Tag: America

Super chill book review: Atlas of the Heart (Brene Brown)

Given how long it took to get a copy—that is, one of 114 copies—of Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart (Random House 2021) from the local library system, I’m going to venture a guess that rather a lot of people are reading it or have read it recently. 

(Also, it’s a TV series? I haven’t watched it, but let me know if you have, and how you liked it.)

So I imagine lots of people on the interwebs have lots of thoughts. And feelings. Possibly many of the feelings explored in the book—eighty-seven of them, to be exact. Still, just for fun, I’ll add a few things that stood out to me:

1) A couple months ago, I took some time to write down a (slightly long) list of hopes and dreams for my writing. Not things like “get published in xyz magazine,” but things like “draw attention to ambiguity in New Testament translation and offer alternate translations that might feel more liberating,” or “encourage people to embrace their God-given agency to change what they want to change and leave spaces they need to leave.” 

One of these hopes is this: “be stubbornly committed to collaboration rather than competition.” 

Unfortunately, this is something I need to remind myself of regularly.

So, I appreciated Brené Brown’s exploration of comparison. Comparison, she writes, “is the crush of conformity from one side and competition from the other—it’s trying to simultaneously fit in and stand out. Comparison says, ‘Be like everyone else, but better.’” (p. 20).

Do people still say “I feel seen”? Just wondering. No particular reason.

What I liked about this is that Brown doesn’t just name and define (an unhealthy sort of) comparison. She also offers an alternative: “be yourself and respect others for being authentic” (p. 20). That could have gone on my list of writing (and life) goals, if I’d thought of it. (Maybe I’ll add it now.) 

I would very much like to move away from “fit in” and toward “be yourself,” away from “win” and toward “respect others.” I think it’s helpful to have something to move toward and not just away from. For those of us who struggle with these things, maybe we won’t instantly stop comparing ourselves to others—but we can focus on being ourselves and respecting others, and maybe eventually we’ll get to the no-comparing part. We’ll see.

2) I learned from this book—and, more specifically, from Brown’s conversations with organizational psychologist Scott Sonenshein—that, wait for it, the grass really is greener on the other side.

Brown writes, “As someone who can fall prey to comparing myself and my life to edited and curated Instagram feeds, I laughed so hard when [Sonenshein] told me that due to the physics of how grass grows, when we peer over our fence at our neighbor’s grass, it actually does look greener, even if it is truly the same lushness as our own grass” (p. 21). 

Whaa…? That’s pretty funny. And kind of deep. 

I mean, personally, our literal neighbors’ literal grass really is greener than ours, because they have a sprinkler system set up and they’re watering it right now as I look out the window. But even if it wasn’t, something about the angle it’s viewed from would make it look that way. That’s bonkers. Let’s just stew on that for a minute.

3). I also learned that apparently there’s an opposite of schadenfreude (you know, the German word for taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune): freudenfreude. According to Brown, freudenfreude is “the enjoyment of another’s success,” and “it’s also a subset of empathy” (p. 36). 

That’s cool. A fun word, and a good thing to practice. I hold the similar biblical ideas close to my heart: “rejoice with those who rejoice” (Romans 12:15), and “if one part [of the body] is honored, every part rejoices with it” (1 Cor 12:26). So it’s fun to have a cool German word describing basically the same thing. (It also pairs well, like a fine wine, with the idea of committing to collaboration, not competition, and the idea of replacing comparison with authenticity and respect.) 

4. I liked this part about curiosity:

“An increasing number of researchers believe that curiosity and knowledge building grow together—the more we know, the more we want to know.

Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty. We have to ask questions, admit to not knowing, risk being told that we shouldn’t be asking, and, sometimes, make discoveries that lead to discomfort.

Our ‘childlike’ curiosity is often tested as we grow up, and we sometimes learn that too much curiosity, like too much vulnerability, can lead to hurt. As a result, we turn to self-protection—choosing certainty over curiosity, armor over vulnerability, knowing over learning. But shutting down comes with a price—a price we rarely consider when we’re focused on finding our way out of pain” (pp. 65-6).

It feels true to me that the more we know, the more we realize we don’t know. And that, if we’re okay with that feeling of “not knowing,” this can motivate us to continue to learn. 

It also means that people who talk like they’re experts on things are often, well, not necessarily as expert as they might seem. 

I am—rightly, I think—suspicious of overconfidence. Especially when it comes to things like theology—because how much does anyone really know?

I also liked the idea of curiosity being “childlike.” In a previous super chill book review I reflected on Tyson Yunkaporta’s thoughts on children’s undomesticated brains. Brown adds another perspective on what it might mean to have faith like a child: being curious, asking questions, admitting what we don’t know, wanting to learn, not assuming we have all the answers.

I feel like people of faith—and people in general—in our highly polarized society could use a tidbit more of all of this.

5. Sometimes conservative Christians talk about the dangers of empathy, or of having “too much” empathy (whatever that means). I feel like this should call attention to itself as a big screaming red flag. But just in case it doesn’t—here’s what Brown says about empathy:

“Empathy, the most powerful tool of compassion, is an emotional skill set that allows us to understand what someone is experiencing and to reflect back that understanding. Empathy has a huge upside. Researchers Peter Paul Zurek and Herbert Scheithauer explain that empathy helps interpersonal decision making; facilitates ethical decision making and moral judgments; enhances short-term subjective well-being; strengthens relational bonds; allows people to better understand how others see them; and enhances prosocial and altruistic behavior” (p. 120).

That’s cool. So many benefits, some more obvious than others. I also like the idea of empathy as an “emotional skill set” that we can learn and practice and grow in—not just something some people naturally have lots of and others don’t, and that’s just the way it is.

Things to think about, and a skill set I feel like our world could use more of.

Hope you enjoyed these quotes and thoughts. If you read Atlas of the Heart, is there an emotion (or thought) that stood out to you? Or an emotion you’d like to explore and learn more about? 

Gutsy faithfulness in a world where money fails (reflections on Luke 16:1-13)

I’ve got another church eblast reflection for you all – unabridged (read: slightly longer) version! 

This one’s on Luke 16:1-13:

16:1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.

16:2 So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’

16:3 Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.

16:4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’

16:5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

16:6 He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’

16:7 Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’

16:8 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.

16:9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

16:10 Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.

16:11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

16:12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?

16:13 No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

When we read parables like these, it can be tempting to try to figure out who exactly every character in the story represents. This is called allegorical interpretation, and many biblical scholars have pushed back against this approach.

Perhaps Jesus’ stories were meant to be just that—stories. Conversation starters. Feeling-evokers. Thought-provokers. Open-ended, with multiple possible interpretations and takeaways. Maybe that’s the beauty of the parables—even though it also makes them…difficult.

I mention this because I am not at all convinced that the “master”—a fraught word, if I ever heard one, given the U.S. history of slavery—in our story this week is meant to represent God. Not only does he engage in dubiously-just firing practices—he lets the steward go based on an accusation from a third party without even bothering to hear his side of the story (v. 1-2)—but also, on top of this, his massive wealth is persistently described as “unjust” or “unrighteous.” 

Perhaps the steward, then, feels free to play fast and loose with the master’s money because he knows the whole system is unjust. 

