Summer contest

Christy ran a nice contest titled, "What should I blog about?" The prize is obvious. Since summer began two days ago, all I have on my mind is exercising, baking pies, stripping wallpaper, reading, and sleeping. What should I blog about?

Don't Trust Anyone Over 12

Chap Clark reviews Don Everts and Doug Schaupp's I Once Was Lost in the new issue of Christianity Today. The book is about moving postmodern young people along toward Christ. After suggesting that 'emerging adulthood' is really an extended adolescence, he writes, "today's 22-year-old is the developmental equivalent of a 17-year-old in 1980." My first-year college courses, then, are geared toward 14-year-olds? Is today's full professor the equivalent of a master's degreed lecturer in 1980? The original comment makes an assumption I'd like to call into question: that it's good to grow up.

Adulthood is turning out to be a ruse. Grown-ups don't know what they're talking about, can't do 7th grade math, and have lots of fears and doubts. Some of the most spiritually wonderful Christian adults I know, from age 19 to 78, struggle to remain connected to Christianity even while they love Jesus -- and not because they're immature, but because the church is so often racist, dumb, and corrupt, and they're too honest to look away from that reality. The details vary -- some think more about mortgages and insurance than whether or not to go to grad school, and some are planning retirements instead of weddings -- but the questions are the exact same at 78 as at 19: who am I? is God real, and is God real to me? am I loved? where did that beautiful thing come from? why is life so hard? can I carry on? and so on.

Clark's review says the book outlines five seasons through which young people mature, three of which I'm still on the "wrong" side of, though I converted to Christianity three decades ago.

1. "from distrust of Christians to trust." What? I trust Christians less and less as time passes, and I am one.
2. "from spiritual complacency to curiosity." That sounds good.
3. "from being closed to Christianity to being open." Also good.
4. "from meandering to seeking." Isn't there room for both?
5. "entrance over the 'threshold of the kingdom.'" As I grow older, I see the kingdom where I thought it wasn't, and realize it wasn't where I thought it was. In terms of social justice and injustice, I see the kingdom and its absence most clearly, but in terms of wisdom, goodness, and beauty, it seems like the wind, "blowing where it listeth" (Jn 3:8).

I thought certainty, confidence, and purposeful direction were right around the corner at age 22, or maybe 25, well surely 30, or maybe 34. I thought maybe I was just a slow learner. But now, at 35, I'm going to stop believing that having it all together comes with age, or that it even should. I'll just come right out and say it: I'm disillusioned with adulthood. My spiritual path is regression, back to childhood. I don't even like children other than my own, inasmuch as they are sticky and smell like poop, but they've got spirituality down. They ask questions, they learn, and they want to be happy. They know yummy from yucky. They meander. They resonate with the way of Jesus.

Maybe it's a great sign that today's 22-year-old is like the 17-year-old of 1980. At that rate, within a few decades we'll all be under ten years old. Wouldn't that be a sign of kingdom come?

My Summer Reading List

1. Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A Reader on Hunter-Gatherer Economics and the Environment, ed. John Gowdy (this one is worldview-altering, amazing)
2. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, Judith Butler
3. The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture-History-Political Economy, eds. Roger Lancaster and Micaela DiLeonardo
4. The American University in a Postsecular Age, eds. Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen
5. Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, eds. Brettell and Sargent
6. Be Not Deceived: The Sacred and Sexual Struggles of Gay and Ex-Gay Christian Men, Michelle Wolkomir
7. Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua
8. God is a Verb, Rabbi David Cooper
9. The Trouble with Nature: Sex in Science and Popular Culture, Roger Lancaster
10. Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders Among Bugis in Indonesia, Sharyn Graham Davies (also amazing - an ethnography)

What's on your summer reading list? Any good ones for me? Any new blogs I should be reading?

Green

We progressivist cultural anthropologists have a jealousy problem. We want to change the world, and our research -- immersion in other worlds -- is inherently fascinating. The problem is that our work is usually hundreds of pages long, jargon-ridden, and embedded in a narrow slice of theory. Wonder why so few policymakers, pastors, activists, or anyone else read it.

The jealousy peaks when journalists do immersion research (but not formally trained in ethnography) and then write wonderful, widely read accounts of other cultural worlds (but not grounded in anthropological theory or its jargon). We like that the lives of poor urban children or migrants are put out to the world, but we wish we were the authors!

