Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions (Part 1): Just Friends --https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-part-1.html
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions (Part 2): Fear Of Intimacy --https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-part-2.html
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions (Part 3): The Romantic Myth --https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-part-3.html
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions (Part 4): Nonromantic Oneness --https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-part-4.html
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions (Part 5): Against "Nature" --https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-part-5.html
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions (Part 6): Brothers And Sisters --https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-part-6.html
At the point in Dan Brennan's book Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions where my last installment in this series left off at, the author starts providing specific examples of historical Christian friendships between men and women. I have never heard of these historical friendships outside of this book, and it seems likely that many other Christians are similarly unaware of them, as I once was. It was quite pleasing for me to read of these relationships existing in time periods where a great social antagonism towards such relationships, perhaps far greater than that today, may have existed.
Yes, I quote the book accurately below, although its use of punctuation and grammar is not always correct according to the defined English lexicon. And in the book the author has references to documentation of the friendships he describes.
The first friendship(s) he addresses involve a monk named Fortunatus and two women:
"Fortunatus was a monk in the sixth century who had two close women friends. He took up residence at a monastery and formed a close friendship with a woman, St. Radegunde . . . While there, he also met Agnes, and a deep friendship ensued between them. Their closeness raised suspicions among others in the community, and Fortunatus assured Agnes that he had the same depth of feeling for her and no more than he had for his own sister. But he didn't back away from owning that it was nonetheless a passionate love." (62)
Illicit suspicion is not only irrational, but it is also the potential stepping stone to bearing false witness against others, a thing explicitly condemned in the Bible. And yet some tolerate stupidity of this kind. Brennan goes on to mention that the three friends, at one time at least, wished to be buried together in the same area. The Christian world needs to see more examples of male-female friendships that possess a similarly enormous level of nonromantic attachment, both from history and in the modern world.
Next Brennan refers to how a man named Agius spoke of his deceased female friend:
"Although we don't know many of the details of medieval friendship between Hathumoda and Agius, we do have a record of Agius' words to those who gathered for Hathumoda's burial.
Believe me, you are not alone in this grief, I too am greatly oppressed by it, I too am suffering, and I cannot sufficiently express to you how much I also have lost in her. You know full well how great was her love for me, and how she cherished me while she lived." (63-64)
Brennan's next example of cross-gender friendship involves one party who was married:
"While Queen St. Margaret of Scotland (1046-93) was married to King Malcolm III, she had a close friendship with her confessor, Turgot, bishop of St. Andrew . . . Turgot and Margaret enjoyed one of the clearest examples of an intimate, transmarital friendship in the Middle Ages. Margaret married King Malcolm III in 1070, and by all historical accounts they had a happy and successful marriage. They had six sons and two daughters. During their marriage of twenty-three years, Queen Margaret formed a close spiritual friendship with Turgot. After Margaret died, her children commissioned him, her confessor and companion, to write her biography. In this royal family of Scotland, a deep, spiritual, transmarital intimacy and a happy Christian marriage were not mutually exclusive." (64)
One does not need any historical examples to know that men and women who are separately married can, of course, be friends who share such intimacy that it cannot be articulated. It takes only a rational mind and several moments to grasp this. Even so, a historical instance of a married person having a close friendship with someone of the opposite gender is something that opposite gender friends in the cherish can celebrate!
The last friendship that Brennan recounts here is that of a man named Francis and a woman named Jane:
"The term 'friendship' doesn't even begin to adequately describe the fullness and depth of the relationship between Francis de Sales, the bishop of Geneva (1567-1622) and Jane de Chantal (1572-1641). If their friendship were the only cross-sex relationship from Christ up to the present day, it would unequivocally resolve the question, 'Can men and women pursuing holiness enjoy close friendship with one another?' The eighteen-year friendship between Francis and Jane is probably the best known male-female friendship in Catholic spirituality even while their paired intimacy remains largely unknown among contemporary evangelicals." (65)
The degree of intimacy that the two of them shared was significant, and the relational freedom they exhibited is necessary for such friendships to develop:
"Francis was a young bishop and Jane, a young widowed mother when they met in August of 1604. She was searching for a spiritual director. From their first encounter, they had a mutual sense that God had brought them together . . . Their passionate love for each other grew as they supported each other in their respective callings in God's kingdom . . . Such freedom between friends, and most particularly between members of the family of God, should not be exceptional; if anything, it is essential." (66-67)
Relationships wither, or cannot even launch very far at all, if they are strangled by arbitrary prohibitions like the ones sometimes found in evangelical communities. Biblically, though, this point is irrelevant to the morality of opposite gender friendships because such friendships are not called sinful in any way. Reason brings light to the darkness of human assumptions. Mosaic Law never condemns cross-gender friendships and forbids adding to God's commands things which he never instructed. And the life of Jesus shows us an exemplar of the healing and life that God can bring to cross-gender relationships, which have for so long been contra-Biblically vilified, fallaciously suspected, and avoided because of the error-filled worldviews of the ignorant. May the church embrace friendship between men and women as the intrinsic good that it is!
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