Wired Magazine's Women Problem

A provocative close-up of a woman's body on a recent Wired cover generated controversy. How should Christians react?

Bethany Keeley-Jonker, guest blogger

Perhaps you’ve seen some of the controversy around the December cover of Wired magazine. The cover is a close-up image of a pair of Caucasian breasts, referencing the cover story about a new bio-technology that allows women to grow more of their own breast tissue after mastectomy or for cosmetic reasons. While the technology is currently being used for breasts, it has potential to help repair other kinds of organ damage. The cover is certainly provocative and has garnered some complaints.

My husband and I subscribe to Wired and both really like their articles. In general, we find the magazine interesting and thought-provoking. We haven’t been too excited to read this particular issue, though, because the cover is so off-putting; we definitely don’t bring it out and about with us to read in waiting rooms or on public transit. It looks like a cover of Playboy. Not exactly the impression I want to make with strangers or colleagues.

Journalism professor and blogger Cindy Royal expands the critique of this cover to Wired’s whole history of covers. Wired editor Chris Anderson defends his editorial decisions in the comments section, and I’m sympathetic to his position. I think it’s unfair for Royal to dismiss the way Wired celebrates Martha Stewart and Sarah Silverman but count a Will Ferrell cover as celebrating men. I’m also torn about my desire to hold media I consume to a higher standard than the rest of the culture. After all, the tech industry is far from the only industry with a woman problem, and Wired isn’t the only magazine that regularly promotes men’s achievements more than women’s. (Publishers Weekly created a list of the “Best Books of 2009” that didn’t include a single female author, and only one man of color.) My point is that Wired, like everything else, is a product of a fallen world, and when you try to make money in a sexist culture, it’s easy to compromise or not notice your own privilege. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t critique sexism when we find it, but it does mean that well-meaning people frequently participate in a culture of sexism without realizing it.

So I’ll leave long-term judgments about the publishing decisions made by Wired aside. Unlike Royal, who said she will cancel her subscription, I’m willing to give its editors a few more chances. I still have a problem with this particular cover, and I agree with others that it’s important to make those issues clear. For one thing, it participates in a pattern of presenting images of women’s bodies as dismembered and partial. If you haven’t seen one of Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly videos, she demonstrates this pattern well. (A relevant section occurs around 6:30, and another at 8:00.)

Gender scholars like Kilbourne have been critiquing the way advertising and media reduces women visually and verbally to body parts for decades, this has become particularly disturbing in some of the recent discussions of breast cancer. Peggy Orenstein’s recent New York Times op-ed makes a similar critique: While breast cancer awareness was once a serious pursuit, it has recently devolved into prurient attention to the breast, erasing the woman. For instance, disclose the color of your bra “for breast cancer,” “save the tatas,” and so on. These campaigns, as Her.meneutics blogger Gina Dalfonzo highlighted last week, are problematic because they make breast cancer about breasts, not women. This are especially problematic for Christians, who believe bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit and individual people are valuable spiritual beings with souls, not collections of body parts.

I see the Wired cover as another iteration of this reductionism. It’s no wonder its editors thought it was okay: the critique of these breast cancer campaigns is not nearly as loud as the enthusiasm for it. After all, Wired's cover story was about a technology that is being used to help breast cancer victims, and the cover was mimicking the tropes in a lot of breast cancer activism. Nonetheless, there is something deeply insulting about purporting to save or support women while focusing (literally) on a sexualized body part and (literally again) excluding or marginalizing the rest of her personhood. Since Christian theology has a deep investment in the value and dignity of humans, this trope should especially bother us.

So what is an appropriate Christian response? I’m not sure. One option would be to opt out. Boycott Wired or cancel your subscription. That’s tricky though: If you boycott every media that makes well-meaning but sexist errors, I’m not sure what you’ll have left to read or watch or listen to. I’m also not sure cloistering ourselves off from offensive culture is an effective way to be Christians in the world. Is it enough to voice our objection, to perhaps avoid this particular issue of the magazine? That’s the path I’m choosing for now.

Further, I think we should be more careful about the words and pictures we ourselves use to discuss issues around women’s health, like breast cancer, pregnancy, and nursing. We’re affected by a culture that reduces women to their body parts, and as Christians, we shouldn’t lose sight of the individual value of all people, no matter what topic we are discussing.


Bethany Keeley-Jonker is an ABD PhD student in speech communication at
the University of Georgia. She regularly blogs for Think Christian and runs the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, which has led to The Book of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks: A Celebration of Creative Punctuation.

Happy Wastegiving?

Tips for celebrating abundance tomorrow without creating unnecessary waste.

Hannah Faith Notess, guest blogger

A few years ago, my husband and I were waiting for our dinner to arrive in a Thai restaurant, when a movement at the next table caught my eye. An older couple was finishing up their meal. The man was settling the check, and the woman was fishing two plastic containers out of her purse. She shoveled their leftovers into the containers, wrapped them in a reused plastic bag (also from her purse), and proudly carted her DIY doggy bag out of the restaurant.

I felt embarrassed for them. Who could be so penurious as to bring their own doggy bag to the restaurant? Couldn’t they just enjoy the meal? Was it really so wasteful to use a restaurant’s takeout boxes for your leftovers?

“Let’s not ever become those people,” I told my husband.

Of course, the scene wouldn’t have bothered me save that I could easily see us becoming that couple. We were both raised in Christian families by parents who taught us the values of thrift and stewardship that we gratefully practice to this day. Another way of putting this: There are jokes about people of both our ethnic backgrounds being cheap.

I married a wonderful man who will put even two spoonfuls of leftover macaroni and cheese in a tiny container in the fridge. That container will then, sometimes, migrate to the back of the fridge and begin sprouting colorful mold flowers. This is not all bad. For one thing, a full refrigerator uses energy more efficiently than an empty one. But it shows how, despite best thrifty intentions, food waste happens.

Americans waste more than 40 percent of the food we produce, according to American Wasteland, a new book by journalist Jonathan Bloom. When one in seven households suffer from food insecurity — meaning you don’t know where your next meal is coming from — this wastage is more than something your Great Depression-surviving grandma would tsk-tsk about. It’s bad stewardship.

The reasons for waste are complicated, spanning from our vast farmland to my tiny container of moldy mac-and-cheese, and Bloom’s book and blog dive into those reasons. They also offer suggestions of how we can reduce that waste (maybe you don't need to peel that carrot) with a refreshing lack of guilt and shame, celebrating creative thriftiness in a ways that would do the Proverbs 31 woman proud.

Since it’s not exactly the easiest time of year to start a compost pile or go dumpster diving, here are a few novice suggestions as you prepare to celebrate and give thanks for God’s abundance this Thanksgiving.

1. Pick up a few extra freezer storage containers at the store. If you’re anything like me, you’ve lost a few due to accidental microwave casualties — now’s a good time to restock. (Or if you’ve got too many, wash out the ones that have been gathering dust.)

2. Clear out some space in the freezer and fridge. Those frost-bitten green beans from months ago can go in your green bean casserole. That weird-tasting jam from your neighbor three Christmases ago? It can go in the compost. Check out Still Tasty to see how long your food has stayed good.

3. Once you’ve carved the turkey, throw the carcass along with the veggie scraps lying around your messy Thanksgiving kitchen (okay maybe that’s just me) into a big pot of water. Simmer it while you watch football, or play football in the backyard, or whatever it is you do after eating, and you have yourself some stock, which is useful in, like, every recipe ever (if you have a good stock recipe, share it below!).

4. Consider giving to efforts to advocate for better food stewardship. I like Bread for the World, a Christian organization that helps churches act to end hunger in the U.S. and around the world. But you may have a different organization (share suggestions below) or you may want to give to your local food bank.

You're probably doing all this and more. You might even be the lady who proudly brings her own Tupperware to a restaurant. If so, I salute you. I haven't become that lady just yet. But lately, I’ve been thinking she's someone I might aspire to be.

What do you do to practice good food stewardship? Share your ideas below — especially if they involve what I can do with the giant, aging stalk of celery in my fridge.



Hannah Faith Notess is the editor of Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical, a collection of personal essays, and managing editor of Seattle Pacific University’s Response magazine. She is also a contributor to The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Fasting and Feasting Toward God, and has written for Her.meneutics about Eat Pray Love and Disney princesses.

When Mom and Dad Move In

Dispatches from a member of the half-a-sandwich generation.

Karen Swallow Prior, guest blogger

I knew my parents were coming, and not to visit — which was often, though living on the opposite coast, not often enough — but coming to live. Forever.

