on what it means to be invisible, from the other side of the racial divide

In high school, I was invisible. But not in the way you might think. I don't mean that no one noticed me, or that I had no friends (strangely enough, I did have some friends, and very good ones, and how awesome is it that I am now Facebook-friends with almost all of them that I care to remember!), or that I felt some keen sense of not being quite counted as a full responsible person and citizen. I mean, my body was invisible: I never thought about the particulars of my body as having any sort of effect on my life or my future. My gender and my race were irrelevant to my ambitions. Invisibility was a privilege. And an invisible privilege at that: a privilege I never even knew I had.

I certainly wasn't racist. I mean, I had like, three black friends!

But I did notice, and fume, those times when my smarts and talents and invisible privileges were not enough to get me what I wanted and totally deserved. Like the time I was nominated for the North Carolina Governor's School, for Choral Music, and made Darren drive me all the way to wherever that audition was. I didn't get in. And while I knew, and knew right away even during the audition, that I had bombed the sight-singing test (I was so nervous I didn't even sing the octave jump right, and sang a fifth instead), what I focused on in my rejection letter was a sentence inserted, I suppose, to make the let-down easy: something to the effect of, you were a qualified applicant with the necessary skills but due to other considerations like diversity of race and ethnicity, we cannot invite you. The invisibly privileged high school kid that I was translated that into: a black kid got my space. It's not that I'm not good enough; it's that I'm too white, thought I.

I know now--actually I knew then, but now I am grown-up enough to admit it--that my nomination was a sort of fluke, and that a completely untrained singer like myself really just wasn't good enough, and I bombed the audition. There's no mystery here. No conspiracy. No systemic social dysfunction.

But I fumed. It was easier to believe that someone else got a space I deserved than accept that sometimes I would come up against a challenge I couldn't automatically ace.

A few years before that, a much younger and more naive teen, still new to my NC junior high, I auditioned for the senior high school musical (Finian's Rainbow, if you're curious, and yes, I still have the bright yellow T-shirt). During that fantastic experience, the 14-year-old me met a marvelous guy with a speaking role and crazy trumpet-playing skills, as well as a sense of humor, incredible smarts, and an unaccountable habit of paying attention to me. He was fun to talk to and easy to hang out with, despite the fact that he was a couple years older than me--a significant difference after all exists between 9th grade and junior year of high school. My first clue that he "liked" me was that all of a sudden he was kissing my ear, on the stairwell between scenes (definitely the first time anyone ever kissed my ear. I didn't know quite what to think about that). All of a sudden that put the easygoing relationship into new and strange and exciting territory.

But that territory didn't get explored. Because he was black.

And it wasn't that I cared. I was thrilled--I already liked him, and was floored that he was even paying attention to me at any level--but I got confronted, by a boy a friend was dating. And told that if I dated that n*** that I would be ostracized and I would certainly never speak to my best friend again. And he meant it. And I knew that because he was in my face, with the crazy eyes.

And so I told that marvelous boy I really liked that it just wouldn't work. I believe the phrase I used was, "it would just be too difficult."

My senior year of high school--and why this happened is still somewhat of a mystery to me--I would eat my lunch out on the lawn in good weather with a few friends. And for whatever reason, we started being attacked by flying fruit. I mean, someone or multiple someones were throwing apples and stuff at our heads--hard baseball throws that really hurt if the aim happened to be right. It seemed to be coming from a group of black guys not too far away, at least, they were aware of what was going on and found it amusing, so they were easy to blame as the culprits. I went and found the assistant principal inside the cafeteria to complain after it had proven to be a regular menace and not just a one-time thing. His suggestion was that we go sit somewhere else. I found this inadequate.

I was pissed. And I was the op-ed editor of the school newspaper, and I launched a full page spread on violence in schools and let the venom fly. It was a symbolic and impotent protest. It was also--I know now--subtly racist, in ways I was completely unaware of, though I suspect that's why Mr. Cockerell made me re-write that thing more times than I can even remember at this point. But what bothers me most, in remembering my outrage, is that I never once thought to ask, why is this happening? I never reached a point where it could even occur to me that there was some reason that might make sense--if not from my point of view, from someone's point of view. I never questioned the assumption that we were lily-white innocent victims of undeserved ire. It wasn't just that we personally were completely innocent--it was that even if it were nothing else than an explosion of racial tensions, that was their fault and had nothing to do with us.

