2D Love and Lars and the Real Girl

Falling in love with caricatures of girls and women, such as blow-up dolls or pillows imprinted with female characters, is still on the margins of Western culture, but it's getting noted enough to merit a recent New York Times Magazine story about the phenomenon in Japan.

"2D love," what the phenomenon is called in Japan, emerges from a subculture of people who have real relationships with characters in the imaginary worlds of video games, anime, and manga (cartoons and print comics popular in Japan). The NYT Magazine story featured 37-year-old Nisan, a single man who fell in love with the video game character Nemutan. He has a stuffed pillow with her image imprinted on the fabric. He calls Nemutan his girlfriend and takes her out on dates and extensive road trips.

Japanese analysts think the trend reveals the difficulty men (in particular) have negotiating relationships with 3D women. It's easier to control a relationship with an inanimate object than with a real woman who can talk back and will from time to time have her own ideas. A similar explanation has been used to explain the attraction many males have to pornography in the States.

A particularly dark side of 2D love is the sexual obsession men have with prepubescent female characters. Momo, who makes and sells X-rated anime images of prepubescent females, says he has sex with his imaginary lovers. He also says he neither views child pornography nor is attracted to his young niece. Whether or not this trend will translate into harmful behaviors toward young girls is to be determined, but the question has at least been raised. Regardless, being obsessed with 2D images says something has gone terribly awry.

While the first impulse may be alarm, disgust, or laughter at 2D love, the quirky 2007 film Lars and the Real Girl allows for a more empathetic response. Lars, and perhaps men like Nisan, are painfully shy, insecure, lonely, and yet long for relational intimacy. Film reviewers called Lars's character psychotically reclusive, a misfit, and delusional. Yet what he wants represents a deep longing we are created to desire, a relationship safe enough to be known and loved, one in which we can know and love another.

So, what is missing relationally between men and women that leads some men to invest in imaginary relationships rather than real ones (in some cases, prepubescent pillow girlfriends)? Do some men choose imaginary girlfriends because they are easier to control and easier to please? Do men attracted to imaginary lovers fear they will disappoint real women, failing to meet the expectations of flesh-and-blood lovers?

As a sociologist, I wonder if the fear seen at the margins reflects a broader experience shared by other men who nevertheless choose to engage in relationships with real women. Such is often the case - which is why looking at the margins can be informative rather than merely interesting.

In a rapidly changing culture such as ours, where gender norms are being renegotiated from generation to generation, men as well as women struggle to figure out appropriate expectations, hopes, and fears. While the most alarming news about 2D love is it's potential to foster pedophilia, the trend to choose imaginary lovers over real ones might also speak of some men's broader fears of failure to negotiate love well.

China Eases One-Child Policy in Shanghai

Reports began emerging late last week that while China is not lifting its one-child policy - heavily criticized for leading to forced abortions - it is considering amending it based on the needs of Shanghai, which hosts a rapidly aging population and weakening workforce.

Shanghai's Population and Family Planning Commission has begun sending out officials and volunteers to pass out leaflets and offer emotional and financial counseling to families who might be willing to have a second child. More births would help even out the age proportion and bolster the city's economy. And younger people will be needed: Shanghai is home to more than 3 million people over 60, about one-fifth of its population. In 2020, those over 60 are predicted to make up one-third.

At the start of Communist rule in 1949, China's government encouraged population growth and even banned birth control. But the population outgrew the food supply, causing over 30 million deaths from starvation by 1962. The government instated the one-child policy in 1979, and for 30 years has kept a tight rein on the country's population (the world's largest) of 1.3 billion people by monitoring pregnancies, sometimes forcing parents to terminate them.

The one-child policy makes limited exceptions based on location, ethnicity, education, and so on. In urban areas like Shanghai, couples without siblings are permitted to have two children. Rural families (about 53 percent of China's population) are allowed a second child if the first is a girl. Couples who willingly have only one child get honors and benefits, while those who break the rules are punished with fines and property damages.

And everyone is well aware that boys are preferred to girls. With accessibility to ultrasounds in the 1980s, the number of aborted females skyrocketed. Prenatal gender screening was banned in 1994, but the damage was done: This April, a British Medical Journal study found there are 32 million more Chinese boys than girls under age 20.

Although China's policy shift seems rooted more in economic security than in ethical concerns over forced abortions and gender selection, the shift is nonetheless welcome. Many have waited a long time for the one-child policy to change.

Elissa Cooper is an intern at Christianity Today magazine. She has written about Pentecostal pastor Paula White for Her.meneutics.

Dancing Down the Aisle

If you haven't seen "Jill and Kevin's Wedding Entrance," the video that's shown up all over the Internet since late last week, I recommend you watch it now. It's five minutes of pure joy as the St. Paul, Minnesota, couple and their wedding party break into a choreographed dance down the aisle to the tune of R&B singer Chris Brown's hit "Forever." As soon as I finished watching it, I immediately posted it to Facebook and sent it to my friends with only the comment, "Stop whatever you're doing and watch this right now!" In sum, I would say that I like it.

And I'm not the only one. So far it's the second-most-watched video on YouTube this month, with over 10 million views as of today. And only five of those are mine (so far).

From the first beats of "Forever," it's clear that this isn't going to be your standard wedding ceremony. Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz's playful reinterpretation of the tradition re-injects life and, perhaps, meaning into the procession. As Sarah Kaufman writes for The Washington Post:

By dancing their entrances and sending that upbeat, physical energy right back out to their guests, the Peterson-Heinz wedding turns the rote behaviors into spontaneous reactions. Of course the guests watch attentively as the wedding party bobs in. You can bet not a single child had to be shushed at that point. This was no longer a display of bad posture and dyed-to-match pumps - it was an uplifting swell of celebration with a beat. The bride - unescorted - was and wasn't the center of attention. The true focus was on the unified, wordless but palpable emotions of her whole support system.

The guests didn't just stand up for the bride's entrance; they gave her a standing ovation. And by the end, we felt, as Kaufman writes, that they had "pulled us all into their story."

I truly appreciate the way this couple celebrates the community that has brought them to this point. The party moves to the front of the church, and the energy begins to build toward the big moment. Then it comes: there is Jill, dancing not just toward her future husband, her family, and her friends, but with them as she pumps her bouquet in the air to the beat of the words, "Seems like I've waited my whole life / for this one night." And it doesn't matter that this is a secular song, or that they are dancing in a church. In a way that can only be expressed in music and motion, Jill and Kevin seem to "get it."

I am not married, and I haven't spent much time thinking about the meaning of weddings. But as I've shared this video with Christian friends and family, the conversation has in almost every case turned to a discussion of the purpose of a wedding ceremony. Must it be a somber affair? Or does a celebration like this one seem fitting for the occasion? How can we celebrate while honoring the seriousness of the commitments being made?

And how many times did you watch the video?

Corrupt Clergy and Forgiveness

In New Jersey this week, the news is corruption. Forty-four people, including three mayors, a state assemblyman, and five rabbis, have been arrested on various charges, including bribery and organ brokering. Shocking, even for New Jersey, many say. Ho hum, others sigh. For victims, the news is as fresh as an unexpected slap in the face. Imagine being the guy or girl who finds out that a rabbi was going to pocket $150,000 on the sale of your kidney. Imagine being one of those who learns he already has.

As Christians, we're fond of moral equivalence statements designed to inspire us to forgiveness. "There by the grace of God go I" is one. "The ground is level at the foot of the Cross" is another. I hate moral equivalence arguments. They impede the ability of victims to truly forgive. In this case, it is not the same thing for an impoverished father to sell a kidney to feed his family as it is for a member of the clergy to buy it for $10,000 while charging a desperate patient's family $160,000. One behavior, unchecked, may lead to another, but we empathize with the desperation and rightly deride the exploitation.