To understand what a great adjustment this would mean, it helps to know that I haven’t lived within 1,000 miles of my parents since I left for college at age 18. And since being married 25 years ago, I haven’t lived with anyone besides my husband — not counting the occasional house guest, various dogs, horses, and a cat named Chaucer. Such a life has made me self-directed, increasingly set in my ways, and easily irritated by the slightest upset of my routine.

So although I love my parents immensely, and like them a great deal besides, I approached the impending convergence of our lives as I do most things: with a sense of duty and a smidgen of anxiety. I just didn’t think about it more than necessary. Of course, my lifestyle and occupation (an English professor and department chair) don’t permit much time for a lot of extra thinking. But when the long-expected call came, on day four of their five-day trek from Washington State to our home in Virginia — their new home — and my Dad said, “We’re 400 miles away, we’ll be there sometime tomorrow,” I began to think.

“Tomorrow” had been a couple of years in the making. Many families find the conversation required to plan for aging and death difficult to broach, but my father has never been one to let anything be left to chance. So a few years ago, when he retired for the final time (having worked three consecutive careers), Dad sat Mom down to plan their future — more precisely, Mom’s future in the statistically likely event that he would “go” first, as my mother puts it.

When Mom told me about their discussion, I suggested that, when that time came, she come live with us. As the only daughter, I felt more suited — my deficiencies in the nurturing department notwithstanding — than either of my brothers to have her. This is normal, I suppose. 61 percent of family caregivers are women. I never dreamed my father would consider moving them both, kit and caboodle, from the home they had built some years ago to be near their grandchildren, my brother’s kids.

But then my father had his own dream. And the next morning, during their daily walk, Dad told Mom that he wanted them to move in with my husband and me.

So they made a couple of visits, chose a scenic knoll on our land between our house and the horse barn, drew up plans for a small home that my husband would build, and construction began.

That’s how we got to the phone call. And with their coming nigh upon us, I began, finally, to think concretely. Realizing my husband and I would be at school when they arrived, it dawned on me that I should have gotten some flowers, some balloons, something to greet them. It was too late to make the 20-mile trip to Wal-Mart, especially on a school night. Perhaps a “Welcome Home” sign? But did I have any large sheets of paper? Markers? Of course not. I wandered into the garage, where my husband was making last-minute preparations for their arrival.

“Do you have any big sheets of paper?” I asked unhopefully, explaining what I wanted to do.
“Do you want me to have the kids make something up tomorrow?” By “the kids,” he meant the students in his Building Trades class at the high school where he teaches.

“Could they?” I asked. He assured me they could, and I accepted gratefully a sense of relief.
He called the next morning, asking me to stop by his school on the way to my school. I pulled into the parking lot to see a gargantuan six-foot tall sign painted red with white wooden letters affixed, proclaiming, HOME SWEET HOME, and a little wooden house glued under the words. My husband planned to take it home to “install” at lunchtime. It wasn’t exactly the tactful, decorous, little banner I’d had in mind, but at least it was something.

After my late afternoon class, I returned to my office to a phone message. “We’re here!” My mother’s voice said cheerily. “During the whole trip, I just wasn’t sure how I’d feel when we actually got there,” she confessed into the phone. I never imagined that my mother—the woman who never second-guesses, never looks back, but has for her entire life charged full speed ahead in every endeavor (a quality which, for better or worse, I inherited from her)—would have had any doubts. Her message continued, “But when we pulled up to the driveway,” my mother’s voice broke, “… I saw the sign ….,” she paused, “and I knew we were home. ‘Home sweet home’.”

Even as someone whose life work centers on words, I am continually awed by the power of even the simplest words to transform a moment and, in so doing, all succeeding moments.

Karen Swallow Prior is English department chair and associate professor of English at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. She has written for sister publication Books & Culture.

Don't Think Pink

Breast cancer awareness campaigns often raise everything but real, tangible support for survivors. Just ask my mom.

Gina Dalfonzo, guest blogger
“Why are the comics pink?” my mother wanted to know a few weeks ago, glancing at the Sunday funnies lying on the kitchen table.

“Breast cancer,” I explained.

Enough said. Anyone who hasn’t been living on Neptune for the past few years knows that pink is shorthand for, “I care about breast cancer patients.” Especially during last month, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the whole world seemed awash in pink. From football players’ chinstraps to bracelets to the omnipresent ribbons to, yes, the comics, the color of awareness was everywhere.

 It’s odd, then, that some breast cancer patients and survivors — like my mom — are getting a little tired of it all.

“Especially during October, everything from toilet paper to buckets of fried chicken to the chin straps of NFL players look as if they have been steeped in Pepto,” writes Peggy Orenstein, another survivor, in The New York Times. “If the goal was ‘awareness,’ that has surely been met — largely, you could argue, because corporations recognized that with virtually no effort (and often minimal monetary contribution), going pink made them a lot of green.”

What does all this awareness actually accomplish? In Orenstein’s opinion, not much: “Rather than being playful, which is what these campaigns are after, sexy cancer suppresses discussion of real cancer, rendering its sufferers — the ones whom all this is supposed to be for — invisible.”

My mom feels much the same way, which is why the pink comics left her less than impressed. When she had her own battle with breast cancer a few years ago, the parade of pink was little more than background noise for her, and not very pleasant noise at that. For all the efforts to correlate cute pink accessories with the message “I care,” none of those things made her feel cared for at all. It was the turning of a disease into a trend — something that’s been done with every disease from AIDS to Alzheimer’s to acid reflux. And in the long run, it felt more dehumanizing than encouraging.

It’s true that sometimes the sale of pink stuff is used to raise money for research. But then again, some aspects of the awareness campaigns are worse than useless. Remember the Facebook fiasco last year when women were supposed to post their bra colors as their status to “raise awareness of breast cancer”? Right. The only awareness that was raised had exceedingly little to do with cancer. And that’s not even the worst example of what Orenstein calls “the sexualization of breast cancer.” I’ve even seen “Save the Ta-Tas” onesies for infants, which opens up a whole other can of worms.

I’m not condemning the motives of well-intentioned people who are trying to show their support through awareness campaigns. But it’s a little over the top. (Does anyone really think that Mary Worth or Marvin looked good with pink hair?) More and more, I’m hearing people complain about pink fatigue and start to wonder just how helpful these campaigns actually are. 

So forget the pink for a minute. Forget the showy gestures and the endless raising of awareness that’s already been raised as high as it can go. How can you go the extra mile to make a cancer patient feel genuinely cared for?

Maybe it’s not as easy as wearing pink, but you might be surprised by how easy it can be. My mom remembers gestures that meant the world to her at the hospital where she was treated. One group of volunteers provided a beribboned basket (“and it wasn’t a pink ribbon,” she specifies) of free cookies and juice for patients as they came out of dehydrating radiation treatments. Other people left gospel tracts and brochures for support groups. A hospital volunteer in a multicolored clown wig cheered up patients in the waiting room, and brought them heated blankets in the exam room. Those efforts made her feel really cared for.

Mom also met some fellow patients who had come for their treatments in cabs because no one was there to bring them or take them home afterward. One of the most caring things anyone can do for a patient, she suggests, is to volunteer to take her to and from her appointments.

There’s so much that breast cancer patients need, and ribbons and bracelets don’t begin to scratch the surface. If you want to wear pink, wear it because you like it or it looks good on you. But if you want to make a breast cancer patient feel better, how about making a genuine offer of help?

Gina Dalfonzo is editor of BreakPoint Online and Dickensblog. She wrote "The Good Christian Girl: A Fable" and "God Loves a Good Romance" for CT online, and "Why Sex Ruins TV Romances" for Her.meneutics.

Christian Woman Sentenced to Hanging for Blasphemy

Asia Bibi, the first woman to get the death sentence under Pakistan's blasphemy law, was charged with insulting Muhammad.

Alicia Cohn

Blasphemy laws in Pakistan legislate against “wounding the religious feelings of any person,” specifically regarding Islam. In 1992, the death penalty became mandatory upon conviction on blasphemy charges. So far no one has been executed under the blasphemy law, but others have languished in prison for up to 14 years without a trial. Up to 10 others have been murdered while under investigation.

This week, Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old mother of five from the Punjab Province, became the first woman ever sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy law. Bibi has already been imprisoned for over a year. Pakistani officials make arrests based on a blasphemy complaint, and suspects are held during the investigation.

