Loading ...Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions by Dan Brennan
Can men and women be friends? Beneath the din of louder conversations on sexuality – such as on matters of divorce or homosexuality – this is the question that rings most persistently. And – as in When Harry Met Sally – it’s usually answered in the negative, especially in evangelical circles where ‘avoid all appearances of evil’ is interpreted from pulpits as ‘never be alone with the opposite sex, either.’
And yet cross-gender friendships are here – are we going to fight them or embrace them with the breadth of wisdom and spirituality? Dan Brennan takes a volatile subject and handles it provocatively, yet pastorally. Even if readers don’t agree with every conclusion, this book dares to be read.
The Buzz:
“Brennan’s treatment of the subject matter is robust, thorough, balanced, well-researched, and thought-provoking. Brennan offers a biblical treatment for his thesis, which I think is most important.” –John Fortin, Catholic philosopher
“Dan Brennan provides a provocative path to rethinking our sexuality and cross-gender friendships. It may be that sex scandals and broken marriages among Christians is the result of a famine in cross-gender friendships. With sensitivity and insight Brennan explores an often uncomfortable topic and what may be the Achilies’ heel of Christian relationships. A must read for people seeking to build authentic Christian community.” Lilian Calles Barger, author, Eve’s Revenge
“Dan Brennan opens a spiritual treasure chest and peers into an untapped resource that has been largely hidden from our sight: the gift of agape between the sexes. In Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, he encourages Christians, with tenderness and thorough scholarship, to reach beyond fear of sexuality and engage the cross-gender friendships in in their life that can help ignite their spiritual growth.” Rev. Carole Hallundbaek, award-winning author of Saints in Love, theologian, and spiritual director, and was consultant to PBS series Religion & Ethics Weekly.
dckludt
The book explores the possibility that friendship between men and women is possible and that, contrary to Harry in When Harry Met Sally, sex does not have to get in the way. Indeed, Brennan argues that our culture (including the church) has reduced sexuality simply to something that we do rather than part of who we are. In other words, there is little room given to see sexuality in a broader perspective, as our post-Freudian world has limited sexuality to eroticism. The book argues for a post-Freudian recognition that humans were created as sexual beings while also being wired for relationships and, while still recognizing the sanctity of sex within a marriage covenant, a man and woman not married to each other are capable of healthy, deep, abiding, and spiritual friendships.
Brennan raises a great question when he asks “what stories of sexual formation are we telling people in our communities?” (56). For many Christian communities, Brennan argues (and I agree) that the stories being told are often those characterized by a romanticized myth of relational exclusivity within a marriage that will satisfy any and all relational needs. In contrast, Brennan suggests that the church should recognize and embrace the need for deep friendships between men and women and that living out these relationships may be part of our call to participate in a new creation.
I appreciated this book on many levels. First, the book is well researched and documented. Brennan complements his own words with support from psychology, theology, history, etc. Second, while he argues against the relational exclusivity in marriage, he has a high view of marriage and the importance of purity, sanctity, and fidelity (I believe hearing even more about marriage in this book would have strengthened the book’s argument). Finally, the book is challenging. Christian culture has, however well-intentioned, created an unhealthy barrier between genders based less on the scriptural witness and more on Freudian psychology. In light of these barriers, any alternatives suggested require significant reflection, deconstruction, and reconstruction of how men and women interact. Yet, with Brennan, I agree that it is a challenge worth facing, as restoring the health of our relationships – our sacred unions – both inside and outside of marriage is an essential task in the journey towards living as a new creation. This is a book I will recommend to others, particularly those in Christian communities who are seeking to understand what it means to live life together in healthy, God-and-other-honoring ways.
http://kludt.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-book-review/
Jun 6th, 2010
expastor
I am genuinely torn as to what to say about Dan Brennan’s Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions. I’ve heard it described as “groundbreaking,” “daring,” “controversial,” and “a stick of dynamite.” What can this book be about that it merits such hyperbolic adjectives? Sex. Sort of. Here’s the “controversial” thesis: men and women, married or single, can have genuine, redemptive friendships without having sex. I know! Before I let the snark get out of control, I do want to commend Brennan for saying what others should have been saying all along. I’m sure he’ll catch (has caught) a shit-ton of criticism, and my critique is not directed at him. Rather, it’s directed at an institution that doesn’t know what to do with naughty bits unless it can control their every function.
I ordered the book hoping he’d spend some time on sexual ethics directed at single women who now get married as late as 30, as opposed to 14 in the text in question, but he doesn’t. That’s not what the book is about, so it’s my fault for ordering poorly, rather than his for not writing about what I hoped he was writing about. I do want to see a text from someone in the church, preferably an evangelical, who finally says, “We need to reexamine sexual ethics for single adults, as we no longer have 30 year old men marrying 14 year old girls.” Crazy idea. End of editorial/plea.
Brennan is trying his best to convince the Church, and I really mean fundangelical conservatives, that men and women need not “do it” when in friendship with each other. That this is even necessary is a testament to how slightly deranged the Church is about human sexuality. Those of us outside the church, even those of us who used to be inside, can tell you that we don’t want to f**k every single person of the opposite sex we meet (or same sex, depending upon orientation). I have longterm friendships with several women, and not one of those has ever had the slightest hint of sexual attraction. Is it possible that friendship turns into a sexual relationship? Of course. Need the Church establish rules to prevent this from happening? Ah. That’s the question, isn’t it?
