History - Julie Clawson

On Banning Books and Forgotten Memory

Posted on October 11, 2025

As an avid reader, a common trope I encounter in books is that of cultural history fading from memory. In The Lord of the Rings, the memory of the One Ring fades and we see Gandalf digging through dusty old scrolls to find fragments and mentions. In The Chronicles of Narnia, after the Pevensie children are returned to our world after their reign as kings and queens in Narnia, they later return to discover a Narnia in ruins, devoid of magic and Aslan, where their reign is dismissed as myth. In The Hunger Games, the Districts have forgotten their history (as the United States) and even the very existence of District 13. In Star Wars, the Empire so destroys the Jedi with Order 66 that a mere 20ish years later Han Solo says he’s flown from one side of the galaxy to the other and has seen no evidence of the Force. Even in the Bible, after the Israelites were conquered, the Babylonians relocated the rulers and scholars of Israel by force into exile. When the Persians allowed them to return to Jerusalem some 70 years later, they had forgotten their faith, and it was only after discovering an old scroll of the Torah in the Temple and tracking down the elderly prophetess Huldah that they were able to returned to their faith (2 Chronicles 34).

When the stories of history are no longer told they are forgotten. If the powers that be want people to forget that something exists (usually something of great power in opposition to them), they destroy all mention of its existence. It benefitted Sauron that the One Ring (the source of his power) was forgotten; it benefited the Calormen to destroy stories of Aslan and magic; it benefited Snow to tell people District 13 (the rebels) no longer existed; it benefitted the Emperor and the Dark Side to erase every bit of knowledge about the Jedi and the Light Side; it benefited the Babylonians to destroy the Israelites’ faith and identity as a people. If there is memory of something different than authoritarian oppression it must be destroyed in order for the oppressors to hold onto power. Stories that contradict their narrative can give people hope that a better world is possible and hope is the most dangerous thing of all to authoritarian regimes.

And so, one of the very first things authoritarians do is try to control the narrative. Despite them out of one side of their mouth claiming that banning guns won’t stop children dying because banning things never works, they jump headfirst into banning books and knowledge. They change how history gets told – making it illegal to teach about slavery, or internment camps, or the mere accomplishments of women or people of color. They instruct their monuments to take down mentions of Trans people so that story doesn’t get told. They tell their military to remove stories and pictures of women and people of color from their social media. They ban public displays like rainbow crosswalks and “Black Lives Matter” signs. They remove books from schools for even mentioning that LGBT people exist – redefining the very existence of gay people as porn or smut. They make sure they control the narrative in every way, so only the stories they want people to know are ever told. And when someone’s story doesn’t get told, people come to believe they don’t exist or are a strange aberration to be shunned from society.

For instance, under the oppressive USSR government it was considered un-patriotic for visible reminders of the government’s failings to exist in public. So, when their horrible environmental practices and disasters like Chernobyl led to children being born with numerous birth defects, these kids were not allowed to exist in public. Much like when the Nazis rounded up all disabled people into concentration camps, these children were taken from their families and put into “orphanages” where they were hidden away from society, and no one was ever reminded that the government wasn’t perfect. Shortly after the fall of the USSR and before an even more oppressive regime was institute under Putin, I had the chance to visit Latvia and Russia. I almost wasn’t allowed to go on the trip with my youth group because I too am missing my lower left arm and it was well known that people like me were not allowed to be in public there. But I went and at one point we visited one of these orphanages full of people with varying disabilities. I got to spend an afternoon surrounded by kids who were missing limbs just like me being asked questions like “So in the USA are you allowed to go to school?” This is why when RFK Jr. talks about putting people with Autism and other disabilities into Health/Education camps, I know exactly what that is about. If we can be hidden away then we do not exist, we will be forgotten as normal humans and considered freaks. Banning us means us no longer being seen as humans deserving of rights, but as diseases to be dealt with.

Banning people and stories about them rewrites history and cultural perception as well. For example, the Institute for Sexual Science was a sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. It conducted research on transgender, gay, and intersex people and campaigned on rational scientific grounds for LGBT rights. When the Nazis gained control of Germany they declared the institute un-German; their censorship programs then destroyed the institute and youth brigades burned its research documents in the streets. The most intensive and detailed research about these topics in existence at the time was not just suppressed, but utterly destroyed. This resulted in a massive setback for LGBT rights and public awareness. To this day people believe that being transgender is some new fad or that intersex people have never existed. None of it is new, none of our sexual desires or attractions are new, but when the research is destroyed and people are banned from talking about it (even sent to concentration camps and tortured for it), it fades from memory and those in control can twist the narrative to make people believe it is something abhorrent and unprecedented. There have ALWAYS been gay, trans, and intersex people but when all records of them are destroyed and it becomes a crime to write or talk about them, the public can be told any lie those in power want and it will be believed.

Censorship is terrifying because it works. Stories teach us empathy towards others. Knowing a person’s story, a people’s history, helps us see them as human – people to be loved and accepted. Seeing disabled people or people of color, or LGBT people represented in books and media, existing in public without fear, and being able to be fully ourselves normalizes our very existence and leads to greater acceptance. Those that want to harm and oppress us can’t allow that to happen. When people know we exist, know our stories, they come to accept us – people (usually) only fear and hate that which is outside of their experience. So, the authoritarian powers that be seek to ban us – they ban our stories, they ban our presence, they ban any reminders of us. We become erased so that they can more easily oppress us and spin the narrative they desire.

That is why we have to be loud. That is why we celebrate Banned Books Week and insist that all stories should be told. That is why when they paint over Pride crosswalks the community draws the color back in. That is why we still celebrate Indigenous People’s Day despite the government trying to overturn it. That is why we protest ICE removing people of color from our communities and disappearing them into secret prisons. That is why we shout that vaccines work and Autism isn’t a disease to be cured. We will not be erased or silenced or have our stories forgotten. That is why we rage against the dying of the light and choose to cling to hope. Rebellions are built on hope. We must tell our story.

