jonathan stegall

Recently, I’ve been reading Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change.

I have also read The Secret Message of Jesus, which is meant to be read as a companion volume. If you have not read The Secret Message of Jesus, feel encouraged to click the link and pick it up, as it is on sale for $6.99 at Amazon.

In any case, as I have been reading Everything Must Change, I have found much to be challenged by, to remember, to share with others, and to allow Jesus to shape my life by. Most of the things that he presents are at least familiar to me, if not things that I’ve thought, prayed, discussed, taught, been taught, and been convicted by. Often, though, he expresses these things in ways that I have thought but not expressed, or have forgotten, or particularly in ways that bring up new implications for my life.

As an aside, there is a review of this book that Jonny Baker wrote several months ago, and it is worth reading. Jonny Baker is one of the people that is most aware of what God is doing in Western culture, and he has a brilliant mind and spirit. The post indicates that much of the thinking is already established in the U.K., although it is certainly radical in the United States. Brian McLaren has an insightful comment on the post, as well.

The strength of this book lies in the insights that it presents into what powers the world, especially America and those who are impacted by the American Empire, and in the insights that it presents into what Jesus has to say to that power. The “framing story” that Jesus offers really can and should change everything, in my life and your life and in the ways we interact with the world around us.

There are countless examples and quotations (and misquotations) floating around on the internet, and a quick search will bring up many of them. But there are a few things that have really shaken me, and inspired my imagination.

Communism, [Rene Padilla] says, specialized in distribution but failed at production. As a result, it ended up doing a great job of distributing poverty evenly. Capitalism, he says, was excellent at production but weak at distribution. As a result, it ended up rewarding the wealthy with obscene amounts of wealth while the poor suffered on in horrible degradation and indignity…

The twenty-first century began in the aftermath of the defeat of Marxism. The story of the coming century will likely be the story of whether a sustainable form of capitalism can be saved from theocapitalism [the religion-like seeking of prosperity], or whether unrestrained theocapitalism will result in such gross inequity between rich and poor that violence and counterviolence will bring civilization to a standstill, or perhaps worse.

There is an amazing amount of depth in that paragraph. and it helps introduce the “suicide machine” and its systems that this book is attempting to deconstruct. Certainly it is not an optimistic statement, but the book is constantly balancing it with statements like this:

If we believe, the decadent and self-indulgent West can be converted from overconsumers to creative stewards, from empire builders to community builders, from sex-obsessed and self-indulgent couch potatoes to people like Graciela, Luiz, and Leticia and their family - who along the way through their life, discover a magnificent vision and a sacred mission that give their lives unimagined meaning.

And this is the kind of statement that challenges everything about the way I live, and inspires my visions about the way I want to live. This is the kind of thing that makes the book a valid challenge to those of us who claim the story of Jesus.

As I’ve said fairly often on this blog, I met Jesus in a Pentecostal church, and went to a Pentecostal college for one of the degrees I earned. One of the really common parts of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements is revival. Seeking revival, predicting revival, announcing revival, and any number of other things.

What is revival?

The interesting thing is that there are as many definitions of what revival is as there are ways of looking for and identifying it. The Old Testament sees (thematically and linguistically) revival as restoring something to life - whether it is a person’s physical life, spiritual life, or the relationship of Israel to Yahweh.

The New Testament uses a word that is often translated as stirring up, or kindling (like a fire), and can also be translated as revival. So, a follower of Jesus can stir up the Spirit within her, and she is revived in this way.

Interestingly, nowhere does Scripture refer to revival as an event. It doesn’t speak of evangelists, or crusades, or altar calls, or anything else that we typically associate with it in modern, Western Christianity. Evangelists and altar calls and nightly meetings are not necessarily excluded from what revival is, but neither are they necessary.

In church history, revival typically comes when the church is at a low point, and a person or group of people begins to stir up the flame, and seek life in the Spirit. In some way, usually a way that is entirely unexpected, God responds.

Examples of this include the various monastic movements (especially the life and effects of St. Francis), the Protestant Reformation (especially the Anabaptists), the Methodist movement, several Great Awakenings, the birth of the Pentecostal movement in Wales and Los Angeles in the early 20th century, and the charismatic movement (and alongside it, the Jesus Movement) across mainline and evangelical denominations in the mid 20th century.