The police complaint against her said she called the Qur'an "fake" and made comments about one of Muhammad’s wives and his declining health late in life. The incident under investigation happened when Bibi, a farm worker, brought water to her fellow female workers. Apparently, the Muslim women refused to share water with a Christian, calling it “unclean.” The Punjab is home to Pakistan's small Christian minority and has seen over 30 group incidents against Christians since September 11.

It’s hard to wrap my mind around a culture like that. Yet it sounds familiar because it’s much like the relationship between Jews and Samaritans in the Bible. Jesus addressed the Jews’ animosity toward the Samaritans many times, not only with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, but when he asked — and received — a drink from the Samaritan woman (John 4:7-42). That was considered “unclean” contact, as well, but Jesus — who was in the majority group at the time — set an example by interacting with her. Of course, in the Bible, religious persecution stops short with Jesus, which speaks of blasphemy but also tells us that judgment is in the hands of God, not his people. Jesus became the persecuted while freeing others from it.

Pakistan’s population is 95 percent Muslim, and minority groups, including Christians, have often complained of discrimination by government and society. Christian women are particularly vulnerable, due to the country’s history of rape violence. (Pakistan passed the Women’s Protection bill in 2006, intended to make charges of adultery following rape less common.)

"The [blasphemy] laws are discriminatory and intended as such and are used for precisely that purpose,” according to Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia analyst for Human Rights Watch. “So, the issue is not of their misuse but of the laws being on the statute books at all. Vague all-encompassing wording allows the laws to be used as an instrument of political and social coercion, legal discrimination and persecution."

The pope, Pakistani women, one cabinet official, and Bibi’s husband have all spoken out regarding Bibi’s case. Her family appealed the sentence, and Bibi’s husband, Ashiq Masih, denies that she ever insulted Muhammad or Islamic scripture. Most alleged blasphemers have been released on appeal in the past. The question now is how long it will be before Bibi is returned to her family. During the wait, Bibi will need her faith to stay safe.

Secular People Need Sabbaths, Too

Internet fasting. Experiments in chastity. Meatless Mondays. Nonreligious people are seeing the personal benefits of Christianity, even if they don't have the whole story.

Amy Julia Becker

It’s taken years for me to integrate Sabbath-keeping into my week. For most of my life, I have attended a church service on Sundays, but otherwise Sundays haven't been distinct. In recent years, though, ceasing from work, resting, and celebrating God’s goodness on Sundays has gained importance in our family. It's become a day when we worship with our church community, eat a midday meal, nap or read for a long portion of the afternoon, and enjoy time together in the early evening. As I’ve written elsewhere, we try to avoid purchasing things on Sundays. We also try to avoid e-mail. I’ve taken to giving our household appliances a rest. The laundry can wait.

American culture doesn’t share my family's appreciation for the Sabbath. I routinely pass a highway billboard from People’s Bank extolling their around-the-clock services. They boast that if there were eight days in a week, they’d be open all eight days. We live in a 24-7 era. We may only report to an office five days a week, but most people are “on” all the time, via the internet, cell phones, and retail establishments.

So my ears perked recently when I heard an interview with William Powers, author of Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. One of Powers's strategies for using technology wisely is what he calls “an Internet Sabbath": "We turn off the household modem . . . We can't do Web surfing . . . We really enter this other zone, and it's wonderful. . . . Even when we're connected, we can feel the benefits of having been disconnected a couple days ago.”

Two other news stories caught my eye. The first was a review of Chastened, Hephzibah Anderson’s book detailing her year of swearing off sex. The second came from an NPR story about “Meatless Mondays,” Sid Lerner’s attempt to convince New York restaurants to serve vegetarian meals on Mondays. In both cases, non-religious people have lifted practices of self-denial out of their traditionally religious context and found them to bring freedom, wisdom, and well-being.

None of these stories involves a recognition of God as one who deserves worship and who offers a way of life in which self-denial leads to flourishing. Yet they all reflect those truths. Powers, Anderson, and Lerner have all recognized a need for limits and a need for order. This echoes the story of creation in Genesis 1-3, in which God works to bring order out of chaos, and the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2-3, which reflects the human need for limits. (Of course, Genesis 3 also reflects our perpetual tendency to deny those limits and try to be God instead.)

In Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, Marva Dawn writes, “the rhythm of six days of work and one day of ceasing work is written into the very core of our beings.” Any type of Sabbath-keeping is a recognition of who we are as part of God’s creation. Yet, as Dawn also observes, the Sabbath (and spiritual disciplines or obedience to God’s commands in general) become pale versions of truth if they are separated from the God who created them. The Sabbath is a gift to us, for sure. But it is intended to be so much more.

Sabbath-keeping not only offers a day of rest, a rhythm that frees us from the incessant demands of technology and productivity. Sabbath-keeping also provides us with a chance to see ourselves as integrated parts of a community. According to Dawn, “the Jews’ original intention was to be deliberate about their actions in order to recover their identity as the beloved, holy people of God.” Christians gather to worship God on Sundays. We also gather to remember who we are as disciples of Christ, sent forth into the world for the remainder of the week to minister to others. Moreover, the Sabbath is about other people: In our rest, we allow others to rest. We cease from making demands of others — the demand of returning a phone call or serving a meal in a restaurant.

Finally, and most significantly, the Sabbath, the commandments, spiritual disciplines — all are about God’s character. Again, in Dawn’s words, the “basic meaning of the biblical Sabbath is an acceptance of the sovereignty of God.” Christians observe the Sabbath in response to the grace offered to us through Christ. As we rest and fellowship, we are reminded of who we are as limited creatures privileged with the chance to participate in God’s work on earth.

I commend William Powers, Hephzibah Anderson, and Sid Lerner for their efforts to bring order, rest, wisdom, and flourishing to human life. I can only hope their experiences lead them beyond themselves and into the community of faith, to acknowledge the one who created them with the need to rest.

Social Media Addict Seeks Connection, Escape

Lessons from the story of the young mom who killed her baby for interrupting her Farmville game.

Sarah Raymond Cunningham, guest blogger

I’ve always been a little suspicious of Facebook’s Farmville app, but I never thought it would become an accessory to murder.

The online game, which allows players to plow, plant, and grow virtual crops, seems to turn otherwise sane people into chronic status updaters desperate to get their hands on, say, a virtual shovel.

Seeing serious adults get sucked into role-playing games usually amuses me in the same way seeing businessmen and soccer moms playing with a Fisher Price farm set might. But occasionally my cynicism gets the best of me, and I roll my eyes at people’s devotion to such menial endeavors.

The story of Alexandra Tobias and her 3-month-old baby, though, made me freeze mid-eyeroll. To some people, I note, Farmville may not be menial at all. Online networks might be a part of a larger search for belonging and significance — one that can go terribly wrong.

Florida resident Tobias, 22, was slaving away on her virtual farm when her son, Dylan, started crying excessively. Frustrated with the interruptions, Tobias told police that she shook the infant to make him stop. Then, she said, she smoked a cigarette to compose herself, before shaking him some more. She pled guilty to second-degree murder last month and will be sentenced in December.

Like many, when I first heard these details I felt a tragic sort of sickness — for the baby, for his mother, and for the illusions that online communities can create for vulnerable people.

I’m not suggesting we rise up and blame Farmville’s creators or Facebook for this needless death. Clearly we humans have the ability to create a stunning obsession out of just about anything under the sun. But a story such as this should still stir some real-time reflection about our online habits. And it could present a new opportunity for people of faith to reach out to the vulnerable and help them approach new technological habits within God’s intentions for his image bearers.

Sometimes our virtual lives function as a hobby, a supplement to rich and healthy non-virtual existence. But social networking sites like Facebook also have addictive properties that serve as convenient escapes to real lives that might not be going well. In a person’s most lonely and depleted state, Facebook can easily become a welcome alternate reality. A young mom depleted by the demands of round-the-clock care for a newborn, for example, might welcome the chance to get lost in mindless entertainment. And if she was socially isolated — another common experience in motherhood — social starvation might drive her toward virtual adult companionship.

Both of these voids are true of many moms, and were likely heightened for Tobias, whose own mom had just passed away. Combine this with suggestions around the blogosphere that the young mother was battling post-partum depression, and we see how an especially vulnerable person could be prone to online addictions.

But this story isn’t just about Tobias and her weaknesses. Problems with online addictions are creeping into the news with regularity, reminding us, regardless of our current emotional state, to seek wisdom in managing our technological lives.

