Reforming a Girls' Reformatory

In August, Beloit Juvenile Correctional Facility in northern Kansas closed its doors. Heather Hollingsworth’s coverage for the Associated Press highlights the triumphs and downfalls of one of the country’s longest-running girls’ reformatories.

Beloit was started in 1888 by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which ran it for a year or two before handing it over to the state. A separate reformatory for juveniles was still a relatively new concept; up until the mid-19th century, children and adult were jailed in the same facility.

Beloit's WCTU had good intentions to shape “incorrigible” youth into morally upright women. Like other reformatories, girls at Beloit worked in the gardens or at nearby farms and took care of the institute’s animals.

“But with the high-minded ideals of the reformers, there was a dark side as well,” explained Ned Loughran, executive director of the Council for Juvenile Correctional Administrators in Braintree, Massachusetts. “These kids were an eyesore for the upper classes of society. The solution wasn’t to change the conditions they were growing up in, the poverty and lack of parental supervision. The view was to get them out of sight. Then people forgot they were there, and abuses crept into the system.”

One of Beloit’s worst times took place between 1935 and 1936 under superintendent Lula Coyner. With a growing belief in eugenics, Coyner forced 62 girls, nearly half of Beloit’s inhabitants, to be sterilized. The girls had to go to the police to stop Coyner, who was planning for more residents to have their fallopian tubes removed. Under other superintendents, girls had been physically and emotionally abused in other ways.

In addition to abuses at Beloit, Hollingsworth notes, “It was common practice for much of the facility’s history to lock up young abuse victims rather than their abusers.” Yet some former residents praise Beloit for being a haven. They knew they weren’t the real criminals, but rather victims who were reacting to the situations they were in.

It took a long time to enforce prison reform, but Christians had a strong hand in it. Elizabeth Fry, a mother of 11, pioneered prison reform in England during the early 1800s. As a Christian, Fry had compassion and a strong belief that prisoners could be redeemed. She practiced that belief daily, reading the Bible to female inmates and teaching them basic hygiene and sewing so they would have a skill when they were freed.

Through one of her organizations, Fry pushed for the government to instate reforms such as separating prisoners according to their offenses and gender. The lives of prisoners improved, and other prisons and eventually entire countries picked up on her ideas. As the Christian History and Biography article notes, “Fry’s ideas inspired subsequent generations to combine social work and gospel proclamation and reshaped how prisoners have been treated ever since."

Beloit is an example of how it took too much time for laws to change in recognizing abuse both in homes and institutions. It also serves as a reminder that Christians need to follow through with original good intentions.

After over a century of operation, Beloit closed mainly due to a lack of inmates.

“We don’t raise orphans and we don’t raise wayward youth and incorrigible youth at state institutions anymore,” said J. Russell Jennings, commissioner of the Kansas Juvenile Justice Authority. “We reserve those institutions only for the most serious offenders to ensure public safety. It really reflects a system that is maturing and it’s becoming more aligned with current research on how we can be most effective with adolescent behaviors.”

Ten years ago, there were 103 girls at Beloit. At the end of the 2009 fiscal year, there were around 21 girls. They have been moved to the Kansas Juvenile Correctional Complex in Topeka.

In the Loop: Down syndrome abortions on the rise

In Britain, Down syndrome abortions are on the rise

According to a recent study, around nine in ten British women who are told they are going to have a baby with Down syndrome decide to terminate the pregnancy, resulting in 1,100 abortions each year. Diagnoses of Down’s have also increased significantly, from 1075 in 1989-90 to 1843 in 2007-08, due largely to the rising number of women who wait until their 30s and 40s to have children, the study reports.

Abstinence-only sex education at risk
Newsweek reports on “The Future of Abstinence” as President Obama’s 2010 budget cuts funding for the Title V grant program and all abstinence-only programs. The Senate Finance Committee voted to restore funding to the budget, but the measure is unlikely to pass in the House. "The open question is whether these organizations will continue to thrive when federal funding is no longer available," says Alesha Doan, author of The Politics of Virginity: Abstinence in Sex Education (Greenwood Publishing, 2008). "What is the underlying support in society for this?" Many programs may now have to turn to private donations and funding in order to continue.

German Protestants choose first woman leader

Margot Kaessmann became the first female leader of the roughly 25 million German Protestants, and only the third female to head a major Christian church. She is a particularly controversial choice for the EKD, an umbrella group for 22 Lutheran, Reformed, and United Churches, because she is divorced, but she received 132 of 142 possible votes, and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) welcomed the choice.

"The election sends a signal to the church worldwide that God calls us to leadership without consideration of gender, color or descent," LWF general-secretary Ishmael Noko told the Ecumenical News International news agency at the synod in Ulm. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church in the United States and National Bishop Susan Johnson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada are the only other female heads of large churches.

Georgia football fans bring Bible to the stands
A month after the Catoosa County Public School District barred cheerleaders at Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School (LFO) in Georgia from displaying banners decorated with Bible verses, the team’s fans have taken up the eight-year-old tradition.

Calling themselves "Warriors for Christ" (a twist on the school’s Warrior mascot), a group of LFO fans have held rallies, sold T-shirts, and now bring their own Bible banners to the games. The New York Times reports that the religious presence at games is even stronger than before. One cheerleader’s mother called it a win for the school’s Christians, noting that students “who may never have even heard these Scriptures are thinking about them and maybe going home and looking them up in their Bibles.”

It's a Not-So-Happy But Wonderful Life

A couple weekends ago, I took my kids to an historic farm run by our local forest preserve. The buildings there have been authentically restored, and the staff and volunteers roam the property in costume and in character to give visitors a pretty-close encounter to what it must’ve been like to live and work on a family farm at the turn of the last century.

So when one of the in-character volunteers stopped hammering the chicken-coop roof, stepped off his ladder, tugged up his suspenders, and asked if we had any questions, I wasn’t entirely surprised by his answer to my question.

I pointed to the fluffy black and white chickens racing behind their wire and asked, “What color eggs do they lay?”

“Dunno, ma’am,” he said. Then he smiled, betraying his character entirely. “Chickens are women’s work.”

As he continued on about how his “wife” had an egg-selling business so she could buy “pretty things” from Sears Roebuck, a weird stream of envy washed through me. Truth be told, this same weird stream trickles through whenever I read Edith Wharton or read or watch anything about times and places where gender roles were fixed, expectations rigid, and life (and death) somehow more certain.

This is weird, of course, because I’m a liberated woman. I call myself a feminist — unapologetically. And I have since I was a girl. I was born in 1972, the year Helen Reddy and her woman-roaring made the charts. My early childhood memories are of parents, teachers, and Brownie leaders telling me I could do and be anything.

I grew up aware of the doors being thrown open all around me, the ones I’d be able to skirt through more confidently than any other generation of women in human history. I stood under some ceilings as they shattered, and throughout my professional career, my writing life and my motherhood I have continued to push (with the Spirit behind me) on those doors and ceilings that have yet to budge.

All this to say, you’d think hearing such things like historical “women’s work” wouldn’t make me jealous but rather happy or relieved. And yet, not so.

Or perhaps you’d think that when I finally sat down to read the much-hyped study as reported in Time magazine’s “What Women Want Now,” I’d feel sad—or at least surprised to read this (also much-hyped) statement: “…as women have gained more freedom, more education and more economic power, they have become less happy.” But, alas, I am not.

Because while I am grateful and humbled to have the opportunities that being a woman in my generation affords—that I can “opt out” of full-time employment to be home with my kids and continue to run my own business, to edit other people’s words, and keep my name in bylines and book jackets—I’m not sure that happy is a word I’d throw around to describe myself. I’m not sure many of my friends—in similar juggles—would use it either. At least, if they were honest.

