[The second in a series responding to articles posted at The Living Church on the proposed change to the marriage canon in the Anglican Church of Canada to affirm same sex marriage.]
Jeff Boldt’s article, “Plural Pedagogies in the Anglican Church of Canada” is a strange betrayal of the very evangelicalism that Boldt wants to promote. While it is not strange to find an evangelical espousing the procreation argument regarding the purpose of marriage, it is pretty much heretical for an evangelical to identify procreation and the biological family as the prime source of evangelism.
At its best, Boldt’s article is counselling conservative Christians in the Anglican Church of Canada to diversify. Do you feel isolated and marginalized in the silos of Anglicanism? Then find a wider group of friends and allies. There is nothing controversial about this. Folks on both sides of the debates that have come to a head around the upcoming vote on changing the marriage canon have always done this. Just as Proud Anglicans have a natural affinity with LGBTQ+ Lutherans so also are evangelical Anglicans more likely to have fellowship with Pentecostals and Baptists.
Boldt is right:
“The Church of the future is neither Anglican, Presbyterian, Coptic, nor Catholic.”
So why don’t we live into that eschatological future by deepening our ecumenical fellowship?
And Boldt is also right in calling us to ecclesial practices that are alternative to both cheap spiritual consumerism and narrow denominationalism:
“Whatever this alternative is, it must be both genuinely local and ecumenical. How do we live generously at both levels? Is there a way to intentionally live long enough in a single place so that our friendships in and outside of the church cost us something? When do we begin to sacrifice mobility and professional advancement for the sake of this community?”
However, anyone reading Boldt’s article who is on the “progressive” side of the present debates in the Anglican Church would undoubtedly note that there is nothing “generous” about his depiction of fellow Christians (or even his Diocesan Bishop!) who deviate from the conservative and “traditionalist” views of sex, gender and marriage.
Let’s be clear. Boldt is only encouraging an ecumenical generosity in relation to conservatives in other denominational traditions. That is a truncated generosity to say the least. Indeed, his rumination about “alternative episcopal oversight” is born of a fear that conservatives are an oppressed minority and that affirming parishes are “no-go zones” for conservative clergy.
This is just a tad precious from a priest whose own parish is pretty much a no-go zone for LGBTQ+ Christians, especially if they seek the blessing of the church on their covenantal unions.
But hey, Boldt isn’t alone in this. We all choose our friends and our allies. Truth be known, pretty much all of us have borders around our ecumenical generosity.
The deeper problem with Boldt’s article is that it is heretical.
That Boldt assumes the traditionalist view that marriage is a union between one man and one woman for the purposes of procreation is not surprising. That he doesn’t bother to provide any biblical warrant for this position is also not surprising. You’re more likely to hear conservatives quote the Book of Common Prayer on procreative marriage than the Bible because it simply isn’t there in the Bible. Certainly not in the New Testament.
What is shocking and heretical is to hear an evangelical describe the biological family, indeed the act of procreation, as the primary form of evangelism.
Let’s begin with Boldt’s curious contrast between parents and bishops. “Far more people are converted by their parents than by bishops,” he writes. Now apart from the fact that most folks who are cradle Anglicans (or indeed, cradled in any kind of Christian tradition) generally do not describe their faith life in terms of “conversion,” I’m wondering how this notion of the biological family as the prime means of evangelism has any biblical warrant.
Any self-respecting evangelical knows that when we talk about evangelism we are not talking about being “born into” a faith, but hearing and responding to a call to rebirth, to a radical transformation of one’s life, being incorporated into a radically alternative and liberating story about Jesus, the Kingdom and salvation.
So when Boldt writes that, “it is incontestable that when parents do their job, they are effective evangelists,” I have a mixed response. Well, yes, Christian parents do indeed attempt to raise their children to follow Jesus.
And yet, Jesus himself radically redefines the whole notion of the family away from biology and towards the fellowship of those who follow in the Jesus Way.
Wasn’t it Jesus who said,
“Whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister and mother”?
(Mark 3.35, cf. Matt.12.48-49, Lk. 8.19-20)
And didn’t he push it even further when he said,
“For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household”?
And then, just in case we didn’t get it, didn’t he conclude by saying,
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me”?
