Leaving Church
It begins, who knows
when it begins or how.
It does not begin
with the tears no one notices,
the ones that well-up
in the middle of the sermon—
not the ones that lead you
down the aisle at altar call,
not the ones that change
from shame to relief—
but the ones that do not
roll down your cheeks,
the ones you hold back
until ensconced in the safety
of your car you sob;
sob until you are as dry
as the Wilderness of Sin—
the barren land
you’ve been condemned
to wander
by no fault of your own.
Even Miriam led God’s people
in song and dance
but there is no place for you.
Something has been said,
the same thing has been said
that has been said
for thirty years,
for forty years,
since your grandmother
was a child sitting silently
in church with a funeral parlor fan,
since the last woman preacher
was silenced
in the fields of Kentucky
or Missouri or Ohio,
sometime back in the 19th Century,
when preachers
like the good Robert Lewis Dabney,
a Presbyterian—then again
so were the Campbells and Stone,
at one time—
and Confederate chaplain—
but we’ve moved so far beyond
slavery and Jim Crow—
proclaimed from the pulpit
and in print that
“women’s preaching was simply pagan.”
No, this was not said;
not this time.
But it has been said.
You were in chapel
when the preacher praised
his corn-fed wife
and then expounded on
slippery slopes
and broken hermeneutic limbs,
before explaining away
the case of Deborah
as exceptio probat regulam,
after all,
did not God use her song
to shame cowardly men.
You’ve heard the Bible boys
whisper such things
among themselves;
you’ve heard their girlfriends
come back from prayer sessions
on white swings
under dogwoods
repeating such things—
but you do not know
if their muttering
is the grateful prayer
of the believer
or the desperate one
of a girl trying to pray
herself into believing
what she’s always been told,
but knows,
knows in her bones,
is not right.
You’ve heard
the mother’s day sermons,
you know that the preacher,
like Lincoln,
owes all he is
and ever hopes to be
to his angel Mother,
and that all you
should ever hope to be
is a silent elder’s wife
and mother to preachers.
The tears began much earlier
than this well-worded
sermon on reconciliation
and forgiveness
that began
with some misogynistic
and racialized joke
downplaying
the fact that a praise team
was sitting mic’d
among the members—
“do not worry,” he said,
“a praise team does not mean
that Janet Reno”—
the embattled and censured,
the ridiculed by sketch
comedy Janet Reno—
“will be here,”
pointing to where he stood,
"in a sequined robe leading
a full Gospel choir.”
Was it what he said…
or the casual manner
in which he tossed
the statement out
before moving
on to his message:
“We are called to live
lives of reconciliation…
to forgive and be forgiven.”?
Indeed, seventy times seven.
You do the math
adding up the countless
elder’s wives whose husbands
were appointed so
that the aura of power
would lure them back
into the pew on Sunday—
God, after all, in infinite wisdom,
knew that man was weaker
than woman in every way,
knew that man was not
as naturally spiritual as woman,
knew that man
has a natural antipathy
to female leadership,
so God appointed man
head of home, church and state—
to those thousands
you add the Sunday school
teachers removed
from their third grade class
because a nine year old boy
got baptized
and you add the wives
and daughters
who never learned to pray
and you add
the number of times
it’s been said
that casseroles and cookies
are the true ministry of women
and you add
and you add
and you add…
How long
must you hear men
daily disown your worth?
How long
will they offer you
the bitter cup
of your trampled gifts
expecting you to drink
from it as if it were
the cup of forgiveness?
How long
before you cross the sea
and dance with Miriam
on the shore
because now you can sing,
sing words written by women
and not have to wonder
why Fanny J Crosby
gets a voice
but not you,
not your sister poet,
not your mother
whose closed-door prayers
have brought you
to the very gates of heaven?
Monday, July 13, 2009
by KSS, part 2
7. Last question: What would you like to say? What do we need to hear?
JTB wrote recently that she went to China and became a feminist. I feel like I went to ACU and became a bitch. I don’t say that out loud (okay, maybe twice), but it’s what I think. I hope you’ll stay with me to see what I mean. Everyone who knew me as a kid and as a teenager will tell you that I am a sweet, quiet girl. People who know me now will tell you that I’m opinionated and some will even say I have a “strong personality.”
Have you heard of the six word memoirs? I wrote one. Here it is:
Didn’t know I had a voice.
The very first turning point for me didn’t happen in church. I was driving (so I was about 17) down 34th listening to FM90 and “Silent All These Years” by Tori Amos came on. I was overcome, it was an epiphany for me.
I’m a word girl. I’ve always loved stories. I love listening to them, I love reading them, I love telling them. If you look at my flair board on my facebook page, you’ll see things like, “Because pointless stories are my thing” and “People who don’t know me think I’m quiet, people who do wish I was.” You’ll also see comments from my friends laughing about how true those statements are.
I had always been full of words, but they were getting blocked up in my throat. I didn’t have a voice to speak my words.
It would be almost 10 years between “Silent All These Years” and my last pissed Sunday, with ACU being pretty much right in the middle. It was a LONG road.
Two things happened while I was at ACU, and these two stories are the part where I’m not reluctant. These are the stories that I love and that have carried me through from a time of questions to a time of answers.
I was taking an outrageous load to finish up my requirements since I couldn’t afford to stay in school any longer. Because it was the end of the degree, the classes were upper-level, small and intense.
I had to do a guided study for one class, because that was the only way I could fit everything in. I would meet one-on-one with the professor and discuss the reading material. One book was about learning styles. He asked me what I thought, and I said, “I think the author is this type, and I think her husband is this other type, and I don’t think she values his type very much.” It seemed like an obvious observation to me. The professor’s jaw dropped. He said, “I can’t believe you picked up on that. I know this couple personally, and they’ve had conflict in their marriage over that.” I didn’t think it was a big deal at the time. I felt a sort of pleased satisfaction about it, like guessing the outcome of a movie before the end. I didn’t think too much about it then, but I’ve thought a lot about it since. It has turned out to be a major turning point for me. I see young people who don’t know what they’re good at. They take “spiritual gifts quizzes” to find out. This experience was one thing that helped me see what I’m good at. Once I had this experience, I wasn’t able to be still and quiet, hiding behind the “not knowing.” Still and quiet seems humble, and confident seems bitchy.
I had the same professor for another small, upper-level ministry majors class, about 10-12 students. I was the only girl. We were talking about a hypothetical case-study. It was some situation about a congregation having a church-splitting conflict over something to do with building a kitchen and a fellowship room and something about a parking lot. There was one woman in the example who was especially problematic. I wish I could remember the whole thing better, but anyway. Everyone in the class discussed possibilities for why the people in the story felt the way they did and what might be done to resolve the conflict. I sat there and listened to what all was being said and racked my brain for what might be this woman’s problem. I thought, “What have we learned from all these classes we’ve been taking? They keep talking to us in counseling classes and family systems classes about how the presenting issue usually isn’t the true underlying issue. After awhile, I spoke up and said, “I don’t think the parking lot is really this woman’s problem, I think what she’s really having a problem with is…” I don’t remember now what I said, but I just threw my ideas out there. The professor spoke after me. He said, “Guys, I just want to stop here for a minute and tell you that this is what you’re missing when you exclude women from your elders’ meetings and your staff meetings. Women offer insights that you won’t get without them.” They kind of nodded, and we continued. But for me, in that moment between the professor’s words and the class continuing, I felt like the sky opened up and a light flooded over me that allowed me to see my value for the first time. The hand that had been covering my mouth my whole life let go at ACU. Ever since that moment, I’ve always had the feeling that once I experienced that kind of validation, I cannot go back to trying to tell myself that for some, unknown reason I am supposed to not speak.
How does one revisit ACU, knowing that women aren’t allowed to speak publically during chapel unless a statement is made, prior to her speaking, that chapel is technically over? How does one revisit ACU knowing they’re sending ministry majors to churches where they know women aren’t allowed to teach boys who’ve been baptized? This place where the goal is to train students for Christian leadership throughout the world (except for women in ministry). This place where women are expected to become corporate CEOs but not church leaders. I’ll tell you. One revisits it feeling like a bitch. Like an ungrateful, traitor who received a world-class education only to turn around and leave it. One does it with fear and grief. Fear of being rebuked, fear of being found out. With grief that this place, these people, these halls and rooms, helped give me something valuable that I’m doing nothing to reciprocate.
If you’ve stayed with me this far, then you know from my response to questions 3 & 4, that I have found a home with peace and relief. It is a house of inclusion. If I’m going to say anything, I want it to be that. But this is a conversation about where we’ve come from. And in that conversation I have to tell a story about living in a house of silence.
JTB wrote recently that she went to China and became a feminist. I feel like I went to ACU and became a bitch. I don’t say that out loud (okay, maybe twice), but it’s what I think. I hope you’ll stay with me to see what I mean. Everyone who knew me as a kid and as a teenager will tell you that I am a sweet, quiet girl. People who know me now will tell you that I’m opinionated and some will even say I have a “strong personality.”
Have you heard of the six word memoirs? I wrote one. Here it is:
Didn’t know I had a voice.
The very first turning point for me didn’t happen in church. I was driving (so I was about 17) down 34th listening to FM90 and “Silent All These Years” by Tori Amos came on. I was overcome, it was an epiphany for me.
I’m a word girl. I’ve always loved stories. I love listening to them, I love reading them, I love telling them. If you look at my flair board on my facebook page, you’ll see things like, “Because pointless stories are my thing” and “People who don’t know me think I’m quiet, people who do wish I was.” You’ll also see comments from my friends laughing about how true those statements are.
I had always been full of words, but they were getting blocked up in my throat. I didn’t have a voice to speak my words.
It would be almost 10 years between “Silent All These Years” and my last pissed Sunday, with ACU being pretty much right in the middle. It was a LONG road.
Two things happened while I was at ACU, and these two stories are the part where I’m not reluctant. These are the stories that I love and that have carried me through from a time of questions to a time of answers.
I was taking an outrageous load to finish up my requirements since I couldn’t afford to stay in school any longer. Because it was the end of the degree, the classes were upper-level, small and intense.
I had to do a guided study for one class, because that was the only way I could fit everything in. I would meet one-on-one with the professor and discuss the reading material. One book was about learning styles. He asked me what I thought, and I said, “I think the author is this type, and I think her husband is this other type, and I don’t think she values his type very much.” It seemed like an obvious observation to me. The professor’s jaw dropped. He said, “I can’t believe you picked up on that. I know this couple personally, and they’ve had conflict in their marriage over that.” I didn’t think it was a big deal at the time. I felt a sort of pleased satisfaction about it, like guessing the outcome of a movie before the end. I didn’t think too much about it then, but I’ve thought a lot about it since. It has turned out to be a major turning point for me. I see young people who don’t know what they’re good at. They take “spiritual gifts quizzes” to find out. This experience was one thing that helped me see what I’m good at. Once I had this experience, I wasn’t able to be still and quiet, hiding behind the “not knowing.” Still and quiet seems humble, and confident seems bitchy.
I had the same professor for another small, upper-level ministry majors class, about 10-12 students. I was the only girl. We were talking about a hypothetical case-study. It was some situation about a congregation having a church-splitting conflict over something to do with building a kitchen and a fellowship room and something about a parking lot. There was one woman in the example who was especially problematic. I wish I could remember the whole thing better, but anyway. Everyone in the class discussed possibilities for why the people in the story felt the way they did and what might be done to resolve the conflict. I sat there and listened to what all was being said and racked my brain for what might be this woman’s problem. I thought, “What have we learned from all these classes we’ve been taking? They keep talking to us in counseling classes and family systems classes about how the presenting issue usually isn’t the true underlying issue. After awhile, I spoke up and said, “I don’t think the parking lot is really this woman’s problem, I think what she’s really having a problem with is…” I don’t remember now what I said, but I just threw my ideas out there. The professor spoke after me. He said, “Guys, I just want to stop here for a minute and tell you that this is what you’re missing when you exclude women from your elders’ meetings and your staff meetings. Women offer insights that you won’t get without them.” They kind of nodded, and we continued. But for me, in that moment between the professor’s words and the class continuing, I felt like the sky opened up and a light flooded over me that allowed me to see my value for the first time. The hand that had been covering my mouth my whole life let go at ACU. Ever since that moment, I’ve always had the feeling that once I experienced that kind of validation, I cannot go back to trying to tell myself that for some, unknown reason I am supposed to not speak.
