Summary: A reminder that the church is (or should be) a radically inclusive gathering.
God Gets Everything God Wants is a book I would never have picked up if I had not recieved a free copy via a Twitter giveaway. First, I am pretty strongly not in the deterministic stream of the Calvinist tradition, and the title hints at that. It is not that I am an open theist, but that I get very uncomfortable with relying on God’s will or election being the answer to complex questions. Second, this is a very theologically progressive book. I lean toward progressive theology, but I am also increasingly wary of white progressivism interested in its own freedom, but not aware of the weaknesses of white progressivism’s lack of grappling with the way it has fallen short of being inclusive for all. And so, while I grew up in a denomination that was in the mainline progressive tradition, I was mainly in a small evangelical wing of that denomination and have mostly found spiritual insight in the Black church tradition or Catholic tradition because my overly broad perception is that the progressive mainline tradition has not been oriented enough toward constructive theology.
That being said, I intentionally went to the University of Chicago Divinity School for my seminary program because I needed to get out of Evangelical institutions and experience a broader sense of Christianity. And one of the most important aspects of my mainline Protestant-oriented seminary program was experiencing the seriousness that so many of my classmates and professors gave to their faith. I believe that many in the Evangelical and Pentecostal traditions dismiss mainline faith expressions because they have not sought out mainline Christians to understand the expression of mainline faith in its own context. Over the past couple of months, I have been increasingly dismissive of Christians unwilling to acknowledge the Christianity of those who accept women as pastors. The fights over Jesus and John Wayne and the Making of Biblical Womanhood are just not my fights. I have always believed that women should be ordained to all roles in the church. And this doubling down on people pointing to 1 Tim 2:12 as the end of the discussion without acknowledging Roms 16 (Pheobe being the one that Paul sent to read and teach the book of Romans, the acknowledgment of Priscilla as the more important of the teaching team, Junia being described as an apostle, etc.). I am not here to argue about women as clergy but to give context to my reading of God Gets Everything God Wants.
Katie Hays is the pastor of Galileo Church in Texas. The church attempts to love the marginalized people of their community as Jesus would. Its first missional priority is to support the LGBTQ+ community. And that priority is communicated throughout God Gets Everything God Wants. And many Christians will never pick up this book because of that. But I want to communicate here more than anything that if people do not pick up this book solely for that reason, they are missing a call for the church to love radically. The very best parts of this book are the grappling with what it means to love well (and the honest grappling with how Galileo and all churches will end up being inadequate to loving as they should because of sin.)
I keep coming back to NT Wright’s biography of Paul because Wright so strongly emphasizes that what Paul did was orient the church to be a transitional, trans-ethnic, and trans-class body. Amos Yong’s commentary on Acts walks through how the book of Acts primarily breaks down lines of division within the church and becomes an increasingly inclusive body. Raphael Warnock’s The Divided Mind of the Black Church is even about how the Black church, in its work to be inclusive, has to keep striving to follow God’s calling toward inclusiveness. The need for the church to return to its vision of radical love is a common theme historically within Christian writing because it is so hard to do in practice.
God Gets Everything God Wants is a book that grapples well with what is most often called deconstruction and lovingly points a path forward to the church and as an inherently flawed but still vital part of what it means to be a follower of Christ. Katie Hays is gentle as she acknowledges the harm that so many have felt from the church. But she also points to a vision of what the church should be striving toward as an ideal.
I did set this book down for a good long while before finishing it, I don’t think it is a perfect book, but I want to commend it to many. The last couple of chapters are the best part of the book, in my opinion. And the seriousness and faith-driven commitment to her ideals of the church, I think, is essential for people committed to a male-only pastorate or who are skeptical about the compatibility of Christianity and the LGBTQ+ community. If you are theologically committed to a male-only pastorate or a traditional sexual ethic, Katie Hays is not trying to change your mind, and this book won’t do that. But what it will do is help you an author that takes her faith very seriously (albeit with a few swear words in the text) so that it is harder just to dismiss faith claims of people that theologically disagree with you.
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