Generous Orthodoxy: The Case of Joseph Lowery

The slogan "Generous Orthodoxy" is appealing. I've read the Brian McLaren book by that name but I'm not thinking only of his articulation; really, I'm thinking of Paul's direction to speak the truth in love. It's hard to be against that, but, as I think Jesus' example shows, the power is in the particulars -- nice sayings have to intersect with the specifics of Christian doctrine and practice. I recently came across an actual example worthy of consideration -- the Rev. Joseph Lowery.

Lowery spoke at Duke Sunday, Jan. 18, in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., before giving the benediction at Barack Obama's inauguration. I didn't attend, but I have since listened to his address. First, it's funny. He pokes fun at preachers and academics alike. I'd quote a joke, but it truly is all in the delivery. Second, he's old (Wikipedia puts him at 87). He can tease and exhort in ways that would be unkind or unwise for a younger man. He playfully (and ambiguously!) declared the university president's speech to have been "pretty good". He shook his finger at the single women in the audience, telling them to say "uh awn" until their men say "I do".

As for "the issue", he blasted Rick Warren for campaigning for Proposition 8. He teased, in condemnation, anyone who would take up the cause of preventing same-gender marriage. But then he turned and said in his contemplation of marraige, he could envision only a man and woman. In holding together these two positions, he made some interesting distinctions (as I read them). First, he separated law from communal practice. Law, he said, is meant to protect the rights of a minority group, not enshrine the customs of the majority. Second, he separated attitude and practice. He is suspicious of any attitude that says, "I am telling you are wrong for your own good." He seems to lean heavily on the injunction to first take the log out of your own eye. Finally, he implies a distinction between your community and my community. His "live and let live" attitude applies among communities but not within his own. If a son, church member or young pastor asked him about marriage, he seems to have a different answer than for the outsider. For those in his care, he says he can only see the union of man and woman.

I respect this teaching, even before taking into account Lowery's work in the Civil Rights Movement. I don't think he needed to knock Rick Warren, whose teaching I also respect. The distinction between American law and Christian practice I think is an important one (aren't we resident aliens!). I suspect black Christians can more clearly see the difference between America's legal system and God's standard for justice and holiness. I also appreciate the sensitivity to tone when in relationship with gay and lesbian people. In my last post, I said a weakness of (stereotypical) Protestant conservatism is that it largely reacts against liberal Prostantism, instead of casting a positive vision of the church. I take Lowery's point about "homophobia" to be similar.

In sum, I like Lowery. In his 50-minute sermon/speech, I heard a Christian voice, generous and orthodox.

Seeing Marriage within the Church

I'v been sitting on this one for the weeks since it came out over Christmas -- "Our Mutual Joy". It’s a Newsweek cover story making the “religious” case for marriage being possible between people of the same gender. It's hard to let pass such a hot-button issue. It's also hard, I've found, to bang out a pithy blog post about it....

Here's the difficulty: I disagree with the argument writer Lisa Miller makes; but, when I started writing a rebuttal I found myself disagreeing with myself, at least in tone. The exercise has sharpened my view that an understanding of marriage cannot be isolated from a wider vision of the world and the church. The vision I'm increasingly enamored with is the "catholic" Christian one (hmmm ... to capitalize the "c"?), which understands marriage as being between a man and a woman, but that's not the foundation of the catholic vision.

The weakness I see with Miller's case is that it rests on a thin vision of the church. She repeats the mainline liberal mantra of "inclusion." Inclusion is all well and good -- as I understand it, Islam, the Communist Party and the College Republicans are all happy to include you, too. The question is, inclusion into what? The liberal Protestant answer is "inclusion in an accepting community". And that seems about where the visions ends because to say anything more specific runs the risk of not being inclusive or accepting. There's no problem with that vision as such, it just doesn't seem specifically Christian in its detail, nor does it set my heart on fire.

The problem with making such a point is that it appears to argue against inclusion and acceptance, which is certainly not a Christian attitude and is understandably a turn off for some. Also, it argues against, which is to say it is presented as a reaction to the liberal vision. As bland as "inclusion and acceptance" are, the (stereotypical) conservative mantra of "don't change things" is even less appealing. It is cast primarily in the negative and has the incredulous assumption that the world hasn't or won't change. Of course it will, and so a full vision of the church must be forward facing, in addition to embracing tradition.

Here's where I use that rhetorical tool of sympathetically presenting a third option after having pointed out the shortcomings of two others. You already know its the catholic vision. It's anthem is the unity and singularity of the church across time and space. There are many, many implications of this, and of course I'm not equipped to articulate them. For my own thinking on the subject of marriage, two are most important: surrender of sexuality and authority of the church. The first addresses homosexuality in a way that is kind and comprehensive mostly because it does not particularly address homosexuality. It addresses all Christians in saying that your bodies are set apart for God -- temples for the Holy Spirit -- and so your sexuality is not meant ultimately meant to be managed for pleasure and/or convenience no matter if you fit easily into the 1950s American nuclear family ideal or not. As Christians, we have three "lifestyle" options until Jesus returns: the priesthood, marriage or a religious order. Each has its discipline for turning sexuality from manipulation and harm towards holiness. (Note that "mutual joy" is not the only dimension to the discipline of Christian marriage.) None affords a special privilege to middle class heterosexual couples.

The second aspect of the catholic vision, authority, speaks to what's actually the bulk of the Newsweek article, interpretation of scripture. Miller picks her way through the Bible and church history with the help of some liberal theologians and not surprisingly comes to the conclusion she set out to reach. And frankly I take her point that she's just doing what conservatives having been doing -- finding the parts of the Bible that suit their case. Now, for what it's worth, I think there's more intellectual integrity in the conservative position that the communities that produced the Bible, Jewish and nascent Christian, understood marriage as only being possible between opposite genders. But, that said, part of Miller's argument is that the world changes and Christian and Jewish understandings of their scriptures unfold over time. Indeed. However, a problem arises when Christians see that unfolding occurring in such different ways. Enter the authority of the church. By the scriptures own account, the church, small as it was, was the community that the Bible (the New Testament anyway). It is the church -- and there can be only one -- that decides the faithful range of interpretation of scripture. She discerns the ongoing implications of the resurrection.

Such a personification of the church, in a catholic mode, may well raise more questions than it answers, but I increasingly see it as the only viable alternative. Admittedly, I've caricatured only two alternatives; I've not tackled visions of the church such as new evangelical, pentecostal, deliverance (prosperity) and emergent. (My short answer is that each of those emphasize a characteristic of the church, but are not comprehensive visions of the church's full character.) There very much remains the "one true church question". What is it and how do you recognize it? Well, raising that question has sufficiently made my point for this post, which, remember, is about marriage. The point is you have to see marriage within the church.