Creation as Liberating Act

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I recently read Mercy Oduyoye’s classic work Hearing and Knowing. It is one of the best introductions to theology that I have ever read and I was especially drawn to her exploration of creation as liberating act. Oduyoye explores the way God responds to broken situations in the world by creating (or birthing) something new in their midst. For example, God so loved the world even in its brokenness that God sent Jesus into that very brokenness. By being in the midst of that suffering, Jesus suffered with the community and through that brought healing to the brokenness as he worked to make all things new. The call to be new creations, defined by shalom instead of brokenness, came out of the being withness of community.

Oduyoye then illustrates how the community can live into the power that creating something in order to find liberation offers. She writes –

Among the Igbo of Nigeria, to be creative is to turn the power of evil, sin, and suffering into the power of love. When things are not going well in a community, in order to restore harmony and mutuality of existence, an African community requires artists to camp together, to work together to heal the society by their sacrifice. The creativity of the artists is the sacrifice required for righting wrongs in the community. The artists fashion a model of a whole community and all that they have in a house, and the house and its artifacts are left as a sacrifice, which will renew the community. … The artist symbolically recreates the clan in its pristine state through artifacts and the result is salutary for the real clan. It becomes once again a wholesome people in a wholesome community. (p.92-93)

Jesus willingly entered into a community of suffering in order to create with them a way to be liberated from that suffering. Yet that vision of shalom was not imposed from the outside upon people against their will. It involved solidarity, creativity, and sacrifice. Jesus was with the community, suffering with them. Creativity was required in order for the community to envision the liberation into a better world that becoming new creations would bring. And it required not only the selfless sacrifice of Jesus, but the sacrifice of the old patterns of brokenness in favor of the new vision on the part of the community. Like the Igbo in Nigeria, those open to creative re-envisioning had to live in community together and make sacrifices in order to bring about the healing that is needed.

I love this idea that it is sacrificial creativity within community that brings healing and shalom. All too often healing is reduced to simply an economic transaction or state of intellectual assent. If a person just believes or thinks a certain way, or follows the right set of rules, or refrains from certain actions then they will magically find liberation. Even if others continue to suffer in brokenness, they can still be assured of personally possessing the key to freedom. While these systems are easy to impose upon others and also make it easy to blame individuals for the continued brokenness in the world, they miss the point of something truly new being created. If as the Bible claims, God is working to make all things new, unless one is seeing new healed and liberated communities emerging from where there was once suffering and brokenness, then God’s work there is not yet done (and sometimes has barely even begun).

As Oduyoye comments “God actually searches for us and suffers until the community is complete… Salvation for an elite who have no responsibility to the community at large is contrary to the meaning of the Christ-event” (p.96). The liberation is not simply something for the few to opt into intellectually. Full healing and liberation occur amidst community and involve both sacrifice and creatively imagining a better world. Jesus created an entire alternative way of being in the world he termed the Kingdom of God – a way to live differently than the systems of suffering and oppression the world offered. Rejecting the ways of the world in favor of this new way of being requires one to sacrifice the privileges and entitlements the world offers in exchange for the liberation and shalom of the whole community. It is easy to be told what to do in order to secure one’s personal safety and comfort. It is a lot harder to stand in solidarity with the suffering of the community and do the creative and sacrificial work of together envisioning something new. Yet, as Oduyoye reminds us, God’s plan for liberation was to send Jesus to do just that.

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Teaching My Children the Bible

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As a mother who is also a follower of Christ, I want my children to learn the stories of the faith I follow. Having grown up in the church and having been a children’s pastor, I also know that there are some pretty messed up ways that churches and families often go about teaching the Bible to kids. From the Aesop fablization of the Bible where gory stories like Noah’s Ark become just about cute animals and instructing kids to obey their parents and teachers to sword drills and programs that encourage binge memorization of verses in order to earn plastic jewels in a crown, children are rarely encouraged to enter into scripture and understand its larger story.

But it’s a story I want my children to know – with all its complexities and overarching narratives intact. While the superbly done The Action Bible has helped my comic-book obsessed daughter become more familiar with the stories, I knew that I needed to find other ways to help expose her to more than just the same dozen “safe for kids” Bible stories Sunday schools seem to favor. So when I saw all over Pinterest a pin about a Child Training Bible, I clicked on it out of curiosity. Something in me hoped it was an accessible way for young readers to piece together the complex history that is the Bible so they could better understand the story of God’s relationship with creation. It couldn’t have been further from that.