Why tell these stories? Just to publicly confess? To make myself feel bad because white guilt is addictive? To make other people involved feel bad, or to publicly plead for forgiveness or prove, hey, I'm different now?

It's not that, although, of course, the whole premise of "rude truth" is that truth is best shared, crude and unvarnished. It's that I would have been horrified if anyone had ever called me a racist. Or the slightly less condemnatory, "prejudiced." Or suggested that I carried around some bias. Or, suggested none of those things, but pointed out that I was privileged in ways others were not.

It's embarrassing how long it took for me to put all these things together. The turning point was a moment in an ACU prof's office when a classmate came in, typically cheerful demeanor very subdued. Why? Apparently he'd been driving home, past campus, the night before and had gotten pulled over by a cop. Not just pulled over, but asked to get out of the car, and was patted down. Why? No particular reason. He didn't get a ticket, he hadn't done anything wrong. It's just that it was late, and he was black. I realized, listening to that story--told in a completely resigned tone of voice, not particularly angry, just sort of defeated, because after all, it had happened before and it happens all the time--that this would never, never happen to me. I've gotten pulled over. I've even gotten pulled over for no particular reason. But I have never been asked to get out of the car. I have never been searched or patted down. And if I were, I would sue the pants off of whoever violated my rights as a citizen. Because I have the privilege of expecting that these things won't happen to me. I'm not a black man.

A couple years later I tried to lead a discussion about race in my summer "Christianity in Culture" class. One memorable moment: having to stop a comment that began with the ominous phrase, "I'm not racist, but..." I know that phrase. I know what comes after it. "I'm not racist, but, I didn't date a black guy in high school even though I liked him, because he was black." "I'm not racist, but, it was totally unfair that I didn't get into Governor's School just because I'm white." "I'm not racist, but when scary black dudes throw apples at your head for no reason, it's clear that they have a problem and something needs to be done about it." 

This is not new stuff, people. This is just my personal version of a conversion story that ought to be everyone's.

This week I've gotten to see the best and the worst of our difficult public discourse on race. The same week that Arizona passed what is, to my mind, an undeniably xenophobic and racist immigration law, I attended a forum at New Brunswick Theological Seminary hosted by the ARTT (Anti-Racism Transition Team) group. It's a weird, schizoid week for me on this issue, and it has me wondering, how do we get from AZ to ARTT? How did I get there? How can we talk about these things directly, honestly, personally, narrativally, in ways that get people to see the invisible?

JTB boobquake

So, blogger Jen McCreight at blaghag.com  took umbrage at this comment from an Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedigric (Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader):

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes." 

Now, of course, we should hasten to note that this is no more ridiculous than Falwell blaming the ACLU for the attacks on 9-11, or Pat Robertson's comments about Hurricane Katrina and gay people. Apparently, religious idiocy is cross-cultural and highly ecumenical. That should make us all feel good, right?

So anyway, Jen M. decided to make this cleric's empirical claim about earthquake causality a matter of actual quasi-scientific experimentation, and suggested that yesterday, April 26, as "boobquake" day. This of course is an irresistible hybrid of my own social networking, theology, and science interests, and it took about two seconds to sign on and commit myself to teaching last night's Foundations of Theology II class in my lowest cut blouse. (FTR, no one noticed, despite the fact that I even wore my one and only push-up bra to enhance the earth-shattering effects.)

As Stephen Colbert noted last night, there was indeed an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan (I'd like to take credit but my relationship with that island is one of two degrees of separation, so I really can't).

Anyhow, the results are in, and apparently, while you may feel the earth move under your feet in a highly metaphorical sense, unsurprisingly, immodest dress is a matter of indifference for tectonic plates. (Apparently Mother Earth isn't a lesbian?)

Now, some of you may notice that the well-endowed, and by that I mean to refer to her intellect, Jen M. describes herself as "a nerdy scientific perverted atheist feminist" and that she is the lame-duck Pres of the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue. So perhaps you're confused as to why I think boobquake is awesome, since part of the point (at least as Jen M. interprets the results) is not just to demonstrate that the immodest-dress-earthquake-causality thesis is absurd, but an entirely different thesis of God's existence as well. Somehow I feel obligated to say, this is over-interpretation of the results of the boobquake experiment. I'm pretty sure that, since God created this material existence, including our beautiful boobs, She was enjoying the whole spectacle immensely, and rather uninclined therefore to, um, shake things up.

