My Friend Lutestring: The Power of Being Heard…

My online friend Lutestring recently wrote a post about her experiences and struggles as a woman in the Evangelical church.  It’s painful, but so important, for us to pay attention to stories like hers.  Too often, female testimony remains contextualized (and confined) by masculine narratives about faith, society and culture.  Even well-intentioned men (like me) will inevitably struggle to comprehend and assimilate the testimonies of women.  It’s so crucial that we allow ourselves to be corrected by female voices, rather than push to fit alternate narratives into our own paradigms.  This is a spiritual exercise, and I’m so glad to have friends like Lutestring to keep the dialogue going.

At her blog she wrote:

When men recognize what has happened to women in their lives, more will listen to and advocate for women. When men listen to and advocate for women, that is a healing work I cannot overstate the beauty and power of. And though nothing will stop us women who want to heal in our journey for healing, we still feel that the picture is not complete until some of our brothers come to stand by us. Just as nothing could stop the African-American people for advocating for their rights no matter how hateful white people continued to be, and nothing could stop them being happy and courageous then. It isn’t contingent on whether someone else understands you or not, just on whether you are determined to honor yourself. Yet as Martin Luther King said, things will not be fully well until whites and blacks considered themselves bound in brotherhood and love to each other…

…

This doesn’t mean that I can’t still be grateful for what I learned from the Church. That doesn’t mean I don’t still own the good things as well. Because I do own them. That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for how the Church has shaped me in good ways. Because it did shape me in good ways as well as bad ways. But I need to leave behind this destructive, false way of thinking that if I name the bad, then I am being ungrateful for the good.Because that is simply not true, and if I allow myself to think that way or be pressured into thinking that way, well then, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then, in that self-fulfilling prophecy, remembering anything good automatically must imply a negation or denial of the bad. This is a very destructive way to look at life, and it is at odds with the nature of true healing.  There was good and there was bad. The good was awesome and I’m grateful for it, the bad was terrible and I’m angry about it and grieving for it.  And this is some of (not all of) the reason I am an unabashed feminist. I believe that our race will not be spiritually whole and well until (among many other things) men and women have learned to love each other upon an equal footing, and named and grieved the wrongs which have been. 

Click here for the full post.

Lute, thank you so much for sharing, and for your kind words!
Peter

Some Battles Are Worth Fighting – And Losing…

It’s a hard reality to face.  It’s one that runs in stark contradiction to the ethos of the present day.  We assess cost, risk, profit and loss of every endeavor.  And I feel uncomfortable and (sometimes) embarrassed to talk about fighting battles, because I’d like to be a peacemaker.  In some areas of my life, I am a peacemaker.  Elsewhere, I stir things up unnecessarily, and polarize people who could probably find common ground.  I’m still learning…

If you could go back and tell them their efforts would end in death, do you think they would have changed their minds?  Probably not.  And that’s not so radical.  Terrorits are that committed, too.  But here’s the bigger idea: if their efforts had failed completely, and you could warn them, would it have changed anything?

Are Men The Church’s Primary Concern? What do YOU think?

Phyllis Trible’s‘Texts of Terror’ demonstrates this emphatically. Until we learn tocontextualize biblical gender roles, we’re doomed to keep running in circlesaround this issue.??

XtraNormal Pilgrim: "Could we borrow your land?"

Happy Thanksgiving! Honestly, I really do enjoy this day.  It’s just that…

Review: ‘Missing Persons & Mistaken Identities’ – Phyllis Bird

I realize blog format is far from ideal for any lengthy papers, but from time to time I’ve included assignments from seminary that I have thought you might appreciate.  I just finished reading Phyllis Bird’s Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities, a feminist analysis and critique of the Hebrew Bible.  I really enjoyed it, and thought I’d share.  Don’t feel bad for skimming or not finishing!

BTW, this comes under the “stuff I like” category!

Phyllis Bird’s Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities opens with a list of diverse images depicting female character and action, contrasting with traditional “default” imagery of Eve in Genesis. While recognizing that these women “appear for the most part simply as adjuncts of men, significant only in the context of men’s activities,” Bird makes a point to note their exceptionality and, in some cases, their prominence. Women’s roles are more diverse and prevalent in the Hebrew Bible text than conventional wisdom commonly acknowledges. (13) With this recognition, Missing Persons seems to carry with it an ideological pragmatism from the start: fearlessly identifying gendered sins and sins of omission in the Hebrew Bible, while choosing to celebrate those occurrences that atypically observe or affirm feminine players.