What Brennan is working against is a centuries-old idea that has more to do with control and fear than with sex. Pick a sacred cow, any sacred cow. The ethical methodology for nearly every one looks the same: identify the potential abuses, erect fence at least one step out from potential abuse, forget that it was the potential abuse that was the primary concern, change focus to the fence, move fence back one more step for every century or so. If the ultimate goal is control, that’s the perfect model. If the ultimate goal is fully-functioning, virtuous, moral creatures, that’s idiotic.
I know of no single rule that is more regularly broken than the rule about sex between consenting adults. I teach college. My students talk about this rule in ethics classes and any other class that affords them the opportunity. They are deeply ambivalent about the rule, so they live with the contradiction that they can simultaneously believe something and do the opposite, a practice that leads to guilt and/or shame. This orientation to human sexuality is ubiquitous among church people: control or chaos. It’s the theme Brennan picks up well, and he does a very good job of ending the dichotomy and offering an alternative: genuinely redemptive, passionate, non-sexual friendship. I can heartily recommend the book to my Christian friends, but many of my Christian friends already believe his thesis, primarily because I tried to hang out with sane people, and those sane people are still my friends.
But back to the issue at hand. The idea that men and women can’t be friends at the intimate level without engaging in genital contact strikes non-Christians as bizarre, and it ought to strike Christians as equally bizarre. Here’s a thought experiment: name as many of your friends as you’d love to have sex with. Hopefully, the list is short. Will there be one or two names? More than likely. Will all your opposite-sex friends make the list? Only if you’re a freak. No one I know wants to have sex with every person in his life. Attraction doesn’t work that way, and attraction is usually necessary for sex (although alcohol can diminish that requirement). What has to happen, and Brennan makes the point well, is that men and women have to trust and respect each other, and individuals have to take responsibility for their own character development. Refusing to place adults in situations where their character is tested does not lead to the development of virtuous people; it leads to a dehumanizing, stultifying set of behaviors that allows the believer to function at the level of a child while believing he’s mature and virtuous when in fact he has allowed fear to drive a wedge between him and half of the creation. This is the new creation Jesus spoke of? Seriously? Wow. Not for the first and certainly not for the last time I do wish Christians actually knew what it is they are supposed to believe.
http://theparish.typepad.com
Jun 7th, 2010
brianjgorman
Brennan’s thesis is quite simple: much of conservative evangelical Christianity has made friendship between sexes, especially post-marriage, nearly a sin. He says that we’ve been told that after marriage, we’re often told that our friendships must be shallow at best, and almost nonexistent with the other sex. It’s expected that one’s spouse will fulfill all of a person’s relational needs. Basically, Brennan says, it is not only possible but necessary and good for women and men to have “cross-sex” friendships (his term) before and after marriage. He spends a portion of the book showing how deep friendship has shaped and formed spiritual heroes and she-roes in the past, and tries to show, using the Bible, that Jesus taught us to have deep friendships as well, and even challenged us that it is possible to have deep, non-romanticized relationships with women.
I came to this book already agreeing with Brennan’s basic thesis, that it is both possible and necessary to have deep friendships, whether or not you’re married, with people of both sexes. I’ve never spent time thinking the opposite was true. If I had, perhaps this book would have had greater appeal to me, but as I read it, I couldn’t help but think: “Did this book really need to be written?” In fact, I felt very strongly that Brennan not only doesn’t really say anything new, but he doesn’t do a very good job saying it, and may have hurt his own case in writing this book. He seems to spend the entire book arguing against a vauge “conservative” monolith who has condemned not only cross-sex friendship in marriage but friendship in general!
First of all, he uses very sexualized language to describe friendships outside of marriage. In an attempt to widen an understanding of sexuality that separates itself from Freud, Brennan uses language like passion, physical pleasure, and even sexuality to describe friendship. The only major distinction he makes between friendship and marriage is “genital sex” as he calls it. While I don’t fully disagree with this use of terms, I’m not sure he’s helping his cause by using language that most people cannot distinguish from romance.
Second, the book is poorly argued and constructed. For example, in chapter 4, he introduces 12 “themes from Scripture” to help illustrate that “male-female intimacy in friendship is an expression of God’s heart for deepening reconciliation betweenmen and women in Christ” (p 73). Of Brennan’s 12 themes, several of them are themes or arguments from books, sometimes not even referencing Scripture. There are several grammatical errors, awkward sentence structure, and poor reasoning. The endorsements on the back cover prominently display a quote from Mike Morell, formatted differently from the others and just seem to have missed an editor’s pen. Overall, the book itself appears more like a low-budget, self-published book by a not-so-great writer.
I don’t mean to make entirely scathing remarks. The book has some high points, especially the second half of chapter 4. He makes some good statements about “sexual shalom” and the sexual theology of the church, some things that I’ve said myself in another post about agape, eros, and philos, though I think he’s got it backwards. He says everything is an example of eros, whereas I say that everything strives to be agape.
The final problem with this book is that it is an example of poor exegesis. Brennan tries to get Scripture to support his thesis and doesn’t do a good job illuminating what the passages he’s using are actually saying. Amazingly, the entire Bible is about male-female friendships! Who knew?! Instead of intelligently suggesting that there are things we can draw from Jesus’ interactions with women, he attempts to make the Gospels a story of cross-sex friendship. He makes claims about Jesus’ intent without acknowledging the role of the author or perhaps the narrative function of a lot of the stories he tries to make use of. Many of the passages he use can support his thesis, but he doesn’t do a compelling job showing this to anyone with a critical eye to methodology.
