a gospel for cyborgs and other unnatural creatures. (that is, everyone.)

If I asked you, what's the most unnatural thing you can think of, what would be your answer?

Clones?

Artificial intelligence, robots, androids?

Gay sex?

Would the Incarnation even make your list? Because seriously, what could be more unnatural than divinity assuming human flesh?

The gospel is good news because it is unnatural. It defies the "natural" opposition of Creator and created, of God versus humanity. We are not doomed to forever relate to God as God's opposition. The unnatural act of reconciliation has taken place, initiated by a God who doesn't care about pretentious and ignorant human categories of the natural.

Clare and I often engage in a little verbal competition to see who can create the most hyperbolic I love you's. Tonight's contest spawned a bit of theological reflection for my almost 5-year-old.

Clare: "I love you bigger than...bigger than God!"

me: "but baby, God is love. So when you love, you just make God even bigger."

Clare: "so God is the biggest thing there is?"

me: "sure. God is everything, so nothing is bigger than God."

Clare: "and if you hate someone you make God smaller."

me: "yes, you could think of it like that. and when you love, it makes God bigger, and brings God right where you are, where the love is."

"so he's everywhere? even right here in the bed?"

"sure."

"I want to call God a girl." [this just as I was about to ask why lately she's been exclusively using the masculine pronoun in her Godtalk.]

"That's totally okay. God is a big girl too. God is everything, so you can call God a he or a she."

"I want to call God 'Universe.'" then, flinging her arms out and embracing the air, "I love you Universe!"

the redemptive pleasure of being wrong

an insanely wise excerpt from an interview with Ira Glass:

IG: Do you talk at all in your book about people who can never be wrong? I feel like I've known people who in an argument can never ever, ever admit they're wrong. And I find that such a fascinating and horrible thing. Those people are so embattled.

I do talk about it, yeah. Defensiveness and denial come up a lot; they really fascinate me. Part of the challenge for me in writing about it was almost like the interviewing challenge you described earlier—trying to approach this really problematic position with empathy, to understand where these people were coming from and what's so frightening or intolerable to them about the possibility of being wrong. 

IG: That's really interesting. There are definitely lots of things that I don't want to be wrong about and will fight to the death over, and I'm totally obnoxious about it all the time. But I also feel like there's a kind of discovery that you're wrong that, in a safe situation, can be a real pleasure. Do you know what I mean? Like when you're arguing with someone you love and you realize, "I'm wrong, you're right," and you come together in that moment. It's such a relief. To me it's so obvious that some kinds of being wrong are OK.

what line?

Interesting article in ACU's student newspaper, The Optimist, popped up on Facebook today: "Walking the Line: ACU seeks to balance faith, academia."

I'm not seeking to grouse about the article itself. It's not a bad article--does a good job of describing both the typical positive and negative reactions to the, let's call it, "dilemma" of the growing diversity of ACU students. For the first time ever, apparently, self-identified CofC'ers do not outnumber the heathen. (Oh, the horror.)

I'm just continually frustrated that we seem unable to frame this discussion in ways that avoid the dichotomy of Faith versus Reason. Walking the Line? What line? The line that describes the point at which we are supposedly required to turn off our brains in order to believe in God, or swallow CofC doctrine? Blurg. It seems to me that a Christian university ought to be the best place to defy this ridiculous dichotomy--a place whose very existence proclaims boldly that God actually intends for us to use the brains that God gave us, and is pleased and not threatened when we do.

It's not that I think ACU isn't doing exactly that--just that the rhetoric needs to catch up to reality, because rhetoric creates its own reality. And to implicitly accept the Faith vs. Reason dichotomy, as metaphors of walking lines and balancing acts do, actually hinders a theology of a parent-God who is pleased--perhaps sometimes amused, perhaps sometimes amazed--at the speculations and investigations of the brainy little creatures God has made. We gotta get over this!

on the maleness of God-talk

Apparently, the presumed maleness of God is not something one can casually comment upon in one's Facebook status updates without causing consternation from unexpected quarters. So, naturally, it seems to me that a blog post is the obvious way to follow up. (Yes, that was sarcastic...in a nice way. I'm making fun of myself, y'all, and my inability to keep my mouth shut, leave well enough alone, etc.)

Actually, I'm not going to say much myself in this post. Instead, I am going to quote extensively from Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God, because 1) she's awesome and 2) she makes a really nice shield.

Johnson offers three basic ground rules for engaging in God-talk, that is to say, doing theology (whether one does theology professionally, or personally, or in my case, both). 1) remember that "the reality of the living God is an ineffable mystery beyond all telling;" 2) therefore, "no expression for God can be taken literally. None;" 3) Therefore, "from this, Thomas Aquinas argues...we see the necessity of giving to God many names" (Johnson 17-22).

Applying these reminders for our God-talk specifically to the issue of God's presumed maleness, we get this: 1) God is beyond our socio-linguistic categories, including that of gender; 2) no pronoun (male, female or neuter) in reference to God can be taken literally; 3) we need ways to reference God that incorporate every possible category since they all equally apply/do not apply.

Johnson herself observes this regarding the univocal, historical, traditional maleness of Christian God-talk:

"the practice of naming God exclusively in the image of powerful men has had at least three pernicious effects. First, because it offers no alternatives, it gets taken literally. Thereby it reduces the living God to an idol. Exclusively male language leads us to forget the incomprehensibility of holy mystery and instead reduces the living God to the fantasy of the infinitely ruling man...Second, in addition to this theological error, the exclusive use of patriarchal language for God also has powerful social effects...In the name of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, men have assumed the duty to command and control, exercising authority on earth as it is in heaven...Third, by giving rise to the unwarranted idea that maleness has more in common with divinity than femaleness, exclusively male images imply that women are somehow less like unto God...a woman may see herself as created in the image of God only by abstracting herself from her concrete bodiliness...Thus is set up a largely uinconscious dynamic that alienates women from their own spiritual power at the same time that it reinforces dependence on male authorities to act as intermediaries for them with God" (Johnson 98-99).