In the first chapter Bird provides a list of verses demonstrating “the variety of viewpoints and expression represented” in the Old Testament, regarding women. (14) In Micah 6:4, Miriam is named alongside Moses and Aaron, with what appears to be a horizontal or equalized stature: “I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of bondage; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.” In 1 Kings 2:9 King Solomon rises to meet Bathsheba, bows down to her, and seats her at his right hand. Such deference to femininity is worth noting for Bird, not because it is normative, or indicative of the broader arch of Biblical testimony toward women, but because of its divergence from the general tone of the canon.

The picture of woman obtained from the Old Testament laws can be summarized in the first instance as that of a legal nonperson; where she does become visible it is as a dependent, and usually an inferior, in a male-centered and male-dominated society. The laws, by and large, do not address her; most do not even acknowledge her existence. (30)

More after the jump below!
Bird begins with an exploration into the gendered language of Proverbs, identifying three key stereotypes of women: mother, wife, and foreign/other. The mother may be the most positive role of the three, not limited to the reproductive role of wife, instead paralleling the wisdom and instructive role of the father: integral “in the nurture and education of the child.” (31) By contrast, the wife is valuable as an asset to the household and its effective management. Her listed virtues are entirely nonsexual. In contrast, “a ‘bad’ wife is also described in Proverbs, but not as a general type. She is identified primarily in terms of a single trait – contentiousness.” (31) The third classification, the foreign/other, is a seductress and a corruptor, “luring men to their destruction.” (32) In all three categories, economic and status concerns inform an underlying priority toward class maintenance. “The wisdom sayings and instruction literature of Proverbs… is a literature of the upper class predominantly; and it addresses men exclusively. A man’s success depends upon heeding his parents’ instruction and obtaining a good wife.” (33)

Such limited caricatures of femininity lead Bird to her thesis:

Women are adjuncts to the men: they are the minor (occasionally, major) characters necessary to a plot that revolves about males. They are the mothers and nurses and saviors of men; temptresses, seducers, and destroyers of men; objects or recipients of miracles performed by and for men; confessors of the power, wisdom, and divine designation of men. (34)

Despite this dire appraisal of the text, Bird does not feign ignorance of the minority view, subtly present in some of the scriptures. She writes with a note of optimism, “Some among the prophets saw beyond the present day… They looked to a new act of God in creation, to a new order with new possibilities for human existence.” (50-51) These prophetic vantages visualized an end to the marginalization and exploitation based on species, age, gender and status.

The second chapter begins with a word study on feminine designations in Hebrew. Bird demonstrates how there is no word for woman that does not either derive from a word for men, or indicate some superficial descriptor of a type of woman. There is no objective female without comparison, classification or judgment. This is hardly surprising, as Bird observes: “the Old Testament gives no unmediated access to the lives and thought of Israelite women.” (53) Rather than self-sustaining characters with their own internal motivations, women are props for male action, or chattel to accompany male characters. Not only that, but the biblical narrative keeps women at a distance, portrayed as “other,” even when not specifically defined as such. “One consequence of patrilineal organization is that women are to some extent either aliens or transients within their family of residence.” (55) When they are truly aliens according to the narrative, the text is far harsher. Alien wives are perpetually viewed as usurpers and instigators of foreign influence and pagan spirituality. Despite the prevalence of foreign wives, they remain a perpetual scapegoat for the ills and suffering of Israelite society. This demonization, however, reveals some level of female influence in society for the rhetoric to carry credence. “The Old Testament attack on foreign wives is indirect testimony to the independence and power of women within the family sphere despite the formal structures and symbols of patriarchal power.” (56) If women were as powerless as instructive verses suggest, foreign corruption would be a non-issue.

Part Two of Missing Persons engages women in relation to the Israelite religion. There are a number of theories as to why women were excluded from ritual. Since society was martial, masculine and militaristic, it was natural for women to be relegated to second-class status. Some scholars argued that “women were disqualified from cultic service by reference to an original ancestral cult of the dead which could be maintained only by a male heir.” Another argument suggested that women were perceived with an inherent “disability or disinterest” in the Yahwistic religion, with chronic proclivities toward foreign, pagan cults. (81) The canon demonstrates that there are clearly movements within the Israelite religion, some which gave more or less inclusion and empowerment to females. When they did participate, it was not identical to the practices of the men, which further fueled allegations of paganism during particularly puritanical movements. “Women’s religion cannot be equated with goddess worship, but there is sufficient evidence to suggest that women’s religion did represent a significantly differentiated form of religious expression within Yahwism…” (120)