Still, corruption threatens its victims' souls nearly as much as its perpetrators'. The path of least resistance is to give in to bitterness and self-absorption, especially when expressions of anger at the injury or injustice draw condemnation from friend and foe alike. When our fellow believers hold up as models the Amish who immediately "forgave" the deranged Nickel Mines killer, for example, victims struggling with anger feel doubly violated. As one journalist discovered, even for the Amish, forgiveness is a complicated process.

In my own journey with forgiveness, the most helpful writer I've encountered is theologian Miroslav Volf. I read his book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace after being victimized by corrupt clergymen. Volf writes, "Condemnation is not the heart of forgiveness. It's the indispensable presupposition of it." Now there's a statement I can embrace.

Ah, but not so fast. He goes on to explain: "Forgiveness cuts the tie of equivalence between the offense and the way we treat the offender. I don't demand that the one who has taken my eye lose his eye or that the one who has killed my child by negligence be killed. In fact, I don't demand that he lose anything. I forgo all retribution. In forgiving, I absorb the injury - the way I may absorb, say, the financial impact of a bad business transaction."

Don't misinterpret Volf, though. In his view, systems of discipline are consistent with forgiveness. Criminals should go to jail. Offending clergymen should be defrocked. Our laws rightly prohibit murder, not anger, even though Jesus said its source is the human heart. Volf delineates between discipline and retribution, stating that we "ought to forgive rather than punish because God in Christ forgave."

Having recently served 18 months for a bribery conviction, the former mayor of my New Jersey town, like these others, should be welcomed back into the community. He should not, in my view, hold public office any time soon. Neither should those corrupt clergymen who victimized my church communities still be in pastoral ministry. Where does that leave me?

Volf writes, "Forgiveness places us on a boundary between enmity and friendship, between exclusion and embrace. It tears down the wall of hostility that wrongdoing erects, but it doesn't take us into the territory of friendship." He asks, "Should those who forgive stay in this neutral zone?

"If they did," he answers, "forgiveness would be the generous act of a person who wishes to stay away from the offender. Often that's all we can muster the strength to do, and all that offenders will allow us. Yet at its best, forgiveness hopes for more."

Yes, it hopes for more. It hopes for repentance, reconciliation, and restoration. It hopes for loving reunion and very often doesn't get it. So, how do we love the offender who keeps on offending? Do we "love the sinner and hate the sin"? Does anyone other than God really hate sin? How about Love the sinner, obstruct the sin, uphold the good, protect the innocent? Will that work?

The Urban Chicks Movement

"What are you building?" the cashier asked as we paid for several sheets of plywood and some 2×4s. When we told her she said, "a lot of people are building chicken coops this summer."

City ordinances are changing to allow for backyard chicken keeping. From Portland to New York City, ordinances are being revised, spelling out what will be allowed as cities respond to pressure from residents for permission to raise chickens. (See ordinances for information about your city.) Most cities prohibit roosters (this video shows why) and backyard slaughtering, and limit the number of hens allowed and the placement of coops near homes and property lines. Many prohibit backyard chickens altogether, though if neighbors don't complain residents raise them anyway.

Urban chickens were common in the 19th century, and helped supplement family diets and budgets during the Great Depression. While the current urban chicken movement did not emerge in response to economic woes, it may play a part in reshaping how we think about ourselves as consumers. The trend is part of a growing movement encouraging people to buy local or raise their own - whether beans and corn or eggs and honey.

Blogs from chicken-keepers suggest that most of them raise chickens in support of sustainable, simple, and healthy eating. But people keep chickens for multiple reasons. Some are protesting the inhumane lives hens in battery cages at factory farms live. Some want to be more connected and in control of food growing processes that sustain them.

For Mark and me, getting chickens is also how we hope to control the larvae that become pear slugs that eat the leaves off our fruit trees. We like that chickens will scratch through our garden in the fall after we're done harvesting, eating grubs and garden leftovers while pooping out rich fertilizer. The eggs will be a nice addition. Since we aren't big egg eaters, we're thinking of implementing a Saturday breakfast for friends and family. We'll sell or give extras to neighbors and colleagues.

Caring for a few hens is part of our bigger commitment to eating "just food." Just food is a tangible way to live out faith. Since we eat every day, our multiple food choices support the flourishing or contribute to the diminishing of others' well being. Just food pays workers a fair price for their labor (so we gave up bananas after researching the human-rights abuses in the banana industry, although I ate my fill of them in England, where fairly traded bananas are readily available). Just food is respectful, nurturing, and humane in the care and treatment of God's creatures. Just food supports sustainable farming practices that minimize harm to the soil, water, and air (which do not characterize typical corporate farming and food processing practices). Just food tastes better - on the tongue and in the soul.

Our chicks are two and a half weeks old. They live in a big cardboard box in the garage, lined with a burlap sack and leaves until they get big enough for the coop. We're about done painting it, which matches the beehives, which is ridiculous, but a reminder that we're all in this together - we need each other. We'll do our best to deny predators chicken suppers in exchange for eggs. We'll give hens a great area for foraging and dust bathing post-harvest, and we'll get grub control and fertilizer in return. Meanwhile the bees will pollinate the garden and orchard, and we'll feed them in the winter to compensate for taking some of their honey later this summer. All this gives me daily reminders that God "so loved the world" (John 3:16) and sustains it all - people, bees, chickens, even the soil that makes all this eating and living possible.

Journalists Link Rising Teen Pregnancy Rates to Bush Administration

The rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in the U.S. rose steadily during the Bush administration, U.K. newspaper The Guardian reported earlier this week.

The Centers for Disease Control press release mentions three statistics as "signs that progress has halted in some areas" (the full report is here):

• Teen birth rates increased in 2006 and 2007, following large declines from 1991-2005.
• Rates of AIDS cases among males aged 15-24 years increased during 1997-2006 (AIDS-related data reflect people with HIV who have already progressed to AIDS.)
• Syphilis cases among teens and young adults aged 15-19 and 20-24 years have increased in both males and females in recent years.

U.S. News and World Report's Bonnie Erbe responds to the statistics by directly blaming Bush and the "Christian Right," while The Dallas Morning News's Tod Robberson offers tips for how to educate teens about sex, and Time magazine adds perspective by examining the numbers specifically for young women in foster care.

Not all the data in the release are new; The New York Times reported on some of it in 2007, where Robert Rector, a senior fellow with the American Heritage Association, connected low levels of education with a desire for motherhood without marriage.

"We should be telling them that for the well-being of any child, it's critically important that you be over the age of 20 and that you be married," he said. "That message is not given at all."

The Guardian article reports, "Although the CDC does not attribute a cause, groups that support comprehensive sex education have seized on the report as evidence of the failure of religiously-driven policies that shy away from teaching about contraception in favor of emphasizing avoiding sexual contact."

Most headlines link the Bush administration with the rising pregnancy and STD rates. This brings up the question: If the three things are linked, why did teen pregnancy rates continue to drop for the first five years of Bush's tenure before rising in his sixth year? Maybe there's a good answer for this - if so, please leave it in the comments.

The Guardian quotes Kristi Hamrick with the conservative nonprofit American Values as saying:

"It is ridiculous to say that a program we nominally invest in has failed when it fails to overcome the most sexualized culture in world history. Education that emphasizes abstinence as the best option for teens makes up a minuscule part of overall sex education in the United States."

In other words, pregnancy rates increased because we were not pushing abstinence education hard enough, and we need to work harder.

What do you think?

Jimmy Carter Speaks Up on Women

Former President Jimmy Carter recently penned dramatic columns for The Guardian and The Age, leading some people to believe that he's leaving the Southern Baptist Convention for the first time.