Actually, to make a serious point, what drew me in the boobquake thing is the need for protesting absurd religious misogyny. And you can do that without presuming there is no God. In fact, I believe you can probably do it better, but in the meantime, I'm happy to momentarily join forces with any fellow traveler who's willing to call it like she sees it.

dear alien friends, "National" means you too...?

Dear Alien Friends,

Since my "Blog in Space" html code has stopped functioning, I know that I'm technically no longer beaming my bloggy thoughts out to the stars in your general direction. But I assume that when I was, some of you caught on and no doubt have become loyal readers, because after all, rude truth is addictive. And I will further assume that your incomprehensible technically advanced culture will surely provide ways of alternative access to this blog even if I'm no longer blogging-in-space myself.

So I feel the necessity to offer an excuse and apology for my human, Christian brethren (and sistren) who have decided to start making noise about a National Day of Prayer. They're not apparently aware of the millions of God's chilluns that their strangely restrictive invitation is leaving out. I know that may seem strange to you, especially since God has always shown particular concern for the aliens among us, but--well, have you ever heard of the human idiom "blind spot?" There's this excellent parable, too, about specks in your brother's eye and logs in your own...Oh. You might not have "eyes." Never mind.

Anyhow, I hope you'll forgive this cosmic faux pas, and that this doesn't incite any hotheads on your side of the universe to, say, want to destroy the earth or something.

Thanks for sticking around, alien friends! It's nice to know we're all stuck in this same universe together...

awesomeness

thanks, Travis Stanley! :)

a conversation

"Mom, I love S---. She is the best. She is my bestest friend in the whole world!"

"I'm really happy you and S--- are such good friends, Clare."

"Yes. I love her. I'm going to marry her because I love her and she is my friend." Pause. "Mom, can girls get married, like a girl marry a girl like a girl can marry a boy?"

Pause.

"Sure, baby. Why not?"

Greg Kendall-Ball, journaphotolist, writes about a rally in downtown Abilene, TX called “Walk A Mile In Her Shoes,” featuring several men dressed in ladies’ heels taking a leisurely 3-block stroll through downtown, led by a Sgt. in the Abilene Police Dept.

I'm hoping that, after three blocks in those gender-specific instruments of torture (and they really should have made them wear pantyhose too), there's a heightened awareness of the prevalence of the threat and horror of sexual assault--but also of the everyday reality of women confining their bodies in painful ways to conform to cultural expectations of femininity...after all, as Rosemary Radford Ruether observes, "one might say that the measure of women's liberation in any culture is at least partly indicated by whether or not they wear shoes that allow them to walk freely!" (Sexism and God-Talk 176).

tea party jesus

survey says...!

Someone I know who teaches at ACU is conducting a survey about gender roles and religious attitudes of people in Churches of Christ. Here's the link to her online survey:

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22ACRXPLLE3.

It only takes about 15 minutes to complete, and your answers are completely anonymous. Please voice your opinions on these important matters, and forward this link to CofC friends or family, Facebook friends, etc., so they can express their opinions, too. Thanks!

be afraid, be very afraid.

Now, look. I'm not paranoid, nor prone to conspiracy theories, nor into theological anthropologies of human depravity.

But I'm freaked out at the moment, and here's why.

Card-carrying crazy-talking pacifist feminist Obama-supporting political liberal that I am, and you know it's all true, I have received a Facebook invite to this group: Now The End Begins. Now, I chuckled at the Tea Party Express III invite, which I still haven't RSVP'd to because it makes me oddly happy to see it on my Facebook page. But "Now the End Begins" is something else--it's exactly what you might think: there, you'll learn everything you need to know about "Understanding Today's Political Events Through Bible Prophecy," and then, you can move on to the "Conspiracy Theory: 101" where you learn that the Health Care Bill was really about Obama establishing a private army so he can put us all into FEMA-run Death Camps.

