Dear David Busic, Gary Hartke, Scott Shaw, and anyone else concerned,

Thomas Jay Oord has asked me to serve as a witness in light of accusations and trials related to his vocal support for inclusion of LGBTQIA persons in the Church of the Nazarene. I read this recent request: “To ask the RBOD to require Dr. Oord and the parties called to be witnesses to briefly summarize what they anticipate each witness will testify to and to remove any testimony that argues whether Manual paragraphs 21.2 and 31 and other provisions relating to Human Sexuality are considered doctrine or should be reviewed or changed.” The explanation given: “Rationale: To the degree that any of Dr. Oord’s witnesses are going to argue that the Covenants of Christian Conduct are not doctrine, those witnesses should be excluded for the above-stated reasons.”

Whether or not this is a reasonable request, I’m willing to comply, and to share in advance what I’ll testify if I’m honored with the chance to speak at this event you’re calling a “trial.” I will not argue manual paragraph interpretation. Nor will I point to the longstanding distinctions, in Christian and Nazarene history, between central theological doctrines and questions of lifestyle. I suspect you’ve listened to Tom’s arguments for inclusion, and trust that you’ve considered published accounts of hundreds of other theologians, pastors, and laypersons who support full inclusion of LGBTQIA folks in the life of this church. I don’t expect you to change your mind because of anything fresh I might argue. And, you’ve asked witnesses at this “trial” to forgo any such debates. So be it.

The question at hand is whether your theological disagreement with Tom warrants his removal from the community of ordained elders in our shared church. This question is not asked in isolation, but alongside thousands of ordained Nazarene elders, professors, and theologians, who have preached, taught, and published opinions that create healthy dialogue about theology, ministry, and Christian life. Tom has been selected for removal, and is on trial today. I’m here to testify on his behalf, but more than that: I’m here to stand between you and your own future. Tom’s future is certain; he’ll spend the rest of his life and ministry looking for ways ensure that queer folk are affirmed and welcomed by Nazarenes. You won’t silence him by removing credentials. The only fate that will be sealed by this decision is your own – you will have used the church’s sharpest and cruelest weapon on a person who is attempting to show compassion.

So, in defense of Tom, I argue that this is not the time to use the tool you now weigh and measure in your hands. If you wield this instrument irresponsibly and without care, long-range harm will result. This harm doesn’t just wound Tom—in fact, I think it hurts Tom the least. It wounds the vulnerable people he vocally supports, and it does so palpably and visibly. It cuts off the healthy mechanism whereby the church is stretched and grown for every new era. If nothing else, thousands find comfort in Tom’s assurance that they are loved and cherished by God, whether or not they are comfortable in their assigned gender, or in heterosexual relationships. This weapon of exclusion, which you hold in your hands, threatens these vulnerable people. You will hurt them more than you’ll hurt Tom.

I am genuinely, earnestly worried about you. You are ordained, like me, like Tom. We carry a common, heavy, serious responsibility. Tom is asking you to fully embrace LGBTQIA folks. I agree with him on this matter, but I’m asking something different today. I’m asking you to hold space for Tom, and to protect healthy dialogue and inclusive conversations about matters such as this. The church can’t be so brittle that it excludes people who disagree on such things. A brittle church survives one crisis only to crack in the next. Be malleable, be gentle, and lead with compassion. I don’t envy your role, holding the sharp axe of exclusion. But please trust me, this is not the time to use it. Only further harm comes from swinging it today. This tool is heavy, too, and your souls will surely tire as you swing it again and again, each time dividing a caring leader from the people we are called and compelled to serve.

I know you’re trapped – between your agreements with Tom about love and compassion and some angry people who insist that Tom’s ordination be revoked. People tried to trap Jesus too. Perhaps you don’t have to be trapped by this. Please indulge me short reflections from the gospels of Luke and John, which have long provided me courage and wisdom for times when people lay traps that divert attention from the heart of the gospel.