Two specimens:

Sonia Nazario's Enrique's Journey - she rode the tops of frieght trains across the length of Mexico with children migrating north to find their mothers. Sheesh, I can't even write that sentence without tearing up. She spoke at Messiah's graduation last weekend and I was not tearing up, not crying, but sobbing. She doesn't tell us what to think about immigration; she shows us what immigration is like.

Andy Crouch's Culture Makers - that link goes to a lengthier description and free chapters. I read this entire manuscript some months ago, and it reminded me of listening to Crouch talk at a regeneration quarterly board meeting. He's on to something about what culture is and how Christians should live in it -- as makers of culture, not critics or even transformers. The only hesitation I have about it is that he situates "culture" in the discipline of sociology much more than anthro, and I wish the book were more a tribute to anthropology...which goes back to my first point, huh?! As a professional anthropologist, this book (written by a non-anthropologist) shapes my view of culture. I hope this book is paradigm-setting for evangelicals.

P.S. Do you see what I did here? I wanted to highlight the work of a white man doing something wonderful, but I'm not satisfied to write blog posts that link only to white men. So I added a relevant, equally important Latina woman to the discussion. She could have been left out, not because of importance, but b/c she isn't central to white evangelical public discourse...because she's a Latina woman (don't know her faith tradition), which keeps the center white and male, and so the cycle goes. I'm not being self-aggrandizing - I'm just making my method explicit so others could do the same.

The Joy of Sox

I just purchased a nice hand-made, fair-trade bowl for a wedding gift, which my husband says looks like it cost $10 from Pier One. As long as I've already botched the event, here's the card I'd like to write.

Dear Michael and Wife Whose Name I Don't Know,

Congratulations on your wedding today! You may be looking forward to the sex, but I'd like to suggest instead that you, especially WWNIDN, consider the laundry and dishes. I recently completed an episode of laundry that involved carrying down three floors, washing, drying, folding, carrying up three floors, and putting away 138 items, work that needed to be repeated (precise repetition -- same items) 72 hours later and every subsequent 72 hours for the forseeable future. At a rate of 276 laundry items per week, we'll be folding 14,352 items this year, and if we stay married for 50 years, a total of 717,600 items. Dishes, at 25 per meal (table setting, not cooking prep), will total 1.4 million by the time our vows expire.

Sex, on the other hand, not so much. If you were to have as much sex as laundry, you'd need to do it 1.6 times per hour round the clock. You might try that for the first few days of marriage, for which I applaud you, but you'll get tired, hungry, or distracted sooner or later. To be generous, we could expand the definition of "sex" to include any act of affection like a pat on the ass, a compliment, eye contact, or restraint from slurping milk out of the bowl (you laugh now, but three days from now you'll realize just how earnestly you'll need to take whatever comes your way). Even with this expansive definition, it's going to be tough to get as much love as laundry.

When we got married, I thought I had done the numbers, but they were all less than ten. Two people, two rings, one vow, two or three kids, one dog, six cats. A decade later, we're in it for 140,000 pieces of laundry and 273,000 dishes, a total that rises by the hour. I should end this card now and get some kisses in before the washing machine dings.

Love, Jenell Paris (a friend of your dad's)

Disguises

In 1996 I had my first teaching gig at the American Studies Program. On the first day of the semester I met my first parent, who said to me, "Hi! Are you Brittany's roommate?" "No, sir," I squeaked, "I'm her professor," afraid he'd take her home rather than leave her to be taught by me. Crestfallen, I called my dear boyfriend to complain. He said it was my barrette's fault, so I cut my hair short. My roommate said I was too small, but come on, it was 1996 - I couldn't take her advice to wear shoulder pads.

Throughout the late 1990s I complained about being mistaken for an undergraduate at parent-student events, at the college library, the business office, the parking kiosk, etc. My colleagues laughed and said, "Enjoy it - it doesn't last long."

It's been 12 years, and it's still happening! I met a parent two weeks ago who said, "What was your research project on?" I said, "I didn't do one -- I was your daughter's professor, not her classmate." I have taken up the barrette again, so maybe it's my own fault. But the ultimate situation was at graduation last weekend. I said to a parent, "You must be proud of your son," and the father said, "Yes, and you must be proud of yourself to graduate today." He couldn't even see my barrette, hidden as it was under my black velvet hat (what is that thing called?) with a gold tassel, which topped off my black velvet regalia and red, white and blue hood. His son was wearing a thin polyester cape and thin polyester cap. Bars on the arms, sir, I wanted to say. Three bars on the arms means I have a doctorate!