What does it mean to be faithful, in a world where a few rich folks hoard while masses of people go hungry? Perhaps crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s when it comes to wealth management takes a back seat to figuring out how to survive—and helping others survive too. Maybe strict adherence to rules and regulations is less important than mercy. And surely mercy is what the steward shows to the debtors when he tells them to lessen the amounts of their debts. 

The steward in our story is often referred to as the “shrewd manager,” but I feel like the word “shrewd” can have some funky connotations. In some church contexts, people use the story of the “shrewd manager” to say that we as Christians should also be more shrewd. As in, we should be more cunning. As in, it’s okay to manipulate or mislead people if it’s all for a higher cause. To me, this is hardly what it means to be “children of the light” (v. 8). 

Perhaps it helps to know that the word translated as “shrewd” is often translated elsewhere as “prudent.” I’m not here for the manipulative cunning, but I’m okay with Jesus encouraging his followers to be prudent.

Prudent, like counting the cost of our discipleship (see Luke 14:25-35). Prudent, like acknowledging that all wealth in our unjust system is in fact unjust—and, accordingly, holding onto material stuff lightly. Prudent, like refusing to spend our lives serving a cruel death-dealing capitalist system that does not love us—refusing to destroy our souls in service of wealth that will one day be gone (v. 9). 

(This word translated as “be gone,” by the way, is actually quite strong in the original Greek; it could be translated as “fails,” “ceases,” or “dies.” As in, money will fail. Money will one day cease to exist. It will die.)

In light of all this, I wonder what we might learn from this passage about what it means to be faithful. Some of us may have been taught that faithfulness is a passive thing, measured by the sins we avoid and the things we do not do. But in Jesus’ story, faithfulness is active. It’s creative. It’s risky. It’s gutsy. It requires intelligence and courage. It involves trying something and being willing to face the consequences of our actions.

The steward is hardly a meek rule-follower. But there is something about him to be admired. With his actions he calls out the lie that unjust wealth is to be served at all costs. He points toward a different way.

Like this steward, we too take part in unjust systems. Under patriarchal white supremacist capitalism, a few rich folks keep getting richer, and any cost is acceptable in terms of human life and wellbeing. We may not be able to completely escape this system—but we can resist it. We can make choices that fly in the face of its logic. We can flout its expectations. 

We can rest. We can play. We can build genuine relationships that aren’t just transactional, based on what we can get out of someone. We can be radically for others and refuse to compete. We can treat ourselves with kindness and compassion. We can share resources generously, knowing there is enough for all. 

We can’t necessarily avoid unjust systems, but we can refuse to serve them as masters. We can build something new—something sacred and beautiful—in the midst of them. 

Peace to you this week. If you have thoughts about what faithfulness means to you (and how that’s changed over time), or how you live in unjust systems without serving these systems as masters, or anything else this passage makes you think about, holler in the comments or otherwise. I’d love to hear from you.

Super chill book review: Sand Talk (Tyson Yunkaporta)

I read Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (HarperOne, 2020) a couple months ago in the midst of a several-days-long cat crisis. (Kitty is doing well now, thank you). So I may have been a bit distracted. So maybe take everything I say with an extra large grain of salt. (Maybe a teaspoon?) 

That said, I found the book fascinating and very much worth reading, although I’m sure large important parts of it probably went right over my (very distracted) head. I appreciated Yunkaporta’s Aboriginal Australian perspectives on the world—some of which I recognized from reading other indigenous writers, and others of which were newer to me. 

Here are some quotes that stood out and some things Yunkaporta helped me think about:

1) On Schrodinger’s cat (speaking of cat issues…yikes):

“In this famous thought experiment, you imagine putting a cat in a box with some poison. You don’t know if it has died yet because you can’t see it, so in that moment the cat is simultaneously both alive and dead…

From an Aboriginal cosmological point of view, the uncertainty problem is resolved when you admit you are part of the field and accept your subjectivity. If you want to know what’s in the box so bad, drink the poison yourself and climb in…I begin to see the uncertainty principle not as a law but as an expression of frustration about the impossibility of achieving godlike scientific objectivity” (p. 42)

I like this idea of admitting we are part of the field. That feels right to me. We are, by nature, subjective. And Schrodinger’s cat always struck me as kind of ridiculous, even though I know it’s a little more complicated than just putting a cat in a box with poison—and that it was meant to expose the absurdity of a particular view of quantum mechanics in the first place. (Because really. Poor sweet Whiskers is either alive or dead. You just don’t know which one yet.)

So I appreciated the point about the “impossibility of achieving godlike scientific objectivity.” Why would we think that this is possible? And why would it be the goal in the first place? 

As Yunkaporta goes on to say, “Scientists currently have to remove all traces of themselves from experiments, otherwise their data is considered to be contaminated. Contaminated with what? With the filthy reality of belongingness? The toxic realization that if we can’t stand outside of a field we can’t own it?” (p. 42)

Dude’s got some sarcasm. And he’s also got some points. There’s a conflict between wanting to own things and recognizing that we are part of them. There’s a tension between experiencing belonging and obtaining (a toxic sort of) power. There’s a connection between wanting to achieve objectivity and wanting to stand outside a system; between wanting to stand outside a system and wanting control over that system, or at least the illusion of control.

Colonizing powers and the white dudes in charge of them have made one set of choices when faced with these tensions. Ownership, objectivity, outside-ness, control, power. Yunkaporta invites us to consider a different set of choices, and I’m all for it.

2) On how non-indigenous folks often view indigenous folks, and what we’re looking for when we look to them:

“I don’t think most people have the same definition of sustainability that I do. I hear them talking about sustainable exponential growth while ignoring the fact that most of the world’s topsoil is now at the bottom of the sea. It is difficult to talk to people about the impossible physics of civilization, especially if you are Aboriginal: you perform and display the paint and feathers, the pretty bits of your culture, and talk about your unique connection to the land while people look through glass boxes at you, but you are not supposed to look back or describe what you see” (p. 51).

As a white U.S. American trying to listen to and learn from Indigenous folks, I need this perspective. Am I just interested in looking at “the pretty bits of culture,” or am I interested in hearing people describe what they see when they look back at me and my world? 

As Yunkaporta writes later, “‘Strong indigenous voices’ need to be doing more than recounting our subjective experiences; we also need to be examining the narratives of the occupying culture and challenging them with counter-narratives” (p. 116). 

I think that’s what I really like about this book in general. It’s all about looking back. It’s about challenging occupying narratives. This is a gift—and one that those of us from occupying cultures who realize things aren’t working desperately need.

3) I appreciate Yunkaporta’s language around being “a custodian rather than an owner of lands, communities, or knowledge” (p. 82). Maybe it’s just another way to speak of what many Christians might call stewardship. God invites us not to dominate and subdue the earth (as Genesis 1:28 has too often been understood) but to steward the earth. To care for it well.

Yunkaporta refers to humans as a “custodial species,” which, to me, goes even beyond the idea of stewardship. (Or at least is a refreshingly different way to talk about it.) I wonder if, in our imagination, a steward still stands apart from the land (or communities, or knowledge) she is stewarding, but a custodial species is part of this land (or these communities, or this knowledge). 