Overall, my major gripe with the book is that it is poorly written as a published thesis. He’s well researched, in a sense, but I’ve never heard of almost all of his sources when it comes to sexuality. I would recommend it to someone who wouldn’t really raise a fuss about writing style like I did, and who didn’t generally agree with the thesis at the beginnning. Not sure this book needed to be written, especially by this author.
Jun 8th, 2010
dkam136
When I ordered Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women, it took me back to all those youth ministry classes I took at Azusa Pacific University where we spent hours talking about boundaries and/or appropriate limits for male/female relationships among students in the youth group and amongst leaders and students, etc.
Dan Brennan is addressing this primary issue: Can males and females — to the chagrin of Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally” — simply “be friends.” His answer: Yes! He spends the rest of the book talking about why he thinks this is not only possible, but necessary in the Christian Church. As members of a new creation, Brennan argues that we are called to practice committed friendships with those of the opposite sex as a genuine taste of the kingdom of God (as it is here and now).
There are two main problems (if you want to call them that) with the content of this book. First, the people that really need to read this book (namely extremely conservative evangelicals) either will not read this book or will choose to ignore and/or write off the themes inherent in this book. Second, people like me who do read the book already agree with him so he ends up “preaching to the choir.”
I found the book extremely engaging and I would highly recommend it. It goes well with some of the other books I have read on sexuality in church history as it relates to the early church and medieval church. Brennan is not just talking about men and women having relationships that extend beyond sex, he is also talking about breaking down some of the stereotypes and boundaries that stop us from bringing the kingdom of God to the world.
All in all, I would say that if you time to read this book, it is a very engaging and thoughtful look at how relationships should function in the church.
Jun 14th, 2010
sagely
Lately I’ve been thinking about love, beauty, and limits. We know that there is no limit to beauty (God is unendingly beautiful). But beauty, as always a manifestation of love, exists because of limits, within limits. My life is beautiful not when I can escape from my workaday schedule, not when I ignore the demands of friends and lovers, not only when I attempt the superhuman. In other days I might call the interplay of beauty and limits balance (that is, before the term was emptied of meaning by the abuse of pop psychology).
There’s another theory of beauty: beauty as excess, beauty as transgression. Sometimes this aesthetics claims a corner on the market for beauty as transcendent, but I won’t buy into this monopoly. Beauty is what we make of our limitations, not just our escape from them. Phrased differently, we see beauty when we see the truth of our limitations, see them in a different light, see them in light of the resurrection.
One way of describing Dan Brennan’s Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship between Men and Women is to say it locates friendship (specifically cross-sex friendships) within these competing dynamics of beauty. On the first page Brennan writes,
This book makes a simple claim: stories of paired cross-sex friendship love are journeys toward communion with God and our neighbor in the Christian story. In the new creation, men and women are not limited to stark contrasts where we must choose between romantic passion in marriage or inappropriate sex/infidelity. Chaste, but powerfully close friendships between the sexes stir our curiosity and resist formulaic gender roles in marriage, friendship, and society.
Beautiful cross-sex relationships, he argues, should not be bounded by the aesthetic ideology of excess. Relational beauty, it turns out, is a matter of balance, not sheerly of orgasm or roses and candy hearts.
Brennan points to Freud as marking the tipping point where sexuality became utterly genitalized and the romantic myth gained decisive ascendancy in Western culture. The romantic myth, Brennan asserts, is the consequence of “idealizing romantic passion as the unique, one-and-only, exclusive form of love between a man and woman.” Every relationship is on a trajectory toward nookie, and only in a sustained and actively sexual relationship can a human person hope to find true fulfilment.
Evangelical churches uphold this metanarrative, even if in mirror reverse of wider culture. Through staff policies enforcing strict boundaries on mingling with the opposite sex and church singles mixers–even through battles for a constitutional definition of marriage–Evangelicaldom enshrines the paired and exclusive romantic male-female relationship as constitutive of Christian blessedness. In large part, the book as a whole emerges as a reaction and response to these narrow parameters of “appropriate behaviour.”
If Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions remained only a theoretical/theological reflection on friendship in what strikes me as a Cappadocian key, it would be a decent book. Brennan’s blog, Faith Dance, would lead me to expect nothing less than this from him. But where this book shines most is in its extended discussions of cross-sex friendships throughout church history and of Jesus’ example in cross-sex relationships.
As I read the first forty or fifty pages, I nodded along with Brennan’s critique of the culture’s and the church’s reduction of cross-sex relationship to parts and hormones, their exclusion of legitimate friendships. But hints and comments about tracing the church’s history–its other history–of cross-sex friendships left me eager for chapters to come. They were well worth the wait.
Highlights: a long meditation on Jesus’ friendship with Mary Magdalene and the significance of the first resurrection appearance in John 20; a similarly lengthy chunk of text devoted to the woman who anoints and kisses Jesus’ feet in Luke 7. The book may be worth reading if only for these two discussions (though the whole is well worth a read).
Brennan makes a provocative case for Jesus as a forerunner in deep, embodied, and chastely sexual cross-sex friendships. This option has been suppressed in church history and named repressed by contemporary church and culture, but we can still find beautiful female-male friendships among those who follow Jesus’ example.
