Supreme Court Rules Girl's Strip Search Unconstitutional

In a case that Her.meneutics covered this April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled late last week that Arizona middle school officials violated the Constitution when they strip-searched a 13-year-old girl suspected of having over-the-counter pain medication.

Savana Redding's parents sued Safford Middle School in 2003 after an administrative assistant and nurse, both women, had Redding remove her undergarments and expose her breasts and pelvic area to see if she was hiding Ibuprofen, which she was not.

Savana’s subjective expectation of privacy against such a search is inherent in her account of it as embarrassing, frightening, and humiliating. The reasonableness of her expectation (required by the Fourth Amendment standard) is indicated by the consistent experiences of other young people similarly searched, whose adolescent vulnerability intensifies the patent intrusiveness of the exposure. . . .

Changing for gym is getting ready for play; exposing for a search is responding to an accusation reserved for suspected wrongdoers and fairly understood as so degrading that a number of communities have decided that strip searches in schools are never reasonable and have banned them no matter what the facts may be.

Souter ruled, however, that the Reddings cannot pursue a lawsuit against the assistant principal who ordered the strip search and the two assistants who performed it, as Arizona law at the time of the search was too murky to rule out their decision.

As The New York Times notes, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only female Supreme Court Justice (who will likely be joined by Sonia Sotomayor), seemed to have a different perspective from her colleagues on the Redding case, dissenting during oral arguments when colleagues questioned the humiliation of a strip search for an adolescent girl.

In an interview with USA Today's Joan Biskupic, Bader Ginsburg said, "They [my colleagues] have never been a 13-year-old girl. It's a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn't think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood."

She urged the need for another woman on the court: "Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. I don't say [the split] should be 50-50," Ginsburg said. "It could be 60% men, 40% women, or the other way around. It shouldn't be that women are the exception."

As Justice Souter retired yesterday, Sotomayor's confirmation hearings will begin Monday, July 13. If she wins confirmation, Sotomayor would become the third woman justice on the court (on the heels of Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired in 2006), and the first Hispanic justice. Her.meneutics has previously covered both Sotomayor's nomination and how women justices might affect the Supreme Court.

Fighting Injustice through Art

Two recent films have played unexpected roles in raising awareness of political and religious practices in Iran that trap many women in cycles of oppression and violence.

Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik recently blogged about Persepolis, a 2007 animated film based on a series of graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi about her childhood during the Iranian Revolution. Poniewozik noted that Satrapi provided a powerful representation of life in Iran at a significant moment for women’s rights.

Then, this past weekend, The Stoning of Soraya M. debuted on 27 screens in the United States, earning $117,000. Based on a book by Iranian-French journalist Freidoune Sahebjam, the film tells the story of an Iranian woman stoned to death after being falsely accused of infidelity soon after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Writer-director Cyrus Nowrasteh and actress Shohreh Aghdashloo are both Iranian.

Soraya M. is a story of injustice arising from religious and political systems in need of change, and has drawn comparisons to the story of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old woman whose death in a Tehran demonstration over Iran’s disputed elections was captured in a video shared worldwide.

If you see this brilliant film, be prepared to be disturbed. You will also emerge with a newfound admiration for Shohreh Aghdashloo, the accomplished Iranian-American actress who plays Zahra, the aunt of Soraya, and the heroine of this film, and also for all the independent-minded women of Iran.

Jennifer S. Bryson, director of the Witherspoon Institute’s Islam and Civil Society Project, also praises Aghdashloo’s performance, but reminds viewers that Soraya M. does not represent all Muslims or Islamic political systems:

[D]irector Cyrus Nowrasteh’s telling of this story portrays the lived-practice, not just an abstract concept, of Islam with nuance. This film is not a cheap shot at Islam or Muslims. Rather, in The Stoning of Soraya M. the faults of those who manipulate religion for selfish gain say more about individual human folly and the brokenness of the political system in that location than about Islam or religion.

We're all playing the story out of the Bible right now. Many of us are different characters. We always try to think of ourselves as the saints and the good characters, but many of us are playing the Pharisees, Pontius Pilate, Judas. There are good and there are bad in this world. But our job is not to figure that out. We just know who we are and try to take as many people we can to Heaven by how we live our life. And I think stories like this [are] moral reminders, they're powerful. If we cower in the movie, we'll probably cower in life. If we cower in the movie, then we say, "I'm not ready. I've got to get ready."

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,” Proverbs 31:8 says. What do you think? Can watching films reveal something important about your own character? Does “speaking up” start with the imagination?

For more about this movie, read the review from Christianity Today Movies, an interview with Caviezel and producer Steve McEveety, and the discussion at the CT Movies Blog.

Am I My Sister's Keeper?

My Sister's Keeper, director Nick Cassavetes' (The Notebook) new weeper film starring Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin, releases today.

Fans of the original 2004 Jodi Picoult novel may be expecting a cinematic exploration of the ethical ramifications of PIDG (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis), the medical practice of engineering and selecting embryos for specific medical reasons.

After all, in both the novel and the movie, the drama centers on a cancer-stricken teenager and the younger sister who was engineered in a test tube to be an ideal donor of blood and bone marrow. (USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman, a fan of the novel, offers a succinct summary of the issue and its implications on her Faith and Reason blog.)

Although the film is faithful to the book in a number of ways, a significantly altered ending and a shift in emphasis make PIDG more of a plot point than a central theme. Intriguingly, a different, but closely related issue, bubbles up in its place.

Kate, the film's sister-with-cancer, has battled serious illness for 12 of her 14 years. Although she needs a kidney transplant, she has become convinced that death is imminent and does not want any more invasive treatments. Her desire to "die with dignity" (to use a politically charged term that the film does not employ) places the people around her in painful quagmires. Her mother has been fighting for her daughter's life so long she cannot even apprehend or acknowledge what Kate actually wants. Her sister, who is in a position to donate a perfectly matched kidney, is the only person who can save Kate's life and, conversely, the only one who can make sure her wishes are respected.

As Grossman points out, the story points to a possible "tension between the value of preserving life and the costs of the quality of life." Although ostensibly the film is about the tension between preserving one child's life at the cost of another child's quality of life, it also asks questions about the validity of preserving a life against its owner's wishes.

The Christian belief that each person is crafted in God's image makes most believers staunch defenders of the sanctity of life. Conversely, the conviction that earthly death is not an end but a beginning (1 Thess. 4:13-18, Phil. 1:21-23) allows for the possibility of a peace-graced acceptance of death at the appropriate time. Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time to live, and a time to die (3:2). As medical science continues to advance and offer extraordinary ways to prolong life, how do we keep track of which season we're in - particularly in the case of terminal illness?

Is life worth fighting for to the - well, death? What do you think? When a terminally ill patient feels ready to let go, should medical interventions cease? How much is our desire for the patient to continue fighting a part of our own fear of death? On the other hand, how much do we need to safeguard ourselves against materialist and utilitarian notions about what makes a life worth living? In the tension between preservation of life and quality of life, on which side should we err?

See Carolyn's full review of My Sister's Keeper at ChristianityTodayMovies.com, one of our sister sites.

Stand By Your Unfaithful Politician Husband?

Just in the last week, two Christian politicians admitted to having affairs, but their wives were noticeably absent from the press conferences.

Yesterday, Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford admitted that he had an affair with a Argentinean woman, and last week, Nevada Senator John Ensign confessed to having an affair with a staff member of his campaign. Sanford has previously called the evangelical Seacoast Church his home church, and Ensign was active with Promise Keepers.