No, the Child Training Bible is a color-coded system (patent pending) that makes it easy for a child or parent to look up a verse when a child needs discipline. Asserting that the Bible is the answer book for everything in life, the system is described as – “All the things you work on to train your children tabbed and highlighted with a key in the front. Training topics include: anger, complaining, defiance, lying, laziness, and wrong friendships! So when you need the verses you can grab the actual Word and be able to quickly flip to whatever you need!!” I read that and had one of those fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul moments. The whole system was nauseating enough for how it disrespected the entire purpose of the Bible (and ignored the fact that only Jesus is called the Word of God), but then I started reading the reviews on mommy blogs online. Dozens of mothers were lauding the product as the perfect way to discipline and get their children into the word. I only found one single response that questioned using the Bible in such a negative way and then immediately read all the responses accusing that woman of hating the Bible and not truly being a Christian. It was heartbreaking.

Like I said, I think it is important to know the Bible and I desire for my kids to know it as well. I honestly find it disturbing that more and more these days committed Christians (even many of the classmates my husband and I encountered at our seminaries) have no sense of what is actually in the Bible. But systems like this that cherry-pick verses out of context for the purpose of using guilt to manipulate children into a certain set of middle-class American behaviors don’t help the problem. Neither do many of the other popular suggestions for “immersing oneself in the word” that I am seeing these days. Like the suggestions for the “25 (or 50 or 70) essential verses” one should put on post-it notes around the house if one desires ones family (or husband) to be transformed. Bible verses are not magical incantations that through exposure and repetition will change a person. Even daily reminders that one must delight oneself in the Lord or that God grants rest to the weary while possibly useful in helping one feel better about oneself don’t actually enter one into the story of the Bible or the more difficult way of living it calls people to live. And, unsurprisingly, I’ve yet to read one of those essential verse lists that acknowledge the communal (rather than individualistic) nature of being part of the body of Christ or that include anything about seeking justice for the poor and the oppressed.

I have nothing against memorizing scripture or finding encouragement from a saying or two from the Bible. I teach my children passages like the Beatitudes and expose them to music full of scripture. But I harbor no illusion that reading a daily devotion of two or three verses that deliver personal spiritual warm-fuzzies is in any form or fashion “being in the word.” Nor is seeing a verse on a post-it on your mirror, finding a warning verse attached to a TV or computer, or even doing a fill-in-the-blank “Bible” study. Using the Bible in such ways cheapens it and turns it into the Christian equivalent of a Magic Eight ball. The Bible is not an answer book, or a guide to raising children, or even primarily instructions for how to have a personal relationship with God. Yes, the Bible gives testimony to the way of life God desires, but a handful of out-of-context verses can never encapsulate the message of a story that the faithful have been trying to figure out for thousands of years. I want my kids to wrestle with that story, to understand the competing voices and ideologies within the Bible, and learn to work out their faith with fear and trembling as they respect the narrative enough to not reduce it to sound bites.

I know this post is a bit of a rant. And I am sure there are readers who will call me a heretic and hater of the Bible for writing this. But as a frustrated mom, it is hard to find resources that help me encourage my kids to engage the Bible but that also don’t turn it into a shallow shadow of what it is meant to be.

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Is Justice Violent?

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At the Wild Goose Festival Melvin Bray raised a question in one of his talks that is one that I’ve been wondering recently as well. After a few days of many of us discussing the myth of redemptive violence (as we honored the recent passing of Walter Wink), Melvin courageously asked out loud why is it that those who propose nonviolence always seem to equate violence with force? I had to applaud him for his audacity, for I, even as one who is committed to nonviolence, often find myself at odds with the primary voices within that movement because I am also committed to justice (restorative, not retributive). For as Melvin pointed out, taking action, standing-up for the oppressed, and ensuring the hungry are fed are all actions that ultimately require some sort of force – but must that force be labeled and rejected as violence?

The argument from many within the nonviolence perspective is that to stand up to injustice is a force that implies violence. To tell sex traffickers to stop kidnapping and selling women (or to enact laws that do so) is a violent act against their wills. To stand up for fair wages does violence against those who exploit others by forcing them to put an end to their practices. Those that support nonviolence argue that Christians truly committed to such pacifism should therefore not involve themselves in actions that make use of such violent force. Christians can care for the abused woman and befriend the trafficker in hopes of modeling a different way of life, but not force them to stop hurting others. Consequently many of the most prominent voices for nonviolence also argue against social justice as it too is a form of violence in their minds.

