fun with data visualization!

The best resource for getting acquainted with the complicated terrain of transhumanism and its permutations, and the various oppositions to transhumanism or the idea of human enhancement technologies generally, is Dr. James Hughes' "Overview of Biopolitics" chart, a version of which is in his book Citizen Cyborg and a version of which is published on the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) website. It's so useful, in fact, that I wrote to get permission to include it as an illustration in my dissertation text, which he was gracious enough to grant.

I have some quibbles with certain categories, but any sort of typology will generate those sorts of questions--that's part of why typologies are useful, as they force you to think "why would I do this differently, here?" And for the last couple days, I've been experimenting with an increasingly adapted form of Dr. Hughes' original typology, through a very fun little website called Many Eyes, a data visualization site. Ya uploads yer data, and out comes a purty picture. Very very nice for someone like me who often feels visually challenged, but wants to incorporate visuals into her pedagogy as often as possible (as a text-based and auditory learner, I can respect that not everyone learns best just by reading and listening and scribing).

So here's an in-progress look at what I've been putting together: the JTB Matrix Chart version of the Hughes/IEET Overview of Biopolitics:

Overview of Biopolitics Matrix Chart (adapted)

If you go to the manyeyes site, you can interact with this chart--there are five variables represented by the color blocks (views on citizenship/personhood is shown here, but in the full chart you can click between views on personhood, humanism, accessibility, technological risk, and environment).

I'll be tinkering with this more in the weeks to come, and possibly constructing a separate biopolitics and religion typology (one of my quibbles with the Hughes/IEET typology is that all religious views are "religious right" type Christian literalism/conservatism, so that I don't quite fit the typology...but then again, I like floating between categories, existentially speaking...).

from Mike Cope (at HCC on January 16, 2005)

http://www.highlandchurch.org/resources/audio/mike-cope-jan-16-2005

Glenn Beck: about as good a preacher as you'd expect

HuffPo characterizes Beck's rally at the Lincon Memorial as "more like a revival."

Yeah, I get it. There's a lot of artless God-talk in it (so far, I'm only 5 minutes in, and he doesn't seem to be slowing down any. Oh wait, a prayer break. Excellent. There's nothing more inspiring than hearing the name of Jesus invoked in tones of wroth. I can almost feel the spittle, and I'm not even there, and this thing was over hours ago.)

Beck begins with, "America today begins to turn back to God." What is this, performative speech? He says it and it is so? (Like, say, "let there be light?") Or perhaps, let's be generous, it's a declarative, a simple description of what he sees happening. Alrighty then, what's the evidence of such a felicitous occurence?

Beck: "For too long this country has wandered in darkness...[here Beck's sentence seems to wander about in darkness a bit too, thank God for ellipses]...this country has spent far too long worried about scars, and thinking about the scars and concentrating on the scars. Today, we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished, and the things that we can do tomorrow."


Um, okay. Well, first of all let's play along and pretend that direct speech about America and American history and American people and America's future is not, ahem, political, because Beck assures us that this rally is not political. Whatever. But I'll play along, and treat this as a purely theological sentiment.


This theology SUCKS. (Sorry, Mom. It sucks so hard that not only do I have to say it, I have to capitalize it.) This is cheap grace in an American uniform, Glenn. Or how about another phrase, from an article I just read recently, about the reason why American young people are leaving churches in droves: "moralistic therapeutic deism," a "mutant form of Christianity" that "portrays God as a 'divine therapist' whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem." We've spent too long thinking about our "scars" and now it's time to stop all that half-hearted repenting and just think about the good stuff, so we can feel good about being Americans?! Turning back to God=being proud of our American selves. WTF? Glenn, I'd've rather heard a Jimmy-Allen-style hellfire-and-brimstone bit. I'm serious.

Worse, here's a quote from an attendee, from the HuffPo article: "This country was created by God, our creator. The problem is, the country is becoming Godless," said Greg Rinehart. "[Beck] said that a lot of people have lost Christ. The country is on the verge of becoming chaotic."

Religious message? Certainly. But apolitical? Hardly. In an atmosphere of hostility toward people of other faiths, by which I mean Muslims, which seems only to be increasing, how is this religious sentiment NOT an incendiary, divisive, politically laden sentiment? People without Christ are making this country chaotic. They must be stopped. Hey, let's go torch the mosque site. That'll show 'em Jesus is the Way. Then we can forget the scars and go on being proud of our badass American selves.

despicable me

So, I'm on the train coming home from CCfB brunching and this family of four settles in 3 seats down from me. The older kid, a girl, between 2 and 3 is my guess, reminded me of Clare--all garrulous and girly, she was. And at first, for say, a good three minutes or so, I really enjoyed getting a sense of the family dynamic. A sorta crunchy mom, with a bag full of farmer's market produce and 7 mo. old babe, a quiet dad, a curious toddler. The first thought I had was, wow, that mom interacts with her daughter like I do with Clare--on a good day. Encouraging curiosity, conversing with her, lots of teachable moments, lots of silly wordplay, even, yes, silly impromptu song-singing.

Then I thought, okay, that mom is like me--if I were really extroverted, loud, and on speed.

Then I thought, okay, this lady is annoying.

But the thing is, she really was like me. I mean, eerily like. As in, even our favorite colors are apparently the same. And her pet peeves about punctuation misuse. And her penchant for using outsized vocabulary with her toddler ("I'm a pedant," she says. Pedant?!)

So I spent the rest of the train ride home pondering how I could recognize both this woman's similarity to me and her annoyingness. Do I annoy myself? Do I secretly think that I'm an annoying person? Is there a kernel of self-hate buried deep within my psyche?

This didn't seem quite right. Sure, I'm as screwed up as any GRITS but I do love myself pretty sincerely.

So finally it hit me: what annoyed me about this woman is the same thing that annoys me about any group of obnoxious teens on the subway--that pseudo-unself-conscious performance of the idealized self for the benefit of the audience within earshot. I'm not part of her family. I'm not supposed to be the target audience for the performance of super-smart-crunchy-mommyness. But me and everyone else around me were co-opted into it, just like you are when giggly gaggles of teenagers are oh-so-nonchalantly proving to everyone who can hear how cool they are. Blurg.

Anyway, that's my best guess. And I suppose the take-away for me is to make sure I don't over-perform my own pedantic-ecofriendly-breastfeeding-feminist-super-PhD-mommy self in public places for people who would really like to be able to sleep on their train.

from Pigtail Pals: The Congresswomen, Stripper Barbie and Myself

Obviously, Stripper Barbie needs some modifications. Or, at the very least, a maternity dress just in case the inevitable happens. 

iftar

(In case you don't already know, iftar is the evening meal during Ramadan when Muslims break fast.)

I don't have a lot to say about our evening, in part because I've scarcely had any time to sit and think--about anything at all--over the last few days. St. Stephen's doesn't begin for Clare till the 31st, and until then, she's got Mommy's 100% attention and energy, until it runs out (typically, at about 10:00 a.m., sigh). But I am determined to share something about it, since it is a rather nifty idea on the part of the IDC to organize these "cultural exchange" type opportunities for people.

It was a bit awkward (how could it be otherwise) to just go to someone's house when you've never met them before and share a dinner, especially such an important (and lavish!) one as this, but awkwardness is a small price to pay. And it's kind of a crazy thing to do, sign yourselves up to entertain total strangers in your home, so I reckon if you're going to do it, then you're ready to welcome whatever crazy lot shows up on your doorstep. And we were probably an intimidating crew: me with my visible tattoos and bare arms, my husband with his priest collar, our wild-eyed 4-year-old in tow. And we were, absolutely, welcomed without reserve.