Emergence Christianity, Women, and the Fall of Christendom

Posted on January 14, 2013July 12, 2025

Last week I was able to attend the Emergence Christianity Gathering in Memphis, TN. In truth, I went mostly to see old friends and to get the fix that comes from surrounding myself (for a few days at least) with people who ask the same sorts of questions I ask. Not that we all think the same, but sometimes I just need that freedom to be myself for a few days. So on that level, the Gathering was amazing. I had some great conversations, heard some good Blues bands, and ate enough barbeque to last a lifetime.

And for the most part, I enjoyed the content of the conference. Yes, there was a serious lack of diversity on stage and amidst attendees. Yes, meeting in a cathedral makes for a very uncomfortable venue. But for what this event was (a celebration of Phyllis Tickle’s life and work), I was prepared to deal with those.

And then came the final session.

There’s no denying that the final session was just weird. Even those who weren’t offended by what was said there thought it was a very odd way to end a conference. I’ve had both people who were there and who were following along on Twitter asking me what the hell happened. I can’t really explain why it happened, but I want to spend some time responding.

A big part of the problem was that people coming to an emergence Christianity event, especially to hear such an intelligent woman as Phyllis, were not expecting to disagree with her much less hear her say such confusing and hurful things about women, people with disabilities (more on this one another day), and African-Americans. From what I gathered, people came there hopeful for what is emerging in the church and left feeing bewildered. They expected to perhaps disagree with some speakers, but Phyllis is beloved and so the disconnect was far more jarring. I’ve heard Phyllis give versions of these lectures before, but never draw the conclusions she did at this event, so even to me, it was unsettling.

The main content of the gathering was Phyllis doing her whole overview of church history to explain where the church is today and how we got here. It’s a fantastic, albeit cursory, survey of church history which far too few Christians have any knowledge whatsoever about. In her talks, she is always one to make snarky comments or sex jokes that no one but a woman pushing 80 can get away with, but the unsettling pattern in her storytelling this time was to blame women for the demise of Christendom. In the final session Phyllis described the rise and fall of Constantinian Christianity and pointed to the emancipation of women in the 20th century as a catalyst for that decline. While most of us there would agree that the fall of Christendom is a very good thing and that women’s liberation significantly changed our culture, it was where Phyllis went with from there that caused the discomfort.

Phyllis described the freedoms working outside the home in WW2 and the ability to control our cycles the Pill brought women and argued that such things led to the destruction of the nuclear family and therefore the foundation of the civil religion of Christendom. While it is a narrow assessment of causality, I can agree with the descriptive observation that such things changed our culture. But then she jumped from these changes as that which brought an end to Christendom to describing how such changes led to the destruction of the ways the faith is passed on to new generations which thereby resulted in a biblically illiterate society. As she described it, when mom is not at home weaving the stories of scripture and the church calendar into her day to day activities in front of her children, they do not receive the basics of the faith. One cannot apparently have a sacred family meal over Papa John’s pizza picked up on the way home from work the same way that one can if one is baking bread, doing family crafts, and eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Phyllis ended the session by encouraging us to discover ways to be back in the kitchen with our children and finding crafty ways to import the rhythms of the church year to them. Essentially to focus on the family and all that. That is the great emergence. The end.

You can see why people left bewildered.

The story as she told it made sense – constructed narratives work that way – women are to blame for the post-Christian era and if we just got back in the home the faith could thrive again. But it is important to note that in her narrative instead of focusing on what has emerged that brings hope in this world, she was telling the story of why things have changed – which are two vastly different perspectives. At some point in telling the story of change it is hard not to get nostalgic about one point or another and hold a sugar-coated vision of that time up as the period we must all try to harken back towards. The problem with such an approach is that it ignores the underside of said period and it imposes guilt upon those who find hope outside that period’s restrictions.

In making the argument that religion was far stronger when the nuclear family (as defined by a working father and stay at home mother) reigned one not only limits the definition of who gets to represent proper religion but also romanticizes a system that was far more broken than is often realized. The truth is, not all Christian families had the luxury of living such a white middle-class, middle-America lifestyle. Even ignoring the patterns of faith outside the Western world, it is only a small demographic of people who ever had a mother at home teaching the children the church year as she cooked their supper. To hold such up as a goal for contemporary Christians to return to privileges white, middle-class, liturgical faith as the only true or acceptable way to be a faithful Christian. While there is nothing wrong with living in such ways, it is not nor never has been the only way to live one’s faith or impart it to one’s children.

To lament that our culture ever changed from such a family structure (even though only a few ever lived it to begin with) also ignores the ills of that very structure. The shift in the Reformation period that empowered women by making them the spiritual leader in the home has over time not only ostracized men from spiritual practices (because such things are “just” for women) but also restricted women’s service to God to just within the household. This way of thinking does a disservice to men, women, and the Kingdom of God. Perpetuating the notion that it is the role of women to care for the spiritual development of their family in their home ignores the fact that it was causing problems for the faith long before the practice began to decline.

Similarly, upholding this family structure ignores that the development of the modern nuclear family wasn’t exactly a healthy historical development. Prior to the Victorian era’s turn to individualized nuclear family dwellings, people lived far more communally. Multiple generations lived together and villages functioned as extended family. There was no such thing as a woman keeping house herself. No one ever had to cook, clean, manage the house, watch the kids, and educate the kids on her own. Younger teens helped around the house. Kids could wander the village knowing that most people there would take care of them and that they too were expected to help others as needed. Crying babies were watched by the tween girls or elderly women while the women devoted themselves to other tasks. The development of the nuclear family took all of those support structures away from women. Those who were not rich enough to afford servants to help them were expected for the first time in history to bear the burden of all the household tasks alone. A few enlightened men in recent decades have begun to lend a hand, but it is rare that extended families much less the community (including the church) feel any need to help women with these tasks – expecting her instead to be some sort of supermom who can do it all. At the same time the turn toward isolated nuclear families took away the safety that being in community provides. When generations live together and everyone in the village knows each other’s business it is a lot harder for abuse of women and children to be hidden. Not that it didn’t happen or that women weren’t treated as property during those periods, but the façade of the nuclear family hid many ills that a nostalgic romanticized view ignores. It was not a sustainable system, and it is no surprise that by the mid-twentieth century women were both “running for the shelter of mother’s little helper” and seeking freedom from such unrealistic expectations.

