CSC 2011: Faith, Science, Babies

Before it all sinks down into that inaccessible fog of forgottenness that swamps everything prior to, say, a week or so ago, I'd like to try to say something about the Christian Scholars Conference.

This is a conference I don't skip and always look forward to, and I'd been looking forward to this one for a solid year or more--ever since learning that the theme was "Science, Theology and the Academy." And, since I was lucky enough to be informally included in some of the brainstorming and planning, I got invested in it early. And though I had exhausted myself in 2010 with multiple sessions and vowed not to ever do that again (mainly, because it means that you're always missing out on sessions you really, really want to attend but can't), I couldn't just sit on the sidelines for this one. In fact, I was so excited about it all that I made all sorts of plans, sessions I wanted to convene and papers I wanted to write and present--and it was months before a basic fact of life clicked: a baby due in April = babe-in-arms in June. Yikes! So then I had to revise expectations a bit, and figure out how I was going to make that work.

But, I'm very happy to say, it did seem to work, and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Teresa Pecinovsky a.k.a. TKP, who volunteered to be my child-care-support (especially since it turned out that Plan A, a.k.a. "Nana," my mom, Pat Thweatt, could not attend as originally planned!). I'm sure that there were some sessions and networking and whatnot that TKP missed out on, and walking a howling desperately hungry babe around is no fun (Baby Z is quite unaccustomed to being made to wait 10 minutes for meals. She thought the world was ending.) However awesome my baby Z is--and she IS--it was still a sacrifice and one without which I could not have done the introducing/presenting I needed to do.

And, although one effect of having babe-in-arms at the CSC was a definite sense of being only half-there, perpetually late and a little unfocused and in general, just a little less than my professional best--I am super glad that I did it (with help). First, because I simply could not miss this conference. And second, because it just shouldn't be impossible for a woman to be a scholar and a mother, and simply walking around with a baby in a sling at an academic shindig makes that statement better than grousing about it on a blog.

And, next time I present something at a conference (coming up in November, where I present something on Haraway cyborg & theology in front of Haraway her very own self), if I get nervous, I can now say to myself, "Self, you got up in front of folks with about six episodes of spit-up evident on your shirt and pee on your foot. You can get through this."

My favorite question from the conference (apart from: "how old is she?"): "you're listed as 'Independent Scholar'--what exactly does that mean?" Um...polite euphemism for unemployed, and thank you for asking. Do you know of anyone with a need for some professional God-talk? I'm available. (Got a tip the other day from a friend about hawking my God-talk services--apparently someone is having some success with this! Who knew?)

Re the academicking side of things, I am very pleased to report that the session I organized on "Theology, Science and the Hermenautics of Interdisciplinary Reason," starring my superstar colleague Ken Reynhout, my ACU prof & advisor Fred Aquino, and fellow ACU alum/SMU PhD candidate David Mahfood, was a huge success (IMO). I was not anticipating a huge turnout, but the room, with 50 seats, was about 3/4 full, and the Q&A time had less awkward downtime than any AAR session I've ever been to. Apparently people are way hungrier for epistemological musing than I bargained for! So--while I have a mental list of self-critical "do this better next time" notes, I think the session itself was brilliant and I am very proud to have brought such a marvelous bunch of guys together.

My other session was also brilliant, though only a handful of folks know that firsthand. :( And again, it's Ken who really shined there--I was pretty fatigued by Friday afternoon, plus I had pee on my foot, so I was less than awesome. But despite my less than awesomeness, the topic of our session--the Science for Ministry Institute that Ken & Wentzel direct at PTS--is such a great program and model for interdisciplinary science and religion dialogue that the session rocked anyway. Just wish more folks had found their way to our little room to hear about it!

There were, of course, lots of sessions I wish I could have attended and couldn't--not just those that conflicted with mine, but sitting through a session with a babe means, really, not sitting at all, and hoping that coming in & out multiple times is less annoying to everyone than baby noises. Chris Dowdy's panel session, "After Apology: A Conversation with Royce Money on Apology, Race and Christian Higher Education," was the first session I half-attended (an incredibly important dialogue, and I have the impression that it went extremely well.) There were also several sessions on gender in the CofC, most of which I couldn't go to, but which add an important dimension to the ongoing dialogue about this within our tradition in their contribution of empirical research into attitudes and practices about gendered roles in (and out of) church. One session I did attend addressed specifically the overlap between academia and theology on gender issues: Christian institutions of higher education and the specific challenges faced by female scholars and administrators within them. Academia in general is not, ahem, very "woman friendly"--if you doubt this, cruise on over to the blog What is it like to be a woman in philosophy?--and in a Christian context, this atmosphere is often additionally entrenched with theological justifications. To hear this said out loud, bluntly, to a roomful of interested women and men who then proceeded to ask the constructive question--how do we change this? what practices need to be changed and what new practices invented? what structures need to be torn down and what new ones built? who are the key players in the institutions for doing these things and how do we teach them what needs to be done?--while I sat there, an un(der)employed academic with a baby at my breast, while the topic at hand was the how-to promotion of women scholars--I can't even really put into words what that sort of affirmation felt like.

One regret that won't go away: I missed my chance to meet John Polkinghorne. Baby Z got a little hungry for second breakfast right before the Saturday morning session, and so I was late making my way to the room. Session was already underway when I got there--and I had to catch my plane. That chance won't be coming back, and I'm a little heartsick about it.

However, I did get to meet J.J.M. Roberts, finally! Since we just missed each other at PTS, it took years and a trip to Malibu to make that happen.

But, there's next year in Nashville to look forward to, for lots of reasons. The theme is "reconciliation," I'm honored to now be a part of the science & religion planning committee, and middle TN is Home. See y'all there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"sure."

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

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

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

the New York Times, an open letter, and my two cents

I think just about every ACU alum in my 500+ Facebook friends has picked this up and posted it, or hit the "like" button on someone else's link: "Even on religious campuses, students fight for gay identity" by Erik Eckholm in the NYT.

If you've read the piece, you know that it references Harding University and Abilene Christian University, as well as Baylor University, Belmont University, and North Central University (a Pentecostal university in central MN).

You may also know that in response to the occasion created by the NYT article, my husband wrote an open letter to the administrations of both Harding and ACU, speaking as an alum of both universities and as Rector of Grace Church in Newark. (Brent has followed up with a brief clarification, here.)

I have no wish to write an open letter (not sure that it would matter much to anyone what an unemployed theologian and mom of two who works unpaid from her home office has to say?), but both the article itself, Brent's letter, and the dialogue and personal responses from our ACU mentors and colleagues have prompted a lot of thoughts--exactly the kind of thing this blog serves as my dumping ground for. And so, since Baby Z seems content so far to ignore Google calendar's kind reminder that today is "DUE DATE" (lest we forget?!), I will do some cognitive dumping. (Yes, I expect that this scatty metaphor is entirely appropriate for the level of organization and polish this post will exhibit.)

No one knows better than two alums of both schools, Harding and ACU, how different these two institutions within our Church of Christ tradition truly are. (Y'all, we lived it.) The response that HUQP received, censorship and public condemnation from the chapel pulpit, was as unsurprising as it was disappointing. The point of The State of the Gay, according to HUQP, was to start dialogue about the presence and experiences of gay students at Harding--and while HUQP succeeded in starting a dialogue much bigger than they had originally anticipated, they did so despite Harding University's efforts to end the conversation before it even got started. This is starkly different from ACU's recent track record of actively, respectfully and officially engaging this issue on campus (read, for instance, this 2006 account from Robin Reed of SoulForce, entitled "Grateful for Abilene.")

Further, even at Harding, as the authors of The State of the Gay attest, there are individuals within both the student body and the faculty who are welcoming not just of dialogue but of actual gay people, even in all their gayness. I certainly know this to be true at ACU. But the NYT article, focused as it is on institutional policy and working with a broad and generic category of "religious campuses" that stretches to include everything from the largest and best-known Baptist university in the country to a small Bible college in MN, does not drill down to this level of (highly relevant) detail. Official spokespersons' statements of official policy are the end of that story; and this, as the HUQP's voices remind us, is just the beginning of the real story, and the reason for having a conversation.

