Phyllis Tickle: New Book Paints Picture of a Complicated, Controversial, Compelling and Deeply Christian Woman

From the first time I interviewed Phyllis Tickle in 2009, until a couple months before she died on September 22, 2015, we stayed in touch. She never failed to respond to my e-mails or phone calls.

She made me feel not like just a reporter, but a friend.

Apparently, I was not alone. 

According to Jon M. Sweeney in his new book, Phyllis Tickle: A Life, the prolific author and speaker “was a genius at friendship, able to communicate sincerity, warmth and affection to hundreds of people, one at a time, in such a way that many people—perhaps two or three hundred—may have, at any given time, regarded themselves as one of Phyllis Tickle’s best friends.”

Uncovering the private Phyllis Tickle is Sweeney’s goal, and he does it well.

We learn about a woman who was deeply spiritual—she prayed faithfully six times a day, starting at six each morning.

He writes about how she had two miscarriages, and then how she and her husband, Sam, raised six children. We also learn of her intense grief following the death of an infant child; she cried for months when the baby died.

She was a gun owner, believing in the importance of the Second Amendment. A libertarian politically, Sweeney writes she loved living on her rural property in Tennessee, secure in knowledge “they would have guns and privacy and would provide as much as possible for themselves.”

She may have spoken in tongues. Sweeny writes she “frequently heard Jesus speak to her,” and occasionally felt God “was hovering over a place, signifying God’s blessing.”

She struggled with a difficult marriage, but never once considered divorce as an option for a Christian. “She was always faithful in a marriage that was sometimes unsatisfying and unfaithful to her,” Sweeney writes.

As revealed in the book, Sam was bisexual, and had occasional sex partners who were men. She “lived with this silent pain around her marriage for decades,” Sweeney writes.

Although she was a trailblazer for women by taking leadership in areas dominated by men, she didn’t consider herself a feminist.

She had many gay friends. She became aware of the suffering of gay men and women during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s when her husband, Sam, a doctor, treated gay patients with the disease.

Together, they were angered by how church leaders “speak uncaringly, unchristianly, on this subject.” She came to believe that these “broken and rejected and battered and publically rejected” people were exactly the people Jesus died for and accepted.

Later, she believed the Holy Spirit led her to support acceptance of LGBTQ people, and also worshipped in an affirming congregation.

However, she didn’t participate in the theological debates about the issue of homosexuality; if pressed for her opinion, she preferred to “go in sideways” through parables or stories from the Bible.

“I’m pretty sure head-on would be a wreck waiting to happen,” she stated.

According to Sweeney, Tickle said her job wasn’t to make theological or biblical arguments for gay equality in the church. “Her job, instead, was more pastoral.”

She could be blunt in her language. She once described theology as “the noise of old men farting in the wind.” When asked if she was a Christian, she replied “You bet your sweet tush I am.”

Also, she had a near death experience, while pregnant with her first child. She never spoke about it much in public, but once wrote it was like being “without a care for anything that had ever been or ever was or ever might be, I lifted toward the light . . . and it said ‘come.’”

Of that experience, she said: “For the life of me I can never be scared of death again.”

If she knew she were to die in the next five minutes, she said, “I’d be somewhere between delighted and ecstatic.”

There is, of course, much more about her private life in the book, and her public life, too. 

Sweeney writes about her groundbreaking work as the founding editor of the religion department for Publisher’s Weekly, and how she helped nurture and promote a publishing revolution for religious and spiritual books in the U.S. and beyond.

And, of course, Tickle was a prolific author herself—she wrote over three dozen books, including a number on prayer.

But for many, it was The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why, published in 2008, that brought her to their attention. 

In that compelling and controversial book, she outlined the changes facing western Christianity today, using the metaphor of a garage sale to describe the upheavals facing the church in the 21^st century.

The last time the church had such a sale was the Great Reformation, when reformers like Martin Luther replaced the Pope with a new source of authority—the Bible.

This time, she said, Christians are looking for new forms of authority, jettisoning things like institutional church structures, buildings, and even the Reformation view of the Bible itself.

In Tickle’s view, this has been an ongoing process over time for things like slavery, women’s ordination and divorce. With each issue, Christians found ways to change their view on those subjects, and adapt their view of the Bible.