I am praising Brennan’s Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions pretty highly, but I have my critiques. I’ll voice two:
1) While Brennan’s argument is compelling, it is poorly strung together. The book could have used a bit more editing, time spent shaping a succession of brilliant paragraphs and strings of citations into the clear and concise development of an unfolding thesis. There were more than a few moments when I had to re-read a page to puzzle out its contribution to the book’s thesis. This said, I would not hesitate to assign this text for a reflection essay in a seminary course on pastoral practice or Christian discipleship. If the argument is hard to trace, it remains well worth the energy expended to do so.
2) Brennan leaves wholly unaddressed questions and implications for friendship in a cultural space of diverse sexual orientations. What does it mean for me to be close friends with someone identifying as gay? How should those within the LGBTQ community understand same-sex and cross-sex friendships? Surely we can’t just invert the book, substituting same-sex for cross-sex where the romantic metanarrative is told differently. But how do we locate faithful friendship and subversive cultural praxis in our cultural and ecclesial moment?
Perhaps Brennan felt this book would already make enough waves in Evangelical circles, that opening to a discussion of sexuality as such might capsize the vessel. Perhaps. It’s not good manners to criticize a book for what it fails to do. However, there are times when a fault of omission speaks nearly as loudly as one of commission. This is one such instance.
In Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, Dan Brennan opens a space for regarding cross-sex friendships as masterpieces of balance rather than as moments in a work of romantic excess. By doing so, the field is cleared for cross-sex friendship as an end-in-itself (or, we might say, cross-sex friendship’s own meaning in the truth of the resurrection).
I like this. It neither chucks the Christian system of sexual ethics as a whole (by writing friendship as a field of excess) nor capitulates to a reductive field for friendship (by demarcating its limits with rules and policies).
To say this differently: On my kitchen table I have this week’s yield from a local CSA. There is zucchni and new potatoes and something I thought was celery but that a friend informed was swiss chard. Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions is like community-supported agriculture. It does not give up the fight for a more just food system, resigning itself to push the cart through the big-box grocery store’s “Fresh Produce” section. Yet, unlike some of my anarcho-primitivist friends, it does not demand a secession from contemporary society and reversion to hunting and gathering. Instead it opts for a third way: close, deep, embodied and spiritual, sexual yet chaste cross-sex friendships. That is beautiful.
Jun 16th, 2010
Dan
I was intrigued by the premise of this book and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I have known for sometime that a man and a woman can have a wonderful (platonic) friendship.
I personally have had many woman friends over the years and one in particular that was during a time when I needed a friend most of all. It was a friendship that strengthened my faith and pushed me to think of my relationship with Christ as more than just private and personal. However, throughout those times, I never could fully legitimize these relationships (in my mind) because of societal taboos. This book explained to my head what my heart had known all along.
What an awesome book… I recommend it unstintingly!
Jun 19th, 2010
Phlipside
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions – Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women by Dan Brennan (Faith Dance Publishing, 2010) I have to admit my first reaction when I saw the subject of this book is “Why is it even necessary?”. At the same time I am aware that there is, in some parts of Christianity, immense tension on the subject of sex and the relationship between the genders. It always seems to me that the underlying assumption for this branch of the family is that human beings go through life balanced on a knife’s edge of nearly uncontrollable lust. At the slightest provocation there will be ripping of bodices and sweaty entangled bodies scattered all over the floors. You may note that I find that school of thought rather ridiculous.
Dan Brennan does approach just those kinds of concerns (without my rather jaded point of view)with compassion and care. He walks the reader through a clear understanding of various points of view and the origins/basis of them. He also gives us a clear foundation based on Scripture of where he believes we should rest as a people of faith.
This is a book about marriage and friendships, it deals with the issues of sex calmly and reasonably, and he refuses to deal with the idea of a loving, non-sexual relationship as something dangerous or alien to Christian thinking. While it seems clear to me that it is aimed primarily at the concerns of certain parts of the evangelical branch of the faith family I think it provides a wonderful rationale for all Christian understanding of friendship between genders. The argument is that the church is less when we limit the interaction between all of God’s children.
Also that the other approach to sex, friendship and gender is essentially one that traps everyone in an immature place of development.
Might make a great book for newlyweds or soon to be weds to consider as well as young people.
Jun 22nd, 2010
ricknier
It was an interesting twist when MTV took relationships and over-sexualized everything. We in the Church argued that they were twisting what God intended for men and women. Then, subtly, we began to use what MTV offered as a framework for relationships. Guy/Girl relationships all became filtered through what we were scared to let happen.
This book asks the question; what would happen if we started over with a Biblical definition instead of our society’s definition? There is a lot of blame, if not all the blame, placed on Freud, who definitely had mommy issues. Freud sexualized all relationships, both cross-gender and same gender. Thanks Sigmund!
This book goes on to describe a bit of Church history and give several examples of purely platonic friendships that would be looked at with great suspicion in our current culture. But simply because we have issues does not mean that everyone has issues, right?
The question should be asked; if we view marriage as the epitome of relationships, where does that leave single people? With nods to Jon Acuff and his view of the Church and single-hood, we can’t just ask this for single adults. Are we saying that children and teenagers are incomplete until their parents let them out of the house to find a mate? Are we to forever segregate boys and girls from each other until they are mature enough to pursue a marital relationship?
