United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities : 2001 Seminar
Patterns of Integration amid Diversity
Preface
Setting: United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities (see social location documents). Conversation has occurred at a lunchroom table in the Context Café following a painful experience by one student in her integrative exam.1 The conversation is referred to and described in a letter sent by the student (Julie2) to her advisor (who is also the chair of the integrative exam committee) in preparation for an advising session to be held in a few days.
The Letter
Dear Cindy3:
I hope you don't mind that I am sending you this letter prior to our meeting, but I am having a hard time after the integrative exam and need you to know where I am and what I'm upset about.
The day after my Integrative I got together with some friends to talk about what had happened and to get some feedback. I told them about how confusing I had found the whole experience—you had told me that I needed to explore a topic and to demonstrate how I pulled ideas together from my coursework to inform my ministry decisions in a particular situation. You had told me that you didn't want me to start with my conclusion and prove my case, but that I should name the dilemma and then explore it. Then, I got nailed in the Integrative for being ‘wishy-washy.' I felt like I wasn't treated fairly.
I really don't have a clue how to do what you are asking of me. On the one hand, you want me to take a stand theologically as a religious leader. You want me to have a well-developed theology that informs what I do as a minister. On the other hand, you want me to stay open, ‘tolerate ambiguity,' and allow different contexts to inform my theological perspective. I don't understand how all of that is possible. I don't think I can do it.
In my Integrative, I wasn't trying to snow anyone. I believe everything that I was saying about sexual ethics for gay and lesbian folks. I do believe in a theology of ‘live and let live.' People need to be cared for, supported, and accepted. Hospitality is a key theological concept for me. It's what I found here—the freedom to be accepted and affirmed as an out lesbian and a religious person. It's healed much of my spiritual self. On the other hand, there are rules. You shouldn't have sex with someone if you're not married (or committed for life) to them. I need to help the GLBT4 community find out how to be sexually moral if they are Christians. You can't be a Christian and be saved and still act in immoral, un-Christian ways. I believe both things—acceptance and rules—but I don't know how to make the connections you are asking me to make theologically between those two principles. It makes me feel like my head will explode to try to make all my experience fit with my theology. And, when you gave me that ministry case situation in the exam and asked me how I would minister with that couple, it was just too close to my own pain for me to know how to address it.
Anyway, I explained to my friends what had happened and they had some of their own ideas about their education here and what happened in integrative exams and classrooms. Sara5 had just taken her Integrative a few days before and she got honors. She used her experience in her exam so we were kind of confused why she got honors for talking about ministering to divorced people when she is so recently divorced, but I failed the exam for talking about ministering to GLBT folks out of my own experience. She said that she'd had trouble in writing her first drafts, because she was using her experience to judge what other people were experiencing and needing, to measure the adequacy of her theology. She had to change her paper to use her experience as a starting point, but to use her traditions, leadership theory and her experiences with other people to create a broader theology for her ministry. She said that it was a really helpful experience to have to work through how she'd tended to use her experience as her primary criterion for what she believed and how she ministered. I got some insights from what she was saying, but she doesn't have the same starting points that I do. It seems like no one really claims the Bible and what it means to be Christian with the same commitment that I have and it makes it hard to really have a good exchange of ideas. I did find it helpful to know, though, that she'd struggled with her own belief systems and how those fit with the ministry she wanted to do and the denomination in which she does it. She was really sympathetic, too, about how it feels to have the rug pulled out from under you because you're not seen as good enough in an exam like that.
I also found Mark's6 comments helpful, except that he thinks in ways that are more distant from his experience. He's more comfortable taking in other people's points of view without jeopardizing his own. He said that he thought it was important that we try to let our own experiences and beliefs be challenged by those of other students, and then decide what's helpful and what isn't. He said that he's grown a lot by being exposed to people with other viewpoints and experiences. He told me that he'd never had a conversation with a lesbian before he came to UTS and it's changed him a lot. I really appreciated that, but it's not the same as someone challenging the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus. Some things you can't afford to let go of, even for a while, to explore other ideas. I mean, I have good friends here who are UU's and I don't have any problem with their beliefs. I think they should believe what's right for them, but I can't let them influence what I believe. Mark's Integrative had asked him to think more deeply about his beliefs and articulate them in a more systematic way, so he was sympathetic with the pressure of the exam, but he doesn't know what it's like to have to be two people at the same time. He's more interested in getting the ‘tools' he needs and getting out of here to do ministry. I didn't know I was being two people until you all said that in the exam, but it's true that different parts of me think and feel different things about faith and ministry, and I don't know how to turn them into one person. And, it doesn't help to feel alone in that process.