But just because the story can be told in such a way that explains why things have changed in a regretful fashion doesn’t mean that is the only way the story must be told. Allowing women to lead family devotions was a huge hopeful step forward in empowering women once upon a time. The freedom that working outside the home and the Pill brought women gave them hope of being fully themselves and the ability to stand on their own two feet apart from abusive and controlling husbands and fathers. I think many of us at the Emergence Christianity Gathering were shocked that such stories of hope were ignored in favor of one that piled on the same stale guilt that we have come to expect from traditional religion. I’m not saying that Phyllis Tickle can’t believe whatever she wants about the role and place of women or tell the story of history through her own particular biases, but what dawned on many of us during this final session was that she was no longer telling a story of emergence. The end of the story as she told it was not one of hope and promise, but one of restrictions and guilt that we are already well acquainted with. It hurt to hear that from her, and many couldn’t bring themselves to admit that they had problems with how she told the story – just that it felt like a really weird ending to the conference. It is like we were waiting for permission to disagree, to state that was not the only way to tell the story.

So here I go – as much as I am grateful for Phyllis and admire much of her work, she does not possess the only truth regarding what is emerging. It is okay to tell the story of where we have been as a story of hope and liberation instead of merely one of regrettable change. We are still figuring out how to live within this emerging world and what were once whispered ideas and conversations are now unquestioned facts about the evolution of our culture. Not knowing where we came from is dangerous, but so is staking our claim in a misunderstood past. We are constantly negotiating what it means to witness with hope within this present moment without simply re-iterating the past. How we tell our story determines the shape of that witness.

So my question for Emergence Christians is – how can we use this awkward moment to push us to start telling this story of hope?

Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 4

Posted on June 7, 2012July 12, 2025

This week as part of Rachel Held Evans’ One in Christ series I am posting the story of my journey to Christian Feminism – Read Part 1, Part 2 , and Part 3.

Once I took the time to understand the history of feminism I found myself wondering if I was really a feminist or not. On one hand I agreed with the messages my predecessors had fought for. Yes, of course women should have the right to vote, of course we are more than sex objects, and of course we shouldn’t be kept from using the gifts and talents God has given us. I fully agreed that essentializing women as simply wombs and nurturers denied the complex reality and diversity of real people fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image. I got that. And I had a huge new appreciation for the history of the fight for women’s equality – a history I had never heard before. (And I even majored in history in college!) I knew those stories should be told and girls taught that there was a rich history of intelligent and fascinating women who fought tirelessly for the very freedoms they now enjoy. It sickened me to know that patriarchy’s silencing of feminism was denying young girls access to some amazing role models.

But at the same time, I knew there were parts of feminism (or at least its stereotype) that just weren’t me. I don’t hate men. I don’t think women as a collective should rule over men, simply replacing a patriarchy with a matriarchy. And while many of the third wavers I encountered defined their empowerment as their ability to have sex whenever and with whoever they wanted, I just couldn’t personally go there. I’m all for embracing my sexuality with confidence, but as a result of commitment and relationship, not conquest or entertainment. Nor did I agree that a woman having control of her own body meant that she had to unquestioningly support abortion. I get that the issue is far more complicated than the extremes often allow it to be, and that the polarizing rhetoric of many pro-lifers often does little to actually help anything, but I remained convinced that abortion on demand as a default birth control choice wasn’t something I could morally support. And yet there were people telling me that the essence of being a feminist was to support “a woman’s right to choose.”

I wanted a third way. I wanted to be able to claim the name feminist, and all the beautiful things it stood for, without feeling like I had to accept the parts that didn’t represent me or my faith. Some may say that I was naïve – wanting my cake and to eat it too. But here was this movement, founded on Christian principles of love and justice, that sought to deliver freedom to the oppressed. Women were breaking free from lies that had held them back for centuries and were finally finding the space to be their true selves. I knew that freedom like that can only come from God; so, despite the ridicule and the misunderstandings and the parts I couldn’t affirm, I wanted to be a part of it.

What I discovered was that there were a whole lot of women who believed the same way, women who over time had come to claim the term “Christian Feminists.” This wasn’t some cheesy Christian subculture thing – feminism misappropriated and redefined, and then repackaged with a Christian label so it would be “safe for the whole family” or something. No, these were women (and men) who chose to be feminists because of their deep commitment to following Jesus. They believed that if, as Jesus said, he came to bring freedom to the oppressed, then that gift must extend to women as well. Through the power of Christ, who treated women with respect and shattered culture taboos by having them as disciples, women could be free from the cultural confines that prevented them from serving God or being treated as people created in the image of God. All my life I had been told that it was impossible to be a Christian and a feminist, and yet here I was reading hope-filled words from committed believers doing that very thing.

These Christian feminists took the Bible seriously and tirelessly advocated for an understanding of scripture and theology that didn’t assume the biases of patriarchy. They reminded the world that the feminist movement, like abolition, has its roots in Christian communities. And they helped me understand that feminism was not about a selfish attempt to claim entitlements for myself (as I had been told), but a powerful way to combat the evil of patriarchy that unjustly harmed women and silenced the voice of half of God’s children. I realized that given its diversity, feminism wasn’t just another box that I had to fit into. Feminism is about freedom to be who I was created to be – even as a woman. I might live that out differently than other feminists, but we were still working for the same cause. I just happened to root my feminism in my faith.

I even discovered a group called Feminists for Life, a pro-life group which argues that women deserve better than to feel pressured into terminating a pregnancy just so she can have a career or make life easier for people around her. Their mission is to change society so that the pressures of a freaked-out boyfriend, or an embarrassed family, or a woman-unfriendly workplace do not become the new cages that patriarchy creates for women. They often point out that many of the early feminist advocates like Susan B. Anthony were strongly opposed to abortion and fought the patriarchal systems that often pushed women towards abortion. As they saw it, any system that forces women to choose between following God’s call in her life and being a mother is just another vestige of patriarchy trying to maintain control over women. They helped me see that being pro-life was actually a feminist cause.

I slowly began to realize that feminism didn’t stand in opposition to my faith, it actually helped me live into my faith more fully.