But that’s okay. It’s appropriate, actually. Because happy shouldn’t be the goal of our lives. The choices and freedoms and opportunities that women (at least in the U.S.) enjoy today shouldn’t be celebrated because they bring happiness, but because they allow us—finally!—to follow God’s calls on our lives more fully and freely.

My life is crazy. It’s exhausting. It’s confusing. It’s stressful. It’s difficult to navigate—because there are few maps for those of trekking this new(ish) frontier of womanhood. For these reasons, on my worst days, yes, I’m jealous of eras when my role would’ve been fixed. When I would’ve gotten married knowing that when my husband left the house at 4 a.m. to milk the cows, I’d get up to start breakfast for him and the farm hands. No balancing. No juggling. No constantly checking family calendars to make sure somebody would be home with the kids. No bitterness because I was the one who had to arrange childcare when we both had meetings.

Instead, I’d do my chores, gather the eggs, sell the pretty white ones for my own pretty things, while using the brown ones (I learned all this from the wife on the farm-house tour) for that breakfast. While it doesn’t seem great or fulfilling or what I’d be good at, it seems simpler. I’m not forgetting the zillion other non-simple stresses of this era (I probably would’ve died giving birth to my oldest son). But the lack of freedom and choice seem easy—at least mentally.

But just as God doesn’t call us to be happy, neither does he call us to easy. He asks us to follow him — and that’s what I, along with many of my Christian sisters, are trying to do with our freedoms, come happy or high water. I believe God ordained my crazy, hard-scrapping, confusing life. And I believe these freedoms we now enjoy are a gift—something we’ve been given, that much is expected of. While this may not always make us happy, there is a joy for us following Jesus just knowing he’s trekking with us in our crazy, frustrating, not-always happy, but often wonderful, lives.

Caryn Rivadeneira is a writer, editor, speaker and mom. She’s the author of Mama’s Got a Fake I.D.: How to Reveal the Real You Behind All That Mom (WaterBrook Press, 2009). Visit her at www.carynrivadeneira.com.

Are You Happy Now?

It’s been said before: Today woman have more than they have ever had but they are more unhappy than they have ever been. In a recent Time article, Nancy Gibbs, using the newest statistics, enumerates the significant progress women have made in just one generation. But she goes on to acknowledge that as a result, women are also more stressed and burdened by the weight of their new responsibilities.

In my experience, when Christian women discuss this trend, they often do so with a cynical “I told you so” attitude. The common assumption is that women can (and should) realize their greatest potential by staying at home as a wife and mother and leaving the workplace to the man. They would be happy if they just did that, instead of chasing after equality.

But whether or not this assumption holds up to biblical scrutiny, it misses a vital point: It’s not about happiness.

Jesus didn’t address the Samaritan woman at the well — elevating her to a much higher place in society — so that she could be happy. Jesus didn’t allow Mary to sit at his feet and learn — a place often occupied by male students — just to keep her happy. Christians don’t follow God so that they can be happy. And Justin Wolfers, co-author of the study “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” told Time in trying to explain the trend, “As Susan Faludi said, the women’s movement wasn’t about happiness.” It is about doing what is right. Or, as a Christian might put it, about bringing about God’s vision for society.

Throughout the Bible, God grants women a significance that was unheard of in their culture. He was constantly elevating them to the status of men. And despite numerous passages delineating gender roles, not once does Scripture state that women are the inferior gender. Why, then, are many Christians not bothered by inequality between the men and women in society? Why weren’t Christians the first ones to be outraged at women receiving less pay, not getting a well-deserved promotion, or having few educational options? God hated the discrimination that women suffered in the Bible, and his followers should have hated it when they saw it 50 years ago.

Helen Barrett Montgomery is one of the few woman figures of the church who strove relentlessly beside Susan B. Anthony to bring women into the realms of higher education and politics. Because Montgomery believed in the power of Christianity to transform the world — socially, politically, and intellectually — she was convinced that it could be used to make society more inclusive of women. She claimed that the women’s movement “was not only legitimized by the gospel, but was in fact the core meaning of the gospel for human civilization.” Without her diligent work in the movement, it may have been many more decades before women were appointed full-fledged foreign missionaries or before evangelistic outreach programs, schools, and other social services for women received funding. Her efforts truly helped to spread the gospel around the world.

The changes that Montgomery fought for were hard-earned, and it shouldn’t be surprising that women are struggling to fulfill their new roles with lighthearted glee. And if women are feeling stressed as they settle into their new college classrooms, corner offices, and political cabinets, that doesn’t mean it is a mistake for them to be there. In fact, that stress could be seen as an indicator of the potential they hold not only to shape society but to mold it according to the gospel. It is an intimidating job. Being salt to the world does bring deep joy, yes, but it is not always a happy task. It is hard. And it can feel burdensome.

I am a single woman on a career track where I honestly cannot foresee any obstacles related to my gender. This would certainly not have been the case 50 years ago, and I am sincerely grateful for women like Susan B. Anthony and Gloria Steinem, though I may not agree with their entire agenda. But I am particularly thankful for Montgomery (and I wonder what would have happened if more women in the church had taken up the cause of women’s rights). As a result of their hard work, I could become a serious player in my office, and bring the gospel into an industry that is thoroughly unchristian. I sometimes feel the weight of this responsibility because the Lord has given me much and it is often hard to know how to pursue my career and with gospel purposes.

But am I happy? I think so. Would I be happier if I were a secretary, and destined to remain a secretary? Or if I were a stay-at-home wife and mother? I don’t know. But that doesn’t matter. The Lord has plans to use his children to carry out his vision for the world, and as a result of all the rights women have won, he can maneuver his daughters with much more agility. They may not always be happy to be pushed to the front lines, but they can consider it a privilege.

Kristen Scharold works in book publishing in New York City.

What Christian Women Want Now

Get excited, because Her.meneutics brings two perspectives on Time magazine’s recent cover report, “The State of the American Woman.” Author Nancy Gibbs explores the questions, “Is the battle of the sexes really over, and if so, did anyone win?” Time, in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation, conducted a survey to find out how we have responded to 40 years of change as we now approach a time where women will for the first time make up a majority of the American workforce. Gibbs reports, "Among the most confounding changes of all is the evidence, tracked by numerous surveys, that as women have gained more freedom, more education and more economic power, they have become less happy." Just a few weeks ago Maureen Dowd wrote on the same topic in The New York Times, and now everyone’s asking, “Why aren’t women happier?”

Is it because we now take on double the responsibilities and stress, as Gibbs suggests, that we now report more unhappiness? Is this necessarily a bad thing? And how do we, as Christian women, frame the issue in light of our own gospel call?

The report is already the source of much discussion in the Christian blogosphere. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler responds, “Feminism redefined womanhood, marriage, motherhood, and the roles for both men and women. … It appears that most women are uncomfortable with this total package.” Her.meneutics guest blogger Carolyn McCulley posted her response, drawing on the study’s findings that many women still desire traditional family goals, saying, “If a happy marriage and children is the highest priority for more than half of those surveyed, then I believe we need to be more intentional about helping our culture achieve those goals.” Beliefnet blogger Therese Borchard, on the other hand, expresses satisfaction with her increased opportunities but echoes the concerns of these reports: “I do think I have a more fulfilling life in that I have to use my head for more things than figuring out why the Bendaroos we ordered from the infomercial sucks in comparison to what they promised us. But my job does bring a considerable amount of stress. So I'm happier in one sense and much more anxious and stressed in another.”

Now it’s your turn. Our writers will offer their views today and tomorrow, and we hope you will join us in the discussion. Let the conversation begin!

Penny Pinching as a Christian Virtue?

Recently, my child who was home-schooled for six years attended a conference called Gathering Around the Un-hewn Stone. I make note of his educational history because I feel responsible for inspiring alternative ideas that catalyzed more alternatives than I imagined when he was 8.