All of these examples, at their beginning at least, had two parts: personal and social. Many of the followers of Jesus in these movements saw visions, dreams, and had powerful encounters with the Spirit. They also experienced a renewal of desire to share their experiences with others, and started innovative churches and ministries, helped the poor and the outcast, and especially in the case of Azusa Street in Los Angeles, they saw that “the color line was washed away in the blood.”

Current revival issues

In the mid to late 20th century up to the present, the term revival has come to mean a lot less, and also a lot more. Now, it refers to a series of meetings with a guest preacher. Nothing really has to change at all, either inwardly or outwardly. If something is expected to change, usually it is narrowed down to physical healing.

There are still people who talk about revival in a more biblical sense. Graham Cooke is one of these, and defines revival as the restoration of the church’s passion for people who are far from God. Then, he sees a stage of reformation, where the effect of that passion goes out into society and changes people. Changes society, and influences it with the kingdom of God. And this, of course, is that second part of social influence.

What’s going on in Lakeland?

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about revival in Lakeland, Florida. Todd Bentley is leading this, and it has moved to the local (regional) airport, where there is not enough space to hold all of the people who want to be there.

I spent just over five years living in Lakeland, long enough to earn a couple of degrees, and earn some extra money to get out of Florida. When I first moved there to attend college, a group of people formed in a small coffeeshop to pray for revival. We wanted to pray for revival among ourselves, in our school, and in Lakeland itself. We kept this up for at least three years, maybe four, and we saw very little effect outside ourselves.

It’s interesting to look at what is happening in Lakeland (people coming from the outside, reports of miraculous things, and renewed and new passion for Jesus) from a distant perspective, and ponder whether or not this is the answer to our prayers. I have come to extreme respect for the wisdom of Robby Mac, and he has a recent post that I think has a very balanced perspective. In essence, he believes that the Spirit is, in fact, at work in Lakeland, but that his work there does not necessitate his approval of the theology or the methodology that is at work there, and it does not mean that people who want to be part of the work of the Spirit need to ignore their own sense of discernment.

And that’s a beautiful thing that I’ve taught, and have observed in my education and in various experiences in pentecost (referring to Pentecostal and charismatic things). God is less interested in perfecting our theology and methodology before he uses us than he is in using us while he changes us. There is great power in grasping that statement.

So, I would love to join some of my friends who are still in Lakeland, and have been to these meetings to see what God is doing. It’s wonderful to see a prayer like that being answered, regardless of how weird the answer is.

Recently, I was shown the website for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which is a soon-to-be released documentary claiming that the “intelligent design” community is a persecuted part of the overall scientific community. In other words, Ben Stein believes that scientists are persecuted because they question Darwinism.

I was reminded of it when I saw AdSense put a link to it in the sidebar of my blog, and I want to look at the issues that are present in this kind of discussion.

The issue with this kind of thing reaches far beyond the useless debate of evolution vs intelligent design (news flash: evolution won). It reaches into how people in the scientific community, as well as the broader culture, view the intelligent design community. By association (for positive or negative), it also reaches into the ways that these communities view Christianity. Granted: not all members of the intelligent design community are Christians, and certainly not all Christians subscribe to the tenets of “intelligent design,” but the stereotype does exist.

It also reaches into how both sides of the issue view biblical theology. How one views the Bible dictates, at least to an extent, what one thinks of “intelligent design,” and of course, how one views “intelligent design” can influence how one views the Bible, and specifically how one perceives a theology of creation.

With all that said, I want to address these issues from my perspective.

Perception of the “Intelligent Design” community

I think it’s really important, when evaluating a claim like the one this movie is making, to honestly look at how the “intelligent design” community is perceived by the rest of the scientific community. On a large scale, the “intelligent design” community is seen as trying to bring religion into science. They are seen as trying to push religion onto children in schools, into the court systems, and further into the political structure of the country.

Whether this perception is correct or not for everyone who believes in this way of looking at the universe is really not relevant. It is certainly not the case for everyone in the community, but I think it certainly is the case for some. The scientific community as a whole, when it rejects the “intelligent design” community, may be employing prejudices of its own because of what it has witnessed, but because of vocal voices it is justifiable, even though it’s not desirable.

It is very similar to the perception many people have that American evangelicals are trying to combine the church and the state in a great big conservative, pro-war, pro-rich, pro-American Empire. There are vocal voices out there who make it seem that way. Until we prove, on a large scale, that evangelicalism is not a poster for the Republican Party, people will have a justifiable (though, horriby undesirable) case for thinking that we believe it is.