How does one revisit ACU, knowing that women aren’t allowed to speak publically during chapel unless a statement is made, prior to her speaking, that chapel is technically over? How does one revisit ACU knowing they’re sending ministry majors to churches where they know women aren’t allowed to teach boys who’ve been baptized? This place where the goal is to train students for Christian leadership throughout the world (except for women in ministry). This place where women are expected to become corporate CEOs but not church leaders. I’ll tell you. One revisits it feeling like a bitch. Like an ungrateful, traitor who received a world-class education only to turn around and leave it. One does it with fear and grief. Fear of being rebuked, fear of being found out. With grief that this place, these people, these halls and rooms, helped give me something valuable that I’m doing nothing to reciprocate.
If you’ve stayed with me this far, then you know from my response to questions 3 & 4, that I have found a home with peace and relief. It is a house of inclusion. If I’m going to say anything, I want it to be that. But this is a conversation about where we’ve come from. And in that conversation I have to tell a story about living in a house of silence.
by KSS, part 1
I have so much to say. It’s so hard to know where to start much less where to go. So I’ll follow the questions posed. But first I have to deal with a word issue. I have such a hard time even typing things like “CoC” or “church of Christ” or “Church of Christ.” Have you ever had to lean over to your friend next to you in the pew, during a talk about “Big C and little c” and whisper, “Have you ever even heard of the church of Christ?” I have had to do that. His answer was, “No.” Afterwards, he asked me, “What was the deal about the big c and little c?” I said, “I don’t even want to explain it because I don’t want to even sound like I’m defending it.” Then he asked me a lot more questions like, “And what was the deal with instrumental music? And what was the deal with women?” I know the answers to all those questions, but I don’t even want to answer them. I might have some baggage. I feel like I lost my baggage at the airport a long time ago, and I’ve bought new clothes and toiletries since then. Now someone is showing up at my door saying my luggage has been found, but it’s mixed up with other passengers’ baggage, so would I please unpack it and sort it out. Good grief.
This is going to be offensive, please excuse me or stop reading this or whatever you need to do. I’m not apologetic anymore.
So I use “Church of Christ” because the way I see it, “church of Christ” is used as a way of insisting that it is not a denomination, and I cannot participate in that thinking. I do believe that the Church of Christ is a denomination. I have to say all of this, because I can’t begin a written conversation about the church where I come from without defending why I punctuate the way I do. I know I’m being unfair, because after having said all that, I’m not willing to talk about it any further.
1. What’s your first memory of realizing that being female meant something different in terms of opportunities or expectations?
If you’re a fish, when do you discover water? I grew up in the CoC. I knew the answers before I knew the questions. I don’t remember exactly when I began asking, but by the time I was in high school I had been asking a lot of questions for a long time and getting very polite, unsatisfying answers. All of my questions seemed to me to be best represented by this one question: “How come if I wrote a book everyone would read it and love it and say, ‘Wow! This stuff is great!’ but if I spoke those exact same words, the same people would say, ‘This is wrong.’?”
I started asking everyone everywhere this question. Mostly the answer I got was,
“That’s a good question.”
I wanted to say, “Are you kidding me?! That’s your answer?!”
Sometimes people said, “Well, probably a lot of people wouldn’t read your book.”
I knew that was true, too.
2. How did being female in CoC affect you as a teenager, in college, in your dating relationships?
I never really dated as a teenager. I think being female in CoC as a teenager was only one of many ways that I was “out of sorts” or “out of my element” or “not at home in my own life.” Probably typical for most teenagers. However in college, I think it did directly factor into my not dating. I was a Youth & Family Ministry major at ACU. In my class, there were only two or three female Y&FM majors. Every year while I was there, there were more and more new incoming female Y&FM majors, but I was rare during my time. One day, I was walking through the campus center with a close friend. He was like a brother to me. He was a psychology major. We were having a conversation about dating, and he casually said, “I don’t think I’d date a female Bible major. I think I’d be intimidated.” He said it so matter-of-fact-ly. I felt like there was no reason to be upset about it. I realized that my major was probably going to be a hindrance to dating, to say nothing of the chances of getting married. Another time I was walking with a male Y&FM major, and we were talking about how I felt discriminated against as a female. He said, “I never really thought about it before.” I said, “You wouldn’t—it doesn’t affect you.” Then he said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
3. How has being female in CoC affected you as an adult? 4. How has being female affected your church life?
To me, being female and the issue of women’s role is part of a bigger conflict I have with the Church of Christ (which I’ll write about later if JTB wants it). At the last Church of Christ I went to regularly, I constantly found myself thinking, “I’m so glad I didn’t invite anyone to come with me today!” Then I would think, “Something is very wrong if I don’t want to invite people to come to church with me.” The sermons made me angry, and I constantly wanted to stand up and walk out. At the time, I had a demanding social work job, and I was constantly getting paged and having to leave church to talk to clients on the phone. Between the job and the church, I found myself on Sunday mornings thinking to myself, “Maybe I’ll just stay home today. I’ll go next week.” My job was with a CoC agency, and it required that I be CoC, so I didn’t feel free to visit other denominations. I was already at the most liberal, progressive CoC in town, so I knew it was pointless to visit other CoC congregations. Before I knew it, I hadn’t been to church in about a year. Then the friend from the “Big C little c” conversation invited me to visit his Methodist church. I decided that as long as I was forsaking the requirements of my job, I might as well do whatever I wanted. I wanted to go to church, I just didn’t want to be pissed the whole time I was there. It has been such a relief to find a home where things that are non-issues to me are non-issues in the church. I feel like now I can focus on the issues that are important to me. I’ve been on social justice and environmental task forces in my Methodist congregations. I’ve gotten to do what I’m good at, and no one thinks twice about it, except to tell me thanks. I’ve moved a couple of times since I started going to a Methodist church, and I’ve always found the same, serving, welcoming types of churches. I understand why people stay who feel like it is their calling in life to help change things, but for me, I feel like I had a different calling and it wasn’t possible to follow my calling in the CoC.
6. How has being female in CoC affected your interaction with children (yours and others’ children)?
When I moved from Texas to DC, I moved in with some friends who grew up CoC but who have been going to an Episcopal church after going to a Disciples of Christ church. They have the same views about women as I do. Now they’re getting ready to move out of state and thinking about where they will go to church. They expect to go to a Disciples of Christ or Episcopal church again, but there’s a local CoC church in their soon-to-be town, that they’ve heard great things about. They also now have a daughter. They asked me what I think about it. They’ve said that they don’t want to raise their daughter in the environment of the CoC because they don’t want her to be influenced by the ideas about women, so I felt comfortable answering their question honestly. I told them that I can only speak for myself and I don’t want to tell them what’s right for them, but I said that I wouldn’t go to a CoC regularly under any circumstances. I don’t have children of my own, but where I do have influence on the experience of children, I won’t promote the CoC. I say these things reluctantly. I am so grateful for so much, but it isn’t enough.
This is going to be offensive, please excuse me or stop reading this or whatever you need to do. I’m not apologetic anymore.
So I use “Church of Christ” because the way I see it, “church of Christ” is used as a way of insisting that it is not a denomination, and I cannot participate in that thinking. I do believe that the Church of Christ is a denomination. I have to say all of this, because I can’t begin a written conversation about the church where I come from without defending why I punctuate the way I do. I know I’m being unfair, because after having said all that, I’m not willing to talk about it any further.
1. What’s your first memory of realizing that being female meant something different in terms of opportunities or expectations?
If you’re a fish, when do you discover water? I grew up in the CoC. I knew the answers before I knew the questions. I don’t remember exactly when I began asking, but by the time I was in high school I had been asking a lot of questions for a long time and getting very polite, unsatisfying answers. All of my questions seemed to me to be best represented by this one question: “How come if I wrote a book everyone would read it and love it and say, ‘Wow! This stuff is great!’ but if I spoke those exact same words, the same people would say, ‘This is wrong.’?”
I started asking everyone everywhere this question. Mostly the answer I got was,
“That’s a good question.”
I wanted to say, “Are you kidding me?! That’s your answer?!”
Sometimes people said, “Well, probably a lot of people wouldn’t read your book.”
I knew that was true, too.
2. How did being female in CoC affect you as a teenager, in college, in your dating relationships?
I never really dated as a teenager. I think being female in CoC as a teenager was only one of many ways that I was “out of sorts” or “out of my element” or “not at home in my own life.” Probably typical for most teenagers. However in college, I think it did directly factor into my not dating. I was a Youth & Family Ministry major at ACU. In my class, there were only two or three female Y&FM majors. Every year while I was there, there were more and more new incoming female Y&FM majors, but I was rare during my time. One day, I was walking through the campus center with a close friend. He was like a brother to me. He was a psychology major. We were having a conversation about dating, and he casually said, “I don’t think I’d date a female Bible major. I think I’d be intimidated.” He said it so matter-of-fact-ly. I felt like there was no reason to be upset about it. I realized that my major was probably going to be a hindrance to dating, to say nothing of the chances of getting married. Another time I was walking with a male Y&FM major, and we were talking about how I felt discriminated against as a female. He said, “I never really thought about it before.” I said, “You wouldn’t—it doesn’t affect you.” Then he said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
3. How has being female in CoC affected you as an adult? 4. How has being female affected your church life?
To me, being female and the issue of women’s role is part of a bigger conflict I have with the Church of Christ (which I’ll write about later if JTB wants it). At the last Church of Christ I went to regularly, I constantly found myself thinking, “I’m so glad I didn’t invite anyone to come with me today!” Then I would think, “Something is very wrong if I don’t want to invite people to come to church with me.” The sermons made me angry, and I constantly wanted to stand up and walk out. At the time, I had a demanding social work job, and I was constantly getting paged and having to leave church to talk to clients on the phone. Between the job and the church, I found myself on Sunday mornings thinking to myself, “Maybe I’ll just stay home today. I’ll go next week.” My job was with a CoC agency, and it required that I be CoC, so I didn’t feel free to visit other denominations. I was already at the most liberal, progressive CoC in town, so I knew it was pointless to visit other CoC congregations. Before I knew it, I hadn’t been to church in about a year. Then the friend from the “Big C little c” conversation invited me to visit his Methodist church. I decided that as long as I was forsaking the requirements of my job, I might as well do whatever I wanted. I wanted to go to church, I just didn’t want to be pissed the whole time I was there. It has been such a relief to find a home where things that are non-issues to me are non-issues in the church. I feel like now I can focus on the issues that are important to me. I’ve been on social justice and environmental task forces in my Methodist congregations. I’ve gotten to do what I’m good at, and no one thinks twice about it, except to tell me thanks. I’ve moved a couple of times since I started going to a Methodist church, and I’ve always found the same, serving, welcoming types of churches. I understand why people stay who feel like it is their calling in life to help change things, but for me, I feel like I had a different calling and it wasn’t possible to follow my calling in the CoC.
6. How has being female in CoC affected your interaction with children (yours and others’ children)?
When I moved from Texas to DC, I moved in with some friends who grew up CoC but who have been going to an Episcopal church after going to a Disciples of Christ church. They have the same views about women as I do. Now they’re getting ready to move out of state and thinking about where they will go to church. They expect to go to a Disciples of Christ or Episcopal church again, but there’s a local CoC church in their soon-to-be town, that they’ve heard great things about. They also now have a daughter. They asked me what I think about it. They’ve said that they don’t want to raise their daughter in the environment of the CoC because they don’t want her to be influenced by the ideas about women, so I felt comfortable answering their question honestly. I told them that I can only speak for myself and I don’t want to tell them what’s right for them, but I said that I wouldn’t go to a CoC regularly under any circumstances. I don’t have children of my own, but where I do have influence on the experience of children, I won’t promote the CoC. I say these things reluctantly. I am so grateful for so much, but it isn’t enough.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
by "GR"
Growing up, I didn't really like saying the pre-dinner blessing: it seemed a chore, like being asked to clean up after the dog or brush my teeth before bed. There was always a bit of unspoken competition between my brother and me, in which we would both slouch as low as possible to avoid being called on to say the prayer.
A few years later, I hesitantly came out of the closet. After many tears and arguments, my parents and I reached an uneasy peace that has held more or less steady for the last five years. But a funny thing happened in 2003 after I came out: I was no longer asked to pray at the dinner table. These days, when my family gathers, either my brother or my father blesses the food. The prayers I did not want to say are now the prayers I am not allowed to say. My mother and sister have always been silent. And now I am, too.
It was this experience, this loss of status, more than any other in my life, that taught me about the silence of women in the Church of Christ. I am not a woman, and the experiences of Church of Christ women are different than this gay man's, though I think our experiences run parallel. But I understand now what it is like to be told your voice is not welcome. I understand the power of exclusion.
I have never heard my sister pray. I hope one day I will.