Johnson goes on to discuss the wealth of biblical imagery of Mother God, only one among many female images of God in the biblical text.

But I want to emphasize her main point, which I will paraphrase thus: insisting that God is male reduces God to the image of man. And God is not a man.

question only question?

Is "what does the Bible say?" the only question we must ask?

on difficult conversations with my daughter

This morning on the way back to the house from the garage, after taking Clare to school, I nearly tripped over a dead baby squirrel. I think it must have happened while we were on the way to school, because surely I wouldn't have missed her (him?) if she'd been there on the ground before. Then again, it's morning, and I was still only half done with the first cup of coffee, and not all that observant anyhow. Clare didn't see her either, or, I'm sure, we'd have had another conversation about being dead this morning in the car.

She was missing a foot. I think one of the neighborhood cats must have gotten her.

A few weeks ago in the car on the way to Trader Joe's Clare asked me about being dead. I meant to blog it, because it was really interesting, but it was the SAHM week before school started for her and that meant zero computer time, and so I never blogged about it. And now I can't remember all the details. But I do remember that she asked 'what does dead mean?' and I struggled to find an answer that would make sense on a toddler level (while trying hard to drive responsibly and avoid a more immediate pragmatic demonstration). I settled on "it's when someone's body doesn't work anymore." That seemed to communicate okay. But of course, she was under the impression that this could be fixed and people could be made alive again--and somehow I was responsible for making that happen, or maybe Daddy, who's good at fixing things, or our doctor (very logical). So then I had to explain that being dead is different from being hurt or sick, which can be fixed, and when your body doesn't work anymore and can't be fixed, that's being dead, and that's why when people are dead they don't walk or talk or play and we don't see them anymore. 

Maybe it seems weird to you that I didn't go with "dead means being heaven" or "going to be with God" or use the word "soul." But I didn't.

What I did say, and what she clearly held on to as the take-home point of the exchange (she spontaneously informed Brent of this the next day, in a rather random context) is that God takes care of dead people. Being dead means God takes care of you. I don't know exactly what that means to her. Hell, I don't know exactly what that means, period. But that was the best I could do in this surprisingly sophisticated theological exchange with my three-year-old about what being dead means.

I think explaining sex would have been easier. After all, she's got the vocab down for all that.

by dallasjoyce: My Voice is Missing

MY VOICE IS MISSING

I am a 65 year old woman, and I was “raised in the church.” I graduated from Lipscomb. We took our children to church three times a week. I belong to a conservative congregation of about 1000. When we placed membership there I promised God that I would not leave unless they kicked me out.

I must say that I am disappointed in the way my daughters were taught as they grew up, but anti-feminism was just part of it. When my daughter was struggling with questions involving drugs, alcoholism, sexual identity, and abortion, she was being taught at church that it was immodest for a boy to take off his shirt in public, and that “no instrumental music” was the most important belief in Christianity. It was an almost complete disconnect with the real world.

I don’t think that anti-feminism will keep anybody out of heaven, though. If I leave my congregation, I’m removing the help that I’ve been to them and depriving myself of the help they’ve given me. There is no lack of work for me, and I feel my gifts are adequately recognized. I do constantly harass the “establishment” every time I get a chance. If they’re complaining about not having enough people to serve communion, I remind them that they’ve disqualified half the congregation.

I used to care more about the gender inequalities, but as I’ve gotten older I find that they matter less to me. My congregation has given me encouragement, prayer, casseroles, and honey-baked hams to help me weather personal storms which are still raging. They can help me because they’ve known me for 37 years. I can help them for the same reason. Somebody once told me that a congregation should be like a huge family reunion where everybody knows that Uncle Phil will get drunk, but he’s still got a place at the table. Joe and Ed will bore everyone to death discussing politics, and Bill and Lois haven’t spoken to Marion and Ruth for years, but everybody’s still part of the family, and they all have a place set for them at the table.

I do recognize that the conservative church is driving away many Christians. The Church of Christ is losing women who would otherwise be preachers, counselors, leaders, and workers because they are repulsed by the discrimination. It’s a loss, but not one I feel personally called to correct. I think God will keep His church intact, and His Christians are going to be found in many denominations. Christians only, not the only Christians.

Somebody once said that it is easy to confuse theological insight with spiritual growth. In the past I have delighted in theological insight, but I now find myself forced to deal with spiritual growth. The theology was more fun.

by Lara: Confessions of a Gender Justice Freak

Finally, a man I respect, Jimmy Carter, a man after God's own heart, says something (read article here) that jives with feelings I've had all my life. Feelings that I now believe are from God. I have felt these things in a very deep place all my life. I have never (and I say never VERY strongly) been able to shake the feeling/belief from deep within my soul that "church" has been getting this wrong all my life. I think that's why I was a "justice freak" kid (though that sounds a lot hipper than "bossy" did back then.) I just wanted things fair. I wanted rules followed. I had opinions...beliefs. And I wanted to be heard. Okay, I also wanted to be right, but more importantly I wanted THE right to my opinion and the right to share it with whomever I chose.

Let me share a piece of my childhood with you. When I was a teenager, the Church of Christ I attended had no formal youth group. We hung out with each other after church on Sunday nights and mostly went to watch R-rated movies and hang out in the parking lot afterwards. But there was an older, single guy who kind of gumped his way into being our mentor of sorts, and sometimes he even helped us make better decisions. I started thinking that if we only had a formal youth group and youth minister, perhaps we could be guided into more spiritual endeavors. (Yeah, I was that kid. But I still wanted to work within the "system" at that point in my life.)