Stories like this encourage us to think about how seemingly innocent online habits might undermine healthy living: Maybe we start using our social profiles as emotional sounding boards. We tweet things like “just bawled my eyes out” to a world of detached strangers, many of whom don’t know what we look like. Or perhaps we drag our real life battles online, taking jabs at organizations we used to work for on our blog or dropping hints in our Facebook updates about being mistreated by “someone.”

When no one writes on our wall or replies to a tweet, we might let these mini-rejections affect our self-esteem. Or, in moments of loneliness, we may obsessively check our online inboxes, hoping for some sign of human care, all the while telling no one in our embodied world how sad and numb we’ve become.

When God created man to desire companionship, he didn’t take a rib and turn it into a Wi-fi signal. He took Adam’s rib and turned it into a living, breathing creature who could hug, touch, comfort, and even intuit emotion in its fellow inhabitants. I don’t think that means God frowns on technology like computers or phones. Social media facilitate most of our relationships and can even deepen some of them. But God’s intentions for humans call us to be purposeful about preserving face-to-face relationships — and stopping virtual addictions before they start.

In the Shadow of Miscarriage

Elise Erikson Barrett's What Was Lost aims to help women who have suffered miscarriage reconnect with God.

Rachel Marie Stone, guest blogger

Miscarriage has been in the news cycle recently. Former President Bush confessed in an interview last week that his mother, after miscarrying, kept the baby in a jar and showed it to her young son. Bush says that act solidified his pro-life stance and went on to shape his presidential policies. His confession started a conversation about cultural attitudes toward miscarriage in post-war America and today.

Contemporary American culture offers plenty of rituals surrounding birth and death. We know how to hold baby showers, congratulate new parents, offer condolences, attend funerals, and bring casseroles through it all. Why is it, then, that we don't seem to know what to do after a miscarriage? The grief that women experience after miscarriage is intense, and the people around them — family, friends, and co-workers — are often unable fully to understand that grief, finding themselves at a loss for words and acts that might bring comfort. Women themselves may find themselves surprised and confused by their own grief, struggling to walk through it and to understand it in light of the Christian faith. Though I've never had to walk down that particular valley, chances are that you or someone close to you has walked it: The American Pregnancy Association estimates that between 10 and 25 percent of all medically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage.

Which is why Elise Erikson Barrett’s recently published book is for you.

In What Was Lost: A Christian Journey through Miscarriage (Westminster John Knox), Barrett, a United Methodist pastor, candidly recounts grieving the loss of her first child through miscarriage. More than a memoir, it is a remarkably comprehensive resource both for women enduring miscarriage and for their families and friends. It comprises basic medical information on miscarriage, an outline of the grieving process, discussion of the inevitable "why God?" questions, and how to respond to well-meaning yet hurtful comments (e.g., "Most miscarriages are due to genetic defects, so it's all for the best"), as well as an annotated bibliography and prayers, service outlines, and hymns chosen and composed with miscarriage in mind. Barrett points out that often people are unable to recognize and validate the pain of miscarriage — and that this is true even of women going through it. Thus, What Was Lost is, as she puts it, a guide to walking through the grief and learning to trust God again.

Some might be concerned with Barrett’s purposefully hazy discussion about what happens to miscarried babies; she hints that they are persons capable of salvation and suggests praying for them. However, I think her avoidance of platitudes and simple answers is refreshing. There are no simple answers. But, as Barrett reminds us, we are created and loved by a God who became flesh and walked with us and suffered as we do. He walks with us still, and because of him we are walking toward the joy of the new creation, where death and pain will be no more.

Especially beautiful is Barrett’s chapter on “Relating to God after a Miscarriage," which connects common post-miscarriage emotions — anger, distrust, distance — with Psalms reflecting similar emotions, gently encouraging the sufferer to continue relating to God despite feeling anger toward or distance from him. Her guidance on engaging in a concrete way of saying goodbye to the baby is beautifully explained as an opportunity not only to create a memory reflective of the experience of miscarriage but also to turn things over to God. And this is Barrett’s aim throughout: bringing the sufferer to a place where she can accept God's goodness despite the pain.

Knowing many other women who have walked through miscarriage's dark veil, I was grateful to discover this resource even as I cringed, recalling how I've mouthed unhelpful platitudes similar to the ones Barrett describes. As miscarriage is so common, and can be so devastating, this book will bring comfort when read individually, but especially when used in groups, in pairs, or in counseling contexts. Each chapter ends with reflection questions and exercises, making it perfect for such use. If you have gone through miscarriage, please find yourself a copy and read it, perhaps along with your spouse or a trusted friend. And when someone you love suffers a miscarriage, use this resource to learn what you can about it, and prepare your hands and heart to bring kindness and gentleness to those suffering from a loss that, while often unnoticed by others, never escapes the gaze of the One who became flesh as we are.

Rachel Stone has written for Her.meneutics on fathers and eating disorders, for Christianity Today on living in Germany, and has also contributed to Flourish, catapult/*cino, and Creation Care magazine. She lives in Greenport, New York, with her husband, two sons, extended family, and assorted cats.

Why I Boycotted Amazon This Week

When it comes to how-to books for pedophiles, defending the defenseless is more important than defending free speech.

Caryn Rivadeneira, guest blogger

I jumped on a bandwagon Wednesday. I was one of the thousands who tweeted out against Amazon.com’s decision to carry on its Kindle store the e-book The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-lover's Code of Conduct.

According to Philip R. Greaves II, his self-published book would “make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certain rules for these adults to follow.” Greaves hoped “to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter [sic] sentences should they ever be caught.”

Ah, lovely. This book, for sale at the same place I regularly order Christmas gifts for my own children. The ones this guy would probably want to molest, albeit “safely,” thereby receiving a “liter” sentence for doing so were he caught. I don’t think so.

So, even though I love Amazon, even though my own book is sold there, and even though I’m grateful Amazon gives us writers a chance to be read and critiqued and ranked, I joined the masses in an “#amazonfail” Twitter campaign. While others called for boycotts and aggressively shamed the company, I simply tweeted, “Glad to have ordered the new Wimpy Kid from @Borders. @Amazon, pull that pedophilia book! #amazonfail”

But even though my words didn’t scathe or scare, I wrestled with what I had written. With what I was asking Amazon to do. As a lifelong lover of books and language and ideas, I seemed to be joining the ranks of the old-school book burners, of those who took offense to a word or an image or an idea and moved to ban it from public discourse. But now, instead of burning a barrel of books on the library steps (I’m imagining that scene from Footloose), we were burning virtual books on Twitter.

A friend’s Facebook comment made me wonder further about what I had tweeted: “There is a freedom of speech issue here. Even when you don't agree with something is it worth having it banned/removed?”

His comment came on Veteran’s Day. No small irony, since it’s a humbling day when I pray for the men and women who risk and have risked their lives so that I can write and say whatever I want (except “Fire!” in theaters, of course), so that I can voice my opinions without fear of being jailed, so that I can write books or articles or stories no matter how offensive they may be to others.

But as I read my friend’s question of, “Is it worth it?” my heart and head said, “Yes.” With this book — an instruction manual for child molesters — yes.

Because this wasn’t simply a matter of free speech. And even if it were about free speech, as a Christian I have higher rights to defend, including this one: to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed” (Prov. 31:8, NLT).

I first underlined that verse as a high school student. Next to it, I wrote, “A good verse for life.” And so it’s been.

So, while I can stand by and even encourage conversations and books and movies about things I disagree with, I cannot stand idly by those things that seek to crush the defenseless, including a how-to manual for pedophiles.

This issue isn’t about censorship (as my friend and Amazon initially claimed) — Greaves can blog and speak about this all he wants. The issue is about a consumer community telling a company that we will not stand by while they profit off child abuse. This is about consumers using their own free speech and the free market to demand more, higher standards from the stores at which they shop.

Amazingly, within a day, because of pressure from Twitter and the Facebook groups that sprung up, calling for boycotts, Amazon took down the book. Let’s hope it stays this way.

Of course, my hypocrisy in all this is that I do business at plenty of companies that profit off child abuse. I’m likely wearing something right now that was made by a child no older than my oldest (age 8). This Christmas, my kids will probably open at least one gift made in part by someone else’s child slave.

That’s a problem. Suddenly that “good verse for life” I underlined so long ago gets complicated.

Yet, today Christians' opportunity to speak up has never been stronger. It took one day for Amazon to change course because of people typing on Twitter and Facebook.

While our government would have taken years and millions of dollars and thousands of unread pages to pass laws to forbid the sale of how-to-molest-children handbooks, it took a lot of caring people just 140 characters and a day. Maybe 15 cents worth of time.

