The Trouble with Confessing in Church

Several years ago, while we were attending a small nondenominational church, Pastor Donn* announced at the end of Sunday worship that we would have a special mid-week meeting. “It’s important that all members attend,” he emphasized. “We have an important family matter to discuss.”

Most of the hundred or so members who showed up Wednesday watched Pastor Donn summon the Hickmans, respected leaders in the congregation, and their pale 16-year-old daughter, Missy, to the front of the sanctuary. He put his arm around Missy’s shoulders and told us he’d summoned us in order to snuff out gossip about Missy before it had a chance to begin.

He then asked Missy to confess her sin to us. Without lifting her eyes, the tearful, trembling young woman told us she had just found out she was pregnant. Missy’s boyfriend, the birth dad, did not attend the church and wasn’t present that night.

I couldn’t deny that the congregation rallied around the Hickmans throughout Missy’s pregnancy and into the first years of motherhood. But Missy was never again just Missy. She became Missy the project, Missy the Girl Who Got Pregnant and Stood Up in Front of the Entire Church. And while the meeting effectively cauterized gossipy tongues and rallied prayer and practical support for the Hickmans, it also served to make Missy Exhibit A whenever the church’s youth pastors gave an abstinence sermon for the next year or so.

Missy’s own Hester Prynne experience taught me that personal confession is too big to be entrusted to an entire institution. In a church setting, I think public confession should be prefaced with a spiritual Miranda warning: Anything you say may well be used against you. Your confession might easily become a shorthand way to brand you: “Jeff? He’s the embezzler.” “Cindy is an alcoholic.” “Missy got pregnant at 16.”

Anne Jackson responds to this troubling church culture in a new book, Permission to Speak Freely: Essays and Art on Fear, Confession, and Grace (Thomas Nelson, 2010). Jackson asked her blog readers this question: What is the one thing you feel you can’t say in church? The book captures the flavor of the hundreds of answers she received, ranging from, “I had an affair on my wife and I still think about the other woman,” to, “Even though I’m a staff member at my church, most of my deep and significant relationships are with people I met online,” to, “I was raped by a counselor . . . I thought he was a friend.”

Jackson includes her own prose and free-verse poetry on the subject of fear and confession. She details her own confessions about the sexual abuse she experienced as a teen, her addiction to pornography, and her square-peg experience as a church employee in order to give readers, as a friend of hers called it, “the gift of going second.”

Jackson’s book is a helpful response to institutional unwritten rules that are more hospitable to silence and shame than to confession. However, I was struck by the fact that most of Jackson’s confessions first occurred in the safety of one-on-one relationships. Once she experienced a grace-filled response from her hearer, she became emboldened to confess the truth about herself in more public settings, such as speaking gigs or on her blog.

Jackson’s goal is to provoke churches toward creating a culture where members can speak freely about their mess. And that’s to the good. But her own story demonstrates that public confession of individual sin is the final step in a process that must first begin with God and then move to a small, safe community of one or two others. Jackson’s admissions of sin in Permission to Speak Freely are not really confessions as much as stories about confessions that have already occurred.

A church can and should facilitate a culture of confession by making space for these stories. That space can’t be manipulated into existence (as was the case with Missy), and will not happen at all if church leaders do not acknowledge that spiritual transformation is a continuous process, not a programmable product.

But the real work of confession isn’t the work of the church. It is the work of me coming to the end of myself and telling the unvarnished truth to God and you, and of you responding with compassion — and, perhaps, a story of your own.

Michelle Van Loon is the author of two books on the parables of Jesus, and blogs at TheParableLife.blogspot.com. She has written for the women's blog on Why Boys Fail, Hutterite communities, and church 'volunteers.'

How Christians Will Save America's Schools

Sixty-eight percent of eighth graders in the U.S. can’t read at grade level. 1.2 million teenagers drop out of school every year. And 44 percent of dropouts under age 24 are jobless. These statistics, from the Broad Foundation for Education, are grim. And the children are the ones who suffer: Not only are their long-term prospects for employment and economic stability jeopardized, they also miss out on the joys of learning and the relationships with peers and adults that develop in a supportive, structured learning environment.

So is it more money? Computers? Summer programs? Better teachers? Certainly each of these factors plays a role. But improving schools extends beyond policy and unions and technology. For those of us with school-age children, sending our kids to public school and developing relationships with others in the school — parents, teachers, and administrators — might be part of the solution.

There are other options, of course. If you have the funds, send your children to an independent school and/or a Christian school. If you don’t have the funds and are willing to figure it out, home school. Good reasons abound for pursuing either route. Parents have greater responsibility to their children than to the community. And some parents have real reasons to fear for their child’s safety and the influence of peers and teachers who don’t hold a biblical worldview. But before Christians withdraw from the public education system, we might consider our calling to serve our local communities. Jesus instructs his disciples to be “salt and light,” to bring his presence into the broader culture. Salt, almost invisible, nonetheless preserves food and transforms its flavor. Light allows us to see. Jesus sends his followers out so that, through relationships with others, the kingdom of God will break forth in their midst.

I grew up mostly attending private schools, and my husband teaches at an independent school. But our family finds itself wed to the public school system. Because our daughter has Down syndrome, she wouldn’t be admitted to competitive independent schools where even preschoolers must pass an entrance exam based on IQ. Some Christian schools might admit her, but they wouldn’t have the resources to provide therapy and other supports. I do have one friend who home schools all her children, including a son with Down syndrome. But I don’t feel up to the task of becoming both a teacher and therapist for our daughter. So the public school system it is, and for that, I’m grateful.

I’m grateful that our children will befriend kids who come from other backgrounds. I’m grateful for the chance to serve other families. And I’m hopeful that our presence will be a blessing, that others might “see our good deeds and praise our father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). It might be through an explicitly Christian gesture — inviting a friend to Sunday school or saying a blessing before mealtime. Or it might subtler — starting a tutoring program, helping to raise funds for the school, or serving on the PTA.

It’s easy for me to say. We live in an area with some of the best public schools in the state. A group of friends from college, however, has moved into a neighborhood where the schools are, by any measure, in disrepair. Their kids are approaching kindergarten, and they have chosen to stay engaged in their community by sending their children to the failing schools. Some of these friends have joined the local board of education. Others have become after-school volunteers. They are engaged in the messiness —the bureaucracy, the discipline problems, the teachers who are indifferent to their students’ fates. They are engaged because it matters to both their children and the health of their community. They are engaged because caring for the education and economic stability — not only of their own kids, but also of their neighbors — matters to God.

Christians have the freedom and responsibility to choose what’s best for their child. But these choices must be made in the context not only of personal gain but also of what serves and blesses others. What would happen if more Christian parents stayed with the public schools in such a way that teachers felt supported and students felt safe and able to learn? Maybe Time would run a cover story on how the church is transforming the nation’s schools, for the blessing of all.

Young, Single Women Outearn Male Counterparts

The fact that men make more money than women isn’t exactly news. Sure, it pops up in the media from time to time as some ask what we need to do to help that statistic change, while others insist that the gap isn’t real to begin with. For the most part, though, it’s a fact that’s accepted as part of our culture: one of the many inequalities — real or imagined, positive or negative — that exist between the genders.

But when a study comes out saying that some women actually earn more than their male counterparts — as one such study did earlier this month — well, that gets people talking.

According to The Wall Street Journal, data for 2008 indicates that “single, childless women between ages 22 and 30 were earning more than their male counterparts in most U.S. cities, with incomes that were 8% greater on average.” Alas, I’m not expecting to see any corresponding jump in my own income, as I’m neither single, childless, nor under age 30, but at first glance, I’m glad to see that working women, at least of the young, unmarried variety, are making strides in closing the wage gap.