Politico outlines how most politicians' wives have stood by their mournful husbands in recent years:

The traditional rule book for adultery damage control always recommends something like this: cheating candidate confesses, sheds a tear if he can (and it has always been a he), and then pleads for mercy with a pained, tight-lipped wife standing mutely by his side. That’s how Suzanne Craig handled it when her husband, then Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig, admitted that he plead guilty to disorderly conduct after he was arrested for lewd behavior in a men's bathroom stall. Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter came clean about his involvement in a Washington, D.C. prostitution ring with his wife, Wendy Baldwin Vitter, standing next to him. And a shellshocked Silda Wall Spitzer, stood next to her husband, then-New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, after he was caught on a federal wire-tap soliciting a high-priced prostitute.

In both Ensign's and Sanford's case, the wives issued statements about their husband's affair, indicating their support despite their absence from the public spotlight.

Jenny Sanford said her husband had been separated for two weeks so she could "maintain my dignity, self-respect, and my basic sense of right and wrong," but he has earned a chance to resurrect their marriage. Part of Sanford's statement:

Psalm 127 states that sons are a gift from the Lord and children a reward from Him. I will continue to pour my energy into raising our sons to be honorable young men. I remain willing to forgive Mark completely for his indiscretions and to welcome him back, in time, if he continues to work toward reconciliation with a true spirit of humility and repentance. This is a very painful time for us and I would humbly request now that members of the media respect the privacy of my boys and me as we struggle together to continue on with our lives and as I seek the wisdom of Solomon, the strength and patience of Job and the grace of God in helping to heal my family.

Darlene Ensign: "Since we found out last year we have worked through the situation and we have come to a reconciliation. This has been difficult on both families. With the help of our family and close friends our marriage has become stronger. I love my husband."

What do you think? Should spouses stand by each other during a public confession?

Neda: More Than Her Death

An e-mail sent to me from a friend in Iran was posted on the Facebook wall of German chancellor Angela Merkel after I tweeted a link to the e-mail, which I had, with permission, posted on my blog. Got that?

The following day, Merkel (or more likely her subordinate) posted a statement of support for the Iranians protesting the disputed election results that threaten to keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power, and the police's crackdown on their protests. Obviously Merkel was responding to world events and not to a single e-mail. But really, who could have envisioned this?

The image that swiftly leapt time zones and that has thus far come to symbolize the protesters' cause in Iran is that of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, a beautiful young woman whose death was videotaped and uploaded to Facebook by an expatriate friend of the video-taper residing in the Netherlands.

The video is heartbreaking and graphic. I don't want to see it again. On Twitter yesterday morning, someone questioned the morality of using it as an icon. I wanted to tweet back: It is obscene. We don't even know her name. What must her mother feel?

But there is a paradox when a loved one dies. We want the whole world to stop and take notice - and we simultaneously want it to leave us alone. I wondered what this woman's family would want, and what their culture prescribes.

On Monday the Los Angeles Times shed a bit of light on this aspect of the story: "To those who knew and loved Agha-Soltan," it reported, "she was far more than an icon. She was a daughter, sister and friend, a music and travel lover, a beautiful young woman in the prime of her life. ‘She was a person full of joy,' said her music teacher and close friend Hamid Panahi . . . ‘She was a beam of light.' "

Neda was not her death. She was a person whose promising young life was snuffed out, allegedly by her oppressors. This, we understand, is what gives the symbol its power. Such is the Iranian government's fear of it that security forces have "urged" the family (and others like them) not to publicly mourn or speak of their loss. "Some insisted on speaking out anyway," the Times reported, "hoping to make sure the world would not forget her."

So now we know. Her loved ones do not want her forgotten. Also, they are "outraged by the authorities' order not to eulogize her, to loudly sing her praises and mourn her loss. But they were too afraid and distraught to speak out."

Anne Applebaum, discounting the primacy of both the "Obama effect" and the Internet as factors in the revolt, attributes it to the long-term work of civil rights and women's groups. She says it is no accident that Ahmadinejad's two main challengers promised to repeal discriminatory laws or that Mousavi's wife was so prominent a figure in his campaign. Writing in Slate, Applebaum opined, "Regimes that repress the civil and human rights of half their population are inherently unstable. Sooner or later, there has to be a backlash."

Although Agha-Soltan is said to have been apolitical and loyal to "her country's Islamic roots and traditional values," she wanted her vote to count. Perhaps she believed in incremental change.

Beliefnet founder Steve Waldman thinks her martyrdom wields power not primarily because she was female, but because she was a non-aggressor. Earlier this week, he wrote, "By drawing the government into violent - and public - misbehavior, the [nonviolent] protesters drew the state into a downward spiral in which the leaders progressively eroded their own authority through their own actions."

Yesterday, Waldman added this: "I understand - and agree with - the decision to show Neda's moment of expiration. That video is the greatest weapon freedom fighters have, especially if they're inclined to use nonviolence as their strategy. But I also mourn for a new boundary being broken."

I mourn primarily for Neda and her family; for their loss and for the potential exploitation of their daughter's death. I both celebrate and fear new boundaries being broken and take soberly the co-mingled expressions of outrage, grief and fear I hear coming out of Iran.

Because a day will come when this story passes from the headlines and when the Iranian people will be living a different political reality. Nobody yet knows what that will be. I cannot imagine it will matter all that much to the parents of dead children. That their sons and daughters were martyrs to a good cause will be consolation, not vindication (even with the historic centrality of martyrdom in Iranian politics and religion). Their dreams of freedom, if they had any, would have been dreams for them.

With each e-mail my friend sends, I reply with what information I can gather and with affirmations of support, but also with warnings and advice. Things I learned through trivial battles for good causes that nonetheless cost more than they were worth. I urge this bright, funny young person to be wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove in regard to both friends and enemies. People, I say, have a habit of self-preservation when things get dangerous.

We who support the cause of freedom need to take heed as well and not be those kinds of people.

A (Crooked) House Divided: the Gosselins Announce Their Divorce

And now it's official. As many have speculated in the week since commercials first aired promoting tonight's "big announcement" that would affect the entire family, Jon and Kate Gosselin announced their separation, and, later in the episode, their divorce. This expected announcment confirmed reports leaked this afternoon that Jon and Kate today filed the paperwork for their divorce in a Pennyslvania courthouse.

The subplot of the episode involved the design and construction of four "crooked houses" for the kids. While Jon and Kate fought over where to place them, the kids enjoyed the simple pleasures of "playing house." In a particularly heartbreaking scene, two of the younger children pretended they were getting married, presumably to live "happily ever after" in their little crooked houses. Kate said she hoped the houses would create many happy memories, but I can't imagine featuring them in this particular episode will do much to help that. It was difficult to hear their individual voices introduce each segment ("next on Jon & Kate Plus 8") with the knowledge of what was coming.

For two people who have been quite vocal about their faith in the past, both on the show and in public, they were decidedly silent on the spiritual implications of this decision. They both cited "peace for the kids" as the primary reason for the separation, and Kate described her main concern as "the label that we have failed." Not once did they mention any consideration of Biblical counseling, as we have previously lamented. The show, of course, will continue on, with Jon and Kate splitting time with the kids.

So what did you think of Jon & Kate's "big announcement"? Did you watch the episode? And how can we best respond to the media frenzy surrounding this recent development, particularly in light of their strong identification with the Christian community?

UPDATE: TLC president Eileen O'Neill announced on Tuesday afternoon the decision to put the show on hiatus until August 3rd "so that everyone could adjust to the new circumstances." But don't expect the show to go anywhere--Monday night's episode attracted 10.6 million viewers, the show's largest audience ever. Will viewers tune in to watch the once-happy family struggle to pick up the pieces and move forward? I know at least one (and, judging from the comments below, quite a few more) who'd rather not.

Top Clothing Lines Downsize Plus-Size Offerings

Women in the market for plus-size clothing may have a harder time finding what they're looking for, according to a recent article at Crain's New York. Several clothing manufactures have trimmed or even eliminated their plus-size offerings, while many have moved their larger lines, generally considered to be sizes 16 and up, to an online-only basis.