So I thought, hey, why not see if anyone else feels like this? So I just started a little survey/petition to see if there was an actual need or interest in starting a youth group. Well, that's what I get for thinking. Soon enough an elder found out about it (not that I was hiding it from them) and took it out of circulation for me. So at 16 yrs old or so, I was summoned to the preacher's office after church (without my parents present or consulted) to find our three elders sitting there (them sitting, me standing) ready to set me right. I was first interrogated then told, in no uncertain terms, that the survey was over. I was to let them handle church matters. How dare I think I had the authority to do such a thing? And I'm pretty sure I remember (though I've been quite successful at suppressing painful memories) they laughed at me when I tried to defend my opinion and the petition. It was a scoff really. I know, scoffed? Surely not! But that's exactly how I felt--scoffed at. Like why did a teenager, much less a GIRL, think she had the right to express an opinion on a church/religious matter?!

I left that office feeling violated by those elders and mocked by God. For a girl with the aforementioned early-onset justice issues, this was...well, UNjust. I left feeling distraught, demoralized, angry, hurt and went home just wanting to die. I can't even remember talking to my parents about it.

That event left such deep wounds in me that the scars have never gone away. But I thank God for Mr. Carter's article because it's a salve to my soul. A salve to a hurt little girl's soul. Salve to a woman's soul who seldom gets to see someone like her in the front of her auditorium full of believers. Who never gets to hear a woman pray in her public worship assembly. Who rarely hears a girl's voice reading the Word of God. Who gets excluded BEFORE the Holy Spirit is is publicly invoked to guide people to come forward and lead a prayer or share a thought. Who's never asked to lead a prayer in Bible class, praise team practice, small group, etc. A woman who keeps being called a "man" and a "son of God" over and over and over until SHE wants to scream.

The reason why this article has been so healing for me is that it was written by a man. It's nothing that many women haven't been saying for years. But if change is ever going to happen in the Churches of Christ, it will need to be helped along by the current leadership. And we all know who that is. Because of that, I'm so thankful for a small handful of men who have dared to let me whisper these feelings over the last few years, because there are so many more who don't get it at all. Who think my thoughts are from Satan himself. Who don't realize that the NIV sounds less unnecessarily man-centered and therefore excludes me far too often. Who don't realize what decades of male omnipresence in worship assemblies has done subconsciously to the spiritual lives of many women. Who don't realize that hearing a woman pray is beautiful and needed. Who think that I'm just trying to usurp their authority by thinking it would be okay for my daughter to pass a communion tray. And the list goes on and on. But thank God for those few men who have allowed me the freedom to read a scripture or share a testimony from "behind the mic." They'll probably never realize how much that meant to me.

So I just wanted to share this in case there's another girl or woman out there who thinks she's second rate in God's eyes. (And don't give me the whole different but equal crap. It rings hollow, and you know it.) You, we, are not second rate. We shouldn't be treated as the "seen and not heards" of the church world. I don't care what some man wrote to one specific church like a billion and a half years ago. God loves us all the same and calls us all to the same calling. When I die I want Galatians 3:28 on my grave marker. (My girlfriends will see to it, won't you?)

So thank you, Mr. Carter, from the bottom of this woman's heart.

part 4: lady-preacher

And then, somehow, I turned into a preacher, or lady-preacher, as my BFF once called me.

As a sophomore at Harding, I dated a guy taking preaching. We spent all evening once in the lobby of Cathcart dorm, he wrestling with writing a sermon for the next day that would meet the established criteria, I trying to, well, help write it. It wasn't quite "three points and a poem," but it was old-school. Particularly onerous was the requirement of an illustration for each point. Finally, for lack of a better (and original) idea for a needed illustration, one of my suggestions was adopted--it was close to curfew, time was running out. The next day I attended the preaching class, as moral support. I was invited to fill out a peer-critique form, but asked not to speak. The peer critiques from the other would-be preachers were pretty harsh--but pretty much uniformly, regarded the bright spot in that sermon to be my illustration. We didn't let on.

(It's an interesting historical footnote that the other would-be preacher in that class who preached that day did a good job, even without my help. Brent preaches an even better sermon today--with or without my help.)

The next year, as a junior, I took "religious speaking for women." We couldn't call it preaching, but our text was Tom Long's The Witness of Preaching. We learned about exegesis and commentaries. We learned about the different styles of preaching. And we preached--if only to each other, in that small crowded room full of eager females. I worked hard on my first sermon, writing, re-writing, feeling stupid while reading aloud but in the process discovering the utter necessity of that discipline, timing it just at the limit. I don't know what went wrong there, because I was a good 10 minutes over. But no one stopped me; I don't think anyone could have.

One of the girls in that class began the semester wearing a headscarf as part of her daily dress. She chose as her text 1 Corinthians 11. The day of her sermon, she arrived without it.

I didn't preach again until 2004, at the West Islip Church of Christ, where Lance Pape and Katie Hays were then the ministers. They were away; Brent and I stayed at their house that Saturday night. I think I remember leaving flowers on their table as a thank you. What else can you do to thank people who've given you, not just a place to stay the night, but that place to go you'd always needed?

I was nervous. Terribly, terribly nervous. It had, after all, been years since my "religious speaking for women" class. And this was the real thing. I would have to walk up to an honest to God pulpit.

And the preparation for this, my inaugural sermon, was done in the aftermath of what I can only describe as a homiletical ambush. Just the week before, visiting the home church of a dear, dear friend, I listened to a sermon which went beyond simply the assertion of Church of Christ orthodoxy on the role of women into slanderous territory, naming names: Lance Pape and Dale Pauls and gal328.org, impugning motives: selfish, willful misrepresentation of the Word, to a chorus of amens and laughter at the mocking punchlines. It was like taking a soccer ball in the stomach, that awful sick prolonged moment when you can't draw a breath, when I realized it was all for my benefit. I'd been asked by the preacher if I was going to be there; at the time, googling my name brought as the top result gal328.org/forum. I sat and listened to that sermon, the whole damn thing, with my friends beside me, apparently insensible to my trembling, my near-hyperventilation. It was impossible to discipline my body's outrage even while I disciplined my mind to listen, consider, analyze, evaluate. After, I went and cried in the bathroom. After that, I went and ate sandwiches at the sandwich supper. I cried again till 2:00 am in my friends' living room, never able to say in how many different ways I felt betrayed by both the words and the silence. I cried again on the airplane home, writing and rewriting a letter which I never sent, and remains on my hard drive even now. For years I would cry in the shower, that sacred place where no one can bother you or see you, remembering it, thinking about it. Last year, I cried while blogging about it.

