7 Controversial moments as a professor in Biblical Studies.

                        Controversial moments spanning 26 years in college ministry.

1.     I was well into my Ph.D. studies. The title of my dissertation is, A Paradigmatic Analysis of the Question of Authority within Pentecostalism. The year was 1992. The field of my research was the PAOC. After a face-to-face interview with the General Superintendent in which I presented my work and asked for some help and guidance, I received a letter 3 months later from the Superintendent commenting, “After talking it over with the Board of Governors, we appreciate the spirit of what you are trying to do but we request that you no longer proceed.” Not sure what was so troubling but here is a link to my 1995 dissertation. https://www.academia.edu/4422810/Authority_in_Pentecostalism Yes I did finish the dissertation.

2.     January 1995. I started teaching at Eastern Pentecostal Bible College. It was a first year course entitled “Theology II”. The subject was the doctrine of God. In brief God is big we are not. I had two sections in a lecture hall with about 70 students in each section. Each class was a 3-hour block. The two blocks were Tuesday and Thursday.  In my mind, however naïve, there was nothing here that should be controversial. “God in God’s essence is Spirit. God is not literally a man, or a woman I say. God does not have arms, or feet and so forth. These are all technically anthropomorphisms, a way of speaking about God using human imagery, a way of relating or describing the indescribable. God is no more literally a physical man than a physical woman.” “Can someone pray to God as a woman” I was asked. “If you understand we are using metaphors, technically yes,” I answered.

Apparently on Tuesday this did not sit well with some students who alerted other students who would be part of the Thursday class. Come Thursday, I get to this part of the lecture and behold a whole row of students walked out. A whole row going to the bathroom at the same time I thought was strange. No, this was not a bathroom break, rather they went to the head of the Bible Theology department and relayed my heresy.

The response from the department chair was: “If you do not like that, go to the library and prove him wrong.” Nobody came back to me. Welcome to my first year of teaching. I am still amused at my naivete that some would have a problem with this. Lesson learned.

 3. Jump ahead circa 2012. Truth be told this was not a lecture per se that I gave. In charge of Providence University chapels I was contacted by group called New Directions. They were visiting Christian university campuses to engage the conversation can one be a God loving believer and gay at the same time. I checked their references and along with the Academic Dean thought this was a worthwhile event even though we had to hastily throw it together. Unfortunately, I could not attend myself as I was scheduled for a minor surgery on that day.

It was well-attended by students, faculty, and outsiders. It led to an after the fact official response by our department of biblical studies (which included me) a week or two afterwards. But that did little to offset the angry phone calls from a nebulous constituency, which also led to some passionate internal discussions among faculty and staff. Ironically perhaps, it became evident that most students had already moved beyond this subject.

4. 2015 For several years, Providence held a yearly public lecture series in a popular Winnipeg bookstore. It would last 7 weeks. I was on the planning committee and that year my topic was on abortion and why the current pro-choice and pro-life options as typically presented are failed options. I argued among other things that when people talk about pro-life they usually have in mind pro-birth which are two very different things.

Furthermore to be pro-life you must take into consideration, the life of the mother, birth father, the larger family, the potential child and so on. In other words, life also includes those that are breathing on their own now.

As is the case typically in these matters my fiercest opposition came from people who did not attend the lecture but only heard about it. The link below presents an abridged presentation on this topic that I also gave on campus in a yearly forum we called Prov Talks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SksjZQaQY0&t=13s

5. 2016 The following year my presentation for the public forum was titled, “Do Jews, Muslims and Christian pursue the same God?” It was spawned by the controversy at Wheaton college in 2015 regarding Layrisa Hawkins, a tenured political science professor who at Christmas that year wore a hijab in solidarity with rising ethnic tensions against Muslim women in the wake of the San Bernadine mass shooting (Dec. 2015). In addition to the hijab she tweeted that “Jews, Muslims and Christians worship the same God.” The fall out for Hawkins was quick. The provost moved to have her dismissed from the college. Other church leaders such as Franklin Graham wrote in support of the provost. It was described as one of the darkest moments for this historical institution even though the faculty at Wheaton was supportive of Hawkins. In the end Hawkins was reinstated to the faculty and then resigned.

