Brian Ammons recently participated in the ecumenical and emergent “Big Tent Christianity” conference. He is co-founder of Trinity’s Place, a seedling faith community, and on the Education Faculty at Duke University. You can follow his blog at www.nekkidresurrection.com.

The Big Tent Christianity conference in Raleigh, N.C., was the second event I attended organized by the Transforming Theology crew out of Claremont School of Theology. Honestly, the “emergent church” identification of many of the panelists made me a bit nervous, wondering how and if I would fit. While “emergent” is never a title I have claimed for myself, over the past year it is one that has increasingly been read onto me. I’ve tried to figure out what it is that makes me a bit uncomfortable with the scene, and I think it’s mostly a post-evangelical flair mixed with the feel of another capitalist cottage industry.

But here’s the deal, particularly at the Big Tent conference, I found myself being more honest about who I am and what I believe than I ever do in public around the liberal church folks I have identified with for years. Why is that? Probably it’s about my need for feeling like I belong to a tribe and my fear about breaking with liberal orthodoxy. I found in the Big Tent crowd, which was set up to be about bringing folks together who were looking for life in our faith beyond the liberal/evangelical binary, a willingness to be messy and complex.

My role in the conversation was to speak to questions of “big tent” sexuality. I took the opportunity to raise some questions and critiques of the identity politics that drive much of the welcoming movement, and to challenge the larger church to quit using our fixation with a conversation about “gay and lesbian inclusion” as a way of dodging more complex conversations about sexuality for all of us. In short, I’m wondering why, as people of faith, we assume that I have more in common with other men who sleep with men than with other folks who approach sex as a form of prayer. From now on, if you ask me about my sexual orientation, my reply will be, “sacramental.”

I know there are loaded politics in what I put out there. I also know there are a lot of sacred cows in church life, even for the most progressive of us. What I found under the Big Tent was far more room for me to move around than I had expected. I found a broad welcome and lots of great conversation partners — even those with whom I profoundly disagreed. My journey in the church took me to a place where I poured my energy into communities of similar thought and politics. It has been a blessing to dwell there, but now I’m longing for a broader engagement. I struggle with the places where the liberalism that welcomed me back into the church covertly demands loyalties to its own orthodoxies.

Be clear, I’m not leaving home again. I love and appreciate my progressive Baptist folk who have nurtured and raised me up — who, in many ways, have saved my life. I continue to wave my Alliance of Baptist banner any chance I get. There is a part of the Christian tradition we have been called to safeguard for the larger body, namely a boldly prophetic vision for radical hospitality, and I’m fiercely committed to that work.  However, the time has come for me to re-engage the folks who aren’t as easy for me to sit down with — my  “others,” if you will — and in doing that I’m finding an invitation to live with even more integrity. What we’ve been about in the Alliance for more than two decades is good news to a lot of folks who have been questioning the structures of the church, and perhaps there is good news for us in their questions if we are willing to listen. These days, that is what gives me hope for the future of our faith.