I don't know why I'm regularly mistaken for an undergraduate by middle-aged and senior people (believe me, no undergraduate has mistaken me for one of their tribe for many years). It's not because of my appearance - the regalia provides coverage of muu muu proportions. And even when I'm not dressed up in regalia, my eyes are spidery red orbs set in dark circles, my hair is wet when I arrive at work, my postpartum midsection has fallen out of its frame (seriously, will it ever go back in?), and I don't bother to stand up straight anymore because all I ever do is pick up food, bodies, and toys off floors - might as well stay as close to the ground as possible. My clothing obviously was heaped in a laundry basket for days (unclear whether it was going to or from the machine), my shoes are always Birks, tennis shoes, or clogs, and I never wear dry-clean fabrics. I'm not the picture of youth, the picture of beauty, or the picture of health.

When I complained for the umpteenth time to my dear boyfriend-turned-husband, he said, "It's not that you look young - it's just that you're unkempt." Ah, faithful are the wounds of a friend. Mothers of young children do look like college students -- bleary eyes, poor posture, shlumpy clothes, wet hair, comfortable shoes... but our bellies always give us away.

Can you help with any of these questions?

1. My least favorite statistic is the one about married Christians having sex more often and with more satisfaction than other people. Where does this statistic come from?

2. I have a 2000-word essay about fertility awareness in Christian perspective that needs a place to be published, probably on-line. (Boo to the editor who solicited it and then didn't want it).

3. I have a 1500-word review essay about lesbian motherhood, based on two books published in 2005. Where could I publish that? (Boo to the editor -- a different one -- who solicited it and then didn't want it).

4. I need to learn about Sandra Bartky's ideas about morality shaped by inconsistencies in people's social worlds - what books or articles should I read?

5. I'd like to do a service-learning project with a class that relates to the !Kung (or San, or Bushmen) of the Kalahari in Botswana and/or Namibia. Do you know any !Kung who e-mail, or missionaries or development workers who might like to shape a project with me? I'd also take a good contact with any other San people, but would prefer the !Kung since that's who we read about.

6. Same for the Waorani of Ecuador.

7. I'm doing some writing on sexual identity that has been dormant for several years. I have a chapter draft with the words "orange, trampoline" written on it with emphatic stars. What did I mean?

A final cackling: a crone's misgivings

In reference to this long series of posts, a woman said to me about her experiences with Christianity and sexism, "Sometimes I just have to let it go." Another, my feminist mother-in-law, said, "I just laugh at them because they're silly. Those men don't have power over me." This isn't the laughter or release born of apathy, but of maturity. Might there be a place of compassion, humor, and peace from which we engage sexism and women's repression? Or, more pointedly, might there be a place of compassion, humor, and peace from which _I_ can engage these things?

I watched my son Wesley agitate his brother this morning. Wesley knows how to push Ollie's buttons, but Ollie doesn't know how to control his emotions (they're only 2). Giving in to Wesley's teasing, Oliver suffers emotional and vocal distress while Wesley watches, amused and otherwise unaffected. To make a disrespectful analogy, it's like religious sexism is Wesley and I am Ollie. In my career, in motherhood, and in church, I'm appreciating anew how entrenched sexism is. It makes me angry to see it affecting a younger generation of scholars and church leaders, and the new generation of my own family. It's vulnerable to be a working mother with an at-home husband and still claim to be a decent Christian, and it makes me angry that my religious community doesn't have a more solid set of pro-family social norms that would help stabilize this experience. There's plenty to be angry about, but there must be a way to act compassionately -- right action -- that is totally loving, patient, and other-centered, even when the other is White Traditionalist Evangelical Guy. In anthropology, evangelicals are sometimes referred to as the 'culturally repugnant other' -- anthropologists discuss how to do good fieldwork among and ethnographic representation of people whom the anthropologist does not like. It's a deeper ethic still for us Christians, to love beyond the circle of those who love us. And to love in a way that doesn't leave injustice unnamed or structural redemption undone.