As custodians rather than owners, Yunkaporta writes, we erase hierarchies and find a new sort of mutuality and belonging. The custodial role “demands the relinquishing of artificial power and control, immersion in the astounding patterns of creation that only emerge through the free movement of all agents and elements within a system” (p. 82). Which can be hella chaotic. But also good. We were not meant to control, but to care. We were not meant to limit creation but to allow its beauty and goodness to emerge freely. 

4) This story got me thinking, as you might imagine, about that one time Jesus told some fishermen they would become “fishers of people” (e.g. Matt 4:19):

“I once visited an Aboriginal community school in the Northern Territory that was using the metaphor of Aboriginal fishing nets as an education framework. This may have worked as an idea of school and community weaving their different threads together to make the nets, then the students using the nets to catch fish, with the fish representing knowledge and social/cultural capital. But this was not the case. The fish in the net represented the children themselves, and the river represented the community, promoting a very problematic image of the school as an entity that captures children and takes them away to be consumed.

We have to be careful of the metaphors we use to make meaning, because metaphors are the language of spirit, and that’s how we operate in our fields of existence either to increase or decrease connectedness within creation” (p. 105).

When Christians use metaphors like “fishers of people”—or, somewhat similarly, “the fields are ripe for harvest” (John 4:35) or “the harvest is plentiful” (Luke 10:20)—what are we really saying? Is there a way to use these metaphors that doesn’t imply that humans are, as Yunkaporta puts it, being captured and taken away for consumption? Do we need new metaphors that better say what we want them to say (and avoid implying what we don’t want them to imply)?

I think these things are worth thinking about. 

5) I read this part and thought of how Jesus talked about becoming like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven (e.g. Matt 18:3):

“Anybody who has small children, or works with them, will be familiar with the qualities of an undomesticated mind. It is wild and unschooled, teeming with innate knowledge processes. Children perform tasks they have not encountered before and you wonder, ‘Where the hell did they learn that?’ They play with absolute dedication and fierce concentration. They learn languages perfectly, to the limits of their adult role models, without explicit instruction and at a phenomenal rate. Most of what we learn in our lifetimes today is during the first few years of childhood” (pp. 135-6).

This is a take on what it means to be like a little kid that I don’t often hear in church-y contexts. What if becoming like a child isn’t just about the things we sometimes assume—like being honest, or being humble, or being curious (although these are certainly good things too)? What if it’s also about being totally wild? 

I’m intrigued by this idea of an “undomesticated mind”—and by the possibility that this might be something God wants for us. That God wants for us that kind of freedom—that kind of Untamed-ness (to borrow Glennon Doyle’s book title), if you will. 

6) Here’s a longer quote that felt pretty clutch to me:

“We still endure longer work hours than our roles require today, for reasons of social control rather than productivity. It’s difficult to find the mental space to question systems of power when we’re working eight hours, then trying to lift heavy weights that don’t need lifting or pedaling bikes that go nowhere for an hour so we don’t die of a heart attack from being stuck for a third of our lives in a physically restrictive workspace. We sleep for another third of our lives (although not if we have small children), then the rest is divided between life-maintenance tasks, commuting, and using the few remaining minutes to connect with loved ones, if we have any. Somewhere in there we also need to find time to study and retrain, unless we want to finish up homeless when our industries inevitably collapse or change direction.

The job is the unquestioned goal for all free citizens of the world—the ultimate public good. It is the clearly stated exit goal of all education and the only sanctioned reason for acquiring knowledge. But if we think about it for a moment, jobs are not what we want. We want shelter, food, strong relationships, a livable habitat, stimulating learning activity, and time to perform valued tasks in which we excel. I don’t know of many jobs that will allow access to more than two or three of those things at a time, unless you have a particularly benevolent owner or employers.

I am often told that I should be grateful for the progress that Western civilization has brought to these shores. I am not. This life of work-or-die is not an improvement on preinvasion living, which involved only a few hours of work a day for shelter and sustenance, performing tasks that people do now for leisure activities on their yearly vacations: fishing, collecting plants, hunting, camping, and so forth. The rest of the day was for fun, strengthening relationships, ritual and ceremony, cultural expression, intellectual pursuits, and the expert crafting of exceptional objects…We have been lied to about the ‘harsh survival’ lifestyles of the past. There was nothing harsh about it. If it was so harsh—such a brutish, menial struggle for existence—then we would not have evolved to become the delicate, intelligent creatures that we are” (pp. 139-40).

Yunkaporta reflects on how “there is no word for work in my home language and none in any other Aboriginal language I have seen” (p. 141). I thought all this was fascinating. I resonate with the idea that an eight-plus hour work day is more about social control than productivity. (I remember reducing my hours at the health tech start-up I used to work for from 40 hrs/week to 30 hrs/week and feeling like I got about the same amount done. Because who can mentally focus on a particular set of tasks for 8 hrs/day?) 

I also resonate with Yunkaporta’s list of things we actually want when we say we want a job. (After all, as this viral Twitter thread from a few weeks ago made clear, no one wants to work anymore…and no one has wanted to work anymore for, like, a really long time.) 

Maybe, as Yunkaporta says, only two or three of these things that we want are available to us through most of our jobs, most of the time—but maybe by operating together as communities we can make more of these things available to more people. “Shelter, food, strong relationships, a livable habitat, stimulating learning activity, and time to perform valued tasks in which we excel.” It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

That’s all I’ve got for now. As always, holler with your thoughts if you’ve read the book, or if you haven’t read the book, or if anything here connected with you.

Super chill book review part 2: Jesus and John Wayne (Kristin Kobes Du Mez)

Back with part 2 of a super chill book review for Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne. (Part 1 is chillin over here.) A few more thoughts and quotes:

5. I appreciated Du Mez’s reflections on the blurring between the evangelical mainstream and (extra-conservative extra-patriarchal) margins.

This quote made sense to me, and helped me make sense of things:

“United in their concern about gender and authority, conservative evangelical men knit together an expanding network of institutions, organizations, and alliances that amplified their voices and enhanced their power. [Doug] Wilson invited [Mark] Driscoll to speak at his church; [John] Piper invited Wilson to address his pastor’s conference; leaders shared stages, blurbed each other’s books, spoke at each other’s conferences, and endorsed each other as men of God with a heart for gospel teaching. Within this network, differences—significant doctrinal disagreements, disagreements over the relative merits of slavery and the Civil War—could be smoothed over in the interest of promoting ‘watershed issues’ like complementarianism, the prohibition of homosexuality, the existence of hell, and substitutionary atonement. Most foundationally, they were united in a mutual commitment to patriarchal power.

“Through this expanding network, ‘respectable’ evangelical leaders and organizations gave cover to their ‘brothers in the gospel’ who were promoting more extreme expressions of patriarchy, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish margins from mainstream. Over time, a common commitment to patriarchal power began to define the boundaries of the evangelical movement itself, as those who ran afoul of these orthodoxies quickly discovered” (p. 204).

Back when I was a little more connected to the circles Du Mez writes about here, I remember being vaguely aware that people with some very different views on some very important things (like racial justice and whether spiritual gifts are still a thing) seemed to be friends with each other a little more than one might expect. (You know, the kind of friends who promote each other’s work and speak together at conferences and generally express agreement with one another’s theology; not the kind of friends who know they’re really different but decide to be friends anyway.)

