Sheila, my wife, after I had posted my first post asked me what was my goal in this series. What would I like to see happen? Great question. My goal? Well, ultimately it would be great to see David move toward me in our complicated friendship.
Just for the record, I offered to meet with Dave one-on-one twice in our complicated friendship history, back in 2010 I believe it was and in the winter of 2017
after he blocked me as a Facebook friend. He turned me down both times. I recognize the complexity of our estranged relationship and I respect his freedom to turn me down both times.
But I also profoundly believe that friendship-leadership is a better way than the "evangelical us vs them" mutual submission model. I realize now looking back on that first smackdown Dave and I had I was not just resisting the immediate shoehorn pressure of Dave's mutual submission model, I was resisting something deeper: the evangelical us vs them antagonism in ecclesial leadership.
In my previous ecclesial experience going back 27 years, I had seen plenty of evangelical pastors make enemies in the middle of church controversies. I’m sad to say Dave was clearly one of them.
I thought Dave brilliantly identified some dynamics within the evangelical movement that nurture "us vs them" antagonisms. I'm on board with him. But blurbs on the book by Missio Alliance leaders? Dave’s friends? Why weren't there glowing blurbs by Larycia Hawkins? Or Justin Lee? Or Christena Cleveland? Or Brian McLaren? Or Brandan Robertson? You know, part of the “them” that he has been super critical of in his blogs and books nurturing an evangelical us vs them antagonism.
I stated this in my first post and I’ll state it again. It’s not meant to be unkind. It’s just a fact. In the last thirteen years that I have known Dave, he’s one of the biggest proponents for an evangelical Neo-AnaBaptist “us.”
So, I was super curious to see how he was going to help Christians move past the evangelical us vs them antagonism between progressives and evangelicals. Then I sure was disappointed when I didn’t see any blurbs from progressives.
Friendship Beyond the Evangelical Us vs Them
Perhaps one of the most surprising (and provocative!) turns for me in my resistance to Dave's Neo-AnaBaptist mutual submission model eleven years ago was to explore friendship as a path for overcoming hierarchies, alienations, and hostilities.
Rabbi Amy Eilberg has an outstanding reflection of making friends in us vs them antagonism contexts in her book, From Enemy to Friend. Justin Lee's recent book, Talking Across the Divide wonderfully explores this theme. Arthur Brooks' Love Your Enemies is a new book that dives into a complicated subject. And, as I mentioned in my first post, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening) is great contribution from a contemporary political angle. Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse is also an important read in this wisdom in this area.
I discovered friendship-theologians who believed friend-making, friend-keeping was possible in the midst of controversial conflict or mutual hostilities. By friendship-theologians I mean men or women who have written serious reflections on a theology of friendship. Some reflected more on the enemy-turned-friend than others but nevertheless, there was a realism (not romanticism) toward friendship as a redeemed path to know God's friendship presence.
It’s so ironic now eleven years later that Dave blocked me as a Facebook friend two years ago but uses social media to promote his book from an evangelical publisher, The Church of Us vs. Them: Freedom from a Faith That Feeds on Making Enemies
You don’t have to take my word for it but once you get outside the evangelical bubble (and old school evangelical male fragility) you will discover quite a number of theorists who have differences about conflict resolution. That should give you a hint about any evangelical who is trying to put forth a “mutual submission” model as something free from their own ideological commitments.
If the psychology behind his mutual submission mode was the only psychology accessible or available to us, he might be onto something.
But its not. Yet, he gives the impression in this book that only through his theory-practice of mutual submission Christ's presence can be deeply known. So deeply known people arrive at a place that is not a compromise or distant defensiveness but a deeper unity in Christ.
To be clear, I’m not denying that Christians participating in a Neo-Anabaptist community can experience movement from the enemy-making machine of “us vs. them.” But what about the people who don't choose to enter into his Neo-AnaBaptist mutual submission model? What about the people who experience Dave’s model as a part of the enemy-making antagonism?
I am absolutely positive Judith Jordan (psychotherapist), Marilyn Friedman (philosopher), Joan Chittister, Oprah, or Kamala Harris would *not* be attracted to Dave’s mutual submission culture. I am also quite certain that Justin Lee, Brandan Robertson, or Richard Rohr would not be attracted to his mutual submission culture.
These are all people you would not see at the Missio Alliance where Dave spoke on "deep ecclesiology" in the last gathering. These would all be voices Missio Alliance wouldn't welcome with open arms to write blogs.
The more I dived into researching friendship on this particular subject, the more I came to realize there are other life-giving, healthy psychologies out there where Christ can be known in different ecclesial leadership contexts and beyond the walls/boundaries of Missio Alliance’s ecclesiology.
Stay tuned to part three.