Our hosts took their teaching role very seriously, offered a lot of information and answered all sorts of questions. Wikipedia can now teach me nothing about iftar I didn't learn firsthand. :)

It occurred to me while talking about the Quran, and the translations of it for personal use and study versus the use of liturgical Arabic for prayer, that there must be some really sophisticated and interesting discussions on hermeneutics in Islam, and in interfaith or comparative religion discussions drawing in an Islamic perspective on the notion of interpretation. Something to look into. I said something about it before I could stop myself--the sort of theology-nerdy thing I do. :)

I didn't, however, talk much religion or theology (whether Christian or Muslim) with the women. Mostly, we talked about kids (our hosts had a daughter slightly younger than Clare), teaching (one of the women was a high school science teacher in Turkey), travel (wish I remembered more about my long-ago trip to Turkey), and whatnot. It didn't feel any more awkward, to me, than trying to get to know people outside my teensy nerdworld of theological acedemia generally does. Brent wondered--asked me on the way home--if the general silence of the women (not total) during the general conversation at the dinner table and during dessert bugged me. To be truthful (should I tag this #badfeminist?) it didn't, particularly, because 1) I wasn't given signals that I shouldn't contribute, and 2) I more or less assumed that the women's unease with conversing in English had more to do with it than anything else. I could be wrong, of course. But these men were proud of their wives, spoke of their accomplishments and (former) careers in Turkey with respect, and showed a lot of regret that relocating meant starting over and a lot of social isolation for them.

And frankly, as I said to Brent, I have a hard time faulting another religion for its symbolic manifestations of patriarchy (modest dress, hijab, possibly, silence) when I grew up in a tradition no less patriarchal, only our signals of it are so culturally acceptable to us that they are invisible. We'll call it a problem when we see it in a hijab, but we'll gloss right over it when it comes to women speaking with a mic from a pulpit. What's the difference? Who gets to throw the stone, here? I'm certainly not going to generically condemn a whole religion as hopeless and evilly sexist...because I'd have to condemn my own right along with it, just to be consistent.

[aside: I'm bracketing violence against women here. but again, I suspect it's easier to see and condemn violent acts against women when they confront you in unfamiliar forms. and, of course, Christianity is not blameless in this respect either--the stats on battered woman seeking shelter and advice from pastors, for example, are dismal, and the advice they often get justifies why.]

Anyhow. That's not much of a description of the evening as a cultural experience, I mean, I haven't bothered with talking about the food (delicious, unbelievably delicious) and whatever. But the whole point, as far as I can see, is less all of that than just the act of "breaking bread together in peace" (Abilene Interfaith Council's motto, and I've never heard a better).

the pattern

Barbie Maternity Dress

needle size: 2
yarn: sport or baby sport weight
gauge: about 7-8 sts/inch

CO 36 sts, divide across 3 dpns, join and knit in rd.
Begin with stockinette st for a rolled hem, or if you prefer, a few rows on 3 X 3 rib for a ribbed hem.
Knit in stockinette till 2", or desired length of skirt (measured from inseam, not ridiculous teensy waist).

Designate needles 1, 2 & 3, with needle 1 as the front.

Begin increases for baby bump as follows:

needle 1: k3, m1 (right slanting*), k6, m1 (left slanting*), k3; needles 2 & 3, k to end.
k 1 row
needle 1: k3, m1*, k8, m1**, k3; needles 2 & 3, k to end
k 1 row
needle 1: k3, m1*, k10, m1**, k3; needles 2 & 3, k to end
needle 1: k3, m1*, k12, m1**, k3; needles 2 & 3, k to end
needle 1: k3, m1*, k14, m1**, k3; needles 2 & 3, k to end
(if you're going for Octomom proportions, you can keep going, but this is enough for a decent size baby bump, for a six-month-ish-along Barbie)
k 3 rows

Begin decrease rows:

needle 1: k3, ssk, k to 5 rem sts, k2tog, k3; needles 2 & 3, k to end
repeat until 12 sts remain on needle 1.

knit in rd a few rows until you are ready to divide for armholes (I didn't count rows here, so give your Barbie a fitting or two to determine this.

needle 1 (front): 18 sts; needle 2 (back): 9 sts; needle 3 (back): 9 sts. If needles 2 & 3 are in your way, place those sts on a holder temporarily.

needle 1: knit 10 rows stockinette
row 11: k4, BO 10, k4
rows 12-14 (knit each strap separately): stockinette st, then place sts on holder for 3-needle BO later.

needles 2 & 3: knit 14 rows stockinette, then 3-needle BO with the front strap sts. leave a long tail after BO to use as a string tie closure. Or if you're fussy, sew on a snap. I can't be bothered with that myself.

Finally, pick up some sts on the inside of the dress where the bottom of the baby bump begins, and knit a square flap. Anchor the top and side of the flap on the inside, stuff with some extra yarn or whatever you've got on hand, then stitch closed.

Congratulations, you've knocked up Barbie!

m1* : right slanting increase. Insert left needle into horizontal strand btw sts from back to front. Knit this through the front loop to twist the st and avoid a hole.
m1**: left slanting increase. Insert left needle into horizontal strand btw sts from front to back. Knit through the back loop. (from Vogue Knitting Quick Reference)

Sheryl WuDunn at GlobalTED 2010: Our century's greatest injustice

by Rachel Wylie

I had my first child, a daughter, in September of 2003. Shortly thereafter, my dear friend had her first, a son. One evening, I was babysitting her son, and he was asleep in my daughter's swing. I sat there that night, watching him swing back and forth, sleeping in that blissed out way babies do, and I started ruminating on what his future might be like.  Knowing he would be raised in a strong Christian home, I remember thinking about all the wonderful, powerful things he might do as a man-- it was thrilling to think of all the great things he could accomplish for the Kingdom of God. In the same second that thought formed itself in my mind, I was struck cold by a second, sobering thought. In the 6 months I had been mothering my daughter, I had imagined a lot of things for her, but I had never considered that she might do “great work” for God. I allowed the distress of this realization to bother me for about five minutes, before I shoved it out of my consciousness by soothing myself with platitudes about all the “great work” women can do for the Kingdom – teach sunday school, bake casseroles, vist nursing homes, and clean the church building. 

The uneasy feeling I first faced that evening of Maya's infancy surfaced now and again over the next five years, but I always rationalized it away – I know all the words about “separate but equal” when it comes to men and women in the Church of Christ. 

And then, in August of 2009, a few things happened.  I read through rude truth, I read a couple of Mike Cope’s blog posts on the subject, and then I read the statement Jimmy Carter released when he separated from the Southern Baptist church, and instead of hearing all of the proper responses in my head (too heavily influenced by evil feminism, doesn't take the bible seriously, etc), I began to hear the hum of truth. It was nearly like a switch.

Here is what I wrote  to Jennifer a year ago this month:

It occurred to me that I had better make dang sure that I believed what I have grown up believing about women in the church…traditional gender roles in the church is not an issue I spent much time considering.  My spiritual gifts are such that I have never felt constrained (mostly relieved) that I would never be expected to teach or pray or lead singing in an assembly.

But I have these 2 daughters, and they are beautiful and created in the image of God…and if that God did not intend for them to remain silent in church, if he has not determined that it is a bad idea for them to publicly share from their knowledge and wisdom about him…if this is not his design…then teaching them that He did, and it is…well it breaks my heart.

And so, for the first time in 28 years, I gave myself permission to consider that I might have it wrong.  