But as Melvin pointed out, to love others means that we cannot be resigned to their suffering. To be afraid that we might do violence to another if we force them to stop hurting others in many cases allows violence to the oppressed to continue. This is why I think affirming a distinction between violence and force is so important. Many pacifists who equate the two argue that even if one sees someone being attacked or raped, one should not resort to violence to stop it. But there is a huge difference between forcing someone to stop hurting someone else and hurting them back. Yes, it requires force to stop a fight or to pull someone off a victim, but it seems far from Christian to argue that it is worse to do supposed violence to someone with such actions than it is to allow the suffering of those already being violated to continue. Same thing with injustice. Standing up against oppression and exploitation requires forceful words, actions, and laws to stop those doing violence to others, but to refuse to use such force is to essentially give approval of the violence that is already being done.

What complicates matters is that those pacifists arguing against social justice often do so from a position of power and privilege as most are straight, white, Southern males. I have a difficult time accepting the theological argument from someone in such a position that it is wrong to stand up to oppression and seek justice. This was an argument used often against Martin Luther King Jr. as the prominent white pacifists of his time criticized his nonviolent marches and calls for bus boycotts as being too forceful (and therefore violent). Yet without such uses of nonviolent force, the blatant oppression of blacks in the USA would not have changed in the way it did. Force is uncomfortable and it challenges the power of the privileged, but that does not make it violent.

I therefore appreciated Melvin’s willingness to bring up this question. I know that it is not an issue for many Christians (as nonviolence has sadly become a minority tradition in the church these days), but for those of us committed to peacemaking it is often the elephant in the room. Those of us who care about justice and work to put an end to oppression non-violently find it difficult to constantly be told by the major pacifist theologians safe in their academic positions that we are the ones sinning by standing up for justice. But the force of love that accompanies the breaking-in of the Kingdom of God in this world is not content with letting the suffering of others continue. I have to believe that letting that love push into the world and overcome the darkness is the call of Christ. I am committed deeply to peace, but because of that overwhelming force of love, I must also be committed to justice.

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Wild Goose 2012 Reflection

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The 2012 Wild Goose Festival East wrapped up just under a week ago and I am still trying to process my experience there. As I tweeted as I drove away from the fest, I left feeling exhausted, hopeful, and blessed – that strange combination that reflected the emotional impact of my time there. And it was a truly blessed time. I was honored with the opportunity to speak on The Hunger Games and the Gospel as well as do a Q&A on everyday justice issues at the Likewise tent. I also was able to join Brett Webb-Mitchell on a panel discussion about living with disabilities in religious communities. But beyond those conversations I was able to help initiate, I also found a generous and safe space to connect with friends, wrestle with difficult questions, and dream of a better world. Such spaces are so rare in my life these days, that finding such at Wild Goose was a precious gift.

There are, of course, the expected complaints about the festival. It was brutally hot (and that is coming from a Texan). I never ceased to be sticky, sweaty, and stinky and there were bugs everywhere. Camping in a field where every action (and parenting attempt) is on constant display is stressful and uncomfortable. And, as with many religious gatherings, there could have been greater diversity. For the first hour I was there as I nearly passed out trying to set up a tent in the sweltering heat, I was in a panic mode wondering why I was stupid enough to subject myself to the discomfort and imperfection of it all again this year. Yet as I entered into the experience of being a part of this crazy wonderful gathering, those issues (although ever-present) faded in significance as I found myself fitting into a place where I felt I belonged. It would be hard to give an all-encompassing report of the Wild Goose since all I have is my particular experience of it, so all I can initially do here is describe a few of those points that provided that resonance of belonging.