The event opened with a lecture, "The Ecological Endgame of Industrial Civilization as a Crisis of/for Faith," which was purported to be about the moral bankruptcy of progress as an article of faith in modernity and, by default, of Christianity for the past 300 years. Resistance involves learning how to brain tan a deer, forage for food, and live out “attachment parenting” — a phenomenon about which my son has no need of instruction, given that he clung to me like a monkey when he was a boy.

In her book, In CHEAP We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue, journalist Lauren Weber espouses similar values, which, like rank materialism, are as old and American as Manifest Destiny. Last week Atlantic economics blogger Megan McArdle reviewed Weber’s book for The New York Times, and compared it unfavorably with the work of financial adviser Dave Ramsey, whom she describes as a “popular evangelical guru.”

Weber grew up without much heat in her home and surprised herself by following in her father’s frugal footsteps. McArdle takes issue with Weber’s idealization of fiscal asceticism, but not with Ramsey’s "save now, worry less later" approach. She says Weber’s idea of thrift as a moral virtue is problematic because it unduly worships parsimony. And McArdle rightly notes that if dumpster-diving “freegans” weren’t living off the largesse of their guilty neighbors, they’d have to get jobs like everybody else. The same could be said of Gathering Around the Un-hewn Stone attendees reveling in a buffet of supermarket overstock, but not of trash eaters around the world who have no other choice.

“We should be taxing carbon, pesticide overuse and other excesses that push the costs of our consumption onto others," writes McArdle, a fiscal conservative. "But once things are priced properly, there’s nothing particularly admirable in refusing to spend money you can spare. If you’re already financially secure and we’ve priced in the negative externalities of activities like driving and eating meat, then walking to work, lowering the thermostat and eating lower on the food chain isn’t virtuous. It’s just a lifestyle choice.”

Not so fast, Ms. McArdle.

Matthew 25 presents three metaphors for stewardship that imbue it with far more value. In the first, Jesus speaks of wise and unwise virgins who ready themselves or not for their long-awaited bridegroom. The unprepared are dis-invited to the wedding banquet, while the conscientious brides enjoy a lavish celebration. In the second, we meet faithful and unfaithful servants who are entrusted with varying degrees of wealth. The only steward to be cast into outer darkness is the fearful miser who buries his wealth and maligns the character of his lord to justify himself.

Finally, we encounter the sheep and the goats. Theirs is a parable of dire consequence. The sheep that live un-selfconsciously generous lives are welcomed into eternal glory, while the self-righteous, self-absorbed flock of goats suffers eternal punishment. Prudence, stewardship, and generosity are neither conflicting values nor simple matters of preference; they are deeply Christian virtues.

I learned hard work and generosity from my evangelical parents, and frugality from my classmates at Eastern Mennonite University. Having arrived my freshman year in a cherry-red Cadillac and a modest but lovely new wardrobe, I found myself embarrassed in the presence of my 23-year-old roommate. She had come from the mission field and from an old-order Mennonite home. That meant living out of a suitcase for a few years and growing up without a TV or a washing machine. Her mother canned her own beef and sewed quilts in her spare time to raise money for missions. Her father worked the farm. We didn’t exactly mesh, my roommate and I, but I left EMU with lifelong values about wealth and what it’s for. I taught those values to my children.

McArdle says Ramsey followers are “righteously scolded” for spending in excess of $100 a month on groceries. That’s not a life I want to live, nor is it one that necessarily reflects Christian virtue. But neither do I want a 50-inch plasma-screen TV dominating the communal living space in my home like McArdle. I’d rather see my son’s reclaimed deer bone knives and cigar box synthesizers cluttering up the place, even if it means he lives off his parents’ middle class largesse for longer than aspirational living — ascetic or otherwise — requires.

Where Someone Loves Us Most of All

Every night while I was growing up ended just the same. "Mommy loves you, Daddy loves you, and Jesus loves you most of all," my mom would say as she tucked me into bed. The ritual was a reminder, enforced through years of repetition, that no matter how far I ventured out into the world, which can be scary, cold, and unloving, I would always have a safe place with the people who love me and a God who loves me more. This is such an important lesson; children need to know that no matter what happens "out there," they are loved. Love doesn't make problems go away, but it grounds us in something greater than ourselves and our problems.

Most children's movies emphasize can-do messages: You can do anything you want if you believe in yourself! Go out and have an adventure! And then along came Where the Wild Things Are.

Perhaps you've heard of it? In production for nearly 10 years, it was last weekend's highest-grossing film. It's also been the source of much controversy, particularly over whether the children's movie is even appropriate for children.

When a Newsweek reporter asked Maurice Sendak how he would respond to parents who might ask if the adaptation of his book is too scary for children, he replied, “I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate.”

But what we allow our children to watch is important. And many children will want to see this movie; the trailer set the hype machine in motion months ago (the first time I saw it, I cried). The movie has been called too philosophical, too postmodern, too psychological, and too bleak for children. Perhaps we think children need something easy to digest. But that is the true genius of the original book, and of great children’s literature: It does not talk down to children or their ability to understand and process, whether consciously or subconsciously, the complexities of their own lives.

Critics of the film say the movie has departed from its source material, which includes only 10 sentences. Yes, the movie does deal with some pretty heavy ideas: loneliness, division, jealousy, anger, fear, and life-changing love. But all of these are in the book, if you read (and look) closely enough. There's a reason Sendak’s original has lasted so long. Underneath the simple story lie complex truths easily identifiable to any reader who has dealt with the pains of growing up. And as with anything that depicts real truth, it also reflects back some pretty powerful Christian themes.

Yes, the movie creates some pretty elaborate stories for the “wild things,” but these are nothing more than projections of Max’s own internal conflicts and his confusing relationships with his absent father, dating mother, and preoccupied sister. Through his time with the wild things, Max learns to better understand and accept his place in the real world. Though this segment of the book has no words — only beautiful, emotive illustrations — it's clear that something meaningful takes place during Max’s journey to “where the wild things are." This is the essential story of growing up; realizing there is a reality beyond yourself that both affects you and is affected by you. I may face a different set of challenges now than I did when I was Max’s age, but they are motivated by the same fears and emotions. At times I still cry out to be respected and heard, I fear isolation and loneliness, and I struggle to figure out how to respond when my needs aren’t being met. It would certainly do me good to get in touch with my own “wild things."

All this existential pondering may be too intense for some kids. But kids’ emotions are intense. And every day they are faced with realities too intense for them or anyone: divorce, loneliness, isolation, an increasingly discouraging view of the world as they awaken to the reality that this is not a perfect, or even fair, place. Early in the film we see Max's science teacher explaining that someday the sun will die, but the students needn’t worry because long before that, the human race will have snuffed itself out by some cause or another: famine, war, global warming. Is this too much information for a 9-year-old? Maybe. But 9-year-olds are probably hearing it, and without an outlet to process this information. I remember being confronted with this same information at exactly Max's age, as well as the fear it instilled for many years. That Max can’t handle this information is exactly the point; he later shouts it at one of the wild things in order to assert his power, while really exhibiting his own fear and insecurity. He just wants someone to assure him it will be okay, that this knowledge isn’t, literally, the end of the world.

This may sound bleak, and for much of the movie, it is. But in the end, Max is able to return home, where he sees his mother’s love in a new way. No matter how far he strays, Max can return to a mother who will love him beyond what he deserves, even offering the hot dinner previously revoked. Anger is real, and particularly scary for children who do not know how to process it. But in the end, it is not Max’s anger that is rewarded; Max realizes he is still lonely, that his attempts to safeguard himself (building a fort to keep out the bad things, putting down others, destroying things for his own pleasure) have done nothing to make him happy. In the book, as well as the movie: “The king of all wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.”