Imagine what those same people — plus a whole Twitterverse of Christians — could do to speak up for the defenseless, to rescue all those others being crushed by injustice. If we took everybody else to task. If we tweeted up for those who cannot tweet for themselves. That’s about the best use of free speech I can think of.

Caryn Rivadeneira is a writer, speaker, and mother of three, 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 Halloween, burqas, fathers, Mother's Day, spanking, happiness, and pregnant Olympians.

The American Red Cross's Knight in Shining Pearls

Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, the first woman to chair the American Red Cross, says women hold the keys to the world’s economy.

Interview by Katelyn Beaty

The chairman of the American Red Cross — the humanitarian organization founded by Clara Barton in 1881 — is, actually, not a chairman. Bonnie McElveen-Hunter was appointed the first woman to the position by President George W. Bush in June 2004. Before that, the North Carolina native served two years as the Ambassador to the Republic of Finland, where she was knighted for starting a women business leader’s summit and an anti-trafficking campaign. In all her spare time, she is the founder-CEO of Pace Communications, and served as finance chairman of Elizabeth Dole’s bid for the U.S. presidency. (Dole became the first female president of the American Red Cross in 1996.)

But the work McElveen-Hunter believes God has called her to is with the American Red Cross, which deploys over 1 million volunteers annually to people devastated by natural disasters and political conflicts. McElveen-Hunter, who recently began her third term as Red Cross chairman, spoke with Her.meneutics editor Katelyn Beaty about women in business, Haiti’s cholera outbreak, and why she is handing the John M. Templeton Biblical Values Award, recently awarded her by the National Bible Association, over to her mother.

While in Finland, you established the Women Business Leaders Summit in Helsinki. Then you founded the United Way Women’s Leadership Initiative and a women’s initiative in Greensboro. Why are women so invaluable in today’s economic sectors?
I believe commerce is the most important force in the world today. It’s what ushers in the social, economic, and political change. And if you can create opportunity for women, guess what they do? They help each other. They help their families, and it creates dignity of purpose. The money that’s generated goes to improve people’s lives as opposed to sometimes, with the other gender in some nations, you find that it’s pretty much squandered. So women are really good investments.

I also think women are . . . focused on nurturing and are focused on others. We’re focused on common goals, so we unite and work together. All of those are traits that are so appropriate in the world today, whether it’s business, Wall Street, [or] philanthropy — [they require] the ability to build relationships to do anything in this world, to be successful in business. In the publishing business, you have to build relationships with your readers, with advertisers, with colleagues. And women are uniquely gifted in this arena, for this time.

If you want to look at nations that succeed in this world, they are nations that recognize that destiny requires 100 percent of their resources, both male and female. The nations that are not succeeding, in many cases they are utilizing only 50 percent of their resources. You can’t compete in a global market today without the full utilization of your citizens.

You have said, “The Red Cross helps me define the why in my life.” So you come to your work with a sense of calling. When did you realize God was calling you to it?
God actually called me through the White House. I got a call when I got back to the U.S. I said, “I loved my experience as ambassador. I’m thrilled to have been knighted by Finland. But I need to come back to North Carolina.” Then I got a call a few months later saying, “We are looking for a chairman of the American Red Cross, and we think this is a role you would do well.” I thought, Oh my gosh, this is God’s work. How do I say no to that?

I spoke to a lot of people about it and certainly prayed about it. I felt like this was an opportunity to meet people at their greatest hour of need, and that is certainly where and when the Red Cross is there. There is no way we as mere mortals [in the Red Cross] would be able to accomplish all the things that are necessary, but there seems to be divine intervention. It’s amazing to see what happens with people who are largely volunteers. You sense you have blessings in the work you are doing.

Have you had a chance to visit Haiti? If so, what principles have you found most helpful in addressing crises like the cholera outbreak there?
I have been down there twice. I have not been there since the outbreak. We have 200 people on the ground that are engaged in emergency response, handing out water tablets. We’ve provided enough chlorine for 75,000 thousand gallons of water. So we’re doing all the preventive things we can to make sure this doesn’t spread.

One of the great benefits of the Red Cross is, first, that we are able, through a great and giving and generous nation, to generate resources. If someone had told me prior to the Haiti earthquake that we were going to generate almost a half-billion dollars for Haiti, I’m not sure I would have believed that was possible, because in most responses that we do, we lose money.

Second, the fact that we have 700 chapters all over the U.S. We have the ability to collectively do more within individual communities. The power of the local chapters and the network that exists — there is capacity and scale that are very difficult to replicate with an organization that has this many boots on the ground.

And the fact that we [the international federation of the Red Cross] have 97 million volunteers around the world. Can you imagine what that would cost if you had to pay people even minimum wage? It’s a trillion-dollar gift to nations and to the world.

What are the challenges that you and other female leaders face? Or would you say a lot of those challenges have largely been removed?
If you go to a women’s museum, you learn that in many cases, the people who opposed women’s right to vote were other women. Our biggest issue is sometimes we hold each other to a higher standard then we hold men. At some point, we have to figure out that we need to help one another. I think that is happening. I am seeing that women are working more to help support and promote each other, and I think that that period [of competition] is diminishing.

For [American] women, there are no barriers. What are the barriers in this country? [A feminist] spoke when I was in college and said the only restriction that you have on your potential is self-inflicted. Certainly there have been barriers, but those have been greatly diminished. You can sit around and talk about what you don’t have as opposed to what you do have. But I’ve never been one to accept that any of those barriers were meant for me.

Your mother, Madeline, has obviously influenced your life’s work enormously.
Enormously. One of the most wonderful gifts that anyone can ever receive is the gift of a godly mother. It makes everything possible. Seeing my mother at the end of the hall with her white Bible with large print propped up on her knees, as she’s propped up in the bed reading and memorizing — and I think, honestly, before she had the stroke [10 years ago], she may have memorized the first 50 or 60 Psalms. She was in the process of memorizing all the Psalms, and she could quote them to you. Honestly, there’s no way that I come anywhere close to deserving a Bible award. I feel like I’m a work in progress, and she has arrived.

The Great Chinese Orphan Rescuer

With more Chinese children abandoned due to birth defects, the work of Siew Mei Ang Cheung and Christian Action is more vital than ever.

Christine A. Scheller

Siew Mei Ang Cheung knows what it's like to be marginalized. Growing up as a Chinese immigrant in Malaysia, she was subject to an educational quota system that she says limited ethnic minorities’ opportunities. The precocious youngster was undaunted by the challenges, however, and earned a Kentucky Fried Chicken scholarship to attend high school in England. There, she keenly felt the sting of isolation, but it caused her to reevaluate her priorities and dig deep into the Word of God.

As a 21-year-old college student, Ang Cheung sensed a call to use her talents to address injustice, inequality, and exploitation. At 23, she began working with Vietnamese refugees in Liverpool. Today Ang Cheung is executive director of Christian Action, a 25-year-old, Hong Kong-based organization with a multimillion-dollar budget that provides vital services to refugees, foreign domestic workers, and abandoned children.

Ang Cheung so identifies with the immigrant experience that she never saw herself as Chinese. After many years of working with refugees, she had a dream about an abandoned baby girl in a Chinese hospital whose situation was hopeless. She woke up in tears. The dream involved a friend who refused to help the baby. When she told him about it, he said he and his wife had thought of adopting from China but had decided it would be too difficult. “God revealed my heart to you,” he told Ang Cheung.

She says this was the first confirmation that God was calling her to direct her energy (and Christian Action’s resources) toward the plight of Chinese orphans. The second was when a Chinese national who lived in Australia smuggled an abandoned baby girl out of China and asked for Ang Cheung’s help in adopting her. The third was visiting a state-run Chinese orphanage for herself and seeing how desperate the situation was in the early 1990s.

In 1997, Christian Action signed an agreement with local officials in Qinghai Province to work with indigenous people in caring for abandoned children. China Development Brief reports that Christian Action took over management of the Xining Child Welfare Institute and has since “invested heavily in improving the institution’s training, facilities and care practices.” The Xining Orphan and Disabled Welfare Center officially opened in 1998, and Christian Action partnered with the local government again in 2007 to open its affiliate, Xining Children’s Rehabilitation Center. Now Christian Action has been asked to co-manage several more orphanages in Qinghai Provence, according to Ang Cheung.

Earlier this year, the Associated Press reported that the number of healthy Chinese children available for adoption has decreased dramatically because China has relaxed its one-child policy. Meanwhile, the number of Chinese children born with birth defects increased by 50 percent between 2001 and 2006. The report says many of these children are abandoned.