I certainly mean everything I said, but I'm second-guessing my ascent to cronehood. The princess - crone dualism is surely a false one, anyway. I don't want to be a self-appointed finger-wagger or an unlikeable academic kook. Besides, I'm only 35 -- I can hang out with the crones, but I really can't go their speed yet. Maybe just being human suits me best; living in the now, responding with such compassion that even judgments about repugnance start to give way to sheer being. If I could find a way to do that, I might even agree with what Jesus said about his Way -- that the soul feels rested and the burden has become light.

In our yard

A seventh cackling

I didn't set out to write seven posts on the same subject, but my religious world keeps feeding me material. Exhibit A in this conversation has just appeared, the Evangelical Manifesto, issued May 8, 2008. Twenty pages long, it is a classic piece of evangelical communication. Generated without institutional support or hierarchy, a group of evangelicals came together to speak only as themselves, but to and about the larger group called evangelicals (I’d rather not capitalize it, though the Manifesto calls for it). They define evangelicals for journalists, politicians, culture-watchers, and others. They speak to the current cultural moment, distinguishing Evangelicals from the Religious Right and chastising themselves for harm done. It’s an open call, and people are invited to sign it.I read the whole thing and mostly loved it. It uses evangelical vocabulary and tone, is irenic and self-examining, and makes evangelicalism seem like something I’m proud to be part of. I even appreciated the theological definition of evangelicalism, which I don’t always, there being myriad permutations of such lists.

If evangelicalism is truly a non-institutionalized movement without official leaders, then you might expect it to be nimble and culturally responsive. Why, then, why was the steering committee comprised of nine white men, and the charter signatories comprised of 66 men and 6 women? The steering committee (Timothy George, Os Guiness, John Huffman, Rich Mouw, Jesse Miranda, David Neff, Richard Ohman, Larry Ross, Dallas Willard) represent an essential sector of evangelical leadership, but are epistemologically limited by virtue of their common positionality. That group shares, for the most part, a cluster of identity characteristics: age, race, gender, nationality, language, and theological persuasion. Is that really a model of Christians coming together to speak to a multicultural society? Even if being white and male were extremely important, people like Brian McLaren or Jim Wallis should be considered preeminent shapers of the American evangelical movement.
If the steering committee had included voices from the evangelical movement globally, or women, or U.S. minorities, or Emergent, or the Call to Renewal, the Manifesto could have:
- Instead of setting culture against theology, and arguing for a strictly theological definition of culture, shown how culture and religion exist in relationship of mutual influence
- Shown awareness of and an engaging spirit toward new technology and new forms of discourse produced on-line
- Engaged postmodernism (and modernism, for that matter) with a less fearful tone
- Discussed political and cultural endeavors already underway, instead of only calling for them
- Modeled an evangelical ability to live in a diverse society
- Dealt with gender as more than an earthly issue “transcended” by Jesus (I’d say Jesus helps us toward reconciliation in gender, not transcendence)

The list of charter signatories is 10% female. I can’t even write about this with satire because it grieves me so. I imagine a group of men networking, e-mailing, calling, and then when their group of 9 was assembled, sensing that the group is complete/representative enough to proceed. They assemble a list of charter signatories, people who will represent the breadth of American evangelicalism according to some criteria of ‘breadth.’ And that seemed sufficiently complete. Then they open the document to the evangelical world for signatures and for public consumption. Women are included mostly after the formative work has already been done. It’s important to note who the 6 women are – they are (arguably) successful, influential evangelical women palatable to established leadership: Marguerite Shuster, Kay Arthur, Roberta Hestenes, Kelly Monroe Kullberg, Shirley Mullen, Becky Pippert. It’s important to pay attention to their work, support their efforts, and network women and like-minded men across both public and private spheres of influence.

I signed the Manifesto and I encourage my evangelical readers to do so. The Manifesto contains some wonderful sentences and ideas about evangelicalism, and I hope it influences public perception of our movement. When journalists or writers or other media folks look for evangelicals to interview, read, or learn from, I hope they can look at the list of signatures and see lots of women. Maybe that can even help stir up public dialogue about the place of women in this major American religious movement.

A sixth cackling

In graduate school, I found it difficult to include women and people of color in my research at times, because the canon and the contemporary academy are so homogenous. I understand this issue. But after reading the canon, then read around your area of interest, and be vulnerable to it being shaped by the voices you encounter. I wasn’t interested in queer theory or sexual identity deconstruction or the anthropology of race when I started, but was by the time I finished. So there are women out there, but they may not be numerous in the canon or the privileged mouthpieces of the discipline (but a few are probably there, too).