Popular women's clothing lines such as Bloomingdale's, Liz Claiborne, Ann Taylor, and Ellen Tracy are among those cutting their plus-size offerings, citing falling demand as the primary reason. "From March 2008 to March 2009, sales of plus-size apparel fell 8 percent, while sales of standard sizes only fell 2 percent," reports one New York article.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, neither obesity levels in the U.S. nor the average weight of U.S. women (163 lbs.) is decreasing. So why are plus-size women buying not only less than they used to, but also less than their size-14-and-under counterparts? One reason, offered by "plus-size expert" Catherine Schuller, is that many plus-size women are homemakers and cannot afford to spend a lot of money on clothes. I couldn't find any statistics on average weights of stay-at-home women versus those who work outside of the home, but regardless, Schuller's explanation doesn't seem to fit.

A more plausible reason, offered by Slate's women's magazine, Double X, is that larger sizes are harder both to produce and to fit. A size 10, for example, is designed to fit a range of women who all fall more or less within the specified measurements of a 10. But the range covered by a size 18, by necessity, has to be greater - so the clothes are more difficult to design, less likely to fit an individual woman, and thus more liable to end up hanging on the reduced rack after months of being tried on and passed over. (Double X links to a wonderful array of spreadsheets and statistics, which I highly recommend if you're curious about bell curves or curves in general.)

On the other end of the spectrum, while America downsizes, British retailer Marks & Spencer recently published an apology to larger-sized women - specifically women with larger bust sizes - for "surcharging" them extra for bras with cup sizes DD and up. In a full-page ad that ran in British daily newspapers and featured the torso of a curvaceous woman in a green bra and matching underwear, Marks and Spencer proclaimed, "No matter whether it's large or small bras you need, the price will be the same."

Professional courtesy or publicity stunt? You decide.

Laura Leonard wrote for Her.meneutics about youth-oriented mega-retailer Forever 21 launching, Faith 21, a line for plus-sized teens, which The New York Times covered this week.

The Friendship Boost

"What Makes Us Happy?" It's an eternal mystery, and the title of a fascinating article by Joshua Wolf Shenk in the June Atlantic. Shenk was given access to archives of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has been following a group of men - Harvard College sophomores in the late 1930 - for over 70 years. About half of the original 268 men are still living.

Reading their stories and talking with the study's longtime director, psychiatrist George Vaillant, Shenk tried to find reasons for some men's happiness and others' dissatisfaction, failure, or ill health. The key to happiness proved elusive and complex, but one factor stood out. Shenk reports:

In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked, "What have you learned from the Grant Study men?" Vaillant's response: "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."

Tony Woodlief, writing in The Wall Street Journal, comments on the Atlantic article and a half-dozen other sources in "Ya Gotta Have (Real) Friends." Woodlief links to Jeffrey Zaslow's WSJ article, "The Ties That Bind," pointing out that women are more likely than men to cultivate long-term friendships. Zaslow cites

a 14-year project at Flinders University in Australia that tracked 1,500 women as they aged. The study found that close friendships - even more than close family ties - help prolong women's lives. Those with the most friends lived 22% longer than those with the fewest friends.

Woodlief, a World magazine columnist, points out that Facebook "friends" don't really count. But how do we keep in contact with flesh-and-blood friends who live far away? I'm still in touch with several childhood friends. Sharon and I met 53 years ago, the summer we were 8; she has lived in Italy for the last 35 years. Kathleen and Molly and I met the summer we were 12; now we live in Maryland, Idaho, and Illinois. Thank goodness for Penny - we met at age 13 - who lives only an hour away! And for airlines - Molly visited in May, and I'll be seeing Sharon and Kathleen later this year. I wish we all lived in the same city. Paris would do.

I'm wondering what female Her.meneutics readers think: Are friendships an important key to your happiness? If so, how do you find time to see friends that live nearby, and stay in touch with friends who live far away?

When a Pro-Life Blogger Goes Too Far

Last Sunday night, a popular pro-life blogger known as "April's Mom" or "B" posted the tragic news: Her newborn daughter, whom she had carried to term though diagnosed with a terminal case of Trisomy 13 and HPE, had died hours after a difficult home birth. This marked the end of the nine-month journey she had shared with the world on her blog, Little One April, where she chronicled her struggles, pains, and hopes as she traveled the journey many would have ended after such devastating news. She wrote often of the centrality of her Christian faith and pro-life values to her decision and motivation, and filled her posts with Bible verses and Christian music. Her readers lauded her courage, prayed for God to save the baby, and sent gifts anticipating her arrival: a baby hat, a pair of little shoes, a hair bow, a crocheted blanket. Pro-life bloggers rallied around this embodiment of the cause, linking to the blog and adding "Pray for April Rose" buttons to their own.

It could have ended there, but "April's mom" decided to post a picture of the baby, a picture that was quickly identified by some readers as not a baby at all, but a "Reborn doll," a vinyl toy made to look like a real newborn. The entire story quickly unraveled; April's mom was actually 26-year-old social worker Rebecca Beushausen, a Chicago-area woman who had not been pregnant at all, though she had lost a child in 2005.

All that is left of the blog now is an apology - and a media mess. In her final post, Beushausen wrote, "I am a Christian and while I wrote many of my posts under dishonest contexts, the God I shared with all of you and wrote about is still God; the Creator or life, Father and Savior. I hope to regain my relationship back with Him, fully, myself." She went on to apologize for her actions - she never intended for anyone outside her immediate circle to find or read the blog - and to link readers to a site for families actually dealing with T13 pregnancies.

So why did this happen? Beushausen told the Chicago Tribune that "I've always liked writing. It was addictive to find out I had a voice that people wanted to hear. Soon I was getting 100,000 hits a week, and it just got out of hand. I didn't know how to stop. . . . One lie led to another." But there's no hiding on the Internet; though Beushausen scrambled to remove the blog, along with its accompanying Twitter and Facebook pages, when it became clear she had blown her cover, the details of her identity came spilling out over the blogosphere and then the national news over the course of a few days.

While many of the blog's followers feel emotionally exploited - like Jennifer McKinney, who at Rebecca's urging promoted it on her popular site MyCharmingKids.net - others were at least happy to have helped in some way; Jennifer Myers, who, along with her husband sold T-shirts and sent money to support April, told the Tribune of Rebecca, "She's someone who needed love and attention, and we gave her that."

In the wake of the Tiller shooting, the rhetoric of the pro-life movement has already found itself under more intense media scrutiny. Just how far will we go to defend the right to life? How far is too far?

Beushausen reports that in place of the gifts, she is now receiving hate mail. Just two weeks ago she wrote these eerily prophetic words on her blog:

We can't do this life on our own. Or, well, I will speak for myself; I know, I can't do it on my own. But more than that, I have been created by God, for God, in love. And He lives in and through me, and He weeps when I weep . . .

And, yes, it does feel horrible at times. But He said that He will never leave me or forsake me, and that nothing and nobody can take me from His hands. And I don't know how all of this works out, but I believe that if I continue to do what He wants me to do, tomorrow will be better. And if tomorrow doesn't seem less painful and alone, than the next day, or maybe the next…

One thing I do know is that the hurt can't be forever, because this [life] isn't forever, and knowing that promise from Him to me, from Him to you, makes the hardest parts of life a bit easier to bear.

Ultimately, Rebecca Beushausen's blog experiment is not one with far-reaching implications for the pro-life movement or its rhetoric; it is a story of one troubled woman's struggle to deal with deep pain. And to that, we must respond in love, affirming the unconditional love of our God, whose glory is not diminished by the broken people who serve him.

Redeeming Twitter

The U.S. State Department asks Twitter to delay maintenance plans for the weekend so Iranians voting in Friday's election can communicate instantly, and defeated candidate Mirhossein Mousavi uses Twitter to organize protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The FBI tracks Twitter to stop a crazed Oklahoma City man from turning the April 15 Tea Party Protests into what he warned would be a bloodbath. Beating even The New York Times, a ferry passenger on the Hudson River uses Twitter to deliver the first reports and pictures of U.S. Airways Flight #1549's emergency landing.