Du Mez helped me connect the dots: the common thread was a shared commitment to patriarchy. That makes so much sense. (And is so gross.) Definitely something to chew on for anyone who’s been to conferences or heard sermons or read books by the likes of Wilson, Driscoll, or Piper—or others in the same sphere, like James Dobson, Doug Phillips, and John Eldredge (Du Mez names these other dudes elsewhere).

Incidentally, it also confirms that I have no regrets whatsoever about the time in my early twenties when I didn’t end up dating a guy I had a brief crush on who was super into Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. So there’s that.

6. It was fascinating to find myself (more or less) in these numbers:

“Support for the president [George W. Bush] dropped most precipitously among younger white evangelicals. In 2002, 87 percent of white evangelicals ages eighteen to twenty-nine approved of the president’s job performance; by August 2007, his approval rating among this group had dropped by 42 percentage points, with most of the decline (25 points) occurring since 2005. Younger evangelicals weren’t just unhappy with the president; since 2005, Republican Party affiliation among this demographic had dropped by 15 percentage points” (p. 232).

First, these numbers are bonkers. From 87 percent support to 45 percent support in five years—and from 70 percent support to 45 percent support in just two years? Yikes. 

I was 14 in 2002 and 19 in 2007, so I’m a little younger than the folks surveyed. But not too far off. And I definitely was happy that Bush was president in 2002 and unhappy that Bush was president in 2007. 

I appreciate Du Mez offering a broader context for these things. I tend to think of my journey away from Republican party affiliation as a very personal one. And it was that. But it was also taking place in the context of broader shifting currents in U.S. society as a whole and particularly among young white evangelicals. 

Similarly, there are these numbers:

“Seventy-four percent of white evangelicals voted for the McCain/Palin ticket. But 24 percent of white evangelicals—up 4 percent from 2004—broke ranks and voted for Obama. The Obama campaign had targeted moderate white evangelicals, the sort who had been voting Republican for twenty years but who wanted to expand the list of ‘moral values’ to include things like poverty, climate change, human rights, and the environment. Obama doubled his support among white evangelicals ages eighteen to twenty-nine compared to Kerry’s in 2004, and nearly doubled his support among those ages thirty to forty-four” (p. 237).

As someone who would have voted Republican if I were old enough to vote in 2004, and who then voted excitedly for Obama in 2008, I feel like I found myself in these numbers too. I was definitely one of those “moderate white evangelicals” who wanted our government to care about “poverty, climate change, human rights, and the environment.” I don’t know if I would have described it in exactly those words at that time, but as I look back, the description pretty much hits the nail on the head. I guess the Obama campaign targeted me and it worked? I think I’m okay with that.

7. Sometimes I think John Piper has a special talent of making my blood boil. (Maybe it’s a spiritual gift.) So, feel free to read this next quote if you want your blood to boil too, or feel free to skip it if that’s just not something you need in your life right now…

“Palin’s candidacy, however, raised the issue of gender. For evangelicals who believed in male headship, was it appropriate for a woman to be in such a position of power? If the alternative was Barack Obama, then the answer they gave was yes. Days before the 2008 election, John Piper wrote a blog post with the title, ‘Why a Woman Shouldn’t Run for Vice President, but Wise People May Still Vote for Her.’ Piper made clear that he still believed that ‘the Bible summons men to bear the burden of primary leadership, provision, and protection,’ and that ‘the Bible does not encourage us to think of nations as blessed when women hold the reins of national authority.’ But a woman could hold the highest office if her male opponent would do far more harm by ‘exalting a flawed pattern of womanhood’” (p. 236).

Seriously? Why a Woman Shouldn’t Run for Vice President, but Wise People May Still Vote for Her. First, the arrogance. Second, the logic: both utterly terrifying and exactly what one might expect. 

Basically, the thought process is this: we don’t want women to have any power—but better one woman in power if she helps keep women in general down, as opposed to a man in power who might try to empower women. Or, said differently, we don’t mind if a handful of particular women have power and influence—as long as that power and influence is used to uphold patriarchy. Charming. And relevant to all sorts of contexts, including the current Supreme Court. 

8. I feel like the news cycles have moved on already from the Southern Baptist Convention’s abuse issues, but sexual abuse in (all sorts of) churches is still a thing. (Would recommend Emily Joy Allison’s #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing and Ruth Everhart’s The #MeToo Reckoning: Facing the Church’s Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct as two excellent books on the subject.) I’ll leave you with some of Du Mez’s thoughts on it:

“The evangelical cult of masculinity links patriarchal power to masculine aggression and sexual desire; its counterpoint is a submissive femininity…The responsibility of married women in this arrangement is clear, but implications for women extend beyond the marriage relationship. Women outside of the bonds of marriage must avoid tempting men through immodesty, or simply by being available to them, or perceived as such. Within this framework, men assign themselves the role of protector, but the protection of women and girls is contingent on their presumed purity and proper submission to masculine authority. This puts female victims in impossible situations. Caught up in authoritarian settings where a premium is placed on obeying men, women and children find themselves in situations ripe for abuse of power. Yet victims are often held culpable for acts perpetrated against them; in many cases, female victims, even young girls, are accused of ‘seducing’ their abusers or inviting abuse by failing to exhibit proper femininity. While men (and women) invested in defending patriarchal authority frequently come to the defense of perpetrators, victims are often pressured to forgive abusers and avoid involving law enforcement. Immersed in these teachings about sex and power, evangelicals are often unable or unwilling to name abuse, to believe women, to hold perpetrators accountable, and to protect and empower survivors” (pp. 277-8).

I appreciate Du Mez making these connections explicit. That feels important to me. It reminds us what is at stake when churches insist on maintaining patriarchal theology. Not that all the other things that come with church-y patriarchy are remotely okay—but sexual abuse seems especially obviously not okay. 

The other implication here is that if churches and denominations are serious about addressing their abuse issues, they have to address the patriarchal theology that enables this abuse. I don’t really see many churches where patriarchy is deeply woven into theology and church culture being willing to seriously look at these connections or admit that they’re there. But it’s something to chew on.

There’s so much in this amazing book, and it might be a lot to process. If you’ve read or are reading it, please feel very free to reach out (comment, message, email, whatever you like)—I’d love to talk about some of this stuff together.

Super chill book review part 1: Jesus and John Wayne (Kristin Kobes Du Mez)

Well, this is looking to be another two-part super chill book review… 

(Some might ask, does it still count as “super chill” once it gets to be this long? To which I would say, the chill factor isn’t about length so much as style—these aren’t really book reviews so much as just collections of quotes that stood out to me and things the book made me think about. But if you want to call these “zero chill book reviews,” that’s cool too.)

Anyhow. Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright, 2021) is an extensively-researched deep dive into the intersections of patriarchy, militarism, toxic masculinity, violence, Christianity, many decades of US politics, and basically all the things. 

It’s one of those books people kept recommending to me for a while before I actually got around to reading it. I’m not totally sure why it took me a minute. I definitely believed everyone that the book was awesome (which it totally is). But maybe part of me also felt a little jaded on the topics involved. 

Part of me felt like, didn’t I go to seminary to try to figure out what the hell is wrong with (white) U.S. evangelicalism—and how it became what it is? What more could there be that I didn’t already learn in my American Church History class, biblical studies and theology classes, ethics classes, or the whole frickin’ class I took on Dr. King? What more could there be—and what more could there be that I would actually be excited to read about and not just totally depressed by?