And yesterday at 5:01 p.m., Now the End Begins posted this message on their Facebook fan page: "This militia group was right about one thing - the upcoming battle with the Antichrist. And ask yourself this - today this group was raided, how long before owning a Bible becomes a crime? How long before Obama makes naming the name of Jesus a crime? How long before our Muslim President makes being a Christian a crime?"


Okay, so I get it--there are crazies out there. But I thought they were far away, way more than six degrees away, way way far away in rural MI with their bitterness and guns and Bibles.


But apparently I am only one degree away from this insanity.


So I'm freaked out.


And wondering if maybe--ironically--this is some horrible portent that the end really is near because sure as hell it seems like these people are willing enough to make it happen.

we are not "leader-ettes."

At the CSC 2009 hosted at Lipscomb that sparked the idea of inviting guest bloggers to share their narratives and experiences of gender within the Churches of Christ, one of the participants on the panel wryly mentioned her childhood status of "leader-ette." Because girls can't be leaders. At best, girls can be leader-ettes. A silent, secondary, expendable sidekick role, decorated with a frilly and feminine diminutive suffix.

Why would this be what we encourage our daughters to aspire to?

Here's some thoughts from a dad on L2L, and why he says 'no' for his daughters: "Taking a Principled Stand."

CCfB AIDS Walk NYC 2010

Clare has a collection of little frayed red ribbons on safety pins in her baby book. Someday in the future we'll be looking through it, and she'll be like, what are these things for? And I'll tell her, every year of your life until you were (???) years old, we walked in the AIDS Walk NYC together to help raise money to help people who were sick and dying from this disease.

My little activist. She may love princesses...but she's a Princess for Social Justice. Help her help people. Click here to go to our personal page to make a donation, or you can donate to the CCfB team (follow the link "my team page").

And thanks.

yay for hrothgar

Raise a glass with Garrison Keillor to "for a landmark bill, achieved through the messy, maddening processes of representative democracy."

on the art of rejection

I'm a pretty thick-skinned individual these days, so racking up a nice collection of rejection letters from the very few institutions even offering theology positions this past year has not been devastating. Still, I can't help but notice the amazing qualitative difference in the rejection letters so far received. Compare:

"Thank you for your kind interest in our tenure track position... We received a record number of applications for this position, and so many of them are from such wonderful and thoughtful candidates. I wish we could hire them all. Of course that is impossible. Unfortunately, after review of your credentials by our search committee, it has been determined that we will not be able to pursue this process any further with you. I'm truly sorry to bear this news, but I do thank you sincerely for your interest in our position. I know that the future will bring its own share of success and blessings for you, perhaps even in ways you did not expect."

"...is grateful for your interest in our job... We can now announce that we are offering the position to ----. Again, we thank you for your interest and for the thoughtfulness of your application.  We all think highly of you and your work, and wish you every success as you move forward with your career."

Now, it seems like letter #1 is attempting to say the same thing as letter #2, but in fact, what you get is something more like "we had lots of people apply, some of whom really good but we're not saying whether or not you were one of those, we looked at your credentials and were frankly horrified, sorry to say so, but hey, thanks for applying and just as a parting shot, maybe you should start thinking about a different career path altogether."

[Note to self: JTB, if you ever find yourself writing one of these letters, remember to look up this post in the ol' blog archive before composing it.]

Mercy Street CofC in Abilene Reporter-News

"Women in the Church Moving Toward Equality," February 25, 2010, by Sarah Stirman.

you gotta be kidding

So, yesterday evening at about 5:30, after an hour+ of some extended and touch-and-go non-cooperative toddler negotiations, I come out of the grocery store (having saved $20 of my $78 trip, BTW, thanks to my cuz Renee's tip about coupon.com), with my cart loaded down (with my own tote bags instead of grocery store bags, I love going green, plus, you can stuff a lot more groceries in your own unbreakable bags!), Clare riding on the front like a big kid, and I round the corner to our little green car ready to unload and get home pronto to start dinner. And witness the lady parked next to us in the big new shiny Lexus SUV push her cart directly behind our car and walk off.

I mean, I know that probably half the people that grocery shop don't bother corralling their carts, but most people seem to park them in reasonably out of the way places. Not directly behind neighboring parked cars.

You gotta be kidding me, I said out loud, but she was already starting her car and gettin the hell outta Dodge.