The instant firsthand information sent from someone's cell phone or computer to the Twitter stream is appealing to this wiki culture; nowadays, we trust mass accumulation of knowledge more than we do an authority figure's research. Besides, there's nothing quite like being able to talk directly to the guy who watched the school bus tip over 20 seconds ago.

As popular as Twitter is (reporting over 7 million users this winter, with a 1382 percent growth rate from 2008), many people still don't know about it, or dismiss its usefulness when they learn about it. (As guest editor of Newsweek last week, satirist Stephen Colbert poked fun at the three-year-old site by proposing the cover story, "Hey, Have You Heard About This Thing Called Twitter?") I happen to know a few folks who have enjoyed a chuckle on my behalf when I call myself a "Twit." It's not worth the risk of being labeled a rabid Twitter evangelist, so I usually refrain from giving my whole spiel to my skeptical friends (I limit it to 20 minutes).

Twitter is a micro-blogging and social-networking site that allows you to post and read status updates ("tweets") in 140 characters from your computer or cell phone. You can follow (receive tweets from) as many people as you like, and they can follow you as well. If you wish, you can protect your tweets so only people you allow can read them, and you can limit how many come your way, so it is never invasive. Numerous free applications are available to design your Twitter experience to the level of participation you want.

What's so good about it? And why would a Christian have any interest in joining?

First, Twitter is a quick, easy way to stay in touch on a moment-by-moment basis with people you know. No need to wait for Christmas cards to find out what's going on in their lives. No need to wait even until next Sunday. This "shallow" form of communication, as many call it, opens the door to deep relationships simply because you know what's going on in your loved ones' lives. As a pastor's wife, I love seeing the effect this has on the local church - how interconnected everyone is in life and ministry.

Second, following like-minded people, whether you know them or not, helps you to discover the most up-to-date news about what interests you. For example, I can follow @joinStAT to find out how to get involved in fighting human trafficking right in Indiana, my home state, @MichaelHyatt to hear news about Christian publishing, @CTmagazine for international awareness, or, If I need inspiration, I can follow @BibleBuzz to help me in my daily Bible reading or @PatsyClairmont for a holy laugh. Words, whether filling book pages or the laptop screen, have power; letting someone know you just prayed for her, or offering a word of encouragement or a laugh, is a ministry that subtly but profoundly affects daily life.

Third, reading tweets from people different from you helps you to be aware of trends and issues that matter to others. Knowing the hearts of people whose worldviews you oppose creates a compassion for them that supersedes judgment. When I see camaraderie on Twitter between supposed enemies, I wonder if Christians might be known again as people who love. If we reveal our compassion, might someone ask, as a Roman leader did in A.D. 125, "Who are these people the Christians, who are taking care of their own and also ours?" (adapted from Johnson 1976:75; Ayerst and Fisher 1971:179-181).

The virtual friends we make on Twitter can by no means replace the real relationships we have in our homes, neighborhoods, and churches. And Twitter can easily draw you into a lifestyle that keeps you in front of the computer rather than being active and engaged in the world of flesh and blood. Worse, it can cause you to feel as though you are in healthy relationships while your real-life relationships are suffering. Also, Internet conversation often feels anonymous, and we may say things that we regret that hurt others and do not reflect the heart of Christ. (See LaVonne Neff's Her.meneutics post "Blog Comments and Christian Courtesy.")

Twitter can, however, broaden our world and our understanding of it, deepen the relationships we have, open the door to new ones, and lead us into ministry opportunities we had never thought of before. To be or not to be on Twitter is not so much the question; the real question is: If you are, are you using this tool to improve your life, to benefit others, and to make great the name of Jesus?

Five Tweeting Tips
(1) You are what you tweet. Are you an encourager, a humorist, a businessperson, a pastor - a complainer? People will know.

(2) Craft your words. This may be instant publishing, but it's still publishing. Your words will last longer than you will.

(3) No cheating. Say it all in 140 characters. Don't use a second tweet to continue your point.

(4) Don't answer Twitter's standard question, "what are you doing?" Rather than your flight plan, nap schedule, or lunch menu, say something that will benefit others.

(5) Don't overtweet. If people quit replying to you, it may be because they can't keep up.

Heather Gemmen Wilson writes at HeatherGemmen.com.

The Downside of Hooking Up

In 1980, Roger Ebert reviewed a coming-of-age movie called Little Darlings. The movie starred Tatum O'Neil and Kristy McNichol as summer campers who embark on a bet to see who can lose their virginity first. Kristy was taught by her mother that sex is nothing more than a biological function. About her on-screen deflowering, Ebert wrote this:

"It was not, of course, quite like she expected it to be. She sits quietly in a corner of a deserted summer cottage, her thoughts a million miles away from her teen-age boyfriend. At last she says, "I feel so lonely." The feelings implied in that single line are completely true to the scene and to the character. Kristy is lonely because she has suddenly and rather unhappily passed on from the ranks of pubescent girls. She is now an individual, possessed of the sometimes uncomfortable freedom to make decisions. Sexual intercourse, she tells the boy, "made me feel like you could see right through me." She slept with him for childish reasons, but now, we feel, she will never approach the decision so casually again."

That was nearly three decades ago.

Fast forward to June 2009. NPR reports the now-old news that young people are "hooking up" rather than dating. The reasons, according to "experts" cited in this article, include delayed marriage, fragmented lives that make young people skittish about intimacy, women's sexual empowerment, and social media.

Hooking up reportedly emerged in the 1960s and '70s out of the worst idea ever: co-ed campus housing. Back then it was called casual sex or one-night stands, which stilled carried a stigma, at least for women.

It is the diminishment of female sexual stigma that Jessica Valenti, executive editor of Feministing.com, thinks is the real source of concern in regard to hooking up. Valenti writes, "The message seems to be that the only kind of sex young women can have is dangerous, drunk sex that leaves them disheveled and traumatized. But the thing is, despite what these books and articles are saying - sexually active young women are in fact not diseased, depressed drop outs. They are doing just fine."

Never mind that in 2006, more than one million cases of Chlamydia were reported to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Valenti imagines something "insidious" going on instead. "Almost all of the books and reports written about hook-up culture are done by writers and researchers with ties to conservative or anti-feminist organizations - some are even outright funded by them." She refers to statistics in Miriam Grossman's book Unprotected that indicate that sexually active young women are more likely to be depressed and suicidal. Valenti says these stats come from a study done by the Heritage Foundation, "a conservative think tank that's a strong proponent of abstinence only education."

For her, promoting abstinence automatically invalidates a source, as if some of us haven't been down this road ourselves. She views solutions like early marriage as oppressive, and instead of questioning evolving cultural norms, pushes ahead with the tired message of female sexual liberation.

Ultimately though, Valenti concedes the following: "All of this is not to say that I don't think there's a problem with how oversexualized the media is, or how women and women's sexuality are portrayed in pop culture - I do think that there's a problem. I also think we need to have a serious conversation about sexual assault, rape and alcohol on college campuses - these are issues of sexuality that are immediately dangerous to both young men and women. I even think that there's a lot more we could discuss about hooking up. But let's have that conversation with nuance and realism, and let's certainly have it without an agenda."

I couldn't agree more.

In an interview with U.S. Catholic, Donna Freitas, author of Sex and the Soul, discusses the findings from her extensive research into attitudes toward sex and religion at public, private, evangelical, and Catholic colleges. Freitas found that the only campuses where the hook-up culture was not ubiquitous were the evangelical ones. (Christianity Today also interviewed Freitas in August 2008.)

She says, "To be young and evangelical is really to be immersed and participating in or creating a youth culture. They are young theologians of a sort. They are interpreting Scripture, writing books on dating, overseeing their own faith lives, and holding their peers accountable."