For all that, I have to say that spokesperson reiterations of official institutional policy are significant. For one thing, they're what make it into print in the New York Times, and they're the articulation of the stance of the institution in the public square. Things may be much more complicated--they always are--on the ground of these "religious campuses" (and praise God for that!). But the official policy is not complicated. It is simple and straightforward, and it tells gay students that they are welcome...but their gayness is not:

“We want to engage these complex issues, and to give help and guidance to students who are struggling with same-sex attraction,” said Jean-Noel Thompson, [ACU]’s vice president for student life. “But we are not going to embrace any advocacy for gay identity.”

Many people, of course, find themselves stuck between an understanding of the Christian imperative to love and welcome all people, as Jesus did, and their understanding that the Bible clearly condemns same-sex relationships as sin. The uneasy, and unstable, result, is a compromise in the form of the mantra "hate the sin, love the sinner," a phrase which neatly sums up the reasoning behind the statement of official policy above, which walks the same fine line. You are welcome here, but your gayness is not.

This makes sense to a lot of people. And as far as I can tell, all those people are straight.

This is the problem: "hate the sin, love the sinner," and its official policy counterpart of insisting on reparative therapy and the characterization of all gayness as "struggle with same-sex attraction" only works as long as you refuse to listen to what actual gay people around you will tell you about being gay.

Are there people with ex-gay narratives? Yes. Are these people flourishing, at peace, spiritually blessed and transformed as ex-gay? I'll take their word for it. By the same token, if these narratives matter as testimonies and witness to the possibility of transformation, I must by my own reasoning take the word of the many, many more gay Christians I know for whom the demand to be ex-gay was soul-crushing and literally life-threatening, and for whom coming out was a salvific act. We can't pick and choose among the narratives our gay Christian brothers and sisters give us; they are as complicated a set of life stories and faith journeys as any other. We don't get to privilege the ones that tell us what we already believe to be true, while shutting out the ones that contradict our presuppositions. We have to face the necessity of reconstructing, over and over again, what we think the Bible teaches us and what God demands of us in our attempts to lead holy lives. Because that is what the Christian life is.

Is this sort of dialogue and attentive listening and faithful Christian living in community happening at ACU? Yes. But is it reflected in the official policy as articulated to the New York Times? No. 

And this is, as I see it, the point of the open letter. We know the kind of community and ethic that exists at ACU, and we know that the full realities of ACU's actions and attitudes towards its gay students is not reflected in a one-size-fits-all official policy of reparative therapy for the "struggle with same-sex attraction." And that is both encouraging and problematic, in that it indicates a disconnect between on-the-ground practice and policy. The point of the letter, as I see it, is to publicly urge the university to fix this disconnect. The point of the letter is that this is not a vain hope.

This may indeed get lost in the media's bottomless ability for amplifying conflict and ignoring the possibilities of reconciliation which are the heart of the Christian gospel. But we know better. The work of reconciliation is already evident, if not complete, and in this work everyone must discern and play their part. This is difficult, and sometimes we get it wrong--and yet, even so, my faith is unshaken that this, indeed, is not a vain hope.

Calling a Time-Out: on Gender, Evolution, and Neon, or "Pink Polished Primate Piggies"

A 5,000 year old burial site with male remains buried in a typical female manner suggests, to researcher Kamila Remisova Vesinova, that this burial site contained a man who was gay/transsexual. This was no Jimmy Castor Bunch troglodyte virilely grunting to himself in the mirror "gottafindawoman, gottafindawoman, gottafindawoman, gottafindawoman." What could possibly explain ancient evidence of such gender deviant behavior?

Well obviously, Mr/s. Troglodyte's misguided mama stumbled upon a small time capsule sent back in time by the diabolical mad scientist that the pink-polished J. Crew ad boy is clearly destined to become, thanks to the warped notions of his own mother, in a desperate effort to undermine the social fabric and family values of America and thereby validate his deviant gender-bending neon-pink polish preferences, before America even comes into existence.

Obviously.

Like Melissa Wardy of pigtailpals.com, my first reaction to Toemageddon was to roll my eyes at Faux-News and continue thinking about relevant things (like finishing my book before these Braxton-Hicks thingies turn into The Real Thing.) But--as Melissa points out--the story in this non-story, the Thing That Should Be Talked About, is:

...the gender constraint and gender policing going on in this hullabaloo. From the moment go nearly two years ago, Pigtail Pals has put a direct challenge to the marketing and products that I know to be objectifiying, limiting, stereotyping and sexualizing our girls. What we must know as parents and people who care about children – we must afford this same right to our sons.

So this troglodyte-turned-cyborg mama is calling a TIME-OUT. Fox Friends, you need to go sit in a quiet place, get calm, and think about the stupid things you've said that were wrong, and mean, and when you've figured out what it is you did that was wrong, you need to apologize. Nicely, like you really mean it. First, to Jenna and her adorable kid with the awesome toenails, and then to the rest of America for making us take the time out of our busy adult lives to address this ridiculous gender-bending behavior, and by that I mean, yours.

why don't they just leave (once again, sigh)

It must really suck to have this aimed at you from both sides of the Great Divide: those firmly within the CofC, and those who have left and don't understand why everyone else just won't grow a pair and do the same.

Those of us who, like Paul Tillich describes, are "aliens" within our own churches (his summation of the existential predicament of theologians) are pretty used to hearing this occasionally from CofC people who are tired of putting up with us and our tiresome oddity and annoying vocality. Certainly I've heard it enough, as this blog's archive testifies. If you decide to dwell within the CofC as alien anyhow, you learn how to screen this out--or at least, armor yourself against the hurtfulness of it. I imagine that the HU students & alumni who comprise the HU Queer Press anticipated this kind of reaction from the pious faithful. In fact--the overall message of The State of the Gay seems to be a response to this question, an answer to that reactionary attitude: Why don't we just leave? Because we're part of you--and we always have been. And because we're invested in making this community that we're all a part of a better one, for everybody.

In case there were any doubt about this, the latest statement from HUQP ought to clear it up. Demanding that hate mail to the HU administration cease, HUQP writes:

We are frustrated that others would pervert our message of compassion and open dialogue by speaking with hate and violence. We wish to create a better campus for all, queer and straight. This cannot be achieved by alienating or attacking those with whom we disagree. Anyone who uses or advocates violence, in word or in action, has completely misunderstood our zine's message.

And they end the statement with this:

"The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of unity, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work"

- Archbishop Oscar Romero

It is the same message I tried to express after a couple years of wrestling with the emotional aftermath of a truly awful experience in a CofC, in which I felt personally targeted and deliberately ambushed--despite having said and done nothing to express any of my heretical theological views within that church community. You can read the full blog post here. But here's an excerpt:

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

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

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

the turnaround

So, I have to be "dangerously maternal" for a bit and relate this marvelous conversation with Clare from a few days ago.

Clare's request for her new room was that it have rainbows on the walls. She asked for this months ago, so I called my interior-designer sis and got her advice, which was: wall decals. I found these online at a ridiculous discount--spent about $15 total for 2 packages of rainbows, clouds & stars. And so, last week, at the top of the unpacking priority list and second only to "find the damn dinner plates already" was, get the rainbows up in Clare's room.

I also consulted her about where she wanted the rainbows and how she wanted them to look. She was very specific: she wanted 2 full rainbows on opposite walls. And I said okay.

And then I didn't do it like she said.

Instead, the wall opposite the one pictured above has 2 half-arches, one beginning in the corner and coming down, and the other coming out of the window. It looks great.

But it's not what she wanted. And she let me know. Like I knew she would.

She was super excited about coming home after school to see her rainbow room. And she walked in and saw the first wall: rapture. Then she turned and saw the second. And turned to me, mad face on, and said, "I don't like it." Pause. "It's not what I said." Flopped down in the chair, very prissy-pissed-off-princess. Longer pause. Then: "It's not all about you."

Oh, I knew it was coming. I was tired, I had put off other things to get this done, my arms ached, my back ached, I had spent all day putting together this beautiful room just for her...but she was right. I had asked what she wanted; she had told me exactly what she wanted. and I hadn't done it like she said.

