Jim Nelson
Photo by Nancy Troy
A renowned Christian ethicist who spent most of his career at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, James B. Nelson might be best known for his works Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology (1979) and Between Two Gardens: Reflections on Sexuality and Religious Experience (1983). These books and others by him eloquently outline the need for reclaiming the importance of the body in Christian theology. And yet, lurking in the shadows of his late midlife, Nelson guarded his own terrible body-soul dichotomy: he was descending into chronic alcoholism.
Last year Westminster John Knox Press published Nelson’s latest book, Thirst: God and the Alcoholic Experience. In it, he theologically chronicles and processes his recovery experiences and understandings with great insight, compassion and wit. Presbyterians for Addiction Action (PAA) was honored to welcome Jim, now retired in Tucson, as the featured speaker at its network meeting during the 2005 Social Justice Biennial Conference there.
Later, Charles Booker-Hirsch of PAA caught up with Dr. Nelson and conducted the following interview.
You state at the outset of Thirst, “For those of us who wonder about and struggle with the faith questions underlying recovery from addictions, we also need more theology, and there is surprisingly little in print.” Why do you think this is so?
While non-addicted theologians have done a bit of theologizing, I’m aware of precious little theological reflection “from the inside” — from addicted theologians. I don’t think it’s because alcoholism or other drug addiction is absent among theologians. Rather, I believe it’s because of the stigma and shame that continue to surround the disease, and no one likes their life work undercut by damaging labels. So, it’s all the more important that those of us who can speak out publicly do so — with as much theological reflection as we can share.
In the very first chapter you state the reasons you move beyond Alcoholics Anonymous’ treasured 11th Tradition, which includes the phrase, “we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.” Have you received negative feedback from going public with your alcoholism and recovery in print? If so, how so?
No, I have not. Though I have not tried to be secretive about my book in AA, I’ve kept a low profile about it simply because there’s such a range of differing interpretations of anonymity. I’m not interested in courting controversy on that issue within the groups on which I depend regularly in my recovery. So I’ve also turned down opportunities for book signings, because that too readily can be interpreted as self-promotion. On the other hand, in other contexts (churches, conferences, retreats and workshops) I’ve spoken publicly about Thirst — locally as well as in other parts of the country. These occasions have seemed to serve AA’s 12th step: reaching out.
After asserting that alcoholism first and foremost is a disease, you then carefully examine alcoholism as both disease and sin. As you know, sin has received such bad press in the 20th century. It holds so many negative connotations for so many that some say, let’s use different phrases — e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous’ language of “shortcomings” and “character defects.” How do you deem the term sin as redeemable? Why can’t the terms shortcomings and character defects suffice?
For me, “shortcomings” and “character defects” are real — but these notions simply don’t go deeply enough. They don’t express the profound, painful alienation from God, from others, from the world and from oneself that alcoholism brings. But it’s precisely that kind of alienation that any adequate theology about sin is trying to convey. The real problem about “sin talk” is bad theology. It’s the superficial, judgmental and moralizing images of sin that turn alcoholics off — not the probing classic understandings of alienation. In my active alcoholism, I knew what Paul was talking about: “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” That is more than shortcomings and character defects.
I found “Body and Spirit” and “Power and Powerlessness” among the most moving chapters in your book. This should not be surprising, considering your lengthy and celebrated work in male sexual theology prior to the onslaught of your disease. Could you share the most important things your alcoholism taught you about your vulnerabilities as a white American male and, out of those vulnerabilities, how your understanding of God has changed?
In recovery I realized that regarding my masculinity my drinking had two sides. Alcohol both helped me feel more masculine (drinking is manly and a real man can hold his liquor), and it eased some of the heavy pressures of masculine achievement (it relaxed me in the face of the endless demands for masculine achievement, the sense that I always needed to prove myself as a man). My understanding of God — better, my experience of God — has been profoundly marked by my sense of powerlessness and vulnerability in addiction and recovery — and by the realization of the profound paradox that we meet the gracious healing One in God’s own powerlessness and vulnerability. It seems to me that the cross is saying those things.
It’s evident in reading your book that, through your addiction and recovery, you have grown into deeper understandings of several biblical texts in your faith journey. Could you share a couple or three of those that hold particularly powerful meaning for you?
There are many texts, but here are a few: Psalm 30 is a powerful addiction/recovery psalm if I ever saw one. Then there’s Jacob’s wrestling with the powers in the darkness, his wounding, his limping into the sunrise with a new identity (Genesis 32). And the many stories of Jesus’ healing speak to me. In John 5, for example, the man has been lying for a long time by the Jerusalem healing pool but has never been able to get to its waters until Jesus addresses him: “Do you want to be made well?” What marvelous texts for an alcoholic!
What would be the two or three most important things you’d like the average Presbyterian in the pew to understand about alcoholism vis a vis the Christian faith experience?
- alcoholism is a spiritual phenomenon;
- recovery is a spiritual phenomenon; and
- the church is a spiritual community that Christian alcoholics need and where, in recovery, they can be a powerful presence that the church sorely needs.
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