Some months ago, a member of the Christians for LGBTI+ Equality Facebook group asked what books might be read by someone looking for a more radical theological foundation for faith for those of us seeking radical inclusion, the radical transformation of Christian teaching and practice about sexuality and gender. The first book I would recommend is Richard Holloway’s Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe. This week I’ve been reading another book I’d recommend: A Bigger Table, Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community by John Pavlovitz is an American pastor, writer and activist committed to equality, diversity and justice.
Pavlovitz invites people to envision a church that is big enough by holding up a mirror to the contemporary church on issues including LGBTIQ inclusion, gender equality, racial tensions, global concerns and theological shifts. We are faced with a number of challenging realities at the moment, national and global, from the after effects of Brexit to the realities of the climate crisis and the Covid 19 pandemic. Dealing with LLF and the Church of England’s inability to allow LGBTIQ+ people to determine our own agenda and develop the space that I, for one, expect the Church to create for us, adds to the emotional and psychological disturbance. I find John Pavlovitz’s account of his own transforming journey to recognition that LGBTIQ+ people also require equality in Church and Kingdom a restorative stimulus to faith in my own radical vision.
Maybe the difference between the Church you dream of and the one you’re experiencing takes its toll. Maybe you sense that something has to give, and you’re just waiting for it all to hit the fan. The more time unfolds, the more you see, the more reality you uncover whether or not you want to. As a pastor, the more burdened for the marginalised and the more outspoken I became, the greater dissonance I felt in the traditional Church, and the more isolated I grew. I felt the space I was expected to occupy as a card-carrying Christian more and more ill-fitting, ever more constraining, ever more toxic to my spirit. The chasm between my outer and inner selves widened as I tried to balance pastoral expectations and the actual condition of my heart. When the duplicity within us becomes too great, we soon discover the cracks getting bigger, and we eventually find ourselves in faith crisis.
John Pavlovitz decided he needed to start looking for life again.
I decided I could either wallow in the rejection and hopelessness which really wanted to have their faith with me or do what I’d been doing since this faith journey began: trusting that God is, that God is good, and that loving people will lead me to where I need to be without knowing it. I started to rest in these things in a way I hadn’t had to in a while. Instead of seeing the moment with dread, I chose to look with expectancy. I saw the gifts I’d been given. I could be more honest than I’d ever been about what I believe and don’t believe and be OK with all of it again. I could decide whether I still considered myself a Christian and if the Church was a place I ever wanted to return to.
Over the course of the next few days gravity began to loosen its grip on my spirit. I started to feel lighter. I began to feel less like I was falling and more like I was flying. This is so many people’s faith story: the realisation that once you’ve gotten some space between yourself and the Church, the landscape becomes wider, you feel untethered.
When the conflicts in our spiritual journey become too profound, something eventually has to give. There is often a steep price to pay to be the most authentic version of ourselves. The prophets and the disciples and the early Christians understood this, but we’ve been conditioned to believe we can have our religious convictions with little or no daily alteration to our daily existence. But the truth is, real spiritual experience is usually costly. Many followers of Jesus end up learning this not from the world outside the Church but from the faith tradition itself. We end up choosing Jesus and losing our religion: finding proximity to him creates distance from others. If you seek to expand the table, you’re going to find yourself in a tough spot. The truth might just make you the odd person out, it might cause a schism in your small group, it might fracture your friendships. But so often, these traumatic breaks allow you the necessary time and space to breathe, to see the wide expanse laid out in front of you, to listen again for the voice of God, and to run (or at least limp) towards it.
Excerpts from Pavolvitz, J,.2020, A Bigger Table, Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community, Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox Press
Holloway, R., 2020, Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe, Edinburgh, Canongate Books Ltd