Freitas said, however, that on all campuses, hooking up is far more talk than action. She summarized her findings thusly: "It's not that they [male and female students] don't want to have sex ever or that they want to save sex for marriage - so, parents, don't get your hopes up. But when they have sex, they want to be in love with that person. They want respect. They want someone to know them. They want hundreds of candles lit. And they don't want to get there right away."

In other words, young adults want what Kristy McNichol discovered she wanted in Little Darlings, and what God wanted for Adam, and what we who are parents want for our children. They want a companion, with whom they can be naked and unashamed.

How will we help them get there?

First Dalit Woman Elected to India Parliament

Earlier this month India elected the first Dalit woman ever as Speaker for its House of Parliament.

Meira Kumar, 64, was elected unanimously as the first woman Speaker of Lok Sabha in the lower house of Parliament, where she will preside over 543 elected members. There are 58 women in the House. India's current president, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, is also a woman.

Kumar is the third Dalit to be elected to a position in the Indian government; in 2007, K. G. Balakrishnan was elected Chief Justice, and Raman Kocheril Narayanan served from 1997 to 2002 as India's first Dalit president.

The Dalits ("untouchables") make up the lowest rung of India's five-caste system. According to the Dalit Freedom Network, a Christian advocacy group, they are considered sub-human and are often mistreated and abused, despite India's constitutional guarantee of certain rights and freedoms to all citizens. Dalits compose 25 percent of India's population, and 75 percent of Indian Christians are from the Dalit class.

Evangelical leader K. P. Yohannan, president of Gospel for Asia, released a statement praising Kumar's appointment because, as a Dalit woman, Kumar represents the most ill-treated group of people in the world.

"Now the most despised people in the most abused people group have a voice in one of the world's largest government bodies - the Indian Parliament," Yohannan said. "She is already a great political force, yet it is still amazing that a Dalit woman was elected to this powerful position. Now she holds great power, so when the issues involving human rights or the downtrodden people groups come up, she will be the one to decide if the issue will be heard."

Likewise, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) launched its Inclusive India campaign in conjunction with Kumar's election to urge the government's renewed focus on the rights of marginalized citizens. CSW's advocacy director, Alexa Papadouris, told ASSIST News, "Meira Kumar's appointment is a boost to the erosion of identity-based discrimination in India. . . . However, our ‘Inclusive India' campaign highlights the need for an impact to be made at the grassroots level. We begin by focusing on justice in cases of religiously-motivated violence. The urgency of this is demonstrated by the recent attacks in Orissa. . .".

Not everyone is happy that Kumar is being noticed primarily for being a Dalit woman. Chair of the U.S.-India Forum Ashok Mago expressed regret in the Business Standard that Kumar is not being noticed foremost for her accomplishments as a justice.

"When will we quit all these labels of cast, ethnicity and religion? Kumar's accomplishment speaks for itself," Mago said. "Those who think otherwise should think twice before making those assumptions. We all should be judged by what we are, not by who we are."

According to The Times of India, Kumar's election has spurred renewed interest in a women's quota bill that would require private businesses to hire a set number of both women and lower-caste members.

Women's Groups Lash Out at Letterman in Palin's Defense

Several women's groups have joined Sarah Palin's fight with David Letterman over his joke that Palin's daughter got "knocked up" by Alex Rodriguez during their recent trip to New York.

"It's worse than poor taste; it reflects ugliness in him. He would never say something like that about a liberal woman," president of Concerned Women for America Wendy Wright said in a statement. "But rather than deal with issues and ideas, he denigrates her as a human being."

The Alaska governor characterized Letterman's jokes as a reference to "statutory rape" since the only child with her at the game was her 14-year-old daughter, Willow. Letterman said the following night that the joke was in "poor taste," but he says he was joking about 18-year-old Bristol Palin, not Willow.

Palin appeared on NBC's Today show today, calling Letterman's apology "a weak excuse" and saying they were "a degrading comment on all young women."

"A generally understood rule of politics is that the children are off-limits," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. "Why are Palin's children an exception?"

Even the National Organization for Women has taken to defending Palin. "The sexualization of girls and women in the media is reaching new lows these days -- it is exploitative and has a negative effect on how all women and girls are perceived and how they view themselves," the statement says.

Letterman had also joked that Palin had the style of a "slutty flight attendant." She has declined an invitation by Letterman to appear on his show.

The Duggars: the Anti-Gosselins

Even in the wake of the media circus that surrounds the Gosselin family, another reality TV show about an unusually large family premiered last night. WeTV showed Raising Sextuplets, which follows Bryan and Jenny Masche as they navigate raising six 16-month-olds. Like the Gosselins, the Masches are professing Christians. (In the show's opening sequence, Jenny shares that, despite the dangers involved in carrying a large pregnancy to term, "because of our faith, selective reduction was not an option.") In light of the Gosselins' recent troubles, it seems odd for any family to choose to expose themselves to the scrutiny that likely at least contributed to the Gosselins' marital problems. As Christians, we might ask, is it wise to enter a "public marriage" when the dangers have been so clearly laid out?

For proof that reality TV exposure does not itself destroy a family, we need look no further than TLC's 18 Kids and Counting, which offers a weekly peek into the life of the Duggar family. As part of the Quiverfull movement, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar abstain from all forms of birth control and, according to their website, "asked God to bless them with as many children as he saw fit in his timing." The show has followed them through multiple pregnancies, planning, building, and moving into a 7,000-square-foot home (built debt-free), and even the courtship, marriage, and pregnancy of Jim Bob and Michelle's eldest, Josh, and his wife, Anna.

To most viewers, the Duggar family is truly different, and not just for its size. First, there are only two sets of twins in the Duggar brood, neither of which were conceived through fertility treatments common on these shows. With so many children spanning so many ages, they have to get creative to perform otherwise simple domestic tasks. Shopping for food and clothes are massive ordeals, as are laundry and cooking. (Check out their favorite recipes - I've tried the tater tot casserole, and it wasn't half bad!) They dress conservatively, homeschool all their kids, and incorporate biblical principles into everything they do. They do not watch TV and limit their children's Internet access. The children speak intelligently and politely; they seem to not only understand why their family operates as it does, they also articulate these values as their own, without hints of the snarkiness or rebellion of many kids their age. The Duggars truly seem to love, value, and respect each other. To many viewers, their way of living is downright countercultural.

In this sense, at least, the Duggars are the anti-Gosselins; theirs is a home of order, where voices are rarely raised, and the biggest problems seem to be managing everyday tasks to sustain a household of 20. While I do not share many of their more conservative practices, I find their emphases on family and community inspiring. It's not that they have avoided public life; they have appeared on the Today show and from time to time appear in the news feed to announce a pregnancy or birth. That they are different is obvious. That Christ is the reason is also obvious, in their words but also in their actions, and in the way they treat each other and deal with the outside world. They demonstrate that in everything, it is a self-emptying focus and reliance on God that overcomes the distractions of the outside world, from temptations of greed or immodesty to the scrutinizing eye of reality TV cameras.

Do you watch 18 Kids and Counting? What do you find most fascinating about the Duggars, or, more broadly, about large-family reality TV shows?

Schuller's Eldest Daughter to Lead Crystal Cathedral

The Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Times reported late yesterday that Sheila Schuller Coleman, eldest daughter of the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, will become "co-leader" with her father of the Garden Grove, California, church. Coleman will replace senior interim pastor Juan Carlos Ortiz, who stood in for Robert A. Schuller after he parted ways with the Cathedral last fall over clashing visions for the ministry. "[Sheila] is taking over her brother's place," Donna Schuller, wife of Robert A., told The OC Register.

With a doctorate in business administration, Schuller Coleman, 58, is already deeply involved in running the 54-year-old ministry, as superintendent of Crystal Cathedral Schools, head of the church's family ministries, and program director for The Hour of Power. It looks like she has given at least one message on The Hour of Power, but does not preach regularly.

