Up With Animals!

Recently someone said that people who just have sex with anyone are living like animals. A conservative religious radio psychologist said people who have sex outside of marriage are animalistic. Someone else said that we humans can't just be pleasure-seeking in life, like animals. As for myself, I refer to my children on a daily basis as monkeys, turtles, beasts, tigers, birds, and monsters (are monsters in the animal kingdom?).

This is unfair and anthropocentric. Animals are not pleasure-seeking, they are survival-seeking. Sleeping in the sun, feasting at times, eating without silverware, and sexing it up with abandon when the time comes for sexing it up -- those are all successful survival strategies. Animals don't moralize about their choices, because they aren't making choices. They don't evaluate whether or not they deserve pleasure, whether they've worked hard enough to claim a day off, whether they're beautiful enough to deserve love or companionship.

We often assume that what it means to be human is to distance ourselves from instinct and live by a moralized external locus of control (we name it "God" or "God's will" and institutionalize it, both of which remove it from the body). But the Genesis account describes the Imago Dei and the created goodness of humanity as residing in the body.

We ought to become more like animals, not less, relying more on our God-given capacities like instinct, senses, and the Imago Dei. This wouldn't make us have sex with everything in sight, eat the entire candy aisle, or claw the faces off people we don't like and eat their beating hearts before their eyes just as their brains lose consciousness. Those fears are regulatory mechanisms of the moralized external locus of control -- fear of pleasure that keeps us in line. Morality creates a state of constant deprivation, because we choose to be good instead of satisfied. When desire is denied for reasons that the body and mind didn't generate and don't understand, it grows and grows into a tantalizing taboo.

Whether for sex, justice, food, or sleep, desire can be rightly directed and sated. If we lived more like animals, we could enjoy sufficiency. And we'd see that sufficiency and satisfaction had been there for us all along.

Or maybe I just drank too much coffee this morning.

Make Love, Not Money

I recently got paid $100 for an article. Sounds good, except that it took five years to move it from draft to publication - that's $20/year. Perhaps I should figure the time spent writing it instead; about 60 hours researching and writing comes out to $1.60/hour. Word count? $100 for 3000 words is about .03 per word.

Now that a family relies on my income, I'm more aware than ever of how much money I make. We need money, and lots of it. From this vantage point, I see so many opportunities in our world to reduce life activities to profit equivalencies, to shrink vocation to employment, to replace love with money.

It's one thing to be a child, innocent by default and unaware of it. It's another thing, as an adult, to see one's innocence (that which remains, as well as that which is reclaimed) as precious, tenuous, and worth protecting. The innocence is there when I make something and can't help but say, "Look at what I did!" or do something cool and call out, "Look at me! Look at me!" or finish a project and hand it over to a loved one (or a beloved audience), saying, "Here. I made this for you."

It's joy, pride, love, relationship, and art all there in a moment, and it's very fragile. The profit-mongers will ask about its quality, its price on the market, and how it compares to others of its kind. They'll measure its value by its profitability. And they will always be wrong.

You really have to be as wise as a serpent to protect whatever dove-like innocence flits into your life. Thank God I make enough money to support my family, and thank God I also earn $20 a year to support my soul.

Where's my no? I'm sure I saw it around here somewhere.

A man asked me for something that he really wanted. If I gave it over, it would improve his life and even bring him a measure of pleasure. But I didn't want to. Every single thing I release -- my time, my energy, my body, my love -- is connected to my soul. Sometimes I'll give myself away gladly, sometimes grudgingly, and somtimes things are taken from me without my consent. In this situation, I realized that I had a choice, so I said "No." He had asked me to do something time-consuming at work, something central to his job and ancillary to mine. It's common and necessary at small colleges to help each other out in these ways, but I just can't shovel any more items onto my full plate, so I didn't.

It struck me how similar boundary-setting is for women in professional settings and sexual ones. It's hard to say no. Men's needs are very compelling and their affirmation is very desirable. It's often easier to grudgingly give in to a man than to suffer the discomfort (the fear, the self-doubt, the second-guessing) of asserting oneself.

But back to the story. You'll never believe his response. He said my "no" would cause him some moderate hassles, and then casually, while walking away, he glanced back and said, "Hey Jenell, I respect your boundaries."

Struck again, I realized how wonderful it is when men affirm women's boundaries, in any setting. I would have stood up for my boundaries whether he respected them or not. But that "Hey Jenell" made a big difference in my day. I often feel like my student with a full-time job, a family, and an evening-class degree program who said, "I'm like a duck. I may look calm, but my feet are always paddling frantically beneath the surface." My colleague's affirmation was like a breadcrumb tossed to that duck. Mmmm, tasty.