Joke’s on me—turns out there really was (and I’m sure still is) much more to learn. So, so much more. I was blown away by Jesus and John Wayne. Here are a few thoughts and quotes:

1) One of the oddities of my own spiritual journey is the fact that, as a teenager, I held some surprisingly Religious Right-leaning views for someone who grew up in a liberal part of the country, in a moderate-to-liberal family, and in a moderate-to-liberal church. 

This is mostly explained by the fact that, unfortunately, I read the Christian Internet. The Christian Internet told me that if I loved Jesus (which I did), then I would vote Republican (which I would have, if I were old enough to vote), because opposing gay marriage and opposing abortion rights outweighed every other political concern. 

I thought about this when I read these words from Du Mez:

“At any given time, numerous creeds have coexisted and competed for influence within evangelicalism. Even today, the evangelical tent includes Calvinists and Pentecostals, ‘social justice warriors’ and prosperity gospel gurus. However, over the past several decades conservatives have consolidated their power within the broader movement. Offering certainty in times of social change, promising security in the face of global threats, and, perhaps most critically, affirming the righteousness of a white Christian America and, by extension, of white Christian Americans, conservative evangelicals succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of large numbers of American Christians. They achieved this dominance not only by crafting a compelling ideology but also by advancing their agenda through strategic organizations and political alliances, on occasion by way of ruthless displays of power, and, critically, by dominating the production and distribution of Christian consumer culture” (p. 9).

Strategic organizations, political alliances, ruthless displays of power, and dominating Christian consumer culture. That sounds about right. There are and have always been many different kinds of Christians, many different Christian ideologies, many different approaches to life and the world and the political realm.

The Religious Right not only aggressively markets their own ideas but also aggressively markets the lie that their ideas are the only ones out there—that is, the only truly Christian ones out there. I used to believe that lie.

Personally, these days, I would say that the values of a certain strain of Christianity (like opposing gun control, supporting the death penalty, opposing immigration reform and refugee resettlement, and generally trying to keep the US as white as possible—all realities Du Mez mentions on p. 4) are completely opposed to what I understand as faithfulness to the religion of Jesus. Others might disagree, and that’s okay. (Not okay in the sense that I think they’re right or that their views aren’t terrifying and deeply harmful, but okay in the sense that different people have different perspectives and that is their right.)

What we should all be able to agree on, though, at a bare minimum, is the clear fact that there are many streams of Christianity, many ways the Bible has been interpreted, many different approaches to politics by those who sincerely want to be guided by the Christian faith. While I tend to think I’m right about things (or at least some things—some important things) and want others to agree with me because I think our world would be better if they did, I also have no interest in pretending that my views are the only ones. I find myself enraged by the ways a certain conservative stream of Christianity has tried to control Christians’ thinking (and voting—mostly, voting) by doing exactly that.

2. Du Mez reflects on the Obama years and on conservative evangelicals’ response to his presidency:

“In 2008, the election of Barack Obama ratcheted up evangelical fears. Initially, the culture wars appeared to be lost and the power of the Christian Right seemed to have reached an ignoble end. But conservative evangelicals had always thrived on a sense of embattlement, real or imagined, and this time would be no different. Donald Trump appeared at a moment when evangelicals felt increasingly beleaguered, even persecuted. From the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate to transgender bathroom laws and the cultural sea change on gay marriage, gender was at the heart of this perceived vulnerability. On the foreign policy front, the threat of terrorism loomed large, American power wasn’t what it used to be, and nearly two-thirds of white evangelicals harbored fears that a once-powerful nation had become ‘too soft and feminine.’

“Evangelical fears were real. Yet these fears were not simply a natural response to changing times. For decades, evangelical leaders had worked to stoke them. Their own power depended on it. Men like James Dobson, Bill Gothard, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Mark Driscoll, Franklin Graham, and countless lesser lights invoked a sense of peril in order to offer fearful followers their own brand of truth and protection” (p. 13).

Looking back on my eleven years at a conservative evangelical church, including a couple years working full-time there in college ministry, I feel like I was very much immersed in the evangelical world but also very much not immersed in that world. It was an independent church, not connected to a broader denominational network. And while the church’s (elder board) leadership turned out to be more conservative than I first realized, the community as a whole really was composed of a broad range of people with all sorts of different views. So, in some ways I was pretty unaware and kind of naive about the kinds of things that were happening in the broader conservative evangelical world. 

One time, though, a college student I worked with forwarded me a chain email about how then-President Obama was a Muslim and the anti-Christ, or something like that. I thought, Surely no one in their right mind believes these things. I knew this college student. I liked her. She was an entirely reasonable person. So I replied to her email asking if perhaps her message was a joke, or did she maybe have her email hacked? 

I was shocked when she responded quickly and told me that no, it wasn’t a joke, and yes, she did intend to send me that email. She felt it was important for people to be aware of the truth about our president. 

I didn’t know what to do. Turns out that the evangelical fears, the persecution complex, the embattlement, all the things Du Mez writes about—these things reached into my own community more deeply than I knew. At the time, I brushed off the student’s email as a bit of an anomaly, but really, it wasn’t that at all. It was likely what a lot of people at my church believed but didn’t necessarily say out loud.

3. As someone who has thought a fair amount about LGBTQ affirmation—because I had to, once it became clear that I had no future at my church if I embraced affirming theology—I resonate with these words from Du Mez:

“Within evangelicalism itself, this [antigay] activism is often depicted as an expression of long-standing opposition to same-sex relationships triggered by the gay rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, but the virulence with which conservative Christians opposed gay rights was rooted in the cultural and political significance they placed on the reassertion of distinct gender roles during those decades. Same-sex relationships challenged the most basic assumptions of the evangelical worldview” (p. 63).

That feels about right. Opposing gay rights wouldn’t necessarily have been that big a deal for evangelicals if it hadn’t directly challenged everything they believed about rigid gender roles for women and men. 

You can be egalitarian (when it comes to equality between men and women) but non-gay-affirming, and I know plenty of people in that camp. At the same time—as I slowly realized when I started to dig deeper into the beliefs of my own church leaders when it came to gender and sexuality—the logic of non-affirming theology directly stems from patriarchal (complementarian) theology.

I’m not saying every non-LGBTQ-affirming person came to this conclusion in the same way or for the same reasons. But historically speaking, as Du Mez points out, that was kind of how it happened, and it seems good to be aware of this.

4. Given the current state of the U.S. and the mess we’re in when it comes to reproductive rights, I felt like this paragraph offers some helpful historical context:

“In 1968, Christianity Today considered the question of therapeutic abortion—was it a blessing, or murder? They gave no definitive answer. As late as 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution urging states to expand access to abortion. But with the liberalization of abortion laws, and as abortion proponents began to frame the issue in terms of women controlling their reproduction, evangelicals started to reconsider their position. In 1973, Roe v. Wade—and the rising popularity of abortion in its wake—helped force the issue, but even then, evangelical mobilization was not immediate. Only in time, as abortion became more closely linked to feminism and the sexual revolution, did evangelicals begin to frame it not as a difficult moral choice, but rather as an assault on women’s God-given role, on the family, and on Christian America itself” (pp. 68-9).

