Emily M. D. Scott, a Lutheran pastor fresh out of Yale Divinity School who planted an unusual church in Brooklyn, has written a memoir of those years,
For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World. Some of it, I liked. Some, not so much. First, the positive.
Scott's church, St. Lydia's Dinner Church, featured some elements of traditional worship, but centered around a full meal. From the start it was a welcoming place, affirming homosexuals and welcoming people who have been rejected from other churches. I love the sense of community the church built. Anyone who has been to church knows how easily one can slip in and out without ever having a conversation or anyone knowing you were there. But around a dinner table, you can't hide. Scott has since left the church and is on a mission, in part, to present this model to others. Besides the dinner/worship model, Scott was deliberate about forming relationships in her economically and racially diverse neighborhood. I was reminded of the line, If your church disappeared from your neighborhood, would anyone notice? It doesn't sound like her church ever got very large, but they were active in the neighborhood and committed to reaching beyond the church walls to work for positive change. The section regarding the travails the neighborhood experiences after Hurricane Sandy are gripping, as she viscerally calls out for justice and relief for her neighbors. Her work in building community and working for the community is admirable and can provide a model for church planters of all theological stripes.
Speaking of theological stripes, as you might guess from a Yale educated, gay-affirming, female pastor, Scott is out on the liberal end of the evangelical spectrum. Her focus seemed to be less on the Holy Trinity and more on the liberal trinity: race, sexuality, and social justice. In this short book there is not room to develop a whole theology, but the signs are clear on that note. In terms of her personal ethics, she does us a service by revealing with refreshing honesty her rejection of traditional biblical norms. She says she likes to "get drunk and make out at parties and on street corners," and then after a fling with a man she met while she was on vacation, she wrote, "Though two thousand years of church teachings imply that what we've done is wrong, I know in the deepest hollow of my gut, the place from which God so often speaks to me, that it is good." As the song says, "If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right." Given the choice between our guts and two thousand years of church teaching and a clear biblical message, most Christians would agree that going with the gut is a mistake. . . .
Now, I know there are plenty of social justice, urban ministry, racial reconciliation pastors and leaders who push the traditional church to slough off teachings that have led to injustice and corrupt the gospel, but who are solidly orthodox in their theology and ethics, both social and personal. I have met them, have read their books, have been in their churches. Scott is not one of those people. She revels in her rejection of tradition, embraces the ethics of sexual liberation, and seems to place hope in social justice above hope in Christ. She writes in the long tradition of social gospel preachers and demonstrates the tendency many in that tradition have of moving away from biblical Christianity toward a social, humanistic vision, neglecting the heart of the Gospel, the work of Christ on the cross. In spite of her liberalism, I am encouraged and inspired by her work to draw people into community with each other, and hope that they, in turn, are drawn into fellowship with the living Christ.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!