So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief - confirmed in the holy scriptures - that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

But Carter actually made the decision to leave the SBC back in 2000, even though he did not have an official role in the 16-million-member denomination.

In his Guardian op-ed, titled "The words of God do not justify cruelty to women," the former President condemns gender inequality among all religions:

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world.

Southern Baptist Joe Carter humorously responds to the born-again President's apparent departure at First Thoughts, a First Things blog:

For decades we Southern Baptists have been trying to trade him to the Methodists, though they've persistently refused the terms (in exchange for taking the former POTUS off our hands we've offered to throw in three pews, a parking lot in Dallas, and a signed copy of Billy Graham's autobiography).

As Joe Carter notes, Jimmy Carter still serves as a deacon and Sunday school teacher at his home church in Plains, Georgia, Maranatha Baptist Church, which is still affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. (Check out the FAQ page where Carter is mentioned 12 times).

On a more serious note, the former President addresses the injustices of women across the globe.

The male interpretations of religious texts and the way they interact with, and reinforce, traditional practices justify some of the most pervasive, persistent, flagrant and damaging examples of human rights abuses. At their most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime.

It seems odd that Carter would compare not ordaining women with genital mutilation. Evangelicals are deeply divided over women's ordination, but does Carter's argument work? Do Christian leaders who oppose women's ordination lay the groundwork for systemic injustice against women?

Of God and Galaxies

Forty years ago Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the moon, with an estimated 500 million people watching them via live broadcast below on planet Earth. I was not among those watching - I hadn't been born yet - and there hasn't been a single man-on-the-moon live broadcast in my lifetime. Eugene Cernan was the last man to visit the moon, in 1972.

Aldrin, Cernan, and five other astronauts met in Washington, D.C. yesterday to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the moon walk. During a press conference they were at times critical of the state of our nation's space program, urging future generations to surpass their accomplishments, but they also acknowledged the significant expense involved in space exploration. In a discussion on the merits of travel to Mars, David Scott, commander of the Apollo 15 mission, said, "We have to find a reason to go to Mars that will continue the funding."

Is pure exploration reason enough? I look up at the moon at night and it seems almost impossible to me that people have walked its far-off surface. (Of course, there are those who still say it never happened, that the whole moon landing was staged, a hoax.) I get chills listening to Armstrong's recorded voice, some 238,855 miles away, actually experiencing what countless generations had only dreamed about. I can't imagine looking at our planet from the vantage point of space.

But as for reasons to explore? I don't know. My high school biology teacher used to say that the more we know about our world, whether we're sending rockets into space or parsing the atom, the more we know about our Creator. And if "the heavens declare the glory of God," how much more so the galaxies, stars, and the "vast expanse of interstellar space," as it says in the Book of Common Prayer? I love seeing, and learning about, these traces of glorious fingerprints all over our world.

And I'd like to see a woman on the moon, someday, too.

The New York Times's Freakonomics blog has an excellent discussion on the costs and merits of space exploration, and I'd highly recommend reading it. NASA's budget last year was $17.3 billion, more money than I know how to understand in any sort of meaningful way, yet still just a drop in the bucket compared with the budget of the U.S. Department of Education.

What do you think? Should we allocate resources for the exploration of space, the final frontier? Continue to fund our space program, to infinity and beyond?

As for me, I'm going to go out and look at the moon.

Building Up Without Walls

Popular Pentecostal teacher Paula White announced two weeks ago that she is taking the helm of the megachurch that she and ex-husband Randy White founded 18 years ago.

Paula's willingness to become senior pastor of Without Walls International Church - a Tampa, Florida, nondenominational congregation that once boasted 20,000+ members - shows immense optimism on her part, because the question remains if Without Walls has a future, or if it should.

Without Walls' leaders have been accused of preaching a prosperity gospel that says God will bless believers by making them succeed in all things, including in finances. One article reports that Without Walls used to have over 23,000 members (including celebrities and world leaders) and received up to $40 million in donations annually. All the while, the Whites were allegedly purchasing expensive homes and buying or leasing costly cars and private jets. Last fall the church faced foreclosure by the Evangelical Christian Credit Union, and is rumored to be in serious debt.

In August 2007, the Whites announced they were divorcing after 18 years of marriage. Since then, church membership has dwindled: three services have been cut to two, and hits to Without Walls' website and Paula's personal site have dropped dramatically.

Then, in November 2007, Without Walls came under a Senate Finance Committee investigation into its and five other ministries' use of donations and financial records. Led by Sen. Charles Grassley, the ongoing investigation has looked into six nonprofit ministries whose leaders' wealth and lavish spending led the committee to question whether the nonprofits were misspending donations and keeping sound financial records. The Whites have claimed innocence, but have yet to provide the committee with all the required documents.

Now, Randy has announced that he is leaving the church due to poor health. Paula has been traveling for her various ministries since the couple's split, but agreed to lead Without Walls at her ex-husband's request. "The timing feels right for coming back to Tampa regularly, whether it's once a month or more often," Paula said in an e-mail to The Tampa Tribune. "Randy and I both needed some time to heal and I think the congregation did, too."

As The Tampa Tribune eloquently put it, "Rebuilding the church could prove harder than building it."

Randy recently stated that the church needs "a financial miracle."

Somehow, that doesn't seem like the right solution.

Julia Duin: The Anna Syndrome

Summertime is when weddings abound. No one longs for them more than the abundance of single women in our nation's churches. The dearth of marriage opportunities for most of these women calls forth certain coping strategies, one of which I'll call the "Anna syndrome" after the prophetess in Luke 2:36-38 who hung around the Jerusalem temple and happened to catch the baby Jesus on a good day.

Anna had been married at one point and as a widow was presumably living off her husband's estate. But he'd been dead many years and she had no children to provide for her, so perhaps she was quite poor. But instead of resorting to prostitution, which was the sole choice for women back then, she lingered about the temple and prayed.

I bring this Bible passage up because of memories that arose while helping a single female friend move. I got the job of organizing the piles of notes she had lying around. It struck me that so many were related to various church events geared to keeping members busy: retreats, visiting speakers, conferences, and Bible studies. This woman was in her 60s, poor and headed toward an old age on Social Security. She hung around church because it's the only family she has in the area.

What good had all these church events done her, I wondered, in terms of helping her find a Christian man and build a family of her own? Isn't that what the Bible encourages us all to do in 1 Cor. 7 in terms of dealing with sexual desires? Doesn't Psalm 68 say God sets the lonely in families? I'm talking nuclear families, not this great herd of singles so prevalent in churches today. This woman's pastor barely noticed her because women like her were plentiful in his congregation. She had chances to get out and get more of a life, but she tended to spend many of her free weekends doing something at the church instead of, say, foster care, being a Big Sister, volunteering in the community, writing a book, helping people learn English or do their taxes, finding a man through a singles website, and so on.

I'm not criticizing church attendance per se, but I feel sorry for these church groupies. My friend was dying to meet a man, but there were way too few of them at her church. Single women tend to hang around church. Single men do not.

Recently, I counseled another single female friend - also jobless and poor - to move to another state and get a new life. But, she protested, she just could not give up Friday night worship at this church. But leaders at this church could care less about her; she is close to being homeless and they have not helped her.

As for helping her find a mate - which would solve a multitude of her problems - why is it that pastors in places like Japan and India see it as their duty to help their singles match up, but most American pastors could not be bothered?

So many questions, so few answers. A few women I know took radical action to get themselves a family instead of filling their days with church events. One Catholic woman moved back to her family in Texas, enlisted their help in finding a mate, and got married. "Your church is not your family," she said. "Your family's your family."