Biblical theology of creation

For many years, conservative and fundamentalist Christians have dug in their heels and fought a losing battle against most of the scientific world, trying to justify their interpretation of the biblical creation narrative: namely, that God created the world in six days. Often, the belief goes something like this: “If we give in to the liberals on literal creationism, it’s a slippery slope to denying the deity of Jesus.”

Certainly, if this was a valid statement we would have cause for concern. But the issue is, it’s not a valid concern at all. Scripture is not interested in being a science book. It is a theological statement, and it is not interested in explaining the details of creation.

Viewing the creation story in Genesis in this way takes the view that the author was not interested in a literal chronology of events, but in presenting the themes and issues that God was addressing, and who in fact God is, especially in contrast with other Near Eastern creation stories that have similar literary structures. Thus, the structure is very similar, but the means, and the reasons, for what is occurring are very different.

For more on this, consider the Genesis chapter of Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology, which goes into a good amount of depth on this issue, and others.

Effects of a biblical theology of creation

There is a lot of good in this view of creation, aside from the fact that it appears to be much more faithful to ancient Near Eastern culture. It is also much more faithful to postmodern Western culture. It allows for creativity, mystery, and a poetic structure to what is going on. Postmoderns are not opposed to this kind of thing, and are often able to find great beauty and truth there.

In addition to this, it allows us to get past the useless debates against the scientific world, and the horrible effects they have on how people view Christianity. Evolution is all but proven beyond doubt, and while it is not an exhaustive explanation of everything, in all likelihood it will only be proven more and more as science advances.

When we are faithful to the literary nature of scripture, we have not surrendered to any kind of slippery slope. We are being faithful to the people that, we believe, were used by God to record his interactions with the world. We can express his nature in a way that transcends the Enlightenment mindset, and this is a good thing.

As I’ve said, I have been reading unChristian, written by David Kinnaman of the Barna Group. I just finished it, and want to look at it as a whole.

First of all, I highly recommend the book. It’s worth reading, regardless of one’s situation, knowledgebase, outlook, etc. At Revolution, various people in leadership decided to read it, as we deal on an immediate and intentional basis with the opinions that outsiders to the church have of Christianity and of Christians.

The book’s audience

Second of all, once one decides to read the book it’s a really good thing to know who its audience is expected to be. It is written, mainly but not exclusively, with people that are already evangelical Christians, and most likely not part of the Mosaic or Buster generations.

With that being said, it is not really written to people who are well-acquainted with what is going on between the church and culture in our time. It has much to say to them, but much of it will be stuff that is already known.

The book’s value

I feel like people in the target audience could be shaken by this book, and that they should be shaken by this kind of information. I think it could serve as a bold call to repentance and change in the church.

However, anyone who reads it can and should get a lot out of it. There are great stories, there is great information, and there is a powerful heart being expressed. Consider the following:

We don’t please him [God] by pretending to be perfect or by taking offense at outsiders; we please him by making Jesus real to people, even those that don’t like us. This is how we start to shift way from unChristian faith. We halt our vain efforts to preserve self-image and start trying to be agents of restoration through self-sacrifice and in blessing the lives of outsiders. This is what pleases God.

This is a gripping statement, regardless of one’s current position, and for me it really helps sum up the value and the point of the book. It convicts and inspires me just as much as it should convict and inspire the pastor of a suburban, 100+ year old church.

In evangelical Christianity, there is a concept that was fairly common during the 20th century called the “Roman Road.” Essentially, a Christian who is speaking to someone (who may be) far from God will present several single verses from the book of Romans, in an attempt to show the hearer several points about God, and about him or herself. It attempts to show:

1. God’s creation as evidence
2. universal human sin
3. the death of Christ to address human sin
4. the need to believe in one’s heart, and confess with one’s mouth, the person of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead

Common usage

If the hearer assents to these things, typically the speaker will lead in “the Sinner’s Prayer,” in which the hearer will tell God about his or her new belief in the above points, and ask for forgiveness of sin.

This technique has been very common in certain denominations, and in certain methods of evangelism by those denominations, including youth ministry, door-to-door ministry, and public “street ministry.” Its effectiveness over the last century (roughly) is debatable.