As Tyler Huckabee writes at Relevant, “Whatever Max might not understand about his mother’s rules, he trusts her love.” At its core, Wild Things is a meditation on sin and brokenness and the unconditional, irresistible love that pulls us back home. And that is something we all need to hear, whether we’re 8 or 88.

Have you seen the movie? What did you think? Is it appropriate for children? How can we better prepare children who will see this movie to understand and appreciate what is going on?

The Goal in Mind

The University of Minnesota apologized on behalf of its Goldy Gopher mascot for making fun of a prayerful opposing player last weekend.

A YouTube video shows the Penn State defensive end Jerome Hayes kneeling in prayer and the mascot taking a knee in front of him. “We have reiterated to Goldy the importance of exercising appropriate religious sensitivity in the future," he said in a statement. Penn State won 20-0. (h/t Eric Gorski)

Other accounts of faith and sports have appeared in several outlets recently, including USA Today’s recent coverage of Messiah College’s stellar athletic program. With less than 3,000 students, the Christian school in Pennsylvania has an undefeated Division III women’s soccer team that is ranked No. 1 and a No. 3 ranked men’s soccer team). Last season, both soccer teams and the softball team won NCAA titles, not to mention past national championships.

[The women’s team sings] more Christian songs in raucous harmony, laughing, singing and bonding all at once. The white cinder-block walls seem to reverberate, as if at a tent revival, until the women switch gears and end with the sweet, solemn I Love You, Lord.
And here the secret of their success is plain to see: Each wears a game face with joy on it.
"As Christians, we are asked to believe some pretty strange things that just defy logic, like Jesus was born to a virgin," athletics director Jerry Chaplin says. "If we can believe those things, how hard is it to believe we can win a national championship?"

Brady’s article on Messiah coincides with the release of Tom Krattenmaker’s book Onward Christian Athletes: Turning Ballparks into Pulpits and Players into Preachers and column in USA Today. Krattenmaker writes that some Christians, like college football star Tim Tebow, send a message that can be offensive to people. “If their take on God and truth and life is the only right one — which their creed boldly states — everyone else is wrong.”

After Krattenmaker’s column, News-Press columnist Sam Cook called for a separation of church and sports. “I don't know how many more ‘God bless’ comments I can stand from the 2007 Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback [Tebow]. Religion - except for the ‘Hail Mary’ pass - has no place in sports.”

Cook dislikes how religion distracts from the game, such as Scripture under Tebow’s eyes.
“Plus, his under-eye markings do more than cut glare. They serve as a prompt to television announcers - who then gush over Tebow's off-field accomplishments.”

Krattenmaker takes a similar critique at athletes who point to the sky to give credit to God after some victory. “Anyone who watches pro and college football or follows the drama of the baseball playoffs can't help but notice something else that often competes for our attention amid the passes, pitches and home runs: religion.”

“Players point skyward to the Almighty after reaching the end zone or home plate, star athletes voice thanks and praise to their savior after a big win, and sports heroes use their media spotlight to promote the Christian message. (See University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his eye-black, touting Scripture.) These are the outward signs of a faith surge that has made big-time sports one of the most outwardly religious sectors of American culture.”

How do you react to open expressions of faith in sports – Are they admirable, cliché, commendable, distracting, something else?

Addicted…to Facebook

Updating their status. Posting pictures. Checking out the news feeds of their friends. It’s all in a day’s work for today’s college students.

One-third of Christian college students spend 1-2 hours a day on Facebook, according to a new study from Gordon College professors. Twelve percent use Facebook for 2-4 hours each day, and 2.8 percent report using it from 4-7 hours a day. This is in addition to the time they spend on other forms of electronic media, such as blogs, Twitter, and the internet. And it doesn’t even count the time they spend texting, talking, or using applications on their cell phones.

More than half of the students reported they were “neglecting important areas of their life” because they were spending too much time online. And when given the definition of addiction as “any behavior you cannot stop, regardless of the consequences,” more than 10 percent said they believed they were in fact addicted to some form of electronic activity.

I teach several classes at a local Christian college, and I’m not surprised. Students text friends under the table during a lecture or class discussion. They post pictures, make plans with friends, begin and end romances on the internet. One student even dropped my class after I told her she wouldn’t be allowed to bring her laptop along.

And I understand. I have my own Facebook account, multiple e-mail addresses, and a cell phone, all of which suck up my time. Controlling the amount of time I spend with social media is difficult for me, and I went to college when e-mail was fairly new. I can’t imagine how much more difficult it is for students who are familiar with even more and better forms of technology.

“It isn’t yet clear whether over-zealous use of computer-based activities will be formally accepted in the U.S. as a distinctive, unique form of addiction,” said Bryan C. Auday, professor of psychology and one of the study’s authors. “What is clear from our study is that a surprisingly high percentage of Christian students who frequently engage in electronic activities report several troubling negative consequences. But ironically they also mention many positive outcomes related to the time that is spent on Facebook or text messaging their friends.”

Last Lent, I joined with many students on my campus in a Facebook fast. For 40 days, I didn’t share how my day was going or check to see what my old college friends were doing for the weekend. Did I notice that I had more time to spend on worthwhile things? Absolutely. I had time to read, to talk to my husband, to play with my son, to read books for fun, to write, to think.

But after Easter, I headed back to Facebook. Call me nosy, but I like being able to follow what my friends are doing, even if those are friends I haven’t seen since high school. I love watching their families and adventures appear in pictures. And I like to be able to share my own experiences in one convenient spot, instead of attaching dozens of pictures to an e-mail.

I’m still searching for a way to limit my time on Facebook without letting go altogether. And according to the Gordon study, Christian college students are, too. They have recognized the potential negative effects that accompany the ease and access of social media and they’re fasting from Facebook, deleting their accounts, avoiding places with internet access, or imposing limits on themselves.

We have to carefully keep ourselves in check as we integrate these new technologies into our lives. So what are some ways we can practice self-control online? And how do we teach that to our children, who will grow up with even more attractive technology than today’s college students?

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra is a freelance writer based in the Chicago area. Speaking of Facebook, you can become a fan of Her.meneutics.

Cancer’s Mercies

435 days ago there were meteor showers over Cincinnati. My world was rocked that night, but it had nothing to do with the meteors that my teenage son, Mikey, and I were watching in the wee hours of a sleepy summer night.

Right before I joined Mikey for Perseus’s fireworks, I had awakened to get a drink of water, and while being one of those things that go bump in the night, trying to find my way to the kitchen sink, I happened to find a bump. Or a lump, rather, on my breast.

I cannot explain the shock and awe I felt. It was like a meteor to the chest, literally. I remember the lump felt like a shooter marble right beneath the “milky way.” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there the day before. My husband, Dave, is pretty sure it wasn’t there the day before. I don’t see how we could’ve missed a meteor like that.

When the meteor show was over, I had a hard time keeping my thoughts from spiraling out of control. A sensible part of me, that I had to dig deeply for, took all the other parts of me and put them to bed.

I lay there, not wanting to wake Dave, deciding to wait out the night, wait for him to wake, wait to see if it would just go away. Wait. And pray.

Since my thoughts like to play connect the dots, this would be where my inner Lady Macbeth started coming out, as "Out, damn'd spot" were the words that came out as I prayed. This seemed like a reasonable prayer, so I went with it.

I also spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to say to Dave when he woke. I had nothing by the time he woke up, and just had to wing it. Some words tumbled out into the air and then seemed to settle in a cloud over Dave, as he groaned and reached over to feel the spot. I won’t ever forget that groan. Dave’s middle name, Wayne, means wagon, and I could just feel him bearing the weight that was to come.

He felt the spot; I had not imagined it. He got out of bed, made a pot of coffee, began researching how “not bad” it could be, made an appointment with my doctor, and told me to go play tennis and try to keep my mind off it until then.

