Cover Story
STILLFX / Shutterstock
AT THE TURN of the millennium, I (Soong-Chan) began hearing a lot about the “emerging church.” It seemed that everywhere I turned somebody was talking about the emerging church. A clear definition of the term was elusive (see “What is the Emerging Church?” by Julie Clawson, below), but the emerging church seemed to reflect ministry and theology rising out of the generation after the baby boomers. In particular, the emerging church was Western Christianity’s attempt to navigate through the context of an emerging postmodern culture.
At the time the emerging church was coming into vogue, I was pastoring a multi-ethnic, urban church plant in the Boston area. It seemed that every brochure for nearly every pastors’ conference I received featured the emerging church. As I began to attend some of those conferences, I noticed that every single speaker who claimed to represent the emerging church was a white male. A perception was forming that this was a movement and conversation occurring only in the white community.
In terms of the public face of the emerging church, white males dominated.
On one occasion, I was at an emerging church conference and was told directly that non-whites were not of any significance in the emerging church. Granted, this was one specific instance, but it led to the sense that the emerging church was not a welcoming place for ethnic minorities. At another conference, on the future of the church, one of the speakers invited up a blond-haired, 29-year-old, white male, replete with cool glasses and a goatee, and pronounced him the face of the emerging church. “This guy is a great representative of the future of American Christianity.” I cringed. In terms of the public face of the emerging church, white males dominated. It seemed like the same old, same old. As per the lyrics by The Who: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
Jim Wallis talks with Sen. Elizabeth Warren at Sojourners' Summit for Change in 2015.
Elizabeth Warren is more than just the head of Congress’s panel reviewing the bank bailout (officially, the Troubled Asset Relief Program). Along with being a Harvard Law professor, she’s also a plain-spoken and passionate advocate for everyday people who is deeply motivated by her Oklahoma Methodist upbringing, as she described in an interview with Sojourners editor-in-chief Jim Wallis and assistant editor Jeannie Choi this February.
Wallis: Particularly for people of faith and conscience, what’s at stake in the battle over financial regulation that we’re in now?
Warren: Our future is at stake, and the future of our children. The story works this way: We had a boom-and-bust economy from 1794 until 1930. Our young nation would lurch from moments of great prosperity to moments of economic panic. Coming out of the 1930s, our leaders crafted a set of basic rules that put fairness into the marketplace: FDIC insurance that made it safe to put money in banks; Glass-Steagall, that said banks that take deposits cannot go out and speculate with your money; some honesty rules for Wall Street through the SEC. Those rules brought us 50 years of economic security and prosperity.
By the 1980s, some of those were outmoded—but instead of trying to think through what kind of rules we need to create a fair marketplace, we just began to throw the rules out. The credit marketplace became a lawless arena.
The urgent call for humane and comprehensive change.
Focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism.
The moral imperatives for change.
elwynn / Shutterstock
AFTER MORE THAN two decades of being married, birthing and adopting children, and teaching two college sexuality courses, I have come to the not-terribly-startling conclusion that I’m rather fond of sex. I delight in talking about sexuality, engaging sexually with my spouse, reading about sexuality, and walking alongside students as they come to grips with their own sexual passions and convictions.
I begin here because Christians have only recently emerged from a somewhat anti-sexual period in church history in which the words “sex” and “sin” have been so closely united in Christian thinking that many of the faithful regard them as synonymous.
This sex-negativity has deep roots, origins that begin with several early church scholars, who saw humans as divided beings consisting of a spiritual part that was good (the mind or soul) and a physical part (the body) that was bad. Such dualism also went hand in glove with the denigration of women, who were seen as more bodily because they became pregnant, lactated, menstruated, and otherwise needed to be more aware of their bodily nature.
During the patristic period and early Middle Ages, sexuality increasingly was perceived as problematic. This is especially clear in the requirements prescribed for various sins in the late medieval English penitentials. The penitentials prescribe 10 years of penance for coitus interruptus and lifelong penance for oral sex. But the same guidelines require only seven years of penance for premeditated murder. Hmm—something seems amiss.
Yet our sacred text is filled with stories about sexuality. Occasionally when people are trying to ban books from public classrooms, someone reminds school officials how much sex is in the Bible: foreplay, adulterous affairs, polygamy, sexy descriptions of lovers’ bodies, heterosexual and homosexual rapes, sexual frolicking, and concern about sacred temple sex in the surrounding culture.
In more than just biblical ways, our spirituality and sexuality are deeply intertwined. Theologically speaking, human sexuality is “most fundamentally the divine invitation to find our destinies not in loneliness but in deep connection,” write James B. Nelson and Sandra P. Longfellow. That yearning for connection is expressed not just genitally but with our whole selves, with intellectual and emotional passion. We need other people, and are drawn to them, just as we are drawn to God.
For the church, the recent recognition that sexuality and spirituality are intertwined, and that the biblical text is not afraid to talk openly about sexuality, has been life-giving.
But while these insights have been a breath of fresh air, sometimes they also have encouraged a certain naiveté or excessive optimism about our sexual selves.
Somewhere between the earlier demonization of sexuality and our current movement toward celebrating something passing itself off as “sexual freedom” must be a healthy balance, a middle way—no, a higher way. That higher, redemptive way must be informed by both the positive affirmation of sexuality as God’s good gift, on the one hand, and on the other hand our capacity for the sexual exploitation of each other.
Perhaps what we ought to call for, then, is a countercultural way of living, not like the sexually repressive way of previous decades but one with an open, positive view toward sexuality—and a clear witness against the abuses of this remarkable gift of God. I want to very tentatively propose some of what this might look like: a redemptive sexual counterculture, a way to both love sexuality and live faithfully.
Black athletes have shown the way for sports activism. An interview with Harry Edwards.
Athletes have long flexed their muscles against racism, sexism, and other forms of injustice.
Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, speaks truth to power with silliness, outrage, and a whole lotta laughs. But is he a prophet?
A promising new movement leaves the bumper-sticker platitudes behind and offers the potential to actually reduce abortion.
Whether it's the South Bronx or rural North Carolina, visionary activist Majora Carter argues that cleaning up our act is good for us -- and the economy.
A growing number of Nashville-based Christian musicians are discovering that their faith compels them to play and work for social change.