So I said to her, "You're right. It's not all about me. What is it all about?" She looked at me and said. "Me. I get to give the instructions." Then, "You didn't do it like I said." And I said, "You're right. I didn't do it like you said. I did it this other way. Can I tell you why?" She looked at me darkly, but didn't object, so I went on. "I tried it your way, and the wall with the window is smaller than the other wall. It just didn't look the same and I thought it would be prettier this other way. I know it's not what you said, but I wanted to make your room the prettiest it could be. So I did it this way instead." There was silence. And then, after about a minute:

"Okay, mom. I see you had a good reason." Then: "I think I could like it." Then: "Those can be the baby rainbows hugging the window, and this is the mama rainbow smiling at them from over here."

I mean, damn. "You had a good reason"?! She's not even 5, and it took her about 5 minutes to process personal disappointment and outrage, listen and understand another point of view, and come up with some forgiveness and acceptance. I know so-called adults who can't seem to do that.

link: covering up is a feminist issue

Annie @ PhDinParenting has produced a video version of her blog post, "covering up is a feminist issue." In some ways, it reminds me of the Vagina Monologues bit entitled "My short skirt"--applied to breastfeeding. And in some sense, that's right: it seems that part of the motivation for the video includes recent comments about women avoiding rape by not dressing like sluts. But it's the more direct public square commentary, often from other women, about how "inappropriate" it is to "NIP" (that's nurse-in-public, for the uninitiated) or to do so without hiding yourself and baby under some kind of massive tent-like cover, that's the real issue. What the video does is connect these, as well as throw in a visual cue that there are other cultural and religious standards at play as well (early in the video, you see a burka), and draw the conclusion that the more general problem is that standards of dress are imposed externally on women, in all sorts of contexts and for all sorts of reasons. Breastfeeding in public is just one of those.

One of the more subtle points in the video happens right up front, in the pairing of conflicting cultural messages to Western women--"cover up"/"strip down." While the video doesn't spell this out, this highlights the way in which women's breasts, in our culture, have become public objects in sexual contexts--but stick a baby on there, and suddenly it's gross. So we're left with a situation where cleavage is fine, but God forbid you let a curve show if you're a mom with a hungry babe.

Personally, one of the many gains I experienced as a woman finally loving and appreciating my body through experiencing pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood was learning to see my body as functional and vital--and part of that happened through redefining my breasts, not as sort of pointless objects on the front of my chest that other people seem to enjoy for some unfathomable reason, but as a necessary, important and life-giving functional part of my amazing body. This meant thinking of them as special and awesome--while at the same time, thinking of them as something akin to my elbow--just there for a reason, because I needed them to do their milk-making thing. Not just hang there and look, I guess, pretty.

I loved nursing Clare, at home, in church, on trains, wherever. She hated being under a cover and so I didn't use one--and nursing tops make them, IMO, unnecessary. Clare's big ol' beautiful baby head completely blocked whatever wasn't covered by the nursing top. And I'm looking forward to nursing Baby Z...and reinforcing with Clare that breasts are awesome milk-making things and she's right to look forward to the day when hers get great big--so she can feed her babies.

Today I got my first open-mouthed, total shock reaction from someone when I said I was moving to Newark.

in defense of Planned Parenthood, because every child should be a choice

"It's not a choice, it's a child."

Every roadtrip I've taken in that last decade and a half, I've seen that bumper sticker on the Covenant Transport trucks while I pass on the left. And over that decade and a half I've gone from a single college kid, far from marriage and motherhood, nodding in knee-jerk agreement, to a mom of two who grimaces in philosophical pain at the simple-minded misdirection of this ubiquitous bumper sticker slogan. (But hey, at least all the words are spelled correctly, and there's no Hitler mustache--which is more than you can expect from most slogan-toting peeps these days.)

I would like to see some bumper stickers that say, "Every child should be a choice." That's the goal, right? That every child conceived is a child whose conception is desired, whose growth in the womb is deliberately nurtured by both mother and community, whose birth is welcomed with the kind of joy that only comes after a ridiculous long period of anticipation? Isn't that what we want? Isn't it a measure of the brokenness of the world that this isn't, in fact, how it often happens?

So why is it that we separate these things, as if they were an either/or? Why don't we, instead, acknowledge the basic biological reality that a child is in fact a choice? And then get busy with making sure that people can in fact choose their children?

I don't mean the "you chose to have sex, so you chose the consequence" line, either. I mean, bringing a child into the world is not just a single choice, much less is it simply the statistically-more-or-less-likely sperm-meets-egg consequence of a single sex act. Bringing a child into the world is a series of choices: a series of choices which begin as soon as you realize that you're not just coming down with the flu because the flu doesn't make your boobs sore, and go to the store to get yourself a package of pee sticks. I don't just mean abortion here--although that is the starkest and most obvious form that this existential choosing can take. Choosing to nurture a life in your womb is a series of choices, one that has a definite starting point but no foreseeable ending point. It starts with prenatal vitamins and yoga and cloth diapers and escalates into something so large and complicated it encompasses the entirety of your life. It's on you: the health and well-being of a completely helpless human being. It's on you: the health and well-being of an increasingly independent little person. Everything from the food they eat to the answers they get to the impossible questions they ask, it's on you. Choosing to nurture life does not have an end. It just keeps going.

We forget--or do we just willfully ignore the obvious?--that women who face down that stark, inevitable, existential choice, do I nurture this life?, aren't answering a question about pregnancy. Pregnancy is the easy part. They're facing down the question about the cascading, unending, exponentially multiplying, choice of nurturing that life, for the rest of their lives.

If you're a fortunate and blessed woman, like I am, then your choice has already been made prior to the pee sticks, because you know that you want this to happen and when it does, your answer is ready: yes. Maybe you've already stocked the cupboard with prenatals and bought a copy of What to Expect (though, for my money, Smart Woman's Guide to Better Birth is a better purchase), you're so ready to say yes to this tiny life. Because you've already chosen this child.

In a different life, I might not be one of the fortunate, blessed ones whose children are predetermined choices. Brent and I were married six years before Clare. (Those, we refer to as "BC.") Not to get too personal about it, but believe me, there was plenty of opportunity for sperm-meets-egg in those years. (FTR, we're doing fine now too, no worries.) For those years--really, for the first full decade of our married lives--we were students, living off of loans and scholarships and part-time jobs of all sorts (between us, we've waited tables, sold orthopedic shoes, sold books, babysat, substituted in public schools and bank-tellered)--that is to say, we were permanently officially broke. And busy. And not interested in or able to even seriously ponder parenthood, except to watch the parents we knew with incomprehension and wide eyes at the amount of sheer energy and time that went into it, and think--no. Not yet. We cannot possibly do that.

So thank God for Planned Parenthood. I re-upped my pills through them the whole time we lived in Abilene, and stocked up there for the year we were overseas in Changsha. And since it turns out that I'm 'Fertile Myrtle' and Brent's 'Virile Cyril' (both times we've gotten pregnant within two months of tossing contraceptives), it's a helluva good thing we weren't left on our own. (Can't say that I see six years of married abstinence in the name of pursuit of theological scholarship as a real option. The world of academia still seems to largely operate on the assumption that scholars are celibate medieval monks--but in the real world, we've all got bodies and sexual drives attached to these putatively floating heads.)

Clare knows that she is chosen; it is another way of saying that she is and has always been loved. Baby Z will know that she is chosen, too. They'll know this because we'll tell them, and because we'll keep choosing them for the rest of their lives, in all those uncountable ways that you choose to nurture and love a kid every single day.

Every kid should know this. It should be the basic expectation with which kids grow up and experience their world. Every child should know that they were chosen--know it in a way that makes asking the question impossible. It should be the tacit foundation for life, that unspoken assurance that you are chosen, wanted, desired, loved.

Supporting Planned Parenthood ought to be a no-brainer. Instead we've let things get to a point where the health of women and children are potentially at risk because no one can think past the word "abortion." This is not about abortions. This is about doing the concrete, practical things that will get us closer to a world where every child born will be a child who is wanted: about enabling women and men, no matter who they are, to make childbearing and childrearing something they can choose to undertake gladly and readily. Every child should be a choice.

aaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh

There are so many more things I'd rather be blogging about than Sarah Palin. Like, what does it mean that a computer named Watson just beat a couple of human Jeopardy champs, and is this really a harbinger of the "shape of things to come"--good or bad, and all that. And I've refrained from blogging at all about anything of late simply because I am too busy: with the move less than two weeks away, I desperately need to get a reworked draft of chapter 4 complete prior to sealing up the last box of my already mostly-packed-up office.

