Dan J. Brennan

A Testimony: Strong Boundaries & Intimate Cross-Gender Friendship

Susanne Osborne, my very close friend and I gave a testimony, a brief story of our friendship in our worship service this morning!  Susanne was at the last Sacred Friendship Gathering and she is coming to Bold Boundaries: Expanding Friendship Between Men and Women in April! This is a taste of what we'll be doing in April. When was the last time you heard a testimony of deep friendship between a married man and a single woman in church?   

Male Evangelical Leaders and the James Knight Syndrome

Christopher Heuertz gives an accurate description of how men and male church leaders address the issues of working in close proximity with attractive women. 

"Rather than teaching self-awareness, I, as a man attracted to women, was taught to avoid the potential of working with women— specifically, though never explicitly stated, attractive women around my age group. This was not so subtly modeled in many of the religious communities I participated in. Almost without exception, the secretaries that pastors or other religious professionals hired were older, and either they were expected to exhibit a certain sense of primness and distance or they were perceived to lack any sort of visible dynamic sexual energy."

Christopher Heuertz, Unexpected Gifts 

Review: Earthen Vessels

Yes, this book is written by a conservative male evangelical.

Matthew Lee Anderson has written Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to Our Faith

My frustration with this book is not that the author intends to write a book on embodiment and sexuality and draws conservative conclusions. There are plenty of Christians who are conservative in their sexuality. 

This book purports to be a book on embodiment and sexuality from a white male evangelical perspective. There is, believe it or not, a need for white male voices on these issues.

My beef with Anderson is what he chooses to address and what he leaves out.

The irony is that he devotes one chapter on “Evangelical Inattention and the Secular Body.”  In this chapter he admits evangelicals have woefully fallen short on engaging in theological embodiment. He seeks to remedy that with this book.

Anderson admits up front this is a large issue and there are areas he can’t explore like the body’s relationship to the arts and neuroscience. I grant the challenge of tackling the vastness of the subject. I understand that an author has to pick and choose.