The Rev. Schuller shared in yesterday's ministry announcement that, after he told God he was too old to lead, God told him, "Give me two more years - 24 more months. . . . Don't worry. I have called your daughter Sheila, too. She is equipped and she will be your legs."

"Our church [affiliated with the Reformed Church in America] didn't even start ordaining women until 1973," Schuller Coleman told The OC Register. "I'm proud of my dad for doing this and I hope I can serve as a role model for younger women who want to get things accomplished in this church." She says her mother, Arvella, was deeply involved in the ministry, but always behind the scenes. Time will tell how the 10,000-member church will respond to having a woman in a more visible leadership position, or whether Schuller Coleman will ever become the 'mouth' of her father's ministry.

Journalists Slammed for Covering N. Korean Women's Hell

On Monday, journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in a North Korean prison. This morning, Blaine Harden in The Washington Post shares the probable reason: they were researching an article on the plight of women who, fleeing famine and poverty in North Korea, crossed the border into China. (You may have to create an account to read the Post article, but the account is free and takes only a minute to set up.)

Many of these refugee women ended up "being sold like livestock in China," according to one refugee who was sold in marriage to three men, sent back to North Korea, permanently maimed from a police beating, and then sent to a labor camp that she characterized as "hell on earth."

Actually, says a South Korean human-rights researcher, most of the women are much better off in China than they were in North Korea. If they stay with the men who buy them, they are given adequate food and housing. However, they and most of their children have no legal status. Without residency papers, the women can be deported at any moment - back to North Korea, where they will be treated as criminals. Their undocumented children, who will remain with their Chinese fathers, may not be able to go to school.

Tina Lambert, advocacy director of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a U.K.-based human-rights group, called upon North Korea to "rescind this unjust sentence and to grant Laura Ling and Euna Lee's immediate release. . . . We urge the United Nations to boldly condemn and extensively investigate these concerns at all levels of its system, including the Security Council, as a matter of utmost importance."

Google "Christianity and women's rights" and you'll find plenty of evidence for the church's relative shortcomings in this area. But note that North Korea and China are both officially atheistic countries. When I get impatient with the church's slowness in treating women and men equally, I'll remind myself of that.

Meanwhile, let's all pray for Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee.

What Are You Reading This Summer?

Summer's a time when you don't want to do any extra work, so we did the work for you and compiled a reading list - several, actually.

Some lists are lighter than others, but here's what Her.meneutics contributors plan to read this summer. If you need a little inspiration, check out some beautiful photos of extraordinary libraries.

Ruth Moon
The Believers: A Novel, by Zoe Heller
Saving History, by Fanny Howe
The Secret Life of Words, by Henry Hitchings
Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke

Elrena Evans
I'm currently reading Sara Miles' Take This Bread, and then I'm looking forward to reading an ARC of Joanne Rendell's Crossing Washington Square. Next up I'll probably read David A. Kessler's The End of Overeating (I have to wait for my husband to finish it first), all while anxiously waiting for my fellow Literary Mama Kristina Riggle's debut, Real Life and Liars.

LaVonne Neff
A Plague on Both Your Houses, by Susanna Gregory is on my nightstand.
I’m halfway through Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, by Christopher Buckley
I’m also halfway through Finding Happiness: Monastic Steps for a Fulfilling Life, by Abbot Christopher Jamison
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery
Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story, by Isabel Gillies
Secrets to Happiness: A Novel, by Sarah Dunn (the cover picture is irresistible)

Christine A. Scheller
Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, by Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan and Ann Swidler
Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice, by Stephanie Paulsell
Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community and Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life, by Simon Chan
So Brave, Young and Handsome, by Leif Enger
Before Prozac: The Troubled History of Mood Disorders in Psychiatry, by Edward Shorter

Katelyn Beaty
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Lesslie Newbigin
Reordered Love, Reordered Lives, by David Naugle
Columbine, by Dave Cullen
Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor

Laura Leonard
re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (before the movie comes out!), by J.K. Rowling
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, by Joan Didion
The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, by Euguene Peterson
Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky But Authentic Spiritual Memoir, by Susan Isaacs
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, by Trenton Lee Stewart (for my "beach reading" I like to read fun YA novels)
I am also planning to finish the Twilight novels, by Stephenie Meyer (for the sake of keeping up with my youth group girls, of course :))

Sarah Pulliam
Home: A Novel, by Marilynne Robinson
Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, by A. J. Jacobs
Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger
The New Shape of World Christianity, by Mark Noll
Harry Potter, by J. K. Rowling

Christianity Today editors also offered some picks at the main site. What books would you recommend?

Top 10 Most Popular Posts, v. 2

Thank you to our readers and stumble-upon visitors for making the first month of the CT women's blog a success! Here are the top 10 posts you read and responded to since Her.meneutics launched on Thursday, April 2:

(ten) "Your Responses: AIDS in Uganda," by LaVonne Neff // Comments: 72
Part Two of 'Meanwhile, What about the Women and Children?'

(nine) "Beware! Dangerous Women," by Lynne Hybels // Comments: 5
They might just step up and do something.

(eight) "eHarmony Launches Gay Dating Site," by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 32
The company agreed to launch Compatible Partners after a user had filed a complaint, citing New Jersey's discrimination law.

(seven) "Strip-Searched Girl Heads to Supreme Court," by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 9
How far can a public school go in an anti-drug campaign without violating students' rights to privacy?

(six) "Breast-feed - If You Can Afford To," by LaVonne Neff // Comments: 19
Judith Warner's April 2 New York Times op-ed piece, "Ban the Breast Pump," was sure to stir up a hornet's nest.

(five) "Going Undercover to Expose Planned Parenthood," by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 18
Lila Rose's pro-life activism may be breaking state privacy laws. But does it matter?

(four) "Is There Such a Thing as Too Many Children?" by Elrena Evans // Comments: 21
Questions linger as last of Nadya Suleman's octuplets heads home.

(three) "Puppies Aren't People," by Kay Warren, guest blogger // Comments: 79
When compassion for animals goes too far.

(two) "Why Do We Love Susan Boyle?" by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 18
She's become a YouTube sensation, but why do we love her so much?

(one) "The Other Miss California Controversy," by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 81
Carrie Prejean might have stood up for Christian sexual ethics by skipping the Miss USA pageant altogether.

Author Interview: Elissa Elliott

Writers and artists have for centuries been using their imaginations to make the Creation and Fall accounts in Genesis come alive for readers. John Milton's Paradise Lost is the most epic and well-known example; others include Perelandra, the second installment of C. S. Lewis's space trilogy, and David Maine's provocative Fallen, from 2006. But what if the story of Adam and Eve were imagined from a - or the - woman's perspective? That's the question Elissa Elliott asks in her 2009 work of literary fiction, Eve: A Novel of the First Woman.

Elliott tells the Genesis story from the perspective of Eve and her three daughters, Naava, Aya, and Dara, who narrate the events of the summer leading up to Cain's murder of Abel. Although the women's voices vary in their believability, Eve's internal monologue as she lives out her curse (Gen. 3:16) adds depth to the sparsely outlined Genesis account. Elliott toys with possibilities, creating family rivalries and another, older civilization with which Eve's family collides to explain the motivation behind Cain's infamous murder. The result is a thought-provoking read.

Elliott, who spent two years at Biola University before receiving a degree in biology and an M.A. in education from UCLA, lives in Minnesota with her husband and child. Eve came out in January from Delacorte Press, and Books & Culture editor John Wilson gave Eve a mini-review here. Her.meneutics editor Ruth Moon sat down with Elliott recently to talk about her faith, women, and her debut novel.

What did you learn by writing from the perspective of Eve?