Although the Chinese government provides minimal support for abandoned children, it is not sufficient for the level of care Christian Action deems necessary for them to either flourish or to die with dignity. This is why Ang Cheung traveled to the United States this fall. Americans have been integral to the ministry, not only as volunteers and staff members but also as adoptive parents. She hopes Western Christians will continue to respond to the James 1:27 admonition to care for orphans in their distress.

Adam Voysey is the U.S. Director of Development for Christian Action and the person who scouted locations for the ministry in 1995. He says it is highly unusual for a Christian agency to succeed on the Tibetan Plateau because the climate is extremely harsh and, as the birthplace of the Dalai Lama, Buddhism is the majority religion. It took ten years of working there to build trust and to demonstrate that Christian Action is serious about helping children. Voysey says, “When you go in there to serve and that’s what you’re telling the officials, they deserve to see the gospel in action, not to interact with a bunch of liars who say, ‘We’re going to go and serve the children,’ but actually we’ve got an alternative agenda.”

Early in the Qinghai work, a Muslim official suggested to Ang Cheung that she would have an easier time if the word Christian was removed from the organization’s name. She refused, saying, “I’m here because I’m a Christian; I’m here because God says to help the children.” Ten years later, she had an appointment with the same official. This time, he said, “You’ve proved to be our friend. . . . I now know that you are really working for God.”

Ang Cheung is a beautiful, vivacious woman in her 40s who has spent her adult life working to make a difference in the lives of marginalized people. Although she says she never felt deprived as an immigrant child, she compares her spiritual journey to a game of Super Mario Brothers in which she has increasingly mastered higher levels of service. With this new challenge, she senses God pushing her to the next level. “I believe it is easy to say, ‘Oh no, it’s humanly impossible.’ My experience with God is that he can do it. If he’s the Creator of the universe, what’s there to stop him?” She adds, “A lot of my friends have tons of money and I would have been one of them. I know that I’m doing something that fits like a pair of gloves. . . . The Lord has given me the chance to do something that is eternally valuable rather than something I can lose in the stock market.”

To learn more about Siew Mei Ang and the work of Christian Action, follow her weekly blog or explore the organization’s website.

Doctrine in Diapers

In teaching my children about God, I'm not sure who's receiving the greater lesson.

Amy Julia Becker

For a few years now, we’ve begun our family meals with a blessing. We started with “The Lord’s Been Good to Me,” otherwise known in our household as “Johnny Appleseed.” The song’s theology is pretty innocuous. It acknowledges God’s existence and says a basic thank you. Then we introduced “Thank you Father” (to the tune of “Frere Jacque”), which gets a little more personal because it introduces the concept of God as Father. Over the summer, my husband and I were getting bored, so one night we suggested the Doxology. And ever since, our kids have requested what they call “Praise Father,” from the last line: “Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” We mix it up occasionally, but “Praise Father” remains their favorite. Somehow, Penny and William moved us from a vague deism to Trinitarian worship.

In addition to asking God’s blessing on our food, we pray as a family. Our kids have started to add their own requests, which range from Penny wanting to pray for a boy from school who can’t walk, to William asking that we pray for him after he had an unfortunate run in with a pear that tasted yucky. We read “Jesus stories” from a picture Bible. We go to church. And we talk about Mom and Dad having “time alone with God” in the mornings. We hope the way we structure our family time will impact the structure of our children’s lives, that they will grow up with a sense that God is present and active, that God cares about and for their daily needs.

But teaching our children the love of the Lord is more complicated than prayers and Jesus stories. Try explaining why all the people go under water except Noah and his family (Noah shows up in every kids’ Bible, I think because kids like animals). Or try explaining why sometimes we pray for people and they don’t get better. Or why we go to church and many other people we know and love stay home on Sunday mornings. Or that Jesus differs from an imaginary friend or the tooth fairy or a fictional character on television.

Two recent posts on Motherlode, The New York Times parenting blog, caught my attention. “What To Tell Children About God” related the stories of two parents who are agnostic yet find themselves fielding questions about God from their young children. They struggle to answer honestly. I don’t share their angst when it comes to conversation about God’s existence and God’s fundamental love and care for humans, but I resonate with some of the themes brought up in the post. Talking about God is serious business.

"Creating God in Your Parents’ Image” offered a sociological perspective on these issues. It explained that children start to understand prayer as conversation with God (rather than generic wish-making) around age 4, and that their impressions of God are influenced most by their parents. According to author Ashley Merryman, children don’t form a view of God based primarily on what their parents tell them. Rather, children form a view of God based on how their parents treat them. Parents who demonstrate both authority and forgiveness lead to children who assume the same about God. Parents who emphasize punishment imply that God shares those characteristics. (Interestingly, children with largely absent parents don’t assume that God is absent. Rather, they often understand God as their surrogate parent.)

This second post didn’t make me rethink the habits of our family. We will still pray and sing a blessing and read our Jesus stories. But it did make me realize that the way I answer questions is only one piece, and perhaps a small one, of the impact I have on my children’s spiritual formation. The primary image of God in the New Testament is that of a father, and a central truth to the Christian faith is that God comes to us in the form of a human being. We learn God’s love through the Incarnation, through Jesus’ flesh and blood. Doctrine matters, but lived relationships matter more. So it makes sense that children form their impressions of God in large part through their relationships with their earthly parents. It makes sense that the way I love them, the way I attend to them, and the way I discipline them are more significant, at least at this stage in their development, than what I tell them about who God is and how he relates to them.

My role as a parent is to model God’s love — exhibiting grace and teaching truth — to our children. Yet based on Jesus' admonition in Matthew 18, it is also to learn from my children what it means to have a simple, humble, and earnest faith. Prayers that ask for what I want rather than pretending to be more pious than I am. Blessings that proclaim praise for the Lord even when our non-Christian friends have come over for dinner and I wonder what they’ll think. Reading the Bible in a way that assumes God’s goodness even when I don’t understand.

The questions will continue — from our children and in my own heart. I’m not sure I’ll ever have a satisfactory understanding of the destruction of the earth in the time of Noah. Thankfully, I don’t need to become God for our children. All I need to do is direct them as best I can toward grace and truth, and let them point me toward him in return.

Sarah Palin's Rogue Comments

The 2012 presidential hopeful calls people who ask whether mothers should work outside the home "Neanderthals," telling them to "evolve" on Fox News last week.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's spotlight during the midterm elections will likely continue as her TLC show premieres this week and a new book is published in two weeks.

Sarah Palin's Alaska, an eight-part series, premieres November 14 at 9/8c. Her book America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag will be released November 23. But Palin's popularity is divisive for even conservatives, as the anticipation for a 2012 presidential candidate heightens.

Last week on Fox News, Palin praised Geraldine Ferraro for "breaking the glass ceiling," saying that ”Neanderthals” focus on issues like whether mothers should work outside the home, which Palin says is “petty, little, superficial, meaningless." Ferraro, who ran for U.S. vice president alongside Walter Mondale in 1984, was criticized at the time by Catholic bishops for her pro-choice stance.

Palin said, "It kind of seems, Geraldine, that some things haven’t changed. There are still the Neanderthals out there, who pick on the petty, little, superficial, meaningless things like looks, like whether you can or can’t work outside of the home if you have small children. All those type of things where I would so hope that at some point, uh, those Neanderthals, will evolve into something a bit more, um, with it, a bit more modern, and a bit more understanding that, yeah, woman can accomplish much.”

Over at the blog Thinking Housewife, Laura Wood isn't too pleased:

Palin says she cheered Ferraro when she ran for vice president, as if every female candidate feels automatic solidarity with any other female candidate. How “great for our nation” it was that Ferraro ran. Golly gee willickers. The supposedly pro-life, small-government Palin applauds the efforts of someone with an entirely different political philosophy simply because she is a woman.

Before the election, Palin also had some strong words for the media, calling some of them "corrupt bastards."

Politico reported that GOP leaders are trying to stop Palin from running for president. She responded to the article in an e-mail to The Daily Caller:

“I suppose I could play their immature, unprofessional, waste-of-time game, too, by claiming these reporters and politicos are homophobe, child molesting, tax evading, anti-dentite, puppy-kicking, chain smoking porn producers . . . .”

Conservative columnist and former presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson penned a Washington Post column on the Republican Party's "Sarah Palin problem," noting her endorsement of Colorado's Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo.