Issues

There are a number of issues with trying to reach people this way, both theological and methodological. In method, obviously the main issue is that it doesn’t work very well. It depends entirely on a conversation that occurs without nuance. It depends on the hearer accepting every point in succession.

And, of course, it typically depends on a lack of relationship. Not necessarily a lack of caring, because many people who have used this method do actually care about people. But having a relationship with someone makes an actual conversation about spiritual things move in a different way. They just don’t follow that kind of process.

Theologically, it devalues the context of what is going on in Romans. Romans is an amazing book. In various times in church history when the established church has entirely lost its way, revolutionaries (Martin Luther, Karl Barth, etc.) have re-discovered Romans and the message of the immanent grace of God.

But Romans is not written to people that don’t know God. It’s not written to people that are not interested in whether he is there, or what he has to say. It’s written to people that are already following Jesus. It’s written to teach them about the nature of the God they have met.

Consider the issue that that raises. For example, if someone tries to lead me through a succession of the platforms of the Republican Party, but I’m a liberal Australian, is that going to have any relevance to me? More unfamiliar still, what if a conservative Australian wanted to explain their platforms to me? Like most Americans, I don’t even know the names of Australia’s political parties (now that I mention it, I’ll have to go look it up). People who get the Roman Road treatment probably don’t agree with our theology. They won’t care about our platforms.

I’ve been reading unChristian, which of course does look at the methods we use to communicate God to people. It recounts the effects that our methods have on people through large amounts of data. These methods include the Roman Road, as well as any number of other things, and they include the way we interact with people on a normal basis as well. These things don’t work. They come across as judgmental, shallow, and irrelevant, or worse. They make people feel that Christianity does not care about them, and that it just wants them to agree with it.

We are not known by our love, and because we are not known by our love we are missing the point.

From Emerging Pentecostals:

…a conversation about emergence within a pentecostal framework would be helped greatly if we took some time to share our stories of emergence.

This is a wonderful idea, and I want to be a part of it. Thus, consider this my story of emergence, or of how I came to be involved with both the pentecostal church and what is commonly called the emerging church.

I met Jesus when I was just shy of fifteen years old, and met him through what you could call a dramatic encounter that took place in an Assembly of God church in Salisbury, North Carolina. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be a part of the supernatural actions of God in the world. I wanted to be close to him in tangible ways, and I wanted to bring others to be close to him as well.

As my faith developed, I began to grow in some very specific ways that together have shaped the person I am now, almost ten years later. First, I began to seek out how I, specifically, should serve Jesus with my life. I looked into being a pastor, a missionary to an obscure country, and a number of other things, because I felt strongly that I was called to reach out to people that were far from God.

Finally, I found confirmation in the idea that I was called to reach the outcasts of our own society. The people who did not fit in with the traditional church, whether because the church rejected them, because they rejected the church, or both. This manifests itself in more ways today than it did ten years ago. At the time, most of this kind of ministry was happening in the various underground subcultures, and it still is. But now, it has moved significantly further into the mainstream with organizations like Emergent Village. In any case, my heart was inextricably linked to the underground, and it remains so now.

As I began to learn about this calling, I also began to learn that I had a passion for being at the cutting edge of whatever I could. I can still remember a message I heard that described the church of today as the kind of organization that would build a church at the site where Jesus performed some great feat, rather than following him to see what he would do next. I passionately want to be involved in the current mission of God in the world. I don’t want to be where God was five years ago. I want to know where his heart is today.

In addition to, and as part of, these previous things, I began to have a deep desire to communicate with love, grace, and power to people who did not yet know Jesus, that they might see him as he really is and give consideration to the kind of influence he would like to have on their lives.

These areas have been molded and shaped through education, experience, prayer, thought, and conversation over the last several years, but at their core they remain the same, and they are derived from a desire to live in intimacy with Jesus, thus my involvement with the pentecostal and charismatic church. I am well aware of the shortcomings of the movement, and at this point I identify far more closely with the term Post-Charismatic than with pentecostal or charismatic, but I am also aware that there is much good in the movement.

As for my involvement with the emerging church, it began through my desire to be a voice to the underground. For most of my life, I have fit with the underground, and I’m comfortable with this. I feel at home there. It’s natural that I would want to share what I believe is commonly hidden about Jesus from these unique people.