A single Presbyterian friend in Florida wasn't seeing men at her church, so she joined a matchmaking service, found a man, and now has two daughters. Both of these women are now set for life.

As for me, I realized I was falling into this same trap 12 years ago, so stopped many of my church activities, switched to volunteering with Kurdish immigrants, and eventually adopted a little girl, who has turned into a darling 4-year-old. (My brothers and parents live in the Pacific Northwest, so I am basically on my own here on the East Coast.) And I discovered I was just fine missing all those healing conferences and Bible speakers because I had basically heard it all in the first 25 years of my born-again life.

I've loved - finally - having my own family, albeit a tiny one. But it wasn't my church or Christian friends who encouraged me to go the route of the working single mom.

Consider your options, my fellow single women. You have so much to gain.

Cohabiting Couples on the Rise

A new national study suggests that the trend toward cohabiting continues its forward march for young adults, many of whom still expect to marry someday.

More than three-quarters of 20- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. said they believe that "love, fidelity, and making a lifelong commitment are very important to a successful relationship." Women, predictably, aspire to marriage at significantly higher rates than men. Perhaps less predictably, married young adults tend to have negative views of living together with no intent to marry, even though (or perhaps because) more than half of them have cohabited themselves.

In 2008, the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University published "Cohabitation, Marriage and Child Well-being," a report in which sociologist David Popenoe traces the history of cohabitation back through the sexual revolution. He concludes,

It should be obvious . . . that in an era of relatively unrestricted premarital sex, women in the work place, delayed marriage, and high marital breakup, there is a profound logic - almost an inevitability - about the practice of living together before marriage. What are the alternatives? Either marriage at a young age (not a good idea because, among other reasons, it limits access to higher education and is associated with a much higher risk of divorce), no sex before marriage (hard to imagine reinstituting this social norm across the population), or ‘sleeping around' rather than living with one sex partner (not good for a variety of reasons). It seems likely, therefore, that non-marital cohabitation is a practice that is not going away anytime soon.

Popenoe, former co-chair of the Council on Families in America, and author most recently of Families Without Fathers, doesn't view this state of affairs as neutral. Not only is cohabitation demonstrably bad for children, he says, "Cohabiting partners tend to have a weaker sense of couple identity, less willingness to sacrifice for the other, and a lower desire to see the relationship go long term. This holds true even in nations where cohabitation has become common and institutionalized."

Popenoe's conclusions corroborate those of a study published in the Journal of Family Psychology this February. It found that cohabiting couples often end up marrying for all the wrong reasons, such as a joint lease and shared ownership of household items.

Popenoe sees little hope of reversing the trend apart from "a broad cultural shift, reflected in the hearts and minds of the citizenry."

If what precedes marriage for many young adults is parental divorce, hooking up, and casual cohabitation, how will this broad cultural shift emerge? It is only through a sacramental view of sex and marriage that young adults have any hope of achieving and maintaining love, fidelity, and lifelong commitment. Failed marriages, while they adhere to a structure of fidelity, often betray the substance of their calling. The commitment one makes before God and community consists of far more than a pact to stay together; it is a proactive commitment to love in the face of everything. Learning to love chastely before marriage strengthens the footing upon which a healthy union is built.

As Christians, we should look upon the cohabiting trend with sadness, but also as an opportunity for the gospel. The pain of failed relationships cries out for the healing touch of Christ. To the wounded, Jesus would say, "I am willing. Be healed. Now go, and sin no more."

Harry Potter and the Vampire Battle

No, I'm not talking about Severus Snape and his vampiric qualities. Last night's midnight opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the latest installment in the blockbuster book-movie franchise, brought with it comparisons to another teen fantasy phenomenon, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series.

The sixth Harry Potter film features front and center the budding hormones of the now-16-year-old wizards, but, compared with Meyer's vampire oeuvre, J. K. Rowling's Harry seems downright innocent - a phrase rarely attached to the magical tales, at least among many evangelicals.

The "question" of Harry Potter - good fun, or evil vehicle for witchcraft? - has circulated through Christian culture since the first movie introduced the boy wizard to the mainstream in 2001. Eight years later - years that have brought the series' conclusion and Rowling's admission that her Christian faith deeply influenced her work - many evangelicals still oppose the book's positive portrayal of witchcraft and wizardry, fearing it gives curious children an entry point into the occult.

Christianity Today magazine has weighed in on the controversy; I personally believe the books are not only harmless, but can also deepen our faith by engaging our hearts and minds in an epic story that explores some very biblical ideas, a la Tolkien and Lewis. The series' conclusion relies heavily on Christian imagery (I'll stop there to avoid spoiling Deathly Hallows' incredibly powerful finale), and in the end, we see that the spells and potions are merely plot devices to depict themes of good vs. evil, the importance of sacrifice, and the power of love. Even the Vatican has stepped out in support of Half-Blood Prince, giving the film a surprising two thumbs up to its treatment of adolescent love.

The fact that the Vatican even commented on this represents the new realities of a "post-Twilight" world. About a month ago, I made my way through Meyer's four-book series about vampires, werewolves, and the girl who loves them. Perhaps that is not generous enough to the books; I may have "made my way through" the first book, but I completely devoured the remaining three, despite what I found to be horrible writing and a thin plot. Really, these books are all about the boys. It's the romantic tension that pushes the characters and the plot forward. These famously chaste vampires/werewolves/humans are completely intoxicated with each other, thinking about little else but the love (and lust) they have for each other. It's all-consuming, obsessive, and very unhealthy.

When I finished the books, it was difficult to fight the feeling that I was incomplete until I found an Edward (or, in my case, Jacob). And I was actively fighting the false ideals presented in the novels. While Harry Potter fans will certainly head to the theaters in droves, by tapping directly into the hormonal vein of teenage girls, Twilight fever is still on the rise. Potter fans may have created their own musical genre, but "Twi-hards," as they are called, will now have their own TV show devoted to news about the series.

So, is Harry Potter as "hot" as Twilight? A lot of people will be asking that question as the box office numbers roll in during the coming weeks. But as the Harry Potter demographic ages - Quidditch is now an intercollegiate sport - the Twilight phenomenon seems to grow younger with every passing day. One quote in a Wall Street Journal comparison of the two franchises' marketing plans particularly worried me:

Haami Nyangibo, a 13-year-old girl from London, says that after years of reading "Harry Potter" she has come to find the "Twilight" books "far more relatable. They just engage in a more realistic way. A lot of my friends have gone off ‘Harry Potter' and are onto ‘Twilight,'" she says.

I'm observing the same thing among the teenagers I work with in my church's youth group. While I'm all for enjoying a good story, I worry that the unrealistic romantic ideals of the Twilight series - that romantic love should consume every other part of your life, that you can't live without your "other half" - is ultimately harming the teenage girls who devour these books and movies without input from mentors. And this isn't even addressing the "weak heroine" image portrayed by protagonist Bella, who barely seems able to walk without the help of her big, strong men, who must often physically carry or guide her to avoid self-injury.

That's the great thing about the new Harry Potter movie. These teenagers have crushes, struggle through the ups and downs of dating relationships, and deal with heartache, but while these situations create some funny and touching moments, they represent one aspect of much deeper, more thoughtful characters. It is their friendships - with each other and with their mentors - that solidly anchor the film, and hopefully provide some much-needed contrast to their vampire counterparts.

Breast Cancer and the Bible

Gone are the days when personalizing your Bible meant choosing between a leather or patterned Bible cover.