(Matt. 10.35-38)
In the economy of the Kingdom the biological family is clearly supplanted by a new family of siblings, brothers and sisters in Christ.
Jesus radically redefines kinship relationships.
So, when Boldt writes, “Traditionalists think the Bible does in fact reveal that God has a purpose for genealogy,” one wonders whether he had these texts in mind.
Genealogy is certainly not the prime means of evangelism according to Jesus.
Ask any convert and they’ll tell you how all of this makes total sense. When I decided to follow Jesus as a sixteen year old kid hanging out on Yonge Street in Toronto, I knew that I was being adopted into a new family, with new siblings, a new common story together with a new family meal. No wonder that adoption is a central metaphor for St. Paul’s understanding of the church. (Rom. 8.15, 23; 9.4)
And do you know who understands this dynamic
better than anyone these days?
Folks in the LGBTQ+ community.
The language of “chosen family” is common in this community. While often enough the chosen family of LGBTQ+ siblings is a response to the rejection that many have experienced in their biological families, it doesn’t always mean a rejection of one’s biological family.
Rather, the language of “chosen family” is an acknowledgement that family is bigger than biology.
The church has always known this. Jeff Boldt’s article comes dangerously close to forgetting it.
Boldt writes, “As we all know, the traditional understanding is that the procreative potential of marriage has been ordered by God for the sake of forming children to be wise Christian adults.” Really? I understand that is the traditionalist understanding, but how about a little exegesis to give such a claim at least a semblance of biblical warrant?
Of course, there are all kinds of other offensive failures in Boldt’s article:
- His prioritization of the procreative family amounts to little more than a biological reductionism.
- Such a privileging of the procreative family is offensive and dismissive of adoptive families.
- He simply assumes that same sex marriages have no biological procreation.
And listen to this: “ … who can eliminate the inconvenient and persistent fact of biological families from the life of our parishes? If Anglican churches grow, it’s only because families are doing their jobs.”
What on earth is he talking about?
Who is trying to eliminate biological families from our parishes?
What kind of reactionary fear-mongering is this?
And, if it is true that Anglican churches “only grow” when families are doing their jobs, then Anglican (and pretty much all other traditionally Christian) families are clearly not doing their jobs.
I assume that Boldt has noticed the hemorrhaging
of young adults from the church.
I assume he knows that the “Dones” were all raised in Christian families.
But more devastating is that an evangelical, from Trinity Church Streetsville no less, would think that procreation should be the source of church growth and not evangelism.
Obviously, Boldt hasn’t read the end of Matthew 28, or the beginning of Acts, or paid attention to what happened at Pentecost, or pretty much the whole New Testament.
Boldt is right. “We live in a church of plural, conflicting accounts of the gospel.”
But when he goes on to write,
“The conflict, as I’ve described it, is a gospel issue because it is about the created means by which the gospel is transmitted in time” he has uttered heresy.
The biological family is not the created means by which the gospel is transmitted in time.
The transmission of the gospel is carried out by that new creation called the church. (Eph. 2.11-22; 3.7-11; 4.11-16)
13 Responses to “The Heresy of Procreative Evangelism”
Sherman Hesselgrave
I was aware of the “Nones,” but not of the “Dones.” Ever since I heard a story on NPR years ago about the names of demographic cohorts (Shotguns and pickups, for example), I have been fascinated by the “handles” sociologists come up with.
When I read the Boldt piece, I, too, was repulsed by the claim of genealogical evangelism. I immediately heard ringing in my ears a sermon heard in my youth: “God. Has. No. Grandchildren!”
Pamela Thomson
Thank you Thank you
Yme Woensdregt
Thank you so much for this diet as a single, widowed clergy, I guess I fail Mr. Boldt’s definition of being an effective evangelist, and I need to find me a wife and start populating the church! I love this notion of “chosen family”, and I to have chosen a different kind of family which nurtures and sustains me. By the way, how do we deal with the issue of over populating an earth that can no longer sustain the numbers of people that live here?
Peter Iveson
I get tired of theological arguments over same-sex marriage. Being fruitful and multiplin and the procuration of children is only part of the purpose of marriage
Brian Walsh
Thanks for your comment. From what I can see in the New Testament, procreation has nothing to do with marriage. It may happen, it may not. Rather, if I read Paul right, marriage is for those who can’t keep it in their pants. Or perhaps more positively we could say that marriage is an erotic covenantal relationship.