A few years later, I hesitantly came out of the closet. After many tears and arguments, my parents and I reached an uneasy peace that has held more or less steady for the last five years. But a funny thing happened in 2003 after I came out: I was no longer asked to pray at the dinner table. These days, when my family gathers, either my brother or my father blesses the food. The prayers I did not want to say are now the prayers I am not allowed to say. My mother and sister have always been silent. And now I am, too.
It was this experience, this loss of status, more than any other in my life, that taught me about the silence of women in the Church of Christ. I am not a woman, and the experiences of Church of Christ women are different than this gay man's, though I think our experiences run parallel. But I understand now what it is like to be told your voice is not welcome. I understand the power of exclusion.
I have never heard my sister pray. I hope one day I will.
by JRB
The question is, “What's your first memory of realizing that being female meant something different in terms of opportunities or expectations?” I am male, so I can speak to this question but not as well to the others. I am a “Hebrew among Hebrews” with good COC lineage and degrees, and I was always a very good church kid and still am. I rocked Bible Bowl, was baptized at 11, led singing at 12, preached by 13 at the latest, helped lead the youth group, was a youth ministry intern and a ministry major in college at a “brotherhood school.” My grandparents are missionaries, and I have been speaking in church for a long, long time. I have always been a member of a Church of Christ, or rather, the Church of Christ.
I love the Church of Christ. It is my people, my family, my tribe, my best friends, and now in many ways, my employer and calling.
As for this question of “women’s roles,” I have been aware of the question for all my life, being the son and grandson of women who had much, much to offer, service to render and wisdom to share but who bumped up against Women’s Roles in the Church all their lives. In my youth, given to accept what I was taught as all youths are, I questioned how this inequity could be. Pointed to I Cor. 14, of course, I saw the example and necessary inference, but I either cobbled together or heard someone give an apology that, although there are not “male and female in Christ,” this does not mean that they are the same or have the same roles. In other words, this is not a question of power or subjugation, of course, but just different roles. Separate but equal roles. I bought it and sold it, too.
At my beloved alma mater, I began to learn otherwise from wise people and to suspect that we had gotten this wrong. My thinking continued to evolve in law school where I served alongside very talented, articulate, visionary, faithful women in our fruitful campus ministry. This was the first time for me to be in an ecumenical Christian ministry, outside the Brotherhood, and gender inequity at our national law school would have been fatal to our ministry, not to mention foolish for the squander of talent and contrary to the gospel we proclaimed.
The gospel truth of gender justice came home to me when I married my partner, best friend and love. She was not from my tribe, a Christian but not a Member of The Church, although she would become one and become bewildered and wounded, stronger and wiser as a result. The most desperate moment came in our first year of marriage when she and I were the de facto youth ministers in a small congregation in the throes of an identity crisis. In a youth group of about 20, only 2 or 3 boys would ever lead prayer, but a few of the girls were more than willing. As the girls castigated the boys for not appreciating their privilege, we told them that we did not have a problem with girls leading prayers for the youth group but that we would wait a week for any of them to ask questions, lodge objections, talk to their parents, etc. When the day arrived without comment, we asked a sure girl to pray, but she demurred. My wife took up the ministry of prayer and led us to the Lord, and then it all hit the fan. Soon enough, I was sitting in the middle of a semi-circle of brethren in a Men’s Business Meeting, with my back against an actual wall. We did not have Elders, but Men’s Business Meetings apparently were some sort of exigency derived from necessary inference. There we parsed I Corinthians and other passages, while I answered an inquisition into my wife’s prayer, in her imposed absence. Theirs was not an angry reaction but the tired answers of stumbling blocks, patience and the need for more study, especially about women praying and prophesying with their heads covered and Gal. 3:28, which none of them had before considered in this context. She cried out to seek a new congregation, and as we visited a local Denominational Service, where she wept during communion, I told her that I wasn’t sure I could leave because I wasn’t sure the Denomination would let me teach, and I needed to teach for my spiritual well-being, apparently without any self-awareness of my hypocrisy. We were in a moment of crisis but were delivered by escape. Blessedly, we dodged the bullet of disaffiliation when we moved to a town with better prospects.
We found a much more confident congregation at our next home, and we love them still. Even so, our beloved preacher once told a story, with boys and girls on the stage beside him, of being discouraged as a boy in church. He had been leading singing in his small church as a lad of 8 or 9 and loved it, although he had not yet reached the age of accountability and had not been baptized. A new preacher came and told him to cut it out until he “became a Christian,” and this crushed and alienated the young boy’s spirit for years to come. Our preacher then exhorted us to empower and encourage our kids because of our profound responsibility to lift them up and strengthen their faith. He then handed the microphone to a girl, a yet-unbaptized girl on stage with other yet-unbaptized kids, who led them all in song. It was beautiful, but I was struck by the dissonance, because even in our congregation, once that very girl was baptized, there would be no more song leading for her. When she “became a Christian,” we would silence the voice we were then celebrating and empowering.
Now we are at a church where women read scripture in service, give their own announcements facing the church, from the pulpit, with a microphone, sing solos, testify, work as ministry leaders and are overcoming generations of discrimination. I even got to crash the Ladies Class, and they prayed in my presence. My wife and I were ordained together to lead a ministry, and in that capacity, she led classes with men and women and even led our elders in prayer as we considered our work together. Our elders encouraged her and blessed her voice. Strangely enough, however, she still cannot pass communion trays vertically because she is a woman, which, in light of all the women reading, praying, singing, leading and serving during our services, is incoherent and tough to explain to eager daughters who want to “throw the plates.”
All in all, our congregation is making sure headway toward manifesting the gospel truth that, in Christ, there are not male and female, making deliberate speed as we learn that there is no such thing as separate but equal, and that separate almost always is about power and subjugation, while equal is almost always about submission. Our pastor has guided us to let our daughters help me pass the collection plate (but not communion, yet), in their desire to help, and we pray that this holds the promise that when they reach their own age of accountability, that they will be welcomed as full citizens into the kingdom of God, equipped and encouraged to seek out the calling the Lord gives to them.
This is important, because we have two daughters who dream. They pretend to be astronauts and ballerinas. They love to play dinosaurs and princesses. They play with legos and babydolls. They play soccer, climb trees and change clothes, all the time. They play hard in the mud, love the zoo, cherish books, run like mad, twirl and leap, color and write, want to be pretty, sing all the time, tell stories and give to their friends.
When our older daughter was two-and a half, she was playing with her little sister in their bedroom. They were laughing, dancing and running around. Then, the little one started complaining and protesting while her big sister pulled and prodded on her.
Momma responded to their cries and insistence, to find big sister with her arms around little sister’s shoulders, pulling and tugging, trying to get her up on the toddler bed, under protest.
Momma said, “What are you doing? Don’t pull on K like that!.”
B replied, “I’m John the Baptist!”
“What?”
“I’m pretend John the Baptist, and K is Jesus, and we’re going to the water!”
Amen, little girl. Prophesy.
I love the Church of Christ. It is my people, my family, my tribe, my best friends, and now in many ways, my employer and calling.
As for this question of “women’s roles,” I have been aware of the question for all my life, being the son and grandson of women who had much, much to offer, service to render and wisdom to share but who bumped up against Women’s Roles in the Church all their lives. In my youth, given to accept what I was taught as all youths are, I questioned how this inequity could be. Pointed to I Cor. 14, of course, I saw the example and necessary inference, but I either cobbled together or heard someone give an apology that, although there are not “male and female in Christ,” this does not mean that they are the same or have the same roles. In other words, this is not a question of power or subjugation, of course, but just different roles. Separate but equal roles. I bought it and sold it, too.
At my beloved alma mater, I began to learn otherwise from wise people and to suspect that we had gotten this wrong. My thinking continued to evolve in law school where I served alongside very talented, articulate, visionary, faithful women in our fruitful campus ministry. This was the first time for me to be in an ecumenical Christian ministry, outside the Brotherhood, and gender inequity at our national law school would have been fatal to our ministry, not to mention foolish for the squander of talent and contrary to the gospel we proclaimed.
The gospel truth of gender justice came home to me when I married my partner, best friend and love. She was not from my tribe, a Christian but not a Member of The Church, although she would become one and become bewildered and wounded, stronger and wiser as a result. The most desperate moment came in our first year of marriage when she and I were the de facto youth ministers in a small congregation in the throes of an identity crisis. In a youth group of about 20, only 2 or 3 boys would ever lead prayer, but a few of the girls were more than willing. As the girls castigated the boys for not appreciating their privilege, we told them that we did not have a problem with girls leading prayers for the youth group but that we would wait a week for any of them to ask questions, lodge objections, talk to their parents, etc. When the day arrived without comment, we asked a sure girl to pray, but she demurred. My wife took up the ministry of prayer and led us to the Lord, and then it all hit the fan. Soon enough, I was sitting in the middle of a semi-circle of brethren in a Men’s Business Meeting, with my back against an actual wall. We did not have Elders, but Men’s Business Meetings apparently were some sort of exigency derived from necessary inference. There we parsed I Corinthians and other passages, while I answered an inquisition into my wife’s prayer, in her imposed absence. Theirs was not an angry reaction but the tired answers of stumbling blocks, patience and the need for more study, especially about women praying and prophesying with their heads covered and Gal. 3:28, which none of them had before considered in this context. She cried out to seek a new congregation, and as we visited a local Denominational Service, where she wept during communion, I told her that I wasn’t sure I could leave because I wasn’t sure the Denomination would let me teach, and I needed to teach for my spiritual well-being, apparently without any self-awareness of my hypocrisy. We were in a moment of crisis but were delivered by escape. Blessedly, we dodged the bullet of disaffiliation when we moved to a town with better prospects.
We found a much more confident congregation at our next home, and we love them still. Even so, our beloved preacher once told a story, with boys and girls on the stage beside him, of being discouraged as a boy in church. He had been leading singing in his small church as a lad of 8 or 9 and loved it, although he had not yet reached the age of accountability and had not been baptized. A new preacher came and told him to cut it out until he “became a Christian,” and this crushed and alienated the young boy’s spirit for years to come. Our preacher then exhorted us to empower and encourage our kids because of our profound responsibility to lift them up and strengthen their faith. He then handed the microphone to a girl, a yet-unbaptized girl on stage with other yet-unbaptized kids, who led them all in song. It was beautiful, but I was struck by the dissonance, because even in our congregation, once that very girl was baptized, there would be no more song leading for her. When she “became a Christian,” we would silence the voice we were then celebrating and empowering.
Now we are at a church where women read scripture in service, give their own announcements facing the church, from the pulpit, with a microphone, sing solos, testify, work as ministry leaders and are overcoming generations of discrimination. I even got to crash the Ladies Class, and they prayed in my presence. My wife and I were ordained together to lead a ministry, and in that capacity, she led classes with men and women and even led our elders in prayer as we considered our work together. Our elders encouraged her and blessed her voice. Strangely enough, however, she still cannot pass communion trays vertically because she is a woman, which, in light of all the women reading, praying, singing, leading and serving during our services, is incoherent and tough to explain to eager daughters who want to “throw the plates.”
All in all, our congregation is making sure headway toward manifesting the gospel truth that, in Christ, there are not male and female, making deliberate speed as we learn that there is no such thing as separate but equal, and that separate almost always is about power and subjugation, while equal is almost always about submission. Our pastor has guided us to let our daughters help me pass the collection plate (but not communion, yet), in their desire to help, and we pray that this holds the promise that when they reach their own age of accountability, that they will be welcomed as full citizens into the kingdom of God, equipped and encouraged to seek out the calling the Lord gives to them.
This is important, because we have two daughters who dream. They pretend to be astronauts and ballerinas. They love to play dinosaurs and princesses. They play with legos and babydolls. They play soccer, climb trees and change clothes, all the time. They play hard in the mud, love the zoo, cherish books, run like mad, twirl and leap, color and write, want to be pretty, sing all the time, tell stories and give to their friends.
When our older daughter was two-and a half, she was playing with her little sister in their bedroom. They were laughing, dancing and running around. Then, the little one started complaining and protesting while her big sister pulled and prodded on her.
Momma responded to their cries and insistence, to find big sister with her arms around little sister’s shoulders, pulling and tugging, trying to get her up on the toddler bed, under protest.
Momma said, “What are you doing? Don’t pull on K like that!.”
B replied, “I’m John the Baptist!”
“What?”
“I’m pretend John the Baptist, and K is Jesus, and we’re going to the water!”
Amen, little girl. Prophesy.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, July 10, 2009
protecting the innocent
"It kinda makes you feel like Jesus only died for the boys."