When I started writing the book, I thought I was going to redeem Eve. I thought I was going to pull her from the depths of obscurity and somehow raise her to a level of humanity. I came away with a more personal God who was concerned about me as a woman. He's been trying to talk to me but I cannot hear him, I cannot see him, and I get so obsessed with my everyday problems that I rant and I rave, but he's there for me.

The second thing is about women in general. Four years ago, I was co-teaching a married couples' Sunday school class that both my husband and I attended. On the days that I would teach, there were certain men who would leave the room and go sit in the café. Their wives would openly tell me they didn't want to be taught by a woman. I felt offended, not that they wouldn't want to hear me, but that they wouldn't want to hear a woman's perspective. So in writing [about] the women of the Bible, I wanted to give them a voice, I wanted to give them an avenue that perhaps God might speak through them.

How would you describe your theological stance?

Let me clarify that I'd love to have Eve touted as literary fiction, but that's impossible because it has too many religious overtones. If I had my choice, it would be a Jewish book, and here's why: Adam and Eve didn't know anything that was coming down the pipe. They don't know that the apostle Paul would later say that through one man sin entered the world (Rom. 5:12). So to a certain extent I had to disregard the New Testament while writing Eve, because I wanted the story to fit on its own.

I wouldn't put myself in a denomination, simply because I have so many questions. I've attended Evangelical Free and we attended a Baptist church down in Houston that we adored. My theology has always been pretty on target in terms of conservative Christians, but over the years I've begun to wonder things. There are so many abuses at the hands of the church. (I know this because I was one of the victims of that.) And I have friends who are atheist, agnostic, and ex-Christian who don't want to have anything to do with the church. They all grew up like I did, and they are very curious how I still ended up with God.

How did you get interested in writing?

Several years ago, while my husband was at Baylor for a surgery fellowship, I took a few classes and started writing a children's novel. I queried tons of editors and didn't get any responses for three years. I really wasted time, but in the meantime, I began to learn to write. Growing up a voracious reader helped. I read only literary fiction and books that were highly reviewed or had won awards. I figured that if I knew what the best looked like, I would at least be studying the correct way of doing it. I got an agent based on my memoir about a childhood growing up in a very conservative Christian household with an angry pastor father. The memoir didn't sell, although it had some serious looks. Then in spring 2006, my agent wrote me and asked, "What about Eve?" He's Jewish, and he knew that I love those stories.

Tell me about your forthcoming book on Noah's Ark.

When I wrote Eve, I truly in my heart wanted to bring my reader to God. I want to do the same thing with Noah, but there are so many questions to ask with Noah, such as why would God destroy the entire world except us, and yet not all of us are good people? How does he determine who's good and who's bad? It's such a tender thing for me. My questions are directing people in a very gentle and careful way to God, and yet a lot of people do not see it that way.

Declining Female Happiness

The data have been collected and analyzed and the determination made: Women are less happy than they were 35 years ago, less happy than men, and the gap between men's and women's happiness is growing. The National Bureau of Economic Research released the report in May, and according to its researchers, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, this decline in happiness is pretty much true for women across the board in industrialized nations.

But women can be CEOs, politicians, and college presidents. They are better paid and have more visibility and opportunity than they did 30 years ago, so why are women less happy?

Stevenson and Wolfers speculate that perhaps it's the overall decrease in social cohesion, or increased anxiety and neuroticism. Or maybe now that women have multiple roles, they are satisfied in one role, but miserable in another, bringing down their overall sense of happiness. Maybe the women's movement raised expectations for women, and their lives don't measure up to those expectations.

I'm sitting in a window seat on a flight mulling this over, heading home after spending a day at Pine Rest in Grand Rapids talking to psychologists, counselors, social workers, and pastors who work with girls and women. Bob Hosack, my editor at Baker Books, extended the invitation believing my ideas from Growing Strong Daughters would be useful. I tossed my speculations about why women are less happy than we used to be into the mix. Here they are:

Our raised expectations have a fair bit to do with it. So does a form of individualism that redefined women's expectations in the aftermath of the feminist movement. (Important note: I call myself a feminist.) We are predisposed to fall into an individualism that is all about me, and women followed men into that particular pit rather readily, but with somewhat different consequences.

We bought the belief that we deserved an easy, happy life, and exerted the right to be all we could as we stretched toward self-fulfillment - even when it meant breaking commitments, leaving relationships, and walking away from the faith that grounded us. Our self-focused approach to life didn't make us happier, just lonelier.

I agree with the Enlightenment thinkers who believed that we needed to free all members of society to stretch toward their potential. I agree with the feminist movement that said that should include women. But individualism is only redemptive when the goal of achieving self-actualization is linked to doing others some bit of good. So I take care of myself, educate myself, and pursue opportunities not primarily because it will make me happy, but because I belong to a world that needs my best contribution. And in the contributing, I find a satisfaction that seeps into my soul. That gets unpacked in another of my books, The Contented Soul. The individualism we embraced instead was a sanctioned selfishness that frayed our social fabric and eroded our contentment.

"We belong not to ourselves, but to something bigger than ourselves." When I suggest this to my students, many of them cringe at the thought. We don't want to be obligated. But in belonging we relinquish the burden of needing to find our own happiness by controlling our destiny. Belonging to God is a great comfort. And while God loves us simply because we belong, and not because of what we accomplish, God did place us here as representatives to work toward making the world a better place. When we represent God on earth by working toward justice, extending mercy, being an advocate, an encourager, leader, supporter, creator, grower - might we find a happiness that eludes us?

The conversation is bigger than this space allows. May we ponder the question, think about where we went wrong, and find a way forward, given our opportunities and obligations.

Up Takes Disney Higher

It's not shocking that Disney would create yet another film that features a child without a mommy and daddy, but Pixar's 10th feature film, Up, still manages to play on strong themes of marriage and fatherhood. Released last Friday, it pairs a crotchety old man with an obnoxiously chatty child to create both a tear-jerking and laughter-inducing film that sister site CT Movies called "a delightful, perspective-changing ride."

The first half of the film uses very little dialogue to show a beautiful picture of a husband and wife, Carl and Ellie, who dream of living in South America. Ellie works as a zookeeper while Carl sells balloons, and we see them live a full life filled with love for each other. But it's not the same happily-ever-after ending we tend to associate with Disney. We see the couple face numerous challenges, and they are never able to fulfill their hope of moving to Paradise Falls.

As 78-year-old Carl mourns his wife's death, a chubby 8-year-old knocks on his door to earn an "assist the elderly" Wilderness Explorer badge. Eager to be left alone, Carl shoos Russell away, badgeless.

Facing a court order to move into a retirement home, Carl instead ties thousands of helium balloons to his house to fly to Paradise Falls. As he floats peacefully on his way, he finds Russell on the porch begging to be let in. We become genuinely annoyed with Russell as he presents Carl with several challenges, almost preventing him from fulfilling his dream.

Carolyn Arends writes for CT Movies about the parallels of the characters.

Along the way, Carl and Russell also make some interior (but no less monumental) discoveries. Despite their seventy-year age difference, they have much more in common than they first realize. Both of them have unfulfilled dreams of adventure, both of them are lonely, and both of them need each other.

Director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.) and screenplay writer and co-director Bob Peterson (Finding Nemo) manage to mine great depths of emotion from the lives and needs of their two heroes without falling into maudlin or saccharine territory.

Carl becomes more sympathetic when he realizes that Russell's own father, divorced from Russell's mother, seems to have abandoned him for a new girlfriend. In the end, Carl is forced to choose between holding onto to the past (his house) and embracing a new life as a father figure to Russell. Many well-known Disney movies portray a child without a father or a mother (think Cinderella, Bambi, and Toy Story), but this was the first movie I could think of that portrayed a divorced family. Sadly, this is the reality that many children face. Up offered a view of what it means to serve as a substitute father to someone. Even the most annoying child needs someone to fill that hole.