And I did.  I had it wrong.  And even though I never consciously felt damaged or belittled by this tradition that I was raised in, I cannot describe the relief and the gratitude and freedom that has washed over me.  It absolutely brings me to tears to think that I will not have to think of a way to explain to my children, whom I love more than life, why, even though they are all created in the image of God, who also loves them more than life, God only wants to hear one of their voices in Church.

As I grapple with this and unpack it a little bit more I expect to find the implications of growing up with the set of assumptions that I did has been damaging and stunting in more ways than I have considered.  It is very strange to realize that one of the basic things I have always understood about myself and my place in the body of Christ was just plain wrong. 

I was right.  As I unravel all of my previous understanding of “Women in the Church” I am continually stunned to find how far reaching the effects have been.  I have been moved to tears more times than once this past year, realizing for the first time that I am not less valuable (to the world, or to God) because I am a woman.  

I cried just last week, when I really really let it sink in that not only is God not male (or female)--which I have always believed, in theory-- but God is not even *more* male than he is female.  I cried reading Women in the Church: Reclaiming the Ideal when Carol Osburn explains Marrs’s proposal that “the actual “order of creation" (man first, woman last) intends not a move from superiority to inferiority, but through inclusio (man/woman) a move from incompleteness to completeness.” 

I know all of the appropriate arguments used to oppress women in our Tradition. I know the scriptures, the “proper” interpretation, I know all of the “flawed” arguments of the “other side.”  For the longest time, I was so afraid of being wrong, of being ungrateful for the role I had been given, of endangering my eternal soul, to even honestly examine scripture and consider the “other side.”  Nearly 7 months after my email to Jennifer, it occurred to me that the things I had been taught about myself and women in general in Churches of Christ are are not compatible with the character of God revealed throughout scripture.  It was this realization that has finally allowed me to step away from the “party line” about women in the church, timidly at first, and with more boldness as time goes on and some of the twisted places in my faith sort themselves out in the light of my new understanding. 

My family finds ourselves in a strange place these days.  I cannot raise my girls in a church environment that implicitly surrounds them with the lie that they are “less than” and that the list of spiritual gifts that God got to pick from when he assigned theirs is shorter than it would be if they were boys.  But where to go?  Churches of Christ, from birth until now is all that I know. 

okay, it was me. I knocked up Barbie.

profile view

full frontal

view of back closure & goring

So, this is definitely a very rough first try--but I have to say, for a non-crafty chick who's never made up a knitting pattern as she goes before, I'm pretty pleased with myself. I hope to decipher my notes and turn them into some kind of reproducible pattern without all the blunders and false starts that are evident in this one...Definitely, the whole thing could be a little more snug, I'm not in love with the ribbing on the bottom (a feature I borrowed from a sweater dress pattern I saw somewhere that wasn't free, alas), the increases in the middle of the belly are redundant and yucky looking...but hey, at least she really does look sorta pregnant.

And Clare seems to like it.

Pattern to be posted shortly, I promise.

the lessons

Gail Collins' op-ed in the NYT on the suffragist movement has some lessons for us c'sofC'ers: organization, persistence, and the importance of men.

Why Language for God Matters, by Naomi Walters

Naomi's article in New Wineskins is available in full here.

the maternal is not an element of the Barbie collective

Last night, after researching free knitting patterns for the off-brand "Barbies" I got for 75 cents at the Thrift Store (I got three of them: one with green hair, one with pink hair, and one blondie whom I'm going to shear and suit up a la' Rachel Maddow), I was drifting off to sleep, still thinking about all the wonderful morphological transformations I was going to make to these dolls in my subversive initiative to to render Clare's Barbie fascination innocuous (a la' Kim Toffoletti), and it struck me: the one thing I had not seen, anywhere, was a Barbie MOM. And for damn sure, no preggo Barbies. Sure: there's "Skipper," but she's like, a younger sister or niece or cousin or something, and like a pre-teen anyhow. Barbie's not her mom, she's more like the cool single aunt type.

Barbie's married friend, pregnant Midge

So this morning I sat down and googled "Barbie mother" and whaddaya know...there's more out there than you would have thought. There's the Barbie Happy Family collection--which'll cost you about $250 for the whole happy family. However, you can buy Barbie's pregnant friend Midge Hadley separately, for only $80. She's got a magnetic detachable belly with a teensy little baby inside. At this point, rumor has it, this is her second.

Now, don't get excited, like all of a sudden Barbie's problematic body image issues are benefiting from some long-overdue therapy. When preggers Midge first hit the market, there was an uproar. Rather than rejoicing that skinny bitch Barbie had finally allowed some real female bodily reality into her ranks, we were frightened. Frightened! OMG, what will this teach our children? How could they possibly look up to their Barbie as a role model if she's pregnant!? Oh, the horror!

Barbie and youngest sister Kelly

So, nowadays, having learned that actual motherhood is totally off-limits if you're going to retain your plastic yet rigid fantasy girlish figure, we're back to Barbie and Kelly. There is just no damn way that Barbie's gonna be a mom.

Which is weird, right? Because Barbie is the projection of quintessential American womanhood--and no matter what color they paint her universal face, no matter what professional outfits she may put on and off, she is still the impossibly long-limbed and big-breasted fantasy girl of the American Dream. And it seems to me that an important piece of this cultural message of essential American womanhood is the get-married-settle-down-and-take-care-of-your-family piece. That's why our country doesn't have "working women," it has "working moms." No matter professional outfit you may put on, at the end of the day, you're supposed to take it back off and come home and take care of your family.

The only explanation I can come up with for why Barbie can display maternal tendencies but not maternal bodily realities is simply that, in the end, a Barbie without the perfect Barbie figure is no Barbie at all. It's a Barbie face on top of some monstrously distended body, and we can't have that.

So, definitely adding a preggers Barbie to my subversive plan, along with: zombie Barbie, crossdressing Ken, prosthetic cheetah sprinting legs Barbie, and of course, cyborg Barbie.

More suggestions welcome...

things I have learned this week

1. you can't assume the people on the sidewalks talking to themselves are crazy anymore.
2. there is such a thing as too much whipped cream in an espresso con panna.
3. you can find free knitting patterns for Barbies on the internet (don't worry, I have a subversive master plan at work here. and when I get my hands on a Ken, s/he's getting a makeover for sure).
4. the new name of the Childlike Empress in NeverEnding Story? "Moon Child."
5. Einstein was a mad genius at baby-killing rationalizations.

and you?

irony

 

I will never understand why people running for public office choose to do so by badmouthing the guvmint. If it's so dang horrible, wouldn't it be more consistent to, say, picket buildings and protest, start eliminating political offices, or, say, work toward making all government work unpaid and pro bono, you know--actually dismantle the institution that is so dang horrible--since by joining, all you're doing is putting your own self on the dole and making the problem one person bigger? But apparently, the only person we can trust not to "vote themselves entitlements from the largesse of the government" is someone seeking public office...

Sharron Angle: "We’re right to that point in the graph where it says, “government dependency.” And we know that once we have a majority that are dependent upon the government, we will lose our freedom; it says we go into bondage. That’s the next stage. Our Founders warned against this. They said don’t… that your liberty is only as secure as the people are. Because once they, um, get the ability to vote themselves entitlements from the largesse of the government, liberty is done; freedom is over with. We were warned. We are there. We’re right on the cusp of it, and you’ve identified those numbers. That’s the war that we’re in. You know, when I talk about a war and a battle and soldiers we have to take up our…our cry for freedom. And we can do it right now at the battle box… I mean at the ballot box. I’m not sure what continues on after 2010. I know people are very frightened about what’s going on in this country. And these programs that you mentioned -- that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward -- are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that’s really what’s happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government. And you’ve just identified the real crux of the problem. I’ve also been endorsed by a PAC out of Washington D.C. and the name of that PAC is Government is not God. And I thought that that was so appropriate because that is really what’s happening in our society and we need to take our country back." (source: Las Vegas Sun)

Oh! Irony, no no no, we don't get that here...

vampires, cyborgs, Christians

So, Anne Rice quits, because people suck? What did she expect, anyway?