--anonymous, 10 years old
--anonymous, 10 years old
JTB: from Hetty (an old, and second-hand, story)
"There is a story about Hetty, one of Charles Darwin's daughters, when she was an eight-year-old girl troubled by the death of a slightly older sister. According to family records, Hetty was worried with thoughts of the afterlife and especially concerned about her sister going to Heaven. One day Hetty asked her mother, 'But Mamma, where do the women go to, for all the angels are men?' According to Emma Darwin's diary, she then burst into tears."
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
Ann Evankovich
Katie Hays
Mary Lou Hutson
D'Esta Love
Lance Pape
Floyd E. Rose
by Casey
Though it was never really an option for me growing up in a conservative church of Christ in Texas, I always knew I was not cut out for the ministry. I am too introverted to be expected to speak every week, far too fond of controversy, and I have to hire people to be my internal censor, as I really have none. So this was nothing I ever wanted to do. I never remember any of the girls in my youth group feeling anything but pity for the boys when they had to participate in services. There was just a slight pang of jealousy when they got to sing together, but then we just mocked them and changed the name of their singing group to ‘All the Kings Dorks.’ And when I went away to college, going to a public university rather than to ACU where many of my friends were, I felt that I was free to do whatever I wanted. I continued going to the church of Christ because that’s what you do, and there was one within 5 minutes of my dorm, and the friends I made at church are for the most part the people from college who I remain friends with today. But as I have gotten older (and gone to therapy), I have begun to realize what it is the church does to us by making it known that our sole purpose is to sit quietly.
When I left for school, even though I chose a non-religious college, I still pictured myself in the life I had been told was for me. I would go to school, and be successful because I’m smart, but I would also meet someone and marry right after graduation (or maybe even before). I would teach high school English, and sing as part of the makeshift chorus at weddings and funerals. I would run VBS, and maybe some sort of ministry for the homeless, if I had time, what with my kids and husband and job. I say all of this in sort of a mocking tone, not to mock people who live this life happily, but in mockery of myself, because this was never me. I swear like a trucker, cry without exception at all weddings and funerals, I am not good with any more than one child at a time (and then only for about an hour), and I am possibly the most undomestic person you have ever met, my only talent really being arts & crafts. But it has taken me many years to discover this. Up until this point, I have felt at many moments like a failure for not having achieved this ideal. And I know I am not alone here.
I see this in women I know who remain single into their 30s, despite their best efforts to find and keep a nice Christian man. I see this in my friends who married early and then discovered that this is not what they wanted out of life at all, but having made the commitment and stoically staying put, hoping to make it work or that the next 60 years will go by quickly. In my friends who decided not to stick it out, and who are demonized by the church for their decision to end an unhappy, at times abusive, marriage. In my friends who are blamed by the church for their husbands’ acts of infidelity, and are told that it is their wifely duty to make him want to stay. Or in people like myself, who struggle for so long to be the ideal, hoping that someone will come along who is okay with the fact that we are not. Someone who can forgive us for having slipped up, or being too quick to speak, or to act, or too selfish to see that our careers are not more important than the potential of a family that we do not really want to have.
The greatest blessing of my life was the day I set foot on the campus of the University of Texas. It was for me the opportunity to be seen for who I am, and to be appreciated for my voice. To meet people who would teach me so much and change me in profound ways, leading me to do more than I ever thought possible. Instead of meeting a husband there, I met a best friend with whom I have walked through the last decade or so. He had a journey very similar to mine up to that point, and has had his own journey since. Like all of us, having to learn that God does not make imperfect things and loves us wholly for who we wholly are.
When I left for school, even though I chose a non-religious college, I still pictured myself in the life I had been told was for me. I would go to school, and be successful because I’m smart, but I would also meet someone and marry right after graduation (or maybe even before). I would teach high school English, and sing as part of the makeshift chorus at weddings and funerals. I would run VBS, and maybe some sort of ministry for the homeless, if I had time, what with my kids and husband and job. I say all of this in sort of a mocking tone, not to mock people who live this life happily, but in mockery of myself, because this was never me. I swear like a trucker, cry without exception at all weddings and funerals, I am not good with any more than one child at a time (and then only for about an hour), and I am possibly the most undomestic person you have ever met, my only talent really being arts & crafts. But it has taken me many years to discover this. Up until this point, I have felt at many moments like a failure for not having achieved this ideal. And I know I am not alone here.
I see this in women I know who remain single into their 30s, despite their best efforts to find and keep a nice Christian man. I see this in my friends who married early and then discovered that this is not what they wanted out of life at all, but having made the commitment and stoically staying put, hoping to make it work or that the next 60 years will go by quickly. In my friends who decided not to stick it out, and who are demonized by the church for their decision to end an unhappy, at times abusive, marriage. In my friends who are blamed by the church for their husbands’ acts of infidelity, and are told that it is their wifely duty to make him want to stay. Or in people like myself, who struggle for so long to be the ideal, hoping that someone will come along who is okay with the fact that we are not. Someone who can forgive us for having slipped up, or being too quick to speak, or to act, or too selfish to see that our careers are not more important than the potential of a family that we do not really want to have.
The greatest blessing of my life was the day I set foot on the campus of the University of Texas. It was for me the opportunity to be seen for who I am, and to be appreciated for my voice. To meet people who would teach me so much and change me in profound ways, leading me to do more than I ever thought possible. Instead of meeting a husband there, I met a best friend with whom I have walked through the last decade or so. He had a journey very similar to mine up to that point, and has had his own journey since. Like all of us, having to learn that God does not make imperfect things and loves us wholly for who we wholly are.
JTB: for Kile
The day before I left Wuhan, my friend, whose tears in my living room preceding her baptism have marked a turning point in my spiritual journey, came to my apartment for a farewell lunch. In the months following her baptism, her bible studies had been conducted by her baptizer: she didn't have time to meet with me, or even come to the women's bible study. I knew she was smart and strong and incredibly faithful, but still, as I prepared to leave China, I worried about her. I wanted to tell her just how much I no longer believed in so many of the things we Americans were telling her was God's truth, but I was dreadfully afraid that that itself might be more damaging than liberating.
We ate our lunch.
And suddenly, from across my tiny little table, she looked up at me and said, out of the blue, "Brother _____ sometimes just talks a lot of nonsense, doesn't he?"
I nearly choked. And then I laughed. I couldn't help it.
And then I praised God for this beautiful reversal of my all-too-human assumptions and expectations, and for the divine symmetry of our friendship. As she had once said to me, "God has answered my prayers in your words," this was true again.
It wasn't that she agreed with me. It was that in that moment I knew that she was okay, more okay than I was, even. She was not a baby who needed looking after. She was a woman, a woman made in the image of God and more mature in the image of Christ than I myself was. She was, in that moment, my angel, my divine messenger, sitting across the table, teaching me. Teaching me that our distortions of the gospel were just a lot of nonsense. Teaching me that such nonsense has no power, unless we grant it such. Teaching me that I too could mature into the image of Christ as she had, resilient, patient, forbearing and fearless.
She is okay now, I know. And so am I.
We ate our lunch.
And suddenly, from across my tiny little table, she looked up at me and said, out of the blue, "Brother _____ sometimes just talks a lot of nonsense, doesn't he?"
I nearly choked. And then I laughed. I couldn't help it.
And then I praised God for this beautiful reversal of my all-too-human assumptions and expectations, and for the divine symmetry of our friendship. As she had once said to me, "God has answered my prayers in your words," this was true again.
It wasn't that she agreed with me. It was that in that moment I knew that she was okay, more okay than I was, even. She was not a baby who needed looking after. She was a woman, a woman made in the image of God and more mature in the image of Christ than I myself was. She was, in that moment, my angel, my divine messenger, sitting across the table, teaching me. Teaching me that our distortions of the gospel were just a lot of nonsense. Teaching me that such nonsense has no power, unless we grant it such. Teaching me that I too could mature into the image of Christ as she had, resilient, patient, forbearing and fearless.
She is okay now, I know. And so am I.
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.]
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.]
Thursday, July 09, 2009
by JW
I think I may be one of the blessed ones. It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I really began to understand that my gender made a difference in my ability to share in the ministry of the church. I was fortunate to be raised by parents that worked to intentionally nurture my ministry skills and to model a life of service and leadership—both by my mother and my father. Even when I was a young child, my mother was writing articles for Christian magazines and going out of town to speak at churches and retreats. I didn’t know at the time that she was blazing a trail for women in Churches of Christ. Nor did I realize that her primary audiences were women—her gender prevented her from speaking to mixed audiences most of the time. All I knew is that my mother was using her God-given gifts in ministry in various ways. And it didn’t seem strange to me at all.
When I was a teenager, my mother began working on her master’s degree and, eventually, her doctorate in ministry. She did this on top of her full-time job, balancing these responsibilities with her marriage, children, and ministry at home. Again, I didn’t find this particularly remarkable at the time—it was just our life. But I do remember beginning to understand that my mother was unique. There were not many other women in her classes and sometimes the men didn’t know how to respond to her. I won’t try to tell any of these stories here because they are hers to tell, not mine. Plus, I don’t know if I really know any of them. I just remember beginning to develop a sense of otherness around this time. I knew that the way I understood myself as a female was not maybe how other people understood me.
My feelings of frustration about my gender didn’t begin until I was in late-high school. In those days, the youth group kids would sit near the back of the auditorium on the far lefthand side. Many Sunday mornings, a slightly frantic, sweaty deacon would come rushing over and would ask one or two of the guys to help serve communion. At first, it didn’t really bother me that I was never asked, nor were other great girls from the youth group. But one Sunday I looked up and saw that I was being served on each side by two guys who had JUST been talking about the party they had attended over the weekend. While they had both baptized in the previous months, neither one was resisting the temptation to party with their friends. Not that I was sinless or expected that the people serving communion would be any more righteous than any of the rest of us. But I felt the first painful pangs of frustration that my ability to serve at church was not evaluated based on spiritual maturity, desire, or willingness. Even though I had been a baptized Christian for seven years, I was not considered able to walk down the aisles with a tray because I lacked the important “spiritual gift” of the phallus.
Despite that frustration, I continued to serve in leadership roles in my youth group and was asked to deliver a public response to the church on Senior Sunday—one of two times I have ever spoken publicly during worship.
When I entered my freshman year of college, I still didn’t have much of an idea about the restrictions women faced in Churches of Christ. I had been sheltered and empowered by my family and, in many ways, by my home congregation. I quickly became involved with like-minded friends and we organized a devotional for freshmen—attended by probably 50 students. During one of the first devotionals, I volunteered to “give the talk.” You know, to use Scripture and my personal experience to edify and challenge the assembled group. After we sang a few songs, my (male) friend who was leading worship introduced me. And he said that I would be “giving my testimony.” Which was true, in a way. But what I was doing was no different than what my male cohorts had done in previous devotionals, only their talks weren’t specified as “testimonies.” He had chosen that word to describe my talk so as not to offend anyone. I remember feeling conflicted and a little hurt by that distinction, though I wasn’t wholly surprised by it. I didn’t want my gender to be the focus of my talk, I wanted the Lord to be the focus.
At the end of my talk that evening, I prayed for all of us. I don’t remember anything specific or remarkable about the prayer at all. And I didn’t think twice about doing it—after all, I had been able to pray, read scripture, and lead discussions in my youth group just months before. But after the devotional, a male friend of mine came up to me and told me that he had covered his ears while I had prayed because he didn’t want to participate in a sin: being led in prayer by a woman. I was absolutely floored. And hurt. And angered. This was the first time (and, thank the Lord, I think the only time) I have ever been so directly attacked for my spiritual leadership.
I attended college in my hometown, and my home congregation was undergoing an extensive study of women’s roles in public leadership. I was invited to be part of a discussion group one afternoon, to share my views with other members of the church as well as the elders. I shared my previous experience about feeling frustration when the boys in the youth group were invited to serve communion and the girls were excluded…and a man in the discussion group responded with the following sentiment: “It’s probably a good thing that young women don’t serve communion. What if a woman wore something sexy that made the men in the congregation lust after her. That would be detrimental to the spiritual state of the men during communion. Therefore, women shouldn’t serve communion.” Again, I was floored. I couldn’t believe his willingness to disenfranchise women based on some men’s inability to control their sexual desires (not to mention the total lack of trust that women are able to dress modestly and appropriately!).