  • I saw people moving past the trivial distractions of the Church to attempt to live authentically in the way of Christ. Last year Wild Goose was a new thing in search of its identity. It was edgy, it was controversial, it was hip. None of that mattered this year. The point wasn’t to have debates over controversial issues, but to do the real work of the church. So collectively it seemed like the festival grew up, got over its fears and struggles to define its identity and decided to stop feeding the infighting within the body of Christ and start being Christ instead. I’m sure there were some people upset by that act of maturing, but I doubt many of them came back this year. There also were far fewer people there who just came to be seen in their own sessions but who refused to attend and learn from other sessions. Being in conversation and humbly letting others speak into our lives was more the norm this year. Wild Goose grew up. I personally found it refreshing to be a part of something that didn’t direct all its energy at defending the rightness of one particular theological ghetto. It was also nice to be amidst people who spent more time living in the ways of the kingdom of God than they do making theological excuses for why the church needn’t bother following the way of Christ. There was also no need to grow any particular church or hold tight to a denominational allegiance. This was a truly ecumenical gathering of Catholics, Mainliners, Evangelicals, and Emergents coming together beyond their tribal boundaries. This is not to say that hard questions weren’t wrestled with at Wild Goose or challenges to privilege issued, but it was done (as far as I could tell) from a respectful and welcoming attitude. I needed to see that to regain some faith in the structure of church itself.
  • I got to see my children thriving in community. Last year at Wild Goose we were the hovering parents. Our kids had to be in eyesight at all times which severely limited their ability to make friends as well as our ability to attend sessions and have conversations. This year we, for the first time in their lives, let our kids roam free. Like children from past generations who roamed the neighborhood finding friends and adventures alike, the safe space of the Wild Goose gave our kids the opportunity to be a part of community on their own. I saw them come alive as they made the experience their own. From my son donning his Batman cape and finding a wooden stake somewhere so he could roam as “Vampire Slayer Batman” as we sipped boxed wine and made fair trade s’mores at our tent with friends to my daughter finding quartz rocks on the path and trying to get the food vendors to accept her “diamonds” as payment for ice cream and lemonade – they had the time of their lives. Yes, we got a few disapproving reactions from other parents there and I heard a family was asked to leave the supposedly “open-table” Eucharist because their kids were playing nearby, but I am grateful for this opportunity my kids had to be children in a way kids these days rarely do – and that there is a space for that within a community of faith.
  • I was able to be moved by a worship experience for the first time in a very long time. While there were opportunities to enter into worship provided throughout the festival – ranging from contemplative prayer times, to interactive creative worship, to liturgies, and even a good old-fashioned hymn-sing (appropriately held at the beer tent), it was the final Sunday morning worship processional that had me literally choked up with the beauty of being a part of the community of the body of Christ. Proclaiming that every worship processional should in fact be a parade of celebration this call to worship consisted of a ringleader and band leading a parade through the festival grounds as the people of God with painted faces and waving banners danced and sang out “When the Saints Go Marching In.” There was a blessed relief in being amidst a group of people who weren’t worshiping just to be fed or to consume a religious good or who don’t see the rituals as church as the limit of worship. There also was a deeper joy in having been through the festival and hearing of the passion of this sliver of the church to truly live in the ways of Christ by seeking justice for all and loving the whole world sacrificially that made me actually want to sing “Oh how I want to be in their number when the saints go marching in.” In the back of my head I heard all the critics’ voices telling me in that moment that worship must be solemn, that we had sacrificed tradition for novelty, that we were simply being foolish. But the sense of utter rightness and overwhelming hope I saw as I danced along with those committed to marching against injustice in the name of love drowned out the toxicity of those messages I am usually surrounded with and I was able to experience God again. I agree with Bono that the right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear – sometimes it takes foolishly resisting the trappings of church in order to find the strength to resist the injustices of culture. It set my soul free and dismantled the box we so often force God to dwell within.

I could ramble on and on about the wonderful people and conversations I had at Wild Goose. It was a place that revived hope in me for the body of Christ in our world today. And I find myself infinitely grateful to have spent a few sweltering and uncomfortable days amidst these saints in order to catch this glimpse of the Kingdom manifest in this world.

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The Widow of Nain

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As part of her series on the women of the Gospels Rachel Held Evans recently posted this retelling I wrote of the story of the Widow of Nain. I’m reposting the story here and I encourage my readers to follow the series of posts at her blog!

 

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“Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favorably on his people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.” – Luke 7:11-17

At first I thought it was strange that the town gathered to mourn my son. All these years later and I still feel like an outsider, not really one of them. Granted, I grew up just down the road from here in Endor. I saw the same solitary dome of Mount Tabor looming in the distance when I would go to fetch water from the well there as I do here in Nain, but still it is different.

It was a difference I felt sharply when my husband first brought me here as his young bride. What I had always thought was a short walk to the neighboring town when I would accompany my father on the journey, suddenly became the other side of the world. Not that my husband mistreated me or that I protested our marriage, just that I knew I was no longer home. The other women in town knew each other already. They would walk to the well together or spend the morning pleasantly chatting as they gathered to do the wash. I was the inept young bride who didn’t even know how to fashion a new needle when my old one splintered. Oh, the mending I had to do once I finally got a new one!