The wide variety of Bibles currently on the market allows for customization based on age, sex, and interest. There are Bibles for teenage girls (with "a unique design that fits her lifestyle") and college students, Bibles for men and Bibles for women, picture-book Bibles (even Manga Bibles), and Bibles for occasions, like the American Patriot's Bible, released by Thomas Nelson this summer to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Now you can also customize the Bible to a particular cause. Last year, HarperOne released The Green Bible, to "help you see that caring for the earth is not only a calling, but a lifestyle"; now Tyndale House has a Hungry Planet Bible (part of a project "raising awareness of the plight of the homeless and hungry") and a Pray for a Cure Bible aimed at breast cancer support, released in 2007. This September, HarperOne will release the Pink Ribbon Bible. One dollar of every purchase will go to the Pink Ribbon Girls, a nonprofit organization providing support, education, and awareness of breast cancer. Although Pink Ribbon Girls is not a Christian nonprofit, founder Tracie Metzger says the Bible was an encouragement in her own battle with breast cancer.

These specialty Bibles allow their owners to identify themselves by a cause they feel passionate about, not just their stage of life or color preference. But are we shaping the Bible to our lifestyle more than molding our lifestyle to the Bible?

Tyndale House suggests that its Hungry Planet Bible is ideal as a gift for the homeless people encountered in your life. Likewise, HarperOne suggests the Pink Ribbon Bible is a perfect way to express your support for a friend struggling with breast cancer. Both ideas seem good, at least on the surface: maybe a homeless person would feel touched, and maybe a friend would feel loved and encouraged. But maybe that homeless person would rather have a meal, or that friend doesn't want to be defined by her disease.

More issues are raised by this type of personalization: Is it appropriate to co-opt the Bible, even for a good cause? Does personalization dilute the Bible's primary purpose? In a recent First Things essay, Wheaton College English professor Alan Jacobs responds to The Green Bible, raising a theological concern with tailoring our Bible to a cause. He challenges the idea of "start[ing] with things we know to be true from trusted sources — Al Gore, perhaps? — and then . . . turn to Scripture to measure it against those preexisting and reliable authorities."

Issues like feeding the hungry, caring for creation, and supporting breast cancer victims are clearly things that Christians should and do care about. And these customized Bibles may be effective in raising awareness and funds for such matters. But at what point does personalizing the Bible cross a line? When does customizing our Bible's binding or study notes become an attempt to customize God?

Nancy Guthrie: Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow

Nancy Guthrie is no stranger to suffering. After her second child, Hope, died within a year of birth from Zellweger syndrome, a rare, fatal genetic abnormality, Guthrie began writing Holding On to Hope, a book about coping with loss and grief. She was in the final stages of writing when she became pregnant with a third child, Gabriel, who was also diagnosed with Zellweger. Gabriel lived for six months.

Since Gabriel's death, Guthrie has written many books and articles, and has traveled around the country speaking at conferences about the Christian response to suffering. Her latest work, Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow (Tyndale), which came out last month, is an expansion of themes introduced in her previous books, adding, as Nancy writes in the introduction, "the perspective of years and further understanding of the Scriptures." Her.meneutics contributor Ruth Moon talked to Guthrie about the health-and-wealth gospel and how to comfort friends who are grieving.

What place do you want Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow to have on the bookshelf of Christian books about suffering? What niche does it fill?

I hope this book is not a "grief" book. It speaks to people who are grieving, but I hope people see it as a theological book. I hope that the book would be that theological thinking through of suffering, but also an invitation to those of us who say that Jesus means everything to us and that we want to follow him, to live that out in the hardest, lowest places of life, that when we enter into unimaginable suffering, it's obvious that Jesus is still everything to us, that he is still the solid ground beneath our feet, and that he is who we're grabbing hold of and depending on and whom we love and treasure and trust.

You organize this book around 11 statements from Jesus on suffering, such as, "I, Too, Have Heard God Tell Me No," and "I Am Giving Life to Those Who Believe in Me." Do you feel you learned anything while writing those statements?

Absolutely. One of the things I have struggled with is that when we look at the Gospels, they overflow with stories of Jesus' visible healing of people. That creates a struggle for modern-day believers: Okay, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. So can I, should I, expect that he wants to do that, will do that, in my life? The most significant step was pursuing an understanding of what Jesus' healing ministry's purpose was, what he wanted us to see about himself.

A lot of believers assume that what Jesus was saying about himself was that he wants to heal our bodies. What I've seen is that he was giving us a picture of his healing power in the way that he healed bodies, but the more significant message he had is about his character, his ability to bring healing, not only to our bodies but to our souls as well.

Is this related to the "name it and claim it" theology, in which if you pray hard enough, you'll get what you want?

There are two clear places where Jesus speaks directly to that. One is where we overhear him pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. So often we hear people quote the verse from James, "The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working" (5:16, ESV). Well, who is more righteous than Jesus? And there he is, pouring out his wants. Not just one time but three times, he prays to his Father, "If there be any other way, let this cup pass from me." It helps us to see how Jesus responds when he comes to God, crying out in prayer, with what he wants, and God says "no." Jesus responds, "I want your will to be done, not mine."

The other place we're instructed on that is what Jesus says to Paul. Paul comes to God three times asking him to take away that thorn in the flesh. If we use the modern equation of the health-and-wealth gospel, is somebody going to say that Paul didn't have faith? I hope not. Paul comes with this prayer to God, and instead of responding to him and saying, "Okay, you have enough faith, so I'll give you what you pray for," Jesus responds to Paul offering himself. He says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (1 Cor. 12:9). That message goes directly against so much of what we hear in the health-and-wealth gospel of, "If you have enough faith he'll take it away," and that it's always his will to take it away.

You give examples in the book of advice or words from friends that were not helpful. What is a good way to comfort grieving people?

A lot of times we fail our friends when we too quickly jump on the bandwagon to assure them that we are going to throw everything we can into praying their suffering away. If we really love our friends, what we want is for God to accomplish his good purposes in the suffering, not merely to take it away. There's lots of good ways that God uses suffering, which we read about over and over in Scripture. I don't want to be the friend who says the easy thing: "Yeah, you shouldn't have to experience this," or "I don't want you to have to hurt." Instead, I want to pray that God accomplishes everything he wants to accomplish through it, because I know that that will be for your ultimate good, and for your ultimate happiness and joy.

Did you write the paraphrases of Jesus' words at the end of each section?

Yeah.

Were you nervous about doing that?

Yes, because I get nervous when I see somebody put words in the mouth of God that I don't think come from him. That's one reason I put all the verses from which I drew them from there so it would be clear.

Sometimes it helps us to hear Scripture in a paraphrase form, not study paraphrases, but I know for me, oftentimes it helps to just hear it that way. I'm hoping that's helpful to that hurting reader. Sometimes the way we read Scripture, we can become cold and hard to it. Those certain words and phrases sometimes have to be reframed and paraphrased to make them fresh.

Where Does Francis Collins Stand on Stem-Cell Research?

President Obama announced last Wednesday his pick of Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian, to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the government's biomedical research wing. While a couple news reports have highlighted onlookers' hesitation over Collins's faith, few have examined Collins's views on embryonic stem-cell research, for which President Obama lifted by executive order a ban on federal funding this March.

So what exactly are Collins's views on the ethics of embryonic stem-cell research and when life begins? Below are some comments he has made on the matter in the last few years. See what you can parse out:

In a 2006 interview with Steve Paulson of Salon:
Paulson: Geneticists are sometimes accused of "playing God," especially when it comes to genetic engineering. And there are various thorny bioethical issues. What's your position on stem cell research?

Collins: Stem cells have been discussed for 10 years, and yet I fear that much of that discussion has been more heat than light. First of all, I believe that the product of a sperm and an egg, which is the first cell that goes on to develop a human being, deserves considerable moral consequences. This is an entity that ultimately becomes a human. So I would be opposed to the idea of creating embryos by mixing sperm and eggs together and then experimenting on the outcome of that, purely to understand research questions.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands of such embryos in freezers at in vitro fertilization clinics. In the process of in vitro fertilization, you almost invariably end up with more embryos than you can reimplant safely. The plausibility of those ever being reimplanted in the future - more than a few of them - is extremely low. Is it more ethical to leave them in those freezers forever or throw them away? Or is it more ethical to come up with some sort of use for those embryos that could help people? I think that's not been widely discussed.