Clarice7, in some ways, was the closest to me in experience. She doesn't have to take the Integrative, because she's not in the M.Div. program, but she said that she's felt lonely at United. Since she is often the only African-American in a classroom, she doesn't feel free to be fully herself or, at least, speak and think as she normally would in her own communities. For example, she can't talk about Jesus in the same way she would in her church. She says that sometimes she feels she has to hide herself in order to fit in and in order to get through the hoops. She knows what it's like to feel like two different people because what she learns in the classes and from the other (white) students is often helpful and thoughtful, but she doesn't know if it's relevant for her. The difference is that Clarice knows who she is when she is in her own community. She takes all the stuff she is exposed to at United and tests it in her church and neighborhood. She has trouble integrating what she gets here at UTS with her life experience, too, but that doesn't seem to bother her in the same way it bothers me. She gets most angry, she says, over the fact that few people really make an effort to know the truths and realities of her life and the great knowledge that she brings out of that. She doesn't always feel that what she says is taken seriously. Her experience is central to her identity (although it's bigger than just her because of her groundedness in her church), but she doesn't have many opportunities to be in dialogue about experience that is really different from many of the other students. She often has to do a lot of translation. She's found a way to work with that, though, and seems pretty content with where she's at in her education here. I'm not.
I don't have a community anymore where I can test my ideas or have conversations where I can grow and change. I have other GLBT folks to talk to, and a few people who are more evangelical, but no one who knows both experiences. I feel like I don't fit anywhere anymore, even in myself.
I feel really stuck. I don't always feel like I can talk about Jesus or my prayer life and have that affirmed. It's not that you or the other students are denying me the right to hold on to my more evangelical theology. It's that I don't have the frameworks or like-minded conversations to help me make sense of it, especially in an environment where the more socially liberal commitments that I love seem to (I know you'll disagree with this) weaken a strong and clear theological commitment.
How do I build the bridges you are asking me to build? How do I take the best of both worlds without losing myself? What do I do when my head and heart are at war? I hope you can give me the answers to these questions, although you probably won't.
One other thing. While I've felt that you've been really supportive of me—a mentor, a teacher, and someone I could talk things over with, in the Integrative—you didn't seem very supportive. It seemed like you weren't interested in my journey anymore. You wanted me to have arrived somewhere. I haven't!! If anything I'm more confused than ever and I need more time and encouragement to begin to pull these new ideas and methods together. I felt judged and abandoned by you and Ralph, and even by my ministry colleague. I suppose you'll say it was "for my own good."
Anyway, I hope we can talk more about these issues at our appointment. Thanks for ‘listening.'
Julie
ENDNOTES
1 Integrative Exam - The integrative exam is a requirement for students in the M.Div. and MARL programs. At approximately two-thirds of the way through the student's program, she or he is required to write a paper based in a dilemma or situation from their ministry experience. The ministry dilemma is to be analyzed contextually and then explored through the curricular lenses and knowledge the student has gained in seminary thus far. The paper is read by two faculty (the student's advisor and one other) and by the student's field supervisor. These four (student plus three readers) then have a conversation about the paper and its issues. The object is to assess the student's ability to integrate classroom and ministry and to demonstrate their intellectual, spiritual, and ministerial growth. Recommendations for further study or experience are made as necessary.
2 Julie - A white, working class, lesbian student who is about 30 years old and who comes from an evangelical background. She has a personal and family history of addiction. She is partnered and is denominationally undecided (leaning toward UCC from the MCC). She is 80% of the way through her program.
3 Cindy - A white, middle-class, middle-aged, United Methodist woman who has served as a professor for approximately 15 years. Advisor is theologically liberal and strongly feminist. She is married with children.
4 GLBT = gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.
5 Sara - A white, straight, United Methodist student, approximately 40 years old, from a rural background. She is theologically traditional, recently divorced, and a student pastor. She will graduate in the spring. She recently took the integrative exam and received honors.
6 Mark - A white, middle-class, United Church of Christ student. He is married with teenage children and serves as a student pastor in a rural setting. He is approximately 40 years old, moderately liberal theologically, and has experienced "positive stretching" but minimal struggle in his time at seminary. He will graduate this spring.
7 Clarice - An African-American, middle-class, United Methodist woman who is approximately 55 years old. She is very grounded in her church and neighborhood communities and is married to the pastor of her church. She has children and grandchildren and will graduate this spring.