Either as a power broker or a candidate in the 2012 election, Palin's increasingly erratic political judgment should raise Republican concerns. Palin recently took to Fox Business Network to call establishment Republicans "sleazy." "Some within the establishment don't like the fact that I won't back down to a good-old-boys club," she said. This odd mix of Tea Party Jacobinism and feminist grievance has become Palin's operating style. What many Republicans, establishment and otherwise, don't like is this: The leading figure of the Tea Party movement seems increasingly indifferent to Republican fortunes and increasingly tolerant of disturbing extremism.

Palin's upcoming book features faith in the title, but Adelle M. Banks of Religion News Service spoke with Stephen Mansfield about how Palin is not especially open about her faith in speeches.

Sarah Palin once pursued politics out of a religious sense of calling, and considered her choice as vice presidential candidate by 2008 GOP nominee John McCain part of "God's plan."

But now, as the midterm elections loom and Palin positions herself as the heroine of the Tea Party, Palin has become less vocal about the faith that propelled her onto the political scene.

"She's not even talking much about her Christian faith as a whole, much less as a Pentecostal Christian," says author Stephen Mansfield, who charts Palin's journey through religion and politics in a new book. As she stirs the Tea-Party pot at rallies across the country ahead of the midterm elections, the former Alaska governor occasionally refers to freedom as a "God-given right" or people with special needs and the elderly as "God's gifts." But her speeches tend to focus more on the economy and small-government populism than faith or social issues.

Time will tell whether Palin alienates a base that might have supported her in the past.

Rumblings About Women at Lausanne

Some of the rumblings got right to the heart of what Lausanne is all about, and are symptomatic of why we need such a congress.

Carolyn Custis James, guest blogger

The difficulty some of us have remembering others’ names is explained, at least in part, by the fact that when being introduced to someone new, the name we are listening for is our own.

That kind of listening was going on at Cape Town 2010 — not so much in introductions as in looking for a face, a voice, a video, a message in which we would hear our name. When that happened, we felt valued and included. When it didn’t (as for the lone Native American representative) or not often enough or as often as others (as for nearly everyone else), there were rumblings in the camp.

Writer Margaret Feinberg reflected last week on those rumblings. “Lausanne offered a microcosm of the macro-challenges faced by the church around the world. Throughout the week, almost everyone I encountered felt marginalized in one way or another. . . . Though I shared some of the frustrations . . . I finally realized: We all feel marginalized in some way. That's the human condition. Extend grace. Move on.”

In fairness to the Lausanne committee, most of the 4,500 delegates were attending their first congress. So we had no way of comparing Lausanne 2010 with 1974, or of gauging the progress this Congress made in increasing diversity within our ranks. From what I have heard, the changes were monumental, but more are needed.

I also agree with Margaret, that we need to move on to the deeper topics touched on all week. Woven throughout the Congress were gut-wrenching stories from delegates of human trafficking, brutal atrocities, and unspeakable injustices. They were stark reminders of our mission’s urgency. Remarkably, many stories led to forgiveness and reconciliation — breathtaking examples of the gospel’s transforming power. They gave me a whole new definition of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this broken world.

But, to be honest, some of the rumblings get right to the heart of what Lausanne is all about, and are symptomatic of why we need Lausanne.

Consider, for example, the polarized rumblings regarding women I heard throughout the Congress, largely from within the U.S. contingency. One person objected that break-out sessions on women in ministry “presented the egalitarian position as though there was no other view.” After browsing in the bookstore, someone else complained, “Only complementarian books are for sale.” On consecutive days in the general sessions, Ruth Padilla DeBorst and John Piper exposited Ephesians — the former unsettling those who believe women should not teach men the Scriptures, the latter known as widely as a staunch complementarian as a Reformed preacher. A complementarian pastor told me with absolute certainty, “Lausanne is egalitarian.” Other delegates I met would take issue with that statement.

The unavoidable fact — whether here in the U.S. or in Cape Town — is that we don’t all agree. Christian leaders we love and respect are studying Scripture and pointing us in opposite directions. Yet all week long, as we collectively poured over Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, words like reconciliation, unity, and oneness hovered over us as God’s vision for his people.

Which is what makes Lausanne both a bold experiment and a strategic opportunity, for this gathering of believers reflects the body of Christ worldwide in that we evangelicals don’t fit neatly into a single theological camp, denomination, culture, or ethnic group. Nor will we ever.

Lausanne opens the door for us to engage a new conversation about men and women in mutual respect despite our differences. Cape Town 2010 overwhelmed us with the staggering scope of our global mission. Every delegate signed the Lausanne Covenant, which calls for the active deployment of all the gifts of the body of Christ — male and female, young and old.

When God created the world, the team he assembled to build his kingdom was male and female. Occasionally, even the secular world recognizes God’s wisdom here. After the 2008 economic crisis, financial experts wondered if we’d be in the same mess if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Brothers and Sisters.

The collapse of God’s A-Team was a coup for the Enemy and a setback for God’s kingdom. Jesus died to restore our oneness in his body. Don’t we owe Jesus a healthy body?

I’m as weary of the women-in-church debate as anyone. And it is not simply an academic one. It has real implications for real lives globally. I will not forget the hopelessness I saw in the faces of women and girls in South African townships. Does our gospel message for women resoundingly contradict other value statements coming to women and girls globally? Do our interactions as Christians send the world a radically different message of how men and women who follow Jesus value and love one another?

The U.S. delegation reassembles in Dallas this April to continue the conversations begun in Cape Town. As we move forward, I hope we will unite despite our differences to focus on making the body of Christ healthy and strong. I also hope the names heard most among us will belong to countless women and girls who have been swept away by a tsunami of abuse and who need to experience the rescuing Good News of the whole gospel.

Carolyn Custis James is president of WhitbyForum and the Synergy Women's Network. She is the author of several books, including the forthcoming Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women.

Girls in Sports No Longer 'Tomboys'

There are also no longer any 'woman astronauts,' according to my 10-year-old daughter.

Jennifer Grant

Athletic competition builds character in our boys.
We do not need that kind of character in our girls.
~ Connecticut judge, 1971


Last month the Women's Sports Foundation held its annual Salute to Women in Sports at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg attended, as did actor Holly Hunter and dozens of athletes, including figure skater Michelle Kwan, softball star Jennie Finch, and New York Jets kicker Nick Folk.

Founded by tennis legend Billie Jean King 31 years ago, the foundation seeks to "advance the lives of girls and women through sport and physical activity." It's well known that girls who play sports reap many off-the-field benefits, including better grades and higher self-esteem. “Eighty percent of the female executives at Fortune 500 companies identified themselves as former ‘tomboys’ and having played sports,” the foundation's website states.

When I was a girl, organized sports belonged to the boys. If a girl played, she was without question a tomboy. At my brothers’ baseball games, I sat in the grass, picked at the scabs on my knees, made dandelion chains, and ran into the woods to retrieve foul balls. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago in the 1970s, I knew only one girl who played baseball. Katie was quiet and tough and came from a large Roman Catholic family. Like her bevy of siblings, she had straight brown hair, dark blue eyes, and a scattering of freckles over her nose. I could spot her coming down the sidewalk just by her swagger.

Sometimes during recess, the whole class would play kickball. I secretly coveted Katie’s approval and, sure enough, when I’d make a good play — catch the red playground ball on the fly, for instance — she’d turn and nod at me, her eyes narrowed. She was a pocket Clint Eastwood on the school grounds. People said Katie was a tomboy. The first time I heard the word was when a boy used it to insult her: “Tomboy. Weirdo.”

Meanwhile, across the country from our blacktop kickball game, members of Congress, led by the late Patsy T. Mink, were at work getting Title IX passed. In 1972, they succeeded. The law states that no one in the U.S. may be excluded from participation in any federally funded educational program or activity on the basis of sex. The Women’s Sports Foundation reports that since the enactment of Title IX, “Female high school athletic participation has increased by 904% and female collegiate athletic participation has increased by 456%.” In other words, Title IX, now officially the “Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act,” worked.

My 10-year-old daughter is on softball, basketball, and volleyball teams. At recess she plays soccer on the field with two boys — when she’s not at reading club or playing make-believe games with her friends. She loves playing Mommy and sits quietly in her room, rocking her baby dolls to sleep. She’s grown up in churches with women clergy. Her heroes include Eleanor Roosevelt and soccer star Mia Hamm. When we watched the movie Avatar, her favorite character, hands-down, was Trudy the helicopter pilot. Whenever Trudy came on screen, she grabbed my arm and sat up straight. My daughter is neither a tomboy nor a “girlie girl.”