Initially, the film seemed too intense for children, but like Pixar's other films (WALL-E, Finding Nemo), Up offers mature ideas in ways that children can understand. Its creators have taken Disney beyond princesses and plush dolls to endearing characters that face both the difficulties and joys of real-life relationships.

Is it a Sin to Nip and Tuck?

"Beauty often wins love. It just does," write Karen Lee-Thorp and Cynthia Hicks in Why Beauty Matters. No wonder women and, increasingly, men are willing to endure the pain and risk of elective cosmetic surgery to attain it. New York Times reporter Alex Kaczynski states it bluntly in her cosmetic surgery expose, Beauty Junkies. "In the end it all comes down to sex. . . . We are looking for love. And we will accept lust."

Few admit this with the aplomb of Cena Rasmussen, a former model who readily confesses that her cosmetic surgery addiction was fueled by the bliss of turning heads. By her own admission, Rasmussen has spent years looking in the mirror. Aesthetic surgery was a biannual ritual that continued for two decades. There were rhinoplasties, breast surgeries, lifts — eyes, face, neck — and non-surgical procedures as well.

Although she had medical complications along the way, her regimen ended with a hyalauronic acid peel in 1999 that burned the skin on her face so badly, it left her looking like a "freak of nature," she says. Since then, Rasmussen has had nothing but $4,000 worth of laser treatments to reduce the scarring. Still, she remains undaunted and is planning another facelift — her third, or is it the fourth? She can't recall.

Rasmussen may represent an extreme in the use of cosmetic surgery, but the trend saw no signs of slowing until the economic crisis. In 2006, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons reported that Americans spent just under $12.2 billion on 11.5 million surgical and non-surgical procedures. That's a 446 percent increase from 1997. Surgical procedures increased by 98 percent, and nonsurgical procedures by 747 percent. Liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgery, abdominoplasty (tummy tuck), and breast reduction were the top surgical procedures that year, while Botox injections, hyalauronic acid, laser hair removal, microderm-abrasion (skin peel), and laser skin resurfacing were the most popular non-surgical techniques.

So is it a sin to get a nip and tuck? It depends on whom you ask.

Lilian Calles Barger, author of Eve's Revenge, says the choice to have cosmetic surgery is not a free one. "If you tell me, 'my mother had cosmetic surgery. She's a very independent woman. She really loves God and she wants to do this, and this is her choice,' I say, 'This is not a free choice. This choice is under duress.'

"The body is not just a hunk of meat," Barger insists. "The Bible talks about how we are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God. The question is, what are we offering our bodies up to when we do that?" She concludes that we're offering them up to "false beauty and to cultural norms that we should be challenging," but adds, "so that is where you can be compassionate, because you can understand that sin is not the sinner by themselves. It is collaborative, communal, reinforced. We support each other in this."

Barger's claim was born out in interviews I conducted with several cosmetic surgery patients, all of whom made their decisions within the context of relationships both personal and professional.

"I don't think [cosmetic surgery] is a spiritual issue in any way," says Rasmussen. "I personally believe that when we die, we're going to have a glorified body that's not going to be physical in any way. So what does the Lord care what we do to our skin?" Rasmussen explains that she both saved for her procedures and tithed faithfully throughout the exercise of her habit.

A middle-aged patient who asked not to be named has had eyelid surgery, a chin implant, a mini-facelift, and Botox. She says that as she struggled with the idea of tampering with the body God gave her, she sensed him saying, "My beloved, you're beautiful. You don't need to do this." She doesn't believe, however, that tuning out the voice of God was sin. What matters, according to this patient, is "where your heart is."

Cissy Brady-Rogers is a therapist who has had a mastectomy, but no reconstruction after breast cancer years ago. She says that our culture "sets women up to feel shame about our bodies." Body shame originates at home where children are not taught what to do with developing bodies and sexual impulses. It is then reinforced in school and through the larger culture. This coincides with what she calls "disembodiment," the phenomenon by which a subject looks into the mirror and sees that he or she does not measure up to cultural ideals and then comes to view their body as an object in need of repair.

Brady-Rogers holds a Master of Divinity along with her counseling credentials. She says patient/consumers are trying to figure out how to save themselves, just like the Galatians were, and, in the process, are biting and devouring one another by increasing the social pressure on all of us to conform to false ideals. "There is always going to be some law, some culturally offered avenue to save ourselves, to make ourselves okay, to fix what's not working," she says. What Paul said is that it's not going to work. Christ is the only one who can save us. "We are free to have plastic surgery. There is not a biblical law that says, 'Thou shalt not have plastic surgery or drive a BMW,' but what Scripture says is: do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love serve one another."

For a woman contemplating aesthetic surgery, she advises, "I would like her to have a group of soul sisters who could support one another in becoming who they are in Christ, and support her in a process of discernment about that decision, not as a solo journey. That may be part of the problem; too many women are making these decisions in isolation from other women."

Sonia Sotomayor: 'I Feel Your Pain'

Women: Imagine you've been having problems with pre-menstrual depression or unpleasant menopausal symptoms. Men: Imagine you're having problems that are probably prostate-related, or maybe you're having trouble getting it up. All else being equal (though of course it never is), would you rather see a male or a female physician?

Empathy matters. That's why I'm not worried about the line from Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's 2001 lecture, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Yes, she needs to explain what she did and did not mean - and I'm sure she'll be given the opportunity to do so. Chances are, she did not mean that she would toss objective law out the window whenever a Latina woman walked into the courtroom. After all, in 1997 Sotomayor told Senator Jeff Sessions, "I do not believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it."

And I'm guessing Sotomayor didn't mean she thinks that, all things being equal, Anglo-Saxon men make inferior judges. In the 2001 lecture, in fact, she said she believes "that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable."

The point is, all things are never equal, and with a diversified set of justices, unconscious prejudices - whether on the part of white males, Latina females, black males, Jewish females, or anyone else - inevitably are held up to the light.

In "The Waves Minority Judges Always Make," New York Times legal correspondent Adam Liptak quotes several studies showing that not only do female and African American judges often rule differently from their white male colleagues, they also affect the way their colleagues understand the issues at stake:

"Anyone who has ever sat on a bench with other judges knows that judges are supposed to influence each other, and they do," Justice Souter wrote in a 1998 dissent in a death penalty case. "One may see something the others did not see, and then they all take another look."

I agree with Washington Post pundit Michael Gerson that "a court should be a place where all are judged impartially, as individuals." However, when he goes on to say that "the Obama/Sotomayor doctrine of empathy challenges this long-established belief," he shows a serious misunderstanding of how impartial judgments are made.

Without empathy, writes conservative columnist David Brooks, people "are not objective decision makers. They are sociopaths." Brooks:

As Dan Kahan of Yale Law School has pointed out, many disputes come about because two judges look at the same situation and they have different perceptions about what the most consequential facts are. One judge, with one set of internal models, may look at a case and perceive that the humiliation suffered by a 13-year-old girl during a strip search in a school or airport is the most consequential fact of the case. Another judge, with another set of internal models, may perceive that the security of the school or airport is the most consequential fact. People elevate and savor facts that conform to their pre-existing sensitivities.

For Brooks, the crucial question is how empathy is used: "Sonia Sotomayor will be a good justice if she can empathize with the many types of people and actions involved in a case, but a bad justice if she can only empathize with one type, one ethnic group or one social class."

Right on, Mr. Brooks. Similarly, a well-trained, widely empathetic doctor can treat many symptoms and both women and men - and indeed, I have had excellent male doctors. Nevertheless, when almost all doctors were males, diseases that afflicted mainly females remained largely unstudied, while studies on equal-opportunity diseases often used only male subjects. Medical science may have been objective, but without the necessary empathy, the practice of medicine was not.

I am not saying you should be thrilled about Sonia Sotomayor. Honestly, I don't know enough about her to say one way or the other. I'm just saying: If we want objective, impartial judgments that result in equal justice for all, we'd better not throw empathy out the window.