Maggi Dawn asked for some literature written by women in a field outside her primary one, and look at the interesting comments. Just ask around, network in the literature, and you’ll find something. But it’s not just a matter of finding women who can speak to areas of conventional male concern, in voices and styles that are compatible with that body of knowledge. Women will succeed there when given an opening, but they will also open up new bodies of knowledge as well as new ways of knowing.

This is why I take sermon notes of citations only, or write book reviews of footnotes only (sometimes without even reading the text itself). Are you tacking on a single woman, and maybe Martin Luther King, Jr. for good measure, just to appear inclusive? Or are you really being shaped by people different than yourself?

What are the identity characteristics of the person who gave this sermon I heard a few weeks ago, citing only Billy Graham, Os Guiness, John Stott, Ron Sider, and Jim Wallis? How about the one from two weeks ago, citing Mother Theresa, Ruby Bridges, Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela, John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. ?

First one was a white man preaching to a white audience, second one was a black woman preaching to a black audience (my white husband and my white self being the exceptions). The black woman’s sermon spoke to me – those people are my people, my fellow Americans and my fellow Christians. So are all the white guys. I can and should learn from them all, but I shouldn’t have to attend an African-American church to hear about Ruby Bridges. And white male speakers shouldn't be considered progressive or with-it for citing a fellow middle-aged American educated white male who leans left. (Don't get me wrong - I love Jim Wallis - but even he would probably prefer the speaker reference Vince Bacote, Catherine Clark Kroeger, or Sam Hines.)

I can see the difference in five minutes between a white male speaker who tacks on a quote from “I have a dream” and a white male speaker who has really learned from the likes of Nelson Mandela, Alice Walker, or Betty Friedan. Who are your teachers? Whose feet do you sit at, whose words do you record as quotes in your journal, whose patterns of life and speech do you imitate on your way to finding yourself?

If you just want to add a woman to your conference or edited volume to look good, fine by me. I’ll take what I can get. If you want to find a woman or two who is working in an area of interest already defined and developed by men, great - you'll probably find a few. But if you want to really make yourself vulnerable to people different than yourself, your learning, your writing, and your spirit can be transformed.

A fifth cackling

This could go on forever, I know, but I want to consider two practices either raised in earlier comments, or just important to me.

From thinkingoutloud, “what makes something women friendly? recently i attended a national event and out of the 18 speakers that were featured only one was female (one other canceled at the last minute and was replaced by a african american male). i confronted one of the organizers and asked him what was up with this. i asked him if it was a theological issue and he said no; if not, why? his answer was rather lame (in my judgment) and had something to do with not being able to connect with the right female voices at the right time. i strongly suggested he and the organizers be more pro-active about this for future events. he asked me a question: how many presenters should be female? he said he was opposed to doing some sort of affirmative action kind of thing just for the sake of balance.”

Inviting women just for balance is about the weakest reason and shows a lack of understanding of why women would be helpful. There is no answer to the question of “how many?”, because any answer would just create a law that could be followed in letter but not spirit. The answer is never one, however. One woman does not speak for women, nor does an African-American man speak for African-Americans, nor are women and African-Americans interchangeable as “Others.”

This conference, which I don’t know much about, announces "Our culture is changing, ARE YOU?” and then offers five male speakers and eleven male musicians who will mentor us into ministering in a changing culture. They do seem to have included culture – one ‘cross-cultural’ band and one Salvadoran speaker, but when the ratio of men to women is 16:1, I wonder whether they don’t believe in women in leadership (but don’t Bill Hybels and Erwin McManus affirm women in leadership? I don’t really know). And, by the way, advertisements for events featuring only men rarely run in The Christian Century -- I think mainliners have cultivated a different culture around this issue.

Another benchmark is representation. If your issue is, say, white men’s spirituality in English-speaking America, then by all means stack the deck with those guys. But if your topic is God, or church, or mission, then consider hearing from people with significantly different vantage points on the issue. Postmodern philosophy regarding standpoint theory or positionality (perspective shaped by social location) can be oversimplified into identity politics (perspective determined by identity), but if honored in its fullest sense, postmodern philosophy requires us to hear from a variety of subject positions on any given issue.