But Sarah Palin. I'll feud over this tidbit from HuffPo till I get it out of my system, so--commence the bloggy exorcism.

First: I was right. I was so, totally, right ON. Back in 2008, I called it. My ire with SP began with her calculated, manipulative use of that great big lie, the SuperMom. She worked it back then, and she's still working it. All she's done is move on from lipsticked bulldogs to mama grizzlies as her go-to SuperMom animal mascot. But now she's come right out and said it:

The former Alaska governor suggested there's "no one" more qualified to handle the demands of the presidency than "a woman, a mom," according to Politico.

Don't get me wrong. Being the primary caregiver of a child really is, absolutely, the most time-consuming, emotionally wracking, philosophically challenging and physically exhausting thing I've ever attempted. And I wouldn't hesitate to agree with the somewhat cliched insistence that it's the most important thing I'll ever do--hell, look at the sidebar, I'm doing it again in +/- 63 days!. Being responsible for the holistic formation of another human being? Does it get any scarier or more important than that? But what does any of this have to do with, say, grasping global geopolitical realities? The only potential crossover I see, frankly, between momming and presidenting is diplomatic negotiation with hostile, unwilling and not necessarily fully rational partners.

So, fine. I'm still pissed about the SuperMom act, which I am still convinced is a damaging cultural image for women in our culture, and to have her flat-out say that being a mom qualifies you to be President makes me want to grow Mama Grizzly claws, put on some lipstick, and do something violent.

And then. When you and I both thought it wasn't possible to feel any more contempt for this egomaniacal caricature of a politician, she goes and does this:

...mocked Michelle Obama to make her point. The first lady is encouraging mothers to breast feed their infants as part of her campaign to reduce childhood obesity - an effort that has drawn scorn from some conservatives. "No wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody you better breast feed your babies," Palin said. "I'm looking and say, 'Yeah, you better because the price of milk is so high right now.'"

You know, if you're going to construct your pres campaign platform around the SuperMom image, the least you could f-ing do is actually support real moms.

from Brian McLaren on postcolonial theology:

Call me cynical, but here’s my suspicion: Adjectives in front of theology are deceptive. Yes, they’re needed; no, I’m not against them, but still, they’re deceptive. Here’s how.

By distinguishing some theology with a modifier — feminist, black, Latin American, eco-, post-colonial, or indigenous, we are playing into the idea that these theologies are special, different — boutique theologies if you will. Meanwhile, unmodified theology — theology without adjectives — thus retains its privileged position as normative. Unmodified theology is accepted as Christian theology, or orthodox theology, or important, normal, basic, real, historic theology.

But what if we tried to subvert this deception? What if we started calling standard, unmodified theology chauvinist theology, or white theology, or consumerist, or colonial, or Greco-Roman theology? The covert assumption behind the modifier post-colonial thus becomes overt, although it is generally more obliquely and politely stated than this:  Standard, normative, historic, so-called orthodox Christian theology has been a theology of empire, a theology of colonialism, a theology that powerful people used as a tool to achieve and defend land theft, exploitation, domination, superiority, and privilege.

If that doesn’t sound disturbing, I’m not writing well or you’re not reading well.

Noting that "If standard Christian theology has indeed been colonial, then we would expect it to have certain characteristics," McLaren lists the following:

1. It would explain — historically or theologically — why the colonizers deserve to be in power — sustained in the position of hegemony.
2. It would similarly explain why the colonized deserve to be dominated — maintained in the subaltern or subservient position.
3. It would provide ethical justification for the phases and functions of colonization — from exploration to settlements to land acquisition to minority marginalization to segregation to hegemony-maintenance, even to ethnic cleansing.
4. It would bolster the sense of entitlement and motivation among the colonizers.
5. It would embed the sense of submission and docility among the colonized.
6. It would facilitate alliances with political and economic systems that were supportive of or inherent to colonialism.
7. It would camouflage or cosmetically enhance its ugly aspects and preempt attempts to expose them.

As a little thought experiment, replace "colonizers" with "men" and "colonized" with "women," and ask yourself, does this describe typical Church of Christ doctrine and practice? I think you know what I think you'll find...

this is why women know better...

...than to "go to the church" for help in abusive situations.

the HUPS blog

I'm not real invested in this, as I've made my peace with the fact that being an alum from Harding University is now something like a curious and unrepresentative factoid of an earlier life--and having a semester of adjunct work for the HU English department on my CV is even more unreal. (Unfortunately...but I almost feel like I'd have to go undercover to attend a Homecoming at this point. And my ornery streak makes it more likely that I'd wear my "this is what a feminist looks like" T-shirt while carrying a gay pride flag, and beg Brent to wear his collar.) But anyway: it seems that HU is on the cusp of a search for a new university president.

The folks at HUPS have put together a list of first-, second- and third-tier candidates. On that list of about 10 candidates, there is one female name. Here is what the HUPS bloggers have to say about her (putative) candidacy:

Let's face it: Cheri Yecke has no chance to become Harding's next president. Is it because she's too conservative? Absolutely not. One can't be too conservative for the Harding presidency. It it because she's too liberal? Of course not. She's Sarah Palin with a Church of Christ pedigree. Is it because she's incapable? No, she ran the state school systems of Florida and Minnesota. It's because of one reason and one reason alone: she's a she.

No one on the Harding campus today has a bigger rolodex than Cheri Yecke. Her political connections are impeccable, especially for the political connections the university would deem key. She has a PhD from the University of Virginia. She's smart, tough, and PR-savvy in a way that is currently lacking in the HU administration. Her fundraising abilities would be superb. In any other university, selecting Yecke as the university's next president would be a no-brainer. But Harding is no ordinary university. For the most part, it still must feel like its president can go into churches of Christ and preach, an outmoded view of CoC higher ed that needs to be put to bed. The job of a university president is to manage and fundraise. Period. Do you really think there's anyone better on the HU campus to do this than Cheri Yecke? We at HPS think not. But until the Churches of Christ get a little less misogynistic, she's hit her glass ceiling at HU.

It's not that this is (at all) surprising--in fact, I'm a little curious as to why there's even a female name on the list at all, since the HUPS analysis is (IMO) unarguable. But the real question this raises for me is a legal/theological one. I'm aware that religious institutions of higher education may legally discriminate on the basis of religion (though not, of course, on other bases, such as ethnicity or race.) So what would the inclusion or exclusion of a female candidate in the upcoming presidential search indicate? It seems that if gender is ruled to be outside the bounds of legal discrimination on the basis of religion, there should be more than one token female candidate--and they should have a real shot. So female candidates might have a genuine basis for legal grievance if things go down like the HUPS folks predict. But, if female candidates do not appear on the list--then the only way for that to be legal would be to make it official that gender discrimination is part of the religious practice of the Churches of Christ. This, it seems to me, would then imply strongly that (contrary to the noises people make about the "women's role issue" being a matter of secondary importance, a matter of opinion, not something we should invite contention or schism over, etc., etc., ad nauseam), this is a kind of admission that silencing women is at the heart of CofC practice.

I'm curious to see which way this will go.

only girls have eyelashes

Clare's been telling me this for months now: only girls have eyelashes.

She's right, you know. The most reliable way to determine the intended gender of any character in a little kid's media world is their eyelashes. If they're a girl, they have long sweepy eyelashes to bat at the camera. If they're a boy, they don't. Generally that's not the only gender signal, of course. Girls also generally have to have bows in their hair and all sorts of accessories. Good grief, Minnie Mouse still prances around in 1950's style high heeled shoes. But you could delete all that, honestly, and you'd still know the girls from the boys without any trouble because, as my perceptive 4-year-old has accurately pointed out, only girls have eyelashes.

So a few weeks ago, I proved to her that boys actually do have eyelashes "for realz" (that is to say, empirically). I made Brent take off his glasses so Clare could see that not only does he have eyelashes, they are way awesomer than mine. She accepted this but maintained: on TV, only girls have eyelashes.