A few years back, I would have fumed silently, thrown a dirty look that didn't land, and been even more furious than warranted because of feeling impotent and helpless. A couple of years back, I would have probably lost it completely and gone overboard in explaining to this woman exactly how awful she is.

Yesterday, I managed (I think) a good, moderate, middle-ground response. Here's how it went down:

Me: [on seeing the cart, to self and Clare] You gotta be kidding me!

[I push my cart past my car, up the aisle to her driver's side window, and tap on it. She rolls it down and gives me a what the hell look.]

Me: Did you just leave your cart directly behind my car?

Her: Which car is yours?

Me, incredulously: The green one right next to you with the shopping cart behind it!

Her: Yeah, I could have done that.

Me, even more incredulously: Why would you do that?

Her: I'm in a big hurry.

Me: Really? Yeah, so am I. And I have a three year old and a cart full of groceries to unload, how am I supposed to deal with this?

Her: I figured the guy would come take it away. And I'm in a hurry.

[I just stare--can't figure out how she could be caught red-handed and not be the least bit repentant. I stare until she rolls her eyes, sighs, and makes like she is going to get out of the car and deal with her cart.]

Me, dripping with sarcasm and really mad now: Oh don't bother. Don't worry, I'll handle it. You're in a hurry. You just go on and have a great day.

[I get no reply. No thanks, no sorry, no nothing. I am so shocked at this that I shake my head and exclaim, "Jesus!" which, I hasten to explain, is not a curse but my shorthand habit of my preferred prayer for patience in absurd and stressful situations, the "Jesus prayer"--"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."]

She ought to be thanking God I'm back on Zoloft. Things could have gone a lot worse for her. As it was, I had to push her cart away from my car in order to unload mine, and her car was so big that she had to execute an extra point in her turn in order to pull out of her space and go past us without hitting her own cart. She refused to even look over the whole time she maneuvered her way out of her spot. So she was minorly inconvenienced by her own mean sneaky laziness, but not enough for me to get any schadenfreude-ish satisfaction out it. So I find myself hoping that deep down inside she felt really bad, even if she couldn't bring herself to show it. I mean, I'd like to think that she's basically a decent person and not a totally depraved wretch.

And my sis thinks I should have just pushed the cart over behind her car instead. There's some really satisfactory poetic justice to that solution. Wish I'd thought of it.

don't miss this!

Now that there's a new beautiful website for the Women in Ministry Network, if you're one of those readers who tried to click on the gadget in my sidebar to join the yahoo group and found that that didn't work (it doesn't, and I never managed to figure out how to fix it)--no worries, because you can go here and get yourself connected.

Also on that same page is a contact if you have any publications or sermon texts you would like to submit to the site. And I'd like to encourage everyone who has anything like that to do so. If you feel odd about it--as if it were some kind of weird self-promotion--think of it as both a historical archive (because what you have done and said is important!) and a public encouragement for other women to lift up their God-given voices as well. This is why I started my little sermon blog--not that I really thought a sermon blog would get any readership (it doesn't) but because I wanted a public record of these events. They are small and unimportant in themselves (except to me personally, for whom they were momentous) but taken together with all the other small, quiet actions of women in our churches, they help paint a picture of the real situation in our churches regarding gender and vocation and ministry. And by that I mean, the real situation is that women are raising their voices...the "status quo" is not complete silence (and as some have pointed out in discussion recently here, perhaps it never was to begin with). That should be recognized far more than it currently is, and we can all take the simple measure of making the public record complete on this point.

(I'm loving and overusing the parenthetical comment today for some reason...hmph...)

new Women in Ministry website

This is exciting! Check it out: http://womeninministrycc.com/

by CW: The One-handed Church

Our congregation’s women’s brunch last spring was bittersweet for me. As much as I loved the music and the message, the food and the friends, I couldn’t escape the painful reminder: We are missing so much by excluding women from public roles in our worship assemblies.

Who could listen to either of our main presenters and not acknowledge their spiritual gifts? These women are obviously talented speakers and writers, but God has also blessed them with supernatural powers to speak to our hearts, to encourage us, to strengthen us. Later that day, another of my spiritual heroes led us in our closing prayer, and I was so touched to hear her words as we together reached out to praise our Father. But our men, unless they happened to be helping out that day, didn’t get to hear those women’s words, and that’s a real shame.