That was my first gut-check response to the statement she made this week on Facebook, subsequently picked up by Huffington Post: 'I Quit Being a Christian.'  Why? Well, like I said, people suck--and apparently Christian people are the suckiest: "It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. ...I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

Okay, granted: Christian people really are the suckiest, if only because they suck just as bad as everyone else and claim to be doing God's will or loving Jesus the whole time they suck. And I hate just as much as anyone the fact that goofy Ted Haggards and odious Fred Phelpses and you-name-hims are the media face of Christianity. In fact, I hate it so much I refuse to accept it. Which is exactly NOT what giving up and publicly quitting being a Christian does. I get that she wants to indict these sucky Christians for their suckiness. But in the meantime, she grants that this is what Christianity really is, and must be, and all right-minded people must quit it because it will only ever be a religion of haters and that's what Jesus would do.

Actually I think Jesus stuck around and got crucified for it, but hey, that's a theological quibble for another day, right.

On my own Facebook page I groused, "why sell out and let the haters define Christianity? all she's doing is legitimizing the perception that this is in fact what Xny has to be. Lame."

Maybe that was a bit harsh. Susan Campbell's reaction is better: "Come sit by me, Sis. Anne. One can be a Christian and cling to none of those antis, I believe." (Amen and amen and amen!) Usually, I'm much more level-headed; I stick it out in my little corner of Christendom, but I have said (so often now it's practically become a mantra) that we need some people to go and some people to stay, and everyone should do what they do loudly. Well, you can't beat an Anne Rice Facebook statement picked up by HuffPo as a megaphone, so it seems like I am actually pissed off at someone conforming to my own advice. Which puts me in a bind. Mea culpa. So why is it that I still feel like what she is doing is misguided in some fundamental way? Why am I still pissed about it?

What makes Susan's reaction better and different from mine is that, I got pissed off at the idea of quitting--because I have chosen to not quit, despite the fact that I too feel very much an outsider in my own Christian tradition. I've decided not to quit because I am an outsider. It's the outsiders--the vampires and the cyborgs if you will--within the church that have the prophetic potential for changing the antis into pros. It's not so much that I'm angry that Anne Rice wants to publicly indict Christians for the unforgiveable anti-stances that have been so publicly and politically taken up by a very vocal some. I agree. It's that her chosen response to it indicts my chosen response to it as wrong: useless, hopeless, and worse, complicit rather than prophetic. As she sees it, her conscience cannot allow association with the horrors she sees perpetrated by those claiming Christianity. But me--I'm just not that interested in preserving the purity of my conscience. I'd rather spend my time trying to preserve other things.

Susan seems to agree with me that it's hasty generalization to conclude that all of Christianity is defined by the haters, but instead of getting pissed off and calling Anne "lame," she says "come sit by me." That's ever so much better.

[So, pssst, Sis. Anne, have you heard of The Episcopal Church? It officially welcomes you. Also, should you ever find yourself in Brooklyn, why not check out this awesome pro-gay, pro-feminist, pro-birth control (well, except for that one couple that doesn't seem to bother, and yeah, you know who I'm talkin bout, but hey, you make great babies), pro-Democrat, pro-secular-humanist, pro-science, pro-life church, CCfB...]

But in the meantime, use your megaphone while you exit--because we need this witness too. But I hope you decide to stick around. And, sorry for calling you "lame."

Philadelphia 11

How long, O Lord? Will c's-of-C ever get to look back and celebrate a date like this?

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/41685_3311_ENG_HTM.htm

Soundcheck on cyborgs & music

summer: a busy of monotony

So, it's summer. And I like summer: I like hot weather, I like being outside, I like the idea of "vacation," I like hanging out with Clare (mostly) (and this mostly reciprocated). But arrrrrrrgh.

Because "vacation" is theoretical, it's been hellishly hot here just like it has everywhere else, and it seems like I've been on my own more the past two months than any stretch of time so far in a decade of marriage. It's a big deal just to extricate myself from Clare's proximity long enough to go pee, and generally, she scouts me out while I'm still mid-stream.

In an hour and a half, I will have some much-needed time to do some pressing and important work--my Science for Ministry elective course, "The Human Person in a Technological Age," starts Monday. I am counting the minutes. This blog post is happening only because I am delaying the inevitable trip to the playground while my iPhone rewrites itself from scratch (no idea why this is necessary but it is taking forever).

In other news, I remain a theologian-at-large and heretic-for-hire, so if there's anyone you know in need of faithfully irreverent God-talk...well, I could use some word-of-mouth buzz. It would be so nice, and not just for practicalities like paying student loans, to do work I actually get paid for.

Time for the playground!

informal review of Susan Campbell's Dating Jesus

[from Christian Scholars Conference 2010]

            Reviewing a book such as this, when your experience reading it has been as emotionally intimate as this has been, is a bit terrifying—knowing that whatever I say about it, I am saying much more about myself, in many ways, than I am about this text. But to say this is in some ways offering the highest tribute possible to Susan Campbell’s memoir of growing up in the [small] c’s-of-C: her journey precedes mine chronologically, is distanced from mine geographically, and differs in personal particulars, but nonetheless describes what it means to come of age as a girl in our denomination in words so honest that not only does my narrative echo hers at certain points, but the contributed bits of the many guest bloggers’ narratives at “rude truth” do, as well.

            This is not actually a very happy thing to observe. One would have hoped, after all, that the church which Campbell describes as “frontier revivalism frozen in amber” (38) might have unstuck itself from its fossilized convictions about gender in the years that separate my coming of age from hers. But, as she rightly observes, anachronism can become a veritable badge of righteousness, and on this issue, there is still no quicker and more effective rebuttal to the attempt to voice women’s experiences as relevant than “we cannot let culture dictate the practice of the church.”

            Campbell’s voice is strong, and compelling, and like many of us who have found that strong female voices are unwelcome—not just in our official assemblies, but in our formal leadership structures, and anywhere at all if they’re asking pesky questions—she has found an alternative venue for expression for this somewhat troublesome gift of God. It may be that, as Katie Hays observed to me somewhat wryly in conversation last year at this conference, no one misses these female voices when the women who possess them leave our churches—because they never got to use them in the first place. Perhaps years have passed without anyone wondering what happened to the voice of that pre-teen girl in Sunday school who asked, why a woman can’t be a preacher. She grew up and became a reporter for the Hartford Courant, and I suppose anyone who thought about it might have concluded, “and she lived happily ever after.” Luckily for us, the same courage that propelled Campbell to verbally spar—and hold her own!—with her Sunday school teacher has produced a memoir which once again brings her voice back into our midst, even if it has to happen cloaked in the “authority of the text,” the same evasive maneuvers performed historically by so many medieval women mystics. Now, we know what we’re missing; even better, we might even figure out why.

            That is, we might, if we read, and read with ears ready to hear a narrative that is both heartbreakingly funny and gut-wrenchingly sad, with some moments of prophetic pissed-off-ness in between. Not everyone is, still. Like the comment I received from a first-year seminary student’s first encounter with James Cone, “I feel like he’s yelling at me through the pages,” there are moments of, say, “snark”—not least of which is Campbell’s habit of footnoting scriptural references for the c’s-of-C practices she describes, and it’s not an aspect of the memoir designed to court a reluctant audience.