When my husband and I started dating, he was working on his Master’s of Divinity and was ministering at a tiny rural church outside of town. I joined him in that work, and, though the church was conservative, I witnessed beautiful female servant leadership by Audrey and Mildred, the octogenarian matriarchs of the church. Each week, they would arrive at the building early to prepare for worship. One had a good right arm, the other had a good left arm. So they would stand, bad shoulder to bad shoulder each week, preparing the communion trays—Audrey on the right, using her good right hand, Mildred on the left, using her good left hand. And even then, in my early twenties, I didn’t miss the significance of this image: two women devoted to the service of the church working side by side, taking up the other one’s slack to the glory of the Lord. My husband and I learned a lot at this tiny church—our first ministry together. But the witness of Audrey and Mildred is the primary image that remains for us.
And I think of so many other women, both in progressive and conservative churches, who have blazed trails or have quietly made strides in their service of the Lord—their curious exploration of the Word. And I am grateful. Because I know that my way, though frustrating, is easier because of their work, their pain, their humiliation.
I am blessed to have a husband with whom I have an equal partnership in our marriage and in our ministry. He actively supports all of my gifts—both spiritual and otherwise. I think this may be the heart of the blessing I feel from the Lord when it relates to women in public leadership: I do not feel the desire to have full-time or public ministry in the church. At least not right now. I am a theater artist and I feel fully empowered to explore and utilize those gifts in my career. Most of the frustrations I have felt with my congregation in the last three years have had nothing to do with my gender. I have been blessed to be part of a young professionals group that has accepted me (and other women) as full teachers and leaders. I am still baffled by the silly little semantic acrobatics we go through to be sure not to offend more conservative members (women in my church are allowed to read scripture during the worship service, but they do it from a seated position; to “justify” this, men who read scripture also do it from their seat). But the last three years have been encouraging to me because, in that time, I haven’t really had any arguments about whether or not women are able or gifted to lead in the church—the conversations have been focused on how quickly the church can adapt to female leadership and what the appropriate next steps are…
And this is where I find hope, as a strong, gifted woman in Churches of Christ. I think churches will either change their views on this central issue, or they’ll further isolate themselves from the rest of the world, will lose their young, dynamic members, and will eventually either shrivel up and die or implode on themselves. I feel churches of all stripes reorienting their focus to be more concerned with justice and peace. A few Churches of Christ are joining this movement. And this gives me hope and excitement. I can see that the road will be long as women have to continue to fight for a voice and an equal share in the gospel mission. But I am encouraged that there is hope within Churches of Christ. I am committed to sticking around and doing what I can to help in the journey, knowing that if—after years of struggle and attempts at reconciliation within the C of C—my husband and I can’t make it work, we will move on to another group that recognizes my voice as equally as important as his.
Until then, I join with so many other witnesses—male and female, silent and outspoken—in testifying to the goodness of our God, even (or perhaps especially) in the face of frustration, suffering, and doubt. To Him be the glory forever and ever.
When I was a teenager, my mother began working on her master’s degree and, eventually, her doctorate in ministry. She did this on top of her full-time job, balancing these responsibilities with her marriage, children, and ministry at home. Again, I didn’t find this particularly remarkable at the time—it was just our life. But I do remember beginning to understand that my mother was unique. There were not many other women in her classes and sometimes the men didn’t know how to respond to her. I won’t try to tell any of these stories here because they are hers to tell, not mine. Plus, I don’t know if I really know any of them. I just remember beginning to develop a sense of otherness around this time. I knew that the way I understood myself as a female was not maybe how other people understood me.
My feelings of frustration about my gender didn’t begin until I was in late-high school. In those days, the youth group kids would sit near the back of the auditorium on the far lefthand side. Many Sunday mornings, a slightly frantic, sweaty deacon would come rushing over and would ask one or two of the guys to help serve communion. At first, it didn’t really bother me that I was never asked, nor were other great girls from the youth group. But one Sunday I looked up and saw that I was being served on each side by two guys who had JUST been talking about the party they had attended over the weekend. While they had both baptized in the previous months, neither one was resisting the temptation to party with their friends. Not that I was sinless or expected that the people serving communion would be any more righteous than any of the rest of us. But I felt the first painful pangs of frustration that my ability to serve at church was not evaluated based on spiritual maturity, desire, or willingness. Even though I had been a baptized Christian for seven years, I was not considered able to walk down the aisles with a tray because I lacked the important “spiritual gift” of the phallus.
Despite that frustration, I continued to serve in leadership roles in my youth group and was asked to deliver a public response to the church on Senior Sunday—one of two times I have ever spoken publicly during worship.
When I entered my freshman year of college, I still didn’t have much of an idea about the restrictions women faced in Churches of Christ. I had been sheltered and empowered by my family and, in many ways, by my home congregation. I quickly became involved with like-minded friends and we organized a devotional for freshmen—attended by probably 50 students. During one of the first devotionals, I volunteered to “give the talk.” You know, to use Scripture and my personal experience to edify and challenge the assembled group. After we sang a few songs, my (male) friend who was leading worship introduced me. And he said that I would be “giving my testimony.” Which was true, in a way. But what I was doing was no different than what my male cohorts had done in previous devotionals, only their talks weren’t specified as “testimonies.” He had chosen that word to describe my talk so as not to offend anyone. I remember feeling conflicted and a little hurt by that distinction, though I wasn’t wholly surprised by it. I didn’t want my gender to be the focus of my talk, I wanted the Lord to be the focus.
At the end of my talk that evening, I prayed for all of us. I don’t remember anything specific or remarkable about the prayer at all. And I didn’t think twice about doing it—after all, I had been able to pray, read scripture, and lead discussions in my youth group just months before. But after the devotional, a male friend of mine came up to me and told me that he had covered his ears while I had prayed because he didn’t want to participate in a sin: being led in prayer by a woman. I was absolutely floored. And hurt. And angered. This was the first time (and, thank the Lord, I think the only time) I have ever been so directly attacked for my spiritual leadership.
I attended college in my hometown, and my home congregation was undergoing an extensive study of women’s roles in public leadership. I was invited to be part of a discussion group one afternoon, to share my views with other members of the church as well as the elders. I shared my previous experience about feeling frustration when the boys in the youth group were invited to serve communion and the girls were excluded…and a man in the discussion group responded with the following sentiment: “It’s probably a good thing that young women don’t serve communion. What if a woman wore something sexy that made the men in the congregation lust after her. That would be detrimental to the spiritual state of the men during communion. Therefore, women shouldn’t serve communion.” Again, I was floored. I couldn’t believe his willingness to disenfranchise women based on some men’s inability to control their sexual desires (not to mention the total lack of trust that women are able to dress modestly and appropriately!).
When my husband and I started dating, he was working on his Master’s of Divinity and was ministering at a tiny rural church outside of town. I joined him in that work, and, though the church was conservative, I witnessed beautiful female servant leadership by Audrey and Mildred, the octogenarian matriarchs of the church. Each week, they would arrive at the building early to prepare for worship. One had a good right arm, the other had a good left arm. So they would stand, bad shoulder to bad shoulder each week, preparing the communion trays—Audrey on the right, using her good right hand, Mildred on the left, using her good left hand. And even then, in my early twenties, I didn’t miss the significance of this image: two women devoted to the service of the church working side by side, taking up the other one’s slack to the glory of the Lord. My husband and I learned a lot at this tiny church—our first ministry together. But the witness of Audrey and Mildred is the primary image that remains for us.
And I think of so many other women, both in progressive and conservative churches, who have blazed trails or have quietly made strides in their service of the Lord—their curious exploration of the Word. And I am grateful. Because I know that my way, though frustrating, is easier because of their work, their pain, their humiliation.
I am blessed to have a husband with whom I have an equal partnership in our marriage and in our ministry. He actively supports all of my gifts—both spiritual and otherwise. I think this may be the heart of the blessing I feel from the Lord when it relates to women in public leadership: I do not feel the desire to have full-time or public ministry in the church. At least not right now. I am a theater artist and I feel fully empowered to explore and utilize those gifts in my career. Most of the frustrations I have felt with my congregation in the last three years have had nothing to do with my gender. I have been blessed to be part of a young professionals group that has accepted me (and other women) as full teachers and leaders. I am still baffled by the silly little semantic acrobatics we go through to be sure not to offend more conservative members (women in my church are allowed to read scripture during the worship service, but they do it from a seated position; to “justify” this, men who read scripture also do it from their seat). But the last three years have been encouraging to me because, in that time, I haven’t really had any arguments about whether or not women are able or gifted to lead in the church—the conversations have been focused on how quickly the church can adapt to female leadership and what the appropriate next steps are…
And this is where I find hope, as a strong, gifted woman in Churches of Christ. I think churches will either change their views on this central issue, or they’ll further isolate themselves from the rest of the world, will lose their young, dynamic members, and will eventually either shrivel up and die or implode on themselves. I feel churches of all stripes reorienting their focus to be more concerned with justice and peace. A few Churches of Christ are joining this movement. And this gives me hope and excitement. I can see that the road will be long as women have to continue to fight for a voice and an equal share in the gospel mission. But I am encouraged that there is hope within Churches of Christ. I am committed to sticking around and doing what I can to help in the journey, knowing that if—after years of struggle and attempts at reconciliation within the C of C—my husband and I can’t make it work, we will move on to another group that recognizes my voice as equally as important as his.
Until then, I join with so many other witnesses—male and female, silent and outspoken—in testifying to the goodness of our God, even (or perhaps especially) in the face of frustration, suffering, and doubt. To Him be the glory forever and ever.
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.
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.
TKP: Not Being Able to Come Home, Part 3
For those of you who keep reading, thank you. I realize I'm not being as concise as other writers, which I wish I could say I blame on JTB, but I am truly grateful that she welcomed our stories.
***
We arrived in Abilene after our van's air conditioner broke down halfway. Fortunately, my dad had the foresight to travel at night when it was considerably cooler. My mom cried as she hugged me goodbye, but I was too busy being mesmerized by the new college atmosphere to really acknowledge her pain and loss (I was the last to leave home and the am the youngest of six children.)
My first week at ACU included a freshman ritual called "Welcome Week," which eerily reminded me of summer camp at York College, except we didn't go home afterwards. There were similar "light a candle in a room and make teenagers cry" kinds of attempts to immediately evoke intimate stories. And then the culture shock started to sink in. Over and over again I kept hearing speaker's anecdotal jokes about the "M-r-s. Degree," opportunities for older guys to get naive freshmen girls' numbers and the staggering amount of spring weddings in the Bible chapel. Having just returned from a summer of mission work I was quite taken aback by this rhetoric. And in this context I was walking up the stairs of the Bible department and ran into a Bible professor (whose friendship I respect, treasure and continue to this day) who I'd met at an incoming Bible majors' function. He smiled at me and said,
"So, are you engaged yet?"
My eyes grew very wide and I decided I would take out my frustrations about the past few days on this unsuspecting person:
"I did NOT come here to get an M-R-S degree! I came to get an education and prepare to be a minister and I would like to be treated as such!"
Oblivious to his poor timing, the man immediately changed posture and profusely apologized to me, reassuring me that of course I had come to get my education and that he was merely repeating a bad joke he told his son. More than a year later I came to talk to him in his office and he remarked at how glad he was that we became friends after that first awkward encounter. I had no idea what he was talking about until he reminded me. I laughed, because he is a strong supporter of gender inclusion within Churches of Christ. But of course I did not know that then.
As the school year began, I started my Bible major courses with vigor. After attending a couple local Churches of Christ I settled on a smaller congregation with a consider amount of theology professors and Graduate School of Theology student members. Those grad students were hilarious, mysterious, often socially awkward, but nevertheless fascinating. I couldn't get enough of them. I sat down with a male classmate and friend one evening outside of the Bible department and we talked for hours about our dreams of grad school at ACU, our MDiv and Ph.D plans that included ministry, writing, publishing and homiletics. Nothing could stop us from achieving our dreams. Except maybe politics.
The spring semester I made very official arrangements to speak with the recruiter, Dean, and several prominent faculty members of the GST (all male), to show them just how serious I was about being an MDiv student in four years. They were kind, sometimes encouraging, and honest with me. One told me that Pepperdine would offer more opportunities for me as a woman in ministry. Another told me about his daughter who struggled with her role as an MDiv graduate with no job offers. Others told me that Churches of Christ were opening up and exploring women's roles in worship and that I should go for it. Yet another told me to talk to him in four years. It was a mixed bag but I didn't really care. I was going to do it! I changed my major to Christian Ministry, which was the most versatile mix of theology and ministry courses. I went back to Tomobe, Japan the next summer, leading a team and served as a conflict resolution mediator and curriculum developer that summer.
