Category: For a Public Theology

Every Sunday of the year 2017, preachers have wished for a way to cry out against the foul news of the week, the difficulty being that most of that foul news was coming from the political sphere.  How to preach without being political?  How do we honestly decry what seems to us evil in our politics, without ourselves turning freedom of the pulpit into a political act?

Cry out, we must, lest the preacher ignore the outside world entirely.

But let us make a distinction–there is partisan politics, on the one hand, and the life of the polis (city), on the other.  When party plays a part in our speaking, it is partisan and disqualified from the pulpit.  But if we speak as a citizen about the city, that is public discourse and is permitted in the pulpit.

Much care is needed here, because we seldom sufficiently scrub our partisan feelings out of us, or know if we have really done so.  When we claim to be speaking the truth, it needs to be qualified as “our truth,”  “a truth,” “the truth as we see it.”  But with that proviso, perhaps then we may claim the attention of the public and enter the field.

Except preachers are not speaking to a public.  Our congregations are not the public but a particular audience that calls us to address them under an implied covenant.  In that ritual setting, the captive audience has a right not to be regaled from on high with opinions they cannot escape or rebut.  Given the sacrosanct status of the minister/priest, we must take special care not to abuse the privilege of the pulpit.

But then what of the evil we see all around us?  Do we not name it?  Is not our role the role of the prophet?

Yes, and we must claim it boldly, or betray our calling.  However, let us pronounce not judgments (fallible) but feelings (infallible).  We have a right to express our feelings, indeed we have an obligation to do so.  But they are only relevant when offered as a symptom of the moment’s mania, and offered as the prelude of an approach to scripture, to Christ, to God.

It is an unseemly and grandiose ambition to be a prophet.  Instead, strive to make the moment’s feelings plain–artists seek nothing more–altogether a difficult enough goal.

Male behavior toward women may change significantly in the aftermath of Weinstein’s involuntary “exposure” earlier this year.    2017 will be the year that heterosexual men were “outed.”  At long last, a bright line can now be said to separate men from women, making gratuitous verbalizations and uninvited hands-on contact  very clearly out of bounds, not to mention behaviors that were already illegal like sexual extortion and forcible sex.  Unspoken but clearly on the Jumbotron now are the words: “We all know what you’re doing, so cut it out.”

What an education the male world is getting already–these behaviors fall somewhere along the spectrum of uncool, unethical, and illegal.  Or did men already know this but find it sexually stimulating to cross those lines anyway?  Either, we are on notice.  Cut it out.

But will men be able openly to discuss pre- and post-Weinstein sexual ethics publicly, the way it is occurring, and has occurred for decades (millennia?)?  We never were before.   Talk about self-exposure!

And will college chaplains, or parish ministers and priests, have any way to open such conversations–face to face conversations?  Given the bad history on this subject of religious communities, particularly Christian ones, we don’t start with much credibility.

But if it were possible to bring men into the public domain where everyone else is talking, what a relief that should be to both women–and men.  If men couldn’t help ourselves before, under the daily and hourly pressures of the id, participating in the dialogue should should only aid us to keep in check.

There have been calls for men to have the frank conversations, heretofore unknown, about “the rhinoceros in the basement.”  You know, that creature which we hide away, feeding it secretly, trying to calm it until it just has to be taken out eventually for its “walk.”  The men’s movement was about celebrating male energy, not discussing it.  Drumming not talking.

So here is a challenge for clergy and religious leaders to take up: create public space for this conversation.  The blogosphere (like this one), Facebook, op-ed pieces are not enough.

What might we do to contribute to the advancement of the human race on this issue?  Let me know–I’m looking for ideas.

Sex is always in the news.  How can it not be?  Sex matters to everybody.

Either the lack of it, the ecstasy of it, the pain of it, the surprises of it.  We can’t get enough of sex, either as a newstory or the real thing.

And making love always seems to be making history.  Last year, gay marriage.  This year, trans.  Next year, looks to be the abolition of contraception (I hope not!).

At the same time. making love is always the making of personal history.

Youth is wholly experimental, but youthful sex is not for that reason impermanent. We want so much to get some experience, to find out what it’s all about.  And we do, one way or another.  But, whichever way, it may not be news, but it’s history.

Later love can’t be resisted either.  As Oscar Wilde said, “I can resist anything.  Except temptation!”  We’ve learned some lessons by now.  Starry eyed again and taking a chance on love, we are eager to make some new history.

That’s the beauty of it, that’s the glory of it, that’s the beauty of love.