Dan does a great job of making references to data throughout history, even including these couple of gems when discussing how men view women. Quoting Nancy Tuana, “a woman left uncontrolled was one of the greatest dangers to mankind.” So felt the Greeks. Even Aristotle believed that women should not be left to their own. Something about great destruction and damage left in their wake. Those silly philosophers. Dan balances it all out by showing how Jesus, as usual, was ahead of His time. Ahead of ours as well.
To me, it seems obvious once it is pointed out, but how much of my married adult life has been lived blind to this reality. Marriage is a choice. It’s not the better choice. It’s not the inevitable choice. It’s simply a choice. But in the midst of redefining terms and changing our view of the opposite sex and appropriate friendships, let’s make one thing clear. I still believe all girls have cooties.
Jun 23rd, 2010
holy heteroclite
Review: “Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions”
(note, may links are mentioned in the review, to make them linkable, read the same post on :
http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2010/06/review-sacred-unions-sacred-passions.html
Dan Brennan’s splendidly readable, and charitably subversive,
“Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions
Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women”
definitely came along at the right time for me. Brennan’s unique, straightforward, and engaging way of tackling the topic; and his unique, straightforward, and engaging way of tackling the topic connected dots for me among three growing convictions:
A reductionist view of sexuality almost inevitably becomes seductionist. We are (g)not gnostic. By obsessing with rules, we end up being ruled by obsexxing. Ironically, that’s when we may be most vulnerable. We in the Protestant tradition can all these (5oo!!)years later still define ourselves primarily by what we are against, and not by what/Who we are for. We desperately need to incorporate insights from Catholic and Eastern streams to keep center, and steer away from gnostic ditches.
The Trinitarian nature of life, relationships, church/ecclesiology….of, well, everything…has profound ( and profoundly untapped) implications for….well, everything.
The promise of the rabbinic tradition of “elevation” (which Bono of course has prophetically endorsed/sung about/prayed about) is uniquely applicable our current juncture in postmodernity and church history.
Bottom line: The books is on cross-sex friendships, and a defense of how they can work.
That no other evangelical Christian-oriented book has even been dedicated to this topic at all..
…let alone challenged the deeply-embedded conservagelical party line (which ironically sounds like the folks Paul is poking fun at in the “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” of Colossians 2:21)….
in our lifetime (part of the point, earlier writers, many of them…gasp!…Catholic, have done well here) is enough to recommend it.
But the way he traces church history (I recently learned a lot about church history…by teaching it! That the “holy kiss” commanded in the New Testament was counterinuitively on the lips, even when cross-gender, nailed me…but not as much as the profound reason for that, see this link) and interweaves solid biblical exegesis, and knows just the right quote from hugely helpful thinkers as Leanne Payne, Rob Bell, Scot McKnight, Marva Dawn, Rodney Clapp, catapults this to a five-star review.
I am about to confess:
I have been down to occasionally meet publicly with women at Starbuck’s.
!!
I am not sure I would be comfortable with doing so at a full-blown restuarant, indoors, as a meal. (Except, say, with a pastor friend and colleague in our network…..who just happens to be named Nancy……… and female).
Right or wrong, I still generally keep the Saddleback/Billy Graham guidelines (which the book weighs).
Though I am certain the Holy Spirit will lead me to break them a bit more (biblically, even though I am not a binitarian bibliolater…read this).
And yes, I am aware that even the Starbuck’s level meetings can be risky
(see “Uncle Ernie at Uncle Harry’s” and “God, beach and breasts”), and that we men (in particular) risk over-sexualizing.
But since that infamous Scripture that nine out of ten evangelicals would swear (well, promise) on stack of Bibles was in the Bible (“Avoid the appearance of evil”) is nowhere in the Bible (and the one Scripture we confuse for that one actually makes basically the opposite point, please read this link from Tia Lynn)..
..the risk I am worried about should not be “what will people think.”
The risk I may be indeed taking is that I won’t grow as a disciple of Jesus, unless I do occasionally partake in such “sacred order” encounters.
I am in sin if I “avoid all appearance of evil.”
Well. for the two readers that are left, I continue (:
I don’t intend to write a review that is a summary of the content, or even one that fully divulges where he lands, but one that references and quotes the book briefly, through the grid of the three topics I laid out above (and copied below).
I sincerely hope you are already sold on the book, and my comments will intrigue you into cutting the deal.
I highly recommend reading chapter one (or watching this video interview withthe author) if you have any doubt; then I would double dare you not to finish the book in one setting.
Onward:
1)A reductionist view of sexuality almost inevitably becomes seductionist. We are (g)not gnostic. By obsessing with rules, we end up being ruled by obsexxing. Ironically, that’s when we may be most vulnerable….
Rob Bell, who is quoted wisely throughout the book, asserts that
“our sexuality is all the ways we strive to reconnect with our world, with each other, and with God.”
If that is so (and the Bible backs it, see Brennan’s studies of Genesis, for example), how can we avoid (or why should we) what the author calls “embodied relationships” that are inevitably sexual, but not romantic or erotic?
Such is what the amazing “cloud of witnesses” throughout church history that Brennan invokes and quotes attest to (Why have we never seen these quotes elsewhere?)
”
As I wrote about it in The Reduction of Seduction posts (here and here) I do get how we in leadership cannot help but complicate relationships with “parishoners” or others who view us in a pastoral/God-figure role. The “woman in the 22nd pew” has permanently messed up my life, thank God.