In a 2007 interview with Ben Wattenberg of Think Tank, a PBS discussion show:
Collins: Stem cells are really not part of genome research, but they're part of medical research and they're controversial so they tend to, sort of, fall in my lap, too.

Wattenberg: And - what - what is your view of it? That we ought to - proceed on the research?

Collins: So I think one thing we ought to do is, sort of, tone down the rhetoric and try to get our scientific facts straight. So stem cells - there's lots of different kinds of stem cells. The kind that I think many people are most concerned about are the ones that are derived from a human embryo which is produced by a sperm and an egg coming together. The way you and I got here.

There are hundreds of thousands of those embryos currently frozen away in in vitro fertilization clinics. And it is absolutely unrealistic to imagine that anything will happen to those other than they're eventually getting discarded. So as much as I think human embryos deserve moral status, it is hard to see why it's more ethical to throw them away than to take some that are destined for discarding and do something that might help somebody.

Wattenberg:
So - so you would disagree with the current political executive branch view of that. I mean, President Bush is against that.

Collins: I have to be careful here because I am a member of the executive branch as a government employee.

Wattenberg: That's why I'm asking the question.

Collins: But as a scientist - I would say we are currently not making as much progress as we could if we had access to more of these stem cell lines. The ones that are currently available for federal funding is a very limited set and they clearly have flaws that make them hard to use. But you know what? I think that kind of stem cell research is actually not the part that's going to be most interesting.

The part that's really showing the most promise is to take a skin cell from you or me and convince that cell, which has the complete genome, to go back in time and become capable of making a liver cell or a brain cell or a blood cell if you need it to. That reprogramming. That's called semantic cell nuclear transfer in the current mode. And yet people still refer to those products as an embryo. Well, there's no sperm and egg involved here.

And that's where I think we've really gotten muddled. That the distinction between these various types of biology has been all murkified. And people are beginning to argue in very irrational ways based on a lack of understanding what the science says. If we could back off from all of the, sort of, hard edged rhetoric and really say, okay, what is science teaching us, I suspect that the moral dilemmas are not nearly as rough as people think they are.

In a 2001 interview with Agnieszka Tennant of Christianity Today:
Tennant: You once described yourself as "intensely conflicted" in regard to stem-cell research. What's the cause of this conflictedness?

Collins:
It is a classic example of a collision between two very important principles. One is the sanctity of human life and the other is our strong mandate as human beings to alleviate suffering and to treat terrible diseases like diabetes, Parkinson's, and spinal-cord injury. The very promising embryonic stem-cell research might potentially provide remarkable cures for those disorders. We don't know that, but it might. And at the same time, many people feel, I think justifiably, this type of research is taking liberties with the notion of the sanctity of human life, by manipulating cells derived from a human embryo.

--/

Justin Barnard, philosophy professor at Union University, this morning provided a helpful critique of what he sees as Collins's ambiguity about embryonic stem-cell research. The day before Collins was picked, the NIH updated its guidelines for how federal funding can be used for stem-cell research: While NIH funds cannot be used to directly derive stem cells from human embryos, thus destroying them, they can now be used to conduct research on stem cell lines that have already been derived from destroyed human embryos.

Barnard explains why this is problematic: "In effect, the new guidelines provide an incentive to private research entities to obtain so-called 'leftover' embryos from fertility clinics and derive stem cell lines from them in order to obtain NIH research dollars to study the derived lines." He goes on to say this is "effectively outsourcing the destruction of human life."

He ends by asking Collins to "come clean. Either he upholds the dignity of human life or he doesn't. If he does, and he accepts the nomination to head the NIH, then it seems that he is deeply compromised as a professing evangelical Christian. If he does not, then the evangelical community needs to know."

What do you think? Can Collins still be considered a "professing evangelical Christian" while supporting stem-cell research on embryos that are stored at in vitro fertilization clinics and would otherwise be discarded?

Conservative Women Respond to Sotomayor

Conservatives will likely paint Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as an activist judge at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, which are set to begin Monday.

Those who oppose her nomination may focus on her remark about a "wise Latina" who would "hopefully" make better decisions because of her life experiences than a white male judge who had not shared them.

A CNN/Opinion Research poll reports that 47 percent say she should be confirmed, 40 said she should not, while 13 percent were unsure. Previous judges carried higher numbers: John Roberts (60/26), Samuel Alito (54/30), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (53/14), Clarence Thomas (52/17). She received the highest rating from the American Bar Association, and even an endorsement from former Clinton special prosecutor Ken Starr.

During Sotomayor's time as a judge, she's never ruled directly on anything related to Roe v. Wade. But Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Benjamin Cardin, both of whom are pro-choice, said they spoke with Sotomayor about Roe and were encouraged by her answers. Republican Senator Jim DeMint asked Sotomayor during a private meeting whether she believed an unborn child had any rights. According to the release, she said she "had never thought about it."

Pro-life groups are most concerned about Sotomayor's involvement with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed at least six briefs related to abortion.

Several conservative women groups released statements earlier this week outlining their concerns about Sotomayor:

Charmaine Yoest, President and CEO of Americans United for Life

Her record of activism in support of a radical pro-abortion agenda is clear and documented. This is a judge with a record significantly worse than Judge Souter's. We are asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to seriously consider the consequences of confirming a Supreme Court justice whose radical record shows she would rule against all common-sense legal protections for the unborn, including parental notification, informed consent and bans on partial-birth abortion.

Connie Mackey, senior vice president for FRCAction

. . . Sonia Sotomayor is a judicial activist who will use the courts to make policy reflective of her own personal judgments as opposed to ruling based upon the tenets put forth by the Constitution. Her career as an activist is well-documented and disqualifies her from taking the 9th seat on the United States Supreme Court.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List

Sonia Sotomayor’s record of support for judicial activism and her work for the pro-abortion Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund offer little comfort that she will be a friend to the unborn on the Supreme Court. Given what we know about Sonia Sotomayor’s own judicial philosophy, including her support of policymaking from the bench, senators have just cause to reject her appointment to the United States Supreme Court.

Genevieve Wood, vice president of strategic initiatives at The Heritage Foundation

I am troubled by Judge Sotomayor’s rejection of Justice O’Connor’s favored adage that a wise old man would reach the same conclusion as a wise old woman. It is deeply offensive that she has suggested that the sexes and ethnicities ‘have basic differences in logic and reasoning,’ and even more offensive that she believes it is somehow patriotic to indulge in gender or ethnic biases.

She worked with organizations that aggressively fought against common-sense regulations on abortion. Her flippant dismissal of cases and unwillingness to provide Constitutional reasoning for her decisions exposes her arrogance, disrespect for our judicial system and the people whose lives are dramatically impacted by her decisions.

The Faith of Our Mothers

This week is Vacation Bible School at our church, and my four-year-old daughter's first year in attendance. In a moment of questionable sanity, I volunteered to help out in the nursery, with my two-year-old and three-month-old sons in tow. Suffice it to say, it's been a very VBS-centric sort of week.

On the CD of VBS songs, there's a hip-hop rendition of "To God Be the Glory" that starts out with a funky beat and a suave voice chanting, Check it out now, to God be the glory! "I wonder what Fanny Crosby would think of this?" I asked my husband as we listened to the CD in the car on our way home from church.

"Why?" he asked.

"She wrote this song," I told him. "She wrote, like, a hundred hymns or something, I think. I read a biography about her when I was little."