To be concluded tomorrow

Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 3

Posted on June 6, 2012July 12, 2025

This week as part of Rachel Held Evans’ One in Christ series I am posting the story of my journey to Christian Feminism – Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

Cultural attitudes about women didn’t change overnight with the passage of women’s suffrage. For the first half of the twentieth century (and beyond), the dominant assumption was still that women’s place was in the home. (Indeed many of the first-wave suffragettes shrewdly played off of this ideology of female domesticity to argue that women needed the right to vote so they could better protect their homes and families from the evils of society.) It would require the practical realities of the Second World War for these Victorian ideals to be (temporarily) set aside as women flooded into the factories to keep this country running as the men marched off to war. As a result, feminism in this country began to shift, even though the old paradigm persisted. When Rosie the Riveter gave up her position in the factory at the end of the war, she did so in favor of the domestic life she had been told she should desire. The post-war years of prosperity, full of conveniences like electrical appliances and a car in every driveway, not to mention a newly built house in the suburbs complete with white picket fence, were sold as the new American dream. Picture the stereotype – a woman spending the day vacuuming in pearls who has dinner ready and a cocktail in hand to greet her husband with as he walks through the door. This was the life that women dreamed of – right?

The problem was that a whole generation of women had, for a few brief years, the opportunity to be more than the stereotype. They had used their gifts and talents, developed their creative side and used their intellect to keep this country running. That women were incapable of such tasks was no longer an argument that could be made. Having experienced a different path, some realized that perhaps this life of domesticity that everyone told them was their heart’s desire wasn’t really who they were made to be after all. Of course, society in general still was adamant that a woman’s place was in the home serving her husband and children. But some of these women weren’t even sure they wanted to have children, much less spend their days chasing around mini-Davy Crocketts or their summers on long road trips to Disneyland and the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately there were very few options for the woman who didn’t walk lock-step with what culture mandated she should be. Sales of anti-depressants went through the roof. And the second wave of feminism began.

It would be an overstatement to say that this second wave was entirely built upon the existential angst of the modern white American housewife, although that did help create an environment ripe for a cerebral movement exploring ideas of subjugation and oppression as well as basic civil rights for all. Around the world groups of people who were denied full equal standing in society were gathering together and demanding that they stop being treated as lesser human beings. In America this mostly manifested itself in the Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movements. While this wave involved some political causes like the Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee equal social standing regardless of sex (this amendment was first introduced in 1921 and has yet to pass, despite repeated attempts), its main focus was on ending cultural inequalities and discrimination against women.

Women sought for the opportunity to pursue education, to work in whatever field they were gifted in, and to not be confined to the roles of mother and homemaker. They also spoke out against the habit of men controlling women by turning her into a sex object. In condemning pornography and the culture of rape (especially date rape) that was growing increasingly common, women demanded to be seen as real people and not just objects for men to use. But of course, how women thought these goals could best be accomplished differed widely, which is where a good deal of the controversy surrounding the contemporary feminist movement first arose.

For some women taking control of their bodies and not being forced into the role of mother led them to fight for birth control options including abortion (more on this later). To subvert the objectification of their bodies, some women choose to abandon the cultural trappings of femininity that they felt were imposed on them simply to make them into sex objects. So out went tight girdles, and painful high heels, and a few bras were set on fire for good measure as well. Other women reacted to patriarchy by painting men as the enemy. A backlash against men which asserted that women were far more capable of ruling the world became the mantra of some. Needless to say, the results were polarizing and the simple message that women should be treated as full human beings, worthy of respect, often got lost in the controversy. Unlike the Civil Rights movement which eventually gained general support in this country, feminism became something to mocked and reviled.

By the 1990’s the message of feminism had become nearly lost in all its baggage. While there were still a number of women diligently working to end discrimination and fighting for things like guaranteed equal pay for women, a hipper, young countermovement within feminism itself started to change the face of feminism. As Naomi Wolf describes it, in this shift, “The stereotype of feminists as asexual, hirsute Amazons in Birkenstocks that has reigned on campus for the past two decades has been replaced by a breezy vision of hip, smart young women.” Informed by postmodern and postcolonial thought, this group of women acknowledged that the needs of white middle class women don’t speak for all women. They started to explore diverse ideas of what it meant to be a woman – really getting into the ideas of gender, identity, and sexuality.

Reclaiming for themselves the definition of a woman became a priority. Instead of letting men’s objectification define women, either through our acceptance or rejection of their standards, these third wave feminist “grrrls” choose to reinvent femininity for themselves. If they wanted to be sexy, they weren’t going to let fear of being objectified stop them. So back came the high heels and bright lipstick – and more importantly, a control over their own sex lives. If they wanted to learn how to bake or knit and crochet they weren’t going to let fear of the cult of domesticity stop them from pursuing their interests. Expectations of culture could not contain them, they were their own women.

Unfortunately, with all this focus on self-empowerment, this wave often runs the risk of believing that the work of feminism is done. There have been so many gains for women that, as femininity gets redefined and sexual politics explored, there can sometimes exist an ignorance of what has come before and the hurdles that some women still face. To once again quote Naomi Wolf, “Feminism had to reinvent itself — there was no way to sustain the uber-seriousness and sometimes judgmental tone of the second wave. But feminists are in danger if we don’t know our history, and a saucy tattoo and a condom do not a revolution make”. This current struggle within feminism both negatively permits the inaccurate stereotypes to continue but also positively makes rooms for a diversity of feminisms that cannot be so easily defined.

To be continued tomorrow with my response to this story of feminism.

Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 2

Posted on June 5, 2012July 12, 2025

This week as part of Rachel Held Evans’ One in Christ series I am posting the story of my journey to Christian Feminism – Read Part 1 here.

Finding out about all that stuff they don’t teach you in school because of the negative stigma our patriarchal culture has attached to feminism, actually helped make a lot of sense out of the whole movement for me. But isn’t that how it usually goes – the fear of the unknown must first be removed before it can be understood for its true self. So here’s a crazy brief and over-generalized overview of the history of feminism. It’s obviously not the full picture, but I hope it’s enough to help you see what I saw – that feminism has a rich history full of diverse voices.