During the next year or so I developed a passion for social justice issues in the context of Biblical theology. I was not a stellar Greek student, but I adored my female professors. I beamed with pride when I heard that a male student was giving a severe speech about women staying in their places and was thoroughly admonished using comprehensive textual criticism by a male professor. I felt like I had the support of everyone: my church, friends, mentors and school.
In the spring of my Junior year something wonderful happened. All of the Junior Bible majors were required to do a summer internship in ministry or missions. I interviewed for a chaplain and church internship position. The latter was with the Stamford Church of Christ in Connecticut, a multi-ethnic, gender-inclusive church of Christ with a heart for social justice. Debbie, the church's involvement minister, told me that she was specifically looking at hiring of a female intern. By the grace of God and generosity of Debbie, I was offered the position the next day. The church members (including some very young adorable girls) started sending me encouragement cards later that spring. I couldn't wait to get to Stamford.
That summer was glorious. I was by no means a perfect intern. I had a lot to learn and messed up quite a bit. I was shown much grace by the ministers and friends I made along the way. I started learning about the nitty gritty, heartbreaking, exhausting work of a full-time minister. I spent a weekend with a congregation in New York that had two preaching ministers-male and female. I became a contributor for Gal328.org and participated in wonderful discussions there. I taught - not only VBS arts and crafts (because I wanted to), but the youth group and adult Bible studies. I led singing in front of men and women for the first time. I was nervous and they were all so wonderful and kind.
At the end of Youth Sunday, an annual tradition where the youth group takes responsibility of the Sunday worship service, I gave my first and only sermon from the pulpit. My mother came that weekend and read a passage from Luke before I spoke. It meant so much to me to have her there - the quiet, servant-hearted woman who led the man who would become my father to Christ over 30 years before. That Sunday was deeply personal for me on so many levels; I spoke from my heart about social justice and received a warm response from the congregation. I owe this church a lot for making me into the woman I am today.
As I stood in line at the airport waiting to say goodbye in New York I was handed a small envelope by the pulpit minister, Dale. He made me promise not to read it until I went past security. After I hugged him and Debbie I walked through security and, of course, ripped open the letter from him. It read,
Dear, dear Teresa. You have what it takes.
I couldn't stop the tears and I wanted to run back through security and tell them in incomprehensible babbling that I could believe those words because of what they taught me that summer. So, to the dear and wonderful people at the Stamford Church of Christ: thank you for letting me use my gifts and my voice. I will never forget it.
We arrived in Abilene after our van's air conditioner broke down halfway. Fortunately, my dad had the foresight to travel at night when it was considerably cooler. My mom cried as she hugged me goodbye, but I was too busy being mesmerized by the new college atmosphere to really acknowledge her pain and loss (I was the last to leave home and the am the youngest of six children.)
My first week at ACU included a freshman ritual called "Welcome Week," which eerily reminded me of summer camp at York College, except we didn't go home afterwards. There were similar "light a candle in a room and make teenagers cry" kinds of attempts to immediately evoke intimate stories. And then the culture shock started to sink in. Over and over again I kept hearing speaker's anecdotal jokes about the "M-r-s. Degree," opportunities for older guys to get naive freshmen girls' numbers and the staggering amount of spring weddings in the Bible chapel. Having just returned from a summer of mission work I was quite taken aback by this rhetoric. And in this context I was walking up the stairs of the Bible department and ran into a Bible professor (whose friendship I respect, treasure and continue to this day) who I'd met at an incoming Bible majors' function. He smiled at me and said,
"So, are you engaged yet?"
My eyes grew very wide and I decided I would take out my frustrations about the past few days on this unsuspecting person:
"I did NOT come here to get an M-R-S degree! I came to get an education and prepare to be a minister and I would like to be treated as such!"
Oblivious to his poor timing, the man immediately changed posture and profusely apologized to me, reassuring me that of course I had come to get my education and that he was merely repeating a bad joke he told his son. More than a year later I came to talk to him in his office and he remarked at how glad he was that we became friends after that first awkward encounter. I had no idea what he was talking about until he reminded me. I laughed, because he is a strong supporter of gender inclusion within Churches of Christ. But of course I did not know that then.
As the school year began, I started my Bible major courses with vigor. After attending a couple local Churches of Christ I settled on a smaller congregation with a consider amount of theology professors and Graduate School of Theology student members. Those grad students were hilarious, mysterious, often socially awkward, but nevertheless fascinating. I couldn't get enough of them. I sat down with a male classmate and friend one evening outside of the Bible department and we talked for hours about our dreams of grad school at ACU, our MDiv and Ph.D plans that included ministry, writing, publishing and homiletics. Nothing could stop us from achieving our dreams. Except maybe politics.
The spring semester I made very official arrangements to speak with the recruiter, Dean, and several prominent faculty members of the GST (all male), to show them just how serious I was about being an MDiv student in four years. They were kind, sometimes encouraging, and honest with me. One told me that Pepperdine would offer more opportunities for me as a woman in ministry. Another told me about his daughter who struggled with her role as an MDiv graduate with no job offers. Others told me that Churches of Christ were opening up and exploring women's roles in worship and that I should go for it. Yet another told me to talk to him in four years. It was a mixed bag but I didn't really care. I was going to do it! I changed my major to Christian Ministry, which was the most versatile mix of theology and ministry courses. I went back to Tomobe, Japan the next summer, leading a team and served as a conflict resolution mediator and curriculum developer that summer.
During the next year or so I developed a passion for social justice issues in the context of Biblical theology. I was not a stellar Greek student, but I adored my female professors. I beamed with pride when I heard that a male student was giving a severe speech about women staying in their places and was thoroughly admonished using comprehensive textual criticism by a male professor. I felt like I had the support of everyone: my church, friends, mentors and school.
In the spring of my Junior year something wonderful happened. All of the Junior Bible majors were required to do a summer internship in ministry or missions. I interviewed for a chaplain and church internship position. The latter was with the Stamford Church of Christ in Connecticut, a multi-ethnic, gender-inclusive church of Christ with a heart for social justice. Debbie, the church's involvement minister, told me that she was specifically looking at hiring of a female intern. By the grace of God and generosity of Debbie, I was offered the position the next day. The church members (including some very young adorable girls) started sending me encouragement cards later that spring. I couldn't wait to get to Stamford.
That summer was glorious. I was by no means a perfect intern. I had a lot to learn and messed up quite a bit. I was shown much grace by the ministers and friends I made along the way. I started learning about the nitty gritty, heartbreaking, exhausting work of a full-time minister. I spent a weekend with a congregation in New York that had two preaching ministers-male and female. I became a contributor for Gal328.org and participated in wonderful discussions there. I taught - not only VBS arts and crafts (because I wanted to), but the youth group and adult Bible studies. I led singing in front of men and women for the first time. I was nervous and they were all so wonderful and kind.
At the end of Youth Sunday, an annual tradition where the youth group takes responsibility of the Sunday worship service, I gave my first and only sermon from the pulpit. My mother came that weekend and read a passage from Luke before I spoke. It meant so much to me to have her there - the quiet, servant-hearted woman who led the man who would become my father to Christ over 30 years before. That Sunday was deeply personal for me on so many levels; I spoke from my heart about social justice and received a warm response from the congregation. I owe this church a lot for making me into the woman I am today.
As I stood in line at the airport waiting to say goodbye in New York I was handed a small envelope by the pulpit minister, Dale. He made me promise not to read it until I went past security. After I hugged him and Debbie I walked through security and, of course, ripped open the letter from him. It read,
Dear, dear Teresa. You have what it takes.
I couldn't stop the tears and I wanted to run back through security and tell them in incomprehensible babbling that I could believe those words because of what they taught me that summer. So, to the dear and wonderful people at the Stamford Church of Christ: thank you for letting me use my gifts and my voice. I will never forget it.
by J
When all else fails, proof text. Right? That’s the CoC way; when logic, morals, and consistency let us down, we can always pull out a verse or two that protect the status quo.
And it’s natural after all. It’s a conservative church. Not just in recent politics, but in the simplest sense. The CoC is a church that tries to conserve a tradition, so its reflexes are always to protect whatever’s always been done.
So I learned to proof text the hell out of everyone. Proof texting was like porn. I was just gazing at a bunch of dismembered parts, treating them like object(ive)s, getting the rush I craved, then feeling a little dirty afterwards.
I felt dirtier when I learned some Greek. I learned past the point where I knew just enough to be dangerous and actually had some budding hermeneutic chops. My writing was clumsy, and I still was mostly reading through a centuries-old haze of conservation, but there were signs that I was starting to reassemble the parts, glimpse a wholly different text than the hol(e)y one I had been working with.
I felt even dirtier when I wondered about the tutor for Greek. I never used the tutoring section because I really enjoyed Greek, so it wasn’t hard work. But I noticed that the tutor was a woman, my age, who had been in the program a little longer. And she was trusted with teaching the rudiments of Greek to a bunch of would-be youth ministers who saw the course as an impediment and who, as soon as they had gotten their Cs, would revert to their proper authoritative place over her. She was good enough to teach us all Greek, but it was time to shut up on Sunday morning.
I wish it had been that simple. But proof texting is a hard habit to break, and, besides, I barely knew the tutor. She dated and eventually married a friend of mine, but I never had to actually confront the paradox of her position.
No, the CoC pews became too hellish for me a few years later, sitting beside my wife, who is smarter and more creative than me in ways that are too numerous to count. It was sitting beside her and hearing her silence that I finally realized what I was doing to her. Trying all week to live up to our equal partnership (it’s a thing with us), then trudging to a church that had us behave otherwise. And for what? Ultimately just to have our souls nibbled away. A few pieces here, struggling to figure out what to do with the church of our youth. A few pieces there, hearing our parents tell us we were hell bound. A few more pieces there, hearing those same sentiments over and again, being called a disappointment, having our son marked as religious territory to be exploited.
The definition of Christian is hotly contested in the CoC, and it isn’t just one’s gender that gets in the way. It’s political affiliation. Language. Music preferences. Sexual preferences. It’s everything, all the way down. There’s a checklist of what counts as Christian, and I and my family are decidedly not measuring up.
Go outside the CoC, and checklists still apply. The otherwise profound and kind Episcopal rector tells me my son needs to be baptized instead of asking us what our choice (not to mention his!) is. The generous Catholic friends want to make sure we don’t raise our son to be the wrong kind of black. And many churches - even many progressive churches - send missionaries to the other side of the world to convert people to Christianity without once asking what these cultures have to teach us about spirituality.
All these lines are tiresome. I see Christianity defining itself narrowly in US politics, showing its ass to the whole world without the slightest bit of self-awareness, and I think that I should be hot and bothered. I should be out there reclaiming the word Christian for something better, something more inviting, something that, for Christ’s sake, includes women!
But I don’t feel it. I’ve decided somewhere along the way that God’s a big girl who can look out for herself. I’ve realized that I’m dealing with a church that will psychologically abuse my wife and my son if they go back, and I’ve started to lose interest in being a party to that sort of fate for them. I’m not even 30 yet, and already I feel too tired for the kind of fight required when one squares one’s shoulders to the CoC.
The problem is…I’m a young educated white guy. Just the sort of person who’s allowed to talk in CoCs. Just the sort of person to whom much (undesirable privilege) has been given and, therefore, of whom much (what? What’s my obligation?) will be asked. So maybe I should be in the CoC mix, fighting the good fight.
But…
I’m not a victim of the CoC’s bias. I’m its instrument of oppression. I’m the one who’s handed undeserved power because of the random specifics of my inception. The best I can see to do is throw it down and walk away.
Think we’ll turn into a pillar of salt?
Not likely.
And it’s natural after all. It’s a conservative church. Not just in recent politics, but in the simplest sense. The CoC is a church that tries to conserve a tradition, so its reflexes are always to protect whatever’s always been done.
So I learned to proof text the hell out of everyone. Proof texting was like porn. I was just gazing at a bunch of dismembered parts, treating them like object(ive)s, getting the rush I craved, then feeling a little dirty afterwards.
I felt dirtier when I learned some Greek. I learned past the point where I knew just enough to be dangerous and actually had some budding hermeneutic chops. My writing was clumsy, and I still was mostly reading through a centuries-old haze of conservation, but there were signs that I was starting to reassemble the parts, glimpse a wholly different text than the hol(e)y one I had been working with.
I felt even dirtier when I wondered about the tutor for Greek. I never used the tutoring section because I really enjoyed Greek, so it wasn’t hard work. But I noticed that the tutor was a woman, my age, who had been in the program a little longer. And she was trusted with teaching the rudiments of Greek to a bunch of would-be youth ministers who saw the course as an impediment and who, as soon as they had gotten their Cs, would revert to their proper authoritative place over her. She was good enough to teach us all Greek, but it was time to shut up on Sunday morning.
