Tag Archives: Christianity

Issues, Theology

End the silence covering up sexual abuse in Evangelical churches

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My Monday morning reads brought me to this article about the tenacious women blogging about sexual abuse in SBC and other conservative Evangelical churches.  It is a must read.

The crusading bloggers exposing sexual assault in Protestant churches – The Washington Post

 

I have many thoughts, but I’ll boil it down to just these at the moment:

Women (and children) (and anyone marginalized) are in danger anywhere women are shut out of the power structures in an organization.

I have a post halfway written about the problem Evangelicalism faces from institutionalized, theologically-justified patriarchy. Despite OT and NT examples of women in leadership positions, conservative theology does not make room for women to hold power and exercise authority outside of very narrow realms.  As a result, leadership within conservative churches are blind to how abuse happens (and many women are themselves complicit in protecting abusers and shaming victims).

I applaud the brave women who have stepped up to review, investigate, and record stories of (mostly) women who were raped or abused by pastors (usually as children, but not always) and have lived traumatized lives while the pastors moved on to greater glory and continued employment in the ministry.  The loose denominational structures of many Evangelical groups allows predators to flourish, but they run unchecked because they are protected and apologized for by leadership in those churches. In fact, it’s far more likely for the women telling the stories (or recording them, as these bloggers do) to get shoved out than for their abusers to be brought to justice.

Both men and women of the Church need to arise and say No to sexual abuse in churches. That the SBC refuses to even allow supporters of victims to rally at their convention this month shows how far leadership within the conservative church will go to refuse acknowledgement of the problem.

You can’t impose enough church policies to prevent sexual predation. In fact, without opening the power structure to women as equals, I don’t think the conservative church will be able to eradicate this problem from its institutions.

In addition to leadership failure and lack of oversight and accountability, Evangelicalism perpetuates a victim-blaming tendency baked into its theology about sex. This article is a great overview of the destructive impact of purity theology on young women:  Naked and Ashamed: Women and Evangelical Purity Culture – The Other Journal

But leaders could at least choose to listen, acknowledge, repent for harboring abuse, and change policies to support victims.

We’ve got a long way to go on this one, folks.

Life, Politics, Theology

Exit: Voting

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This is a short entry in the series I’m writing about my breakup with Evangelicalism.  You can find the first entry here. 

Yesterday I posted a Voter’s Manifesto – mine.  You can read it here.

Morning after in America

It’s the morning after an election in America, and the pundits have only just begun to wag their jaws about the implications of yesterday’s voting. Blue wave? Red wave? Referendum on Trump?

I’m not here to discuss it, y’all. I’m done.

I’m at the stage in the breakup with Evangelicalism where all the ways in which my former lover acts like an ass confront me. Especially when I’m trying not to think about it.

It’s like when you run into the friend of an ex, and he tries to make the argument that “Bobby is a great guy, you know?” as if that made Bobby’s douchey behavior toward you irrelevant. “I mean, he’s trying, ok?”

As if rampant nationalism, racism, xenophobia, a lust for power, and idolatry of individualism and the “self-made man” and capitalism weren’t warts on the face of the Gospel.  “Evangelical” literally derives from the Greek word that we translate “Gospel,” euangelion. What’s sad is that I see the clear connection between evangelicals’ theology and their actions at the voting booth, arising from deep-seated racial and cultural fears, and from long-standing racism that’s buried so deep into evangelical culture that it’s hard to notice unless you tune your eyes to see it.

I’ve realized that I’m well and truly over this breakup.  I have nothing against “Bobby’s” friends. I’m not severing ties with anybody.  I don’t need other people to agree with me or follow me out. You do you, and stand before God with a clear conscience for your own actions.

I’m still puzzled, though I’ve given up trying to understand.

Like how the hell Evangelical women can feel like this for a man who belittles and demeans women almost  non-stop:

White Evangelical women Republican vote November 2018
From NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/card/nbc-news-exit-poll-white-evangelical-women-stand-squarely-republicans-0n933236

I don’t need my Evangelical friends to explain why they picked the side of the “culture war” that makes as its goal the disenfranchisement of non-cisgender, non-heterosexual people….. or rejection of people seeking asylum and respite from oppressive regimes whose origin is closely tied to over-zealous American foreign policy…. or an absolute loyalty to an anti-abortion stance above actual policies that reduce abortion.

Or how the combination of these Culture War factors drive intense support for a president whose “base” is energized by race-baiting and xenophobia.

Vox headline Evangelicals
From Vox
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/29/18015400/2018-midterm-elections-evangelical-christians-trump-approval

Fear is ugly

“There is no fear in Love, for perfect love casts out fear,” as the Apostle John wrote.  I can’t sanction refusing to see beyond apparent moral infractions to take care of people in need.