And there is need to always remember the names we’d like to forget (from Swaggart to Haggard)
But it is precisely we as leaders, with our drive to control, that hinders the Spirit’s work in our communities. In the name of carefulness, we abdicate prayerfulness. We inadvertently (??) bless legalism, sell gnosticm, and endorse immorality.
Really?
What if I simply quoted two of the most acceptable standards among evangelical writers here
These are the killer quotes (if read thrice and pondered) that Brennan brilliantly introduces us to:
“It is therefore easy to see why Authority frowns on friendship.
Every real friendship is a sort of secession, even a rebellion.” (C.S. Lewis, p. 145)
“[Seeking intimacy, at any level} is not a venture that gets the support of many people.
It is inefficient." (Eugene Peterson, p. 150).
No wonder we (I) hijack and framejack our sermons and framejack our pastoral counsel;
we feed (our) power, and fear (the peoples) freedom.
Much better to be found faithful and inefficient
(Read Ellul, please....as well as the Marva Dawn "I cast you out, foul spirit of effectiveness" article here).
Thus, our sermons on "thou must" create musterbation.
We "should" on people.
Also, that this author (like hardly anyone else you read today, save the Godsend N.T. Wright) radically gets what Scripture means
by "New Creation" is worth the price of the book. Any serious study of 2 Corinthians will reveal that the only way it cannot be translated is the way we pastors have always preached it (and likely the only way you have ever heard it: "If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation," When a straightforward reading of the Greek is "If anyone is in Christ, there the new creation is [in part].
Every pastor worth his or her salt knows that’s what it says, but who preaches it?
“New Creation” throughout the Bible is a corporate manifestation of the Kingdom of God; the Kingdom of the future partly and partially consummated in the present life,and on earth.
Yes, I see that hand. I know all the dangers of an overly “realized eschatology.” Yes, I know the Corinthian church bough it hook line and sinker, and it led to sexual (and other) immorality.
But I also know the danger of not realizing the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer
(Read Ladd, Wright, et al…or how about the Bible in context for a change and get back to me!
And check Brennan’s quotes below.
The fact that he incorporates the biblical worldview of New Creation in passing; without even defending or commenting on it like I just did, is refreshing and revolutionary, timely and telling:
“in the new creation, men and women are not limited to stark contrasts where we must choose between romantic passion or inappropriate sex/infidelity.” (p.. 17)
“rethinking male-female oneness in the new creation…in this new age, the New Testament makes clear there are new social intimacies.” (71-72)
How tragic that those who preach the most on “not being of the world,” don’t often preach on “being in the Kingdom.”
As Len Sweet says, “We are in the world, and not of it…but not out of it yet, either.”
In this world we will have troubles…but also delightful marital sex, and delightful non-romantic cross-sex relationships! If that word “Delight” trips you up, do NOT read one of the strongest section in “Sacred Passions’ on that D-word!
2)The Trinitarian nature of life, relationships, church/ecclesiology….of, well, everything…has profound ( and profoundly untapped) implications for….well, everything:
I was thrilled to find extensive coverage of the practical ramifications of a Trinitarian worldview, ecclesiology, and sexology. I have often quoted Len Hjalmarson and Jurgen Moltmann on this lens (see labels marked “trinity” below), so found these additional quotes confirmational:
“our trust in the Trinity’s embrace frees us to love more fully with triune types of love–fostering deep relationships that involve solid friendships without sexual innuendo”
(Marva Dawn, p. 77)
“It is precisely the one triune God in whose image all human beings are created who holds the promise of peace between men and women with irreducible but changing identities.”
(Miraslov Volf, p. 146)
“Like the Trinity, we are called to understand who we are not as isolated individuals who have to make contracts to protect ourselves, but as persons with faces turned towards God and each other.” (Edith Humphrey, p. 169)
If you are thinking this all sounds like theological gobbledygook, or a “sloppy agape” “free-love” orgy, you are far from the point. We cannot theologize, or make practical decisions without the Bedrock doctrine (and lifesource) of the Triune God who is intrinsically relationship ( liminally and missionally).
3)The promise of the rabbinic tradition of “elevation” (which Bono of course has prophetically endorsed/sung about/prayed about) is uniquely applicable our current juncture in postmodernity and church history.
On this final point/thesis of mine….maybe one related quote from Breannan which radically re-paints a category such as “chastity” as postitive will suffice:
“Chastity, then, becomes the relational skill of choosing freedom to dance with personal beauty, goodbness and truth in embodied relationships (138).
On this point, I can do no better than point you to rabbis…and Bono:.
We start with Rabbi Cohen;
For the chasid, prayer is not something one recites, it is rather an exercise that one performs, or an
experience that one enters into…. There is no room for inhibition…singing and dancing are essential means by which …he expresses his emotional cleaving to God….but
that desire for God has to be so overwhelming that any extraneous thoughts are excluded…If distractions are erotic in nature…and (one) faces up to the predominance of the sexual urge at both conscious and subconscious levels, and
its capacity to intrude even during prayer…then he has learned to take measures…Chasidism dealt with this by introducing the doctrine of the “elevation of strange
thoughts.” This…technique not of sublimation, but of thought conversion, whereby the beauty or desirability of the woman is latched upon and used not as a sexual but rather as a mental and spiritual stimulus…. taught to “elevate” these thoughts by substituting the beauty of God for the
physical beauty that is currently bewitching us. (The pray-er) has learned to immediately contrast the pale reflection of beauty that humans are endowed with, on the one hand, and the supreme Divine source of authentic and enduring beauty,
on the other…
link
Any U2 fan will immediately and clearly connect all this to the U2 song, “Elevation.”