            In my opinion, to consider this a weakness of the book is to entirely miss the point. It is not the memoir’s only strength, but it is one of its strengths, and without the “snark” it would not be the honest narrative that it is. As one blog commenter observes, “it made me feel like I was sitting at the table with her”—and what better observation could there be of the profound, dare I say, sacramental even, intimacy made possible by the disarming honesty of an author, reciprocated in the receptive honesty of a reader?

            Moreover, it misses the point—never articulated directly by Campbell, and perhaps I am over-interpreting—that snark is a coping strategy. Robert A. Heinlein—another quite snarky author, come to think of it—wrote that the difference between human beings and our primate cousins is that we have a sense of humor; we laugh, and we laugh because it hurts. It is when we can no longer snark, no longer laugh, no longer grin and bear it, that we find we must walk away.

            It seems that Campbell reached that point, a point which I still hope will never manifest itself for me, and yet, as so many of us find, walking away does not exactly translate into leaving behind. There is a reason why my Episcopal priest husband still corrects himself in the instinctive use of the first-person-plural when speaking of the Churches of Christ. There is a reason why there is a thriving online community of ex-Cof-Cers. There is a reason why a successful Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and author finds herself revisiting the narrative of her coming of age and the way in which her life is mysteriously and inextricably bound up with the church of her youth.

            And, fantastically, the reasons are not all bad. You have to willfully ignore Campbell’s words, selectively read only the sarcasm, to miss that the description “revivalism frozen in amber” is immediately followed with, “If that sounds grim, it isn’t. If it sounds soulless, it isn’t that, either. The traditions plant in the believer—even someone who walks away from the church—a deep and soulful need” (38).

            Unfortunately, the reasons aren’t all good either, and the double bind which Campbell sketches from early childhood on, the message that 1) you must do everything you can to make yourself ready and 2) a woman can’t [fill the blank], becomes a message she describes as an adult as “hardwired” (149). “I was hardwired to understand that I don’t belong in the pulpit”—a dreadful perversion in modern metaphor of Jeremiah’s experience of the fire shut up in his bones. “As big a feminist as I am,” she writes, “I have on some level embraced the limitations set before me. And I fear bucking them. And that makes me both sad and angry” (149). Yeah. Me too. And how many, many others.

            Unlike Campbell, my first experience speaking in a pulpit did not leave me sobbing in front of the congregation before I even got started. But, in the first unprecedented moment in which my body (thankfully) moved on autopilot from the front pew to mount the steps up to that honest-to-God pulpit in West Islip Church of Christ, I felt lightheaded, and my surroundings, misty and surreal. It is not an easy thing to do, rewiring your circuitry. But what else can you do, when you wake up in the middle of the night and realize that, after all, all those years ago, you’d been dating the wrong Jesus?

no more time-outs

Clare: "what if I had no more time-outs ever? could we send all the timeouts all the way into outer space?"
me: "there's a way you could have no more time-outs ever for reals. wanna know how?"
Clare, eyes wide: "how?"
me: "You could always listen and then you would have no more time-outs."
Clare, excited: "Mommy, I GET IT!"

just for fun: 12 Arguments Evolutionists Should Avoid

12 Arguments Evolutionists Should Avoid

Saw this link on Facebook the other day, and couldn't resist. Neither should you!

I think my favorite item is #2, under which the website notes "Darwin’s own deficit of formal education" i.e., "(he earned a bachelor’s in theology)". I am so pleased to know that within the biblical worldview, a degree in theology = a deficit of education. Awesome.

stat uncounter?

So, apparently this blog has had 0 visitors since April of this year. I don't check statcounter much anymore, being content with simply naively trusting that there is something like a readership in existence. (Perhaps my alien friends don't get counted on statcounter? Which suggests a cosmic xenophobic bias in the statcounting technology, there. Get to work on fixing that, please.)

So...helloooooooooooo? Are you there, Readers? It's me, JTB...

the redemptive pleasure of being wrong

an insanely wise excerpt from an interview with Ira Glass:

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

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

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

the low point: commenting on "mixed marriage"

One of the low points--other than my unHappy Meal encounter--was hearing not one but two joking references to "mixed marriage" while in Nashville. The first came through a mike, immediately preceding a prayer. And, while it did occur to me at the time that it was tasteless and grossly inappropriate (especially since I had, just a few minutes before, from my vantage point at a corner table, been struck by the fact that I could count the number of black faces in the room on one hand and still have fingers left over), it didn't outrage me nearly as much as it should have. It just sort of washed past me, an enduring legacy of having grown up in the South. It wasn't until the next day, when I heard it forthrightly named as racist by someone who was paying more attention than I was, that I realized the full depth of what it means to casually joke about "mixed marriages."

The next day, I heard another joke about while standing in the middle of church. This second time, it reverberated in all of its unintentional overtones. And the nervous wry bark of a laugh with which I responded to the first reference was replaced by simply a deep sadness, without any tinge of judgment, because I too had had to learn belatedly that this is nothing to laugh about.

Once in high school I heard a pillar of our church tell a joke, standing in the center aisle of the auditorium, with a punchline that ended with the n-word. Not even tempted to laugh nervously, I just stared in confusion. We can recognize racism in our midst when it comes packaged in blatant and socially unacceptable forms. But what's the difference between a joke with the n-word and a joke about "mixed marriage"? In the end, both rely on the same categorical racism--without it, they are incoherent.

This adds a new dimension to the discussion from the Dating Jesus session at CSC 2010 about the relationship of theology and justice. I suspect--as does my bro Robert Foster, whose comment was very insightful--that dismantling injustice in one context is a gateway to becoming cognizant of the need for social justice in other contexts as well. But one problem is, many people simply don't seem to see that there's anything unjust about the role or status of women in our churches. How could that possibly be? I dimly remember not being outraged by it, but I can no longer recapture the logic of that former point of view--I can no longer remember how it feels to not be bothered by this. This leaves me with the necessity of constructing some kind of coherent intellectual explanation for what seems now to be an inexplicable blindness to justice matters.

There are surely multiple factors in this, but here is the one that seems the strongest to me right now. Men and women are supposed to be ontologically distinct--this is the crux of "hierarchical complementarianism" just as much as it is straight-up patriarchalism. (To borrow a phrase from another CSC session, hierarchical complementarianism seems to me to be the theological construct justifying "benevolent sexism." Perhaps a post for another time, there.) So it's no biggie that men do X and women do Y; they are just essentially different kinds of human beings and therefore women could never do Y and it's stupid to get angry over it.

Like the logic of "mixed marriage," the concept of hierarchical complementarianism doesn't make sense without assuming categorical difference. And if we are still, as a church, joking and laughing about mixed marriage--demonstrating that on some level we still are not questioning the working assumption that white people and black people are essentially different kinds of people--no wonder we're not able to question the same logic when it shows up with regard to gender. These two things are linked at a deep conceptual level. We cannot have gender justice without racial justice. And maybe we're banging our heads against a brick wall with some people about gender justice because we've never adequately dealt with the generations-old sin of racism that still permeates our vision of the world, even as we bow our heads to pray and stand in the middle of our churches.

unHappy Meal

Warning: this is going to be one of those miscellaneous, personal complaint posts. But honestly...just wait till you hear this!

So, Sunday morning, after working through some massive attitudinal issues with Clare, we rendezvoused with Ally and Jarrod and kids at 4th Avenue CofC in Franklin, and had a lovely morning there. Not least because I was agreeably surprised to listen to a sermon on the necessity of creative non-violence! Which is lovely in itself but also relevant to what follows.