My doctor somehow squeezed me into the schedule of the best breast surgeon in Cincinnati. I felt like God orchestrated it. Even in the middle of the muddle, God gave us glimpses of his hand of mercy. I had never experienced “peace that passes understanding” that deeply. I feel like part of me might has been in shock, but most of me was in awe of his care for me in all the scary details. On Friday, the breast surgeon scheduled a lumpectomy and biopsy for Tuesday, and sent me home for the weekend, to think “benign” thoughts. On Wednesday we got the phone call. All three of my teenagers were huddled around me, listening. It was cancer. I needed a mastectomy and chemo so I could be here to keep being their mommy.

My first two weeks of cancer felt like they went as quickly as that last paragraph. Not in the “time flies when you’re having fun” sense, but in a godspeed way. As soon as we heard the C-word, we began the battle with a prayer meeting at our home, filled with friends, setting the course to carry me through all that was to come.

What followed was a double-mastectomy (preceded by a bra-burning with my girlfriends) then bone scans, cat scans, muga scans, and finally, a happy report: The cancer was gone. As soon as we heard, we had a praise meeting, which also doubled as my 43rd birthday. What a birthday gift: the proverbial new lease!

Still, there was a year-and-a-half of chemotherapy to come, which I will “wrap up” for my Christmas present this year. In fact, I am writing this from my blue recliner in the chemo lounge, which I call my chemo cocktail chair. I think it is ironic that it is a recliner and yet it isn't an easy chair. It's the hardest chair I've ever sat in. There have been days I've gone home and said "No more." But then I look at my kids and there's no way I'm ready to count down my days.

In the midst of Jeremiah’s lament, he wrote of God’s tender mercies that were new every day. Doesn’t that make every day a mercy? Not that you have to sit in a chemo cocktail chair to experience it before you start counting all over again, but here I sit in mine, and it is Day 435 and counting.

Julie Evans is a writer based in Cincinnati.

Trouble with Online Love

More Australians are being duped by “romance fraud” or “love scam,” particularly Christian women, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Through dating or social networking sites and Christian chat rooms, online scammers posing as love interests have convinced people to send millions of dollars to places like Nigeria.

"They go into Christian chat rooms and a lot of the time when they ask for money, there's a Christian element to the [scammer's] story," Queensland police Fraud Squad chief Detective Inspector Brian Hay said. "It's a comfort thing for the victim. "We are seeing more targeted attacks because people put information about themselves on to the web."

USA Today’s Cathy Lynn Grossman poses the question: “Do you worry that sharing your faith on dating or social networking online sites could attract people who treat your values as stepping stones to a scam -- financial or spiritual?”

Christian Dating Watchdog lists various dating sites that Christians should avoid because of a site’s secular ownership, gay/lesbian profiles, or “questionable methods of advertising.” However, it doesn’t mention any troubling sites due to romance frauds.

There are few places that monitor these frauds, such as Internet Love Scams (ILS), which offers support to victims of romance frauds. It states, “A “normal” person wanting YOU, not what you can give them would not be asking you for money or goods. If they do, you are being scammed.”

The site, which has several thousand members, finds that scammers will use any approaches that will catch your sympathy. Many of the ISL posters still believe the Internet is a powerful tool for finding one’s soul mate. Sometimes, the fraud continues: ILS knows that scammers have the audacity to join as members and then try to con other members who are trying to recover.

Australian police found that sometimes the online relationships develop over months before the scammers ask for money. Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson called romance frauds “a particularly cruel scam” as it targets people who are oftentimes “lonely and vulnerable.”

Does the potential for romance fraud dissuade you from developing relationships on the Internet? Why do you think Christian women are particularly susceptible to fraud?

Mazel tov for Jewish Women

Orthodox Jewish women have a reason to celebrate this month.

Ten years ago, Nishmat, an advanced Torah study center for women in Israel, was founded as part of a larger experiment. The center sought to certify female students as experts in rabbinic law without overstepping the strict rules of the Orthodox faith. Orthodox rules do not prohibit this type of certification, though strict Orthodoxy does not allow women to be ordained as rabbis.

In 1999, Nishmat awarded the first Yoatzot Halacha (rabbinically-certified women consultants in Jewish Law) certificates to two female scholars. All graduates were certified experts pending a re-evaluation every 10 years. The program has graduated 61 female scholars in the 10 years since it was created. On October 11, Rabbis Yaakov Varhaftig and Yehuda Henkin announced that the 10-year limit on certification had been officially lifted, essentially declaring the program a success.

Rabbi Henkin said in a press release:

Because we understood the historic and political significance of creating women halachic experts – we were stepping where no one had in 3,000 years – we chose to proceed with caution … Now, ten years later, the Yoatzot Halacha program is no longer just a promising experiment – it is a vibrant reality for the Jewish people. The achievements of the Yoatzot are great and their positive effect on the community-at-large is so clear that we are removing this restriction permanently.

Female Jewish scholars are still rare (the center has 61 graduates) but the response to female rabbinic experts has demonstrated a largely unrealized interest by Orthodox female Jews in rabbinic law-related questions. Thanks to the hotline Nishmat offers to the international community, Israel National News reports a jump from 3 to 500 in questions from Orthodox female Jews in New Jersey posed to female experts, as opposed to their local male rabbis.

Nishmat also provides a hotline where the women have answered more than 100,000 questions coming from anywhere in the world about Taharat HaMishpacha (Jewish family purity) and women’s health, including fertility, sexuality and prenatal care. The Jerusalem Post reports that another 9,000 questions have been answered on the English-language website.

"If we had two or three questions a day on the hotline in the beginning 10 years ago, today we have 20 or 30," Dr. Deena Zimmerman, a physician and a graduate of the first class of halachic advisers, said before the ceremony.
"Women are much more willing to speak openly and freely about these issues when they are talking to another woman. So we are seeing not only more questions but also more detailed questions," she said.

A Jewish woman who grew up without the benefit of a female teacher expressed the emotion that Zimmerman hints at recently for the Jewish Times, describing the difference between her experience and her daughter’s:

True, there were some questions that the rebbetzins, or wise women with whom we studied before our weddings, could answer. And we had been taught by them that there was nothing to be embarrassed about if we had to ask a rav a question on nidah [womanhood]; that it was all halachah [religious law] and that the rav treated our questions like any other halachic question. But logic and feelings did not coincide.

Orthodox Judaism, of course, follows a more complicated structure that must be strictly observed. The faithfulness and dedication by women studying the Torah could demonstrate that our Jewish brethren are actively seeking God. Jewish women have found a new way to study their faith while still respecting the Orthodox rules and structure of their religion. It seems it was worth the 10-year wait.

Mixed Reports on Abortion

A new report by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice reproductive think tank, suggests that while abortion is safe and legal in most developed countries, it is risky and restricted in the developing world. The Associated Press and USA Today both emphasized the 70,000 annual deaths the study attributes to unsafe abortions.

Political science professor at the University of Alabama Michael New writes that media analysis is “faulty” because it neglects potential social factors and implies restrictive abortion laws are solely responsible.

“These (developing countries mentioned in the report) have low per capita income and a higher incidence of social pathologies that may increase the perceived need for abortion,” New writes on The Corner. “This nuance is not picked up in any of the media coverage of the AGI report.” New also points out AGI has released other studies linking stricter abortion laws with reduced abortion rates.

The AGI study comes on the heels of a New York Times feature on abortion opponents and protests. The Times also ran an article and slideshow on Monica Migliorino Miller, who photographs aborted fetuses, and an article on “selected reduction,” aborting some of the fetuses in a multiple-fetus pregnancy.

Pro-life writers seemed to express shock that The New York Times would run a package that is so sensitive to pro-life concerns. The National Right to Life Committee calls the package “amazing for pro-lifers” and “breathtaking” that the newspaper would run images of aborted fetuses on its website.