A good day

I headed out to the store, preparing for a long winter afternoon indoors with my kids. When I got to the store, I laughed at my shopping list: bubbles, birdseed, balloons. I'm lacking nothing but these three things. Life is good.

Things Evangelicalism Likes, conclusion

Who cares about any of this? It's all too easy to saracastically write off evangelicalism (or any other -ism) and its adherents as stupid, brainwashed, or just generally beneath us. But people need to belong (and be perceived as belonging) to evangelicalism for various reasons. I am totally sympathetic to pastors and editors who put forth ideas they don’t really believe in because their jobs are at stake. The stakes are high – people’s marriages, livelihoods, friendships, and church memberships ride on their affiliation with traditions.

But that’s not true for me – my college is a Christian college, with room for all kinds of Christian faculty including but not limited to evangelicals. My church isn’t evangelical. My husband couldn’t care less. The only thing at stake for me is publishing, but now that I have a blog, I have a venue for communication with interested readers, so publishing is more of an ego concern (which can be placated, but not easily) and less of a necessity for public communication.

But beyond pragmatics, personal identity and guidance for faith are at stake. Evangelicals are my people – for better and for worse, that’s the culture I know most intimately. And even if evangelicalism is displeased with me, I’ll keep on doing what evangelicals taught me to do: follow the way of Jesus, talk with God every day, and serve the world with gladness. And I'll keep on seeing myself as part of evangelical history, especially the "evangelical women and men working for justice" part. The way I write and speak about that journey may put me out of sorts with evangelicalism, but I think evangelicals, taken one by one as persons and not as a mass movement of homogenous opinion, can still be my people. But more importantly – much more importantly -- all people can be “my people.”

In closing, may I be so bold as to assert that God spoke to me the other day through John Denver? Evangelicalism likes that I hear from God directly through daily experience, but it doesn’t like the way I believe it tentatively and with humor. That’s OK (it's all OK, in fact). John Denver didn’t proclaim his truths from inside a suit – his style was more Sermon on the Mountish, taking the birds, the children, and the lilies as his teachers. From Rhymes and Reasons:

For the children and the flowers
Are my sisters and my brothers
Their laughter and their loveliness
Could clear a cloudy day.

And the song that I am singing
Is a prayer to non-believers
Come and stand beside us
We can find a better way.

Things Evangelicalism Likes, part 3

7. Evangelicalism Likes Euphemistic Curse Words
In my evangelical upbringing, heck and darn were dicey, but acceptable. The “dicey but acceptable” category has expanded these days to include suck, blow, and even piss. The real swear words, however, are very bad. Please don’t ask me to list them – I know you know what I’m talking about here.

I tried raising the question of “Why are you so much more concerned with the fact that I wrote “shit” than that there are thousands of children starving to death in our world?”, but as it turns out, Tony Campolo has already ridden that train to its last stop.

8. Evangelicalism Likes Women in Their Place
Recently a powerful evangelical man explained to me how Christian workplaces are beginning to open to women in leadership. The women are nearly ready, he said, and as they continue refining their skills in lower-level administrative roles and in their graduate programs, then the most gifted of them can begin assuming mid- to upper-level leadership roles. This attitude translates into the publishing world as well. Evangelicalism prefers ladies to write for other ladies about lady issues: mothering, wifing, homemaking, homeschooling, beauty, and prayer. Women who write about non-lady subjects are preferred to develop points of view derivative of the men who lead public discourse on the subject at hand. Evangelicalism recently told me that a Famous White Man had already published the definitive book on my subject, and that I should consider whether or not there really is anything more to be said.

9. Evangelicalism Likes Suits
Evangelicalism ascribes authority to men in suits. Rick Warren is an exception, and has really thrown us for a loop by no longer wearing the Hawaiian shirts that we all spent fifteen years trying to get our heads around. It just feels right – words spoken by a white American standard dialect-speaking man in a suit just sound more plausible than the same words spoken by a woman, a person with an accent, or a shlumpy white American standard dialect-speaking man.

I’ve heard evangelical women, on numerous occasions, justify the way they dress at work in terms of how their attire is like or unlike a man’s dark suit. We talk about how we look, and how men interpret how we look, and whether or not we want to be perceived as pretty and why, and why our appearance has to matter so much. It’s not that we’re longing for the authority of the Suit. We’re just trying to get our work done.