After church, it began to rain and so we revised our lunch intentions to take the kids to McDonalds so they could run around on the inside playground area. And while I am no fan of McD's, this is a compromise I am willing to make on occasion because it's way better than the consequences of three restless kids unable to play outside all day. So, we walk in and the kids immediately join a beautiful girl about Clare's age at the toy display and start identifying which one they want, which causes some kind of ruckus with Clare who starts bawling for reasons I have to try to figure out and satisfactorily address, which I do. Then we hustle them off forthwith to playground area before any more hungry energy causes another ruckus, and then I go to the counter to order. There's a couple standing in an ambiguous place, not quite in line or at the counter but standing around sort of in the general area, hanging back, so I ask, "are y'all in line?" and they say no, so I get in line behind my bro-in-law and place my order right after him. As we're clearly together they put our trays up and start putting stuff on them, six adult meals and six kids meals all together. Then I notice a little bottle of milk, which I'd ordered for Clare, right next to my tray, and I think, why isn't this on my tray? So I start to take it but then I notice it's chocolate, which I didn't want, so I put it down and consider whether it is worth pointing out the mistake and asking for plain milk. While I'm pondering this they put a kids meal sack on the counter and announce "cheeseburger" which I'd heard Jarrod order for Levi, so I pick it up to hand to Jarrod. And out of nowhere this blond woman comes up, practically shoulder tackles me, snatches it away and says, "That's ours, and thanks for putting your hands all over it," in a super nasty voice.

Now, if you know me at all, you know that I am absolutely supremely unobservant and often almost comically stereotypically professorishly absentminded, so, it shouldn't surprise you that the obvious 2 + 2 here that these were not our items totally did not occur to me. From my point of view, it wasn't at all obvious, and even in retrospect, I feel like there was some logic to my mistake. And of course, as she said, "this is ours," I immediately handed it to her and started to say, "oh I'm sorry, here you go," but she talked right over that instinctive reply with the nasty "thanks for putting your hands all over it" as she stalks off. So I'm greatly astonished, but, like the moment with the lady in the grocery store parking lot, I'm no longer one to let these things go by internalizing shame or accepting the notion that somehow I deserve to be treated like shit. So I try again with an innocent and sincere, "I'm sorry," but she snaps back with the same nasty statement, and I say (not particularly conciliatory here), "Look, lady, I was nice to you, I even asked if you were in line, what's your problem?" But she just walks off.

I turn back around, and the employees behind the counter, who got a free front row ticket to this drama, are all looking at me and at each other with big round eyes and shrugged shoulders. One of them even said out loud, "what was that about?!" And the girl putting our order together grinned at us a few minutes later and said, "Now, I just want you to know, I'm putting my hand into this bag to put your food in it, I'm touching your food, hope that's okay," and as I left she said to me, "I mean, I'm pregnant and hormonal and I don't act like that!"

Of course, it was too much to hope that we would sit on opposite sides of the place where we could easily ignore each other. Turns out they chose a table right next to where we'd plonked down our stuff already. So, I felt like it would be remiss of me to not attempt some sort of reconciliation with this blonde nutjob. And I did my best--after all, I felt bad about calling her "lady" which is very dismissive. Plus, it had occurred to me that maybe she was pissed about something else--maybe she had seen Clare do something to her little girl while they were swarming around the toy display, and maybe there was something actually problematic that needed to be addressed, which I should know about but somehow missed.

So I approach the table, and before I even open my mouth, this woman rolls her eyes and says to her husband, "OMG, can you believe this?" So I say, "I'm sorry to interrupt your meal, but I feel like I just don't know what I might hve done to offend you, so I'd like to say that I'm sorry but I sortof need you to tell me what to actually apologize for." And she's interrupting every few words of this simple statement to say, over and over, in that same nasty tone, clipping off the ends of her words, "I--don't--want--to--talk--to--YOU."

So I give up, because she's a brick wall and not even hearing that I truly am trying to figure out what the problem is, because clearly, she's got some sort of massive problem with me. But as quickly as I turn away, I turn back again, because this is so absurd and so totally unsatisfactory. And I begin again with acknowledging that I am interrupting their time together, and sorry for that, but in case she missed it, I am genuinely trying to apologize. "What is it that I did?" I say, and stops her robotic litany of "I don't want to talk to you" to say, as if she can't believe she has to explain it, "you TOUCHED the BAG." And I said, "really? That's it. Really? Okay, then I guess I'd like to say that I'm sorry for touching the bag." But she's gone back to the "I don't want to talk to you" thing, and so I just can't manage to filter out my last comment.

"But you know, I do wash my hands after I pee."

Oh, the irony of listening to a sermon on creative non-violence and walking into this crap. I think I failed to remember the take-home phrase, "don't hit back." But honestly...as Anne Shirley would plead..."if only you knew how many things I want to say and don't."

A final irony: we're all sitting there letting our kids romp around the plastic wonderland together, and at one point Clare comes running up to me in mad-tears because "Sol hurt my feelings because she growled in my face. And she won't say sorry." Me: "well, did you tell her you were hurt and why and ask for an apology?" Amswer: no. Of course not, my child is only almost 4. So I say, you have to tell her, and this is what you say. And when Sol comes up, straightway my little girl says, clearly and straightforwardly, "Sol, you hurt my feelings when you growled in my face" and Sol blinks and says immediately, "I'm sorry, Clare," and off they run together back into the plastic wonderland.

My four year old can do it. Take that, you blonde basketcase.