Is is good that abortion is getting all this attention in the media? Do you think the reporting is fair and balanced?

In the Loop: Matters of Life and Death

The New York Times tackles pro-life issues

The New York Times featured a report on pro-life street protesters explores the role of faith, particularly evangelical Christianity, as a motivation to action, and describes not just the controversy surrounding the practice but also the self-reported success stories it has inspired. The article profiles Deborah Anderson, a 62-year-old activist, who describes her “first triumph”:

After becoming pregnant with a boyfriend while separated from her husband — and deciding to have the baby despite friends’ advice to abort, she said — she was a single mother with a bumper sticker on her Chrysler Fifth Avenue that said “the heart beats at 24 days for an unborn child.”

One day in a parking lot near her home, Ms. Anderson said, a woman came up to her and said she had been on her way to get an abortion when she saw that simple statement and changed her mind. “There was a 2-year-old in the back seat,” Ms. Anderson said.

You can read more thoughts about holding abortion signs at our sister site, Kyria.

The Times' Lens blog also profiles Monica Migliorino Miller, an associate theology professor at Madonna University and the director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, who produces the photographs of aborted fetuses that show up on protest signs, billboards, and trucks. The piece features a slideshow of her work. Warning: it’s very graphic.

The Times also reported on “selective abortion,” or the decision of some parents to terminate one or more fetuses in a multiple pregnancy. It suggests that this is sometimes necessary to ensure the survival and health of the remaining fetuses.

Iran drops charges of anti-state activity against 2 Christian women

In March, two Iranian women were arrested on charges of anti-state activity, propagating the Christian faith and apostasy. On Tuesday, the state of Iran dropped the charge of anti-state activity against Maryam Rostampour, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30. However, if convicted of the remaining charge of apostasy, the two women, who are reported as in poor health, could still face the death penalty.

Her.meneutics contributor featured on Slate’s Double X blog

Christine Scheller, a regular contributor to Her.meneutics, was featured on Slate’s women’s site, Double X. In the article, "My Son's Suicide Strengthened My Faith," she writes about the suicide of her son, Gabe, and its impact on her Christian faith.

Judge orders Rifqa Bary back to Ohio

Florida and Ohio judges decided on Tuesday that Rifqa Bary, the 17-year-old who fled to Florida because she believed her Muslim parents would kill her for converting to Christianity, must return to her parents’ home in Ohio. Sarah Pulliam Bailey offers a report on the Christianity Today Liveblog.

Duggars welcome first grandchild

The Duggar clan, featured on TLC’s 18 Kids and Counting, welcomed Mackynzie Renee Duggar to the world on October 8th. She is the first grandchild for Jim Bob and Michelle, whose eldest son Josh is the father. Mackynzie has 18 aunts and uncles, and one on the way (Michelle is currently pregnant with her 19th child). In a recent interview with Beliefnet, Jim Bob and Michelle discuss their family's lifestyle and religious beliefs, dispelling rumors that they are connected with the Quiverfull movement.

Top 10 Posts of the Last 30 Days

The editors here at the CT women's blog are taking deep breaths after what has been a whirlwind month for the blog — and one that's seen plenty of thoughtful commentary from you, our readers. A quick glance at the most-read posts of the last 30 days reveals that stories centered on the family, sexuality, and health are those that you most want to talk about, and those that incite the most passionate response.

On that note, we aim to continue covering books, news, and ideas that are most pertinent to evangelical women. But because we have only so many eyes and ears, we need your help in knowing what those pertinent topics might be. So we encourage you to write Her.meneutics' editorial advisers, Katelyn Beaty, at kbeaty[at]christianitytoday.com, or Sarah Pulliam Bailey, at spulliam[at]christianitytoday.com. And in the month ahead, look for coverage of the ethical dimensions of in-vitro fertilization, coverage from sister website Kyria of the recent Christianity21 conference, and (fingers crossed) more guest blogging from Carolyn McCulley, author of Radical Womanhood and writer at a blog of the same name.

And now, in case you missed them the first time around:

(10) "Snakes, Spiders, and the Science of Gender," by Elrena Evans // Comments: 10
Why do women tend to be more afraid of creepy crawlies than men?

(9) "Redeeming Roman Polanski," by Alicia Cohn // Comments: 17
Looking for a Christian response to a child rapist with powerful friends.

(8) "Anne Graham Lotz, the Church, and Me," by Alicia Cohn // Comments: 12
Like Lotz, I've never doubted faith in Christ, but I have mightily doubted the goodness of church.

(7) "Signs of Faith in Sarah Palin's Book?," by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 20
Palin is writing her book with an evangelical author.

(6) "The Confusing Case of Caster Semenya," by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 14
The South African runner may lose her gold medal after gender test results are released.

(5) "U.K. Christian Says Yes to Abstinence, No to Gardasil," by Christine A. Scheller // Comments: 40
Should women like Simone Davis be required to take STD-preventing shots if they are not having sex?

(4) "Does Religiosity Encourage Teen Pregnancy?" interview by Christine A. Scheller // Comments: 18
An interview with Joseph Strayhorn, the co-author of "Religion and Teen Pregnancy Rates."

(3) "The Case for Male Circumcision," by Christine A. Scheller // Comments: 113
Why the arguments from sentiment and sexual pleasure don't cut it for me.

(2) "Adoption: Single Christians Need Not Apply," by Julia Duin // Comments: 81
When there are 132 million orphans in the world, should unmarrieds really be discouraged from reaching out to them?

(1) "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," by Ruth Moon // Comments: 63
Early marriage sounds great — as long as there are mature Christian men willing to initiate.

This Is Your Brain on Evangelicalism

In 1995, NPR religion reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty was interviewing members of Saddleback Church for a Los Angeles Times Magazine article on why some churches grow and others don’t. She talked with a woman named Kathy Younge about her spiritual journey. Younge was suffering from recurrent melanoma, but she didn’t believe God was trying to kill her; she believed he was giving her a transcendent purpose. As Hagerty and Younge were talking, the journalist says, the air grew thick, moist, and warm, as if someone was breathing on them. She felt enveloped in a circle of light.

This is the story Hagerty opened with at a Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion lecture last week. She was there to discuss her most recent book, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality (which CT magazine reviewed this May). I was surprised to hear her validate evangelical faith so openly given that, as a regular attendee of the center’s lectures, I’m accustomed to hearing that faith's adherents talked about as if they were part of a carnival sideshow.

The experience presented Hagerty with a crisis. She says she was “spooked” and shut down the discussion quickly, but on the drive back to LA, she began asking herself questions: What happened? Was it a delusion? A chemical reaction? God?

The veteran journalist set out to answer some of these questions for herself, others like her, and her NPR listeners — most of whom, she said, aren’t members of the Southern Baptist Convention. In her research, she discovered that 51 percent of Americans say they’ve had a dramatic spiritual experience, but that 93 percent of National Academy of Science members don’t believe in God. “If 51 percent of Americans had schizophrenia, scientists would want to study it,” she concluded. She decided early on to include her own experience in the book, because, she said, journalists tend to be like anthropologists, treating their subjects as specimens. She wanted readers to know she was one of them.

Hagerty's research led her to a Navajo Peyote ceremony, a conference on near-death experiences, and to scientists who study what happens to the brain during spiritual practices. She concluded that scientists tend to see the brain like a CD player, a closed system in which events are merely chemical functions of the system. But, she said, it’s possible that the brain is more like a radio in that the sender is separate from the receiver. If, for example, NPR is broadcasting a program and a listener’s radio breaks, NPR is still broadcasting. Likewise, she said, “people who have vivid transcendent moments are able to tune into a reality that many of us ignore.”