Things Evangelicalism Likes, part 2

4. Evangelicalism Likes Believing Things

Evangelicalism likes believing more things rather than fewer things, and believing confidently rather than doubtfully. I articulated beliefs that were conservative enough for one publisher, but not confident enough. Specifically, I acknowledged that I could be wrong about all of it – I wrote that I’ve read the Bible, searched my conscience and learned church tradition, and reached some conclusion that I put forward as my own – Jenell’s views, not God’s views. Evangelicalism would like me to claim them as God’s views. Additionally, I point out the complexity of various sexual identities and how a single message of condemnation doesn’t cover every single situation and disrespects individuality. Evangelicalism didn’t like that either – it wanted me to offer a single message of condemnation in a loving way.

5. Evangelicalism Likes Claiming that the Phrase “God is in Control” is in the Bible
A theologian recently told me that the entirety of evangelical theology is built on the cornerstone of God being in control. His book, in fact, devotes a chapter of biblical exegesis to the phrase which, strangely, is not actually in the Bible. We read words like “powerful”, “I AM,” and “King” and take them to mean “control.” Seems like the control issue might be our deal, not God’s.

Since my triplets died five years ago, I’ve refused to believe that God is in control, and numerous evangelicals have encouraged me to heal, move past anger, and grieve thoroughly (good advice) and readopt the notion that God is in control (bad advice). Surely my personal situation influences the objectivity of my theology (hence my reluctance to speak for God, noted in number 4). Surely my sanity didn’t emerge from grief entirely intact. Fair enough, but still, the Bible doesn’t say that God is in control.

6. Evangelicalism Likes Prioritizing the Superiority of Its Point of View
I wrote about a man who moves from Christian faith to atheism, and evangelicalism worried that I was showing more credence for his point of view than I was defending the Christianity he had abandoned. Indeed, because I was writing for an audience predisposed against atheism, I thought I’d show the marginal point of view in as empathic a way possible. It’s just what anthropologists do – we try to see the world from other points of view, not simply showing how Others are deficient versions of Us. Evangelicalism disagrees with anthropology on this point, preferring to discuss things like atheism, agnosticism and other religions primarily in terms of how they rely on flawed logic and personal immaturity, and how our superior logic and maturity could potentially convert their adherents.

Revival, Resurgence, Reposting

OK, I'm feeling better about these posts now that I edited them. Very uncool in the blogosphere, I know, to remove posts and mess with them, so please forgive me. My series on Things Evangelicalism Likes recommences today! Here's the part from last week, new stuff to follow tomorrow.

Things Evangelicalism Likes

I’m an evangelical first and foremost for cultural reasons. But if pressed to discuss theology, I still uphold Jesus as Lord and Savior and have a high view of the Bible. My credentials are sound. Why, then, do evangelicals keep suggesting to me that my membership in the movement is becoming increasingly tenuous?

Over the last 18 months or so I’ve attempted to publish lots of stuff and have done some public speaking. The stories in this series of posts are from these experiences, but all are anonymized (if you think you recognize yourself, by all means learn from it, but it probably isn’t you – it’s really anonymized.) Some of the pieces discussed won’t ever be published, and others will be or already are…all that to say don’t waste your time trying to figure out the specifics of my stories.

I get along with evangelicals pretty well, but evangelicalism … I think it might be turning on me. The “-ism” suffix indicates a set of beliefs that guide a social movement. Some –isms seem affable, like conservatism or liberalism (pick one) or realism. Others, like authoritarianism or fascism, seem terrible. But they share in common the –ism, the turning of a thought or practice into an ideology that guides a group of people toward some end.

Evangelical beliefs are supposedly widely held by a very large group of people out there called evangelicals. Evangelicals don’t have an organization, a denomination, or an official leader – we exist by power of our “-ism,” and we grant authority – informally - to particular persons and groups to represent the movement. In addition to publicly visible evangelicals, pastors and editors serve as culture brokers, articulating what evangelicals want, ascertaining what pleases them and what offends them, and deciding how much of what they really need they can handle in any given sermon, book, or speech. That’s mostly how I hear about my breaches – from editors and publishers who deliver religious goods and services to large groups of evangelicals, and paid church workers who do essentially the same.

My problem is not with individual evangelicals, and it’s not about core doctrines or church membership or life experience. I’m good on all those counts. If I understand our conflict (and I may not), evangelicalism and I have nine points of disagreement, based on the likes and dislikes, not the core beliefs, of the –ism. I’ll post a series over the next few days about “What Evangelicalism Likes”, and how my scholarly work is displeasing it.