It wasn’t until my belly started to swell with child that I began to feel a part of the community. It’s hard for the women not to get involved when they see that one in their midst is expecting – especially when it is her first. At first it was casual – someone dropping by with a handful of herbs she had happened upon that were supposed to help with the incessant nausea or backaches. Soon it became long chats as each and every one of them felt it was her duty to tell me the gory details of her birthing experiences. Goodness knows why any woman would ever want to have children after hearing all those stories, but somewhere in the midst of hearing Miriam confessing that she thought she was giving birth to a demon instead of baby and Hannah warning me for the fourth or fifth time to make sure the child suckles on both sides if I didn’t want to be crippled with pain – I became one of them. In the camaraderie of women’s shared experience Nain finally accepted me as one of their own.

It was that acceptance that later allowed me to survive. My son was a healthy young lad, a blessing to our house, but the two daughters I bore since never made it through their first winters. It was that long winter that took our second daughter that claimed my husband as well. And once again I felt utterly alone. The horror stories of childbirth were nothing compared to this. The very act of putting food on the table became a near insurmountable task. As the bitter winter raged on and death surrounded us all, for the first time I understood why those women with the ragged clothes and hollow eyes would dare defile themselves with man after man. Yet somehow it never came to that for me. I don’t doubt that I would have done anything to feed my son, but the women of Nain wouldn’t let one of their own starve.

Granted, nothing was ever again the same. I wasn’t like them anymore. Instead I was the one to be pitied – but at least we survived. My son, young as he was, always found there was a stable to be cleaned for a coin. And the women who I once would laugh and share stories with were always willing to pass on their mending to me in exchange for the occasional jar of oil or loaf of bread. Once again I was an outsider of sorts, but it mattered far less that it had before. Making it through each day became my goal.

When my son was finally old enough to learn a trade, I began to breathe a little easier. Once he could earn a living, we wouldn’t have to live in constant fear wondering where our next meal would come from. I say I trust in the Lord to provide, but despite the generosity of Nain, the question always remained as to when that well too would dry up. It is hard to have faith when despite the pity and the charity, you feel so alone. So it wasn’t until my son was able to work that I dared have hope again. It was more than just knowing we would survive. With his support, I wouldn’t be just a widow anymore, but perhaps could spend time with the other women instead of just taking in their mending.

So when he too was taken from me my world came to an abrupt end. Now I was completely alone. I think I might have laughed when some of the women once again stopped by with herbs for his body and they told me to muster up the courage of Jael to face the difficult road ahead. If only survival was as easy as driving a tent peg through the head of the enemy commander fleeing down neighboring Mount Tabor. Perhaps the women who have never had to question if they belong here can find strength in the tales of old, but I doubted even faith could sustain me now.

So when the town gathered to help me bury my son it felt odd to be surrounded by those to whom I must now entrust my life. We had managed to survive before, but now without the boy to feed I wondered if they would be so eager to provide for me alone. The loss of my beloved son compounded by these fears consumed me with grief. As his body was carried out of town for burial, I could not help but wail in despair and angry. How could God forget me so? Was I as much of an outsider to God as I was in Nain?

Yet even as my faith crumbled in the face of my grief, something amazing happened.

We had just carried my son’s body outside of the town gate when we encountered a traveling teacher and his disciples. I doubt I would have noticed them, but this teacher came right up to us, halting our progress. And then he commented on my grief. Someone must have told him I was a widow who had just lost her only son, for he seemed to genuinely care about my plight. I half expected him to offer some hollow words of comfort or press a coin into my palm without quite looking me in the eye like a few others had done. Instead he looked at me and seemed to understand – not just my loss but it almost seemed like he knew how utterly alone I felt. And then with deep compassion that went far beyond awkward pity, he told me not to weep and he walked over to my son’s bier and touched it.

A few people gasped at how seemingly oblivious he was to the purity laws, but their concern was quickly dwarfed by what happened next: For the moment he touched the bier, my son sat up and started talking to him!

I was too stunned to speak, my sobs caught in my throat. One of the bearers nearly dropped his side of the bier breaking the tension of the moment. The teacher, laughing, then helped my son down and brought him over to me. All I could do was embrace my son, weeping all over again – this time with tears of relief and joy. Everyone was in awe of this teacher, calling him a prophet and proclaiming that he had brought God’s favor among us. But no one understood the magnitude of that favor more than I. My son and my ability to survive were restored to me – surely I had been blessed.