I wish it had been that simple. But proof texting is a hard habit to break, and, besides, I barely knew the tutor. She dated and eventually married a friend of mine, but I never had to actually confront the paradox of her position.
No, the CoC pews became too hellish for me a few years later, sitting beside my wife, who is smarter and more creative than me in ways that are too numerous to count. It was sitting beside her and hearing her silence that I finally realized what I was doing to her. Trying all week to live up to our equal partnership (it’s a thing with us), then trudging to a church that had us behave otherwise. And for what? Ultimately just to have our souls nibbled away. A few pieces here, struggling to figure out what to do with the church of our youth. A few pieces there, hearing our parents tell us we were hell bound. A few more pieces there, hearing those same sentiments over and again, being called a disappointment, having our son marked as religious territory to be exploited.
The definition of Christian is hotly contested in the CoC, and it isn’t just one’s gender that gets in the way. It’s political affiliation. Language. Music preferences. Sexual preferences. It’s everything, all the way down. There’s a checklist of what counts as Christian, and I and my family are decidedly not measuring up.
Go outside the CoC, and checklists still apply. The otherwise profound and kind Episcopal rector tells me my son needs to be baptized instead of asking us what our choice (not to mention his!) is. The generous Catholic friends want to make sure we don’t raise our son to be the wrong kind of black. And many churches - even many progressive churches - send missionaries to the other side of the world to convert people to Christianity without once asking what these cultures have to teach us about spirituality.
All these lines are tiresome. I see Christianity defining itself narrowly in US politics, showing its ass to the whole world without the slightest bit of self-awareness, and I think that I should be hot and bothered. I should be out there reclaiming the word Christian for something better, something more inviting, something that, for Christ’s sake, includes women!
But I don’t feel it. I’ve decided somewhere along the way that God’s a big girl who can look out for herself. I’ve realized that I’m dealing with a church that will psychologically abuse my wife and my son if they go back, and I’ve started to lose interest in being a party to that sort of fate for them. I’m not even 30 yet, and already I feel too tired for the kind of fight required when one squares one’s shoulders to the CoC.
The problem is…I’m a young educated white guy. Just the sort of person who’s allowed to talk in CoCs. Just the sort of person to whom much (undesirable privilege) has been given and, therefore, of whom much (what? What’s my obligation?) will be asked. So maybe I should be in the CoC mix, fighting the good fight.
But…
I’m not a victim of the CoC’s bias. I’m its instrument of oppression. I’m the one who’s handed undeserved power because of the random specifics of my inception. The best I can see to do is throw it down and walk away.
Think we’ll turn into a pillar of salt?
Not likely.
TKP: Not Being Able to Come Home, Part 2
After my first taste of advocacy as a young teenager with a cassette tape recording, I remember several key issues with gender and my church experiences. In high school I started attending two additional church of Christ summer camps, desperate to form a spiritual connection with people my age. I always loved singing at camp; it wasn't at all like the singing at our house church. There were so many talented singers, and if you didn't know the right tune or words, you learned quickly. I wrote my first songs at Bible camp; one I sang with a friend at a talent show and another that I got to teach our singing class (after I taught it to a boy and he sang it to the class, of course.) It was exhilarating. I believed that this wonderful, amazing tradition of Christian songwriters was more relevant to me. I appreciated the poetry and lyrics of the songs I sang and started to think critically about the conflict between the words I sang and the words I spoke or thought in my mind.
That summer at camp one of my favorite staff members was a young college-aged woman whose name I do not remember. She was the epitome of cool with her icthus symbol tattoo on her ankle, her cute ripped light washed jeans and her vivacious personality. She was assigned the role of "recreation director" or something to that effect. It was basically a glorified PE/Arts & Crafts position for someone who didn't want to be a cook or counselor. She expressed her frustration at not being able to teach any classes; not just Bible classes, but any sort of class, because she was a woman. I didn't think too much about it then, but looking back I see the beginning of my questions.
The other gender-related camp issue was the Big Controversial Issue of whether or not a woman could lead a four-part song that began with a soprano or alto melody. You know, one of those "pretty songs" church of Christ schools like to sing over and over. I loved singing them, because we didn't have enough singers who knew four-part harmony at my house church. One night at campfire one girl started to lead a song that was not one of these songs. She just started singing a regular song that didn't require a female lead. I didn't find out what happened to that girl, but I'm sure that a few people took her aside to explain the usurping error of her ways. I was too busy singing the pretty songs to pay much attention.
When I was 16, I began a wonderful relationship with several international exchange students at my small high school. We had never had so many exchange students in one year and I thought it was wonderful. We formed a close-knit group of the six exchange students and three Americans. We spent Wednesday nights at a Congregational youth group. I had a couple individual Let's Start Talking classes using a simplified version of Luke to teach English. That fall I applied to do missions work in Nairobi, which sounded exotic, exciting and far away from Iowa. I could ride some giant zebras, tame lions and maybe help a few orphans along the way. I was ready for my life as a missionary (or so I thought.) I was informed a few months later that since I would only be 17 by the following summer I would not be allowed to travel across country. I was offered a domestic missions trip with the same missions group.
Instead I got on the Internet and searched for church of Christ missionaries who might want a summer intern. I e-mailed one in Europe and was referred to a couple in Tomobe, Ibaraki, Japan. They were long-time missionaries and alumni of Pepperdine University and they said, "Yes!" I spent that spring writing fundraising letters, making travel arrangements and studying Japanese with the one Japanese exchange student at my high school.
My eight weeks in Japan were amazing. I was a real life missionary and I loved it. I returned to the States for a week and then rode with my parents 1,000 miles to Abilene Christian University, where I promptly changed my major from English to Missions. For the first time in my life I was about to experience an American church of Christ as my home church and a church of Christ school with very interesting views on women in worship.
That summer at camp one of my favorite staff members was a young college-aged woman whose name I do not remember. She was the epitome of cool with her icthus symbol tattoo on her ankle, her cute ripped light washed jeans and her vivacious personality. She was assigned the role of "recreation director" or something to that effect. It was basically a glorified PE/Arts & Crafts position for someone who didn't want to be a cook or counselor. She expressed her frustration at not being able to teach any classes; not just Bible classes, but any sort of class, because she was a woman. I didn't think too much about it then, but looking back I see the beginning of my questions.
The other gender-related camp issue was the Big Controversial Issue of whether or not a woman could lead a four-part song that began with a soprano or alto melody. You know, one of those "pretty songs" church of Christ schools like to sing over and over. I loved singing them, because we didn't have enough singers who knew four-part harmony at my house church. One night at campfire one girl started to lead a song that was not one of these songs. She just started singing a regular song that didn't require a female lead. I didn't find out what happened to that girl, but I'm sure that a few people took her aside to explain the usurping error of her ways. I was too busy singing the pretty songs to pay much attention.
When I was 16, I began a wonderful relationship with several international exchange students at my small high school. We had never had so many exchange students in one year and I thought it was wonderful. We formed a close-knit group of the six exchange students and three Americans. We spent Wednesday nights at a Congregational youth group. I had a couple individual Let's Start Talking classes using a simplified version of Luke to teach English. That fall I applied to do missions work in Nairobi, which sounded exotic, exciting and far away from Iowa. I could ride some giant zebras, tame lions and maybe help a few orphans along the way. I was ready for my life as a missionary (or so I thought.) I was informed a few months later that since I would only be 17 by the following summer I would not be allowed to travel across country. I was offered a domestic missions trip with the same missions group.
Instead I got on the Internet and searched for church of Christ missionaries who might want a summer intern. I e-mailed one in Europe and was referred to a couple in Tomobe, Ibaraki, Japan. They were long-time missionaries and alumni of Pepperdine University and they said, "Yes!" I spent that spring writing fundraising letters, making travel arrangements and studying Japanese with the one Japanese exchange student at my high school.
My eight weeks in Japan were amazing. I was a real life missionary and I loved it. I returned to the States for a week and then rode with my parents 1,000 miles to Abilene Christian University, where I promptly changed my major from English to Missions. For the first time in my life I was about to experience an American church of Christ as my home church and a church of Christ school with very interesting views on women in worship.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
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.
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.
from Amy Wilson: "She-Preach"
By Michelle Sanchez, MDiv
Printed in Priscilla Papers, Vol 23, No 2, Spring 2009
Flames of beauty-fire erupt from her lips
Like pure Pentecost
Her sister-speech sears and refines
Until all who listen
Dazzle like gold
Her mother-mouth is a fountain of life
Beckoning blossoms to sprout in desert souls
And birthing warm, fresh children
Into the cradle-kingdom of God
With enraged enmity her seed-sayings
Crush the skulls of satanic strongholds
Warrior-princess, her daughter-declarations
Authoritatively enact the triumph-rule of her Father-King
Like Eve, she promises life and redemption —
Like Sarah, she finds and inspires faith —
Like Miriam, she leads her sisters sweetly in song —
Like Deborah, she leads her brothers boldly to battle —
Like Jael, she is a secret weapon who smashes the enemy —
Like Ruth, she righteously breaks the rules —
Like Abigail, she is an ambassador of reconciliation —
Like Hannah, she prays in the revival of nations —
Like Huldah, she poignantly prophesies the troubling truth —
Like Mary, she chants magnificent melodies of peace and justice —
Like Priscilla, she patiently teachings the mysteries of the Word —
Like Junia, she is an outstanding preacher of the gospel!
Sister-mother-daughter-aunt-wife-friend . . .
At last!
Her soprano sermons rise and resound
As she joins the symphony with the best of her brothers
And so
The Great Co-Mission
May be completed
At last!
Printed in Priscilla Papers, Vol 23, No 2, Spring 2009
Flames of beauty-fire erupt from her lips
Like pure Pentecost
Her sister-speech sears and refines
Until all who listen
Dazzle like gold
Her mother-mouth is a fountain of life
Beckoning blossoms to sprout in desert souls
And birthing warm, fresh children
Into the cradle-kingdom of God
With enraged enmity her seed-sayings
Crush the skulls of satanic strongholds
Warrior-princess, her daughter-declarations
Authoritatively enact the triumph-rule of her Father-King
Like Eve, she promises life and redemption —
Like Sarah, she finds and inspires faith —
Like Miriam, she leads her sisters sweetly in song —
Like Deborah, she leads her brothers boldly to battle —
Like Jael, she is a secret weapon who smashes the enemy —
Like Ruth, she righteously breaks the rules —
Like Abigail, she is an ambassador of reconciliation —
Like Hannah, she prays in the revival of nations —
Like Huldah, she poignantly prophesies the troubling truth —
Like Mary, she chants magnificent melodies of peace and justice —
Like Priscilla, she patiently teachings the mysteries of the Word —
Like Junia, she is an outstanding preacher of the gospel!
Sister-mother-daughter-aunt-wife-friend . . .
At last!
Her soprano sermons rise and resound
As she joins the symphony with the best of her brothers
And so
The Great Co-Mission
May be completed
At last!
by TKP: Not Being Able to Come Home, Part 1
I was absolutely livid. As I sat on the couch and squeezed my fiance's hand so tight it turned colors, my mind was furiously racing.
How can they just sit here and not say anything? Why are the loudest supporters of women's spiritual second-class status female? Did I spend the past seven years preparing for and practicing church leadership just so I could come home to this?
I had so many questions and comments that I wanted to contribute to the discussion of F. LaGard Smith's Male Spiritual Leadership, but I kept them to myself. After all, I was a woman in a church of Christ. It didn't matter that this was the intimate house church that lovingly raised me with my parents since I was an infant. It didn't matter that I was baptized in a literally ice covered river in March when I was 13 and then surrounded by these people with towels and blankets to keep me warm. I didn't feel warm anymore. I was heartbroken, frustrated and angry.
As my fiance and I drove back to my parents' house that Sunday evening we couldn't stop talking about what had happened. John, my fiance, pointed out that the man leading the discussion had problems pronouncing the relatively easy words in the book, while his wife (who had just taken off her head scarf since the 'official service' was over) had to frequently correct his pronunciation. We also discussed the fact that another woman often corrected her husband's off key lead singing, but only after he had started the song off himself.
We talked about my experiences growing up in a loosely defined house church of Christ in rural Iowa. My ties to the mainstream church of Christ came through reading The Christian Chronicle, going to Bible Camp, youth rallies, The Tulsa Soul Winning Workshop, and being recruited by York College on numerous occasions. I loved my church growing up; my mother was frequently my Sunday School teacher and she was a nurturing and creative hands-on teacher. Even though we had to rotate homes every Sunday (some weeks traveling as far as 70 miles) it was always worth it, because we'd enjoy a meal together afterwards. This was my second family.
