I have several close friendships with women. Including evangelical women. One of my most cherished friendships is with an evangelical woman who has a PhD in theology. We have had a deep, close friendship for over twelve years. I have another dear friendship with my pastor Juliet Liu. My longest cross-gender friendship is now eighteen years old.
To say I have a passionate interest in the subject would be an understatement.
I know the courage it takes to step out into the front-lines on this subject in the evangelical community. I applaud Bronwyn Lea’s courageous desire to go where no female evangelical leader has gone before: write a full-length book on the subject. Well, Aimee Byrd wrote a book before her. But Lea writes as the first female egalitarian leader to write a book. I hope more egalitarians follow her.
It is music to my soul to read her encouragement to reshape friendship-sexuality boundaries. She writes with post-Freud awareness that we are sexual beings. Following another evangelical author Deb Hirsch, Lea makes a distinction between genital sexuality and social sexuality. Genital being the more narrow expression of sexuality that is for marriage. The social expression is far broader and “lies in the heart of all person-to-person interaction” (24).
It is music to my soul to read an egalitarian write positively about healthy male-female friendships. Lea believes the best way to do this is to see friends through a family lens. Here, she does follow Aimee Byrd. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus is our big brother. Seen through this lens we can “find way to be close without being sexual” (xxiv). That close connection as siblings in Christ means something that is existential, profound and real (49). The implications, she observes, “are staggering, especially for what it means to love one another.” That is indeed music to my soul.
After finishing reading the book, I felt like she and I could wonderfully converse for hours and hours about the subject. It’s something I have had a passionate interest in for years. I know Bronwyn as an online friend, we are acquaintances.
This is all good and beautiful. Now that she has gone this far, why stop here? Why not go farther?
Why not consider friendship as an ethic on its own? Why not consider it has inherent worth and extraordinary beauty to stand on its own two feet with robust boundaries? There is an incredible tribe/community out there that sees Christian friendship as its own powerful practice, ethic, and telos for leadership.
She doesn’t mention Brian Edgar’s book, God is Friendship which is a theology of friendship. Nor does she point us to Drew Hunter’s Made for Friendship. I understand that Lea feels comfortable within an evangelical framework of leadership. But these theological reflections are evangelical! They both carry a LOVE for friendship through a friendship lens.
She also overlooks many Protestant and Catholic thinkers who see friendship as a robust unique ethic. These thinkers point us to a fullness of friendship that doesn’t turn to a family model. They don’t evaluate friendship’s boundaries and trajectories through family boundaries or marital boundaries but on its own biblical and theological boundaries. The biblical writer would tell us in this regard, “Some play at friendship, but a true friend sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). As Drew Hunter comments about the verse, “Family was seen as the tightest relational circle. Yet here a friend breaks inside that family circle and then moves even closer.”
I think approaching Christian friendship on its own healthy terms moves us further toward a theology of cross-gender friendship. There are plenty of evangelicals who have no theology of two cross-gender friends singling each other out to share life together, alone. In other words, a theology of a healthy robust dyad. You know the beautiful pairing of friends we read about in classic children's books. You know like, Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. "If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.” Or, Frog and Toad. "Frog said, 'I wrote Dear Toad. I am glad that you are my best friend. Your best friend. Frog.' 'Oh,' said Toad, 'that makes a very good letter.' Then Frog and Toad went out onto the front porch to wait for the mail. They sat there, feeling happy together."
I would have loved to have seen Lea explore the dyad more. She covers a lot of ground in the book but the dyad would be worthy of a chapter on its own ground. She has a whole chapter on dating. I wished she would have devoted a chapter to the dyad. Many evangelicals feared the dyad before MeToo and ChurchToo. Although she points us to wisdom to flesh out ongoing friendships rather than the "Billy Graham rule" I would have been delighted to have seen a whole chapter toward the dyad. A lot of evangelicals are nervous about the dyad during the MeToo era.
Lea starts her book with this story about a college buddy she hadn't seen in a long time. She sees him on a Sunday morning at church. She tells of the warm hug and then gives us her conscious self-reflection about all the instant sub-culture purity dynamics. You know, like "How long is this hug going to last?" And, "What example is this setting for the students I've just been chatting with, who see me as a leader" Those are all the sub-culture dynamics that play out when a cross-gender friend who is married says to another cross-gender friend, "If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart." Women--especially women happily choosing to be alone with a male friend to nurture a life-giving friendship are subject to a lot of sub-culture dynamics. What's the healthy difference between a romantic couple and two friends who single each other out to share life together with no one else around? I would have enjoyed seeing Lea flesh this out more than what she did.
Can evangelicals move toward a healthy, robust delightful dyad using a family model? Yes, they can. That's the route that paved the way for me. But, once I discovered the tribe/community of thinkers, therapists, spiritual directors that embrace friendship on its own magnificent boundaries, the cross-gender dyad becomes something to enjoy the peak experiences of two friends who love each other and love friendship's fullness. Two friends who want to be there for each other in life's ups and downs. Who end up weathering all kinds of changes and differences and twists and turns and remain a healthy close dyad. That would have been a great chapter for a dyad--exploring the peak experiences two friends can know as a dyad. That kind of missing reflection is one of the reasons why I want to make progress on the book I am writing!
Lea’s book is a beautiful book. I gave it five stars for Amazon. I gladly welcome her to the frontlines of this conversation. I hope it inspires a love for friendship that will help others go farther into Christian friendship.