I haven't thought much more about it, other than to grumble to myself about yet another manifestation of the ubiquitous "female-gender-as-marked" thing that my daughter is observant enough to note without understanding it. Then yesterday I came across this: Toys Receiving Makeovers. Apparently in the 80's version of these toys (including Care Bears, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite and Strawberry Shortcake), girl characters didn't have to have Tammy-Faye mascara in order to be recognizable as girls. The worst thing about the side-by-side pics is that the toys in question were already nauseatingly girly to begin with--how much more gendered can you get than Care Bears and My Little Pony?!

So, when Clare draws girls (and her human representations are evolving quite rapidly these days! No more amoeba-spider-people!) they get two--yes, precisely two (?)--carefully drawn eyelashes. Otherwise of course you would never know that they are girls.

from BBC News: Female Torah scribe observes and battles tradition

I heard this on the way from St. Stephens Preschool this morning. Read the written story here, but take the time to play the embedded video, too.

Several things struck me while listening to the interview: Aviehlah's description of her work, how she came to her vocation, and how she views her unique status as the first female scribe in a few hundred years. She engages in her work as a sacred vocation--a vocation whose first glimmering came to her at the age of 3, with her first sight of the Hebrew script, which of course she did not understand fully but which she felt, instinctively, was important in some way.

But it's her description of her determination to live "sincerely and 100% within tradition" that struck me most forcefully. People regard her in a variety of ways: some people reject her, some people are fine with her, and some people seem to assume that she does what she does as a way of "sticking it to the man." This is not how she describes her vocation or her intent in pursuing it. Instead, she emphasizes how many years she spent learning from men--teachers and fellow scribes, all of whom are male--and how many years she has spent earnestly delving into tradition, seeking an answer to the question of whether it is permissible for a woman to do this work. This is, she says, as if stating the absurdly obvious, is obedience, not rebellion.*

Truthfully, it is absurdly obvious. And maybe (dare I hope?) the absurdly obvious is more easily seen in an example of a woman's devotion to a sacred calling in a tradition outside of our own CofC tradition.

Now, we don't have an authoritative body of leaders to sign off on something (or not). And we don't have an accumulated body of textual commentary describing authoritative traditions (at least, not in the same sense). What we do have, we "speak where the Bible speaks" people, is the biblical text. So for women in the c'sofC, our version of Aviehlah's obedient and diligent years-long search of tradition for permission to practice her vocation is going back to the Bible: back to those verses and the authoritative interpretations we've received, in an effort to understand, an effort to discern how we are called and what our scriptures truly say about that. This is, to state the absurdly obvious, obedience--not rebellion.

*note: some of these details are pulled from my memory of the audio interview aired on the BBC, not all of which appears in the video or the written text.

sending out the wolves

"We let a wolf into the church," Rexrode mused, "and now we can't get him out."

I wish I could say that this story about a small CofC in VA frightens me because it surprises me. Instead, it frightens me precisely because I don't find it that surprising.

I've never blogged directly about the things in my experience which render this narrative unsurprising. I've alluded to them only once, writing,

...[our] churches generally don't concern themselves with psych profiles or background checks for people who voluntarily go overseas to do mission work--these people raise their funds, typically from several churches, and so at least some of those churches don't necessarily know them personally or well, and yet we give people money at the drop of a hat and send them off--just trusting that we can take them at their word, because they say they're wanting to do this great work for the Lord. Even if we don't really know them from Adam.

Maybe that's awesome. But it's also naive.

And it totally backfires. Sometimes.

Because sometimes the people we fund are not good people. Sometimes they are terrible people, who do very bad things, all paid for out of church budgets by people who feel comfortable assuming that they can just take someone's word for it that all they want to do is serve God.

I see the exact same issue here in this story of the Harrisonburg Church of Christ--and for that reason, I wish I could agree with the reporter that this small church community "is an unlikely setting...for the kind of Southern Gothic tale involving murder and mendacity and money and treachery and, by many accounts, the handiwork of Satan himself." Instead I find it, sadly, a quite predictable setting. The only difference between what I've seen and this story is geography: this time, they invited the wolf in, instead of sending him out into the mission field. 

And so, of course, this means that this time, the wolf got caught. What happens to the wolves we send out into the world outside of our little red brick churches?

"God, hear me rage" @ feministing.com

Don't miss this post in feministing.com's Faith and Feminism series.

crowdsourcing

The question on overt instances of sexualization of women and girls in church came up in discussion on the soccer field-church post. I've heard some strange things from pulpits over the years--strange, and yes I have no doubt unintentional, things...and you may have too. I'm wondering what examples come to your mind of the sexualization of women and girls in your experience of the c'sofC.

One simple one that occurs to me at the moment--pegged to a specific memory, but something which I must have seen dozens of versions of at this point--is the way in which a missionary and his wife were introduced during a Sunday morning service. He was introduced by name, lauded for his work and his talents and his willingness to sacrifice, etc., and then his new bride was brought up, introduced as "his lovely wife" and then--if I remember correctly--he was publicly congratulated on his fine catch.

It's like the Sunday morning version of that awful commercial I've been nauseated by during the Daily Show the last few weeks--the one where the wedding is "the jungle" and the dude is on the prowl, so skillful that he gets "his prize" to come to him. Pardon me while I go vomit. And no, it's not morning sickness.

toward a zombie cyborg theology

Because cyborgs are cooler.

But also because zombies, as cultural figures, are inherently anthropologically dualistic. Think about it: you take a human person, give'em a zombie bite, and the person dies but their dead body, who is not the person you used to know, becomes reanimated by an external force of some kind and then tries to eat your brains. This is precisely why, of course, we can kill zombies with impunity and without remorse: they are not human anymore. They are not the person they were; that essential self is gone, and the body that looks like the person you used to know is just a dead vehicle being driven by something else. --You just don't get more dualistic than that!

So it's curious to me that the read of The Walking Dead in the blog post from religiondispatches.org, "Toward a Zombie Theology," is that the working anthropology is materialistic:

"But even with Christian overtones the writers of Walking Dead end up coming down in favor of brain-based consciousness. In death, including the death of the brain, Dr. Jenner says, “Everything you ever were, or will be…[is] gone.” 

Note: I haven't been watching this show, so the interpretation of the show may well be right on target...which means that the writers of the show should be wrestling with how to reconcile the inherent dualism of zombies with their attempt at materialism. In any case, my point is that zombies, as a symbolic monstrous posthuman figure in our cultural landscape, are much more at home with garden-variety dualism of body/soul than they are with materialism of any sort, reductive or non-reductive.

Whereas cyborgs, on the other hand, are resolutely materialistic. What makes a cyborg? Some sort of bodily merging of biology and technology--flesh and machine. Now, we think of human persons and machines as categorically different, not least because machines don't have "souls"--which we can just define here very loosely as that essential inner thing which animates a creature. Machines are not animated; humans are--basic categorical difference. So, what the cyborg does, conceptually, is render that categorical difference highly questionable. If a single creature is part human and part machine--then what is the difference between human and machine? And if we can create (and we regularly do, let's note) humans that actually are to some degree "part machine" and they are much better off thus--that is to say, able to flourish as humans because of their part-machine-ness--then, part of being human includes the potential of interfacing and merging with technology and making it a functional part of ourselves. Here, then, the definition of human shifts into one with an emphasis on embodiment, and the surprising ways our bodies are configurable. That's moving away from dualism with a vengeance.

So the question posed in response to zombies is actually much better posed in response to cyborgs:

"So does this leave theology out in the cold? The dominant theological understanding for anthropology in Christianity is still dualistic, a synthesis of the physical body and an immaterial spirit or soul, but in recent years those advocating a monistic view of human nature have arisen, articulating a perspective they call “nonreductive physicalism.” This view, advocated by scholars like Fuller Seminary’s Nancey Murphy, recognizes the significance of the cognitive neurosciences that have cast doubt on philosophical and theological concepts of the soul, but argues for human significance and the divine as opposed to materialist interpretations in the field."

Do we need a concept of the soul in order to faithfully interpret the biblical canon and the Christian tradition? I would argue, rather, we would probably do better to dump it in order to better understand both our own scripture and Christian tradition and the best available (and constantly evolving) scientific witness on the anthropological question.

a quick note

The blog post "gender, identity and the church" is now up as a podcast via Half the Church. You can find it here.

if the church were a soccer field

I came across an article today about girls playing sports--and the way in which excelling or simply participating in a sport gives girls a way to think about themselves and their bodies in a context free of sexualization. In playing sports and becoming athletes, girls learn to value their bodies for "what they can do" and not just for how they look, or how other people perceive them as sexually desirable.

