true confession
some time ago, i posted a link to one of dr. james' posts about reconciliation through confession. i asked people to envision what this might look like in seattle. dr. james lives in the town next to the infamous salem, ma, so confessing to witches was the proper confession for his context. what about seattle though? sure, we could confess to witches, and maybe we should, but my friend marilyn and i were talking yesterday and thought that the homosexual population in capitol hill might be a better fit.
i'm too busy to start dreaming about this until january. but, please start thinking about what that would look like.
* what community would the confessors come from?
* what would we confess?
* how do we bring sincerity to this rather than making something contrived?
* should we first study the history of the issue in capitol hill?
* what would something like this mean for our lives?
* how would we incarnate God in this?
* can we see God incarnated in those we confess to?
for james, kellie and jeff (not gentry - the one who was there), what do you think of this? for anyone from beverly or salem, what would be your wisdom in this regard?
3 comments:
Hey there,
I'd say that it is probably good to understand that we didn't select a target audience for the booth. I know there are many who have cited reference to our confessional booth, noting that we set it up specifically for the witches and pagans living in Salem. Well, it wasn't really set up with them specifically in mind, though we hoped they would take the opportunity to step in. Really, we just set up the both hoping that anyone and everyone would partake.
My advice would be just to set it up in an area that could really find healing from hearing a confession from the church. If that means setting it up in a predominantly gay community, then i say go for it. When someone steps in, be sure to offer a confession for the many sins of the church as a whole, not simply an exclusive confession for their condemnation of homosexuals, but certainly emphasize this point to a person of this orientation who might step in.
You might say something along the lines of, "We apologize on behalf of the church for imposing a Christian standard of living upon you who may not have ever made a decision to follow Christ. We recognize as followers of Jesus that we are called to live in either monogamous heterosexual marriages, or in abstinence, though truly we can't expect others who don't follow Jesus to live according to these principles. And we apologize for any form of condemnation you may have received on behalf of the church."
My confession usually began with a greater overview of the church's long history of violence, and then moved more toward specifics. For example:
"We recognize that the church has a long history of violence, thus we'd like to take an opportunity to confess...
-The Crusades
-Inquisition
-Witch Trials
-Genocide of the Native Americans under "Manifest Destiny"
-Slavery and subjugation of African Americans
-Current issues in violence, Abortion clinic bombers, Church abuse scandal, etc...
after this there is room for *neglect of the poor *church's mixing into politics *church's siding with big business and neglecting the care of the environment, etc...
Does this help? Over all know that there was no one target audience in mind; just a recognition that many have been wounded by the church's actions.
I will begin to dream with you, Becky, about what this beauty could look like...
thanks james. that's important.
i still think capitol hill is probably the best place in seattle, but we can/will do it in a much more open way.
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