Hagerty doesn’t believe that science currently has the ability to prove or disprove God, although it might in the future. She also believes that the case for materialism “isn’t as much of a slam dunk as it’s made out to be.” It’s just as likely that our brains are “finely tuned to connect with the divine,” and that we are on the verge of a paradigm shift.

Hagerty only interviewed people like her — people, she said, whom she wouldn’t be embarrassed to invite to a dinner party. During the Q&A after the lecture, she said she comes from a bias of accepting the rules of science as “the legitimate rules,” a bias she still prefers, even though she believes that as long as elite scientists dominate the debate, there will be little progress away from the dominant paradigm of our time. Younger scientists are getting restless though. The notion that we’re just a bundle of cells apparently doesn’t ring true even for them.

Toward the end of the Q&A, a young scholar from North Carolina asked if Fingerprints of God might not be good for evangelical types, who don’t trust science. Someone else asked if all religious experiences are equally valid. Hagerty said she didn’t get why evangelicals trust medicine but not other branches of science, and told a story of being interviewed by two evangelicals on what she thought was a secular radio program. One of the hosts asked if it wasn’t possible that for non-Christians, the experiences were demonic, given that Satan appears as an angel of light. The author was taken aback and said she couldn’t judge that, even though she would call herself a Christian.

It was an ironic ending to a narrative that began with a spiritual experience at a premiere evangelical megachurch. Apparently the only metaphysical truth worth considering is happy truth, and all evangelicals mistrust science.

We should be grateful, I suppose, that a paradigm shift may be on the horizon. We should also be grateful that intellectuals of various sorts are warming to the idea that there might be a non-material world. I just wish they understood how foolish it sounds — when they’re coming to conclusions that simple-minded believers have arrived at for millennia — and yet they continue to relegate them to the sideshow.

Christine has written about two other Princeton lectures on her blog, Exploring Intersections.

Banned Books and Blasphemy

If you want to read To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, or the Lord of the Rings trilogy, now is the perfect time to start. Last week was National Banned Books Week, designated to promote these and other books once or currently banned from libraries around the country.

Sounds like a good idea, right? Oh, and others on the list include Hang-ups, Hook-ups, and Holding Out: Stuff You Need to Know about Your Body, Sex, and Dating, Sex for Busy People: The Art of the Quickie for Lovers on the Go, and other publications of questionable literary merit but attention-grabbing content.

Still, all things considered, celebrating freedom of speech with Banned Books Week seems like a no-brainer to this journalist and English major. A week to celebrate works of great literature rejected by the uncultured masses who don’t understand them? Sign me up. And if, as one Christian philosopher once wrote, “All truth is God’s truth,” we have nothing to fear. Once the dust settles from the resulting collision of ideas, the truth will still be standing.

But amid the hullabaloo about John Steinbeck and Harper Lee, maybe we’re missing something. It’s easy to support a week celebrating banned high school books; it’s a little harder to put your money where your mouth is when safety and sanctity are on the line.

The Danish cartoon fiasco is one example. The cartoons caricaturing Muhammad created an uproar four years ago when artists received death threats for creating them. Last month, Yale University Press omitted the cartoons from an upcoming book, The Cartoons That Shook the World (H/T to Mollie Ziegler Hemingway at GetReligion for pointing that out).

Yale's reason for cutting the cartoon — “There existed a substantial likelihood of violence that might take the lives of innocent victims” — seems plausible, given recent history. But, as Hemingway points out, it’s a little bit scary that book publishers would be cowed by it.

Al Mohler took note of International Blasphemy Day a few weeks ago, created in response to the Danish cartoon controversy. The goal? “To expose all religious beliefs to the same level of inquiry, discussion and criticism to which other areas of intellectual interest are subjected.” The day's organizers asked participants to video-record themselves damning themselves by rejecting the Holy Spirit and post the video online.

That might hit a little closer to home for Christians. A week designated to celebrate esteemed literature sounds like a good idea. A day in honor of mocking all that we hold worthy of reverence crosses the line, right?

Maybe. But maybe not. Christians like to defend God; whole strands of apologetics are devoted to getting better at it. Maybe we can step back once in a while, and, to quote U2, “Stop helping God across the street like a little old lady.” If we are going to get up in arms (rightly, I would argue) about banning things that are offensive to others, we at times have to be willing to take criticism and swallow offense ourselves. If all truth really is God’s truth, well, the truth can set us free, if we let it.

Signs of Faith in Sarah Palin's Book?

Sarah Palin may not be writing a second autobiography for Christian audiences as previously reported, but perhaps her evangelical co-author will persuade her to include more details about her faith.

Shortly after she was nominated as John McCain's vice presidential candidate, media outlets seemed to dig for details about her Pentecostal background. But the focus on Palin's faith appeared to fade after the election as she became a grandmother, battled with her daughter's ex-fiancee, and resigned from her Alaska office.

Palin's 400-page memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, is due out from HarperCollins and Zondervan November 17. (Coincidentally, it's the same day Zondervan releases Rick Warren's The Hope You Need. Warren became the target of criticism after he was chosen to lead the benediction at President Obama's inauguration.)
Going Rogue's product description suggests that Palin will write about "the importance of faith and family," but is still fairly vague. She chose to work on her book with Lynn Vincent, co-author of Same Kind of Different As Me (which is becoming a movie starring Samuel L. Jackson), and a former writer for World magazine.

Politico's Ben Smith wrote about how Vincent could help Palin appeal to the Christian audience:

Vincent's posture on the confrontational, conservative right matches Palin's post election stand, in which she has powerfully secured her standing as a leading figure of the Republican party while doing little to broaden her appeal beyond the party's base.

That's also the posture likely to sell books.

"She doesn't need a writer who understands government — she needs a writer who understands the Christian heart — that's what the book's going to be about and that's who the book's going to appeal to," said [Sara Nelson, a longtime publishing industry watcher].

It will be interesting to see if Palin includes as much about her faith and analysis of religion and politics as Obama did in The Audacity of Hope, which included an entire chapter on Obama's faith, giving examples of how it impacted his views on abortion, same-sex marriage, and social justice. (Sections are available on Google Books starting on p. 195.)

Dan Gilgoff argues that Palin embodies the evangelical ethos because she is so countercultural. But at this point, it appears her countercultural stance is more political than it is religious.

Do you plan to buy Palin's new book? If so, do you expect to find much about her faith? Now that we are nearly a year past the 2008 election, how do you view Palin as a political figure?

In the Loop: Two Memoirs, One Tweet, and No Votes for Letterman

No 'Christian version' of Palin memoir after all

Going Rogue, Sarah Palin’s forthcoming memoir that is already a bestseller before its November 17th release, will not be accompanied by a “Christian edition” as previously thought. In August, Vanity Fair reported that Palin’s memoir was “to be published . . . not only by HarperCollins but also in a special edition by Zondervan, the Bible-publishing house, that may include supplemental material on faith.” However, Zondervan publicity director Karen Campbell today told U. S. News & World Report that "Zondervan never planned on publishing a separate Christian edition of Going Rogue with supplemental material. From what I understand,” she said, “it was misreporting."

Reported rape hits 20-year low
Thanks to advances in DNA technology, the rate of reported rapes has hit a 20-year low. According to USA Today, the FBI estimates that 89,000 women reported being raped in 2008 — 29 women for every 100,000 people. That's down from a high of 109,062 reported rapes in 1992, or 43 women for every 100,000 people. Scott Berkowitz, president of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, a victims' advocacy group, noted that new technology helps prosecutors put away many rapists after their first offense, preventing them from harming others. Additionally, he noted, the past 20 years have seen a shift in public awareness. "There is a much greater understanding that this is a crime,” he said, and women are now more likely to report a rape without fear of judgment or disbelief.