Growing up in the Church of Christ, for years I just accepted that certain roles were only for the men. I was shown the “restrictive passages” (1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2), and that was that. As I grew up and came into my own “owned” faith, I found myself drawn more and more to women’s Bible studies that gave me the chance to hear from those who were silenced on Sunday mornings. That’s not to take away from the many men who blessed me with their lessons, their prayers, their testimonies, but I cherished those occasions when I could learn from spiritually gifted women, too.

Years ago, I heard our minister’s lessons discussing which of our traditions may be gospel or cultural. That study and others turned up the volume on this question that kept resonating in my heart: Did the Lord really intend for His church to do its work with one hand tied behind its back?

Obviously, women are hard at work in His church. It is hard to find a ministry at my home congregation or anywhere that does not rely on male and female members’ time and energy. Rightly so, in our church we have no problem asking and expecting women to serve—with one notable exception. You would think that no one could argue with women serving, and yet our congregation only allows men to serve the Lord’s Supper. Even the strictest interpretation of those restrictive passages would still allow for women to participate in this way. (In fact, every Sunday hundreds of us women are serving when we pass the tray from the person on one side of us to the other, but somehow we’ve decided that a woman shalt not pass a tray whilst standing upright.)

But what about other types of service like reading scriptures or praying? What about making announcements aloud? What about teaching? We’re already doing that, too! In our small groups, in Bible studies and in our homes, women do all those things in the presence of men. Countless times I’ve been blessed to hear one of my sisters share her thoughts or her interpretation of a particular passage, and it’s been uplifting and encouraging. I’ve also heard women pray from their hearts and find ways to articulate our praise, our thankfulness, our humble requests. In those environments, are we no less worshiping God? Yes, it’s special when we’re all assembled in the Family Center on the first day of the week, but it seems strange to change the rules for that setting as opposed to other gatherings when we humble ourselves before His throne.

I have spent much time praying for God’s guidance with this issue, and I have struggled, wondering how much of my dissonance comes from my own ego: Who’s to tell me I’m not good enough to pass a communion tray? Why is what I have to say less important because I was born a female? How are my contributions to the work here not deacon-worthy? I have kept quiet, afraid that my objections were driven by my own pride and selfishness. But over and over again, I have felt the Spirit leading me to question our traditions, to speak up, to acknowledge that the cost of this silence is too great.

I don’t necessarily need to be the one in front of the microphone; I’m happy with my role tapping on keyboards and pushing buttons running MediaShout or the sound board. I’m so blessed to get to use my computer skills for the church’s work, and I can barely describe the joy it brings me to feel like a vital part of this family. But what about our women who are spiritually gifted speakers and teachers? What about our female prayer warriors? Shouldn’t they have the same opportunities to use their God-given gifts to serve Him? Not only would they be blessed to use those gifts, but we all would be blessed to hear from those women among us more regularly. At events like the women’s brunch, that fact is painfully clear.

God is at work in His church, and He is doing awesome things at our congregation! He has blessed us with so many capable leaders, but too often we have hidden some of our greatest resources behind the scenes or behind their husbands. We have squandered some of our blessings by silencing those He has gifted. For too long the generations before us ignored certain brothers and sisters because of their skin color. Looking back now, we can recognize that tragedy. How many more generations will have to pass through our doors before we recognize how much we’re missing by not utilizing the resources He’s provided? It’s time for us to reach out to Him and to those around us with both hands.

--Charis Weiss

gal328: Frequently Raised Objections

Just revisited this for the first time in awhile. It's still right on target. And it makes me curious: what is the most frequently raised objection you hear? What is your response to it?

FRO (Frequently Raised Objections), by Lance Pape

1. Do you really pronounce the site name “gal three twenty-eight dot org”? Isn’t the word “gal” sexist? It’s ironic that your site’s name perpetuates a damaging stereotype.
   
   
2. If Jesus was such an egalitarian, why did he choose 12 men as his disciples/apostles?
   
   
3. Aren’t you afraid you might be wrong? Why risk your eternal soul over something you can’t possibly be sure about?
   
   
4. Gender justice is a sell-out to culture. Secular feminism raised this issue and now you are trying to make the Bible conform to a secular agenda.
   