Feminism in a Nutshell
The first historical fact that I discovered once I started looking was that there have been feminists throughout the history of the church. Okay, so they might not have used that term, but there have always been people who have been using their voice to advocate for women even in the face of opposition. There were the young Christian women in 3rd century Carthage who tried to overcome the stigma of being female by pledging to remain unmarried (and therefore perpetual virgins) and forego the veil which was the symbol of women’s shame. Sadly, they were met with the response that not even virginity or baptism could transcend the shame of being a woman. Then, in the 12th and 13th centuries, during a time when a woman’s only options were commitment to an arranged marriage or lifelong enclosure in a convent, a lay movement called the Beguines arose which offered women a third way. Women could commit to living in community with other women where they would engage in spiritual and intellectual endeavors without having to commit to lifelong chastity. Think of it like an early college for women during a time when most women weren’t even deemed worthy enough to be taught how to read. Living in community, discussing theology – sounds like my kind of ideal dorm life experience (yes, I am a bit of a theology nerd). Unfortunately, many of these women were accused of being heretics and burned at the stake for their pursuit of the life of the mind. Then, in 1617, Rachel Speght became one of the first women to publish a pamphlet under her own name (as opposed to a male pseudonym) in which she challenged a popular theory of the day that claimed all women were corrupt and therefore must be despised. Her pamphlet implores men to stop showing ingratitude to God by treating the women around them as less than the equal partners God created them to be. Although they often faced dire opposition, these voices are a historical testimony that the barrier to women answering the call to serve and follow God wasn’t always accepted without question. These women saw themselves as children of God and pleaded with the world to honor God before they honored philosophies that silenced and restrained God in the name of silencing women.

I personally was amazed to discover that one can look back on almost any period in history and find evidence of voices resisting the totalizing messages of patriarchy. But I also realized that feminism as a movement didn’t fully begin to coalesce in the Western world until the nineteenth century. When we use the term today (really use it, not just as an insult or a stereotype), it actually refers to what historians and other cultural observers have designated as three separate waves (or historical periods) of this movement to advocate for, give voice to, and empower women.

So if you were like me (and just about every other person who grew up in America) you saw the movie Mary Poppins as a kid. Amidst the spoons full of sugar and chim-chimneys you caught a glimpse (albeit a negative one) of one of the main purposes of first wave feminism – getting women the vote. While Disney portrayed Mrs. Banks cluelessly marching for the vote as evidence of how she neglected her children (and then turning her “Votes for Women” sash into a kite tail once she reprioritizes her life), they at least planted in the minds of a generation of kids the reminder that women had to fight for the right to vote. Yep, for most of our country’s history women were not considered intelligent or capable enough to have a say in who made the laws they had to live by.

If you can recall from your 5th grade social studies class, when the Founding Fathers of the fledging American nation declared our independence, they proclaimed that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The unspoken but assumed footnote at the time was that “all men” only referred to white males who were rich enough to own property since they were the only ones allowed to pursue those unalienable rights and have a say in how the country was run. Women, the landless poor, and people of color were generally considered more as property to be owned or, at best, protected. From the horrors and abuses of slavery, to the limits that kept women and free minorities from owning property, opening a bank account, going to college, or voting in an election, those rights were obviously not available to America’s “second class” citizens.

It was from our nations’ churches that the cry of “this isn’t right” first arose. Many Christians who took seriously the command to love others and who believed that in Christ there is “neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28) started speaking out for equal citizenship for all. Many of those early abolitionists were also the early feminist voices – some pushed towards that cause when, as women, they were denied the right to speak out on behalf of abolition. They cared so deeply about freeing those held in physical bondage that they saw the need to help women escape from bondage as well. In 1848, a group of some 300 men and women met in Seneca Falls, NY to demand freedom and rights for women. Their declaration concludes –

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation–in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

This is where the official feminist movement began – with a small group of people trying to apply the same ideas about human freedom that pushed them to fight for the end of slavery to women. Nothing evil or scary, just a plea for basic dignity, freedom, and respect. These were freedoms which, at the time, were actually becoming more and more elusive as the culture at large bought into Victorian ideas regarding the role and place of women. As the industrial revolution created the new social categories of working in the home vs. working outside the home (previously unknown since, in agrarian cultures, everyone worked at home in the fields) the idea was spread that women (meaning white women) were solely domestic and therefore belonged only in the home. Many women knew they didn’t fit this imposed role and came together to resist this societal impetus to place them in such a cage. In standing up for the freedom of both women and slaves, the emancipated slave Sojourner Truth in 1851 delivered her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech dismantling the hypocrisy of this cult of domesticity.

I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

You have to admire the audacity of a black woman in that time standing up to patriarchy by calling it out on its inconsistencies. Women like her helped change society. And other women joined the early feminist movement because they believed that if women had a voice then they really could change society. In 1870, Julie Ward Howe called for the celebration of the first Mother’s Day asking women to come together as one and use the combined power of their voices to help end the strain war had on families. Think of that, next year, when you send the sentimental card and flowers or take mom out for brunch (it could at least make for some interesting conversation – “Hey mom, did you know that Mother’s Day started as a feminist anti-war protest?”). Others joined the cause as a way to advance their work for prohibition to ensure that their husbands no longer drank the paycheck away, destroying their families in the process. For these women, working for rights for women, especially the right to vote, was utterly rooted in a desire to help make the world a better place.

By the early 20th century, as women still didn’t have the right to vote, the outcry became more vocal. Huge marches were staged demanding that women be given this most basic right. These women risked beatings and jail time to fight for this cause. They were generally met by the very large, and very well-funded, anti-suffrage movement, which argued that women didn’t really want to vote and weren’t qualified to do it anyway. But finally, in 1920 with the passage of the nineteenth amendment, women in the United States were granted the right to vote and have a say in their own government.

To be continued tomorrow.

The Things It Would Be A Crime To Forget

Posted on April 6, 2012July 11, 2025

This week I am reflecting on some of the difficult questions The Hunger Games trilogy raises for readers – today the focus is on the things we remember.

Today is a day of remembrance. We recall the Passover meal shared by Jesus and his disciples and their participation in remembering the story of their people’s release from bondage. And we remember the death of Jesus at the hands of the Romans. What the Romans intended as an intimidating example intended to quell any other messianic uprisings in this backwater land they occupied instead became the greatest symbol of hope for the world. A symbol that another way of life is possible, that the Kingdom of God is far greater than the empire of Rome, and that even death cannot contain this offer of hope.