This rings anecdotally true for me--I played center fullback on my high school soccer team and I loved it, though, admittedly, I was as anxious a performer on the field as I was anywhere else. Even so, on the field, I was a necessary and competent part of a team. When I subbed out, they missed me. I remember a game where we were five goals up in a shut-out and the coach took me out in the second half for a bit; while I was on the sidelines the opposing team scored two goals. I was told to get back in there. Now that's validation. Someday when I have an office I'll hang my senior MVP award on the wall next to my PhD.

The article on girls & sports links to an APA report on girls' sexualization. Toward the end of the report, the authors name several possible agents and avenues for the construction of alternatives to the overwhelming sexualization of girls present in US culture. One of those possible agents, as you might expect, is parents & family. One is sports and extracurricular activities. One is religion. And it should be; this makes sense. Our churches should absolutely be able to and active in providing a context of validation and self-definition for our girls that is free of the cultural context of sexualization.

And I had to ask myself, do our churches do this?

I'm afraid that if I answer honestly, I might have to answer no.

It is a sad thing to reflect that playing soccer may have done more for me as a girl than sitting in church. And I'm not alone; Naomi Walters writes, 

In retrospect, maybe part of the reason I was so drawn to soccer is because I was good at it and my skills were utilized there. In my youth group, the females were the most consistent members. When it came to “Youth Sunday” we did all of the planning, and yet, were forced to delegate everything we had planned to male execution. It was clear from an early age that I was born to be a leader, and since I couldn’t do that at church, maybe I played soccer instead? It feels good to be a vital part of a team, a leading force, a fully participating member.

Is the practice of silencing women in our churches an overt form of sexualization akin to the onslaught of sexualized media images, Bratz dolls and pinkified princessing our girls endure as a routine and mostly unremarked aspect of girlhood? No. But is it a covert reinforcement of the hypersexualized message that girls' bodies are objects that define and restrict them?

Yeah. I think so.

Maybe you're disposed to think that there's no obvious connection between our practice of silencing women in the church and the sexualization of women and girls in our surrounding culture. After all, the most common defense of our practice is that it's biblical and therefore counter-cultural in the best possible way. And what does being silent in the assembly have to do with sexuality? How does accepting the God-created differences between men and women and their concomitant different roles have anything to do with sexualization of girls and women in the larger culture?

But these practices are not counter-cultural. These doctrines and practices fall right into step with messages from our culture that female bodies define women and girls differently than male bodies define men, and that these female bodies fall under the authority of others--others who get to define when and where and how these bodies should be used, when and where and how these bodies are valuable. This is the same message that women and girls get in the form of sexualization, in which others define when and where and how their female bodies are valuable--that is, desirable. The only difference is the lack of an overt sexual component--but this does not, IMO, make the underlying message any less disconcerting or anxiety-producing. And it certainly does not provide a basis from which the sexualized message of our culture can be subverted.

And this means we need to take a good hard honest look at the knee-jerk defensive claim that we're being "biblical" and "counter-cultural." We need to take a good, hard, honest look at what our doctrine and our practice really does to the women and the girls in the pews of our churches. It's not that we're getting it all wrong--as I've said before. But the gospel message that could--and does--subvert the dominant cultural sexualization of girls and women, the message that God has created and chosen and gifted and loved and called without qualification, is one that isn't consistent with the church's practice of silencing and restricting of women. And we need to take a good hard honest look at this inconsistency.

If the church were a soccer field, little girls could discover just how much they could really do--and we would cheer for them.

SJWD

On the way home from Atlanta last week, we saw lots of amusing and picturesque things. Clare liked the cows. Brent liked the great big water tower painted like a peach that also happens to resemble a human butt, IF you approach from the north (but not, we observed on the return trip, from the South. Coincidence? Maybe.) And I was greatly amused by the water tower labeled "SJWD," which prompted the mental exercise of creating a list of things that would fit the acronym for "Sh** Jesus Would Do." (It's nice to have something to keep you awake and alive on long roadtrips, after all.) Alas, my list is incomplete, but what's a blog for, anyways? Help me out. Add your contributions in the comments pls!

Sh** Jesus Would Do:

1. bring the liquor
2. speak the rude truth!
3. play in the dirt 
4. knock stuff over 
5. tell weird stories and then tell people it's their fault if they don't get it

Heresy detection costs extra. No refunds.

gender, identity and the church

About a year ago, I was sitting in my therapist's office, answering for her a question I've answered many times before, to interlocutors both hostile and friendly: "why do you stay? why don't you just leave?"

Let me back up a bit. My very first appointment with this therapist, where you go through all the basic obvious stuff like who you are and what's driven you to seek therapy, I felt compelled to begin with, "Okay...well, to understand me and why I'm here, I'm going to have to explain something else first. Have you ever heard of the Churches of Christ?"

So, it shouldn't have been surprising to this doctor--and she was a pretty good therapist, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't, actually--that when I answered her "why don't you leave" question, I started talking about issues of identity. After all, I had begun my answer to "who are you" with explaining that to understand who I am and what my "issues" are, first you have to understand something about my church.

So, I said to her what I've said to many people in various ways: how can I leave something that is my home, a community that has shaped who I am, a people who have helped form me into the person I am today (however much they may not like the result)? How do you "leave" your own self?

It's not that it's impossible to do. I've had a front-row seat to observe what it means and what it takes to "leave." And so I know, not just by my own instincts, that it means redefining who you are.

I came across an observation just this week, from a friend of a friend, that leaving the CofC was harder than coming out of the closet. Think about that for a moment. Yeesh.

My therapist was slightly confused by this strong correlation of personal identity and church. I have a feeling she refrained from suggesting this was slightly cult-like. When I insisted to her that I was not alone or unique in this--that everyone I know in a similar situation to my own expresses this dilemma in the same way, as an issue of identity, I think she was even more confused. It didn't make sense to her that my sense of self would depend on this community that was less than affirming of the entirety of who I am. It seemed masochistic, backward, undifferentiated, and problematic--and if this wasn't simply my personal hangup but a broader problem for other people like me, then something must indeed be systemically wrong.

I parse it differently. Yes, there's something wrong, something systemically wrong, in our communities that are producing identity crises in people. But what's wrong is parasitic on what we're actually doing right.

So what is that we're doing--both rightly and wrongly? What we're talking about is one of the main functions of the church, the process of spiritual and personal formation. In our churches, this starts with "Cradle Roll" and never stops--adult Bible study classes in your average Church of Christ are a huge ministry priority. Now, if you're someone who's seriously interested in the process of catechesis and spiritual formation then there are a million things to talk about, positive and negative, about how churches in our tradition go about this ministry and how it might be better. My point is simply that it happens.

Within this process of spiritual and personal formation, we teach something important and theologically fundamental, again and again. We teach people who they are. This begins in Sunday school with felt boards and internalizing the narrative of God's creation. Who are we? We are creations of God. It continues up through elementary school age classes on topics like baptism and even in youth group studies on topics like how to avoid backrubs from the opposite sex. Who are we? Baptized believers, the elected and saved, children of God, joint-heirs with Christ, ambassadors for Christ.

In a broad but real sense, we get this right. We teach people who they are. We teach that everyone is a creation of God, a child of God, elected and saved, baptized and gifted with the Spirit, joint-heirs with and ambassadors for Christ. We teach that this gift of beloved, sought-after, dearly paid for, identity is intended for every human being on this planet. We get this part right.

So what goes wrong? How could someone brought up learning that their identity is chosen, loved, cherished, elevated, and gifted by God end up in an identity crisis fostered by the same community that taught them these things?

Answer: that someone is female.

Here's how it happens. (This is not theoretical. Nor, I hasten to add, is it merely personally anecdotal. This is a pattern traced out in the multiple narratives here on this blog and at Half the Church.) It happens like this: we believe it. We believe what the church teaches us about who we are. We internalize it. It becomes how we define ourselves and our relationships, not just to the church, but to the world. It shapes how we envision our future, our goals, our entire life. It shapes our desires, our choices, our sense of vocation.