(Read more, and exegete and watch the song here…ideally it’s a soundtrack to this great book)
—
So please, buy the book.
Read it…at Starbucks…with a friend.
Nancy?
Jun 23rd, 2010
TgotK
Check out http://anthony-emily.blogspot.com/ for my chapter-by-chapter summary and review (in progress).
Jun 28th, 2010
freakdaddy3
Check out my full review –> http://experienceshift.blogspot.com/2010/07/sacred-unions-sacred-passions.html
Jul 13th, 2010
knowtown
Redeeming Harry and Sally…
I recently had an opportunity to read Dan Brennan’s book, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women. I’ll confess at the outset that I did not have high expectations for this book. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this work.
The forward from Dan’s wife, Sheila Brennan, explains that Dan Brennan is using this book to counter the myspace/facebook trend to call everyone a “friend.” She explains:
Daniel’s book attempts to recapture a deeper (and thereby narrower) understanding of friendship and a wider understanding of intimacy within spiritual friendship.
With this goal in mind, I think Brennan’s offering is well worth the read. If there is a target of critique in Brennan’s cross hairs, it is the absurd bipolar counsel that the conservative evangelical community offers to non-married men and women who wish to enter into relationship. Brennan points out that for many in this camp, there are only two alternatives. One is the romantic path that leads men and women down the one way path of becoming “one flesh”. This is acceptable for young, single people. However, if either one or both of the people are married then the only alternative for these male/female relationships is avoidance at all costs.
Brennan argues that between these two very narrow narratives of male/female relationships is a very wide, complex and necessary range of appropriate and deeply intimate expressions of genuine, deep, and faithful friendship that does not need to lead to anything sexually inappropriate.
Brennan explores these sacred unions by looking at history and scripture. While there are areas I felt like he was forcing the sacred text in order to make his case, overall I think the book raises some important questions for those in the conservative camp. While there is nothing in the book that would shock “emerging” or “progressive” Christian thinkers, I feel his book hits his intended target.
There were some great quotes throughout:
When conservative Christians adapt a modified Freudian view of sexuality and conflate the romantic myth with the meaning of one flesh, one wonders how Christian husbands and wives are able to pursue deep intimacy and become companions on the marital journey. Perhaps the greatest enemy of marriage when the notion of one flesh has been made synonymous with the romantic myth is the one flesh vision of marriage itself. (p. 43)
The husband-wife relationship doesn’t cover the range of embodied oneness in this age or the next. In fact, it is not even the ultimate picture of union. Paul Wadell suggests that friends in Christ “will have much greater intimacy and unity between them than they would if they lived together but were united over a lesser good.” he suggests, following Augustine, “the greatest possible intimacy comes not from physical closeness or even physical expression, but from belonging to the body of Christ.” Our union in Christ as men and women then, has profound implications for both married and unmarried individuals. (p. 79)
For more information about the book and a video interview with the author, please check the links below.
http://viralbloggers.com/2010/04/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-by-dan-brennan/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaYIN16E4DI
Review originally posted at http://www.ecclesialdreamer.com/?p=1307
Jul 14th, 2010
Chris Enstad
Watch this interview and pick up Dan Brennan’s new book on friendships between men and women. Since _When Harry Met Sally_ we have, unfortunately, walled off the possibility that, yes, men and women can and SHOULD be just friends. In fact, for the kinds of authentic kinds of Christian community that are being built today these relationships are even more important and vital especially for that community to carry the title, “authentic”.
Jul 16th, 2010
tiffanymalloy
http://tiffanymalloy.com/?p=229
Can Men and Women Be “Just Friends”?
I’ve just started in on Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions by Dan Brennan. And I think it’s going to shift a paradigm of mine about intimate friendships. Brennan is an evangelical Christian who believes that men and women can, and should, be intimate friends. He and his wife have been married for 28 years, and both have dear, close, intimate friends of the opposite sex. They spend time with those friends in the company of one another and alone. I know, I know- their pastors have warned them that they are playing with fire.
BUT, I mean, what if they’re on to something? I am and/or have been VERY close with a few male friends (several that read this blog) and have found true intimacy with them without feeling like I wanted to make out with them. So, in some ways, I really get what this author is saying. I love having the ability to go out with one of my male friends to eat dinner or go do an errand or pray about something significant– and not having to worry about Jake getting mad or jealous or the other person’s spouse feeling the same way.
But, I digress. I’m only one chapter into this but already have lots of questions, hesitations and excitement about the possibilites that the author is presenting.
How do you feel about cross-sex intimate friendships?
For more about the book, check out this video:
Interview with author of Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions
Jul 17th, 2010
Jamie
Check out my review at http://thinkingaboutitall.posterous.com/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-book-review
Jul 18th, 2010
staucody
One morning, in what we called our “zero hour” seminary class in high school, I remember our facilitator asking the question, “Can a man and woman really be just friends?” His answer was that they could not, because there would always be sexual tension there. My natural reaction was to disagree; after all, I had many friends who were female. In fact, I felt more comfortable with my female friends, and actually enjoyed their company more than most other men I knew. But the question was firmly placed in my mind now, and because I didn’t feel that tension, in natural high school male arrogance, I had to assume that my lady friends felt it on their end toward me.