But there just aren’t women in my field of interest or area of expertise… (next topic)

A fourth cackling

How do I have time to blog so much? It's the final week of the semester, and I bribe myself with blogging. Grade three papers, then check blog. Three more, write a post. Grade three more, go to bathroom...

One observation I have is that I was trying to spark discussion about gender in the young Reformed movement, which pretty much failed. To the extent that we discussed gender and the Bible, it devolved into two posts I had to delete. To the extent that that wasn't even the topic I raised, well, oh well.

Second thought I have is that this issue is not fundamentally about men and how they treat women. The issue is how each of us relate to the dominant values of patriarchial democratic capitalism that structure our socialization and our religious and secular organizations. Men are privileged, as a class, but individual men are oppressed, hurt, shut out, and even die as a result of patriarchy (I'm thinking of death in pre-union, male-dominated physical labor professions). Women are not privileged, as a class, but some individual women are able to work the patriarchal system much more successfully than men.

Gender in emergent or any other religious movement is not an issue to be settled, but an element of life to be absorbed and carried throughout life. Individual men need to consider their relationships with women, and women need to consider ways in which they relate to patriarchy, men, and other women. While it may seem tedious to some, I appreciate the way this conversation comes up again and again (of course I appreciate it - I'm one who keeps bringing it up!). We've done good work on keeping it civil, but even more importantly, we've done a little networking, a little complimenting, and a little encouraging.

A third cackling: gender in the blogosphere

Ed raises such a great point in the comments of the last post, I want to bring his concern to center stage: "do you all feel that this new medium (blogging) is helping to set new norms of how the genders treat each other? Or is the "man's game" already set up here, too?"

Yes.

The blogosphere is a new medium with new gender relations because it is so radically democratized. I can speak my mind without needing middle(mostly)men: editors and publishers. That allows for lots of poor text (I am first among sinners on that one) but also allows direct access between author and audience. The blogosphere also allowed me to have public voice even when physically incapacitated, sometimes unable to travel and sometimes unable to walk -- problems strewn over a five-year reproductive flurry. When trapped in the house on bedrest or nursing, the blogosphere was my primary link to mental health and community.

My experience with The Generous Orthodoxy Thinktank is my favorite example of being treated well in the blogosphere as a woman. I was invited to join (by Steve Knight, if I remember correctly), and I suspect it was in part because their list of theologians included so few women. I can't imagine they were really longing for an anthropologist, but by trying to be inclusive of women, they expanded their normal boundaries of interest. Perhaps there really are very few graduate-educated Christian women bloggers interested in discussing particular theological topics in a group blog format...but there's a like-minded anthropologist woman over there, so let's include her. That resulted in conversations about culture and theology that benefited both theologians and anthropologists (well, one anthropologist) that wouldn't have happened but for the gender-inclusivity of a group of founders. And they brought me in at the very beginning, allowed me access to posting/editing, and let me play freely. Contributors to that blog include 33 men and 6 women (left sidebar). You could say that's not very good, or you could see that the bar is so low, it doesn't take much to make a woman feel included.

But yes, the blogosphere has elements of the 'men's game.' Some unevidenced assertions:

-readers gravitate to blogs of people who are well-known in the real world, so men with organizational power or followings in the real world have advantage in the blogosphere (this assumes that bloggers want lots of readers, which isn't always the case).

-links, links, links. Many male blogs link almost exclusively to other males. Including 2 women in your list of 45 friends don't make you woman-friendly. Including 3 doesn't, either.

-women separating themselves into groups like the Emergent Women's Group has the advantage of networking women, but the disadvantage of seeming like a women's auxiliary. Same issue for minority support groups on campuses. Ideally such a group would be a space unto itself, but individuals from the group would be integrated into the mainstream of blogging as well.

-men seem to gravitate toward discussions of theology that are abstracted from practice or personal experience. Discussions on male bloggers' theology blogs that include, say, over 30 comments are often dominated by male commenters and are often framed with a Greek mind-body dualism.

-when male theology/bible/religion/church types refer to other interesting things happening in the blogosphere, they are often other conversations or posts written by male theology/bible/religion/church types.

-women bloggers often, though not always, integrate personal experience, story, and vulnerability to a greater degree than male bloggers.

-men use more black in their templates.

What say you?