   
5. What about 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36? Shouldn’t it tell you something that you have to work so hard to “explain away” texts like these? The plain sense of these texts seems clear enough.
   
   
6. You chose Galatians 3:28 as the theme verse for your site. Aren’t you aware that Galatians 3:28 is simply saying that both men and women enjoy equally the promise of salvation?
   
   
7. Churches of Christ have a long history of quarreling over opinions and majoring in minors. This gender justice thing is just another example. Shouldn’t you be paying more attention to core issues like evangelism?

1. Do you really pronounce the site name “gal three twenty-eight dot org”? Isn’t the word “gal” sexist? It’s ironic that your site’s name perpetuates a damaging stereotype.
Lighten up. It’s meant to make you smile when you say it.

2. If Jesus was such an egalitarian, why did he choose 12 men as his disciples/apostles?
Jesus embraced Samaritans against all odds, yet he did not choose any Samaritans as apostles. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, breaking down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles, yet Jesus did not choose any Gentiles as apostles. In Christ there is no longer male and female, yet Jesus did not choose any women as apostles. Jesus was no “respecter of persons,” but his ministry had to be conducted within the constraints of a particular historical context.
Furthermore, the number (12) and kind (Jewish men) of the apostles function symbolically to recall the twelve tribes descended from the sons of Jacob, thus designating Jesus’ new community of followers as the New Israel descended from twelve.
In the final analysis, the “demographics” of the apostles no more suggest exclusively male leadership as Jesus’ vision for the church than they suggest exclusively Jewish leadership as Jesus’ vision for the church.

3. Aren’t you afraid you might be wrong? Why risk your eternal soul over something you can’t possibly be sure about?
Granting that well-meaning people may disagree about the Bible’s teaching on gender, there is no compelling reason to assume that the traditional, restrictive position is theologically “safe.” The status quo is self-authenticating. It creates the illusion of safety while depicting alternative visions of community life as inherently risky. But in light of God’s self-disclosure in both Testaments as the advocate of the voiceless, the liberator of the oppressed, the friend of the marginal, and the reverser of human power structures, I submit that when the status quo restricts and excludes in God’s name, it is profoundly risky and should bear the full burden of proof.


4. Gender justice is a sell-out to culture. Secular feminism raised this issue and now you are trying to make the Bible conform to a secular agenda.
There is no doubt that gender justice is enjoying a lot of attention in our culture. Violence against women, objectification of women through pornography (including the soft porn of mainstream advertising), lower pay for equal work—in so many ways our enlightened democratic society is coming to grips with the reality that gender discrimination has led to all kinds of gross injustice. As during the movements for abolition in the 19th and civil rights in the 20th century, the world outside our church doors is rumbling once again with profound change. I am convinced that, once again, God is at work in such rumblings.
I submit that these rumblings are a third chance for us. Do we really want to repeat the hardness of heart that allowed us to defend the supposed Biblical warrants for slavery right up to the moment when we were dragged kicking and screaming into God’s future? Do we really want to repeat the rigid thinking that made our Christian colleges some of the last to embrace racially equitable admission policies? What is needed now are people who take Scripture seriously and who can read it courageously with the fresh eyes that our new, God-given moment makes necessary and possible. God does new things (Isaiah 43:19) and awakens in his children new capacities to discern the new thing in their midst. Just ask the daring souls who decided the question of the inclusion of the Gentiles (Acts 15). There was plenty of Scripture to quote both ways on that question, but the more inclusive vision carried the day to the glory of God and our eternal benefit. Scripture, like the God of Scripture, is living and active. Take another look in the light of a new context; you may be surprised what you find there.

5. What about 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36? Shouldn’t it tell you something that you have to work so hard to “explain away” texts like these? The plain sense of these texts seems clear enough.
The simple fact is that sometimes the truth really is complicated. When a passage insists that women “will be saved through child-bearing” (1 Timothy 2:15) rather than by grace through faith, we are on notice that something is up—something complicated.
Our context plays a huge role in determining which passages seem perfectly clear, and which need to “be explained.” To a plantation owner in the deep South circa 1860, the implications of Ephesians 6:5-6 seemed clear enough:

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.