As I’ve said before, I have been blessed to be involved with the Underground Railroad and learn from and be in community with the wonderful ministries that are part of it. Many of these ministries have been around for decades, and have been doing the kind of ministry that is now known as “emergent” for longer than I have been alive.

Thus, I have come into the emerging church, and thus into Emergent itself, from what you might call a back door. I have learned ministry by grace, unconditional acceptance, and the power of authenticity from the underground, and have sought to learn how it fits with my personal theology, my personal experiences, and my personal areas of calling. Many other leaders of the emerging church, including Andrew Jones, also came to be involved in similar ways.

I feel that this is one of the most valuable facets of the emerging church and the Emergent conversation: that people who spend their lives reaching out to the darkest corners of western society can come together with people who study postmodernism in universities or painting in art schools, with people who understand that colonialism is dead and its obituary is the power of the non-Western world, with those who do research on the effectiveness of modern Christianity in the Western world, and with those who simply feel like something is missing from their normal church experience.

More interesting still, than these examples, is that no one fits into only one of these areas. For example, I have a passion for walking into dark places as a shadow of Jesus, but I also have a ministerial education from a pentecostal university, an art degree from a secular art school, and a weird job history of discussing theology and politics and philosophy for hours at a time while cleaning toilets and mopping floors. Emergence indeed.

Occasionally, things occur to me that are fairly obvious, but have never really hit me before. Today, one of those hit me.

As humans, we are much harder to please than God is. People are finicky, inconsistent, utterly strange creatures, and pleasing all of us with anything at all is entirely impossible. Pleasing even one of us on a consistent basis is incredibly difficult.

The horror of our lives is that we spend them running around in agony, desperately trying to find people who will be pleased with us, desperately trying to appease those who are not pleased with us, and then on top of it all we who believe that God’s opinions of us matter feel like we are an utter disappointment to him.

Imagine that. I spend days, from time to time, in the belief that no one is happy with me. During those days or moments, my emotional well-being is depending on a person, or people, who will probably have a different opinion of me in the next few minutes. And typically, I am one of those people who are blessed (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) with relative indifference toward the opinions and whims of people around me.

Contrast this with the ways that I can be, and already am, pleasing to God. Several months ago, I read TrueFaced, a book that contrasts our constant attempts to force ourselves to please God (which do not please him) with simple, but ruthless, trust in God (which does please him). Part of it says this:

We will never please God through our efforts to become godly. Rather, we will only please God - and become godly - when we trust God.

Really let that sink in for a minute. We will only please God when we trust him. That’s it. It’s that easy. Everything else comes from that.

There doesn’t have to be any more running around in circles between people who are angry with or disappointed in me for all kinds of different reasons. There doesn’t need to be any more constant shame at my failures to live up to the standards I place on myself. There doesn’t need to be any more legalistic bondage under which I place myself in an attempt to appease my creator.

I please him. Right now, I make Jesus happy. I trust in his acceptance and love for me, and that makes me righteous. That puts my character, right now, squarely in the process of being formed into his.

Along with much of the country, I have been aware of the issues surrounding Barack Obama’s former pastor, and his church. Through my education, I have at least a decent understanding of liberation theology (in various forms). I resonate very strongly with a lot of the beliefs that are common to this kind of theology.

However, I do feel that many of its proponents have missed out on actually encountering the risen Christ, through only emphasizing the solidarity that God has with the poor and suffering. Of course, as I have said before, evangelicals are at least as guilty on the other side, often only emphasizing personal spirituality.

In any case, liberation theology grasps powerful truths, and it can have a powerful voice in speaking to those who are in power. I’ll go ahead and say this: I don’t believe Jeremiah Wright was wrong in the statements we’ve all been hearing. Certainly, God stands against the many injustices that stain the hands of the United States, just like he was against the many injustices that stained the hands of ancient Israel. Certainly, the injustices he mentions are very real, and there are other injustices that could be added.

Even though I agree with many of the things Wright says, I have a vast amount of respect for the way Barack Obama addressed the issue and his disagreements with Wright in his speech yesterday.

While the speech is over 30 minutes long, it is entirely worth watching, as it is easily the most significant speech addressing issues of race and racism that a public figure of his caliber has made in my lifetime in the United States. In stating his disagreement with the statements of his former pastor, and yet also stating his strong support of his ministry, he was able to involve and challenge all of us to really examine the issues that are at hand.