A second cackling

I’ve wondered this year whether or not I’m becoming a crone. I’ve carried patriarchy around for years, dealing with it when it cries, patting it to sleep, even feeding it when absolutely necessary. For a number of reasons, mostly related to aging, I’m losing patience. “Grow up already and stop sucking me dry!”, is what I want to say to patriarchy. (Or is that what I want to say to my kids…like I said, I’m on unsteady footing here.) For instance, in the comments section of “Cacklings of an Emerging Crone,” I felt impatient when one person took the multi-stranded, interesting conversation back to the most tedious starting point imaginable. Not that Scripture is tedious, but approaching it with that question framed that way is. At least to me. At least right now.

I have succeeded professionally as an evangelical woman, in part, by avoiding seminary and church work; I did secular graduate education in a field unrelated to religion and then Christian college teaching. My paycheck and livelihood do not depend upon pleasing gender traditionalists, which is a very good thing. But still I have used charm and even flirtation to succeed in Christian settings. If you’re a young woman who isn’t too hard to look at, you can maneuver through an institution by making the men above you feel cool, attractive, with-it, or not sexist. Another gendered method of success is to play the men’s game. Use of name-dropping, vitae-citing, competitive conversational styles such as interrupting or loudness, lots of travel and conferencing, scholarly productivity, and maintaining the appearance of being an able-bodied, able-minded, unencumbered individual. My third gendered method of success is and was to cultivate a network of supportive, like-minded men and women in my organization/sphere who go my speed; I find them nearly everywhere. (So please don't assume I'm criticizing particular persons or places - I've taught at four institutions in three different states and have been active in numerous churches.)

But infertility, three back-to-back pregnancies, and now a boatload of dependents, put an end to my games. My charm is fading by the day as a triple dose of postpartum effects deplete my body, skin, and face. Men my father’s age, with whom I used to be able to cultivate a quasi-professional quasi-daughter-father relationship with, are retiring and I have to deal with my contemporaries and even younger men. I can’t beat men at their own game anymore because I’m just not a man. Men have challenges balancing work and family, no doubt, but women’s challenges are just different. I’m feeling like a hunched-over, tired-out, dried-up crone who doesn’t watch her tongue or her back. I only have so much time on this earth and don’t want to spend any more of it pandering to patriarchy, succeeding by spurious methods, or losing ground because of my gender. I just want to get my work done.

But honestly, my vision of cronehood pretty much derives from Scripture. “Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.” Where in our Christian world would such a woman be praised, who lives and moves from her own God-created center? Where would men honor women as equals, even when those women challenge them, create discomfort, suggest new processes, and cast new visions? Where would men value old crones as much as young princesses? May we females be Proverbs 31 women, and may men and women together shape communities in which such women are praised.

I’d like to develop a few posts here that keep this conversation going. Rather than continue banging the theology drum, why not consider practice? Even though many (most?) in the young Reformed crowd would deny pastoral leadership or eldership to women, many (most?) men in that movement want to work harmoniously with women in other roles. In emergent and other woman-affirming movements and organizations, men also want to work well with women and are often flummoxed when their well-intentioned efforts backfire. Let’s generate a discussion of practices: Women, what personal or organizational practices make gender relations work? Men, same question. I have a few ideas myself I’ll try to post.

In installment three, Collin Hansen writes,

"E-mail conversations like this are helpful; sharing a meal together is even better. There is a tendency for all of us to write things for the Web that we would not say across a table. Nothing can substitute for the immediate give-and-take of face-to-face dialogue. I hope these interactions will continue and forestall the rush toward entrenchment in polemical blogs and books."

We need to keep that in mind on this blog, also. I wonder whether M. De Vrie might take this conversation to his own blog, where people can discuss things on his turf. I'm not comfortable moderating comments, nor do I have time to check in numerous times per day, and I'm gettign nervous about people saying mean things that I won't delete in a timely manner (I did delete one comment, but left the rest). I'm often willing to discuss whether or not the Bible teaches headship (as he did in my class some years ago, Pete keeps coming back on that one!), but I want to try discussing some other gender issues instead.

Addendum.

After reading Heidi's comment, I realized this may be the mention of gender that Tony promised. I thought he must have meant fourth installment instead of third, so I was waiting for the next one. Would love to read more from him at his post or emergent blog (hint hint). The comment about 'louder men' was part of a point of consensus between Hansen and Jones that neither enjoy their movements being criticized repeatedly and unkindly for things that they have defended, already explained, or never done. Fair enough.