Now, she stated, came “the last playing piece”—the full rights and inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church.

“When it is resolved—and it most surely will be—the Reformation’s understanding of Scripture as it had been taught by Protestantism for almost five centuries will be dead,” she declared.

Tickle understood this battle would be “agonizing” for many Christians who had built their lives on a certain view of the Bible, and it would prompt fierce defensive attacks—she was called a heretic more than once. 

Sweeny records one such episode in the book about her first visit to Winnipeg in 2009, writing that her presentation was met by “evangelicals protesting a wide range of what she was teaching, and what she wrote in The Great Emergence.”

What her critics didn’t know, he says, was that she was “always more sympathetic” than they imagined “to the pain and discomfort Christians felt in the face of change rocking the churches, traditional doctrine and ways of being faithful.”

Looking back, Sweeney writes that “people will debate for years to come whether Phyllis was an evangelist and catalyst for change in the American church, or simply a historian and sociologist telling of changes taking place.”

History, he says, “will tell whether or not she was correct in her reading of the signals and signs to identify a great emergence of Christianity.”

As for me, Tickle was all those things, and a friend. Sweeney's book adroitly captures Tickle's private and public personas, and leaves us with a colourful portrait of a compelling, controversial, complicated and deeply Christian woman. 

A shorter version of this column appeared in the Oct. 13, 2018 Winnipeg Free Press.

Anti-Abortion History for Religious Conservatives not Straightforward

All eyes were on Washington the past couple of weeks, riveted by the nomination process for D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

For religious conservatives in the U.S., especially evangelicals, Kavanaugh’s appointment is a big step in their long-held goal of dismantling Roe v. Wade.

That was a promise made by Donald Trump when he was running for President; if elected, he would nominate judges who would end legal abortion in that country.

His promise caused many people of faith to vote for Trump, despite his moral shortcomings.

It is not certain that Kavanaugh will rule against abortion, if the opportunity arises. But even if he doesn’t, it’s clear religious conservatives will keep up the fight.

Interestingly, it wasn’t always that way—for evangelicals, at least. (Catholics had an official history of opposition to abortion going back to the later 19^th century.)

As Jonathan Dudley noted in a blog post for CNN, this “uncompromising opposition to abortion” is not “a timeless feature of evangelical Christianity.”

According to Dudley, “the reality is that what conservative Christians now say is the Bible’s clear teaching on the matter was not a widespread interpretation until the late 20th century.”

He notes that in 1968, Christianity Today—the flagship publication for evangelicalism in the U.S.—published a special issue on contraception and abortion where leading evangelical thinkers explained that the Bible “plainly teaches that life begins at birth.”

In the lead article in that issue, Bruce Waltke, then a professor of Old Testament at the conservative Dallas Theological Seminary, wrote that “God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed . . . the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense.”

That same year Christianity Today and the Christian Medical Society sponsored a symposium that declined to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as justifications for ending a pregnancy. 

Three years later, in 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution affirming abortion should be legal not only to protect the life of the mother, but to protect her emotional health as well.

Today, Dudley notes, opinions and resolutions like those would be considered heretical by many evangelicals.

“Yet their positions were mainstream at the time, widely believed by born-again Christians to flow from the unambiguous teaching of Scripture,” he says.

So, what changed?

One of the key figures in the cause is conservative political activist Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Moral Majority with televangelist Jerry Falwell.

In an article titled “The Real Origins of the Religious Right” in Politico Magazine, Randall Balmer, a historian of American religion, writes that Weyrich was looking for a way to secure evangelical support for right wing political issues.

Back then, Balmer says, American evangelicals had largely stayed out of the political arena in any organized way.

“If he could change that, Weyrich reasoned, their large numbers would constitute a formidable voting bloc—one that he could easily marshal behind conservative causes,” Balmer writes.

But this “moral majority” needed a standard around which to rally. For nearly two decades, Weyrich had been trying to find one—things like pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, and abortion.

“I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Balmer quotes Weyrich as saying.

But he was able to capitalize on growing uneasiness about abortion. 

Beginning with the 1980 Presidential election that saw Republican Ronald Reagan defeat Democrat Jimmy Carter, “leaders of the religious right hammered away at the issue, persuading many evangelicals to make support for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion a litmus test for their votes,” Balmer says.