The Sadducees came to Jesus one day, Luke tells us, with the intention to trap Jesus concerning legislation about marriage, particularly as it relates to the resurrection. The practice, called a Levirate marriage, required a brother-in-law to marry his brother’s widow, offer her ongoing opportunities for procreation, and care for her children. This law of the Torah would have routinely involved the creation of plural marriages, and it appears this was an active practice during the time of Jesus. Brothers-in-law are often already married; this is not a disqualification. A married brother-in-law is required by the Torah to enter into a sexual and marital relationship with another woman – protecting the widow from destitution. In the puzzle presented by the Sadducees, the woman burns through seven husbands, all brothers, each dying and again leaving her bound by the Torah to enter into marriage and sexual relationship with another man. One bride for seven brothers. This whole arrangement would be considered odd, illegal, and perhaps immoral today. The Sadducees take it for granted, and Jesus leaves it unchallenged. He won’t be baited into a response to their salacious question about who shares whose bed in heaven.

This was a great opportunity for Jesus to renounce plural marriages (and polyamory), if he had opinions or revelation to deliver on this matter. Instead, Jesus indicates that the questions about sexual, marital, social, and legal practices are a smokescreen. The resurrection is not about sex, marriage, or family building. He refocuses their question and dismisses their puzzle, leaving unaddressed the laws requiring plural marriage.

I’m sure you also remember how Jesus dealt with that angry mob in John 8, led this time by scribes and Pharisees – they attempt to trap Jesus between his loving care for a vulnerable person (accused of adultery) and hard laws from the Torah. On the one side there were sharp stones, clinched in angry hands. On the other side the helpless body of a woman. Jesus wrote with his finger in the dirt. They dropped their stones. Please drop yours.

What I offer here, from Luke 20 and John 8, is not some fresh argument for you to consider about whether or not the Spirit which stirs still in the revealed word of God leads us today to be people of inclusion when it comes to folks that identify as LGBTQIA. What I am suggesting is that the trap you think you’re in is no trap at all. You’re caught between people who demand that you silence and exclude Tom Oord and the compassion you surely share with Tom for vulnerable people who come to Nazarene churches and schools for life, only to find rejection and exclusion. But you don’t have to be trapped. You can do what Jesus has done, and point to the resurrection, which isn’t about sex and marriage or how many of your husband’s brothers you’ve made love to. You can throw the first stone, or you can scribble in the dirt.

You are free to set a precedent today, by disagreeing with Tom but agreeing with his compassion. All you have to do is say: “marriage and sexuality and gender are concerns of this age, not the Kingdom of God.” This is what Jesus did when he was confronted with a sex-and-marriage problems involving the tension between plural marriage and the resurrected Body of Christ, between a woman’s suspected sexual activity and the hard stones of her accusers. You can say it too! Refuse the trap. Leave the axe sheathed. Drop the stones.

If people persecute you for not condemning him, point to the cross, and cling to its message of vast and uncontainable love. This church was formed and lives out of a mission that involves shared allegiance to the holiness and power of that cross. The center that holds is our shared commitment to the cruciform love of God in Christ. Perhaps Tom – and I – have the shape of that commitment wrong. May God forgive us if so. But I promise we’re just trying to be faithful to the oaths we swore when we took up the responsibility that we share with you today.

There will always be people demanding the church take sides, but you have a choice—the one Jesus made when the Sadducees and the Pharisees attempted to entrap him. Tom welcomes disagreement and dispute, and so do I. Tom will not turn you away or exclude you for disagreeing with him about theology; I won’t either. This trial isn’t about whether Tom is wrong or right in his suggestion—which I certainly endorse—that the most Nazarene way to be involves affirming and being inclusive of queer folk. This trial is about the time and place to use one of the church’s most dangerous weapons. Your hands should shake as you take it up. Your soul should quiver at the great risk of these words, these actions, this move. There are people standing behind you, pushing you to flex your power, to be their champion. Perhaps their foot is on your neck? Perhaps you’ll face some ire, or see your positions of influence undermined if you defy them? I don’t know; I have not stepped into your robes. I do not know the temptations and pressures that come with this power, or this devastatingly powerful tool you hold in your hands this day. For your sake, for the sake of vulnerable people in the churches you’ve pledged to serve, for the sake of the Church of the Nazarene itself, let it go.

Today is your chance to embody your calling, to protect our church. Today you have an opportunity to sidestep this trap, to safeguard the meaning of my ordination, Tom’s ordination, and perhaps most importantly, your own.

In love, and even hope,

Eric Severson