Again, the issue for me is a non-starter. These three religious traditions all share the same root. There is only one God, but does that mean they all worship in the same way? The answer is no. Are some ways inappropriate? I would say yes. To that end, I argue there are many people who self -identify as Christians today but I do not recognize the God they claim to serve. Try reading Tim Alberta’s recently published excellent book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, to get an idea of what I mean.

In the public forum I was delightfully surprised how well it was received.

6. Again this was not a lecture I gave, but in my capacity as a member of the lecture committee at Providence, I invited my good friend David Kennedy, a certified grief counselor and a hospice care worker to come to Providence and speak about dying, and giving a lecture on MAID. It was well received by all those in attendance but again the controversy here was that some faculty would not attend because of the subject matter. To acknowledge death was to give power to Satan.. In defence of the lecturer, I argue that death has always been part of God’s good creation. Death may become something to be feared in the fall but it was not invented in the fall.

7. Several years ago, I was invited along with two other colleagues from a denominational College to speak at a district conference. That year the theme of the annual leadership conference was “Reading the Bible.” On the opening evening, each of us presented our own take on the topic. As for me, I distinguish between two voices in Scripture, namely the priestly and the prophetic which appear throughout the Bible and neither seem to apologize for the presence of the other. The priestly voice is about table manners. We witness this voice in legal, moral and cultic purity codes. Its mantra is, “be holy as God is holy,” (Lev.19.2) where holiness is understood as separation from the profane or the worldly. And what made Israel holy: circumcision, Sabbath adherence, sacrifices, kosher foods, and avoiding people with unclean hands - the stranger. The priestly voice is largely exclusionary concerned with identifying who is “in” and who is “out.” It aligns with the Bible as a closed text, itself bordered by two covers that advertises itself as all one really needs to know in living out the good life - seemingly a small price to be paid for the stability it provides.

But to stop there is to avoid another prevalent voice in Scripture that we might call the “prophetic.” If Genesis 1:1 is priestly, Genesis 1:2 points to the wind/spirit of God sweeping over the waters (Genesis 1.2). Try as we might to harness the enigmatic powers of wind and water, they have a will of their own. The mantra of the prophetic voice might be Luke 6.36 “Be merciful as your father is merciful.” The prophetic has a long history of dancing on the Sabbath, overturning both religious and secular tables of containment, and resisting all attempts at domestication. Its table manners are unpredictable. Here boundaries are meant to be crossed or at least stretched and the Bible as its companion is an inclusionary open book that points the way “not wanting anyone to perish.”[1]

And I concluded, here is the awkward truth of Scripture. Neither voice apologizes for the presence of the other even if sometimes they don’t always seem to play well together. The question is not one of balance, it is of tension. History has long documented the excesses of the prophetic voice when it ignores its priestly counterpart, and it also knows the wounds that can occur when the priestly blocks out the prophetic. It was after all a homeland security version of the priestly tradition that in the end betrayed Jesus. End of lecture.

The next morning was scheduled as a Q and A session based on the previous evening lectures. The first question dealt with homosexuality and the church. While I do not recall the exact question, it was framed as a pastoral question and not a commentary on same-sex relations outside of church parameters.[2] My response was in the form of another question. “Here is a scenario,” I suggested, “a covenantal (married?) lesbian couple knocks on the door of your church. They love Jesus, they love each other, they have two children whom they adore, and they are looking for a home where they can worship God in community. How will you respond as pastor? Will you welcome them and set out four more chairs at the dining table or will you refuse entry? And if you choose the latter option are you still a church?

I don't get invited out much.

[1] As a side, in February 2018 I was asked to give this same presentation as part of a forum sponsored by the Steinbach Neighbours for Community: Promoting Understanding and Acceptance.  I was one of five speakers to explore issues related to the LGBTQ community. Of the 5 speakers two of us were heterosexual in orientation. The irony was I never mentioned the LGBTQ community or any other grouping of people in my address.