Not so fast, though, says Joanne Cleaver of BNET. As with any statistic, perhaps especially a statistic involving money, the claim is only as good as the multifaceted factors behind it. Cleaver contacted James Chung of Reach Advisors — the firm that published the statistic — and sums up what he had to say: “It’s pretty simple: more women are graduating from college than men, so more young women are qualified for higher-paying entry-level jobs. Thus, in aggregate, millennial women are earning more than millennial men as they start their careers.” (Cleaver also notes that black and Hispanic women's earnings are nearly double that of their male counterparts.)

So why are you still making less money than your equally qualified male coworkers? “This doesn’t mean that women in particular professions, industries or job categories are making more than their male peers. It also doesn’t have anything to do with what individual women make compared to their male colleagues.” Cleaver says. The statistic is merely an aggregate of all possible incomes for women and men of the target demographic in the study. When the factors contributing to the statistic are unpacked, it doesn’t look quite the same.

Cleaver points out that the study “doesn’t relate to married young women or the biggest earnings barrier of all: children.” When women with husbands and children are added to the mix, the results are a far cry from women out-earning men. According to a September 16th press release from the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), the 2009 national poverty rate for women rose to almost 14 percent, the highest rate it’s hit in 15 years. Poverty rates for men are also on the rise, “but remain,” according to the NWLC, “substantially lower than among women.” As to who’s making how much money, the NWLC reports that “Women working full-time, year-round in 2009 were paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts.”

Apparently, the wage gap hasn’t been closed after all. I’m thrilled to hear that young, single, childless women are doing so well, but with poverty rates in this country at 17 percent for elderly women and a staggering 38.5 percent for single mothers, I think any discussion of women and income needs to include those statistics as well.

Does God Want Us to Suffer?

This is the second of two posts on Christian perspectives on physical pain. The first explored the idea of pain relief as a human right.

Melanie Thernstrom, in her critically praised new book, The Pain Chronicles, examines the role of pain in religious belief. “If we try to describe the particular terror of pain,” writes Thernstrom, “it seems to lie in the way that it kidnaps consciousness, annihilating the ordinary self.” Yet annihilation of the self is precisely what many religious traditions strive for. And “while some pain poses a grave threat," she notes, "other pain paradoxically strengthens the sense of self.”

Childbirth, rigorous physical training for sport or career, and coming-of-age rituals in some cultures can all be painful, but participants understand their pain as necessary for transforming the self — into a mother, a champion, a soldier, an adult. Thernstrom refers to this type of pain as integrative; we incorporate it into a positive sense of who we are. Thernstrom contrasts this with what she calls disintegrative pain: "pain that cannot be reconciled with one’s sense of self, but undermines and destroys it, as the pain of surgery differs from the pain of disease, even when they result in the same tissue damage.”

Pain’s transformative nature plays a central role in Christian belief. One need only look toward Jesus' crucifixion to see this. In fact, as Thernstrom explains, crucifixion maximizes pain by targeting body parts that are particularly pain-sensitive, such as the hands. Through Jesus’ painful death, we receive salvation and new life. Thernstrom explains Christianity’s perspective on pain: “The God of the Gospels answers the problem of pain not by removing it from human life, but by sharing it. . . . [Christ] suffers unto death, showing Christians not how to evade pain, but how to welcome its redemptive possibilities.”

Unfortunately, understanding pain’s redemptive possibilities can lead to romanticizing pain, scorning pain relief, and failing to recognize pain’s destructive power. In the 19th century, for example, it took decades for anesthetics to become widely used, even after physicians knew that they worked. Surgeons perceived the extreme pain of surgery as a necessary step in healing and a fundamental quality of their work. Christian churches claimed that medication to ease labor opposed the will of God, who had imposed labor pain upon women after Eve’s disobedience.

Today, people often respond to others’ pain with clichés: “Everything happens for a reason,” or, “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” glossing over the hard realities of pain in favor of the lessons to be learned. In a fascinating study, philosopher Rebecca Kukla showed that giving birth without pain medication has for some become a test of modern women’s suitability for motherhood, noting that “ ‘good’ mothers deliver vaginally without pain medication [while] ‘bad’ mothers make ‘selfish’ choices,” including epidurals and C-sections. Thernstrom also notes that chronic pain patients (particularly women and African Americans) have their complaints misunderstood or dismissed and their dependence on medication quickly pegged as weakness or addiction. Our culture operates under the assumption that “pain is gain” (and that an inability or unwillingness to bear it is a character flaw).

Certainly, the Cross demonstrates that pain can be redemptive, and many of us can relate experiences whereby pain led to positive transformation (though such transformation often comes once pain is relieved, because in the midst of severe pain, it’s hard to do much of anything besides be in pain). Christ’s suffering also helps us to know that when we suffer pain, God actually does know how we feel.

Yet the abundant stories of Jesus' healings also suggest that God understands how pain can limit human flourishing, especially when it leaves people unable to participate in essential human activities (family and community life, work, rest) and disconnected from their true selves. As someone with a painful, debilitating physical disability, I cling to the healing narratives as proof that Jesus cares about me and my broken body, and understands that pain is not always gain. I cling also to God’s promise in Revelation 21: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

As modern Christians with medical technology at our disposal, from drugs and surgery to genetic screening and assisted reproduction, we’re forced to contemplate how far we should go in abolishing pain, and when we should welcome its redemptive possibilities. One important step in that contemplation is an honest look at how we perceive and judge those who are in pain. Pain can transform, and pain can destroy. Humility requires that we not be too quick to judge into which category another’s pain falls.

Is Pain Relief a Human Right?

The International Association for the Study of Pain issued a declaration saying it is. People have a right to receive pain relief, without discrimination, via medications and non-medication techniques; to have pain assessed as a vital sign; to be treated by medical personnel trained in pain management; and to have chronic pain recognized as a disease entity that requires comprehensive treatment.

In a related story, Human Rights Watch published a report revealing that “most Kenyan children with diseases such as cancer or HIV/AIDS are unable to get palliative care or pain medicines,” because existing programs don’t serve children, health-care workers are inadequately trained in managing pain, and inexpensive opioid medications are scarce due to government policy and providers’ reluctance to give these drugs to children.

I learned of these developments while I was also reading — actually, devouring — Melanie Thernstrom’s acclaimed new book, The Pain Chronicles: Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing and the Science of Suffering. The meticulously researched book covers the history of how we interpret and treat pain; the relationship among pain, the body, and the brain; and Thernstrom’s story of living with chronic musculoskeletal pain.

Thernstrom describes injustices in how pain is perceived and treated. For example, women with chronic pain are more likely to receive medications for depression and anxiety, while men are more likely to receive opioids, surgery, and complete exams. She says women who aggressively demand pain treatment are more likely to be dismissed as hysterical, and women’s fears of being perceived as demanding make them hesitant to report pain. African Americans are also more likely to be under-treated for pain, denied opioids, and to “have their requests for medication interpreted as ‘drug-seeking behavior,’” she writes.

Thernstrom also documents an “opioid backlash” — an overzealous response to prescription painkiller abuse. The backlash has left some patients unable to get relief, as more doctors are reluctant to prescribe opioids as they witness colleagues being prosecuted, sometimes unfairly, for prescribing the drugs. Thernstrom predicts that decades from now, people will look back with pity on patients from whom opioid pain medication was withheld because of misguided fears and misinformation, just as we pity our ancestors who, sickened by infectious disease, were subjected to bizarre, cruel, and ineffective “treatments” before the germ theory came along.

This backlash might lead, unjustly, to the criminalization of people who take opioids with legitimate prescriptions for legitimate pain. As one of those people, I was alarmed to read about some North Carolina sheriffs who want to obtain a list of state residents with prescriptions for pain drugs. Claiming that the list will help them fight prescription drug abuse, these law enforcers apparently believe they need to keep tabs on people like me, as they do sex offenders and ex-felons.