belated thoughts on CSC 2010

1. I am EXHAUSTED.
2. Presenting in 3 sessions of 6 (plus various other stuff) means NOT getting to do all the things you really want to do at a conference, namely, go to the sessions you want to hear, and freely skip sessions in order to grab a coffee with people you only see once a year. It also means not being able to live blog/tweet and thus, catch-up blogging. Sigh.
3. Having food provided for every meal ROCKS. Way to go Lipscomb!!!
4. The session I most wanted to attend and couldn't: Monstrous Beauty. So many awesome posthuman figures in that one...
5. The session I most enjoyed participating in: Dating Jesus with Susan Campbell. It was not the only follow-up to last year's groundbreaking sessions on experiences of gender in the c's-of-C (and yes, I agree with JRB, when it comes time to write the next volume of Reviving the Ancient Faith for these recent and upcoming decades, last year's conference is going to be read as a turning point); there was a wonderful session convened by Dr. Sharp Penya of ACU on some results of ongoing research into gender attitudes and predictors of attitudes in our churches. But it was, I think, the session that provided that same voice of experience that last year's sessions did--and I am convinced that this is the thing most needed right now. This is not (only or primarily) an intellectual or hermeneutical matter--this is something that requires a conversaion experience of some sort. And for about 50% of CofCers, that means taking the leap into someone else's experience and making that vicarious experience their own in some sense--enough to prompt the realization that it really is and has been damaging, for many of us, and blindness to that reality is not a moral option. Not everyone will make that leap--there are lots of ways to armor yourself against it--but the immediate task is to make it impossible to be unknowingly ignorant of this reality. Some will choose to be willfully ignorant. And we can't coerce conversion. But we can--like Jesus with the rich young ruler--force people to the point of decision, and if they walk away, we can watch them do it sorrowfully...and turn to the next person, because we can also hope that not everyone will choose to be willfully ignorant of the reality of women in our midst. Not to keep blathering on too much, but again...this is the point of the "women in the CofC" blog experiment, which of course is still ongoing and the invitation is for YOU! (MOM!). I had a vision last year of women sitting primly next to each other in pews every Sunday, silently saying to themselves every week, "How long, O Lord?" and all convinced they were the only ones...while together they send up their silent collective cry to God. How long, indeed? It will remain forever deferred if we all sit silently in our pews frozen by anxiety and unable to speak, even to each other, about the vision of liberation and full range of opportunity of serving our God and our church and our world that we long for. And if you can't bring yourself to lean over and whisper something subversive to the gray-haired old lady next to you--say it here, anonymously if you must, because this is not "laleo in ecclesia" and this Theologian-at-Large and Heretic-for-Hire can take the hit. Plus, back to my original point after that massive tangential diversion, Susan Campbells ROCKS. And she said some of the things we most, most need to hear--like, why does it take a year to get a CofC on board with something which, once you see it, is (in the paraphrase of JRB) "silly right," something which makes our current typical practices obviously and untenably absurd? Why are we taking baby steps? And who are we hurting when we concede to those who require baby steps but those who are already walking wounded? Does that not matter? Why are we so unjustifiably proud of our faltering baby steps--shouldn't we be sprinting toward the goal of justice in our communities? There was also a good back-and-forth on the connection between theology and justice, which makes me wonder (and so I guess I am officially asking), was this experience of injustice within the church the door into Susan's convictions regarding social justice in the wider sense?
6. Really really really really REALLY stoked about CSC 2011. It'll be sad to miss my annual pilgrimage to middle TN, which really is Home for me, but I shall content myself with the second-best option of Malibu (sarcasm alert here, y'all). AND, of course, the theme is religion and science, and John Polkinghorne is slated to be one of several awesome plenary speakers. Awesome! And there is so much to think about...so many different possibilities for presentations and sessions...very exciting. Ken Reynhout, brace yourself, because I'm going to start begging you to come starting right now.
7. People seemed to like the posthuman stuff. Always encouraging. And getting a shout-out from James Elkins in the concluding dialogue session was certainly a feather in my cap, which no longer quite fits on my great big inflated head. :)

All right, that's it for now. Next step: go home, and label an empty mayo jar "CSC 2011" and start saving the pennies. :)

on the maleness of Godtalk, part 2

don't miss this post from Jamey Walters over at Becoming What We Are: "Metaphor, Idolatry and Theology."

and, while you're there, find out why Battlestar Galactica kicks LOST ass.

"Barbie in comfy shoes"

But if Rachel Maddow gave me a Barbie doll, I would treasure it. Very cyborg move.

I'm an (8 year old) single lady?

I hesitate to even blog about this because I am uncomfortable about embedding this video or linking to it...

First: yeah, "not my daughter." Hell no. I won't even buy her a secondhand knockoff Barbie at the thrift store. Why? Because I want her to have more images of women than the caricatured sexuality that is Barbie to internalize as she grows up.

Beyond that initial parental instinct, though, this video presents a particular fraught and acute version of the dilemma I regularly face as the fem theologian mommy of a precocious daughter: how to separate out the genuinely childlike joy of dress-up, pretend play, movement and dance and song--and the horrible metanarratives our patriarchal--no, let me go further: subtly misogynistic--culture provides for the acting out of those beautiful children's instincts. How can I help my daughter separate out the desire to be beautiful and wear princess dresses from the helpless passivity of all these godforsaken ubiquitous princess narratives she soaks up like a sponge? How can I help her enjoy the gift of her body without learning that she can only enjoy it through the process of making others desire it?

(Further complicating that is the problematic stuff associated with any sort of public high-pressure competition for children, but let's just bracket that for a moment. Those concerns apply equally to children's beauty pageants, dance competitions and national spelling bees...)

So here's how I parse things out. Is it wrong for these girls to be up on stage dancing? Is it wrong for them to enjoy the ways their bodies can move and enjoy being good at moving their bodies? Absolutely not. But let's have a reality check here. Those girls did not choreograph their own dance routine, choose their music, make their own costumes. Some adult(s) in the background made those choices for them, and made them without any consideration (apparently) about what those choices would mean for the girls they were supposedly acting on behalf of. Do these girls have any idea what their skimpy outfits--outfits designed to display the sexual characteristics of female bodies they haven't even developed yet!--or movements like hip thrusts or shimmies are actually communicating, given the cultural context of this performance? Not to mention the awesome lyrics of a song that literally, verbally, reinforces the message that women are property who should be properly marked as owned before they give away their sexual favors. Maybe these girls have some dim idea--which is actually worse than having no idea at all, I would think. But what the adults in control of this situation have done is encourage these talented girls, who surely have developed their talents in dance at least partly out of the sheer joy of movement--to offer themselves as sexualized objects in order to do what they enjoy and are good at. Lesson learned: the only way to be who I am and do what I want is through the mechanism of being an outstanding object of sexual desire, even before I get my boobs.

Oh, that's awesome. Congratulations to everyone on that.

Not to mention, this gem of a video is on youtube, and when these amazing girls grow up and, say, apply to college, and later for jobs, there it will be. Forever archived on the ol' intertubes. That's gonna really help them out later on in life, isn't it.

cheap tricks

Having lived the entirety of my decade of married life as a poor grad student bouncing from student housing apartment to another--till landing in this fabulous rectory, The Gwynne House, a year or so ago--I have my own set of "cheap tricks" for making it on a shoestring budget patched together from stipends, student loans, and part-time waitressing gigs. But I'm interested in your cheap tricks. What are your favorite ways of pinching pennies, making a meal out of the random oddities in the cupboard at the end of the week, etc.? I'm looking for everything from recipes for your favorite cheap meals to advice on navigating grocery stores without falling for those endcrap displays...

from JW: Passive Resistance for Gender Equality in the Church

The assumptions about how scripture functions and the ability to “interpret” it within Churches of Christ have produced a number of faulty readings of Scripture. The most obvious example is the staunch stance that (many) Churches of Christ take on not using instrumental music simply because the NT does not discuss the use of instruments in music. However, the NT also does not address the use of technology in worship, but I hear no churches arguing that it is wrong to use microphones. Churches of Christ are inconsistent on the application of such principles as “speak where the Bible speaks, silent where the Bible is silent,” and it results in no small number of problems when describing the idiosyncrasies of our worship.
Some problems, however, do not result from the silence of scripture, but rather from the perceived certainty of what scripture actually does say. For example: the commands for the silence of women in the church (see 1 Corinthians 14:35-36; 1 Timothy 2:11-13). For many churches (not just the Churches of Christ), the interpretation of these passages is clear: women must be silent. However, there are problems with the certainty with which this conclusion is offered.

1. We do not actually require women to be completely silent. When Churches of Christ sing their characteristic a capella songs, there are female voices as well as male. Clearly, even we do not take this command to its fullest extent to require absolute silence.
2. The reasoning that a woman cannot teach/preach because the text says no woman can have authority over a man ignores other scriptural witnesses of the authority of women. I offer as an example Phoebe of Romans 16, who is both a patron and deacon of the church at Cenchraea, not to mention that she is likely the carrier of Paul’s letter and therefore the representative of Paul to Rome. So unless we presume that the churches in Cenchraea and Rome were completely made up of females, it is beyond doubt that Phoebe had authority over men and was appointed to such a position by Paul, the presumed author of the above texts in question.

