Pillar 3

Living in the Tension Community Gatherings (LITT)

These LITT gatherings are for people of all different shades of what is faith and sexuality in our culture today: secular LGBT, Christian LGBT, ex-gay, celibate, Christian heterosexual (liberal and conservative) and non-Christian heterosexual people to all willfully enter into a place of constructive tension, intentionally forming a community that peacefully and productively takes on the most divisive topics within the culture war that is faith and sexuality. It’s what we call our Holy Umcomfortableness.

These forums are held twice a month in Chicago at The Marin Foundation’s offices, as well as around the country. Once a quarter we also hold a Large Group LITT at Roscoes Bar—the oldest and most well-known gay bar in Boystown. Past speakers for the Large Group LITT have included PD Williams, and intersex individual; and Tony Campolo, bestselling author, commentator and former spiritual advisor for President Bill Clinton. For our upcoming LITT schedule, please see our Current Events.

In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. was locked up in a jail in Birmingham, Alabama. In a letter to confront the white clergymen that had him locked up MLK reflected on his life’s work to that point and said:

“I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly opposed violent tension my whole life, but there is a type of constructive, non-violent tension which is necessary for growth.”

The problem is that in today’s culture there is no such thing as ‘constructive tension.’ All tension is projected as bad tension; a tension that is too political and therefore too divisive to know what it means to engage in ways that tangibly bring redemption and reconciliation. Unfortunately, our culture is focused so heavily on assimilation that it has forgotten what progress looks like.

Yet if we are able to understand the significance of constructive tension, settling ourselves in the middle of places that others just run from, the growth that MLK was talking about will always come. But it will only come retrospectively after much time has been spent immersed in the tension-filled areas that we are, and culture is, most uneasy about. Those tension-filled areas are uncomfortable, challenging, confusing, overbearing, uneasy, oft-criticized, oft-rebuked and don’t always come with a simple answer—if an answer is ever involved. And it’s worth every minute.

Our slogan is to Commit. Stay. Reconcile. Grow.

For more information please email kevin@themarinfoundation.org.