While some Americans are subjected to stereotypes or inadequate responses to severe or chronic pain, residents of poorer countries often lack access to more basic pain relief. In parts of China and Africa, surgery is still often performed without anesthesia (although in China, there is some documented success with using acupuncture to prevent surgical pain). Non-prescription pain medicine is a luxury in many developing countries. I recently loaded up my shopping cart with children’s Advil and Tylenol for a friend to take on a trip to an Ethiopian orphanage, where children get no relief from the pain of sprains, fevers, headaches, and broken bones.

I have a genetic bone disorder that causes both acute pain (due to frequent broken bones) and chronic pain (due to joint and bone deformities). My oldest child shares my diagnosis. If you were to ask me for an image to illustrate what grace looks like, I would tell you about the EMT who responded last summer when my daughter had an accident resulting in multiple fractures. As my daughter lay in agony on the hot asphalt, the EMT lay down next to her and, from that awkward position, quickly and almost painlessly started an IV, through which my daughter received morphine to ease her pain for the ambulance ride. Adequate pain medication, administered by a skilled professional who saw pain relief as a primary duty, made a terrible day a bit more bearable. It was a gift for which I will always be grateful.

Thernstrom notes that “pain never simply ‘hurts.’ It insults, puzzles, disturbs, dislocates, devastates,” leaving those in pain feeling that they have lost their real lives, even lost themselves. As people concerned about justice, dignity, and wholeness, Christians might pay more attention to the emerging movement to relieve those whose selves are threatened by pain. Every human, including Kenyan children dying of HIV/AIDS and the estimated 70 million Americans who live with chronic pain, deserves to have their terrible days made a bit more bearable.



This is the first of two posts on Christian responses to physical pain. The next post will explore Christian understandings of pain as transformative and redemptive.

Why I Envy Young Nuns

I have a vinyl sticker on the back window of my car that reads, JESUS INSIDE. It's an effective conversation starter because it frequently invites teasing: “So, where does Jesus sit?” “Hey, did you know Jesus is inside your parked car?”

That decal came to mind while I read this weekend about young Catholic women who have joined the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville. This year, the traditional convent, replete with flowing black-and-white habits, is accepting a novitiate class that, at 27 women, is the largest in the U.S. The women are joining a convent whose median age is 36. At the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, another thriving and traditional convent in Ann Arbor, the average age is about 28. Sisters of Mary reports a highly educated new class of 22 candidates, including one Harvard graduate who spoke in Latin about her decision to take vows during her commencement speech. These young nuns-in-training are taking a modern path back to a traditional way of serving God.

Many Protestant women lack a precise spiritual equivalent to joining a convent. Many, of course, have shown sacrifice and dedication in various ways, such as overseas missions work and teaching at third-world schools. But others of us, including myself, lack a clear path to establishing lives of devotion. I am a woman devoted to God, and, incidentally, chaste. But I wonder how many situations I have been in where nobody knows that about me. Is my vinyl decal acting as my Protestant nun’s habit?

Some of the older sisters quoted in the AP article theorize that young women want to do something “radical” for God. As a young woman trying to figure out the fundamentals of life — where I’ll live, who I’ll live with, where I'll work — I get that. Jesus doesn’t naturally come up in my day-to-day conversations any more, and I occasionally feel as though I blend in with the world without trying.

I drive my car into a lot of situations, and my Jesus sticker is always there to catch others' eyes. I put it on my car after I graduated from a well-known Christian college in the Midwest. Since graduating, I've realized that while there, I took for granted that everyone knew I was a Christian. I didn’t have to work to appear to be following Christ.

I think we Christians could put a little more work into standing out for Jesus. Sometimes, we have to make a point of separating ourselves for God to get others to even notice.

I hope that’s the drive behind so many young women joining U.S. convents (and not because it’s radically interesting to give up Starbucks and personalized clothing). One of the sisters at Sisters of Mary called this year’s novitiate class “a vocation explosion.” These days, when it comes to choosing a vocation — a choice many of us think we are making in college — economics are creating problems for a lot of recent college graduates. Last year, more women earned PhDs than men, yet only 51 percent of college graduates under age 25 are working in jobs that require college educations. So when a Harvard graduate joins a Dominican convent, maybe it’s an acknowledgment that higher education is not going to help a 9.4 percent unemployment rate.

A nun’s habit symbolizes her commitment. I bet it also serves to remind her that her boss is the Lord, no matter what occupation she has. Short of putting on a habit, and with the full understanding that appearances do matter, I don’t mind branding myself for Jesus in my own Protestant, jeans-wearing ways. If I would wear a uniform required by my work, I
should be equally willing to wear any emblem that identifies me as a Christian, because the real work of following him has less to do with public, physical symbols and more to do with proclaiming his name in word and deed.

Not Everyone Is Praying for Christopher Hitchens Today

One of this generation’s most celebrated atheists, Christopher Hitchens, is dying. He has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

Since his cancer was made public, people of various faith traditions have been encouraging others to pray for the man who penned God Is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything, an indulgent bestseller rant against all things God. There’s an online push designating September 20 as Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day. There’s a Facebook page for those committed to Praying for Christopher Hitchens. Robert Barron, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, wrote an essay for CNN on “Why Christians should pray for Christopher Hitchens.” And Larry Taunton, executive director of the Fixed Point Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama, has issued a video blog urging Christians to pray for Hitchens.

Taunton recently drove to Washington, D.C., to fetch Hitchens and carry him back to Birmingham for a previously scheduled debate about all things God with David Berlinski, author of The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions. A reported 1,200 people turned up for the event.

Asked what he considered the most damaging tenet of the Christian faith, Hitchens said, “The idea of vicarious redemption is a disgusting moral teaching . . . it abandons moral responsibility. Faith is a refuge in cowardice.”

Hitchens is no lightweight atheist. He considers faith the least admirable of all virtues. He doesn’t even like the term "atheist" because it leaves too much wiggle room for the notion of God. In his most current book, Hitch-22, a memoir, he says, “I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with ‘you’ in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. That modesty is too arrogant for me.”

Hitchens has cultivated a keen knack for the ironic as was evident during a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for The Atlantic.

“Does it offend you that people are praying for you?” Goldberg asked.

“No. No,” Hitchens replied. “I take it kindly on the assumption that they are praying for my recovery, but not to be saved.”

Under no circumstances does Hitchens want people praying for his salvation. And should a rumor circulate that at some point during this process of dying he has made some death-bed confession, Hitchens warns people to not believe it. Perhaps, in some state of delirium, some state of physical anguish, such a prayer would be uttered, don’t put any stock into it. It would only be a raving, mad entity whose cancer had spread to the brain, he said.

“There’s humility in agnosticism that doesn’t exist in the atheist,” Goldberg responded.

Could it be that the very arrogance that caused Hitchens to denounce God and declare all religion as poisonous has strait-jacketed the man? Hitchens is beset by the very thing he has tried so long to escape: a religion. The Religion of Certainosity is for those who care more about being right than about being redeemed. Even Hitchens ought to find amusement in the irony of that.

Still, he is right to be suspect of the reasons why Christians are compelled to pray for his salvation when we don’t bother to pray for the salvation of the child next door, the grocery store clerk, or that good friend from college.

Why are so many people campaigning for Hitch’s salvation? Is it because his salvation would in some disingenuous way affirm their own? Hitchens isn’t fooled. He knows that for the Christian community, he’s the Big Fish. Netting him would be like hauling in Jonah’s whale. The salvation of Christopher Hitchens would get widespread play in New York City and far across the Atlantic. There would be a media feeding frenzy of apologists and bobble-head Christians, all yammering about the rejoicing in heaven over this one soul.