Given these two points, it seems reasonable to conclude that simply referring to 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 as “proof-texts” to not include women within the worship service is problematic. And we can come to this conclusion with a “naïve” reading of the text—that is, it does not require any special approach or interpretation to see that the example of Phoebe contradicts the injunctions against women having authority. It just requires good philological and historical tools. But for those who cannot read Greek, it requires honesty by our Bible translation committees—I’m looking at you NIV.
I do not believe it is possible for any person to arrive at the biblical text “objectively”—that is, without being formed by preconceived notions and experiences. However, this concept does not apply only to the readers of scripture, but also to the authors of scripture. In other words, those who wrote the words that we read as scripture could not help but be influenced by the assumptions of their various cultures.
One cultural assumption implicit within the commands for silence is that women were simply not intelligent enough to have authority over men. It was assumed that women were not as capable as men, and as a result of this assumption, women were not educated as men were in the ancient world. The practice of not educating women only perpetuated the assumption that women were not as intelligent. And thus, we have evidence of an oppressive system based on faulty assumptions of gender inequality that provides the (implicit) reasoning for the silence of women. The explicit reasoning of 1 Timothy 2—that man was created first and woman second—only serves as a “theological” justification of the culturally assumed place of women.
I hope that no one today still assumes that women are in any way inferior to men. If that assumption persists, there is nothing that I could say that would deter such willful ignorance. So, assuming that we all agree on the equality of men and women, we must take this into account when we read scripture. The authors assumed women were inferior, but we do not agree with their assumption. So how can we agree with their conclusion?
So now we come to the practical aspect: given the stance of the Churches of Christ on women, what should I do? Should I just leave and join a more egalitarian community? Should I become an activist and demand change immediately and loudly? Should I stay and patiently try to work it out with those who would listen? My lack-of-confrontation-personality wants to take option one and just leave. But my attempt to remain faithful to the community of faith that raised me and taught me the Gospel makes me fight against the gut instinct to leave. As for the second option, I do not have the personality to be an activist. That is not to say that I don’t think it is a viable option, I just don’t think it is for me. As for the third option, let’s just be honest here: I am not patient. I don’t want to spend 10 years trying to convince one congregation that it’s okay for women to read scripture publicly but restrict them from the “more important” jobs like eldership and preaching.
Given the fact that I have problems with each of the three options mentioned above, I have been trying to think of another option. For inspiration, I think of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. in the 1960s, and specifically I think of the examples of passive resistance (like sit-ins, marches, etc…). However, I do not want to stage sit-ins or march to the church house door. So I am still left searching for an expression of my passive resistance. And the more I have thought about this issue, the clearer my answer has become.
My form of passive resistance for gender equality within the church is: silence.
Clearly I do not mean complete silence because you are reading my blog post, so let me explain what I mean.
I think it is wrong for any institution, including the church, to deny someone the opportunity to do something for which they are capable and trained based on gender. For example: my wife, Naomi, has the same ministerial training that I have: an M.Div. from Abilene Christian University. Actually, she has more: an undergrad Bible degree from Rochester College with a minor in counseling. On paper, her credentials beat my own B.A. in Political Science. Moreover, not only is she better qualified based on training, she is better qualified based on gifting: I can write and deliver a sermon, but she can preach. However, despite the fact that she is better qualified on all counts, virtually no Church of Christ (with few exceptions) would hire her over me. This is not just unfortunate or unfair, it is morally wrong.
So, if our churches refuse to let her use her training and gifts, then I will refuse to use mine. Now, those of you who know me may say, well that’s convenient for you since you have chosen an academic career rather than a ministerial career. And I agree. But that does not mean that any church of which I would be a part would not ask me to do things like preach, lead prayer, lead songs, teach Bible class, etc…
To say it more succinctly: I will not work for or serve any institution that would not allow my wife, being equally trained as I, to perform the same job. Yes, this means that I will not work for any university that would not hire my wife to do the same job, but that is not as likely to cause a problem as the church scenario.
However, in order for this form of protest to mean anything, I must take it one step further. I cannot just refuse the opportunity to preach, lead prayer, teach, etc… without an explanation. I must express the reason for my refusal. Perhaps I will respond to any such invitation with a question: “You know, I’m not very good at preaching, but my wife is. Would you ask her to do it instead?” If the response is “No,” then I will decline and explain my reasoning.
I do not propose this as something that everyone else should do. I would be happy for other (especially my male colleagues) to participate in this form of protest, but only if you choose. This is the form of protest that best fits my personality, so it works for me. I encourage every one who reads this to think of creative ways that you can actively or passively call for change within our churches.
In conclusion: gender equality is not a worship preference issue; it is a justice issue. If you disagree, I hope that you will reconsider. If you agree, I urge you to think about what you can do about it.

originally posted here at Jamey's blog

what line?

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

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

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

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

defining marriage (not for the faint-hearted or easily offended)

When a three year old asks you "what is 'married,'" it sends you down a surprisingly difficult and philosophical spiral. Just what is the basic "essence" (in quotes, because I hate this word) of this particular human relationship, which we set apart from other human relationships as unique, and grace with special social status and legal rights?

Now, I am not one of those parents who is squeamish or reluctant to chat to my toddler about body parts and where babies come from. When Clare made the intuitive leap that babies in big round bellies exit from their mama's bellybutton, the cuteness of her toddler logic did not stop me from correcting her misunderstanding of this important biological process. Babies come out of vaginas, and she will gladly tell you so, and add that that is a-MAZ-ing.

But for all that, when Clare asked me to define 'what is married,' my toddler-sized definition did not include an explicit reference to sex, or where babies come from. I think I could have managed a version for her that was not alarming and made some kind of sense, but I didn't.

Instead I cobbled together something like, "when two people love each other so much, and they want to be together all the time, they get married and live together in the same house and share everything." Clare's first reaction, after digesting this information for a couple days, was to let me know that she wanted to marry me. Actually, she clarified, we're like, already married, because we love each other and live in the same house and share our things. And now, as I've noted, I've been replaced--she is determined to marry her BFF S---- from school. Because if that's what getting married means, well, that's how she perceives these relationships.

Obviously my definition has some flaws. My little toddler polygynist is just logically applying the information (though she seemed to miss the part about 'two people'). But to be honest, I like it. Particularly because the sexual aspect of the marriage relationship isn't entirely missing--it's implicit, rather than explicit. Share everything.

In the context of these toddler dialogues, NPR's recent piece on challenges to DOMA just highlights the way in which opponents of "redefining marriage" are themselves seeking to literally "redefine marriage." It seems to me that to arbitrate which relationships count as marriage and which don't, on the basis of what sort of sexual acts are engaged in, is to discount as irrelevant everything I included in my definition of marriage for Clare. Is that a "defense of marriage?" (And, let me pause for a parenthetical tangent and note how absurd the name for this law is. "Defense" of marriage? Because people who love each other so much that they want to be together all the time and live in the same house and share everything are the metaphorical equivalent of a terrorist threat? Yes, clearly these people sound horribly deranged.) I thought that marriage is supposed to be a unique and sanctified human relationship, something that the biblical text dares to use as a metaphor for our relationship to God and God's relationship with humanity and Jesus' relationship to the church--but it seems to me that in so vigorously "defending" marriage, the definition of what it is that's being defended has been stripped down to the bare naked sex act. Defense of "marriage" is just defense of the holy and singular privilege of penile penetration of female passivity.

This is not a marriage my daughter would recognize as marriage. And I intend to keep it that way.

vote for Neal

Here's one of those free and painless ways to help someone help someone else in potentially life-changing ways.

Go here: http://www.refresheverything.com/collegescholarshipfund and vote for Neal's idea.

I don't know Neal but it sounds like he has some good ideas in his brain! Definitely worth a click, and plus, I like conspiring to take $50K away from evil corporations. Very refreshing. ;)