Radical Christian Inclusion must follow the example of Jesus, which would mean welcome and embrace. Jesus seems to have gone places other religious leaders would not have done. This was quite offensive to many. The type of inclusion Jesus offered was not without judgement and a call to repentance at times. Inclusion is in danger of becoming a 'humpty dumpty' sort of word, meaning whatsoever the writer, reader and hearer believe it to be. There will be perils within this eventually.
NT scholars from a variety of traditions would concur that Jesus of Nazareth embraced those he perhaps should not have done, and welcomed those who some within positions of power would not have done. There would though have been challenge as well as embrace, for example changes in life-style were expected. The story of the woman caught in adultery is a case in point (How I wish her partner had been caught too, but c'est la vie). Jesus puts her accusers on the spot, forcing them one by one to admit their own frailties and vulnerabilities, and while ensuring the woman is free, asks her to preserve that freedom, by sinning no more.
Rowan Williams puts it thus: We welcome people into the Church, we say: 'You can come in, and that decision will change you.' We don't say: 'Come in and we ask no questions.' I do believe conversion means conversion of habits, behaviours, ideas, emotions. The boundaries are determined by what it means to be loyal to Jesus Christ. That means to display in all things the mind of Christ.
Paul is always saying this in his letters: Ethics is not a matter of a set of abstract rules, it is a matter of living the mind of Christ. That applies to sexual ethics; that is why fidelity is important in marriage. You reflect the loyalty of God in Christ. It also concerns the international arena. Christians will always have reconciliation as a priority and refuse to retaliate. By no means everything is negotiable for me. I would not be happy if someone said: Let us discuss the divinity of Christ. That to me seems so constituent of what the Church is."
There are two related dangers faced with the notion of inclusion at present. First, all the discussion revolves around sexuality and same sex relationships, leaving sometimes the impression that it would only be gay and lesbian people who might be challenged about their lifestyles. How much do we challenge the lifestyles of those who come and join our communities. Indeed in my own context, how much do I challenge the lifestyles of those who break bread with me week by week. Inclusion could mean simply at present; welcome and embrace without a call to discipleship. I am over-egging the pudding, at least I hope I am, but if I survey some of the congregations I have attended, and certainly the one in which I grew up in, the lives of regular communicants seemed barely indistinguishable from those who were members of the Working Men's Club or the Labour Party (I am sure other parties did similar good deeds, but in the socialist republic of South Yorkshire, Tories were hard to find). Christians could be in danger of losing their distinctiveness, or as Jesus might well have put it, in peril of losing their saltiness.
The second is that we ignore how inclusive we are at times. At our best, in a bumbling sort of way, Christian communities already include, especially Parish Churches that are not flagships of one particular tradition or another. In Churches I have served and worshipped in, Evangelicals have worshipped alongside Catholics, people of different cultures, races, economic backgrounds and educational abilities, as well as people who defined themselves as gay, same sex attracted, and heterosexual. In fact there have at times, even been young people :-). It would be extraordinarily insulting in one sense to say to those communities that they were not already inclusive.
Inclusion in the context of the current debate is one that is becoming narrowly defined. We might find in the years that lie ahead that it becomes a term that is devoid of meaning or is limited to one.
The little gem found in Galatians 3:28-29, which may have been declared over Christians as they were baptised points to an explosive inclusivity, but also one that demanded that each disciple's identity was framed firstly not in terms of race, class (sic) or gender, but in Christ Jesus. For the Christian, that is our radical identity; that we are found in Christ. That is radical inclusion.
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