Yet there remains one for whom the praying is most sincere. Peter Hitchens is the brother who has long prayed for his brother as only a brother can. Unlike Christopher, Peter, author of The Rage Against God, chose faith.

“If you drive God out of the world then you create a harrowing wilderness,” Peter said.

It’s a wilderness in which far too many roam.

Hitchens doesn’t want our prayers.

“I don’t mean to be churlish about any kind intentions, but when September 20 comes, please do not trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries,” he said in Vanity Fair’s October 2010 issue. “Unless, of course, it makes you feel better.”

Can we justify praying for Hitchens when there’s a vast wilderness of other people lost?

And can we say in all truthfulness that we are praying as earnestly for those whose names aren’t among the celebrated notables?

Karen Spears Zacharias is an author, essayist, commentator, and popular speaker. She has written for Her.meneutics about Anne Rice, and can be reached via Twitter @karenzach. This post originally appeared at Patheos.

Craigslist Gives Up 'Adult Services' in the United States

After testifying at a hearing regarding domestic minor sex trafficking on Wednesday, Craigslist officials agreed to remove adult services advertisements in this country for good.

Her.meneutics has followed the story of Craigslist closely (see a 2009 interview with Kaffie McCullough and news report from March). In June, we interviewed Malika Saada Saar, founder and director of Rebecca Project for Human Rights, which monitors Craigslist’s postings and launched a campaign to end the adult services section of the popular web site. At that time, Saada Saar urged readers:

Be very aware that all of our girls are really at risk of this issue of sexual violence. There is a statistic that 1 in 3 girls, by the time she reaches 18, will have suffered some form of sexual violence. So I think it’s important for us to honor the sacredness of our daughters, and recognize that too often our girls are sexually victimized. Whether it is a trafficker, or someone who purchases our girls, or the next door neighbor who goes onto Craigslist, we have to be able to hold accountable those persons who subject our girls to sexual violence. We should be able to honor our girls’ sacredness, to talk to them, and to recognize that they deserve only to be honored in their bodies, not hurt, not criminalized.

Due to the continuous efforts by human rights advocates, law enforcement, and Congress, on September 3, Craigslist stopped running the adult services, formerly known as “erotic services.” It has received much criticism for its adult services section, which has been linked to sex trafficking, particularly of children.

Approximately 100,000 children are prostituted every year. At the House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children president Ernie Allen stated, “Internet services have made it possible to pimp these kids, offering them to prospective customers with little or no risk.”

[S]ome lawmakers questioned whether the need to protect children overrides the need to protect free speech. “Speech in the form of postings that incite violence against children is not protected speech,” Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) said.

Yesterday, Focus on the Family president Jim Daly posted on his blog:

Doesn’t common sense and common decency dictate that it’s just a bad idea to openly (or even subtly) advertise prostitution online? To me, wisdom dictates that a society has an obligation to protect its most vulnerable and most easily exploited members.
By pulling down this objectionable section, I'm encouraged to see that Craigslist has taken a step in the right direction.

The permanent removal of adult services was also followed with the announcement that Philip Markoff’s case was dropped. The “Craigslist killer” took his own life before he could stand trial for Julissa Brisman’s 2009 murder, who had advertised under the adult services section. Under law, Craigslist is not held responsible for crimes committed on its site, either.

Although human rights advocates and law enforcement applaud the section's removal, Craigslist has not agreed to remove the adult services section from other countries’ sites. Advocates are still concerned that traffickers will continue to use other, smaller sites to sell which will not be as well-monitored as Craigslist. Time reported that Craigslist’s director of law enforcement relations, William Powell, said, “Those who formerly posted ‘adult services’ ads on Craigslist will now advertise at countless other venues. It is our sincere hope that law enforcement and advocacy groups will find helpful partners there.”

What do you think about Craigslist’s new policy? What is the next step to end human trafficking?

How the Iraq War Has Affected Women

As the narrative in Iraq shifts from war to establishing a stable government and social structure, new and unexpected details about the cost of war are coming to light. One issue Iraq is struggling with is marriage — or the lack thereof.

The Associated Press reported last week that the number of single Iraqi females over age 30 — who face social stigmas due to their age, usually living under the protection of family — is disproportionately large for the population. A growing unmarried female population is one that could affect the total Iraqi population long-term, potentially negatively impacting the fledgling post-war economy, making it a significant peace-time issue for the vulnerable new democratic government.

Many of the unmarried women are widows. In January 2009, Mazin al-Shihan, head of Baghdad's Displacement Committee, estimated that Iraq’s widow population had reached one million. In addition to the loss of eligible men through violence, intermarriage has become far less acceptable in Iraqi society than it was 10 years ago. U.S. intervention into Saddam Hussein’s regime unexpectedly stirred up strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslim sects. (The majority population of Iraq — between 60 and 65 percent — is Shiite, but Hussein was Sunni and his government was mixed.)

By 2007, mixed-sect families had become a regular target of threats and violence by insurgents. Notes would be slipped under doors warning, "You must leave your home. We give you three days. Or we will kill you." But with both sects banning together against the other, many couples had nowhere to go. Families were torn apart. Few new mixed marriages were happening under those circumstances, and they have become rare.

The Iraqi government and human rights groups have been debating solutions to this growing problem for more than a year. Last year, Al-Shihan and Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq vice president, both proposed similar government solutions to offer monetary incentives for marriage. "[W]e propose offering 10 million Iraqi dinars [about US$8,500] to men in their late 30s or 40s who can't get married due to soaring prices, if they marry a widow," he said. Al-Hashemi particularly wanted to focus on intermarriage between the sects.

But women’s rights activists are concerned over the long-term dangers that a government-sponsored policy of marriage “bribery” could leave women. Jinan Mubarak has been sounding the alarm over the treatment of Iraqi women for several years, observing the reemergence of religious control over the government following the replacement of Hussein’s largely secular administration. Mubarak, head of the Iraqi Centre for Training and Employing Women in Baghdad, said in 2005 that the withdrawal of U.S. troops could signal a diminishing protection of women’s rights. More recently, she said that while single women are vulnerable in Iraqi society and many widows struggle even to feed their children, marriage might not solve everything. In reality, “the economic crisis is the core cause of all the women's problems in Iraq," she said.

Other women’s rights activists promote what could be considered a more Western solution: vocational training to help women gain a place in society apart from marriage. Hanaa Adwar, head of the Baghdad-based NGO al-Amal, promotes self-reliance over subsidized marriage. “The government should ensure there are adequate social and health programs [for the widows]," she said. The incentives plan diminishes women because “the widow must get married to another man to get the government help,” Adwar said. "Their dignity is violated when they have to stand in long queues to get small sums of government aid which will last for a few days, or when they have to depend solely on their extended families.”

The U.S. government has stepped back to provide Iraqis freedom to make their own choices about governing their country. This debate raises a lot of important questions about how the fledgling (and still floundering, following this year’s controversial election) government will choose to respond to an internal crisis. Should a democratic government mandate an answer, or allow NGOs and activists to shape the solution(s)? The answers to those questions will define the the way Iraqis, especially women, live.

An Argument against 'Settling Down'

“What Is It About 20-Somethings?” Robin Marantz Henig asked recently in The New York Times Magazine. Young American adults are taking longer than previous generations to grow up. They are faced with more possibilities, and their idealism runs rampant. Therefore, they are left wallowing in indecision and uncommitted lifestyles, which makes them “emerging adults,” a term coined by psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett.

Emerging adults’ most distinct trait is an inability to settle down. Henig notes that “the traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes . . . forestalling the beginning of adult life.” In other words, to quote Mark Edmundson’s excellent Chronicle of Higher Education essay “Dwelling in Possibilities,” young people are “possibility junkies” and “enemies of closure.”