Ah, yes. Roe v. Wade? Not sure what to think about it. Mostly a Catholic issue, I think. No definitive answer here. Oh wait, the feminists are advocating for abortion rights? Well then it must be a problem. It must be contrary to what we believe as Christians—because clearly anything feminist must be contrary to what we believe as Christians. Sounds about right.

I don’t think this was the only thing going on. There was also the way conservative evangelicals had opposed racial desegregation, and when it became clear that that was becoming an unpopular position and a losing battle, they needed another heated issue to rally people around in a partisan way. 

But I think abortion was a ready choice for this issue because of its connection to changing ideas about gender roles and women’s empowerment—ideas that Christians whose faith was tied closely to their patriarchy found incredibly threatening. 

As with opposition to LGBTQ+ inclusion and affirmation, individual Christians who oppose abortion rights today didn’t necessarily take the path Du Mez outlines to get here. But this is the reasoning that was involved historically.

That’s what I’ve got for part 1! Please feel free to comment, email, or otherwise holler with your thoughts on these nice little noncontroversial issues. And don’t worry, I’ll be back next week with part 2!

New post at Feminism & Religion

Just got done with a Zoom book discussion of Kyla Schuller’s The Trouble with White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism. What a book. Definitely “super chill book review” material, so keep on the lookout for that sometime soon-ish.

(And spoiler alert: as a white woman, I didn’t feel nearly as offended as the title might perhaps make one worry. I didn’t feel like the book was criticizing me so much as inviting me into better ways of thinking about things and moving in this world. Which most of us very much need.)

One of the (many) things The Trouble with White Women made me think about was the (complicated) legacy of Margaret Sanger in regard to birth control and reproductive rights and that sort of highly-relevant-to-current-events thing. I wrote a post about all this at Feminism & Religion – check it out here if you like!

Fourth grade child, crucified

Processing the grief and horror of the school shooting in Uvalde, TX with a poem. God, have mercy.

Fourth Grade Child, Crucified

Fourth grade child on the cross,
you did not choose this.
There is nothing in you 
nor your family, friends, or schoolmates
that deserved this.
All forever changed without consent.

Where was Christ to wipe your tears
and who was there to honor 
all the sacred blood that left your side?

Fourth grade child, crucified
because the Romans shouted “freedom”
and would not give up their guns.
Because lobbyists lobbied 
and senators are spineless
and lines are drawn unjustly
and our addiction to violence 
is strong.

You deserved to live 
among a people who cared. 
You deserved a long life
among a people who are for life.
And now you deserve the birthing of a world
where this will never happen again.
Even so, you’re gone forever.
It would not be enough. 
It would be something.

Fourth grade child, 
the grief of those who love you
is real and raw 
and right and angry.
You were unprotected by 
the ones who pledged to keep you safe.
We failed you.
No excuses remain.
Nothing to be said
and nothing left to do
but bear witness and not turn away.
To grieve and scream.
Hold vigil.
Refuse to forget and move on.
Demand better.

Fourth grade child, innocent,
I need you to know -
I need us to show you tangibly -
your life was worth more than all the money in the world
and all the power thrown around
by those who lead 
but do not love us.

Super chill book review part 2: All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep (Andre Henry)

As promised—and eagerly awaited, I’m sure!—this is the second part of a super chill book review of Andre Henry’s All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep. (The first part is chillin over here if you didn’t catch it before.) 

Here are a few more quotes and thoughts.

4) On the language of “can’t”:

“That was the second time [seminary friend] Kevin used the word ‘can’t’ in regard to condemning slavery…He echoed his predecessors, who often wrote about how they couldn’t abolish slavery, because the world they were building depended on it too much. A straight line can be traced between the colonizers who claimed they couldn’t abolish slavery to white people today who ‘can’t’ condemn it in the present, nor imagine a world without its descendants: the police and prisons. Perhaps they do this because they know they can’t categorically condemn the violence that structures their world without implicating themselves” (pp. 87-8).

I hear and honor the specific context of race and racial violence that Andre’s writing about here. And, at the same time, when I read this, my mind also wanders to all the other things I’ve heard Christians say they can’t do.

For example, “I want to support women in ministry, but I can’t—it isn’t the way our church/denomination does things, and there isn’t enough will to change.” Or, “I want to affirm LGBTQ+ people and relationships, but I can’t—I just don’t see how the Bible could be understood in any way other than condemning.” 

What is this “can’t”? 

In a sense, it’s a sort of appeal to a higher authority. I want to do something, but some thing/person/rule/structure/system/theology/authority won’t allow me. At some point, though, in my view, we don’t get to absolve ourselves so easily of responsibility for our own choices and the impact they have. 

Sometimes, in order to be whole and healthy humans who want wholeness and health for others as well, we have to go against the way things have always been done. Sometimes we have to disagree with church/denominational higher-ups. Sometimes we have to read the Bible differently from what we’re used to or what everyone around us is doing. These things are not easy. But we can do them. 

We get to make choices, and we are responsible for these choices. Those who felt they couldn’t abolish slavery are still responsible for the suffering it caused; those who feel they can’t challenge the status quo today are still responsible for the suffering in our current world, whether by way of racial violence, institutionalized misogyny, homophobia, or any other forms it might take.

I don’t find it easy to imagine, as Andre writes, a world without…police and prisons. But, in solidarity with people who are most impacted by the injustice and violence of these systems, I can try.

5) On God and racism:

“I don’t think they always realize this, but when a Christian says God isn’t concerned about racism, they’re saying God doesn’t care about Black people. Those statements are inseparable. We fight for people we care about, period. If you saw a friend in danger, love would compel you to try to save them. So to say God won’t intervene against anti-Black violence, because it’s not important, could only mean God doesn’t love us” (pp. 120-1).

I read this, and I think about how sometimes Christians get some weird ideas about redemptive suffering. And it gets especially gnarly when people try to apply these ideas to other people’s lives rather than their own. 

If someone went through something difficult and felt that it was redeemed in some way, whether through character growth or something else good that came out of it, that’s great. I’m all for it. But I don’t think I get to tell someone who is not me that their suffering is redemptive.

Yet that is often what white people do to Black people. And it’s violent. It’s the opposite of loving. For those of us who are not Black, if we love our Black sisters and brothers and siblings, as Andre writes, we won’t try to tell them that God isn’t concerned about racism. We’ll believe with them in a God who fights for them—and we’ll join them in the fight.

6) On what comes next:

 “The question I have today is whether or not all those millions of people who filled the streets in 2020 for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have realized that their next task is to use nonviolent direct action to cripple the operations of a repressive society. We’re not just fighting for white Americans to be nicer; we’re fighting against a corrupt empire. We must connect the struggle for Black lives today to previous movements against imperialism, authoritarianism, and fascism around the world and at home. We must learn from those movements and apply their lessons to our situation today, with the understanding that tinkering with the current system isn’t enough. The current system was built to oppress, which means it must be replaced. We must go from being a fundamentally unequal society sustained by violence to a truly egalitarian society sustained by mutual care. A revolution is necessary to make Black lives matter, and we have to plan it” (pp. 144-5).

I don’t really have anything to add to this—just wanted to include it here, because I feel like it captures the heart of a lot of what this book is about. 

