Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

About 2000, I ran across an article that I thought set a new standard for dismantling the "beauty on the outside" schtick of the grocery-store checkout line magazines, notably Cosmo. Then-college student Sarah Hinlicky wrote "Glossy Lies" with incisive wisdom and an acid pen.

Since then she's finished college, completed seminary, been ordained, worked at least one pastoral assignment with her denomination, married, delivered a son, and done a ton of writing for Boundless, First Things and other publications. I Google her from time to time, just to hang around her wisdom a bit. Such things are contagious, you know.

A few years ago, she took a position as editor of a magazine, Lutheran Forum, which is one of the few places where the two major streams of Lutheranism co-operate: The Missouri Synod (generally conservative) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA; generally liberal, and her own spiritual heritage). Yes, I hate the simplistic labels, but they set up the story. In her first "here I am; here's who I am" column, she wrote about how church breaks your heart...but this is what we have:

Somehow it feels like telling the punchline before the rest of the joke, but in the aforementioned interest of avoiding hidden agendas, here are some things you may as well know about me now.

The Bible: As I mentioned before, it is my lifeline. I don’t find the doctrine of inerrancy (of the literal-six-day-creation-in-fierce-opposition-to-evolution type) illuminating or insightful. But I do believe that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God and the norm of the church’s faith and life, as I confessed in my ordination vows. I stand under the Scriptures, not above them.

Some hot-button issues: I do think (obviously enough) that the ordination of women is in keeping with the gospel, but at the same time I am not at all interested in non-theological reasons for ordaining them. I have tried very hard to conclude that homosexual behavior is in keeping with the gospel too, and I have failed; and I imagine that neither the effort nor the failure will win me any friends. I think the much bigger problems are divorce, abortion, and sexual abuse. I find it hard to take seriously invocations of statis confessionis where homosexuality is concerned when it has not been invoked over divorced bishops and non-celibate heterosexual pastors.

Ecumenically: I have no desire to become a Roman Catholic and I do not find the reasons that others have offered for doing so compelling. As you might deduce from my dissertation topic, the eastern church is more appealing to me. All the same, it’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I think Lutheran indifference towards (other) Protestants is a shame and a failure.

Closer to home: I have examined the Lutheran confession of the Christian faith at length and have not found it wanting. In fact, in it I have found life, grace, truth, and my Lord Jesus Christ. I have examined the Lutheran church bodies that confess the Christian faith and have found them profoundly wanting. But I expected that all along because, after all, church breaks your heart.

Well. This is a dire beginning!

I should be asked now, with some justice, why I have prolonged this apparently masochistic relationship with the church; why I have stuck around, gotten ordained, pursued a Ph.D. in theology, and accepted an editorship for a church journal, if the only payoff is heartbreak.

(Read the rest here.)

What I love about Sarah is that she loves God, God's word and the gospel contained therein, and God's people for whom that gospel was lived and written. (All three.) She gives voice to my own experience, and perhaps the experience of many other people, when she writes, "I have tried very hard to conclude that homosexual behavior is in keeping with the gospel too, and I have failed; and I imagine that neither the effort nor the failure will win me any friends."

I have learned that the effort to discern God's written intentions for us produces sometimes-violent reactions; I have learned that the failure to find popular or conventional conclusions produces additional sometimes-violent reactions. I weep for our churches and our Christians who have fallen to such depths. I weep for those who have broken fellowship with us, ostensibly over such differences. And I weep for me.

But of course, as she says while seeking common ground between people, church breaks your heart.

And to reiterate my last post, if we are to live deeply, we will have to risk (our hearts) greatly. To whom else can we go, except to a savior who walks into troubled waters and divided houses and says, "...be still?" Perhaps if we would be still before him, we would know peace.

If you're still with me, please look over her writings. Enjoy; and be blessed.

Subversive Virginity (1998)
Subversive Masculinity (1999)
other writings at Boundless (1998-2002)
other writings at Lutheran Forum (to present)
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