1. Evangelicalism Likes Lots of Scripture in Small Doses
I wrote an essay that used Scripture as a framing theme, but didn’t discuss specific Bible verses as proof of my point. According to expert feedback, my approach was Christian, but not evangelical. An evangelical approach would have listed the six verses that discuss my topic, and articulate pre-existing points of view on each. My PhD in anthropology allows me to develop ancillary thoughts related to culture or humanity, but I am still obligated to write extensively about Bible verses, even though my Bible study would either be derivative of actual Bible scholarship, or wing-nutty because I had pretended to be a Bible scholar.

I argued that the entire Bible addressed my topic, not just the six verses with the topic’s main phrase. This is often perceived by evangelicalism as a liberal approach that allows free-wheelers to generate any theme whatsoever. It is important to remain ‘close to the text’, maybe literally holding the Bible so close that one’s eye can only see one or two verses at a time.

This strikes me as Bible-ism, turning the Living Word into a set of doctrines and ideas that support a religious movement. But please learn from my experience with evangelicalism: if you use the phrase “finger pointing at the moon” to describe the relationship between the Bible and God, you’re sunk.

2. Evangelicalism Likes the word “Jesus”
I based a pages-long analysis on one of Jesus’ encounters with his disciples. Evangelicalism said I wrote about Jesus appropriately, but with insufficient repetition. And in addition to Jesus’ name, his moral prohibitions should have been stated earlier and more often.

Jesus is a historical person whose actions and sayings should be cited often. Fair enough. But in addition, it seems that evangelicalism likes Jesus used as a blank screen onto which we project our notions of perfection, completion, beauty and the like. Evangelicalism may think it lifts up Jesus to use him as a master metaphor, but I’m not so sure. I’d call it Jesus-ism, turning the person of Jesus into an ideology.

3. Evangelicalism Likes Merging Exegesis and Hermeneutics
One commenter questioned my acceptance of liberal scholarship (“reliance upon!”, I said) that distinguishes between what same-sex sex meant in biblical cultures and what it means in our day. Though evangelical scholars separate exegesis and hermeneutics, evangelicalism often doesn’t. Evangelicalism wants the Bible to speak plainly and unproblematically into our culture on every issue currently of interest to us, regardless of differences in language, culture, and worldview between our world and the world of a particular biblical author. It’s also unwise of me to lean so heavily on liberal Bible scholars and secular queer theorists, arguing as I did that it’s possible for evangelicals to learn from their analysis even while disagreeing with their politics.

Sorry - went into hiding

One of the worst days of my blogging life was earlier this week, when someone googled a name and found an old, old post in which I had written some mean things about something important to them, and pointed it out to me. I had been blogging for less than a month and had 2 readers (KPG and CB), and didn't appreciate the public scope of the blog. I forgot about the post, of course, but Google makes it as present as the day it was written. I deleted it and apologized to the person, but still felt awful about being a force for cruelty in the university instead of the beacon of light I'd like to believe I am.

My interrupted and removed series of posts about evangelicalism was, at base, a sarcastic defense of my writing. Recently I've received three very challenging critiques of my writing from evangelical publishers. Not one related to the quality of my writing or even my basic Christian beliefs. All three related to the nuances, the caveats, the implications, and the tone of my words that are not harmonious with evangelical sensibilities (not convictions or principles, mind you, sensibilities). The wild animal that lives inside me rarely practices flight -- it's all fight. I wrote a very long series on how my work offends evangelicalism without actually violating any of its supposedly core tenants. But maybe it's as mean as the post I wrote about that other person. I lost my confidence for a few days, so I went into hiding.

I'm sorting out my relationship to my religious tradition, even as both it and I shift and change over time. I feel hurt when my writing gets rejected, but not too badly -- I mostly keep my self separate from the products I create. But these critiques seemed more about me and the quality of my spiritual journey -- more than just my writing that was getting rejected.

The truth is that I am not my writing. The writing is just writing. And I am not my thoughts. My thoughts, ideas, and words are just thoughts, ideas, and words. I need to trust my journey and my voice, and not grant power to credentialed white men in religious authority who cast critique down from on high. (But they're just so ... white, and so credentialed, and so male, and so religious. That's a powerful combination. See, here comes my 'fight' again!).

And I am not my worst blog posts. There were actually a cluster of other terrible things about this week I've been clutching in my hand like a string of balloons - my domestic life, my job, my work-life balance, my personal history, and my whole future. I'm going to release them all - watch, there they go into the sky - and I've given away nothing of consequence. I'm still here. I'm going to take myself to church this morning with newly open hands.