I began noticing gender issues after I became a teenager. One day in Junior High, after listening to a riveting Voice of the Martyrs radio program about current church persecution (which I knew nothing about), I became convicted of the human rights atrocities happening every day. I tape recorded the next radio program and asked my father if I could play it for our church, as it was being held at our house and it was his turn to lead a lesson. He agreed and we all listened to it that Sunday. After we prayed about it together, our church decided to contribute money to sending Bibles to Christian persecuted areas. That day I became an advocate. The ministry bug had bitten me.
How can they just sit here and not say anything? Why are the loudest supporters of women's spiritual second-class status female? Did I spend the past seven years preparing for and practicing church leadership just so I could come home to this?
I had so many questions and comments that I wanted to contribute to the discussion of F. LaGard Smith's Male Spiritual Leadership, but I kept them to myself. After all, I was a woman in a church of Christ. It didn't matter that this was the intimate house church that lovingly raised me with my parents since I was an infant. It didn't matter that I was baptized in a literally ice covered river in March when I was 13 and then surrounded by these people with towels and blankets to keep me warm. I didn't feel warm anymore. I was heartbroken, frustrated and angry.
As my fiance and I drove back to my parents' house that Sunday evening we couldn't stop talking about what had happened. John, my fiance, pointed out that the man leading the discussion had problems pronouncing the relatively easy words in the book, while his wife (who had just taken off her head scarf since the 'official service' was over) had to frequently correct his pronunciation. We also discussed the fact that another woman often corrected her husband's off key lead singing, but only after he had started the song off himself.
We talked about my experiences growing up in a loosely defined house church of Christ in rural Iowa. My ties to the mainstream church of Christ came through reading The Christian Chronicle, going to Bible Camp, youth rallies, The Tulsa Soul Winning Workshop, and being recruited by York College on numerous occasions. I loved my church growing up; my mother was frequently my Sunday School teacher and she was a nurturing and creative hands-on teacher. Even though we had to rotate homes every Sunday (some weeks traveling as far as 70 miles) it was always worth it, because we'd enjoy a meal together afterwards. This was my second family.
I began noticing gender issues after I became a teenager. One day in Junior High, after listening to a riveting Voice of the Martyrs radio program about current church persecution (which I knew nothing about), I became convicted of the human rights atrocities happening every day. I tape recorded the next radio program and asked my father if I could play it for our church, as it was being held at our house and it was his turn to lead a lesson. He agreed and we all listened to it that Sunday. After we prayed about it together, our church decided to contribute money to sending Bibles to Christian persecuted areas. That day I became an advocate. The ministry bug had bitten me.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
part 2: the place I went
With no place to go, I went as far as possible.
As a sophomore in college I had, actually quite unintentionally, been audience to a missions workshop presentation on the possibilities of teaching English in mainland China. All that was required was a college degree, a native accent, and the ability to raise the airfare. Conspicuously absent from the list of qualifications: maleness. I thought it was perfect.
Within a few weeks of my arrival, a unilateral attempt to homogenize our house church practices with regard to the conduct of women was initiated by one zealous colleague. Showing up unannounced at the home of our hostess one Sunday morning, he delivered a sermon which enumerated precisely what women could and could not do. Proof texts for word studies of the Greek laleo and ekklesia were cited; in possession of the only Greek NT in the room, I searched diligently only to find that those words did not appear in the cited texts. The consternation on my face and page-flipping in my Greek NT flustered our unannounced guest preacher, who stumbled and lost his focus just as I figured out the problem: he'd gotten the citations mixed up. Desiring to reassure him, I began to say, "It's okay, I got it"--and then realized, that would probably count as laleo in ekklesia. Oh well.
For awhile I hosted church in my living room--it seemed like a practical and concrete contribution, and moreover, entirely uncontroversial. I cleaned house every Saturday and rearranged the living room furniture to seat as many people as possible. On Sunday mornings I made the communion bread in my tiny narrow kitchen, and baked it in the toaster oven. Having suffered through some Sundays choking down manifestations of the body of Christ that were truly inedible--stale, or tough, or worse, one time somehow slimy--I was determined to make it good. It took a few weeks to get it right, but finally, a pastry-like bread made with the only margarine available, "Mother's Choice," evolved from my earnest experimentation. One Sunday, inspired, I threw a pinch of sugar into the flour mixture; the bread that morning was flaky, baked to perfection, and just faintly sweet. I thought, now this is the body of Christ. After church someone complimented the bread: it's the best communion bread I've ever eaten, he said. Thanks, I told him, see, I put a pinch of sugar in it this morning. A few minutes later, I was summoned to my living room, and sat down on my couch, and rebuked. Sugar doesn't belong in the communion bread, Jennifer. Don't do that again.
Frustrated, we women instituted a Tuesday night women's bible study, and my centrally located, easily accessible apartment was an ideal spot. Almost immediately we began to outgrow the space available--we packed ourselves like sardines on the couch, perched on the arms of chairs, even sat on the floor, which I scrupulously cleaned every week. We had, after all, come to do mission work, and we could do it on Tuesday nights among ourselves without the boys around. The singing was marvelous. The discussions even more so. The prayer time got so long that we exhausted ourselves with it. After awhile the men started their own Tuesday night study, and after it concluded, would drift over to my apartment to hang out. Sometimes they would arrive before our study was done, and we would close the door to the living room and, conscious of the male presence in the apartment, would try to hurry up and finish.
One evening, after all my students had said good night and drifted away, two girls approached me and asked if I was a Christian. Yes, I said, surprised at this directness. One of them wasn't my student; she was a friend of a student, and had come to my class specifically to engineer this moment and ask this question. She had been a Christian for two years, she said. She wanted to ask me about baptism: what was it, and why were people in the Bible always doing this mysterious thing she couldn't find a satisfactory definition for? I invited her to Tuesday night Bible study, and went home and wrote a whole new lesson plan for it, on baptism. After the study she approached me with eyes shining, and said, "God has answered my prayers in your words. Now, I think I understand, and I want to be baptized. ...But...you never said...how do I do it?" Overwhelmed, I assured her that was the easy part. (If only that had been really true.) We could do it now, I said, if she wanted to. Yes, she said, and we called the man in our group who held the membership card to the swimming pool in the luxury hotel down the street. "She's ready," we said, "we need the pool card," and he replied, "I'll get my swim trunks and be right there." When he arrived, swim trunks in hand, we were ready to go. But he wasn't. Leading us back into my living room, he sat my friend down on my couch, and let us know that if he were going to perform this baptism (no one asked him to!) he needed to be sure she was ready (we had already told him that!). I watched, feeling absolutely helpless, as he reduced my friend to tearfully admitting that she was not, could not be, a Christian yet, despite her years of faith, because she was not yet baptized. Only then was she ready to be baptized. By a man she'd never seen before who had just reduced her to tears, in the uncomfortable intimacy of immersion in a public pool, wearing a borrowed swimsuit.
A few months later, another friend arrived at my doorstep to spend the night, as she routinely did on Saturday nights, fresh from Bible study. It was an uncomfortable friendship, full of unwanted intimacies I hadn't asked for: I discovered in retrospect she'd been borrowing my toothbrush for months, and she was either lacking in standards or adequate facilities for personal hygiene. That night, she told me that she had decided to be baptized, and she wanted me to do it. Um, okay, I said; but knowing this would be controversial within our group of Americans, I said, what did [her Bible study teacher] say when you told him this? She answered, with a puzzled look, "He said, 'isn't God a man?'
I like to tell people that I went to China to be a missionary, and became a feminist. This is why.
As a sophomore in college I had, actually quite unintentionally, been audience to a missions workshop presentation on the possibilities of teaching English in mainland China. All that was required was a college degree, a native accent, and the ability to raise the airfare. Conspicuously absent from the list of qualifications: maleness. I thought it was perfect.
Within a few weeks of my arrival, a unilateral attempt to homogenize our house church practices with regard to the conduct of women was initiated by one zealous colleague. Showing up unannounced at the home of our hostess one Sunday morning, he delivered a sermon which enumerated precisely what women could and could not do. Proof texts for word studies of the Greek laleo and ekklesia were cited; in possession of the only Greek NT in the room, I searched diligently only to find that those words did not appear in the cited texts. The consternation on my face and page-flipping in my Greek NT flustered our unannounced guest preacher, who stumbled and lost his focus just as I figured out the problem: he'd gotten the citations mixed up. Desiring to reassure him, I began to say, "It's okay, I got it"--and then realized, that would probably count as laleo in ekklesia. Oh well.
For awhile I hosted church in my living room--it seemed like a practical and concrete contribution, and moreover, entirely uncontroversial. I cleaned house every Saturday and rearranged the living room furniture to seat as many people as possible. On Sunday mornings I made the communion bread in my tiny narrow kitchen, and baked it in the toaster oven. Having suffered through some Sundays choking down manifestations of the body of Christ that were truly inedible--stale, or tough, or worse, one time somehow slimy--I was determined to make it good. It took a few weeks to get it right, but finally, a pastry-like bread made with the only margarine available, "Mother's Choice," evolved from my earnest experimentation. One Sunday, inspired, I threw a pinch of sugar into the flour mixture; the bread that morning was flaky, baked to perfection, and just faintly sweet. I thought, now this is the body of Christ. After church someone complimented the bread: it's the best communion bread I've ever eaten, he said. Thanks, I told him, see, I put a pinch of sugar in it this morning. A few minutes later, I was summoned to my living room, and sat down on my couch, and rebuked. Sugar doesn't belong in the communion bread, Jennifer. Don't do that again.
Frustrated, we women instituted a Tuesday night women's bible study, and my centrally located, easily accessible apartment was an ideal spot. Almost immediately we began to outgrow the space available--we packed ourselves like sardines on the couch, perched on the arms of chairs, even sat on the floor, which I scrupulously cleaned every week. We had, after all, come to do mission work, and we could do it on Tuesday nights among ourselves without the boys around. The singing was marvelous. The discussions even more so. The prayer time got so long that we exhausted ourselves with it. After awhile the men started their own Tuesday night study, and after it concluded, would drift over to my apartment to hang out. Sometimes they would arrive before our study was done, and we would close the door to the living room and, conscious of the male presence in the apartment, would try to hurry up and finish.
One evening, after all my students had said good night and drifted away, two girls approached me and asked if I was a Christian. Yes, I said, surprised at this directness. One of them wasn't my student; she was a friend of a student, and had come to my class specifically to engineer this moment and ask this question. She had been a Christian for two years, she said. She wanted to ask me about baptism: what was it, and why were people in the Bible always doing this mysterious thing she couldn't find a satisfactory definition for? I invited her to Tuesday night Bible study, and went home and wrote a whole new lesson plan for it, on baptism. After the study she approached me with eyes shining, and said, "God has answered my prayers in your words. Now, I think I understand, and I want to be baptized. ...But...you never said...how do I do it?" Overwhelmed, I assured her that was the easy part. (If only that had been really true.) We could do it now, I said, if she wanted to. Yes, she said, and we called the man in our group who held the membership card to the swimming pool in the luxury hotel down the street. "She's ready," we said, "we need the pool card," and he replied, "I'll get my swim trunks and be right there." When he arrived, swim trunks in hand, we were ready to go. But he wasn't. Leading us back into my living room, he sat my friend down on my couch, and let us know that if he were going to perform this baptism (no one asked him to!) he needed to be sure she was ready (we had already told him that!). I watched, feeling absolutely helpless, as he reduced my friend to tearfully admitting that she was not, could not be, a Christian yet, despite her years of faith, because she was not yet baptized. Only then was she ready to be baptized. By a man she'd never seen before who had just reduced her to tears, in the uncomfortable intimacy of immersion in a public pool, wearing a borrowed swimsuit.
A few months later, another friend arrived at my doorstep to spend the night, as she routinely did on Saturday nights, fresh from Bible study. It was an uncomfortable friendship, full of unwanted intimacies I hadn't asked for: I discovered in retrospect she'd been borrowing my toothbrush for months, and she was either lacking in standards or adequate facilities for personal hygiene. That night, she told me that she had decided to be baptized, and she wanted me to do it. Um, okay, I said; but knowing this would be controversial within our group of Americans, I said, what did [her Bible study teacher] say when you told him this? She answered, with a puzzled look, "He said, 'isn't God a man?'
I like to tell people that I went to China to be a missionary, and became a feminist. This is why.
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."
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:
***
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.
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.
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