Dan Brennan deals with the issue of cross-gendered friendship in his book, “Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions.” His proposal is that the Evangelical community has, by and large, allowed culture to dictate the terms of what it means to be both a friend and sexual. Brennan suggests that we have adopted a view of sexuality that is far more Freudian than it is biblical. I have to say I agree.
The truth is that we are called to a life of redemption, a life of “shalom,” and Brennan argues correctly that this must characterize ALL that we do, including how we interact with the opposite sex. He makes the case that is not only okay to be a close, intimate friend with a member of the opposite sex who isn’t your spouse or who you have no romantic intentions with, but that it is actually necessary, especially for the health of our other relationships, particularly our marriages.
The current approach to cross-gendered friendship, Brennan argues, is rooted in both fear and in a myth of romance that we have created, where only one person can be all we ever need. Quite frankly, that is an unhealthy approach for any relationship, as no single person can be or should be expected to be all for one person. Brennan points out that we are called to become one as brothers and sisters in Christ, and that is not relegated merely to marriage.
One of the most helpful chapters in the book deals with historical relationships in the church that were mutually edifying and beneficial that also happened to be cross-gendered. It’s helpful because we normally only tell stories of danger and fear when it comes to these types of relationships, but we never focus on the stories where God is restoring both people to God through each other. In another portion of the book, Brennan takes a look at two passages of scripture- one about Mary Magdalene meeting Jesus in the garden after his resurrection, that has huge implications for male-female relations; the other about the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair and tears. These two explorations alone are worth getting the book for.
Jul 21st, 2010
SGill4613
Growing up, I heard that Eskimo’s have over 100 different words for “snow”. That when your life is surrounded by snow, your language will reflect the subtle differences in the cold precipitation. It was somewhat comforting to think that at least one group of people could adequately describe something so central to their life.
Now that I am older, I know that this story I heard as a child is a myth. No group of people have 100 words for snow. But if there was one concept in life which is deserving of such an honour, it is love.
In his book, Sacred Union, Sacred Passions, Dan Brennan writes about how through the history of humanity, love has come to take on many forms. One of the least accepted forms in society is the male-female, non-sexual, relationship. This book highlights this under-developed, often misunderstood form of love in a world which desperately needs its strength.
As most “emergent” literature is today, this book takes aim at conservative Christianity, whose views of relationships and sexuality is behind the times. And while Brennan does a good job of keeping this to a minimum, while highlighting the numerous denominations who do a better job at male-female, non-sexual relationships, it is a good book to read if you are unsure as to what should be the role of people of the opposite gender in your life.
My only disappointment with this book is that it seemed to minimize the difficulties as well as the dangers of this type of friendship. In a modern world which focuses on the shallow view of human sexuality, we need direction on how to form these positive, Christ affirming relationships in such a way that sexual intercourse is not the desired outcome. (I hope this might be addressed and developed in a second book!)
Pick this book up… its worth it to help begin to change the world to have a more positive view of love, relationships and sexuality!
Aug 1st, 2010
TgotK
Here are some thoughts on specific sections of the book:
http://anthony-emily.blogspot.com/2010/06/sacred-unions-sacred-passions.html
http://anthony-emily.blogspot.com/2010/06/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-chapter-1.html
Aug 2nd, 2010
TheLogo
Dan Brennan’s book, supposedly, makes one main argument: Men and Women can share in deep, passionate, intimate friendships without sex. Or, contra Harry (“When Harry met Sally”), men and women can be ‘just friends’. However, along the way in making this argument, Brennan makes some excellent points about friendship and intimacy, in general as well as in how they have been warped and distorted by our culture. Thus, he rightly points out that (especially among conservative Christians, but also in the culture at large) focused all of our intimacy and friendship into romantic cross-gender relationships (whether in marriage or out) and that this focus is damaging both our ability to make non-romantic friendships as well as our ability to flourish in romantic relationships.
Here’s the thing though, I would much rather discuss Brennan’s side points than his main points. I feel this way for a couple of reasons. First of all, intellectually, spiritually, and theologically I think Brennan is right on. However, I feel like he missed his mark on the focus when we speak culturally, emotionally, or in terms of effecting positive change in our church. Let me explain.
What our culture needs right now is a broader and more fleshed out idea of intimacy that does not necessarily involve genitalia. However, this is a side point. What our culture needs right now is to be critiqued for the over-sexualization of intimacy. However, this is a side point. I am glad Brennan includes these side points, they are almost what make the book worth reading. Still, the main point is that men and women can be just friends, but in our culture even the idea of friendship is slipping away…
Emotionally, Brennan holds out some tantalizing visons, but fails to engage at all in how individuals, who are damaged by our cultures distorted views of intimacy, can works towards these visions.
Finally, in terms of the church, Brennan has a lot to say about the problems we have caused. However, he completely ignores principals of change. As an aside, I find most books do. The cynical side of me wants to say that this is because controversy sells. I don’t doubt many authors have much purer motives. However, read any book on helping people change and you will find things like “move slowly” and “speak gently.” I am not saying Brennan should not say what he said; but where is the humility and grace? Where is the principle of the stronger brother submitting to the weaker, which we find so prevalent in the apostle Paul?
In the end, this is an incredibly well researched book, a fairly well written book, and, perhaps, a poorly aimed book. 3.5 out of 5 stars, conditionally recommended.
Aug 2nd, 2010
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