(Perhaps St. Francis of Assisi was onto something when he, perhaps apocryphally, said, "preach the gospel. use words if necessary." In our churches, a woman might preach effectively just by placing her female body behind the pulpit, and saying nothing at all. Just stand there. Let them see you there. Let them wonder, what's this about. Let them ask, why don't we see this more often. Shall we stage a protest, a silent pulpit stand-in?)

A week after that first sermon I received a card from Katie, telling me she'd heard the sermon tape (which, I have to say, I still have not, despite David Fritz's prompt supply of one for each sermon I have preached there) and that I'd done good. I still have that card. Of course.

Still later, I preached my first sermon at CCfB. I discovered how different it is to preach to people you know well. Not that there isn't honor in the hometown--just that the communication is weighted with so much more personal knowledge and intimacy and nuance. My weakness as a preacher is also my strength as a theologian: my sermons tend to be all about ideas. But preaching to CCfB has taught me that playing with ideas is not enough in a sermon.

A sermon has to communicate the basic truth that God loves. You. Me. Messed-up people, and with-it people. Know-it-alls and dumb-asses. Straight, gay. Needy, secure. Party people, lonely people. Moms, dads, babies, people orphaned or disowned from their own families.

Men who do what's expected of them. And women who don't.

God loves. God loves us all.

links

Before rudetruth hosted these narratives of the experience of gender in our churches, gal328. org did. Don't miss these voices of experience.

Ann Evankovich
Katie Hays
Mary Lou Hutson
D'Esta Love
Lance Pape
Floyd E. Rose

by Kile

At this point in my life and after having struggled so much I've gotten to the point I honestly don't care enough about the C of C to fight anymore. I've checked out.

And the strange thing was it happened so fast. Just two years ago we (my wife, son, and I) were part of a vibrant active progressive congregation. We moved away due to a new job. We looked for another congregation and found that, in the area we moved to our choices were extremely limited. We chose the best of the bad and settled in. I knew the congregation was going to be much more conservative than our last and an order of magnitude more conservative than me. But I thought I was ready. We had feasted on spiritual food so richly at our previous congregation that I thought I could survive some lean times. In fact the Elders came over one evening very early on in our tenure here and we talked for a long time. I told them that I was very likely going to disagree with a lot of things and was never afraid to share my opinions. They didn't seem to have a problem with that. But now, after being a member of a congregation who has no interest in being the hands and feet of Christ but rather are just interested in behind his wagging disapproving finger, I'm done.

I didn't want to be angry or frustrated on Sunday's anymore so I just stopped caring. I would walk away from the C of C but my wife isn't ready and I'm not going to be the husband that sends the wife and kids to church while he sleeps in on Sunday. Perhaps I should, for all the good attending is doing me or anyone else. I've lost the will to care about my congregation and my brotherhood and I am ever so slowly losing the will to care about the Kingdom at all. I pray with and over my son with fervor and that's about it anymore. I don't deny Him (or Her as J so eloquently put it). I still love Him. But I don't think I've got anything for Him, at least not now. That probably doesn't make Him very happy. But damn it, I'm not even sure if I care about that all that much either.

In the back of my mind. In the recesses of my soul. I want to care. I want to feel my spirit stir. I want to engage my intellect. I want to serve. But I don't. I don't do any of those things.

I am unwhole. I am broken. I feel these things. I know these things. They torment me some nights as I try to sleep. But apathy is a damn powerful thing.

[JTB editor's note: you can find Kile's original comment here, as a response to J's post. I asked for permission to re-post his words as a stand-alone blog post, and I am grateful that he consented.]

part 3: girl meets boy

And then I became a theologian.

It happened like this:

I got a letter, a sweet, respectful, and very brief letter, from a boy I actually really didn't know that well, who was, apparently, a bit impressed with my theological ambitions. That boy's name was, of course, James Brent Bates. I wrote him back, included my email address, and pretty soon, we were emailing regularly. Like, every day. Or almost--the days I didn't get an email, I stalked about begrudging the rest of the world its sunshine and happiness.

Our first emails, I kid you not, were about the role of women in our churches.

It was love at first...well, email, I guess.

And Brent mailed me a care package that included a recording of Carroll Osburn's lecture on the role of women, the one that begins with the facetious "shut up and sit down!" quip. I invited the other American women I thought would be interested to listen to it with me, and we sat in my living room to hear it. Not everyone came. But those who did needed it. Like me, they were thirsty for some word of affirmation and hope, some indication that they hadn't somehow missed the mark by choosing to come to China to do mission work. Like me...They were like me. And not only were they like me, but so was Brent, and this mysterious Dr. Osburn, whose book on women in the church Brent was then helping to research as his graduate assistant. I wasn't alone. I wasn't crazy. (Well, I was crazy, but that's a different story.)

And I could say anything to this guy, this out-of-the-blue sympathetic and smart guy who, for some reason, replied to every lengthy email with equally lengthy replies, taking everything I said totally seriously.

And when I visited him in Abilene (also a different and crazy story), he invited me to sit in on all his MDiv courses, so I could decide whether I wanted to study theology or Bible or what, or perhaps just go on in English lit, or linguistics, or ESL, or something. And I went to his Hebrew class, where they were translating and studying the text of Ecclesiastes, and the professor, Dr. Andre Resner, not only welcomed me but actually asked me what I thought about something. And I sat in on a philosophy of religion class, which Brent wasn't even taking, just because he thought I'd be interested; and again, the professor, Dr. Frederick Aquino, not only welcomed me but included me in the discussion. And I sat in on Brent's worship course, taught by Dr. Jack Reese, where I took notes on the most fascinating things about Eucharist and a man named Justin Martyr.

And I knew, because I felt the same thrill I'd felt when studying the gospel of John with my dad as a high school kid, that this was the stuff I wanted to spend my time thinking about.