(Actually, Balmer maintains that racism—opposition to desegregation of whites-only schools, including the evangelical school Bob Jones University—was the real reason for evangelicals getting involved in right wing politics. Since that wouldn’t be an acceptable strategy, abortion was selected as a safer route. But you can read that in the article and decide for yourself.)

Which brings us back to the Kavanaugh nomination, and evangelical activism around abortion, today. 

There may be many good reasons to oppose abortion. But for evangelicals in the U.S., and maybe in Canada, too, one of them isn’t that they have always been against abortion, or that they have always interpreted the Bible as supporting that cause.

To put it another way, just as the issue of abortion itself isn’t simple or straightforward, apparently neither is the history of evangelical opposition to it.

A slightly different version of this column appeared in the October 6, 2018 Winnipeg Free Press.

Settler or Indigenous: Who Owns the Land?

It’s customary today for events to begin with an acknowledgement that the gathering is occurring on the traditional land of an Indigenous group.

Universities, arts groups, public schools, city councils and even sports teams are doing it.

In religious settings, the United Church of Canada has been among the leaders in this area.

For them, “acknowledging the territory where we gather and the people who have traditionally called it home for thousands of years is a way to continue to live out the church’s Apologies to the First Peoples of North America.”

It also “supports our calls to others to pay respect to Indigenous peoples” and is a way the church can “work toward right relations” with Indigenous people, they say.

I heartily endorse the practice. But while it is good and right to openly acknowledge that the lands on which we meet were once home to Indigenous peoples, from a theological perspective it doesn’t feel like the whole story.

And why is that?

While it is good and right to acknowledge we are meeting on lands that once were home to Indigenous people, for people of faith the land—indeed, the whole planet—doesn’t belong, and never belonged, to anyone.

It belongs to God.

For Christians and Jews, the words of Psalm 24 make this clear.

The earth, it says, “is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.”

For Muslims, the Qur’an states that "Allah created the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them.”

Hindus believe that Vishnu is the creator, sustainer, destroyer and then re-creator of the universe.

Sikhs believe the universe was made by Waheguru (God) who created the earth and all forms of life on it.

Buddhism has no concept of a creator god to explain the origin of the universe. It teaches that everything depends on everything else in the universe.

But the same idea as in the other religions is still present: People are not at the centre. There are other forces at work beyond humankind.

Without getting into a debate about how the earth was made—creation versus evolution—all the world’s major religions acknowledge it was made by, and belongs to God, or gods, or to forces and factors beyond human beings.

For these reasons, I like what my church does. 

The weekly bulletin acknowledges the historical connection between the land we are meeting on and Indigenous people. But it also affirms a broader theological perspective.

It goes like this:

“We affirm with Psalm 24 that the earth’s is the Lord and everything in it. We humbly acknowledge that our worship takes place on Treaty One land, the traditional territory of the Anishinabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Metis Nation. We pray for justice and reconciliation.”

That works for me. But does it work for Indigenous people? 

I asked a couple of my Indigenous friends. They both found it quite acceptable. In fact, one said it is similar to Indigenous beliefs about how the creator made the earth, and how humans—Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike—are responsible to care for it.

Of course, there is much work to be done beyond acknowledgements. This includes taking seriously the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action. 

One of them invites faith groups to “develop ongoing education strategies to ensure that their respective congregations learn about their church’s role in colonization, the history and legacy of residential schools, and why apologies to former residential school students, their families, and communities were necessary.”

Acknowledgements is one small way to work towards that goal. And so is acknowledging that we all have an obligation to care for this earth we share together.

Sunday Stalwart, Diversely Devout or Spiritually Awake: What Type of Religious Person Are You?

Are you a Sunday Stalwart? Diversely Devout? Relaxed Religious? Or Solidly Secular?

Those are some of the new categories being proposed by the Pew Research Centre in the U.S. to categorize believers in that country.

The new categories—or “typologies,” as Pew puts it—are based on answers people provided to a survey it conducted last December.

By using the new categories, Pew wants to better describe the way people believe and behave not only within faith groups, but across religions. People in the seven groups can be found in any faith tradition.

Of the seven categories, the Sunday Stalwarts are the most religious group. These are people who not only actively practice their faith, attend services weekly, and pray daily. Seventeen percent of Americans fall into this group.

