with you vital news: JESUS’ TOMB IS STILL EMPTY!

No small honor has been given to me by the one who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead to announce this news. Woe to me if I neglect my holy vocation. Friends, have you not seen for yourselves? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Based on the exchange on this listserve about marriage and sexuality, I cannot help but to conclude that we have forgotten God’s mighty act that claims us as fellow heirs with our risen Lord. Are not each of us baptized into his death? And if we share in a death like his then certainly we share in a resurrection like his.

Therefore, let us choose to know nothing of one another except Jesus our Lord, and him crucified. What are red states and blue states? Who are conservatives and liberals? Who are homosexuals and heterosexuals? We are all given our ultimate identity in our baptism that reconciles us to God and all creation.

To us is given the divine calling to participate in God’s reconciling work. We, who are strangers on a listserve yet more so the family of God, are gathered and empowered by Holy Spirit to live together in a community that reconciles differences and transgressions. We know not categories that divide, such as red and blue, right and left. Behold! All things are being reconciled to God in Jesus.

Does this mean that we should ignore diversities of opinion? Are we to sweep controversial topics under the carpet and pretend they do not exist for a false sense of peace? By no means! Jesus did not liberate us that we should fall again into the bonds of slavery. But for freedom, Jesus has set us free. We are free to discern God’s will; free to follow our hearts; free to act according to our conscience; free to speak our minds.

What matters for Jesus' followers is HOW we go about doing these things, because the only thing to which we are bound is the name of our Lord Jesus given to us in baptism. Are we first listening and then discussing together as a community that is both reconciled and reconciling? Or are we talking at each other from our own opposing positions defined by terms other than the good news of our one, risen Lord?

Friends, exchanging posts about our various opinions on this listserve does not serve God’s reconciling work in the community of Jesus‘ followers. Not only does it misuse an otherwise effective tool for communicating news and inviting others to ministry opportunities, but more importantly it does not make us good stewards of the gospel. We, who are united in baptism and called to live in Jesus' community, must find more personal ways to communicate our opinions.

The tactics of CNN’s “Cross Fire” are not the means of God’s in-breaking reign even when exchanged in formal pleasantries. Likewise, we do not participate in God's reconciling reign by throwing proof texts at each other. Our messiah’s cross alone is the means for our participation as workers in God's reign. Let us all die to ourselves and our inclination to prove our opinions through such an impersonal mode of communication, that we may rise in the reconciling vocation of Jesus' church.

Only if we have not seen our risen Lord or have not heard the news of his resurrection does such impersonal behavior as witnessed on this listserve make sense. Only if Jesus' body is somehow back in the grave and his tomb is no longer empty can such divisive behavior serve a will other than our own. Only if Jesus is still dead and his Spirit was never unleashed throughout the world can such behavior be justified.

I implore you, sisters and brothers, let the last email that expressed an opinion on the issue of marriage and sexuality be the last email that expresses an opinion about marriage and sexuality. Please continue to post emails that invite others to events that your heart says are opportunities to serve our Lord, regardless of whether they are viewed by others as politically conservative or liberal. But please discuss your opinions only in ways that participate in God’s reconciling activity through human community: not by hiding behind a computer monitor but by meeting face to face and hand in hand.

With this in mind, I request that anyone who might wish to respond to this email not do so by posting on the listserve. Rather, give me a call at the number listed below. Whether you agree or disagree I’ll be happy to discuss this in person over a cup of joe -- my treat! Our conversation will begin and end in prayer, and we will exchange the peace of our risen Lord Jesus, which we will know fully in God’s . . .

Shalom!

Kevan Penvose

Discipleship Coach for Family Ministries
St. Stephen the Martyr Lutheran Church
6101 S. 51st St. Greendale, WI 53129
church’s office phone: (414) 421-3543

Phishy Polity

The intro to my latest paper:

In recent years the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has witnessed the emergence of several organized parties dissenting against issues ranging from ecumenism to sexuality. Yet despite the common occurrence of dissent there is little, if any, scholarly discussion happening about the theological grounding for, and appropriate methods of, dissent within the church. The reasons and means of dissent within the church are taken for granted.

However, clarifying an ecclesial ethic for dissent will guide the church in its mission and equip the baptized for their witness to the gospel of Christ. Therefore this task has practical implications for the life of the church. Theological discussion about an ecclesial ethic for dissent will help to alleviate the anxiety that threatens to hold the church’s mission captive, which is due in a large extent to the ELCA’s ambiguous polity. This ambiguity is analogous to lyrics of the song “Bouncing Around the Room” by the jam band Phish:

The place I saw was far beneath
the surface of the sea.
My sight was poor but I was sure
the sirens sang their songs for me.
They dance above me as I sink.
I see them through a crystal haze
and hear them bouncing round the room
a never ending coral maze.

That time and once again
I’m bouncing around the room.

When Christians sense that the church is sinking into the dark abyss of heresy and immorality, God’s Word calls out to us to help the church swim to the surface. Yet the polity of the ELCA hinders us from doing so through faithful dissent. On the one hand, the organizational structure is solidified by a detailed constitution. On the other, the structure lacks means for both authoritative teaching and constructive dissent. Such a situation of “solid ambiguity” leaves us with blurred vision, gazing at our destination through a crystal haze. We are left unsure how we can help the church swim to the surface; despite our best efforts we remain trapped underwater, lost in a coral maze. Panic sets in like a person bouncing off the walls of a room, and the social climate of the ELCA becomes one of fear and anxiety.

If Phish can help us diagnose the problem, then the prescription for healing is also a fish -- the ichthus, which was commonly used as a symbol by the early church to locate other Christians without fearing persecution by the empire. Ichthus is the greek word for ‘fish’. Christians turned the spelling into an acronym for Iesous CHristos, THeo Uios, Soter. In English this means “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” By drawing an ichthus in the sand, dirt, or on a cave wall when meeting other people, Christians could find the gathered church without risking being turned in to the Roman soldiers. In today’s post-Christendom world, the ichthus is once again a helpful metaphor for forming a church structure with authoritative teaching and a constructive means for dissent, so people can identify the church when they see it.

(If you'd like to read more about my proposed ichthus ecclesial ethic, see my paper "Through a Crystal Haze: How Phish can Help Construct an Ecclesial Ethic for Dissent within the ELCA.")