The third section of Missing Persons deals with meaning and roles behind the creation narrative. Here, Bird tries to maintain some connection and continuity between historical-exegetical interpretation, and constructive theological interpretation, while maintaining critical methodology and a priority for the integrity of the scriptural testimony. (125) This is a perilous task, to be sure, as Bird lists pitfalls so many theologians have fallen to, particularly isolating and atomizing texts, and redacting contemporary vantages into premodern works. She argues that one of the keys to understanding the gendered language and delineation of Genesis 1 is exploring Priestly tradition and priorities that would have worked to construct and shape the narrative. (130) “The primary concerns of the Priestly creation account are two: (1) to emphasize the dependence of all of creation on God… and (2) to describe the order established within creation – as an order determined by God, from the beginning.” (131)

Part Four of Missing Persons explores the identity of harlots and temple prostitutes. Bird highlights three texts featuring a harlot as the key player: Genesis 38:1-26, Joshua 2:1-24, and 1 Kings 3:16-27. Through the texts, she explores the assumed meaning of the harlot imagery, and how that meaning impacts the narrative development. (197) One of the surprising benefits of the harlot’s role in society is that she is not (necessarily) obligated to men, owned by anyone, or otherwise encumbered. With this status, she uniquely carries rights as a citizen that other women may not, which allows the writers to utilize her in scenarios not otherwise imaginable for women. It also keeps her marginalized – an “other” – which prevents her story from becoming instructive to other women. In Joshua’s story of Rahab, “the entire account depends on Rahab’s marginal status… And it is only because she is an outcast that the men of Israel have access to her (an “honorable” woman would not meet alone with strange men).” (213)

The fifth and final section of Missing Persons assesses the hermeneutics and authority of the biblical text, particularly in regard to its masculine language and characterization. “The overwhelming androcentrism of biblical language presents contemporary communities of faith with a serious and unavoidable theological problem… because it misrepresents to the modern hearer both the nature of God and the nature of humanity by its preponderant use of male reference.” (239-240) Bird argues that simply retranslating the text to avoid androcentric language misses the underlying problems with the attitudes and worldviews inherent in the text. Instead, she advocates for a wholly “transcultural” approach, an understandably hazardous effort given the Bible’s complicated and existential status as sacred revelation. (240) In her final chapter Bird discusses feminist critique and laments the way that feminism has relegated too much of practical religion to the church. She observes that by dismissing responsibility, “the dilemma for feminists within the church is intensified,” and she advocates for a feminism that engages scripture with applications for Christianity itself. (249) The inevitable result of abdicating this responsibility has been loss of community for women who reject patriarchy. (250)

I enjoyed and appreciated Bird’s work in this book, and feel more comfortable than ever with a feminist (and more broadly, postcolonial) approach to scripture and theology. In a recent post at Emergent Village, Brittany Ouchida-Walsh discussed the silence of God. That silence, she argued, is largely present by our own devices. I commented that the idea of God’s silence seems ironic, given the ubiquitous clamor of religious rhetoric in the public sphere. But maybe God has indeed been silent. Maybe that’s the point: that until the voices of the marginalized – the “other” – are given breathing room and airtime and affirmation, God’s voice literally cannot be heard. There is little “still and small” in the testimony of contemporary Christianity. Sadly, that too-often includes the voices from behind the pulpit. Bird’s final chapter deals specifically with these practical problems in the church.

I admit I expected to find Missing Persons more vitriolic, which reveals how my own perceptions have been sadly shaped by the mistrust and demonization of the feminist movement. Stephen Prothero recently wrote an article at CNN’s Belief Blog, lamenting the death of feminism (and liberalism) as a result of the Reagan Revolution and the 20th Century culture wars.

When I asked my students why they don’t want to call themselves feminists, they spoke of bra-burners man-haters and Femi-Nazis, which is to say that in the war of the words which was the feminist movement, feminists seem to have lost perhaps the most important battle: the battle over the meaning of the word feminism itself.
(http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/02/my-take-feminist-theology-and-feminism-r-i-p)  

Contrary to virulent stereotypes, Bird is constructive, patient and committed. She identifies herself as a “liberal evangelical,” which is the language I use for myself. Clearly there is much that feminist criticism threatens in mainstream Christianity. That is an unfortunate environmental reality, not an inevitability of orthodoxy. As Bird eloquently argues: “The authority of the Bible does not rest in the infallibility of its statements, but in the truth of its witness to a creating and redeeming power, which can and must be known as a present reality.” (264) A Christianity that is threatened by such a statement is not a Christianity worth preserving. Christianity sells itself short when it posits certainty as its redeeming message or trait. It’s peddling a product it isn’t equipped to produce.