And one day, when we bring the gift of who we are back to the church who taught us who we are, we are told: No. No, that's not the whole story of who you are. Or, yes, but. Yes, these things apply to you because they apply to everyone, but. They apply, but they apply differently. Yes, you are a creation of God and a child of God; yes, you are elected and saved; yes, you are baptized and gifted with the Spirit; yes, you are joint-heirs with and ambassadors for Christ--but, despite all of that, here are the things that you can't do. Because although these things apply, they carry an implicit limiting condition on what they can mean...for a woman.

Identity crisis? You bet. Because it's not simply about roles. It's not simply about a list of do's and don't's. It's about what it means to be a woman in our churches: someone to whom all the adjectives of Christian identity apply--until you take them seriously in all their fullness. Most women in our churches learn the implicit conditional on their Christian identity--soak it up at the same time they soak up everything else, and, most women in our churches, I dare to say, don't recognize the theological limits it implies. Which means that it's just a handful of women who, believing these lessons so utterly and staking their identities on them so thoroughly, find this theological limitation and reject it as impossibly contradictory to all they've been taught in their church their whole lives about who they are.

Ever wonder, along with my therapist and they countless others who've asked me this question, why these women don't simply leave? This is why. They are bringing to the church its own teaching about who they are, and asking it, "weren't you serious about this? didn't you mean it?" Ever wonder why these women typically spend years banging their head against the altar, saying these things over and over, until finally if they leave, they do so with bloodied foreheads and weary spirits? Because they're coming back again and again to the church with its own message of Christian identity, asking the church to simply recognize its own teachings.

It's not a Messiah complex, no matter what my therapist (probably) thought. It's not altruism. It's simply inevitable. Rightly or wrongly, wisely or foolishly, at some level, we're returning to the ecclesial authority of our lives, seeking affirmation of our identity where we were first taught to embrace it as our own: creations of God, children of God, elected and saved, baptized and gifted with the Spirit, joint-heirs with and ambassadors for Christ. Isn't this for me? Or are you going to take it all back?

humility

Maddeningly, it's the virtue someone like me is presumed not to have--a "lady preacher" and PhD, I couldn't possibly be anything but an arrogant power-seeking female. Maddening, because, ironically, if I have learned anything at all in my pursuit of knowledge of God and God's cosmos, it's that humility is the prerequisite for learning anything at all. Seeking knowledge means admitting you don't know stuff, and that some of the stuff you thought you knew--that you were sure of, sure enough to correct other people on, defend as self-evident, stake your life on--was wrong.

When anyone brought up in the CofC comes to the theological conclusion that the silencing and categorical subordination of women is unbiblical and morally wrong, it is because of humility. Without it, you just don't change your mind about something you were previously sure of.

I would love to see some reciprocal humility from those defending the practice of women's silence and categorical subordination. But what I see, instead, is the opposite--a refusal to acknowledge, even as a remote possibility, that we as a church have historically gotten this wrong. I see a preference for believing evil of others over considering the possibility of repentance.

and to think...

...that I once naively assumed that academia would be my haven from sexism.

What is it Like to be a Woman in Philosophy?  (h/t Jamey Walters)

I've always hated the way every housecleaning product on the market is sold by smiling women who wipe, mop, sanitize, launder, spray, freshen up and scrub down everything in their shiny happy homes so that their children don't eat germs from raw chicken off the countertops and noone has to suffer from garbage can stink.

But I really really hate these Electrolux commercials with Kelly Ripa.



happier things

So, because lately this blog has been such a downer...

Baby #2 is due sometime mid-to-late April. Official due date at the moment, April 21. (Naturally, this falls right in the middle of Holy Week. Not the best timing for a priest, but I keep reminding Brent, Clare was 15 days post-date, so I'm decently sure baby #2, officially designated "Tinkerbell" by guess-who while in utero, will stay put till after Easter...but, of course, no guarantees.)

That puts me about 10-11 weeks along at this point, our first appointment at Avalon Midwifery went nicely, although since Tinkerbell is still snugged under my pelvic bone we couldn't hear the heartbeat. Mostly what we heard was my stomach growling...

I find myself hoping Tink's another girl, but of course it'll be awhile before we know. As a fem-cyborg-mama I am a judicious technophile--not all technological doo-dads associated with pregnancy/birth are actually beneficial--but the 20-week-ultrasound is IMO the awesomest!

men we can trust. women, on the other hand...

This past week, I feel like I did some honest engagement with people of all sorts of theological opinions on the topic of women's silence in our churches. It was a lot of work, it took up quite a bit of time, it took a lot of focus, and it took a lot of strategic reading to avoid getting stuck on the horribly insulting things that do get said in pretty much every discussion I've ever seen/heard on this topic. While commenting, I read past the insults, the suspicions of character, the easy ad hominem stuff. But it's not that it isn't there--go back through and count up how many different ways that the moral character of women who want to serve God gets assassinated. It's a constant theme.

One of the things I've been pondering for the last several years is the way in which CofCs take for granted the upright, upstanding character of the people in our churches and in our tradition more broadly. Some of this has to do with our theological anthropology, and some of it has to do with our ecclesiology and the pragmatics of a strict "congregational autonomy" set up. We don't typically require a lot of fuss or background checks for Sunday school teachers or youth group volunteers, for example. And churches generally don't concern themselves with psych profiles or background checks for people who voluntarily go overseas to do mission work--these people raise their funds, typically from several churches, and so at least some of those churches don't necessarily know them personally or well, and yet we give people money at the drop of a hat and send them off--just trusting that we can take them at their word, because they say they're wanting to do this great work for the Lord. Even if we don't really know them from Adam.

Maybe that's awesome. But it's also naive.

And it totally backfires. Sometimes.

Because sometimes the people we fund are not good people. Sometimes they are terrible people, who do very bad things, all paid for out of church budgets by people who feel comfortable assuming that they can just take someone's word for it that all they want to do is serve God.

But if it's women making that claim, right in their own church community...forget about it. Obviously, there is something heretofore unknown that's wrong with their moral character. They have an agenda. It's about power. It's about money. It's about arrogance. Whatever it is, it's not what they claim--we can't take their word for it that they just want to serve God the best way that they can.

Do you see the disconnect? Men, we can trust. Women, on the other hand...

open question

Does affirming a "principle of male spiritual headship" logically imply that men are inherently better equipped to be spiritual leaders?

Yes or no, give me a thumbnail sketch of the reasoning. Am curious about the consensus/dissensus on this point.

a short random personal observation

So today, as I sit down to finalize prep for a class at Calvary on Sunday on religion & science perspectives on the creation narrative, I realize once again the complete absurdity of my personal situation. Here I am, about to prep for an adult forum as a completely normal and routine part of my workday, because I was invited to teach a class on a subject I've spent years now acquiring a certain level of expertise on--after spending days in the rabbit-hole of arguing for the possibility, the ability and privilege of my doing such things. Sometimes--most of the time--it's really healthy for me to inhabit this whole other world where this debate doesn't exist. But today, stepping from one to the other is jarring.

on scripture

Imagine with me, for a moment:

You're in church, on a Sunday morning, a little rumpled but not late--a sincere Bible major about to graduate from one of our "brotherhood's" institutions of higher ed, and you're listening closely to the sermon, which is on the parable of the talents. You've heard this story since the womb, practically, maybe (who knows) even a couple times in utero--after all, it preaches pretty well. But this Sunday, you hear it differently. This Sunday, like you are all the time these days, you're wondering just what exactly you're going to do with your life, constantly barraged by the question from well-meaning friends and relatives "so what are you going to do when you graduate?" You're not ready to answer that question, despite four years of college nearly completed and a steady, unwavering conviction that majoring in Bible has been the right thing to do. You don't feel ready for a pulpit--not by a long shot. You're not even sure you're up for youth ministry. You certainly don't feel equipped for mission work in some faraway place. So this Sunday, you hear that parable differently. Rather than shake your head in pity for the fool who didn't have the sense God gave a (capitalistic-minded) goat and at least invest in a bank and draw interest, for the first time, you're afraid that might be you. This time, you hear in that story a challenge: what are you going to do with your talent? And you sit there, listening to the familiar text, the familiar sermon theme, and you think--no. No, that's not me. I'm not going to bury my talent. And I'm not going halfway, either. I'm going all the way, because that's what God asks of me.