“Who is my neighbor?” Jesus shut down that sanctimonious shit from the Pharisees. You can’t play games with the great commandments. Love God and Love your neighbor.  You don’t get to choose not to love because you’re afraid of who they are, because they got pregnant without being married first, because you don’t approve of gay love, because you don’t like their atheism or Islam, because you think they’re lazy and unmotivated.

"Is your neighbor worth loving?" ~ Fred Rogers
When asked about hate crimes, Fred Rogers asked this question.

The quote above comes from a great interview with a National Geographic photographer who was asked to document the Squirrel Hill synagogue shooting last week. She’s from Pittsburgh, so she had initially resisted the assignment to work in her hometown. But she went out anyway and captured powerful images.

Her graduate thesis focused on hate crimes, and she interviewed Fred Rogers as part of her research.  He asked her this question: “Is your neighbor worth loving?”

Cuts to the heart of the issue, methinks.

I live in one of the reddest states in the South. South Carolina Republicans won nearly every race yesterday, with only a couple exceptions.  (Article)

It’s hard to believe in change when the momentum around uniting Jesus with the GOP is like digging something out of cured concrete.

But I have faith.

My faith in the core tenets of Christianity informs my priorities, and voting is actually about priorities rather than moral absolutes.  I believe that many Americans can learn to see a way to vote for priorities that don’t disenfranchise others in our nation.

Maybe I’m a fool, I don’t know. One can hope.

Issues

Good Read:  This is Not The Story I Wanted—But It’s My Story of Rape – Rewire

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It takes a lot of courage to write out your story of rape. It also takes a lot of courage to tell people you don’t want to be a Christian anymore. I’ve long appreciated Dani’s honesty and willingness to continue dialogue with people whose worldview perspectives are opposed to hers.

I encourage you to read her latest essay thoughtfully, and be willing to learn from her critiques of purity culture and religious moralism which feed a tolerance for rape culture. I don’t personally believe that Christianity must necessarily produce the warped views of sex, purity, and gender that Dani experienced in her early years, but I’ve seen these views in every church / organization I’ve been a part of, and it needs to be addressed. 

Writer Dani Kelley thought she had shed the patriarchal and self-denying lessons of her conservative religious childhood. But those teachings blocked her from initially admitting that an encounter with a man she met online was not a “date” that proved her sexual liberation, but an extended sexual assault.

Source: This is Not The Story I Wanted—But It’s My Story of Rape – Rewire

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And I also highly recommend Dani’s series of posts “for the well-meaning Christian.”  Some of my dearest friends are atheist or agnostic, and I trust that my love and care for them has improved since reading Dani’s series.

Theology

Article: Why are Christian movies so painfully bad? – Vox

Quote 1 Comment

This is a great article. I’m so tired of Christians being satisfied with bad, “preachy” movies and books and music because those feel “Christian enough” while truly Christian, challenging art shoots over the head of the average person.

It’s a childish view of the work of the artist, grounded in our Protestant failure to value story and image as highly as we love propositional, systematic statements. And while we are certainly People of the Book, we need to realize that God is telling a single, amazing, vast, nuanced Story of Redemption, one that encompasses within itself everything from erotic poetry (the Song) to apocryphal visions.

Recognize that “Christian art” finds its Christian-ness down in the bones, not on the surface. LikeTo End All Wars is one of the most “Christian” films I’ve ever seen, but it’s rated R.

Let’s support better art.

A couple great quotes from the article – please do read the whole thing:

Any person even vaguely familiar with Evangelical subcultures will recognize the trend of copying and sanitizing whatever pop culture is doing. This trend belies a certain impulse within Evangelical Christians to separate the entire world into two categories: sheep and goats, wheat and chaff.

A good deal of contemporary Christian art is predicated on the sacred/secular divide: As Christian film critic Alissa Wilkinson noted, “Christians, and evangelicals in particular, have been really, really prolific in making pop culture products that parallel what’s going on in mainstream cultural production.”
…
The end result is that the Christian product seems like a knock-off, a cheap alternative.
…
Even if Hollywood films do contain embodied messages, they’re not always as explicitly drawn out as they are in Christian movies. That’s because, says Godawa, many Evangelical Christians, who are people of the Good Book, have come to value words over images. “They don’t know how to embody their messages in the story,” he says. “They have to hear the literal words [of the Gospel].”

As with the bifurcation between sacred and secular, so, too, do contemporary Christian artists divide form and content, believing that what a piece of art says is of infinitely more importance than how it says it. The thing communicated is more urgent than how it’s communicated.

Of course, this perspective overlooks the fact that how a thing is communicated is the thing that’s being communicated. To put it in Marshall McLuhan’s terms, “The medium is the message.” That is, when you communicate an idea through the medium of film, the aesthetic quality of the film subsumes the idea, fundamentally altering its narrative shape.

via Why are Christian movies so painfully bad? – Vox.