The point of all the recent scholarly discussion about 20-somethings isn’t to complain about their habits, but first, as Henig says, to figure out “whether the prolongation of this unsettled time of life is a good thing or a bad thing.”

However, I think many Christians have already concluded that emerging adulthood is a bad thing. The voices who have noted the trend have immediately begun grasping for a solution, which, in many cases, is marriage. This is essentially what Mark Regnerus argued in his Christianity Today cover story, “The Case for Early Marriage.” If young adults have not gotten married, or are still wandering the world, they are not serious adults, he suggest: “. . . the focus of 20-somethings has become less about building mature relationships and fulfilling responsibilities, and more about enjoying oneself, traveling, and trying on identities and relationships. After all the fun, it will be time to settle down and get serious.”

And Christian Smith makes a similar case in Books and Culture, even encouraging parents to financially support their children while in undergrad, arguing that such parental support will push adolescents into adulthood sooner because to him, marriage is the primary signifier of maturity.

As someone smack in the middle of this new life stage, I admit that emerging adulthood carries with it many disconcerting patterns, and that Christians should have a unique response to them. But I also think emerging adulthood may not always be as bad as it looks. Furthermore, the idea that we should close in on emerging adults and force them into commitment may not only limit them, but limit our understanding of Christian maturity.

Admittedly, some of us are resistant to settling into the “traditional cycle” of adulthood, but is this because we are sloughing off responsibilities, or because we are waking up to a new set of responsibilities? For 20-somethings who are committed to Jesus, it could be the latter.

We are becoming increasingly ill-fitted categorical adults, but only within the narrow definition that adulthood means settling down — that is, tethering ourselves to romantic partners or to permanent homes. But if adulthood means accepting responsibility — regardless of whether we stay in one place, with the same career, or with the same people — then some of my peers aren’t emerging but have already arrived. They are taking Jesus’ call to discipleship seriously. They are embracing an expansive vision of adulthood, one that doesn’t necessarily involve getting a spouse and a mortgage, but more importantly means following Jesus, a call that sometimes requires reckless abandon (“and immediately they left their nets and followed him”), singleness (“there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”), and financial insecurities (“sell all you have . . . and come follow me”).

Some Christian 20-somethings might look like their fellow emerging adults, but by remaining single, serving overseas, working for justice, creating cultural goods, and pursuing other unprecedented opportunities for gospel advancement and renewal, they may be responding most responsibly to the call of discipleship.

Perhaps Christians don’t need to just grapple with a new stage of adulthood, but also form a more robust definition of adulthood, one that doesn’t assume settling down is the finish line for adolescence, but that adulthood is a mature acceptance of Jesus’ call — even if it leaves them unsettled.

Kristen Scharold, a graduate of Wheaton College, is an editor of Wunderkammer Magazine. She's written for Her.meneutics about women and unhappiness.

A New Message at the Strip Club-Church Showdown

Sitting in her car, Anny Donewald prayed these instructions to God last month.

Founder of Eve’s Angels, Donewald ministers to women in the adult entertainment industry in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She’d been mulling over the news that dancers from a strip club in Warsaw, Ohio, were picketing the local nondenominational church that for years had picketed them.

When Donewald’s phone rang moments later, it was her friend Sheri Brown, who co-leads JC’s Girls, a ministry to women in San Diego. She’d called to talk about the news. Donewald says she knew immediately that “God was telling me to go to Ohio.”

As quick as you can say holy irony, both were bound for Warsaw. There the two women would do what they did every week: get a table at a strip club, spend time with the dancers, bring them pizza, offer them gift bags — and tell them, “God loves you, and we love you.”

For Brown and Donewald, pizza and goodies are about more than pizza and goodies. “It’s all about relationship,” says Donewald. She tells the women, “Anytime you want to hang out or need something, call me.” The beautiful thing is, they do.

What made this outing different, of course, were all the church folks in the parking lot waving placards.

What Donewald and Brown would share that Saturday night, first with dancers in the club and then with church members outside, was, “What you’ve been hearing isn’t quite right.”

Donewald had stripped for six years in various cities, earning as much as six figures. During that time the Bible had been wielded as a weapon against her, along with dire warnings of damnation, as well-meaning Christians had begged her to stop.

Many women in the sex industry, many of who have already been abused physically and emotionally, experience a type of spiritual abuse from Christians. This is why ministries like JC’s Girls and Eve’s Angels are spreading a new message. Donewald summarizes: “He isn’t saying you’re a whore. He isn’t saying you’re a home wrecker. He’s not saying you’re forgotten. He’s not saying you’re dirt.”

Donewald came to Christ after her second child was born. With the random words “Matthew Four Sixteen” scrolling through her head — which was more than a little irritating — she asked her sister, “Who the h--- is Matthew?”

Her sister ventured, “It sounds like a Bible verse.”

Donewald’s sister opened a Bible and read these words to Anny: “The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” From that point, Donewald says, she knew she had heard from God. She spent the next three weeks reading the New Testament. She acknowledges, “I was radically converted.”

In The Fox Hole

When they arrived in Warsaw, Donewald and Brown spent several hours hanging out with the dancers at the Fox Hole. The reason they gave the dancers for being there? “We just came to give the message that God loves you.”

What you’ve been hearing isn’t quite right.

Afterward the two women introduced themselves to the church members who’d gathered to protest. Recognizing that the church had indeed been called by God to engage with the folks at the Fox Hole, Brown and Donewald pled, “We just came to tell you this is not God’s heart for you. The way you’re going about it is putting them on the defensive.”

What you’ve been hearing isn’t quite right.

Pastor Bill Dunfee invited the two women to speak in church the following morning. When he introduced them in worship, he confessed, “I don’t know the best way of doing this type of ministry. I do not know the best way to minister to strippers.”

Through their respective ministries, Brown and Donewald have found that unconditional love is what changes lives. That’s the secret to reaching women in the sex industry. The evening they spent at the Fox Hole, three women rededicated their lives to Christ, and two came to know Christ. Recognizing the need for more comprehensive supports, Donewald dreams of establishing a housing and rehab center for women leaving the industry.

After Sherri and Anny preached, members of New Beginnings Ministries had already begun to minister differently. Members had given the dancers backpacks full of clothes for their children and offered to help meet other needs as well. It was, indeed, a new beginning.

The end, of course, has yet to be seen. Dunfee met with the Fox Hole owner to attempt a truce, but both the strippers and church members reportedly have continued their respective protests. However, the women at the club have stayed in touch with Anny and hope to see her again.

“I love the [broader] church,” Donewald exclaims, “but I’m frustrated with her! The church has missed it, and we owe the world an apology for not representing Jesus the way he wants to be represented.”

We are, after all, representing the guy who was scorned for eating and drinking with sinners.

I can’t help suspecting that when more of us are eating pizza, sharing our stories, exchanging phone numbers, and learning the names of each other's children, we will be on the right track.

Anorexia and the Body of Christ

Harriet Brown’s new memoir, Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia, challenges popular beliefs about eating disorders. Many psychologists and nutritionists say that getting anorexics to eat won’t work until “underlying psychological issues” are dealt with, yet many anorexics die before that can happen. The deadliest of all psychological disorders, anorexia has an abysmal recovery rate: 30 to 40 percent recover completely; 20 percent die; the rest cycle in and out of hospitals and treatment programs.

When Brown’s 14-year-old daughter, Kitty, became anorexic, the author voraciously read up on the disorder. Dissatisfied with traditional explanations and terrified by the recovery rates, she encountered a lesser-known option: Family Based Treatment (FBT), or the Maudsley Approach. It sounds simple enough: Phase 1: Restore the patient’s weight. Phase 2: Return control over eating to the patient. Phase 3: Resume normal development. It’s done at home, with Mom and Dad sitting with the anorexic child at every meal, packing them with the calories needed for recovery.