Now, imagine that that's you, and you're a girl.

Or is that bit just for the boys?

women in ministry and the impasse of scripture

From Jamey Walters at Becoming What We Are: http://jewalters.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/46/

hope sinks

Don't get me wrong. Underneath all this grumping I have a boundless optimism that indeed human beings have the capacity to desire good, to change, to shift, to repent, to act. I do, I really do. Otherwise I'd be outta here.

But damn it, I hate these online discussion like pure pizen. They, more than anything else, send me as close to the Pit of Despair as I ever get. I can sit through a service with its all-male revue and not sweat it. I can hear casual benevolent sexism, and sigh and move on. I can hear these stories, note that in the last decade nothing has changed, grumble, and then roll up my sleeves in determination that this must change. But these online things...I should skip them.

It's not even just that they are inevitable stalemates and dead ends, with the same hermeneutical arguments deployed futilely from both sides and (best case) the same polite incomprehension in the end. Or, even, worst case, ending in things like accusing women of "spiritual abortion" because somehow advocating the giftedness of women to do all sorts of things necessarily implies not teaching other women like the Bible says. (??)

The real problem is, the faith I had in the ability of narrative to crack open the possibility of real dialogue, conversations that won't just repeat ad nauseam as they swirl around the drain, is waning. I really thought this was the key, the sort of magic key, that might make our endless discussions productive. I haven't entirely lost this hope, but it's starting to be hard work to keep it afloat. Its initial buoyancy has been shot full of holes.

This is why (excerpted from my downer of a comment on preachermike's post):

the real disconnect is that one side of this discussion perceives the relevance of women’s experiences as part of the dialogue, and one side views all human experience as something basically sinful and untrustworthy, to be submitted to the corrective lens of (received interpretations of) scripture. In short, gals, it doesn’t matter that you experience an internal crisis of life-shattering proportions because you are caught in the middle of hearing God’s call and hearing the church you want to serve deny that this is possible or genuine or righteous. It’s not relevant, because what you need to do is “get your mind right” (in the immortal words of the Captain of Road Prison 36 in Cool Hand Luke). Somehow, it’s become a badge of righteousness to deny one’s own experience, and by extension, the lived experiences of these women.

To be "rude" about it, I'm stuck with an image of incredibly sincere, faithful, loving people opening their Bibles, staring fixedly at the text, and sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "lalalalalalala" to drown out the sound of these women's voices. Because we can't allow ourselves to hear, to understand, to care, to examine what these women are saying. That itself would be to dangerously flirt with unfaithfulness to the Word, a sign that we were wavering in our conviction that the only thing that matters here is our received interpretation of scripture.

The women thing is not about women. It's not. But it should be.

haaaaaaaaappy anniversary, cy-boys and cyber-girls!

If you're into this sort of thing, you won't want to miss the celebratory 50 posts about cyborgs in honor of the cyborg's 50th anniversary (since its etymological debut in 1960, in the Clynes and Kline article on space exploration in the now defunct Astronautics journal).

Half the Church

Go to http://halfthechurch.wordpress.com and listen/download the podcast! I haven't been able to listen past the introduction of the four women featured in the podcast--had to go pick up Clare--but just hearing the names (Naomi Walters among them) and knowing the people involved in putting this together, I know this has got to be good.

From the site:

The site was launched in September 2010 as a companion to two presentations at Abilene Christian University’s Summit.  The two presentations were titled “Half the Church” and were a part of a track on Women in Ministry in Churches of Christ.  The title of the class was both a (not so) subtle play on the New York Times Best Seller Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and a line from an interview with a female student in ACU’s Graduate School of Theology.  She said, “It’s not good for the church to be silencing more than half its members.”

The two presentations were the product of two research projects:

“Half the Church: Calling and Vocation for Women in the Churches of Christ”
“Half the Church: Women in Gender-Inclusive Churches”

The purpose of this site is to archive the audio podcast titled “She Is Called” presented in the first session and to extend the research of the second session that seeks to identify Churches of Christ “that have found gender inclusivity important enough to talk about openly and act upon positively.”

sweat girls

Last week, I woke up from an unplanned exhaustion coma-nap on the couch, particularly grumpy as it didn't alleviate the exhaustion really, to find Clare staring wide-eyed at a Bratz dolls commercial. "What is she watching?!" I hissed at my poor spouse. "Those are SLUT DOLLS! Don't you have any judgment whatsoever?!"

Okay, so among the things wrong with this scenario is being mean to Brent, who, after all, let me sleep. And I have never wanted to be a parent who refuses to let her kids watch TV or go to the movies or whatever because it's eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil; I've always wanted to be a parent who encourages a sort of fearless exploration of the world. And, as Brent pointed out later that night, labelling female figures with epithets like "slut" is pretty judgmental and anti-feminist. Sigh.

But, she's four. And she doesn't discriminate in her susceptibility to commercials. I've blogged before at the hilarity of her wanting a Turbo-snake for Christmas--and just yesterday in Shoprite she berated me up and down the laundry aisle for not buying any OxiClean because it gets clothes the cleanest and brightest. Skechers Twinkletoes, Zhu-zhu Pets, slut dolls, housecleaning products, you advertise, my child wants to Buy.It.Right.Now. I mean, shit.

So, of course, Clare immediately proclaimed: "Mommy I want one! ...What's a sweat doll?"

Double sigh.

I told her that what I meant was that I did not like those dolls, she would not be getting one ever, and that Mommy had said a mean thing that she shouldn't have and she was sorry for calling them a mean word.

But the sweat girls have been haunting us ever since. They are now an ontological category in Clare's developing worldview and they will not budge.

A few days after that it became apparent that Clare had put together that one of the offending characteristics of sweat-girls is lots of makeup. But this was confusing to her, because as little makeup as I occasionally use, Clare has seen me putting it on and has the inevitable corresponding envy/curiosity about it. And worse, my little logician concluded that makeup = sweat girl, Mommy + makeup = Mommy is a sweat girl. And she used it against me as her verbal logic super-weapon to argue me into conceding that she could have one of those godawful dolls.

This is enough to make me sincerely want to dump every bit of lip gloss and zit concealer in the trash, along with the TV and every pair of high heels I own. And moving to a cave and home-schooling and in all other ways super control-freak indoctrinating my daughter in the way that she should go. This is not the mom I want to be. But I have got to deal with the sweat girls.

happy golden princess

Like phdinparenting, I have a daughter who cannot resist anything pink, sparkly, and conventionally girly, and I've already struggled with that. And of course, I'm still engaged in (slightly stalled and currently stowed out of sight) The Great Barbie Project of 2010, which touches on these same problematic gender constructs. And I've sewed my girl a gold lame and tulle princess dress with my own two hands, for crying out loud. And so my basic parental strategy is already set, I reminded myself: subversion, not opposition. Constant, quiet, insistent, hopeful subversion. I can't keep her away from pink and fluff and sparkle. And I shouldn't have to--pink sparkle fluff is fine, as long as what she is doing is enjoying herself, her body, and her imagination in healthy ways. I do think that's possible. It just means my task as a parent is creating the space for that possibility, when the rest of the world doesn't.

But the sweat girls? Are they redeemable? Barbies--frankly--are barely on the edge of redeemability, and possibly out of my reach, given my limited skills and available tools. The Bratz dolls seem less pliable to me--more frozen in their hyper-sexualized, exaggerated features and more locked into rigid fashion-obsessed roleplay.

So in response to my 4-YO's sweat-girl logic-bomb, I sat her in my lap and we had a seriously intense chat about what it means to be "pretty." I told her that there are good ways of being pretty and bad ways of being pretty. I told her that using makeup to be pretty can be good, or bad. I told her that I wanted her to know that she is pretty everyday, just exactly how she is, and that I want her to feel good about how she looks and what she wears, but that anytime being pretty means making an ouchie on your body (like wearing ouchie shoes), that's a bad kind of pretty. Or anytime choosing something because of what someone else likes instead of what she likes, that's a bad kind of pretty. Or anytime wearing something "pretty" means she can't do something she likes to do (climb trees, or run fast), that's a bad kind of pretty.

I'm not exactly sure how much of it got through. But she did stop talking about sweat girls. Praise God.

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...).