So, of course, I married the boy. (Also a different, and crazy, story.)

And he does the dishes if I cook dinner, and he has always ironed his own shirts (nowadays, they're clergy shirts with funny little collars). And he has always, always told me that this is what I should be doing: this thing, which takes my whole brain and my whole heart and consumes my waking lucid moments with its glittering, fascinating, elusive interconnectedness. This faith seeking understanding thing, this theology Thing.

So I joined him at ACU, and we took classes together: theology, philosophy of religion, church history. Sometimes my grades were better. Sometimes this really bugged him. By the end of my degree, it really bugged me that my gender--which didn't keep me from planning grad chapel services but did at that time still keep me from leading them--generated so much attention that Brent's scholarship and contributions somehow seemed eclipsed by all the light and heat. I refused to go on to doctoral study unless he did too; it seemed intolerable to me to concretize that unwanted dynamic in a piece of paper I might someday possess that he wouldn't. He made that Faustian bargain, not simply because he had some desire to go on academically himself, but because he was utterly confident that this was what I should be doing.

So, too, was my mom, who'd always said I'd end up a college professor. She also prognosticated I'd marry a man 10 years older than myself. That turned out not to be true, but even my mom can't be right all the time. So, too, was my dad, who, as a second-career preacher already in full-time ministry, was completing his own MDiv, and used to talk to me on the phone about his coursework occasionally. I send them drafts of my dissertation chapters now, which I don't think they read (who can blame them?), but they tell me they're proud of me. Maybe, crazy hippies that they were, they'd always wanted to raise a little heretic.

I landed at Princeton Theological Seminary, having been warned a few weeks before we packed the U-Haul that I should watch out, because "there's bad people up there." (Sorry, PTS readers.) Not sure what that meant, exactly, but if I was bound to go, I was charged with teaching everyone up there the Truth.

Would I have done it anyway? It's not a question I can answer. I was already pondering studying theology before China, before Brent. But would I have done it? Would I have actually applied somewhere, knowing that not only was there no place to go, but that even my imagined refuge in mission work was proving horribly false? Or would I have found something safe, something secular, something to keep me busy while I waited for Life to deliver whatever came next? Would I have done the unthinkable, and become the high school English teacher I had known for years I no wanted to be?

I thank God I don't need to know. I thank God that, out of the blue, this man saw what most wouldn't: that the defiance, the desire to shock, the need to get out, the desperate loneliness, was an expression of a self in need of a place to go, a place to be. I thank God that, out of the blue, this man didn't just offer me a place to go be myself in the small private space of our teeny-tiny home and in our marriage, as if that tiny isle of refuge (or comfortable exile?) would be sufficient. He has always understood--even before I did--that the church should be everyone's "place to go."

The Bible describes Jesus as homeless: the Son of Man had no place to lay his head. So, too, were the Israelites, the people of God, homeless for a good chunk of their history. Perhaps living with no place to go is simply the reality of vocation. But Jesus also promised us a place to go: his father's house is a mansion with many rooms; he goes before us to prepare us a place there. Some of those rooms, the old joke goes, you have to tiptoe past, because the CofC folks inside think they're the only ones up there. The rest of those many rooms, I'm sure, are plenty big to house the rest of us; but I think I'd like to knock on that CofC door awhile, and see if anyone answers, even if it's a woman's voice they hear, asking to come in, if there's a place for her there.

by JDB

My mother and father had me baptized in the Lutheran Church when I was a baby. I was confirmed as a child and took my first communion at the octagon rail with the other children, eating the bread we had made in Sunday School class and drinking the juice from the small glass cups. I can still remember what it felt like to walk and kneel, waiting my turn, then taking the bread while Pastor W. put his heavy hand on my head. “This is the body of Christ broken for you, Jennifer.”

My family stopped going to church a little while after that. My mom was exploring other ideas about God and the universe. I was invited to my friend’s Nazarene church in fourth grade and found a community that wasn’t as reverent as my earlier years in the Lutheran Church, but very emotional and desperate in its need for Jesus. I went down to the altar and accepted Jesus there. My friend’s family supported and encouraged me in all my search and made sure that I wore a skirt or dress to church. My mother even came to church with us once, but her Methodist upbringing and lifetime of searching was not compatible with the emotional pleas from the pulpit.

I went onto the Presbyterian Church with a boyfriend in junior high. I remember being in a “new Christians” class with 2nd graders. I remember friends who were partiers on the weekends and devout Christians on Sunday. I also remember the first time I prayed out loud. It was in a prayer chain in a group of young girls. My heart beat so fast and I thought I might fall out, but the ability to pray and proclaim to my God in front of other people was humbling and exhilarating at the same moment.

I moved onto the United Methodist Church with a new boyfriend during high school. My experience was vast and full there. When the youth ran the service one Sunday, my friend Tara and I read the scripture and prayed from the pulpit. I was one of the teens who ushered and passed communion trays. We had a woman co-youth minister.

I met Jeff in 1996 and started exploring the Church of Christ. We were dating long distance. He was at Harding University (which I had never heard of) and I was at the University of Tennessee. I wanted to see what his “denomination” was all about. I went, on my own, to a local “progressive” Church of Christ, eager to figure out where I could be involved. As I sat in the pew I couldn’t find my place. I would gladly pass plates. I would gladly pray or read. I would gladly serve in a way where I could be involved in the worship service, but I couldn’t see a place for me, especially as a single woman. It bothered me, but not enough to leave. I thought maybe I was missing something and I wanted to know my new boyfriend’s perspective on Christ and his indwelling.

Jeff and I got married and we moved to Tupelo, Mississippi. We attended the “progressive” church that was really an old church that had been taken over by some of the mainline churches’ splits. It was a bit of a mess, but it was immediately our second family. We were on our own with our parents at least 6 -8 hours away. We became the de facto youth ministers in this very small congregation. One day Jeff asked for someone to lead prayer in the youth room. After none of the boys were willing, one very spunky young woman volunteered and then looked around nervously. Jeff and I enthusiastically encouraged her. After a few moments of silence she deferred until “maybe next week.” She also rebuked the boys for not taking part in this wonderful opportunity, one that she wasn’t sure she should participate in. Jeff asked the youth to come to us or to their parents if they had a problem with a girl praying in class and let us know. The next week she wouldn’t pray, and no one else would either. So I did.