Jim Walls, who wrote God’s Politics, recently released The Great Awakening. Along with the book’s release, he is traveling around the country on The Great Awakening Tour.
The event is described like this:

“What would it take to end extreme poverty, to address climate change, to create peace?

For too long, a narrow religious agenda has been used like a wedge to divide people. But a wider and deeper vision of faith and values is emerging. It’s a renewal of faith – a great awakening – that combines personal faith with social justice. A new social movement is on the rise. The Great Awakening is upon us. “

From time to time, Sojourners, Jim Wallis’ organization, seems a bit naive with the way it wants faith to impact politics. Some of this is the language that is used to describe things, and some of it is probably what is actually being expressed.

But with things like this book, and the tour accompanying it, they really perceive something that is happening, and the potential for growth to happen, in the way that faith relates to politics in the United States. A recent blog post from Jim Wallis says this:

This doesn’t mean young evangelicals are automatically becoming Democrats (and I don’t think they should). It does mean that their agenda is broader and deeper, no longer beholden to a single partisan ideology – more concerned with 30,000 children dying daily of poverty and disease than with gay marriage amendments in Ohio.

Theologically, these 20-somethings are abandoning a worldview that reduces the gospel of Jesus Christ to an afterlife-oriented, fire-insurance, salvation pitch. These are Matthew 25, Luke 4, and “Sermon on the Mount” Christians. They really believe that the kingdom of God represents God’s best hopes and dreams for this present age, not only for the life to come.

This goes alongside any number of other things that God is doing in the United States, specifically. He’s doing amazing things in the rest of the world, and it is easy to be discouraged by the situation here in the States. He is asking us to begin to see past our attempts to box in the ways we expect and want him to interact with us. For many years, there have been people at the forefront of new things that he is doing, and I believe that things like this indicate that their message can have an impact.

At Josh Brown’s blog, there is a series of posts that I began to link to yesterday that are challenging some of the common critiques leveled against Emergent (and in this sense, I do mean, at least predominantly, Emergent Village, not the global emerging church).

One of the posts deals with the conception that Emergent consists of white guys, sitting around talking about theology. The post itself is well worth a read, as are the comments. One of the comments, from Julie Clawson, is what I want to look into, at the moment.

Part of it reads like this:

“Nice Christian women” are taught to be polite, respectful, and submissive - very hard things to be if you ever want to get a word in edgewise in a conversation with men.

I saw this firsthand during the first year we led the local Emergent Cohort. The group consisted of mostly younger men and single women (wives never show up, what family shells out babysitting money just so the woman can participate in such things???). The group nearly fell apart after all the women left. They left because they never got a chance to participate in the conversation and constantly received the message that they weren’t wanted. If they tried to speak up, some guy would jump in and talk them down, and as nice Christian women they were “trained” to let that happen. The guys weren’t doing it intentionally or generally even aware of what they were doing, they were just holding a conversation like they had been trained to do.

I feel like there is something deeply significant in that statement, as it pertains to things like Emergent, or theological and church-related discussions in general, and also as it pertains to life in general. At this time in the development of Emergent, many of the people who are attracted to it do have a history of involvement with the evangelical church. For a number of reasons that are related to everything from serious biblical misinterpretation to simple selfishness, evangelicalism has not, especially in the last fifty years, welcomed the voices of women. There is a certain “training” that Julie alludes to that women receive in modern evangelicalism that leads them to be quiet and let themselves be shut out of conversations with men.

As a man who has both formal and informal experience in evangelicalism and training in evangelical ministry, I read this comment and was immediately struck by how true it is. I recognize guilt in myself of shutting women out from conversations, because I have spoken as I learned to speak. I have unintentionally expected women to speak in the same ways that I do, and I have neglected to recognize the differences between the framework that I have been given and the framework that they have been given.

The implications of this thought really hit home when I began to think about my marriage. I recognize guilt in shutting out my wife by expecting her to speak like I do. This occurs in public conversations as well as private ones. She has a longer, and in general far more negative, history with the church in general and evangelicalism in particular than I do, and thus this framework has been drilled into her even more than it has into me, and many times I have failed to recognize this.

I believe that a comment like Julie’s has the potential to teach guys like me how difficult it can be for a woman to get past that framework, and the damage that it can cause. This kind of learning is essential for the development of the Emergent conversation as more than a bunch of white guys discussing theology.