The need to remember and tell the stories of the past to find hope or to mourn what has been lost is a necessary part of human development. Yet all too often we want to move on too quickly, hide from the painful moments in the past, or deny the embarrassing parts. We fail to remember well.

So for me, the idea of remembrance was one of the most poignant themes in The Hunger Games series. At the end of the third book, Katniss, who has repeatedly had to suppress the painful memory of what she has done and what she has lost, finally must embrace those memories and it is in that process that she finds healing. As I wrote in The Hunger Games and the Gospel –

Her healing is slow, and the comfort she finds doesn’t change the fact that horrible things have happened, but it makes living with the memory of those things more bearable. As part of that process of mourning and healing, she and Peeta start compiling a book to remember the things “it would be a crime to forget.” Stories of those who died, the memory of her father’s laugh, an image of her sister being licked by the cat. The entries go on and on, and they “seal the pages with salt water and promises to live well and make their deaths count.” … Katniss intuitively knew that telling the stories of what has been lost is a vital part of the process of mourning.

Yet it is not just the small stories that must be remembered. Allowing the human moments to not be forgotten and the sacrifice of individuals to be recognized is a vital part of that process of telling the story, but so is the act of telling the truth about the bigger things. About the sins of the past and the acts of oppression in the present. Naming the systems that cause pain and remembering the stories of those who have been hurt not only allows those people’s stories to be recognized and mourned, it holds the perpetrators accountable for their actions. There is a comfort in knowing that the people who have hurt you accept responsibility for your pain. There is even greater comfort when they humbly repent of their actions and start the process of reconciliation. But sometimes the best that those in pain can hope for is to ensure that things that it would be crime to forget are not forgotten. And that means telling the truthful although sometimes difficult and embarrassing stories of the past.”

There are things in our world which it would be a crime to forget. For people to be able to find hope in its fullest form that allows for mourning and reconciliation to occur, the painful actions of the past cannot be forgotten. Like the Passover meal that calls the Jews to remember that they were once slaves in Egypt but that God delivered them, the story of where we have come from must be remembered and wrestled with in order for hope and healing to be present now.

So the hard questions The Hunger Games left me with are –

What are the things it would be a crime for us to forget?

What must we force ourselves to remember if we truly care about healing and reconciliation in this world?

What are the stories of oppression, genocide, and slavery that must always be told?

When have we like the Capitol citizens forgotten that the people we use are human?

How can we tell those stories so that we too can be delivered from bondage?

Truth and Reconciliation in the United States

Posted on September 29, 2011July 11, 2025

On Tuesday of this week a new sex abuse lawsuit was filed against the Roman Catholic Church in Montana. While sadly the need for such lawsuits is nothing new, this one is different for being one of the first involving abuse by nuns toward Native American children. Some 45 Native Americans are accusing the nuns (and priests as well) of raping and molesting them during their time in residential schools from the 1940s-70s. Although the time limit to pursue criminal charges has long since passes, their attorney commented that the Native American plaintiffs “want accountability. The perpetrators have never been criminally prosecuted; they’ve never been punished,” but that, “It’s unfortunate that the only accountability that remains for the victims is through the civil system.”

These are the Native American children who had no choice but to attend these schools and are just now finding their voice to start healing from their experiences there. For those unfamiliar with the Residential or Boarding school system required of Native Americans (because it is definitely not something taught in most history classes), these were government-funded, generally church-run schools that “were set up to eliminate parental involvement in the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual development of Aboriginal children.” If you’ve seen the film Rabbit Proof Fence you might have some clue about what these schools were like, but they existed in the US and Canada as well (and some are still functioning in the US). Native American children would be placed in these schools – often by force against their parent’s wishes – to have their culture “civilized” out of them as a means of assimilating them to white culture. Often parents would not know where their children were taken, and frequently never saw their children again. Children in these schools were forbidden to speak their own language or practice their own culture. Many of the schools used the children as forced labor for government projects. As stories of these schools have emerged, tales of molestation, rape, abuse, disappearances, murders, and medical experimentation and sterilization are common themes.

The horror of these schools is a reality as are the racist assumptions that lead to their formation. The children who were forced into these schools now have emotional scars that need serious healing. As in any case of abuse, to find that healing and to properly mourn what they lost through what was inflicted upon them, the victims need to tell the truth of their experiences. And in the US, the only legal way to do so is to bring a lawsuit against those that harmed them. Sadly though that opens up the victims to further abuses and pain. Those bringing this particular lawsuit are being vilified for their audacity to accuse elderly nuns of abuse. They are being accused of being greedy for money and that they are only doing this out of a hatred for the Catholic Church. As a numbers of responses have said, how dare the Native Americans mar the good name of these nuns and the Church without proof (as if the testimony of 45 Native Americans doesn’t count as proof). If this is even allowed to come to trial (which is doubtful since the allegations are so old), they will face further struggles as their story is suppressed by the loopholes of the legal system.

In reading about this recent lawsuit all I could think is that this is exactly why we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States. Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness, describes how it was precisely for this reason of allowing the truth to be told with the least amount of pain for the victims that South Africa set up their commission as they did. They knew that to bring all the acts of injustice to trial would not only bankrupt the nation, but that it would hide the truth as perpetrators did everything in their power to not be found guilty and punished. It would not bring healing to their nation to have the victims constantly be told that they were lying about their pain and abuse. So the Truth and Reconciliation Commission choose to promise amnesty in exchange for confessions of truth. Only by telling the truth – all of the murders, abuses, and sins – could a person be exempt from being possibly punished by the government for their crimes. While this system angered those hungry for revenge, it served the purpose of telling the truth necessary for healing. (And it’s not like perpetrators were never punished – confessing to such crimes often led to ostracism from friends, broken marriages, and even suicides as they came face to face with their depravity). But as the name states – the purpose is reconciliation not revenge.