As Erhard Gerstenberger argues in Yahweh: The Patriarch, “The Bible cannot provide us with a timeless and universally binding image of God… Theology dare not hide behind our ancestors; it must relate to the situation of the present world and the contemporary search for God.” We must not be slaves to past contexts and interpretations, just as we must not ignore or forget those testimonials of the past. Moving forward, spiritually and theologically, is a process of maintaining humility and dynamic tension. Bird’s Missing Persons skillfully accomplishes this.

Equal Pay For Women: Hello Again, 1963!

Pretty amazing that this is still an issue.

Of course every time I articulate “surprise” or “amazement” over continued gender inequity in the United States, one of my wife’s eyebrows raises slightly, she sighs, and wryly says: “Really Peter?  You’re surprised?”

Hell, I’ve already confessed that I thought feminists were the problem until I was 21 years old (when I took my first Women’s Studies undergrad course, which helped destroy my worldview, thank God).  Of course I’m surprised.  I’m ignorant down to my genetics!

CNNMoney.com reports:

It has been nearly half a century since Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963. But thatpesky pay gap between men and women persists — and now there’s actually something you can do about it.

This Wednesday, the Senate is scheduled to hold a preliminary vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that could put some teeth into the old Equal Pay Act by strengthening and updating many of its provisions.

“Many people think that equal pay for equal work was something that was solved back in the ’60s,” says Deborah Vagins, legislative counsel for the ACLU’s legislative office. “But what we’ve seen is that because of loopholes and weak remedies, it’s been less effective in combating wage discrimination than everyone had hoped.”

This isn’t some shaggy old feminist cause rearing its head. This is a live issue for American families, given that in nearly a third of households today, women are the primary breadwinners. And according to a nationwide survey of registered voters, more than 75% of Republicans, Democrats, men and women all said they supported the measure.

The new bill has already passed the House, and if it gets the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster this week, it could, possibly, pass the Senate and become law — giving women stronger legal recourse when facing discriminatory pay.

Click here to read more.

"Feminist Theology Is Dead"… (?)

A few years ago Nas, one of my favorite rappers, produced an album called Hip Hop Is Dead.  It pissed off a lot of genre loyalists, and other artists who took personal offense.  The album was a statement on the way that hip hop music had been co-opted by cheap “bling” content, how it lost it’s prophetic cultural voice, sold out to the almight dollar, and it was also an indictment of tacky Southern “crunk” rap.

No one wants to hear bad news. 

There’s an article on CNN’S Belief Blog about the death of feminism.  I don’t like it.  It upsets me – it actually stresses me out – to think about dissolving energies of Third-Wave Feminism.  I’ve heard a few women state that the Third-Wave never actually happened – that it’s really nothing more than the dying cries of the Second-Wave.

I don’t think that’s entirely true.  There are so many incredible female voices still pushing forward in fresh ways, on new ground.  Naomi Wolf and Hillary Clinton are just a few women I deeply admire.  But while new ground is still being gained, old ground is rapidly being lost.  The attrition is faster than the growth.  That’s bad news.

Stephen Prothero writes at CNN’s Belief Blog:

Much has been written about how the right has successfully turned the term liberal into a dirty word. But the other f-word (feminist) has fared even worse, sullied by some combination of the Reagan Revolution, the culture wars, and the success of the feminist movement itself, which has left young women today feeling more empowered and less vulnerable than their more feminist-friendly forebears.  When I asked my students why they don’t want to call themselves feminists, they spoke of bra-burners man-haters and Femi-Nazis, which is to say that in the war of the words which was the feminist movement, feminists seem to have lost perhaps the most important battle: the battle over the meaning of the word feminism itself.

This is tragic.  And in my experience, very true.

Last week I met a young woman online – a friend of an old friend, who found my blog.  Over e-mail, she introduced herself as a “feminist” and I just about got out of my chair and shouted!  Because I can’t remember the last time I met a 20-something woman who was so boldly willing to claim that title – even introducing herself as such!  A few of the women I know who are feminists sort of hang their heads in a slightly defeated way, sigh, and say, “But I’m not THAT kind of feminist…”

I’m not criticizing them.  Culture wars are tough – and much tougher on women and minorities.  I spent a lot of time apologizing for being a Christian.  Sigh… “But I’m not THAT kind of Christian…”  Maybe there’s a lesson there – but it’s one I’m too cynical to address today.