She also likes to draw. One of her works has been hanging in our kitchen the past few years. “I can’t wait to show you what I made in art class,” she said the day she brought it home. “It’s an astronaut.” My mind flashed on Neil Armstrong, head tilted, helmet in hand. She then presented me with her picture. Before me, on a black construction paper background, standing confidently on the surface of the moon, was a woman. She wore lipstick and a spacesuit with the requisite headset and globed helmet. Her suit was also embellished with a flower patch.

I wonder in what tangible ways the effects of Title IX have rippled through our culture. Names matter, labels matter, and that it did not occur to my daughter to describe her drawing as a “woman astronaut” shows me how much things have changed since I was a girl. I am thankful for all the “tomboys,” for Patsy Mink, and for all the men and women who continue to push the doors open wide for girls in our culture. Their efforts not only account for the growing presence of women’s sporting events on ESPN, but also contribute to a more equitable society in which women can use their God-given gifts whether running down the soccer field or exploring the galaxies.

Jennifer Grant is a journalist and freelance writer who has written for Her.meneutics about mid-life callings, multitasking, and Lady Gaga. Her book, Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter, will be published next summer.

Friday Night Lights' Shining Female Lead

Why Tami Taylor is the best female character on television today.

Laura Leonard

Whenever I encourage someone to watch Friday Night Lights — which happens often, as I’m quite evangelistic about my TV shows — the response is always the same: “But that’s a football show.”

For most shows, I would leave it at that and move on. But Friday Night Lights, currently airing its fifth season on DirecTV on Wednesdays at 9/8c, with a run on NBC this spring, is not most shows. And while football is central to the residents of Dillon, Texas, anyone who has watched one episode can attest that their lives are about much more than football. At its core, this is a show about marriage and family and the everyday moments that make up a life.

The show revolves around Eric and Tami Taylor, the coach and guidance counselor at East Dillon High School in rural west Texas. In the season five premiere, the Taylors are practically the only remaining original cast members, and their marriage anchors the show. They impact the kids of East Dillon not just as coach and counselor but by example, their lives and love modeling what many of the teens don’t have at home.

Slate calls the Taylors’ marriage “the defining achievement of FNL, quite possibly the greatest marriage in television history.” New York magazine called the Taylors “the only living grown-ups on television: complicated, emotionally alive, intimate, and totally in love.”

And I’ll just come out and say it: I want to be Tami Taylor. Not until I started watching FNL did I realize the dearth of strong female role models on television. Like many women, Taylor wears many hats: wife, coach’s wife, mother, counselor, sister, friend. But what’s striking about Tami is that she often finds herself in situations where she does not know what to do, yet forges ahead and honestly addresses the situation head-on. Sincerity is her hallmark.

For example, when Taylor finds out that her daughter Julie has started having sex with her boyfriend, she insists they have an open talk about it (something sure to make any 16-year-old squirm).

Tami: And you know, just cause you're having sex this one time doesn't mean that you have to all the time, and you know if it ever feels like he's taking you for granted, or you're not enjoying it you can stop anytime . . . and if you ever break up with Matt it's not like you have sex with the next boy necessarily."
Julie: Why are you crying?"

Tami: Because I wanted you to wait . . . but that's just because I want to protect you because I love you, and I want to make sure nothing bad ever happens to you. And I always want you to be able to talk to me even if it's about something so hard like this.

Julie: I didn't want to disappoint you.

It’s frustrating that Taylor implicitly allows her daughter to continue having sex, and I hope it might play out differently should I ever find myself in her parenting shoes. Yet hers is the first message I would look to for guidance, because Taylor’s love for her daughter is so obvious. Any teenager watching the scene would recognize it as well.

Earlier this year, Friday Night Lights made headlines when it aired an episode that portrayed a pregnant teenager seeking out, having, and not regretting an abortion. New York magazine described the episode as the “best and most honest portrayal of the heartrending decision to end a teenage pregnancy that we’ve ever seen.” (In fact, I argued in favor of this point.)

But, as is true in life, the story could not be neatly wrapped up in one hour-long episode. The rest of the fourth season effectively addressed the fall-out of such a decision in a small west Texas town. Because the girl had sought out Taylor’s guidance, and because the father's parents are pro-life Christians, they were horrified to find out that information Taylor provided led the girl to have the abortion. (Taylor did not recommend that the girl have an abortion, suggesting adoption first, but did agree with the girl that abortion was one option.) At the outrage of her boyfriend’s parents and the principal of a local high school, by season’s end Taylor found herself demoted as principal down to guidance counselor.

Through it all, Tami exemplified why she is the best female character on television now, and perhaps ever. She acts in the interests of her students and is willing to keep jumping hurdle after hurdle with them so she can get them as far as she believes they can go. And she is gracious, willing to admit defeat or step aside when the battle is lost. She knows what she believes is right, and stands resolute and firm to defend it.

Though the Taylors regularly go to church (as nearly every character on the show does), Tami has never verbalized much about her faith. But one thing I appreciate about Friday Night Lights’ portrayal of faith is that the characters we know to be Christians truly live lives consistent with Christianity.

I look forward to this final season and hope Taylor continues to be a strong character of power, grace, and love.

If you watch FNL, do you think Tami Taylor is an exemplary female character? Who are other strong female characters on TV?

Apple Takes a Bite Out of Sexting

Is a parental-control device the best way to teach teens that sending sexually explicit texts is a bad idea?

Elrena Evans

Apple recently secured a patent for technology that would allow the company to read, and censor, iPhone text messages. The patent was almost immediately dubbed an “anti-sexting device,” despite the fact the actual patent title is “Text-based communication control for personal communication device.”

The idea is that text messages will be subjected to a control system — an algorithm or perhaps an underpaid intern — that will flag objectionable content and prevent it from being sent. The logic is similar to that behind the TV Guardian, a device that filters so-called “mature” content from television and movies, based on a series of filters that users can turn on or off. (Perhaps this reveals my immaturity, but when reading through the list of TV Guardian options, “Hell/Damn Filter” made me snicker.)

I couldn’t find any statistics on how many homes own a TV Guardian, but I’m willing to bet it’s less than the number of people who own an iPhone.

The proposed Apple technology contains some laughable aspects, such as a grammar option, which would allow parents to set up alerts whenever their children’s texts contained an assault on the English language. This description, from the patent itself and quoted in PC World, sums it up nicely:

"A parent can . . . institute a condition to improve a child's grades. For example, the control application may require a user during specified time periods to send messages in a designated foreign language, to include certain designated vocabulary words, or to use proper designated spelling, designated grammar and designated punctuation and like designated language forms based on the user's defined skill level and/or designated language skill rating."

Sounds like fun, no? Nothing spices up your text life like having to include the week’s list of vocabulary words. (RU4 real? That’s so antediluvian.)

Barbara E. Hernandez, also writing for PC World, took the “anti-sexting device” out of the context of children and parents and looked at how the app might fare in the workplace. “This could be helpful,” Hernandez writes, “when your company is getting ready to release a product that's in a hush-hush beta phase. In essence, you could potentially spy on employees to see if they're spying for someone else.”

Are you looking over your shoulder yet?

I don’t text. My cell phone is an ancient, nearly three-year-old model that I plan to keep using until — gasp — it stops working. But I’m aware of how texting is transforming our social relationships, especially among the teenage set. Recent studies say that 75 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds own a cell phone, and that teenagers in the United States send or receive, on average, 3,339 texts per month. (That’s over a hundred texts a day, for those doing the math.) Forty-two percent of teens say they can text blindfolded, and 60 percent of teens admit to texting while driving.

I couldn’t find firm statistics on what percentage of teen texting is actually “sexting” (the practice of sending out sexually explicit photos or videos, often of oneself, via text), but when places like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children are concerned enough about the practice to talk about it on their website, I’m concerned, too. When one in five teenagers admits to having engaged in sexting, when headlines about sexting involving NFL stars abound, and when sexting is reported to have featured prominently in one young girl’s suicide, it’s a wake-up call that our teenagers need, at the least, some guidance.

But should that guidance come in the form of a patent like Apple’s? Or should it come from somewhere else, such as parents, schools, and churches? “This whole online social media thing is a huge experiment on our children,” a mother from Westchester County, New York, was quoted saying in The New York Times earlier this year. And since teens have become so inextricably connected to social media, it’s hard to imagine that any censoring or policing device invented by an adult isn’t going to be circumnavigated by some 13-year-old within minutes of its hitting the market.

I don’t think Apple is going to save us from our sexts. But I’m curious to hear from Her.meneutics readers: How are you and your children taming the texts?

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