The emotions still blind me. I cannot convey adequately the heartbreak, confusion and sorrow that both Jeff and I experienced in Tupelo. I cried a lot. I didn’t take communion one Sunday because I could not be in communion with this body. Jeff was required to attend the Men’s Business Meeting in which he had to defend me and my willingness to pray in front of these youth. Jeff asked fervently for our church and our preacher to study 1 Corinthians 11, especially the verses dealing with women praying and prophesying in the temple. The preacher said he would have to study on that. A month later when Jeff asked our preacher if he had looked into the verses the preacher said he had not been able to get to it yet. No one came to me except for one woman, my friend, who cried with me but then said that these issues were not such a big deal for her now in her older age.

We left Tupelo.

In Jackson, Mississippi we found a good church. A church that truly wanted to be the hands and feet of Jesus. A church in which we found some kindred spirits. A church that was bound by its tradition in deeper ways than I could fathom. In a “young professionals” class the role of women in the church came up. Surprisingly most of the men were very comfortable with the idea of women in leadership, although some of them said it might be strange to have a woman preacher. Even more surprising was that the women who had grown up in the Church of Christ were not remotely interested in using their gifts in a position of “leadership” or what they perceived to be leadership. I couldn’t understand the wholesale denial of the joy of serving in a worship service because it was in front of people.

In Jackson I also heard our gifted, wise preacher wonder aloud why women would want to serve communion when they would get a chance to be off their feet.

Now in Montgomery, Alabama, we attend the most gender inclusive Church of Christ available in our city. Men and women read scripture together during the service. I have read scripture by myself in a service. Women pray in class, even in front of elders. Men have joined the women’s class at times. We love the pastor (he even calls himself that). We love the elders, with whom we agree on some things we wouldn’t share with many people. The rub comes when our two year old daughter mentioned to my husband, “I want to throw the plates,” while watching men pass the communion trays. We’ve talked to our pastor and some elders about this. They sighed and said, “ah, yes” and suggested that for now that Kate accompany Jeff when he passes the offering tray. That was about six months ago. We have tried to encourage her to go with her daddy, but she refuses now. I have offered my services to be the “first” woman to pass trays and have been told that my offer is appreciated. I would be willing to be the first to pray, do the communion meditation and possibly preach, although I would need some good practice for that. Maybe if my daughters see me doing these things, they too will be able to imagine they will experience the beauty of serving God and serving His body in a moment dedicated to Him.

I want to participate fully in the worship service. I am so appreciative of the steps that have already been made. We are ready to make the next steps.

God bless us all.

Part 1: dressed up, with no place to go

One time, very young, seized with a sudden inspiration during Sunday school while singing the "The B-I-B-L-E," I literally took my stand on the Word of God by putting my Bible on the floor and standing on it. I was aware that this wasn't what the song really meant, but I thought it would be funny. It was.

I learned to sing harmony and read music sitting in the pew (second row, on the left) next to my mom, following her strong alto and watching my dad lead the singing from the pulpit.

I would listen to sermons until they got boring, and then pass the time by reading Proverbs or Song of Solomon. And Revelation 12: I didn't understand it, but I liked picturing the woman "clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars."

In high school my dad led our small "youth group" in a study of the gospel of John. I can still remember the fascination of delving into the meaning of those first words: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. I can remember the thrill of the realization that here was something huge, so much packed into these words, something that just kept getting better and richer the more I thought about it. No one else seemed to get excited about that, though everybody was polite. Just my dad, and me.

In college, I took "Religious Speaking for Women," and first year Greek, for fun. My senior year a well-known CofC author visited Harding's campus to give a series of lectures on his new book. On the slight strength of a rather extended family relation, I decided to introduce myself to him afterward, and tell him I was thinking about studying theology. His answer was very kind, and sincere, and direct. He didn't tell me not to. He just said, "I think you'd be getting dressed up with no place to go."

He was telling the truth; and nowadays, there are a great many of us, well "dressed up," with MDivs and MAs in missions and theology and Christian education and even PhDs in Old Testament and ethics and church history and philosophy. And we have "no place to go," still, unless we choose to leave the church that inspired to study and devote our lives to these things. To leave the church we started out inspired to serve. Because that church refuses to make "a place to go" for us. That church refuses to hire the talented ministers who graduate with the same MDivs as their male colleagues. That church refuses to recognize their readiness, their ability, their gifts, their willingness to make the work of the church their life and calling. That church continues to say, "you look real pretty all dressed up, too bad you have no place to go."

the invitation

One of the most powerful things about the Friday morning panel at the Christian Scholars Conference, which I blogged about below, was the simplicity of it. It was, simply, a time and space created to let women talk: to say the things that are scary or straightout forbidden to say at other times and in other places. We need more opportunities like this. Part of the problem is that the institutional structures of our churches define when and where things may be publicly shared, and who may share them, and this rarely includes women. Even in those public spaces and times when women may speak, these experiences and stories are not the ones being sought. Why would they be, when they are cries of pain and stories of exclusion, and prophetic condemnations of the injustice of the way things are? You can hardly respond to the great challenge of being the first woman to teach a class in your church, or lead communion, or preach a sermon, by sharing truths that are so unedifying and disturbing.

So: we need more of these times and spaces. We need them convened in the flesh, and God bless the CSC and the brave folks whoever they were who organized those sessions. Let's do it again. In the meantime, let's do it here. Let me know if you'd be interested in guest-blogging. If you want to be anonymous, email me and I'll post for you. I want women's stories and women's voices, but men, if you've got a story to tell, bring it. I want stories of staying and stories of leaving. I want stories of heartbreak and stories of hope. I want it all. We need to hear it, all.