A century and a half later, in a new context, we are not persuaded by the claim that the ownership of one human being by another is part of the God-ordained order of creation. We are utterly unconvinced by the once seemingly self-evident claim that this arrangement enjoys a universal, Christological endorsement.
What is needed is interpretive humility, and a sensitivity to the theological undercurrents in Scripture. I am convinced that Galatians 3 and Acts 15 recommend themselves as good starting points for thinking theologically about gender while 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 do not. For a detailed annotated bibliography of the relevant literature, see our “Readings” page. And we will continue to provide resources on the “Articles” page that explain and clarify our understanding of the Bible’s egalitarian vision of gender relations.

6. You chose Galatians 3:28 as the theme verse for your site. Aren’t you aware that Galatians 3:28 is simply saying that both men and women enjoy equally the promise of salvation?
Obviously the argument of Galatians is concerned primarily with the question of Jews and Gentiles, not men and women. And, strictly speaking, the conflict doesn’t appear to be a boundary or “salvation” dispute (“Are the Gentiles in or not?”) so much as a status dispute (“Can an uncircumcised Gentile ever really be ‘in’?”).
This is a growing scholarly consensus that is well illustrated in the story Paul relates in Galatians 2:11-14. Paul recalls an incident in which he chastised Peter as a hypocrite when he was persuaded by Jewish peers to refuse table fellowship to Gentiles in Antioch. Paul counted Peter’s treatment of Gentiles as an affront to “the truth of the Gospel.”
Apparently, the “no longer Jew and Gentile” of Galatians 3:28 is not only a claim about Jews and Gentiles sharing equally in the promise of salvation, if by “salvation” we mean an other-worldly designation with no concrete social implications. We can scarcely imagine Paul consoling Gentiles forced to sit at a separate table with the assurance that they are equal in God’s sight, but must resign themselves to a different “role” in the community. In Galatians, Paul argues and imagines a community with no second-class citizens. For Paul, the new status enjoyed by both Jews and Gentiles “in Christ” is the reality that trumps all others—a “new creation” that will be reflected in every facet of community life.
Since the claims about race, class, and gender appear in parallel in Galatians 3:28, I submit that the burden of proof is on those who want to say that the implications for gender are not analogous to those for race. I further submit that Galatians 3:28 may be the best window into Paul’s theology of gender—one that is not complicated and obscured by the (largely unknown) circumstantial crises of gender that precipitated 1 Corinthians 14, and 1 Timothy 2.

7. Churches of Christ have a long history of quarreling over opinions and majoring in minors. This gender justice thing is just another example. Shouldn’t you be paying more attention to core issues like evangelism?
I resonate with this concern. Given our history, we should take great care in choosing the issues that receive our attention. I can only say in good faith that I am convinced that time will show that gender justice is different. I think history will someday show that it is as important to the truth of the gospel as the full inclusion of the Gentiles in the first century, and the important milestones of class inclusion championed by American Christians in the 19th (abolition) and 20th (civil rights) centuries.
Paul could say that “the truth of the gospel” was at stake in the way Gentile converts were treated by Jewish Christians at Antioch (Gal. 2:11-14). And, of course, the status of Gentiles in the community did have profound implications for the spread of the Gospel of grace in Paul’s mission field. Paul understood that the Good News was not really good news to the Gentiles of Asia Minor or Greece if it involved inviting them into the community of faith as second-class citizens. How could they have been expected to receive it as Good News on those terms?
I think that in the 21st century we will face similar problems on gender unless we work hard to come to terms with the last of the three claims in Galatians 3:28 (“no longer male and female”).
For a narrative approach to this same idea, I recommend “Elijah’s Twelfth,” a little piece of historical fiction by Dale Pauls that teases out the troubling evangelistic implications of dismissing justice issues as peripheral to the gospel.

belated tribute to genius

Finally, I am uploading some (sort of fuzzy, sorry, the camera is not behaving well lately) pics of my uber-awesome biz cards from Virgil O. Stamps Letterpress. In case you were wondering, YES, a handful of my cards are backed with a vintage SPAM ad. I'm not giving those away. They are too cool. Others are backed with B&W images of 50's housewives holding big baskets of laundry, or washing dishes, and looking, frankly, a little pissed off. And others with pics of 50's paradise-suburbia. Because Virgil knows, I like irony.