We have to reclaim words like “liberal” and “feminist.”  We have to take them out of the gallows, out of the “Hall of Shame” the Right has methodically, aggressively constructed.  Burning bras doesn’t threaten me.  It doesn’t threaten you.  The fear of burning bras, or making any other public statement, threatens ALL of us.
 …
Eventually, we’ll have to reclaim words like “Christian” too.  But it isn’t actually true to say that Christianity “isn’t THAT way…” because Christianity is what it puts into practice, and as I’ve said a thousand times here, we’re practicing some bad habits on a very grand scale.

Feminism is what it practices to: a radical philosophy that calls women people.

XtraNormal: "I Have Decided to Fight for Absolute Truth!"

A) “You just don’t understand absolute truth.”
B) “Maybe not, but you might be wrong…”

Texts of Terror: The Raped, Dismembered Unnamed Woman…

In Judges, Chapter 19,  a Levite (a man of the priestly tribe of Israel) took a concubine.  She left him for unknown reasons, and fled to her father’s house.  The Levite followed after her, made nice with her father, and began to take her home.  On the journey home, they stopped at an old man’s home to stay for the night.

As they were enjoying themselves, suddenly certain men of the city, perverted men, surrounded the house and beat on the door. They spoke to the master of the house, the old man, saying, “Bring out the man who came to your house, that we may know him carnally!” But the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brethren! I beg you, do not act so wickedly! Seeing this man has come into my house, do not commit this outrage. Look, here is my virgin daughter and the man’s concubine; let me bring them out now. Humble them, and do with them as you please; but to this man do not do such a vile thing!” But the men would not heed him. So the man took his concubine and brought her out to them. And they knew her and abused her all night until morning; and when the day began to break, they let her go.  Then the woman came as the day was dawning, and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, till it was light. When her master arose in the morning, and opened the doors of the house and went out to go his way, there was his concubine, fallen at the door of the house with her hands on the threshold. And he said to her, “Get up and let us be going.” But there was no answer. So the man lifted her onto the donkey; and the man got up and went to his place.  

When he entered his house he took a knife, laid hold of his concubine, and divided her into twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel.  

 How do you feel about stories like this?

 What do you think it means, that we’re never told stories of these unnamed women in Scripture, raped, abused, tortured, murdered and mutilated?  We ignore them because they are horrifying, but in doing so, we marginalize these already-marginalized characters, anonymous though they may be.  Is it all right for a Levite – a man of God – to protect himself by sending his concubine (a woman he already “uses” for his purposes, but refuses to marry) out to a band of rapists?  Just like the story of Lot in Sodom, the rape of a man is unacceptable, but women are chattel – things – property – and can be expended for the sake of self preservation.  And then their bodies can apparently be mutilated and dismembered, sent as a “message” to one’s enemies.

Clearly it would be outrageous for any contemporary pastor or theologian to somehow attempt to justify or legitimize this “text of terror,” (as scholar Phyllis Trible aptly calls it).  All the more reason for us to be very, very careful with the texts we DO attempt to justify and legitimize.

Of this text, Phyllis Trible writes:

First of all, we can recognize the contemporaneity of the story.  Misogyny belongs to every age, including our own.  Violence and vengeance are not just characteristics of a distant, pre-Christian past; they infect the community of the elect to this day.  Woman as object is still captured, betrayed, raped, tortured, murdered, dismembered and scattered.  To take to heart this ancient story, then, is to confess its present reality.  The story is alive, and all is not well.  Beyond confession we must take counsel and say, “Never again.”  Yet this counsel is itself ineffectual unless we direct our hearts to that most uncompromising of all biblical commands, speaking the words not to others but to ourselves: Repent.  Repent. 

(Trible, Texts of Terror)  

"Lord, Show Us Where and How We Are the Oppressors. Amen."

An online friend of mine recently went on a spiritual pilgrimage, and journaled during his time away.  He shared one of his written prayers with me, from during a church service he endured.  I so deeply appreciate his openness to self-exploration and his desire for the church (the established, Western church in particular) to become more self-aware:

"Father, please help us not to stop at praying for the Christians who are persecuted! Please open our eyes and show us where we ourselves take part in oppressing structures. Please help us to see the world through your eyes and show us the people we should be in solidarity with in our own country. Help us to love Muslims, the marginalized, those who fell through our social structures and all the other people without a voice, with your perfect love that knows no boundaries. Please forgive us, that we traded your Kingdom for our own comfort. Please help us understand the reason that we are not persecuted."