Like Hagar cast off into the wilderness, God saw me in my isolation and looked with favor on the lowliness of even one like me. I wasn’t forgotten or merely treated with pity, God accepted me even in my grief and despair. I finally felt like I belonged.

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Goose Your Kindle

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I’m off to the Wild Goose Festival this week and am looking forward to seeing many of you there! As the festival kicks off I wanted to share with you all the special offer Likewise Books is offering as part of its involvement in Wild Goose. Likewise Books invites you to Goose your Kindle with a great sale on Kindle books by Likewise authors speaking at Wild Goose.

That means from now until July 3rd you can get the kindle version of my book Everyday Justice for just $2.99!

Also available at this price are kindle books by Mark Scandrette, Margot Starbuck, Leroy Barber, Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.

Enjoy the books and I hope to catch up with whoever will be at Wild Goose this week!

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Worship Confession

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I was annoyed with the worship wars back in the 90s. All too often they boiled down to younger people demanding that church be done in a language they understood and older people demanding that since they tithed the most church should cater to their whims (and yes I heard the arguments stated that crassly numerous times). These days a theological veneer is imposed on the same arguments (generally by those who accuse those who desire the church to embrace only the cultural idioms of 100 or 300 years ago instead of those of the past fifty years). The arguments typically accuse people of rejecting the forms of church that are the “proper” way of encountering God for the siren call of individualism and novelty. Same wars based on personal preference, just new ways of accusing the other side of being wrong.

As I repeatedly encounter these spats in the church, it forces me to ask the question as to what the purpose of corporate worship is anyway. I fully believe that worship can never be limited to just the rituals of church but involves the actions of serving God in the world. Yet I still see a place for corporate worship. What I hear most often is that the purpose of that event is to unveil God – to make God present and known to those gathered in a particular space. The rituals, the prayers, the songs, the sermon, the well-rehearsed actions of the leaders all work together to bring the congregation into an encounter with God.

But this is where I get uneasy. I keep asking myself – is the point of worship simply to encounter God?

The longer I am part of the Christian faith the more uneasy I get with churches that enact a well-planned performance intended to help people have this encounter with God. Whether it is a timed-to-the-minute contemporary stadium show with a recording-level-quality praise band or a highly orchestrated liturgy with a recording-level-quality choir and organist, I find myself increasingly uncomfortable with the affected voice of the church. The manipulative nature of the fact that the religious professionals are staging a show intended for me to consume (as I read or sing as prompted) under the guise of enacting the proper form for how God is to be revealed grates on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard.

For a long time I thought this was just my preferences regarding worship and was reluctant to jump in the fray of the worship wars culture. But the question kept returning to me – is worship simply about encountering God or should it also involve participating in God? Watching a show and being moved to see God seems like a mere shadow of worship compared to making of ourselves living sacrifices and being caught up in the work of God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Rehearsing or timing a performance can make for a beautiful experience in the moment, but it leaves me hollow. Maybe it’s because after so many years in the church world I’ve seen too much of the machinations of the men behind the curtain to even be able to see God in such polished performances.

Perhaps that is my failing.

But I’ve reached the point where it is only in the messy and faltering attempts to be the body of Christ -to give of ourselves as we are instead of in a role someone expects of us – that I not only experience God but feel that I am participating in God’s work in the world. It’s often elusive and frequently difficult and uncomfortable to live into worship instead of merely consume it, but it is where I can actually see God at work as of late. But as I am discovering, desiring to worship in such ways makes it very hard to continue to exist in the church world that has formed different habits.

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Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 5

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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 , Part 3 and Part 4.

Even as I embraced the identity of a Christian feminist, I still encountered countless misunderstandings regarding what it meant to actually own that label. The fear and the ridicule remained, and even increased as people tried to grasp what it meant that I was a Christian and a feminist. I recall being in a small group once in a church where I self-identified as a feminist. Immediately one of the women in the group spat out at me, “Oh, so you’re a baby killer.” To her, nothing else I said mattered since she could label me according to what she thought she knew about feminists and therefore dismiss me. While I fully understand how intimately tied the abortion issue is to some strains of feminism, it continues to amaze me how that one controversial issue has been used to shut down the entire conversation regarding the freedom and worth of women in certain circles. Especially in the church, where abortion is often opposed, many women feel like they can’t explore what it means to develop their full potential as women because of the fear of being associated with abortion. Yet discovering the freedom that comes in Christ for women should not be restricted because of fear and misunderstandings. There is such a rich history of feminism that has nothing to do with abortion and that even opposes it, I just wish that full and diverse story could be better understood.

