Where Your Treasure Is

If your Twitter feed is anything like mine, it is lighting up with shocked responses to the news that Josh Duggar, TLC star, purity culture paragon, Family Research Council executive admits to sexually abusing underage girls, possibly including his sisters, when he was a teenager. And while I am naturally heartsick to hear this news, I confess that I am not surprised. Because you see, purity culture is based in the kind of power & control ideology that can easily lead to abuses like this. Purity culture teaches that women's bodies belong to men, and that offenses against women's bodies are not offenses against the women in them, but against the men who have headship over them. Purity culture teaches that women's bodies are naturally salacious, and that women's primary duty is to prevent men from lusting, thus making any man's transgression that woman's fault. Purity culture teaches that confessing the sin (in this case, confessing it to the authorities) is less important than maintaining an image of purity on the outside, so that no scandal can tarnish the family's reputation.

But the most heartbreaking part of all of this, for me, is where the Duggar family continues to put its value. Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:21). Democratic strategist Karl Frisch's tweet has gone viral, pointing out that the Duggar family statement uses the word 'God' six times, but never the word 'daughters'. It is clear that the Duggars' concern is for their son, for their name, and for their reputation, not their daughters - or, for that matter, any of Josh's victims. While this blog - like many journalism outlets - abides by the practice of not naming sexual assault victims until and unless they speak out for themselves, acknowledging the perspective of the victims is a key part of making amends to those victims. By speaking primarily from the perspective of Josh and his journey toward redemption, the Duggars and their spokespersons are disregarding the very real women he abused, whose lives ought to be our primary focus.

The Duggars are not alone in demonstrating their disregard for women. The #SayHerName campaign calls attention to the fact that protestors have been marching in response to the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and others, but the deaths of black women at the hands of the police have largely been ignored, even by the #BlackLivesMatter leadership, and even moreso by the national media.

Where is our treasure? The Incarnation of Jesus Christ shows us that God's treasure is in us. We who claim that name as our salvation and our king must follow in his way in treasuring those whom he loves. Not as symbols of purity or keepers of reputation, but as people, made in the image of God and valuable in themselves and for themselves. Tanisha Anderson. Rekia Boyd. Miriam Carey. Michelle Cusseaux. Shelly Frey. Kayla Moore.

For where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.

Bad Theology: Equal Rights for Satan

There are times when I see something related to God, religion, etc. that triggers within me a strong negative reaction by the sentiment the item expresses. My reaction is not simply a matter of "Oh, I disagree with that." More often than not, it is a reaction more along the lines of "Wow, the implicit theology is terrible/overstated/marred in political ideology/heretical."

So, the below church sign is the subject of this edition of "Bad Theology."



Let's start with the imprecision of the statement "Remember Satan was the first to demand equal rights." It is unclear which "equal rights" we are talking about. While this moment in our national history can lead one to guess that the sign is referring to lgbt+ rights, the sign does not make that clear. The problem is then that the sign could refer to any equal rights movement. One could imagine this sign up to the 1920s being used against women's suffrage. One could imagine this sign up to the 1960s being used to defend Jim Crow. I would wonder how far back in history the congregation would argue against equal rights. However, with a statement this universalizing it does not matter. Any advocated-for "equal right" is tied to Satan's bid for equality with (or rather, supplanting of) God.

Now, to put my main objection in its simplest terms: equality with God and expecting equal treatment from other humans is *not* the same thing.

There is the problem of association and that will take some background to explain. Assuming some traditional Christian categories into which we slot humans, angels, and God into a hierarchy (in ascending majesty (cf. Ps 8:4-5)), there is the matter of 'vertical' and 'horizontal' relationship.  For instance, the story of Satan holds that Satan was an angel who sought to usurp God and ultimately rebelled(/rebels/will rebel). This is a break in 'vertical' relationship in which the divine hierarchy was threatened. Satan's sin being pride, Satan tried to put himself in the position he thought he deserved: God the Creator's place.

But humanity coexist in horizontal relationship with each other. The social witness of the prophets, the Gospel, and the imperfectly-realized love we are supposed to share and hold for all whom we meet bear this vision of humanity. The basis of human dignity and our equality is in our shared likeness, being made in the image of God. In the many disputes among humans, none can claim special privilege over others when it comes to the essence of human dignity. Our human propensity for placing ourselves in heirarchies must always be held in some suspicion since they always fall away in God's estimation of what is important. This is what it means to respect the rights of others.