Matthew Kieswetter
I believe it was Jurgen Moltmann who wrote something along the lines that ever since the Messiah was born, procreation should no longer be seen as a requirement.
Benjymoto
Labelling Jeff’s ideas as “Heresy” makes you Brian appear to be stooping to name calling as a replacement for intelligent discourse.
Brian Walsh
I am sorry that you didn’t find my piece to be an example of intelligent discourse. I thought that I fairly represented Boldt’s argument. Was the employment of the word “heresy” name calling? Well you will have to evaluate that in terms of the argument that I make. If procreational evangelism is something decidedly not taught in the New Testament then doesn’t an argument that says that procreation is “the created means by which the gospel is transmitted in time” heretical? Heresy is a salvation issue. Part of the genius of the evangelical revival movements of the 19th century was precisely the insistence that salvation is not rooted in genealogy or blood lines. You can’t be “born” a Christian. Whether my claim that procreational evangelism is heresy is name calling or a serious charge against a view that has crippled the church during the whole period of Christendom needs to be evaluated by careful biblical reflection. I attempted at least a beginning of such biblical engagement in my article. I note that Boldt engages no biblical texts at all in his essay.
Brian Walsh
Let me also add that I have a more robust answer to the question of whether I am overstating my case with the use of “heresy” at the Living Church site, directly under Jeff Boldt’s article. Chris Seitz also criticized my use of the term and I have given what I hope is a fulsome reply.
https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2019/06/20/plural-pedagogies-in-the-anglican-church-of-canada/
Stephen Martin
Footnote 63 of “This Holy Estate” reads: “John Chrysostom’s “Sermon on Marriage” applies the command to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” within a limited context. “The earth, Chrysostom explains in the fourth century, is full; its population is enough.” But “filling the earth” is qualitative as well as quantitative, “so that the Genesis command ends in ‘dominion.’ To Paul, as Chrysostom reads him, it suggests the qualitative fulfillment of history in the dominion of the Messiah. The command of creation is fulfilled, that is, when the Second Adam fulfills the promise of the first and brings the dominion of God.” Good, Jenkins, Kitteredge, and Rogers, “A View From the Liberals,” cited above, page 69.”
Graham
Brian, I appreciate your criticism of Jeff’s article. You point out some important things to consider. However, it is hasty to declare Jeff Boldt as being heretical and fear mongering. I don’t know if you have spoken with Jeff about all this before publishing this but the way you presented a response to his article appears to be offended and reactionary. It would be wise and respectful to simply ask for clarification on the points you presented rather than trying to silence Jeff’s article by declaring it as heretical.
To me it seems Jeff is trying to argue that the best way to preserve the church and its traditions is to encourage that through families. I don’t disagree with that notion, though I do wonder if the effort to preserving church tradition has too often become more important than discovering and introducing people inside and outside of one’s family to the Truth of what church is actually all about in the first place. Ideally church tradition and the Truth of God would be of the same essence but that is not reality.
Whether the church and it’s traditions are steadfast or deteriorate the Truth that it seeks to realize will always remain. So regardless of how one wants to preserve church tradition, whether it be through evangelism within or outside the family, I believe our greatest efforts should not be focussed on that anyway.
Brian Walsh
Thanks for the comment, Graham. It has been more than a year since I wrote that response to Jeff Boldt’s piece. Was I pushing my rhetoric with the charge of heresy? Perhaps. But I do think that the position that he was promoting was profoundly unbiblical, and very strange to be coming from an evangelical. But for clarification, while I do think that the notion of procreative evangelism is deeply flawed, and perhaps worthy of dropping the “H” word on it, I do not intend to dismiss Rev. Boldt as a heretic.
Fr. Stephen Crawford
It’s true that Jesus sharply limits the role of biological family within the Church that he gathers and sends. However, there are points that indicate something else happening with families in the New Testament as well. I would argue that when Jesus warns that he will divide families and seemingly cast them aside for the sake of the bonds that he is forging by the power of his Spirit, that families undergo a kind of death. The Christian dies to her earthly family (in a sense, at least). But we are right to watch for the possibility of resurrection on the far side of that death.