Canada has created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for precisely the purpose of telling the truth about the Native American residential schools. The Commission believes they have a mandate to find out the truth of what happened in those schools so as to help with the reconciliation process of all involved. The system is far from perfect, but it is a step towards allowing true healing to be possible for the survivors. Instead of making the victims out to be the bad guys as they search for healing in a system that often refuses to acknowledge their continued mistreatment, a Commission like this in the US would at least start a dialogue that is long overdue. This most recent lawsuit and the responses it has provoked serve as poignant reminders that there is a lot of truth our nation still needs to face. Pretending such things don’t exist by writing them out of our textbooks or washing our hands of any responsibility only leads to more pain – for everyone. The truth will set us free, but only if we are courageous enough to let go of our defensiveness and let it be heard.

Cowboys & Aliens – A Review

Posted on July 30, 2011July 11, 2025

Americans have a hard time knowing how to respond to the sins of our colonial past. Except for a few extremists, most people know on a gut level that the extermination of the Native Americans was a bad thing. Not that most would ever verbalize it, or offer reparations, or ask for forgiveness, or admit to current neocolonial actions, or give up stereotyped assumptions – they just know it was wrong and don’t know how to respond. The Western American way doesn’t allow the past to be mourned, or apologies to be made. Instead we make alien invasion movies.

It’s no secret that alien invasion films are a way our culture attempts to deal with the sins of our past. Just like we colonized, pillaged, and exterminated indigenous peoples around the world with our advanced technologies of deadlier weapons, we now explore how that might have felt by imagining aliens doing the same to us. But of course, in our never-ending hubris those films always end with the hero kicking the aliens’ butt. Identification with the other can only go so far.

It is into this postcolonial genre that Cowboys & Aliens attempts to fit in, except with the twist that it’s actually set during the period of Western “Manifest Destiny” expansionism. In trying to make such an odd marriage work, the film very self-awarely makes use of all the stereotypes of those genres. You have the old West mining town populated with stock characters like the bespectacled Doc, the crusty old preacher, the lawful sheriff, the prostitute with the heart of gold, the grumpy old Civil War vet turned cowboy (Harrison Ford), and the rugged outlaw (Daniel Craig). The aliens too are the expected insect-like slimy vicious being with no hint of compassion. Added to that is the Hollywood version of a band of Apaches, including the favorite colonial narrative story of the young Native American boy who had been adopted by the racist cowboy (Ford) after his parents died in raids who now serves him as a field hand, looks to him as a father, and willingly sacrifices his life for him later on. Of course, in this alternate world the cowboys and Indians quickly see that they must overcome their differences and work together to fight the aliens (or at least the white men condescend to fight alongside the Natives after the Natives accept that the white men’s attack plan is superior.) Perhaps more ironic self-awareness would have made the stereotypes actually work instead of just descend into the uncomfortable, but as it was they made it difficult for the rest of the films’ theme to play out fully.

As for that, the narrative attempted to follow the colonial trope almost too well. One of the opening lines of the film states that “we are near to Absolution” which is soon followed by Daniel Craig’s wounded character being asked if he is a criminal or a victim to which he replies “I don’t know.” From there the story becomes the journey to seek absolution – in the personal characters’ story arcs and awkwardly in the cultural story of White/Native American relations. While the Preacher is an entertaining character, it quickly becomes apparent that religion will be of no help on this particular journey. In their pursuit of aliens who have abducted their family members, the group of main characters come across a wrecked upside down-steamboat in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Five hundred miles from the nearest river large enough for it, the boat (named the “Amazing Grace”) doesn’t belong. It also is where the Preacher gets attacked and killed. Finding absolution becomes not a religious quest, but a way for boys to become real men as they learn to fight to preserve their way of life.

They soon discover that the attacking aliens (which they call demons) came to earth on a scouting mission to plunder us of gold. Yes, gold. Not some odd resource needed for advanced technology, but the exact same resource that sent pox-infected Conquistadors and Cowboys alike off on quests to plunder the lands of indigenous American peoples. The aliens also round-up humans and keep them sedated in holding pens until they can experiment on them to discover weaknesses. So a combined cowboy, Indian, and outlaw force launches an assault on the alien ship making use of six-shooters, dynamite, arrows, and spears. They, of course, rescue their enslaved family members and (with the help of an angelic-like being) use the alien’s technology against them to destroy the scout ship. The oppressive colonizers are vanquished, the American narrative remains intact.

The happily-ever-after ending has the characters not questioning how gold led to evil and oppression, but prospering off the alien’s discovery of nearby goldmines. Cinematic absolution has been reached, relationships healed, and the threat of colonization seems to have vanished for good. Hollywood delivered some decent action sequences, a hint of a love story, and stock character arcs that make for good entertainment (not to mention the requisite shots of Daniel Craig with his shirt off). Summer blockbuster status achieved.

And yet I wanted more. There was too much historical commentary for Cowboys & Aliens to simply be entertaining escapism, but not enough for it to have anything meaningful to say. Good commentary on our colonial past forces us to examine current assumptions by allowing us to see things from the perspective of the other. But in this film the cowboy still won. The cowboy is both the criminal and the victim, demonstrating superiority in both roles. Just as the Native Americans in the film had to concede to the superiority of Harrison Ford’s ideas, the message is that even when faced with stronger beings and more advanced technology the cowboys (with God’s angels on their side) will by their very nature always come out on top. The other is still other. True absolution, true reconciliation, remains elusive as the hierarchical status quo remains.

In a blundering attempt to deconstruct the colonial narrative, Cowboys & Aliens simply reasserts the myth of the rugged individualist who has no need to ever apologize for current or past sins. But sadly most viewers will be more disappointed with the film’s lack of explosions and sex scenes than its neocolonial message. But I guess that’s the prerogative of cowboys trying to retell their own story.

Justice and Women

Posted on August 18, 2010July 11, 2025

We live in a world full of pain and injustice; there is no getting around that fact. We can hide from the truth or try to protect ourselves from reality, but just because we don’t want to know about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still exist. Our world does its best to hide its dark side from consumer eyes and our school boards do their best to hide most of history from our children. It takes work to keep our eyes open wide enough to see reality. Thankfully, there are people out there who do try to be informed, who try to end injustice, to heal past wounds, and to make amends. Yet recently, as I was reading Eduardo Galeano’s classic book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of Pillage of a Continent, I came across an almost casually mentioned atrocity that jolted me with the reminder that even for the people who are out there actively seeking to fight injustice, there remains one injustice that many would prefer to continue to ignore – the oppression of women. Across the world it is women who often face the worst injustices and yet are often brushed aside as not important enough to seek justice for.