Where do we go from the summer of 2020? What more is needed? What does continued and genuine antiracist engagement look like? We’re not just fighting for white Americans to be nicer. We’re fighting to become a truly egalitarian society sustained by mutual care. Amen to that.

7) On white folks who want to get involved:

“If white people are serious about fighting white supremacy and anti-Blackness, they need to start within themselves. This kind of work is essential because without it, white people will enter movement spaces and cause the same kinds of harm Black people are trying to get away from. They need to confront the ways they’ve been shaped by anti-Black ideas and been complicit in defending the racial hierarchy. They need to dedicate themselves to the work of fighting against racism in their own communities, instead of rushing straight into spaces where Black people are trying to heal and organize for our own freedom.

“White people should consider how they can organize for racial justice in ways that give Black people space: space where we’re free from the pressure to educate them, perform for them, or coddle them. One option is for white people to join non-Black ally movement groups that work in parallel with Black-led organizations and are accountable to trusted Black leaders: White People for Black Lives (WP4BL) or Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), for instance. White people who really get it understand that such space is necessary” (p. 163).

As a white person hoping to be useful to the cause of racial justice—and who knows a lot of fellow white people in a similar boat (hi, Lake B)—I appreciate this warning and encouragement. Not every justice movement space is a space for us—and that’s okay. Not every space needs to be for us, and not every space should cater to us. 

This doesn’t mean we can’t be useful. It just means that anti-Blackness is so deeply ingrained in us that we need to be thoughtful, careful, and humble about where and how we show up, so that we don’t do more harm than good.

8) On hope:

 “Frankly, I thought hope was bullshit. Mostly because all of the hopeful people I knew had a tendency to minimize problems in order to stay positive. It seemed that the only people I knew who had hope weren’t paying close attention to what’s going on in the world. [Activist Rebecca Solnit’s book] Hope in the Dark was the beginning of a journey that would permanently shift my perspective.

“The idea that struck me most in Solnit’s book was that there’s a difference between hope and certainty. To be hopeful doesn’t mean we’re sure about the future. ‘Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists,’ she explains. ‘Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting.’ My mouth dropped open when I first read those words. They gave me a concept of hope that looked ugly truths in the face and left room for human agency. It felt like good news” (p. 169).

I feel this tension between holding onto hope and trying to pay attention to what’s actually going on in the world. I also really enjoyed Hope in the Dark. I have not been engaged in activist scholarship and struggle nearly as deeply as Andre has, but in the ways I have tried to engage, Solnit’s book felt like good news to me, too.

As far as good news goes, I feel like many of us who’ve been involved in the evangelical world have been awakening to a realization that the white American evangelical gospel doesn’t actually feel like good news. (As Andre articulates in his song Playing Hookey.) So I think it’s worth asking, and paying attention to our answers: What does feel like good news?

What’s actual, legit good news for you? For your community? For those “with their backs against the wall,” as Howard Thurman writes in Jesus and the Disinherited? I don’t know if the answers that come to you will line up very well with a conservative evangelical version of Christianity. But I suspect God might be in them. 

Well, this really just scratches the surface of a few parts of Andre’s book. There’s a lot there. I hope you get a chance to read it, and I’d love to chat about it if so (here, FB, email, real life, whatever you prefer)!

Public property, 73%, centering, and quickening: four brief thoughts on abortion

You may not be surprised to hear that, over the last few days—like much of the U.S.—I’ve been thinking about abortion. Sometimes I see people—mostly Christians—say that they feel like they “need” to weigh in. I don’t really feel that need. 

Part of it is that I generally don’t feel the need to weigh in on anything right away. My first reaction is usually not the best-thought-out one, and I would rather stew for a while and then hopefully say something more thoughtful if or when I have something to say. 

I also don’t really want to play into the news/media/outrage cycle that tends to happen. Often an issue gets a lot of attention for a few days, but really it’s a long-term, long-standing thing. And there are lots of people who have devoted many years of their lives to it. I’d rather listen to those people—the experts on a given topic, those who are committing their time and energy beyond the two days when it’s trending and at the forefront of everyone’s mind—than feel the need for everyone to speak all at once, whether or not we know much at all about it.

Basically, if I speak or write, I want to contribute to movements working to build a better world for the long haul—which often means choosing not to react spontaneously to whatever seems most egregious at the moment.

Caveats and hesitations aside, though, I’ve been thinking about abortion and the complex web of issues that come up whenever people start talking about it. And I have four brief thoughts.

1. Women’s bodies as public property

This is what I think about when I see abortion-related conversations go down. I find it kind of mind-blowing that people have so many opinions and philosophies and theologies about this thing that is so intensely intimate and personal. It’s not just an abstract topic for debate; it’s real women’s medical care, pregnancies, bodies. 

People feel so free to state their opinions to anyone who might listen and many who will not. This is a reminder, to me, of how women’s bodies are often treated as public property. 

I believe Paula Stone Williams writes about this in As a Woman: What I Learned About Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned. Paula is a transgender woman who reflects on how life is different for her now since transitioning in her sixties. Among many other things, once she transitioned, she noticed that people feel free to comment on her appearance in a way they didn’t feel free when they saw her as a man. She felt as if her body, for the first time, was considered public property.

Would people feel the need to state their opinions on difficult health care decisions—not to mention related topics of pregnancy risks, and rape and incest, and teen pregnancy, and that sort of thing—if it were primarily a conversation about men’s bodies? It’s kind of hard to imagine. What men can or can’t do tends to be seen as their own decision. 

So I guess I generally feel like it should feel more uncomfortable to talk about abortion than it is. And when we do talk about it, I would love to hear more respect for the privacy, autonomy, and agency of every woman who has had to make difficult pregnancy choices. 

There’s something a little dehumanizing when this sensitivity is lacking—something a little disturbing about how everyone feels the need to weigh in with opinions that are often more intellectual than personal, more overly generalized than sensitive to individuals’ needs, highly ideological and not nearly nuanced enough to take into account all the complexities life and pregnancy and birth and parenthood hold. 

2. 73% of Americans care about my life

I’ve been sitting with a statistic I saw the other day: “73% of Americans say abortion should be legal if the woman’s life or health is endangered by the pregnancy” (see full Pew Research article).

(To be fair, only 11% say it should be illegal in that case—but I’m also not super happy with the 14% who say “it depends.” I’m not at all sure I want people looking at each individual woman to decide whether her life matters—and when people do that, it’s hard to imagine that things like race and socioeconomic status wouldn’t come into play.)

73%. What this statistic makes me feel is that if I were pregnant, and if there were complications such that my life were at risk, less than three out of every four people I meet in daily life or shop with at the grocery store feel quite sure that they would want my life to be saved. That doesn’t feel very good. 

I think of the psalmist’s lament: no one is concerned for me; no one cares for my life (Psalm 142:4). I’m sitting with this—for myself as a woman, and also, especially, in solidarity with women who have experienced real danger in pregnancy.

3. Center those most impacted

This is something we’ve learned from various social justice movements. Why would it be any different when it comes to conversations about abortion?

I remember the time, back when I was working in college ministry, that some of the students wanted to attend an on-campus debate about abortion. So off we went to the debate. Both speakers were men. 

On the one hand, I was used to stuff like that. On the other hand, and especially in retrospect, it was kind of surreal. It didn’t make any sense. What exactly qualified these two men as experts on something that impacted other people’s bodies more than their own?