When we got home, I looked up Fanny Crosby online and found that my memory was slightly off. Crosby actually wrote over 8,000 hymns during her lifetime, and is considered by some to be the most prolific hymnist in recorded history.

In the anthology Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined, editors Amy Hudock and Andrea J. Buchanan write about the legacy left to mother-writers by women who have mothered and written throughout history. But "our cultural memory seems so short," they observe. "Many of the mother-writers of the past have been largely forgotten, their legacy lost for their creative daughters."

I thought about the legacy that Christian women throughout the ages have left for their daughters as I started reading, again, about Fanny Crosby. Blinded in 1820 at six weeks of age by an improperly performed medical procedure, Crosby's story began to take on more meaning for me as I read about not only her hymnody, but also her life as a preacher, a lobbyist, and a mother whose only child died as a baby. About her blindness, Crosby is quoted as saying:

It seemed intended by the bless­ed prov­idence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dis­pensa­tion. If perfect earth­ly sight were of­fered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distract­ed by the beau­tiful and interest­ing things about me.

Wow.

The church's history is rich with stories of remarkable women like Fanny Crosby, women who did incredible things for their Lord and for the world. Harriet Tubman, Florence Nightingale, Anne Bradstreet, Hildegard of Bingen - these women's stories are ones that I want to make sure I pass on to my daughter, and my sons.

Back in April, writing about modern-day evangelical women, Katelyn Beaty asked readers to "help us think of the women we have forgotten who are shaping the broader culture for Christ." I'd like to ask something similar: who are the Christian women throughout history whose stories have moved you? Whose testimonies, whose stories of faith do you want to ensure we don't forget?

In 1875, a blind woman wrote a song that my daughter will uh-huh her way through today at Vacation Bible School. I'd like to think Fanny Crosby would be happy, knowing that her faith and her love for the Lord were reaching forward into future generations. Or perhaps she would simply say that this is her story, this is her song.

Praising my Savior all the day long.

The Resurgence, a ministry of Mars Hill Church, posted a video this week detailing Crosby's life. It can be viewed here.

Top 10 Most Popular Posts, v. 3

Here are the blog posts that sparked the most reader curiosity during the third month of Her.meneutics. Thanks to both committed readers and stumble-upon visitors for making the CT women's blog a success! And, if there are particular topics you'd really like to see us cover, please send your suggestions to editor Sarah Pulliam (spulliam[at]christianitytoday.com) or editor Katelyn Beaty (kbeaty[at]christianitytoday.com).

(ten) "Declining Female Happiness," by Lisa Graham McMinn // Comments: 23
A new study reveals that feminism may be the source of our discontent.

(nine) "Trashing Sarah Palin's Faith, Family, and Femininity," by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 17
The outgoing Alaska governor has faced 10 months of serious scrutiny.

(eight) "Stand By Your Unfaithful Politician Husband?" by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 15
Christian politicians Mark Sanford and John Ensign recently confessed to having affairs, but their wives were absent from the press conferences.

(seven) "Top Clothing Lines Downsize Plus-Size Offerings," by Elrena Evans // Comments: 14
Which clothing lines are belt-tightening during the shrinking economy.

(six) "When a Pro-Life Blogger Goes Too Far," by Laura Leonard // Comments: 6
The case of 'April's Mom' is less an indictment on the pro-life movement and more the story of a deeply pained woman.

(five) "The Downside of Hooking Up," by Christine A. Scheller // Comments: 34
The message of 'female sexual liberation' comes with a cost.

(four) "Schuller's Eldest Daughter to Lead Crystal Cathedral," by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 13
Sheila Schuller Coleman to become her father's 'legs' in new role.

(three) "Neda: More Than Her Death," by Christine A. Scheller // Comments: 6
Behind the stark symbol of her videotaped death is one vibrant life snuffed out and a family in mourning.

(two) "The Duggars: the Anti-Gosselins," by Laura Leonard // Comments: 22
When reality TV marriage actually works.

(one) "A (Crooked) House Divided: the Gosselins Announce Their Divorce" by Laura Leonard // Comments: 36
Ten years, eight kids, and five seasons later, Jon and Kate call it quits.

Breadwinning Moms and Stay-at-Home Dads

While most moms were celebrating Mother's Day this spring with a family of three or four, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, resident Tiffany Kriner celebrated a graduation ceremony with thousands of college students.

Kriner, 31, an English professor at Wheaton College, has two young children - 9-month-old Beckett and Fiona, 3. Her husband, Josh, 32, is a stay-at-home dad while Tiffany is the family's primary breadwinner, a decision based on necessity that has since worked out to both parents' benefit.

Tiffany is one of a growing number of women in the United States who are primary earners for their household. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 25.8 percent of wives had a higher income than their husbands in 2007, an increase from nearly 23 percent in 1997 and 18 percent in 1987.

The Kriners' situation is unusual at Wheaton College, Tiffany said; most working mothers at the college have husbands also working outside the home, so are balancing a co-parenting situation. Their situation evolved when Tiffany gave birth to Fiona while in a post-doctoral program and Josh stayed home to care for her, and then when Josh decided to stay home when the couple moved to Wheaton for Tiffany's job about three years ago.

"Most people do ask whether I stay home with my kids or not, especially if they meet me in a context where they see me with my children," Tiffany said. "I don't think there's any stigma especially, but definitely an awareness."

Josh is currently working on a start-up small business, so Tiffany stays home two mornings each week to watch the children while he works. And having a stay-at-home husband has its perks; because Josh works from home, she has the freedom of a man with a stay-at-home wife. She and Josh also enjoy having more of an equal share in their children's experiences.
Tiffany said she does feel pressure to fit in with a mold of suburban, stay-at-home mothers who are interested in seeing all aspects of their children's lives. She also struggles with not fitting into some aspects of traditional gender roles of the husband as breadwinner and the wife as nurturing homemaker.

"Do I feel like I'm switching gender roles? Yes. Especially when I'm the primary breadwinner," Tiffany said. "I'm feeding [my children], clothing them and supporting them, but that seems to be a thing that's celebrated on Father's Day, not Mothers' Day - I don't consider my monetary contributions to be part of what it means to be a good mother. The real contribution is putting them to bed, or staying when I ought to be grading."

Tiffany does not feel she is sidestepping the Christian calling to motherhood - she's just pursuing it differently.

"Being in a family and raising children for the Lord and for their good is absolutely the central thing," she said. "I just think I do it better when I'm working."

This is a pre-edited story that, following consultation from editors, appeared in the Naperville, Glen Ellyn and Wheaton Suns. This article differs from the published article found here.

Sarah Palin: Andrew Sullivan's Punching Bag

No writer that I've read in the past 11 months has been more - dare I say - hysterically critical of Sarah Palin than The Atlantic's uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan. Eight months after the election, he is still harping on the failure of traditional media to investigate the parentage and birth of her son Trig.

With Palin's resignation as Governor of Alaska coming days after a scathing profile appeared in Vanity Fair, Sullivan is in fighting form. Yesterday, in one blog post alone, he called her a delusional liar, "the biggest farce in American politics in living memory" and a "hood ornament of a candidate." Palin may have been the wrong person for the job of Vice President, but she's nobody's hood ornament.

Nothing Sullivan has written about Palin has been more hypocritical than his condemnation of what he alleges is her exploitation of Trig and Bristol as props for the pro-life cause. Forget the fact that it was first-wave feminists and not religious conservatives whose motto was "the personal is political," Sullivan himself drags out his family to argue for gay marriage all the time and applauds others for doing the same. Not only that, but in the wake of George Tiller's murder, he posted anonymous reader e-mail after anonymous reader e-mail detailing unsubstantiated late-term abortion stories - thereby suggesting that perhaps even these gruesome acts should be legal.