Jones' paragraph:
"A more difficult criticism to refute has been that of the organization and leadership of Emergent Christianity. Since our movement formed along the lines of the new media, and particularly the Internet, it tends to be egalitarian and a bit chaotic. Some voices rise up loudly for a while, then fade to the background. In the past, mainline Christianity has tried to mitigate the dominance of loud white guys (like me) with bureaucracy and Robert's Rules of Order. Although I don't think that's worked very well, I do worry that our movement will devolve into the oligarchy of the loudest voices."

Very interesting stuff about ways in which emergent might create new, egalitarian, chaotic organizational processes, but then ways in which systemic gender patterns may continue, despite the absence of bureaucracy and Robert's Rules of Order, and despite any purposeful discrimination on anyone's part. Gender problems may persist even in the presence of purposeful theology and practice intended to resolve them.

I don't want to be divisive or mean, but I don't want this CT series to end with two similarly educated American white English-speaking men of the same religion finally realizing how much they have in common. The young Reformed movement is different than emergent in many ways, which the series is highlighting, but one massive difference is a Reformed theological emphasis on hierarchy and dominance/subordination and a practice of gender traditionalism, which exist in a feedback loop of mutual influence.

Help me write

I need a phrase for someone who is about to be spit out of God's mouth. The idea is that people who are good rest in God's right hand, but those who are lukewarm are resting in God's mouth, about to be spit out -- the image from Revelation.

I have that they are "in the center dip of God's tongue", but I don't think that captures it.

If I like your phrase I'll use it and I'll acknowledge you if I can, but I don't know whether or not the editors will allow footnotes. Either way, I'll be grateful.

Overheard at a Christian College in early May

Act! Christians are concerned about like war and stuff. I'm not sure I understand. It's important to be aware of what's going on. I just want to say you did a great job. What did they pray about? I've changed. Hijab is the word for veil. I have a cold. Could I just say something about that? I find a discrepancy there. A lot of it comes down to social stratification. It creates a strain for both child and community. I need to go home and write a paper. I would love to do more research. Any questions?

Cacklings from an emerging crone

Christianity Today is running, over the course of several days, a conversation between Tony Jones and Collin Hansen regarding their new books: Tony Jones' The New Christians and Collin Hansen's Young, Restless, Reformed. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that Tony Jones' kids donated their potty seat to my kids, so don't mistake me for an unbiased observer. Anyone who in any way helps my kids go in an approved container gets my vote. I should also acknowledge that my knowledge of the books is limited to Jones' first chapter, two minutes of Trucker Frank, and Hansen's original CT article.

May I implore Jones, Hansen, and their commenters to discuss the role of women in their respective movements and the embeddness of patriarchal presuppositions in contemporary western theology? This first installment speaks of what 'people' in the movements think, but by 'people' do they really mean 'men'? In what contexts, on what issues, and by whose authority are women allowed to have opinions and to voice them? As a female reader, I wonder whether and when words like 'people' or 'they' or 'we' include me. If interest in my reflections on the atonement, the Bible, or ministry methodology is circumscribed, by all means let me know so I can portion out my intellectual energy accordingly. The introduction to the piece, authorship unclear (maybe an editor?), mentions the "elder statesmen" of both movements, and I wonder whether the gender exclusivity there was intentional.

Gender is not ancillary, derivative, or marginal to some a-cultural center set of theological concerns. Patriarchy is a constitutive element of contemporary and historical religious discourse, and organizational and personal practice.

I believe that the young Reformed movement legitimates and reinscribes the repression of women for a new generation, carrying an ages-old injustice into the future of the church. They may do it via what Mary Stuart Van Leeuwen dubbed 'soft patriarchy', a gentle, well-intentioned protection of and headship over women, sometimes even allowing all manner of social equality short of access to the pulpit, or they may do it through more blatant discrimination or even misogyny. Soft or hard matters sometimes, but not in this case -- it is what it is. If your movement excludes women from full equality with men, then just call it a men's movement and don't try to make me pay attention to it.

I believe it is right and good for emergent folks to build bridges with all co-religionists and all human beings for that matter. I know I'm not the nicest evangelical around, though I don't intend to be a bridge-burner myself. But from whatever platform I can climb, I want to insist that we take gender seriously as a constitutive social and epistemological issue, and that we frame it as a matter of justice, not adiaphora.