God-and-Country Believers (12%) are less active in church groups or other religious organizations, but hold many traditional religious beliefs and tilt right on social and political issues.

The Diversely Devout (11%) are people who believe in traditional ideas about God, but also consult accept other spiritual practices like consulting psychics and believing in things like reincarnation and spiritual energy.

The Relaxed Religious (17%) believe in traditional ideas about God, and four-in-ten pray daily. But fewer of them attend religious services or read scripture regularly, and they almost unanimously say it is not necessary to believe in God to be a good or moral person.

Spiritually Awake people (15%) believe in God or some higher power, though many do not believe in the traditional ideas about God. Relatively few attend religious services on a weekly basis.

Religion Resisters (12%) believe in some higher power or spiritual force, and many consider themselves to be spiritual but not religious. However, many express strongly negative views of organized religion.  

The Solidly Secular (17%) are the least religious of the seven groups. They are relatively affluent, highly educated adults, and mostly white and male. They tend to describe themselves as neither religious nor spiritual.

Pew notes that outside of the Sunday Stalwarts, relatively few Americans—even those who otherwise hold strong religious beliefs—frequently attend religious services or read their scriptures.

Instead of attending religious services, Pew observes that many Americans find fulfillment from different sources such as “their families, friends and careers, but also from being in the great outdoors, taking care of pets, listening to music and reading.”

Since this study is about Americans, it’s hard to know how well these new typologies would apply to Canada—the God-and-Country category, in particular, might not fit as well north of the border.

I also suspect that, in our much more secular Canadian society, there might be more people in the Religion Resisters and Solidly Secular categories in this country.

All the same, it would be interesting to see how people across different religions would share some of the same characteristics when it comes things like belief in God, attendance at services, reading scriptures, or praying.

What category are you in? You can find out for yourself by taking the quiz on the Pew website. 

Trinity Western University Changes Course on Community Covenant, and There's No Backlash

It was big news when the Supreme Court denied an appeal by Trinity Western University (TWU) to have a decision against its law school overturned because of the university’s stance against homosexuality.

It was even bigger news when the school made a change to that stance.

In June, the Court ruled that the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario could refuse to accredit TWU’s proposed law school because of its community covenant.

The chief objection by the societies was how all students were required to sign the covenant, which included a provision that students “abstain” from “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”

In making the ruling, the Court agreed with the societies that the covenant discriminated against LGBTQ students.

For many Christians in Canada, the decision was evidence of how the standing of the church in Canada has changed, as well as a blow against religious liberty.

Then, in August, TWU did something unexpected when it decided to make signing the covenant voluntary for students.

In an interview with Faith Today, Canada’s leading evangelical publication, TWU President Bob Kuhn emphasized that the covenant itself had not been changed—it still exists, and faculty and staff have to sign it annually.

By making it voluntary for students, he stated, the school was clarifying that it “does not discriminate in terms of enrollment for any person from any belief or any LGBTQ or other group.”

He went on to say something that also caught some people by surprise: TWU already has LGBTQ students, and many of them say they feel “welcome and embraced and supported” at the school.

They also say it is easier to come out as gay at TWU than at public universities—also quite a statement for him to make.

After hearing Kuhn’s comments, I immediately wondered about the reaction. Would donors cease giving? That’s the big fear church-related organizations have when they think about changing their stance on LGBTQ.

In the back of everyone’s mind is what happened four years ago to World Vision USA when it changed a policy related to LGBTQ.

It was in 2014 that the organization altered its employee conduct manual to recognize same-sex marriage as being within the norms of “abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage.”

Then-president Richard Stearns explained to the U.S. evangelical magazine Christianity Today that, in making the change, the organization was not endorsing gay marriage.

Instead, he said, World Vision USA was simply recognizing that gay marriage was like other issues churches that support it disagree on—things like divorce, remarriage, modes of baptism, female clergy.

The change simply made the policy “more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues," he said.

The response was quick and very negative. About 5,000 child sponsors cancelled their donations, a loss of over $1.2 million for the organization. Major evangelical leaders in the U.S. also loudly criticized the move. 

Within two days, World Vision USA reversed course.

Now that TWU has done something similar, would it suffer the consequences? I contacted them to find out.