If we’re going to talk about uteruses, we have to center the voices of people who have uteruses. If we’re going to talk about pregnancy, we have to center the voices of people who have experienced pregnancy. If we’re going to talk about abortion, we have to center the voices of people who have made a difficult choice to end their pregnancy. Likewise, if we’re going to talk about various options for abortion-ban exceptions—things like rape, or incest, or risks to the mother’s life—we have to center the voices of people who have experienced these things.

I don’t want any of these people to feel like they have to speak. They get to choose whether they want to speak. But there are those who are speaking. Are the rest of us listening?

4. Quickening

In my younger and more conservative days, I used to think that since I was a Christian, I believed that life began at conception. It was all part and parcel of being a believer. 

I’ve learned, since then, that the “life begins at conception” argument is really a rather recent one. There is a long, long historical Christian tradition of people who didn’t necessarily think this way. (Alternatively, if you think there weren’t any true Christians in the world until the last half of the twentieth century…I suppose that’s a view you could take.)

I think of this fascinating article from a couple years back. Its author, Dr. Freidenfelds, is a historian who spent fifteen years researching and writing about miscarriage. Freidenfelds suggests that, in the earlier years of Christianity, people believed the soul of a baby entered the baby’s body when the mother first felt her child move in her womb—a moment known as “quickening.” 

That makes a lot of sense to me. And even if it doesn’t make sense to you, it’s an example of how Christian beliefs about souls and bodies and fetuses and life have changed dramatically over time. “Life begins at conception” is a newer idea, and it is not a statement every Christian must believe. 

Well, those are my four thoughts. I don’t really want to provoke more debate, but do feel free to share your own thoughts and feelings over these last few days—I’d love to hear.

Super chill book review: Becoming Rooted (Randy Woodley)

I recently read Randy Woodley’s Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth (Broadleaf Books, 2022). (First super chill book review for a book that was published in 2022—woohoo!)

I’ll confess I did not take the full one hundred days to read it. But I still like how the book is broken up: one hundred very short chapters (like, very short—1-2 pages each), each with an intriguing quote at the beginning and a suggested action item at the end. Even though I sometimes read several short chapters in one sitting, I still liked being able to digest the book in such small chunks. 

I found this book very much worth reading; as always, here are a few random thoughts and quotes!

1) It must have taken Woodley some time to find one hundred different interesting and relevant quotations to begin each chapter with. But I’m glad he did.

I found myself appreciating the variety of people quoted—many indigenous thinkers, some Buddhists, some Christian theologians, some Bible quotes. From Gandhi to Sitting Bull to Mother Teresa to Alice Walker to James Baldwin, as well as lots of indigenous people I hadn’t heard of before but enjoyed learning from, it’s quite the diverse and brilliant cast of thinkers. 

2) In particular, I found this quote very striking: 

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”

-Cree Indian Proverb (p. 141)

Reminds me of what Jesus said about not hoarding treasure where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal (Matt 6:19). We either learn to share resources, giving and receiving generously, building just communities where everyone can flourish—or, eventually, we are all destroyed. 

Money might protect many wealthy people from feeling the effects of climate change, pollution, unsustainable agriculture practices, etc. as quickly as others, but it will catch up with all of us in the end. We can’t eat money. I hadn’t quite thought about it in that way, but it feels right.

3) I also liked this quote: 

“In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” 

-Eric Hoffer (p. 241)

Reminds me of what Jesus said about the meek inheriting the earth (Matt 5:5). To be learners, we have to admit that there’s so much we don’t know. (And often also that much we’ve learned isn’t actually true or helpful.) We have to become humble enough to want to learn, and to know that we need to learn.

Also, the idea of being “equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists” is something one of my seminary professors used to talk about a lot without attributing it to anyone in particular (other than, by implication, himself). So it’s nice to know where that comes from.

4) Woodley has such great stories. So many of them. I appreciated his willingness to share his life and spiritual experiences so openly. 

I especially appreciated his emphasis on God speaking through nonhuman beings, since this is often overlooked and undervalued in Western churches. 

I’m Western enough in worldview that it sometimes seems silly, to me, to feel like I sense God speaking through wild animals or plants. Or maybe it’s not even so much that I think it’s silly—I actually think it’s very common, and very sacred and beautiful—but maybe more that I’m sometimes a little embarrassed about it. That is, I worry others will find it silly. 

I appreciate Woodley’s leadership in being willing to put himself out there and say, yes, that eagle is totally a sign. It’s totally God speaking. And it’s real. You might find it silly—but if you do, you’re missing out on so many amazing ways God might be speaking to you.

5) Woodley writes, “Humanity has yet to realize the fact that nature is wiser and more powerful than we are. Nature will, without a doubt, outlive us. She knows her mind, and she understands what keeps life in balance” (p. 17).

This was another thing I hadn’t quite thought about in this way, but when I hear it, it feels true. From Woodley’s perspective, climate change isn’t exactly a threat to the earth—as we might tend to talk about it—so much as it’s a threat to humanity. The earth will be okay, with or without humans. 

It’s almost an image of Earth having to spit humanity out because we aren’t playing well with others—with, as Woodley often calls it, the whole “community of creation.” Earth will be okay—she doesn’t need us. 

So when we fight climate change, we’re fighting for our own survival—for our own place in the interconnected web of creation. And that’s worth fighting for. I would very much like to get to stick around. 

6) I hope this isn’t too much of a spoiler, but this is how Woodley sums up the values he’s hoping to teach and reflect on throughout the book: 

“A harmonious worldview. Mutual respect. Generosity. Hospitality. Inclusion. Relatedness to all creation. Cooperation. Wisdom. Humor” (p. 116).

Then again, at the very end of the book, he describes these values a little more:

  • “Respect: Respect everyone. Everyone and everything is sacred.
  • Harmony: Seek harmony and cooperation with people and nature.
  • Friendship: Increase the number and depth of your close friends and family.
  • Humor: Laugh at yourself; we are merely human.
  • Equality: Everyone expresses their voice in decisions.
  • Authenticity: Speak from your heart.
  • History: Learn from the past. Live presently by looking back.
  • Balance work and rest: Work hard, but rest well.
  • Generosity: Share what you have with others.
  • Accountability: We are all interconnected. We are all related” (242).

I appreciate this articulation of indigenous values that we can all seek to live by, whether Indigenous or settler. 

These values also strike me as very Jesus-y. By mentioning Jesus so many times, by the way, I don’t mean to say that indigenous values are only valuable if Jesus also taught and lived them. I don’t mean to say that something is only valuable if Christianity affirms and endorses it, or that Christians don’t have things to learn from indigenous worldviews that we might not learn from the Bible alone.

I do mean to say that I think Jesus would be down with this book. Respect, harmony, friendship, humor, equality, authenticity, generosity—these are exactly the things that characterized Jesus’ life. The fact that indigenous thinkers and theologians often have to push back on aspects of the dominant Western Christian worldview says less about how Jesus and indigenous views relate to one another and more about how far removed a lot of the dominant Western Christian worldview is from who Jesus was.

Here’s to moving toward, as Woodley puts it, “heal[ing] ourselves, the Earth, and the whole community of creation” (116). 

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.