Memoir describes 15 abortions in 16 years
Yesterday marked the release of Irene Vilar's memoir Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict, which describes her 15 abortions in a span of 16 years. Other Press, a small publisher in New York, is publishing the book 51 other houses turned down. Publisher Judith Gurewich, who is also a practicing psychoanalyst, offered this interpretation:

I never saw this story as having much to do with abortion, except that it happened to be the target of her pathology or her neurosis. Her behaviour is very, very similar to anorexia or bulimia. It’s some kind of an addiction where she wants to impose her own rule on her own body. The fact that, of course, this involves a more complicated target makes it rather different.

Miscarriage announced on Twitter causes a stir
An interesting side note in the abortion debate: Penelope Trunk, the chief executive of a blog called Brazen Careerist, has been at the center of much debate after posting on her Twitter account, "I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's an [expletive] 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin." Kathleen Parker at The Washington Post wrote a response highlighting the very real grief that many couples experience after a miscarriage.

Letterman accused of sexual harassment
National Organization for Women (NOW) president Terry O’Neill issued a statement today calling out talk show host and comedian David Letterman for “setting the tone for his entire workplace . . . with sex” and noted that the controversy has “raised serious issues about the abuse of power leading to an inappropriate, if not hostile, workplace environment for women and employees.” Letterman offered an on-air apology to his wife and staff on Monday after allegations of sexual harassment amid news that he carried on affairs with several staffers.

Stranded in Manila, A Mother Prays

Twin typhoons Ketsana and Parma pummeled the Philippines and surrounding regions last week, taking more than 250 lives in Metro Manila and bringing the worst floods in 40 years to the capital. When Ketsana struck, Normi Son — an evangelical who works for a Montessori school downtown — found herself separated from her two children, ages 8 and 14. Below is her first-hand account of the floods that threatened to split her family in two.

At about 11 a.m. in my office at Cainta City, Metro Manila, I received a text message from my nephew: “Aunt, you won’t believe [this], but the river behind our house overflowed and the streets are now submerged into 2-meter-deep floodwater. Our neighbor’s fence has collapsed and their house is flooded. A landslide had occurred blocking the only road that would lead us to safety. Do not attempt to come. The roads are impassable.”

I phoned home to find out how my children were. They told me the river was still rising and that the walls behind our house could crumble anytime. My home was built on a piece of land 6 meters from Antipolo River. I felt numb at the thought of my children being stranded at home by themselves. I went to a corner and poured out my heart to God. “Please stop the rain now.” I kept uttering these words throughout the day, but the rain grew heavier. I wondered if God was listening.

Meanwhile, a member of my staff said that her husband had to swim to escape their submerged house. She said that flooding had started around our office. I looked out the window and saw dirty water rising up. Within a few minutes, it turned into a brown river raging in every direction; it engulfed plants, vehicles, bungalow houses, and small trees.

More complications hit us as the day wore on. The electricity was cut off by noon. Everyone on staff failed trying to go home by foot. I spent the entire afternoon with three of them, helping about 50 children and adults who had arrived at our office building. By nightfall, I completely lost contact with my children.

At 2 in the morning, a staff member told us that hundreds of cars, vans, and small trucks were floating everywhere, and that hundreds of people were stranded on train stations and overpasses. He had swum in the flooding waters, hoping to buy a can of milk for his infant daughter who was in an evacuation center about four kilometers away. But stores and supermarkets were also submerged.

Then we heard a voice cry “Fire!” We rushed to the window to see thick smoke coming from the chemical factory next door. We called two fire departments to no avail — their fire trucks had not escaped the floodwater.

We descended the stairs of our office building, and, with the aid of a rope tied between our building and another across the street, we braved the neck-deep water to climb to safety in a nearby mall. We found hundreds standing and lying down on higher floors, anxiously waiting to leave. Not until about 10 a.m. Sunday did the flood subside enough for us to start making our way home. As I walked, I still felt helpless — and anxious for my children — as I passed large areas that were still severely flooded.

I was hungry, weary, and frankly traumatized when I arrived home, but I was surprised to see my children relaxed, cleaning and drying wet books and clothes. The flood did not inundate the area around our home, so they weren’t in as much danger as my imagination had suggested. For a moment, I just stared at them with unbelief, feeling thankful that they were safe, and that despite my doubts, they had been under God’s protection the whole time.

Redeeming Roman Polanski

Film director Roman Polanski was recently arrested on a 32-year-old charge of statutory rape, which he pled guilty to in 1977 before fleeing the country. Now, while Polanski fights extradition, Hollywood rallies for his freedom, and news sources turn it into a story about a celebrity instead of about our justice system, others are asking, “What if Polanski were a Catholic priest who had abused children?”

Meanwhile, many Americans are scratching their heads. Unfortunately, it seems many of the people quick to give their opinion on this issue got their facts from Wikipedia and assume it wasn’t as appalling as it sounds. Well, they are wrong. (Warning: Reading the facts may make you sick.)

Hollywood hasn’t forgotten, however, because apparently Hollywood never blamed Polanski for raping a 13-year-old girl in the first place. (To be fair, there are exceptions.) People protesting the “Polanski persecution” include Harvey Weinstein, Peter Fonda, and Whoopi Goldberg, among others, who are all old enough to know better. No, it’s probably not fair that the only reason the L.A. Police Department knew Polanski would be in Switzerland was because he’s famous. It’s not fair that Polanski has been celebrated — and publicly awarded, including an Oscar in 2003 —for the 32 years since he fled the country, either. His arrest in Switzerland, in fact, came about because he had a Lifetime Achievement Award to accept.

But as Jeri Thompson, wife of Law & Order mainstay Fred Thompson, and no stranger to celebrity culture, wrote, it’s “one more piece of compelling evidence of just how out of touch the ‘artistic’ community is with the rest of America.” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said yesterday that such an explanation is a little too easy, just as it would be to say that Catholics are out of touch with the rest of the denominations.

As usual, it comes back to fundamentals. In this case, I think it is a matter of understanding human nature. People come to Christ as they acknowledge their need for him. Usually that means the two-step recognition of our own capacity for depravity, and God’s wonderful capacity for redeeming grace. That is the basis for our Christian understanding of forgiveness, as well as our belief in the possibility of change.

That is why a church in Kentucky recently ordained a sex offender as a minister. I hope that in that case, the church believes this man has changed, not because of their belief in the man's fundamental goodness, but a belief in God’s power. It is possible for a man to have committed evil and still be capable of good. Still, the man in this example served a prison sentence for his crime. Both steps — the punishment and the forgiveness — are important.

The Christian principle of forgiveness is not a replacement for the justice system. That is why it doesn’t matter (except to her, of course) that his victim has forgiven Polanksi. No punishment can turn back time on a crime. The basis of the U.S. justice system is the deterrence of crime. Biblically speaking, restoration is very different from punishment and one that denotes repair or return to perfection and wholeness. God is the only path to restoration.

It is so important to bring God into the prisons, into rehab programs and other aspects of the justice system. Because while the justice system is a societal good, it cannot offer healing to the person. Only God can do that. Navigating conflicting reasons why this person or that person “deserves” forgiveness should be easy, because restoration is not something any of us can offer. Not even, in the case of Polanski, his victim.

As a woman, I am horrified when I read any part of that little girl’s testimony. As a woman, I wince when I see someone dismiss Polanski's crime as unimportant compared with everything else going on in the world. As a woman who is a Christian, however, I am delighted that someone finally took action (for whatever reasons) to put Polanski in jail where he belongs. The sooner they get him there, the sooner he might be ready to listen when a prison minister tries to tell him that Christ offers a far better alternative to running away from that crushing burden of guilt.

Alicia Cohn previously interned at Christianity Today magazine. She has written previous blog posts for Her.meneutics on Anne Graham Lotz, parental rights, journalists in North Korea, Juanita Bynum, Margot Starbuck, summer reading, marriage in Florida, the Breast Cancer Bible, and The Stoning of Soraya M.