Absurdly simple, or simply absurd? Amazingly, patients treated with FBT have close to a 90 percent recovery rate, more than twice the rate of patients treated with traditional methods. FBT seems so revolutionary because it has been assumed that no one — least of all, parents — should make anorexics eat. It’s wonderfully sensible that in FBT, parents (guided by professional therapists and doctors) manage their children’s care. Brown is careful to note that she and her family have their faults, but she comes across as a dedicated mother, one who admits that sending Kitty to a residential treatment facility would be in some ways easier, but who nonetheless, with her husband, faces down the “demon” of anorexia (as she calls it). She gives many reasons for why her family chose this path; perhaps the most persuasive is this:

We have something no one else in the world has: we love Kitty best. No one else in the world can possibly want her to get better as much as we do. No one else loves her as fiercely, as nonjudgmentally, as unconditionally as we do.

Love, I suspect, is the active ingredient in FBT. The first act of love from parent to child involves feeding, by breast or bottle. Indeed, many of the things Kitty does when working through FBT mimic babyhood. She eats with baby utensils, sleeps on her parents’ bedroom floor, goes with them to work, is supervised at every meal and snack (spending five hours a day at table), and cries herself to sleep in their arms. She gains weight. Slowly, she returns from near-death.

Of course, Kitty faces bumps on the road. Without her parents supervising, she tends to restrict her eating. Criticism of FBT in general (and of this book in particular) may pinpoint this fact, citing it as proof that parental supervision of an anorexic’s eating isn’t viable for the long term. However, the best-odds alternative — residential treatment — isn’t terribly effective once patients leave the facility. And it’s expensive. FBT is an approach that can work well much more cheaply, given the possibility of family support (and employer flexibility), without the stress of taking young girls — sometimes very young girls — away from their families.

Eating is, or should be, an intensely communal act. Brown nods in this direction, yet I was surprised she did not more directly note that FBT acknowledges this in a way that traditional treatments haven’t. Traditional therapists tiptoe around the issue of food, citing issues of control and obsession as primary. FBT, instead, creates an environment where it is “impossible not to eat.” This sounds less like the setting of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (cf. Lauren Greenfield’s documentary Thin) and more like dinnertime at Grandma’s. Sit down and eat with your loved one until she cleans the plate? Do we need to be told this? Maybe we do in a culture in which, says Brown,

We . . . have fallen for the notion that food is a regrettable necessity. As if the ideal, the holy grail we are all working toward, is to do without food altogether — and as if we not only should but could attain this state, were we good enough, determined enough, strong enough. As if that’s what we should want.

Maybe we all need to eat together more. Brown mentions that, pre-illness, Kitty spent three hours each evening at gymnastics practice, eating alone most nights. Somehow I wasn’t surprised, having recently read data indicating that children from families eating together have a lower incidence of eating disorders than children from families who don’t. If anorexics’ best hope is having a loved one eat with them, might eating together in general have more curative and preventative powers than we currently understand? Brown doesn’t go there, but I receive her family's story as an invitation to consider more seriously the value of eating communally.

Perhaps that’s a job for the Christian community. The early church ate their meals together “with glad and generous hearts, praising God” (Acts 2:46). Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians urges them to practice the Lord’s Supper rightly (11:17–34). Often we assume this means getting our hearts right before approaching God, but in context, Paul seems more concerned with making sure everyone eats. When you eat the Lord’s Supper, you proclaim Jesus’ death and second coming. Do it right, then: Wait for each other, share with one another, and make sure everyone has enough. Eating together this way proclaims Christ. What would that look like? Minimally, like eating together, with thankfulness and joy. Pass the cup with gratitude; pass the bread broken from a single loaf, being sure that all — especially the most vulnerable among you — are served.

Rachel Stone has written for Her.meneutics about fathers and for CT about living in Germany. She also contributes to Flourish Online and Creation Care magazine.

ChristWire and Good Satire

I first learned of the website ChristWire from a Facebook friend who linked to a much-read post that lists questions for wives to answer if they think their husbands might be gay. My friend asked whether anyone knew if the list was satire, because it sure seemed like it. The answer to her question, according to New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer, is a resounding "yes." Having operated ChristWire since 2008 under pseudonyms, the founders revealed their true identities — and intent — publicly last week.

Bryan Butvidas and Kirwin Watson started ChristWire to be “something like what The Onion [a popular fake-news site] would be if the writers cared mainly about God, gay people and how both influence the weather.” The site’s tagline is “Conservative Values for an Unsaved World,” and articles are heavy on pronouncements about God’s vengeance against gay people (e.g., "Hurricane Earl Projected Path, Gay East Coast of America"), as well as racist rants and ridicule of celebrity lifestyles.

It’s ugly, hateful, over-the-top stuff intended as social commentary. But it appears that many readers don’t get the joke. Many commenters respond to ChristWire posts seriously, with both support and shocked contempt. According to Oppenheimer, even seasoned bloggers from established conservative and liberal news sites, such as RenewAmerica and the Huffington Post, were taken in.

The founders, a nondenominational Protestant and a practicing Catholic, insist that their target “is not Christians but those who do not question what they hear on the news.” Even so, a brief glance through ChristWire's topics suggest Butvidas and Watson are taking on a certain brand of Christian. While their portrayal of conservative Christianity is not completely fair or accurate, we shouldn't simply write them off as the product of a media culture that fosters stereotypes (although it often does), or of a godless popular culture (research consistently scores American culture high on religiosity, especially compared with secularized Europe). A few high-profile leaders in the evangelical movement have described natural disasters as God's punishment on gay people — or, more recently, on Haitians who purportedly practice witchcraft. Even if ChristWire mistakenly conflates a few leaders' comments with an entire Christian movement, we evangelicals are wise to understand how some prominent mainstream voices perceive us, and to ask if some of the poking fun is deserved.

I regularly partake of satirical humor, including The Onion, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert. As the mother of a little boy whose favorite color is pink, for example, I snorted helplessly through The Onion’s video about creating a masculine Halloween costume for an effeminate son. The video was a cutting take-down of our culture’s equating of militarism, violence, and toughness with masculinity — and it was very funny.

At this point in the post, I wonder if I should put a disclaimer at the top letting readers know that, if they click through to some of the links, they will likely encounter colorful language, nonsense, and irreverence. I wonder if I’m endangering my fledgling career as a Christian blogger by admitting that I like comedians (and musicians, writers, and filmmakers) who employ colorful language, nonsense, and irreverence — when they do it well, in a way that is artful and truth-revealing, not gratuitous.

Blogger, author, and editor Jana Riess (who, full disclosure, is my book editor) recently asked on her Flunking Sainthood blog, "Why Are Jews Funnier Than Christians?" She pointed out that most high-profile comedians are Jewish, with the exception of Stephen Colbert, who is a committed Catholic. Christian comedy is largely limited to “the people your youth conference hires if you want to make sure the kids are entertained by someone who is not routinely dropping the f-bomb.”

Commenters to Riess’s post suggested several reasons for this comedic disparity, including the idea that humor is often born of great pain, and Jews know pain. Several observed that Christians concerned with pure messages and motives can have trouble appreciating satire and irony. Christians, in other words, sometimes take ourselves and the world a little too seriously.

I like the idea behind ChristWire — to challenge those who accept without question factually deficient, ideologically driven opinion masquerading as news. But I find it too heavy-handed, not particularly artful or clever, and also completely one-sided. I appreciate The Onion, Stewart, and Colbert because they are willing to highlight the hypocritical, ignorant, dishonest, or just plain silly aspects of anyone and anything. In targeting one viewpoint and hammering it into the ground, ChristWire’s humor feels gratuitous. Homophobia and racism are easy to ridicule, and those who seriously spout hateful speech about God’s vengeance are unlikely to see the irony, or themselves, in ChristWire’s fake journalism.