According to James Tweedy, TWU’s director of marketing, “we haven’t experienced a negative impact on donations. In fact both donations and enrollment continue to be stronger than in prior years.”

Overall, he added, “the response has been largely positive,” although he acknowledged there have been some criticisms based on the mistaken belief the school has eliminated its covenant.

Thinking about the TWU experience makes me wonder if there aren’t some lessons for other church-related organizations facing a similar challenge.

Today, many church-related organizations find themselves in a difficult place. They know they need to modify policies about LGBTQ issues, or face losing a younger generation that is generally more open to gay relationships—their future supporters.

But they worry if they do then their older donors—the ones who donate the most and keep them afloat today—will stop giving.

Maybe the TWU experience shows those fears are overblown—in Canada, at least. 

If a thoroughly evangelical school like TWU can modify its stance on LGBTQ, perhaps other church-related organizations can do the same.

Maybe TWU has done them all a great service by opening the door, and not experiencing a negative response.

Based on a column first published in the Sept. 8, 2018 Winnipeg Free Press. 

"Awesome, a once in a lifetime experience": Winnipeggers React to Meeting President of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

That's me in the foreground interviewing President Nelson (right).

If you are Roman Catholic, imagine what it would be like to meet the Pope in person.

If you are Muslim, imagine going on the Hajj.

If you are Jewish, imagine praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Winnipeg don’t have to imagine what something like that would feel like. They know because they met the leader of their church—a man they regard as a prophet of God—last month.

Over 1,300 people came to hear president Russell Nelson on August 17, with some lining up over four hours before the event started.

The 17^th man to hold the position, the 93 year-old Nelson is considered by the faithful as God’s representative on earth.

His visit is only the second time a president of the church has come to Winnipeg. The other was Gordon Hinckley, who came in 1998.

Nelson came to Winnipeg to visit the church’s new temple, which is under construction in the southwest part of the city. It is scheduled to open in 2020.

“As the temple is prepared for the people, the people need to prepare for the temple,” he told the gathering, going on to describe ways members of the church need to become “temple ready.”

Prior to coming to Winnipeg, Nelson was in the news about changing the name of the church from Mormon, which is commonly used, to its official name: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In the few minutes I had to speak to him before his address, I asked about that decision.

By announcing the change, he said he was trying to “correct an egregious error” that had taken root over generations.

He added he “loves” the prophet Mormon, from whom the name is derived.

But “this is not Mormon’s church,” he said. “I think Mormon himself would be embarrassed if people thought this was his church.”

“I’m trying to make clear this is his [Jesus’] church,” he said, noting that Jesus had impressed this on his mind.

The instruction he received is “an amazing revelation,” he stated, and it will be “a wonderful thing” for the church. 

At the same time, he acknowledged that changing the name won’t be easy. But when “we know what the Lord wants, we move in that direction,” he said.

For members of the church in Winnipeg, it’s clear his visit was a memorable event.

“This is a once in a lifetime chance for people in Winnipeg to see him,” said Ken McInnes. “It’s a very special moment.”

“It was a wonderful privilege to have him come here, to remind us of what we need to do to prepare for the Temple,” added his wife, Silvia.

“We see them on TV [the presidents], but it’s different to be in the same room.”

Not only Winnipeggers were there. Dhafne Rasera is from Brazil.

“It was an amazing experience,” said the University of Manitoba student of her first time seeing a prophet. “I felt the Holy Spirit. It was powerful.”

Fiona Nauna of Papau, New Guinea is doing her mission service for the church in the city.

“It was awesome, a once in a lifetime experience,” she said, adding “I am the first one in my family to see a prophet in person.”

It was the same thing for Baley Godderidge of Logan, Utah, also doing her service in Winnipeg.

“I feel very lucky, to be in the right place at the right time,” she said, laughing at the irony that someone who lives near Salt Lake City—the headquarters of the church—would need to come to Winnipeg to see its president.

Added Allan Robison, a long-time member of the church in Winnipeg: “This is the highest honour, to have him visit us . . . it’s thrilling to me whenever I can hear a prophet.”

As someone who grew up in a church tradition that doesn’t have a pope or bishops, or even sacred places, the reverence and rapture members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Winnipeg showed for Nelson was hard for me to relate to. But it was still moving to see how much his visit meant to them.

Now I just need to get used to not calling them Mormons.