The NT itself subtly trains us so to hope. The promise of John the Baptist is fulfilled in families when a family’s life is reoriented towards Jesus. While a family may have once been divided over Jesus, when a family unit turns towards Christ together in its integral life, then we should fully expect that the Spirit will keep that ancient promise and “turn the hearts of parents toward their children and the hearts of children to their parents.”
Jesus indicates something like this in Luke 4, during his sermon in Nazareth. He is sent “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” a technical phrase referring to the Jubilee. In other words, the Jubilee commanded for Israel, in which families are restored to their ancestral heritage, foreshadows something of the societal and generational healing that Jesus came to bring.
Even Matthew 28, when Jesus sends out to make disciples of all nations, we shouldn’t jump to imagining a liberal nation, where individuals have freely entered into some kind of social contract. We would do well to consider that the Lord has regard for each nation as the particular nation it is (which is closely related to kinship ties–hence the word “nation”).
Finally, in the Revelation to John we find that the Lamb has purchased for God with his own blood people from every family (or tribe, depending on the translation, though even a tribe might be understood as a vast extended family within the larger nation). Again, we should understand here that the Lord has regard for the particular family within which a person is redeemed, that the person’s family belonging is itself a significant feature of that particular person’s identity which is being resurrected.
This bears out in particular instances. Despite Jesus’s own saying about who his true family is (as though Jesus’s new definition would leave Mary out!), the Scriptures themselves nonetheless offer an extravagant accounting of Mary, especially in Revelation 12 but in other passages, too. That is difficult to understand if family’s are insignificant in the Lord’s eyes, and Mary’s relationship to Jesus might be a particularly striking example of a biological relationship that is completely subordinated to the Lord’s sovereign purposes, so that the biological relationship itself undergoes a kind of resurrection in the process.
But also Andrew and Simon Peter, or James and John. It’s not an accident that John the Baptist is Jesus’s cousin. Throughout the Acts of the Apostles, when someone comes to know Jesus it commonly happens that their entire households are baptized. Yes, James struggled to believe in his brother, but the gift of faith is eventually given (a kind of parable of the larger hope of Israel), along with the oversight of the Jerusalem Church. Further along that line, flesh-and-blood relatives superintend the Church in Jerusalem for the next hundred years, also not by accident. We see that family ties stand out in the New Testament as a channel through which the Lord’s grace invades this world. Something similar continues to happen in other seasons of the Church’s life, though. Think of St. Macrina and her siblings, especially St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Or the holy Martin Family, St. Therese of Lisieux among their issue.
To summarize: all Christians must love Jesus more than anyone else in their lives. As an example, if a woman loves Jesus more than her parents, more than her siblings, more than her husband (if she’s married), even more than her children, the people in her life are liable to resent her for this! According to Jesus, so be it. But loving Jesus more than anyone else will actually deepen her ability to love these others as well. It’s the surprising path by which she’ll become the daughter, the sister, the wife, and the mother that she’s destined to be. That begins to suggest something of the new life that Jesus can breathe into families–and even reorient them, so that families become a source of blessing to people outside their immediate boundaries. Put differently, there’s not room for Jesus’s Kingdom inside our little families, certainly not as they are naturally constituted. But we will be delighted to discover that Jesus’s Kingdom has enough room in IT for our families, if by the Lord’s grace they come to surrender themselves to their Maker.
With all this, I’ll just float the possibility (though I do not know personally) that when Fr. Boldt describes the family as the created means for transmitting the Gospel, the emphasis in that sentence might fall on the word “created,” as opposed to the Church itself, which is something a bit different. Though I think this would still be too narrow: cities and nations are also creatures of the Lord, which when surrendered to Jesus are powerful channels through which the Lord’s grace can flow into people’s lives. But that’s the pattern. The Lord’s plans are not constrained by the state of our families. But when his grace meets us, however his grace meets us, we should hope that it will bring about healing for the life of our family. When that happens, we should expect that an even fuller measure of his gracious presence will be opened to us along with that healing.
This leaves aside the question of celibacy and monastic communities, which perhaps track more closely with the author’s concerns. I’m simply trying to say something about how a natural family can become a powerful sacrament of Jesus’s Trinitarian love. I also leave aside the question of whether this is best described in terms of Evangelism, though my initial thought is that such a claim could be strongly defended.
Grace be with you,
Fr. Stephen