***
Here is the introduction and the prompts from the CSC discussion, moderated by Dr. Ken Cukrowski:

Intro
As the church and the academy have addressed the topic of women's roles, various theological resources have been brought into the discussion. Not surprisingly, given our heritage, Scripture has played a significant role in our reflection. Reason has also played a role, although this issue understandably stirs emotions, which sometimes strains our use of reason. Tradition--what we have always done--has played a huge role in actual practice. The use of experience--of women specifically--however, has been rare or absent, for at least a couple of reasons. First, there are few opportunities when women are invited to speak in public; second, it is culturally difficult for a woman to ask for the floor without negative connotations. So, women's stories have gone untold and unheard.

Our goal is to provide a place where those stories can be told and heard. Specifically, we'd like to know how has being female in CoC has affected you over your lifetime? How has it affected your religious experiences (e.g., in church, with other members, your own spiritual life)? How has it make you feel? In short, how has your gender affected your heart, mind, faith, and families?

Questions
I will ask specific questions, more or less moving across the life cycle:

1. What's your first memory of realizing that being female meant something different in terms of opportunities or expectations?
2. How did being female in CoC affect you as a teenager, in college, in your dating relationships?
3. How has being female in CoC affected you as an adult?
4. How has being female affected your church life?
5. How has being female in CoC affected your marriage relationship?
6. How did has being female in CoC affected your interaction with children (yours and others' children)?
7. Last question: What would you like to say? What do we need to hear?

***
If you've been silent, not because you thought it was biblical, but because you thought no one wanted to hear what you have to say, this invitation is for you. If you've been silent, because you've never been asked to find the words for your experience, this invitation is for you. If you've been silent, because you're too busy seeking ways past the scandalous obstacles placed in your path to even bother with thinking about or sharing your experiences, this invitation is for you. If you've been shouting because it's been impossible to get anyone to stop and listen, this invitation is for you. If you've been crying, because the time for words is past and all you've got left is tears, this invitation is for you.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

On Friday, this is what I heard:

a panel of women--academics, ministers, teachers and other professionals, wives, mothers, grandmothers--talk about their experiences as women in the Churches of Christ. The purpose of the panel was explained briefly and simply: while we do a lot of talking about the "issue" of "women's role," and while that talking has utilized scripture, and reason (at least some form of it anyhow), and tradition (defined as 'how we've always done it'), experience, women's experiences, have been glaringly absent from our considerations. The panel was convened to address this gap, to create an opportunity for women to share their experiences. The first question was, "when did you first realize that your gender mattered in your church, and what was it that made you realize this?" This question generated answers ranging from early exclusion from brothers' childhood church roleplaying to "not until my 40's." These experiences were not uniform, except in one respect: at some point in their lives, each woman was forced to the realization that being a woman limited her ability to participate in the kingdom of God in the ways she knew herself to be capable of, in ways that she knew to be needed. And the responses to this realization were not uniform, except in one respect: each woman refused to listen to the message that she could not be the Christian, the fully empowered agent of God, the imago Christi, that the gospel itself proclaims she is. Whether she continued her work by creative accommodation of restrictive boundaries, or sought alternative spaces where she could serve without restriction, each woman's life testifies to the inherent power of the gospel as good news, for everyone, despite the ways our human flaws and blindnesses restrict it. The emotions present were not uniform, except in this respect: every one of us in that room wept at someone else's pain, whether it was generated by that first shock of discovery, or the backlash against stepping out in faith to serve, or the sense of fear and failure that accompanies these attempts. We all wept. Because these stories, which we have so long refused to allow to even be told, are about courage and fear and pain, survival, and hope that maybe things will change for the better.

At the end of the session, the woman sitting next to me, whom I'd never seen before, dabbed at her eyes and smiled at me, and gave me a hug. She, older and never married, native Tennessean and CofC her whole life, read my nametag: Jennifer Thweatt-Bates, Princeton Theological Seminary. "Good for you," she said. (And, "are you related to...?") I thought, this is who sits in our churches' pews, silent and with so much to say.

On Saturday, this is what I heard:

three ministers, all formerly of the Churches of Christ, currently "disaffiliated." Their experiences were not uniform any more so than the previous day's panel, other than that each one of them had remained in the Churches of Christ for as long as possible, and each one of them left sorrowfully. Each one of them, it was clear, still grieved the necessity of departure--whether it was decades ago or still fresh. Disaffiliation is too neutral a word. Divorce would have been better. The Churches of Christ divorced them, on what it self-righteously considers to be biblical grounds.

At the end of the session, a man I'd never seen before walked up to me and introduced himself. He'd been watching me watch them, he said, from his unseated vantage point at the front of the room facing the back, where I'd been lucky enough to snag an extra chair in that packed audience. He'd been watching me weep through Micki's recount of her preacher refusing to recommend her for divinity school, because she was a woman. He'd been watching me weep as Katie told how they'd told everyone they were preparing to leave the Churches of Christ for months and months, hoping someone would say to them, "please stay," make it possible to stay, and no one did. He'd watched me smile wryly as Andre told about the pink-haired tattooed girl in his ACU preaching course, who stunned everyone in her initial sermon with insights they'd never heard before, because "we never had a pink-haired tattooed girl before." He'd watched all this, and said to me, "These stories are your story right now too, aren't they?"

On Sunday, this is what I heard:

a youth minister, emceeing the baptism of a 15-year-old girl, rhapsodizing about the intimacy and spirituality of the experience for a father to baptize their child.

a sermon illustration comparing the experience of the Spirit to falling in love: the passion of the process of courtship, all the silly things guys do to woo their loves. You know what I'm talking about, don't you, guys?

an introduction of a missionary couple, in which the man was congratulated on finding himself such a great wife.

Afterward, no one said anything about any of that at all.

on God the Great Physician and Jesus the Healer

Yesterday, one of CCfB's longtime members spoke to us on the topic of vocation: specifically, the challenges of integrating his Christian faith and daily work. He is a physician, as is his wife. He spoke personally and candidly, and it was riveting. Stories of turning of machines; of saying the words, "I'm so sorry" to families in waiting room; of confronting the dilemmas of social injustice in treating the uninsured and the homeless; of struggling to resist the pressure to treat sick bodies rather than sick people.