I’ll stick with the equal-opportunity humor of Stewart, Colbert, and The Onion, where people and ideas that make me cringe are ridiculed alongside people and ideas I embrace. The ability to laugh at ourselves and the world, to recognize the rampant hypocrisy and vanity of people and our institutions, is an important ingredient in humility. Comedy reminds us to question our allegiance to ideologies, organizations, and personalities whose wisdom is so easily revealed as foolishness, and to reaffirm our allegiance to the God who “made foolish the wisdom of the world” (1 Cor. 1:20). Sometimes, irreverence, colorful language, and satire can reveal the world’s foolishness — along with its pain and beauty — far better than earnest sermonizing.

500 Women and Children Raped in Congo

I went to dinner recently with a law student whose parents are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As we ate and shared, I tried to recall everything I had read about the DR Congo on BBC’s website or in history textbooks. But my mind blanked.

What year did Zaire become the DR Congo? When did they gain their independence? And did their stint with Marxism-Leninism ever end?

The next morning, as coffee brewed, I decided to reeducate myself on the DR Congo’s history, people, and beautiful terrains. My first questions were close to home. “If I were a Congolese woman, what would my life be like? What are their standards of beauty, roles in the home, recent accomplishments?”

As I typed “Congolese women” in my browser, I assumed the search would yield websites on their literature, political developments, and colorful printed fabrics.

Instead, page after page was all about rape. War crimes. FDLR rebels (a remnant of Hutu forces) systematically destroying the reproductive capabilities of women. A 13-year-old girl tied to a tree and raped by passing soldiers for several days at a time. Besides a few charity efforts, few websites actually celebrated Congolese women; one article celebrated a doctor for his reconstructive surgeries of them.

Gaping in disbelief, I then Googled “American women.” Immediately, links to songs, literature, “famous firsts” of American women, and women-only fitness centers popped up. Most links celebrated their beauty and strength.

The difference between my two searches couldn’t have been more drastic.

The results grieved me for days.

Since then, the violence in DR Congo has continued. Yesterday, the United Nations reported that some 500 Congolese women, girls, and babies have been raped since late July.

In response, some U.S. authorities are calling for more legislation and aid.

Others argue that an economic recession is no time to reach out. Given U.S. unemployment rates, some call humanitarian intervention a “conflict of interest.” (Similarly, the U.S. administration declared, “we have no interest in Rwanda” when asked to help contain the 1994 genocide; today’s economic hard times have further paralyzed leaders from taking action.)

As government officials take turns airing their say, Jesus’ actions remain steady. In Samaria, Jesus went to the well and found the woman right where she was. He met her specific needs. He healed her where she was most broken. No longer irreparable, she returned to her town and spread messages of his living water.

Today is no different. In the face of such evil and chaos, God is piecing DR Congo’s women and their communities back together. He is turning broken women into strong survivors who share messages of hope.

In her 2009 book, Kingdom Without Borders, anthropology professor and CT contributing editor Miriam Adeney explains,

Water is a better metaphor than blood for [women in eastern Congo] . . . Jesus offers living water, cleansing and purifying. Jesus also restores what has been stolen. . . . Strangely, the thought of Jesus hanging naked on the cross also comforts these women. Often they have been left naked and bleeding by the side of the road. . . . They have had to crawl until they could find help. It has been very shameful. Jesus’ shame soothes them. Out of such healing ministries remarkable forgiveness has grown.

One such ministry is the Congo Initiative (CI), which trains indigenous women and men to lead their nation well. Since its inception in 2002, CI has started a university, a center for professional development, abuse rehabilitation, HIV/AIDS church mobilization, and vocational training including micro-enterprises.

Grassroots organizations like CI are small and young; perhaps their comprehensive approaches to building up DR Congo’s citizens one by one will slowly contain the deadliest conflict since WWII.

Until then, the Cross makes it possible for them to have a sense of urgency anchored in an unwavering sense of peace.

Because of the Cross, you and I can also respond to the women of DR Congo with a sense of urgency basked in unwavering peace. There are a number of ways to weave your story with our sisters’ across the sea — including through prayer, sponsoring their aftercare, or by wielding power as a citizen of a democratic country that lets your voice be heard.

If “we are all…one body — whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free,” then every time one of our sisters in the DR Congo suffers, so do we. It’s time we rise up and seek justice on their behalf. It’s time we clothe our distant sisters with strength and dignity.

Davita Maharaj is pursuing a master's degree in international human rights law at Oxford University. She has written for Her.meneutics about human trafficking and Craigslist. You can find more about her on her website or follow her on Twitter.

A Course in Dying 101

My grandfather turned 90 last week. The past two years have been ones of declining health for him, including a botched surgery and shingles and Bell’s palsy and a broken hip. A few months ago, my mother sat down to talk with him about reaching the end of his life. She relayed the conversation to me.

“Dad, are you sad?”

He seemed puzzled. “No. I’m not sad. I’m just tired.”

“Are you sure? Maybe you’re worried?”

“No, I’m not worried.”

“Well, how are you feeling about death and the whole dying process?”

“Dying is much harder for the people around you than it is for the person dying. I’m looking forward to heaven. It should be exciting. New things always are.”

My mother doesn’t live with her parents, although she visits frequently. She and her sister (and, to a lesser extent, her two brothers who live farther away) help make decisions about their care. At age 88, my grandmother has been able to provide a great deal of support for her husband, and they hired a woman to help with his physical care once my grandmother couldn’t provide it on her own. A similar family drama is being played out across the nation. According to the Family Caregiver Alliance, women compose the majority of caregivers for the elderly and terminally ill patients.

Americans have a hard time talking about the end of life. As Atul Gawande wrote recently in The New Yorker, in “Letting Go,” the church in previous centuries offered ways for individuals and their families to prepare for death. But in a secularized culture with increasing life expectancy and medical technologies that prolong life, we have generally lost the ability to talk about an irrefutable fact: We will all die. Idolatry of life has led to a place — medically, culturally, even within the church — where death has become taboo.

It is taboo and yet crucial to discuss. As Gawande notes, talking about death is a great balm for the family of the person dying as well as for the patient at the end of life.

Gawande focuses on the contemporary hospice care movement. He details the difference between doctors like himself, who are ill-equipped to talk with patients about the reality of death, and hospice workers who help dying patients focus on what it means to live well until the end.  The term euthanasia means, in Greek, “a good death.” In contemporary culture, the word is most often used to refer to physician-assisted suicide, and most Christians oppose the practice. Despite the connotations of the word, Christians should seek to redefine the idea of a “good death” according to a biblical theology of human flourishing, which includes helping individuals and their families prepare to die well.

Ironically, simply talking about death often prolongs life more than medical intervention does. As Gawande reports, “researchers followed 4,493 Medicare patients with either terminal cancer or congestive heart failure. They found no difference in survival time between hospice and non-hospice patients with breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer. Curiously, hospice care seemed to extend survival for some patients.” Gawande says the reason hospice care extended life was because it focused on the continued value of the patient’s life, and because having someone to talk to about life and death provided relief. Citing a different study of cancer patients who were able to talk with their doctors about end-of-life care, Gawande writes, “These patients suffered less, were physically more capable, and were better able, for a longer period, to interact with others. Moreover, six months after the patients died their family members were much less likely to experience persistent major depression.”