So back to the statement "remember Satan was the first to demand equal rights." This was the breaking of the created order and the upsetting of a vertical relationship. But--by association--for the sign's statement to have any meaning in the human/horizontal context then there have to be corresponding human actors for Satan and God. In other words, this sign has meaning by association if straight/white/cis/male are stand-ins for God and all others who challenge the social hierarchy with these men at the top do so as agents of evil. If this is not what the sign-maker means, it is certainly what the sign-maker is implying. And it is certainly how a majority of straight/white/cis/male Christians have acted--even within the last fifty years.  Gross.

So, there it is.  This sign fails even in theological terms that are quite traditional.

What’s wrong with the “Feminization of the Church”?

CW: sexism

I finally took the time to read an article that has been passed around in my circles on Facebook, in which a Roman Catholic cardinal claims that the Church is “too feminine.”  (And I suspect many pass the article around for the supposed irony of the image that accompanies it:  a bunch of dudes in frilly lace, one of whom is complaining about the Church being “too feminine.”  Get it?  It’s supposed to be funny—because they are men wearing lace.  Never mind that men can pay heed to aesthetics.)

Anyhow, Cardinal Burke is of the opinion that opening up altar service to women has been detrimental to young men choosing priestly vocations because:

“Young boys don’t want to do things with girls. It’s just natural… It requires a certain manly discipline to serve as an altar boy in service at the side of [a] priest, and most priests have their first deep experiences of the liturgy as altar boys.”

*Gag.*  Having trained altar servers of various identities, I would say “manliness” is not a prerequisite.  Attention to detail and reverence are not gendered categories.

He also believes that the upswing of “radical feminism” has, since the 1970s had grave impacts on the Church and have been scaring men away from marriage— “These young men were concerned that entering a marriage would simply not work because of a constant and insistent demanding of rights for women.”

The focus on women’s issues, he said, plus “a complete collapse” of teaching the faith and “rampant liturgical experimentation,” led the Church to become “very feminized.” That turned off men who “respond to rigor and precision and excellence,” Burke said.

“Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women,” he said. “The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and have become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved.”

Cardinal Burke represents a particularly shrill opinion about the Church that is not limited to the Catholic side of things.  The evangelical world is having this conversation, too.  As Kristen Rosser notes on her blog (and as is cross-posted to Patheos), there is a lot of talk about the fact that the Church seems to be 60/40 women to men.  And many men, typically in leadership, bemoan the gap.

Why do they think this is the case?  A few of the common responses are that women may be more spiritual than men and that the church’s music, messages and ministries now cater to women.

David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church (Thomas Nelson, 2004), put it this way:

“[W]omen believe the purpose of Christianity is to find “a happy relationship with a wonderful man”—Jesus—whereas men recognize God’s call to “save the world against impossible odds.” ... While the church was masculine, it fulfilled its purpose. But in the 19th century, women “began remaking the church in their image” (and they continue to do so), which moved the church off course.

I know a lot of women in the Church.  I know a lot of women in leadership in churches across denominational lines.  I cannot think of one who believes that the insipid “Jesus is my boyfriend” mentality is a sufficient statement of faith or motivation for the proclamation of a Kingdom that seeks to throw down the principalities and powers.  To reduce women’s expressions of Christianity to some sort of wish fulfillment of the perfect man is to go about telling lies about our people.  It is belittling. 

I've pointed to some rather blatantly sexist examples of this conversation about the gender gap, but it is happening in other parts of the American Church as well.  Christianity in America seems to go through a “crisis of masculinity” every twenty years or so.  Typically it coincides with social trends that resonate further than the religious tradition; but still, crises of masculinity tend to flare up in Christian circles around the same time the national conversation goes there.  Here we are again, perhaps.  I have no solution to this, but I offer the following food for thought—which guides me in wondering if there is a crisis worth panicking about.

• How do we define “masculinity” in a modern Christian context? 
• What about butch persons? Do they tip the balance back toward "masculine"?
•  How do we define “femininity?”
• Is there a femininity meter somewhere that we can calibrate?  Or is femininity based on the number of women present?
• Is this a theological issue or a demographic panic?
• How are we defining who has power in these contexts?
• In denominations that ordain women and LGBTQIA folk—can we go about reaffirming “masculinity” without reifying the sins of sexism and heterosexism?
• If we cannot affirm men's ministry without belittling or tokenizing women's ministry and/or religious experience, might there be a deeper issue?
• Masculinity as it is culturally conditioned rests on privilege and violence to uphold.  Does Christianity then offer a critique of masculinity?  Are we willing to make men angry if we challenge those forms of masculinity?
• Does masculinity inherently deserve to exist, no matter what its content?
• Could the Gospel actually be about calling us together across lines of gender?
• Maybe femininity and masculinity are not actually necessarily equal. Is it possible that, by the current standards of the world—in which power, control, and domination hold sway— the gospel is feminine?