Five years ago, when I decided to write about my own unplanned pregnancy for Christianity Today magazine, my son was a young adult. I framed the story within the context of dropping him off at college and concluded it with an exhortation for him not to make the same mistakes I had made or cause the harm I had caused. I asked his permission to write what I did and gave him veto power over the article before I submitted it. Even so, in light of his death by suicide last spring, I've questioned the wisdom of having exposed him to this minimal level of public scrutiny.

And yet, in that same article (which has since been included in a Gale Cenage anthology called Opposing Viewpoints: Religion and Sexuality) I related the story of Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Michelman became an activist after her husband abandoned their family when she was pregnant with their fourth child and she had to get his permission to end the pregnancy. Nobody accuses Michelman of exploiting her baby. How could they? The child was never given a chance to live.

Therein lies the difficulty. Critics mock the Palin family for its uncomfortable public fecundity, but we have no idea how many politicians or wives and/or daughters of politicians are aborting babies for nefarious reasons including political expediency. We never will.

Perhaps we would all be better off if issues like abortion and gay marriage were argued on their merits alone, but then we would be left with the limits and dangers of abstraction.

To my knowledge, Sarah Palin has never mentioned Sullivan by name, but she has openly condemned the highly personal attacks directed at her and her daughters. In truth, I'm relieved she is not the Vice President. I don't think she possesses the knowledge, skills, or temperament for high office. Nothing she has done or said publicly in regard to her family, however, comes close to the exploitative, hypocritical barrage she has endured from the likes of Andrew Sullivan.

Trashing Sarah Palin's Faith, Family, and Femininity

It's hard not to draw comparisons between Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton. Both high-profile women are deeply beloved and passionately detested on both sides of the aisle. In fact, Christianity Today magazine came to both of their defenses during their most heated moments in the media spotlight. But Palin has faced particular scrutiny for her faith, thanks to her Pentecostal background.

The New York Times's Ross Douthat does a nice job outlining Palin's enemies:

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You'll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You'll endure gibes about your "slutty" looks and your "white trash concupiscence," while a prominent female academic declares that your "greatest hypocrisy" is the "pretense" that you're a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.

One of the most recent pieces that scrutinizes Palin's faith included Vanity Fair's lengthy profile by Todd Purdum. Douglas LeBlanc takes the piece apart at GetReligion, but here's the oddest paragraph of Purdum's piece:

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin's extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of "narcissistic personality disorder" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy" - and thought it fit her perfectly. When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig's condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God's, and signed it "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

With Palin's stunning announcement this weekend that she will resign, her political future seems uncertain. What do you think? Has the scrutiny been appropriate?

Women's Ordination: A Crack in the Cathedral?

After the Anglican Church in North America's (ACNA) momentous inaugural gathering, the verdict is out on whether the issue of women's ordination will inhibit the budding alliance from moving forward.

Last week more than 800 men and women gathered in Bedford, Texas, to elect an archbishop and ratify a constitution for the ACNA, a new alliance for churches that have left the Episcopal Church. Led by Robert Duncan, bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the ACNA comprises more than 700 theologically conservative churches with about 70,000 parishioners.

There were many central theological beliefs that last week's attendees could agree on in their constitution and canon laws, including the full inspiration of the Bible, the centrality of baptism and Communion to church life, and the authority of the historic church creeds. But for the time being, ACNA leaders have not reached full agreement on female priests. At this time, each jurisdiction is free to decide whether or not to ordain women, but jurisdictions cannot force others to either accept women's ordination or to stop practicing it. Women bishops are forbidden.

"For those who believe the ordination of women to be a grave error, and for those who believe it scripturally justifiable . . . we should be in mission together until God sorts us out," said Duncan in last week's opening address. "It is not perfect, but it is enough."

Religion journalist George Conger told Christianity Today that Duncan himself has ordained women priests and that all of his key aides are ordained women, including Canon to the Ordinary Mary Hays, who was profiled in last week's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Of course there is disappointment that there is less openness to the ordination of women among some," Hays, ordained for 25 years, told the paper. "But we are agreed on the essentials of the faith."

Julia Duin of The Washington Times reported today that only 6 of the 28 ACNA jurisdictions currently allow women priests. Duin spoke with the Rev. Travis Boline - Duncan's right-hand woman during last week's deliberations - who noted that even the conservative Anglican provinces of Africa are split on this issue: Kenya, Uganda, and, most recently, Ghana allow women priests, while Nigeria, Tanzania, and Central Africa do not.

Conger explained the ecclesiastical distinction between allowing female bishops and allowing female priests. "In the Anglican understanding, a bishop is a bishop of the whole catholic church, meaning that person should be acceptable in all places that the catholic church is," Conger told CT. "[The ACNA] can live with women being at the local level of priest, because a woman priest in New York doesn't do anything to the people in Fort Worth, Texas, who think it's contrary to Scripture."

"Bishops serve the whole church, and if the church is not of one mind, then it's not appropriate for women to be bishops," the Rev. Boline told Duin. "The global south has shown us a model of keeping to the main thing, while not being of one mind."

Since both human sexuality and the authority of Scripture are so central to ACNA's formation in the first place, it seems unlikely that the issue of women priests won't at some point cause the newly formed partnership to fracture. But Duncan stressed the importance of keeping unity - for the time being.

"Our adversary, the Devil, is interested in what is happening here," Duncan told last week's crowd. "A reformed Anglican Church in North America is one of the enemy's greatest concerns. He will try to draw us into old ways and old fights. It is essential that we stand together."

Liberty University and the Liberty to Dissent

Last month, Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, revoked its official recognition of the student Democratic group on campus, saying that the Democratic Party platform conflicted with the university's Christian principles.

Following purported complaints from trustees, parents, and (perhaps most significantly) donors, Student Affairs Vice President Mark Hine sent an e-mail to Brian Diaz, president of the College Democrats, saying that the university was "unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by Liberty University."

"By using Liberty University and Democrat in the name," Hine wrote, "the two are associated and the goals of both run in opposite directions." The e-mail concluded,

We are removing the club from the Liberty website and you will need to cease using Liberty University's name, including any logo, seal or mark of Liberty University. They are not to be used in any of your publications, electronic or internet, including but not limited to, any website, Facebook, Twitter or any other such publication.

Censorship, some said. But others noted that conservative student groups have been targeted in this way for years. Commenters on news sites and blogs pointed out that Liberty is a private university and as such retains the right to bar certain student groups from official recognition, while others countered that it's a private university, yes, but one that receives federal funding.

Then, a few weeks later, Diaz announced that he was stepping down from his position as club president and transferring to another school. "I think that the school needs both sides of the political sphere to be represented and represented fairly," Diaz said in an interview.

While watching all this transpire, I found myself thinking not so much about Democrats and Republicans and Jerry Falwell Jr., but more about group ideology as a whole. The Liberty University foment seems less about two-party politics and their representation, and more about the connections between the beliefs of groups and of the individuals who belong to them.

How much of any given party line, if you will, does an individual have to agree with in order to be considered part of the group? What does it mean to belong to a group, if we as individuals retain beliefs that do not conform to the group's overall creed? I've been thinking about this question not only in the context of political beliefs but theological and denominational beliefs as well. Falwell Jr. claimed that the ideologies of the Democratic Party and Liberty University were in opposition, but obviously Diaz, and others, feel otherwise.

The end of the Liberty Saga - for now - is that all political student clubs, be they Democrat or Republican (or, presumably, any other party) can exist only as unofficial clubs. Even though the story is wrapping up, I'd like to see the discussions continue: Does an individual have to accept every aspect of an ideology in order to belong to a group? What do you think?