As he spoke I thought of Jesus' healing miracles, and how Jesus must have confronted these same challenges and pressures in his ministry. So many people pressing in, demanding help. So many unsolvable problems. So much to do, and only a finite opportunity and limited options. No wonder Jesus withdrew to mountains to pray, and climbed into boats to get away from the crowds. And yet, the stories of miraculous healings demonstrate above all that Jesus never neglected to deal with people holistically: body and soul and spirit. My own theological preoccupation with embodiment has led me to think of the healing stories as emphasizing the importance of the body--which is true--and yet, the testimony from this physician reminded me that in the profession of healing there is a danger of reductionism that many fall into, and the struggle is to keep oneself open to the reality that these material bodies are people, with emotions, families, goals, fears.

And never has the metaphor of God as the Great Physician been more meaningful to me. What was once a purely intellectualized theological grasp of that metaphor has been enriched with this glimpse into what being a physician really means.

P.S.: sometimes all six verses of "Just as I Am" are comforting.

So, I had a bad week this past week; I couldn't concentrate, couldn't focus, couldn't think very well and certainly couldn't write. I was totally exhausted from the moment Clare came elephant-thumping (the pitter-patter of little feet stuff is all propaganda, folks) into the bedroom to help us greet the dawn until falling back into bed at night--exhausted but unable to relax and get to sleep. I got through the days by deliberately overdosing on caffeine in various forms. Then, Thursday night, I drank a bottle of wine (unaided) and ate some macaroni and cheese comfort food, slept like the dead and woke up Friday feeling relatively awesome. I must have seriously frakked up neurochemistry.

Anyhow, after that unexpected jolt back into normal physical functioning, for which I'm ever so grateful, I'm a little more even-keeled. Brent said something absolutely sensible to me in the midst of my resveratrol (read: red wine) consumption. He often says absolutely sensible things, so that's not remarkable in itself. I often disregard these things, which is stupid but unfortunately unremarkeable as well. This time however I had ears for hearing it.

So, here's the thing. I added a whole layer of personal crisis on the stay-or-go question on top of the real CCfB crisis, which was maybe not totally unjustified, but a little blown out of proportion. Brent's sensible comment was: CCfB is still what it is, and if that's not connected enough to the CofC to satisfy people, then there are a whole bunch of other things they're not going to hire you for anyhow. So why sweat it. And this is so obviously true that I stopped sweating it right then and there. I resolved a long time ago that the CofC was going to have to take me "just as I am." I do not want to find myself feeling compelled to dissemble, evade and deny my theological convictions in order to land a job, keep a job, or just in general stay a part of the church tradition that I consider my home. Just as I am--or not.

So maybe it wasn't the wine. Maybe I just have an awesome husband who, in addition to being able to absolve sins and stuff, can absolve anxieties as well.

Happy Valentine's Day, babe. I'm glad I remembered to buy you some chocolate. Thanks for sticking with me.

an open letter on the unity of the church

Dear Brother,

It's taken me a few years to write this letter. This isn't the first one I wrote. That one was angry, and hurt, and after a half dozen editing jobs, politely angry and hurt. I never sent that one; it sits on my hard drive still. I never could send to the trash bin, because a part of me really wanted to explain, persuade, defend.

But pretty soon I'm going to delete that file, because I've finally realized that that letter, the one where I explain how wrong you were so very politely, isn't the letter I want to send. It isn't on topic. It's not even close.

But it's taken me years to see this. Years which have been filled with replaying that hurtful scene over and over in my head, trying to figure out what I could have done or said other than what I did (that is, go have a cry in the church bathroom). I've wondered if I should have said something, confronted you in some way. Part of me is ashamed that I didn't, and considers it a failure of moral courage. Part of me is relieved that I could pass you a paper plate and eat a sandwich without making a scene.

And I've wondered if, when I am again in the neighborhood, I will dare to walk through your church doors again, or not. And which would be the right choice?

I've wondered if I really should just give up, and go away. I can't count how many people over these intervening years have asked why I don't--students, friends, family, colleagues. My answer used to be that this church is my home; how do you leave your home? But that Sunday I wondered for the first time if maybe my home might leave me, instead. Later, in defiance, my answer was, why should I? This is my home, too. Then I wondered if it was true that my presence was divisive and harmful to the church, an act of self-gratification and arrogance. I began to be afraid that I really was the kind of person described in your sermon.

For a long time, that was my fear: that my sincere wish to remain a part of the body of Christ into which I was baptized and raised in the faith would be divisive and contentious no matter what I did or didn't do, because of what I do (or don't) believe on this (or that, or that other thing).

But now, I know what I will do next time I'm in the neighborhood. I will be walking through those church doors. I will take a seat in a pew and I will sing, and pray, and listen, and contemplate scripture. I will praise God with you. Because I am certain now that it is not divisive for me to remain. It is a conscious act of unity.

See, I realize that we will probably never agree about a lot of things, and some of these things we both think are really important. And we can argue or debate, and maybe we should. Maybe we can even change each other's minds on some of these things. Maybe not. But the unity of the church has never depended on this. Unity is not conformity of doctrine, and Campbell just plain got that wrong. The unity of the church is a mystery not unlike the mysterious unity of the one-in-three, the mysterious unity of Jesus Christ the Son and God the Father--consider Jesus' prayer in John 17: That they may be one, as we are one.

We could agree to disagree, and walk away from each other. Or we could trust that the mysterious unity of the church will hold, despite all. So I'm not walking away. You can look for me to walk in next time I'm in the neighborhood. Because I believe, despite all, that we are brother and sister, children of God, joint-heirs with the Son, members of the same Body, and I believe that nothing we can say or do can, or should, change that. I choose to claim you, and strive to love you.

That we may be one, as our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father are indeed One.