JESUS & WOMEN

'The depth and breadth of the robust embodiment with which Jesus related to women in highly significant for cultures obsessed with sex. The Gospel stories offer a rich embodied distinction between sex and sexuality. These stories highlight Jesus' freedom and authority to live and practice an enfleshed, physical, concrete, nonromantic nearness with women in a culture that had no place to put such physical nearness and touch with one's female neighbor.' 

Dan Brennan, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, p.120. 

CREATED FOR AND BY LOVE

'We were created and redeemed by Lovers and we are lovers.' 

Dan Brennan, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, p.91. 

MALE & FEMALE INTIMACY

'In my thirty years of attending churches I have heard two narratives in Christian communities: 1) the marital/ romantic story, and 2) the danger story. Both stories of course, involve an introduction, a plot, and a climax towards the same thing: sex. Freud no doubt, would heartily endorse these two stories. But are we to settle for only Freudian sexual formation in our faith communities? As Protestants, we have to ask ourselves, why do we reduce deep, male-female intimacy in our communities to the great Freudian "sex charade?" If the church is going to present an alternative, eschatological community of brothers and sisters bonded together as one in Christ, formation and friendship must suggest that Christian sexuality has multiple paths for men and women.' 

Dan Brennan, Sacred Union, Sacred Passions, p.56. 

WHAT GOD HAS JOINED TOGETHER

'God, who is love, calls us all - singles, husbands. wives, widows, widowers, divorced - into a spirituality of love and friendship in marriage, beyond marriage and outside of marriage. While God honors and blesses the marriage bed, God does not confine delight, goodness, passion, attraction, beauty, sensuality, spontaneity, or creativity to the boundaries of married love. Jesus himself embodied these realities as a single man.' 

Dan Brennan, Scared Unions, Sacred Passions, p.44. 

EVANGELICAL INDIVIDUALISM

'The beginning of the evangelical conversion story centers on the experience of a private and isolated decision to follow Christ. This focus on a privatized spirituality continues as the evangelical sub-culture stresses how our evangelical identity is found in "quiet times," or our commitment to private prayer and Bible reading. The isolated experience tends to be the high point for evangelical spirituality. In fact, evangelical theologians and pastors have encouraged, exhorted, and entreated Christians to depend on God alone as their helper, deliverer, burden bearer, refuge, strength, encourager, friend, and counselor. Scores of books have been written on the virtue and benefit of private, isolated, withdrawn, personal prayer. With an inordinate emphasis on the individual, it is rare to find an evangelical who values formation from paired friendship love and community.'  

Dan Brennan, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, p.29. 

COUNTER-CULTURAL LOVE STORIES

'Romantic love does not have a monopoly on all deep love stories between men and women.' 

Dan Brennan, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, p.20. 

SOME GOOD QUESTIONS

'What would our marriages, our friendships, our churches, and our communities look like if men and women were not afraid of connecting with each other in deep ways? What if men and women could really know each other without sex getting in the way? What if we did not have to be so afraid of own own and other's bodies that we cannot trust ourselves with them?' 

Dan Brennan, Sacred Unions,. Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women, p.17.