In writing about how the sugar cane industry has destroyed the land and economies of many Latin American countries and led to numerous human rights abuses, Galeano mentioned that in certain plantations in Brazil (at least as of his writing) it was common practice for the plantation owners to claim jus primae noctis, or, right of the first night with the daughters of their workers. Most commonly known to us from the movie Braveheart this is a medieval custom giving to the Lord of an area the right to the virgin night of all the women he ruled. Although in Medieval times the actual consummation was rarely if ever practiced as many families chose the option of “giving” the Lord the bride’s dowry instead (what the Lord was after anyway), Galeano reports that on the plantations the owners would demand the right to have their way with their workers’ 11-12 year old daughters in exchange for the worker remaining in their employment.

Reading that affected me in a visceral way. In the midst of a litany of oppression, I was reminded that women truly bear the brunt of injustice worldwide. Their bodies are chattel, they aren’t deemed worthy of education, and they are fed leftovers if they get food at all. Because they are women their oppression is magnified. Not only must they endure the poverty and the colonialism, but also the objectification of their bodies and the required subjugation of their wills. When voices for liberation or revolution arise the women are called upon to endure hardships and make sacrifices, but it is never their liberation that is fought for. The few that call out for women’s needs to be addressed and for liberation to come to women are told that in light of the greater injustices and oppression that their cause is just a selfish distraction. I hear it all the time in the church – there are just too many more important things to spend energy on than trying to bring justice to women. We aren’t even worth the effort of those that make it a point to care about injustice and the oppressed.

Feminist postcolonial theologians are quick to point out this imbalance. They ask how can we say that we truly desire liberation if in achieving that liberation women still remain oppressed? They repeatedly insist that equality and respect for women should never be an afterthought to be sought sometime after the real work of combating injustice is done, but an instead should be at the very foundation of what it means to seek liberation itself. Nations and races cannot ever fully work for reconciliation and mutual respect if those nations are built upon oppression from within. But sadly, theirs are not the voices that are commonly heard.

In reading non-Western theologies recently (both postcolonial and evangelical), I have in fact encountered the very opposite. Men, who write on combating injustice and prejudice by calling the church to learn from say Korean or First Nation theologies and church practices, insist upon, as part of that process, an affirmation of gender roles that give men a strong (and sole) leadership role in the home, the community, and the church. They see a firm affirmation of this hierarchy of men over women to be integral to ending race divisions in the church itself. So not only are the needs of women ignored, healing and justice are proposed through the continued oppression and sacrifice of women.

Injustice and oppression make me sick and prompt feelings of rage inside of me. But reading about these young girls being raped as pawns in the never-ending cycle of colonial and commercial oppression left me feeling raw. This isn’t just about greed and economics. It isn’t just about racism and power-plays. It’s rooted in a subjugation of women that denies our worth and turns us into mere objects for men to use as they see fit. Most of the Western world hides behind their ignorance of history and injustice (often willfully sought) as an excuse to uphold the status quo. But when even those who claim to care about justice say that speaking out of behalf of women isn’t worth the effort I can barely respond. How can justice be justice if it is only for men?

Violence from the Past

Posted on June 4, 2010July 11, 2025

The day after we here in the U.S. paused to remember the men and women who had died fighting for our country, the fight continued from beyond the grave. On Tuesday in the town of Göttingen, Germany, a World War 2 era bomb exploded killing three people and injuring six others. The strangeness of death coming from a conflict long resolved, the destruction of former enemies now become close friends, gave me pause as I read the headline.

My first thought in the “what a tangled web we weave” category, was to wonder if the Allied airmen dropping those bombs some years ago ever thought that their action had the potential to kill their unborn grandchildren. Or that one day we would live in a globalized world where the idea of Germany and America being at war with one another would be utterly preposterous. And still the violence and the hatred of a time gone by had its latest causalities in 2010.

I’m fully aware that if any war could ever be called a “just war” it would be World War 2. I also know that this could simply be seen as a freak accident. But it isn’t just in Germany where the conflicts of the past still reach into the peaceful times of the present — harming generally those with no stake in the fight. The poor farmer in Laos whose legs were blown off when he overturned a bomb leftover from when his country was used as a pawn as the colonial powers of the West fought for control in Vietnam. The three children killed in Columbia when they triggered a landmine while playing a game of soccer. The people in Japan dying from cancers caused by the atomic bombs dropped in their country. The children born with birth defects because their parents were exposed to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. Wars never end when a treaty is signed or peace declared.

It can be easy to dismiss these as simply the vicissitudes of life, but I wonder if that is just a way to avoid dealing with the issues. Our news channels don’t give us body counts of those we’ve killed in Iraq or Afghanistan because that would make the conflict too real — too human. Thinking about the lingering effects an act of violence might have seems to do the same. In the moment the goal of winning trumps any understanding of the enemy as a real person. Considering that in a decade one might be sitting down for a cup of coffee with the person one is attempting to kill today isn’t conducive to gaining the upper hand today. But the future still comes.

I recall first understanding the strangeness and regret hindsight can elicit when in grad school I sat down for a lunch with a friend from the Ukraine and we joked about the duck and cover drills we practiced in our grade schools. Each of us was conditioned to hate the other, sure that our respective countries would launch an attack at any moment. And now we were in school together, studying missions theology, eating sandwiches at the local deli. It is easy to question why I assumed she was my enemy then, I just wish I had had the courage to do so when I was a child.

I know how simplistic it sounds to suggest that a long-term perspective be applied to the conflicts of the present. Most would answer that the peace of tomorrow can only come through the violence of today. But how many of us would look at our closest friends and tell them that if we could travel back in time we would have no problem killing their grandparents. So why are we interested in killing people today whose children will go to school with our kids in a few years? Are we okay with the bomb we dropped today killing our allies in Afghanistan in 70 years? I hope if anything good comes from this incident in Germany it is that some of these questions start being asked. It’s complicated and messy, but that’s what generally happens when we take the time to think beyond the moment.