Simple, honest acts of caring go a long way in providing comfort for dying patients and their families. But Christians can provide another type of balm for the dying person. Christians believe in the inherent, God-bestowed value of every human, regardless of age, ability, religion, or creed. Christians also have the Jesus as the model of how to care for one another — as one who cared for the physical needs of people, who was willing to talk about difficult subjects, and who held onto the promise, even while dying, of eternal life with God. Moreover, Christians hope for the resurrection of the dead, hope that life with God in the here and now can continue for eternity through a relationship with Jesus Christ. As Christianity Today’s editors have written before, the need for chaplains and other professional caregivers is growing, and Christians should consider caring for the dying as a particular calling from God. Whether in a professional or personal capacity, Christians have a life-giving gift to offer our death-denying culture.

A good death is possible for most people in America, but not because a good death comes through physician-assisted suicide. A good death is possible when the resources exist to help patients express their wishes to caregivers and family members in such a way that they find healing in relationships, purpose in their lives even at the end, and hope for the world to come.

James Lee and 'Filthy Human Children'

This week ended very badly for James Lee. Maybe the 43-year-old militant environmentalist expected September 1 to be his last day — a suicide mission seemed consistent with the activist’s manifesto that humans, particularly babies, are pollution and are polluting the planet.

Armed and wearing what appeared to be bombs attached to his body, Lee entered the Silver Spring, Maryland, headquarters of the Discovery Channel, which he had targeted on other occasions for its “pro-birth” programming, such as the Duggars’ 19 Kids and Counting. Taking three hostages, he attempted to capture the world’s attention while reiterating his message that people are wreaking havoc on earth and must stop having “filthy human children.”

Every issue has its spectrum, and Lee demonstrates the far reaches of a biocentric perspective that, at its core, sees humans as no higher or better than other life forms. At this point in our history, Lee and those sharing his view contend that humans have overextended themselves as a species to the demise of thousands or hundreds of thousands of other species.

At the other end of the spectrum is the anthropocentric perspective that says only humans have minds and souls, so only humans matter. Earth was given to humans to meet our physical needs while we developed our souls. We come to know God and ourselves in this temporary earthly existence as we work, relate, and create using our God-given abilities.

A centrist perspective, captured by creation-care groups such as the Evangelical Environmental Network, falls between these two. Departing from the biocentric view, this perspective holds that humans are different from other species because God’s likeness is woven into our being and we are tasked to represent God on Earth. Unlike Lee, this view holds that humans are cherished and loved by God. Departing from the anthropocentric view, however, the creation care perspective brings to the fore that God created and loves the Earth, and that we honor God when we love, celebrate, take joy in, and foster the flourishing of all life. Perhaps forests do not exist primarily as wood supplies for our homes, but also as homes for forest flora and fauna and to sequester the carbon dioxide that helps keep our climate stable.

I cringe at the James Lee story — both because of the loss of life (in this case his; he was shot after four hours of failed negotiations) but also at how much damage extremism does where thoughtful conversation is needed. I find his actions and language egregious. But I also hope Christians can have a conversation about the issue that Lee obsessed about. When any species’ population gets out of control, we confront a problem of overusing resources all species need to flourish or even survive. If we humans have over-extended ourselves, growing our population to a point that causes problems for other humans around the world, not to mention other species, then I have a responsibility to respond. The response may mean that couples need to consider having none or only one or two children, and expanding through adoption if they want large families. A Christian response will require all of us to learn to live more gently on the earth.

This summer, Christianity Today asked several writers (including myself) to comment on the General Synod of Australia’s statement urging citizens to have fewer children. Australia is on its way to overpopulation, and as a way to uphold the Eighth Commandment and care for future generations, the country’s Anglican church wants the government to offer incentives to parents to have fewer children.

Christians believe humans have a unique place in creation as God’s image-bearers, and we also acknowledge a responsibility to be good stewards of God’s creation. We are God’s beloved, commissioned to represent God in the world. We are called to love and to bring the gospel to a world crying for redemption. This may well include making hard choices as stewards of creation to help all life flourish.

Lisa Graham McMinn is professor of sociology at George Fox University and co-author most recently of Walking Gently on the Earth: Making Faithful Choices About Food, Energy, Shelter and More. She has written for Her.meneutics about 'femivores,' 2D love, happiness, and beekeeping.

Burqa Watching in Great America

During this summer’s visit to Six Flags Great America, I was prepared for the bikini-clad girls with short-shorts pulled down low, the shirtless boys with white tanks tossed across their shoulders, not to mention the matching families in khaki shorts and neon green tees.

As my eyes went from the women to the men, a rage boiled up inside me. In my mind, I was witnessing walking bondage, humans trapped beneath black cloth.

I have never considered the hijab (head scarf) oppressive, simply because I find the scarves and their wearers to be elegant and lovely — and because they do not cover a woman’s face. But to me, the burqa and even the niqab, which covers the face to a lesser degree, communicate an oppression that no woman in the world — let alone in Great America, the amusement park or the country, should bear, and certainly would never choose.

So imagine my surprise when I heard a young, modern Muslim woman named Nadia defending her choice to wear a niqab and cover her face in public at CNN’s Belief blog.

“I’ve never seen anybody interview a Muslim woman and ask her if she’s oppressed,” Nadia says. “Or if she feels oppressed for wearing what she wears, or if she’s oppressed in her home.”

Nor have I. Neither have I asked a Muslim woman. I can blame my assumptions on the Taliban and my open-jawed reading of Half the Sky, or the protestor’s images of a veiled woman being stoned for adultery. Nadia says these images are not valid in America. She has never met a woman forced to wear the veil.

In fact, far from being oppressed, Nadia maintains, she is more respected and taken more seriously by men because of her choice to cover her face and body in public. “You often see in many societies women being objectified because of how they look or being disrespected,” Aliya, another young Muslim, told CNN. The hijab helps “force people who may be otherwise unwilling to take the focus off of our physical appearance.” Ultimately, though, Nadia says that she chooses to cover to feel closer to her creator.

Nadia raises some valid points: Certainly we Christians hold modesty, as well as taking women seriously, as a virtue. But I can’t help wondering about Nadia’s view of the Creator. If women of all shapes, sizes, and skin tones want to be heard and accepted fully, we cannot continue to play into the notion that beauty or sexuality cannot go hand in hand with intellect and wisdom. As a blonde, if I color my hair to be taken seriously, don’t I just add to the longevity of the Dumb Blonde jokes? If nursing mothers continue to sneak out of interesting conversations to hide away to feed their babies, doesn’t it just fuel the flames that scorch the world with their “mommy brain” lies? If women, in the fullness of their God-given beauty and sexuality, are ever to be taken seriously, we must do it as we are created. Which leads to the bigger problem with Nadia’s conclusion.

Women are made in God’s image. God gave us faces — lips, tongues, cheeks, eyes — and breasts and legs and shoulders that presumably reflect and glorify him in some way.

Yes, in our broken world our lips and breasts and legs are viewed and used improperly, to allure the wrong person or to “distract” men. But how does hiding our womanhood away honor the God who made us fearfully and wonderfully with these parts?

When I think of a veiled face in particular, I can’t help wonder what is lost when one’s countenance is invisible to the outside world. Think how much we learn and understand about one another through our faces. When Jacob and Esau reunited after decades of bitter separation, Jacob experienced grace when he saw Esau’s kind, welcoming face that was “like seeing the face of God.”

As a Christian, I love Nadia and her Muslim sisters in whatever choice they make regarding hijabs, niqabs, or even burqas. As a libertarian and an American, I defend their right to feel close to their creator in almost any way they see fit. But frankly, as a woman made in the image of God — and as a woman loved by God — I struggle to understand how it could ever be better to hide our faces and our selves away.

Caryn Rivadeneira is a writer, speaker, and mom, and the author of Mama's Got a Fake I.D. as well as a book forthcoming from Tyndale House. She has written for Her.meneutics on fathers, Mother's Day, spanking, happiness, and pregnant Olympians.