Other misunderstandings are a bit more disturbing. A few years ago I received an anonymous and rather creepy email from a guy who said he found it entertaining that I would write about feminism on my blog and be angry at men who beat their wives, commit adultery or generally look down upon the female segment of society. He asserted that the only valid reason I would be a feminist is because I must have been sexually assaulted as a child (I wasn’t), and that to get over my issues (and avoid becoming a lesbian) I must allow men to have sex with me every day to knock the feminist chip off my shoulder. Not exactly the sort of email I enjoy receiving. It would be easy to write this guy off as crazy, but over the years I’ve discovered that his perspective is not that uncommon. Those that can’t accept women as equals and who see us only as sex objects to be used for their entertainment honestly have no idea why women would dare strive for respect and equality. To them it is simply a sign of dysfunction, generally of the sexual sort.

Then there are others who, while they understand the message that women desire dignity and respect, believe women only do so out of a desire to make women the dominant sex. Patriarchy continues to encourage fear of feminism by spreading the lie that it is about dominance and not equality. The July 2010 issue of The Atlantic played on these fears as they titled a widely-read cover article highlighting the advancements of women “The End of Men,” implying that if women succeed it must be at the expense of men. And while I agree that for respect to flourish, patriarchal attitudes that denigrate women or privilege men at the expense of women will have to be sacrificed, those things are sins that need to be repented of and not the core aspects of male identity that some have argued they are.

None of these misunderstandings are what feminism is basically about. Wanting to release women from oppression, to allow her to be who God made her to be does not mean that others must be hurt in the process. These are fears and misunderstanding that are sadly encouraged in our culture, ensuring that feminism remains generally reviled. But as a Christ-follower who cares about truth (not to mention justice), I believe it is necessary to oppose these lies and dismantle misunderstandings with the light of reality. That’s why I no longer fear being called names like feminazi, I would just rather help others see that the message of freedom feminism offers is the exact opposite of Nazi Totalitarianism. But of course, not everyone agrees with that approach.

Some Christians believe that the negative connotations surrounding feminism are reason enough to shun the label. In our world that is often hyper-obsessed with labels, I see how this can be a good way to attempt to avoid confusion. Sadly though, what I often see is the baby being thrown out with the bathwater. When people reject the term feminist because of its negative associations, they often similarly try to distance themselves from the very things feminism stands for – even the good things. Christian writer Frederica Mathewes-Green, who once claimed the term feminist (and even served as Vice-President of Feminists for Life), often cites such connotations as one of the reasons she chose to distance herself from and eventually abandon feminism. As she explains it, she just couldn’t continue using a term that meant one thing to her and her friends and something drastically different to others.

I sympathize with her (and understand that this wasn’t the only reason she rejected feminism), but at the end of the day can’t I bring myself to agree. There are some labels I want to claim even if they have negative connotations for some. Like the label “Christian,” for instance. For a lot of people in this world the term Christian is synonymous with hatred, and often for good reasons. So even while I will from time to time use differing terms (like Christ-follower) to describe my faith, I am not going to abandon the label “Christian,” no matter how many negative things (both true and false) can be associated with it. I’ve come to feel the same way about feminism – there is too much good there, too much hope for women, to reject it out of hand.

Feminism is diverse just like Christianity is diverse. I appreciate the comment a woman left at my blog once regarding claiming the term feminist in light of this diversity – “All of that is precisely why I call myself a feminist – particularly in more conservative Christian circles. If I don’t self-identify as a feminist, then that allows people to maintain their stereotypes of feminists and who we are.” I went from fearing a term I didn’t really understand to finding hope and encouragement in its message. What I thought was a hurdle, preventing me from accepting a fully egalitarian position, actually gave me greater insight into how I could live out a faith that sought to bring freedom to the oppressed. Like the commenter on my blog, I choose to embrace the term because I saw the good in it – a good I want others to see as well.

I no longer think of “feminism” as the f-word or a term to be avoided, but a way of life to be embraced. A way of life that helps women break free of the cage of patriarchy and find the space to become whole.

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Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 4

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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

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Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 3

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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.

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