What Is Her.meneutics?
The Christianity Today women's blog provides news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women. We cover news stories and books related to international justice and evangelism, pregnancy and sexual ethics, marriage, parenting, and celibacy, pop culture, health and body image, raising girls, and women in the church and parachurch.Her.meneutics is edited by associate editor Katelyn Beaty and online editor Sarah Pulliam.
books we're reading
I Have a Confession to Make
Why online confession booths like FamilySecret and Post Secret take us only so far.
In support of her latest novel, Daisy Chain, Christian author Mary DeMuth launched Family Secrets, a website where users can anonymously confess their secrets to an online audience. DeMuth writes, "In Daisy Chain, many characters harbor secrets, but only a few are brave enough to bring them to the light of day and find freedom and hope. That's why I created this site — to give you a safe place to air a secret anonymously."
DeMuth's project picks up on a confessional trend made famous by PostSecret, a blog that posts submissions from its ongoing community mail art project, in which people mail their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. The blog, which boasts of attracting 284,343,252 visitors (and counting), has been turned into museum exhibits as well as five books, the most recent of which tackled the topic Confessions on Life, Death, and God. The idea is to rob the secrets of their powerful grip as writers identify, process, and share with others those things they are afraid to admit to themselves.
There’s a simple reason these blogs are so popular: We experience a rush as we recognize the pain and courage each entry represents, heightened when we find ourselves connecting with the confessions. “I thought I was the only one,” we marvel as we see our own hearts in the words of a stranger.
Confessing to others is good for our spirits and psyches. Often we evangelicals make light of it, thinking of it as “a Catholic thing” and insisting that God is the only one we need to confess to. But by doing this, we ignore not only the rich tradition of confession in church settings, but also the biblical command: “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16).
Top 10 Posts of the Last 30 Days
What you read during the month of October.
Another month, another top-10 roundup. Thanks to all our regular readers and stumble-upon visitors for your thoughtful commentary on the topics we've recently covered — especially Wheaton College's search for its next president, what makes women happy, and online scams that target Christian women. Keep the comments coming over the next month as we cover Bollywood-flavored Bibles, online confession rooms, and the importance of father-child bonding time. And if you have more ideas for what Her.meneutics should cover, please e-mail me at kbeaty[at]christianitytoday.com or fellow editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey and spulliam[at]christianitytoday.com.
(10) "Penny Pinching as a Christian Virtue?" by Christine A. Scheller // Comments: 9
The spiritual dimensions of frugal living.
(9) "Cancer's Mercies," by Julie Evans, guest blogger // Comments: 14
October is breast cancer awareness month, and I’m so aware I might as well be pink.
(8) "It's a Not-So-Happy But Wonderful Life," by Caryn Rivadeneira, guest blogger // Comments: 15
God doesn't call us to be happy.
(7) "Trouble with Online Love," by Elissa Cooper // Comments: 3
Australian police found that two out of three victims of 'romance fraud' are women.
(6) "Wheaton Students Advocate for Woman President," by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 19
An open letter encourages selection committee to commit to 'ethnic, economic, and gender diversity.'
Carrie Prejean's Book Urges Women to Stand Up for Beliefs
Still Standing doesn't claim Prejean made the right decisions, only that she has the right to make them.
In her book, Still Standing: The Untold Story of My Fight Against Gossip, Hate, and Political Attacks, former Miss California Carrie Prejean describes herself as “a sacrificial Christian thrown to the vicious and cruel media lions to be torn apart.” Prejean, a competitor and semi-finalist in the Miss USA 2009 pageant, became the center of media controversy this spring when she responded to a pageant question that she believes “marriage should be between a man and a woman,” not between same-sex couples.
Media treatment of the ensuing controversy — which raged on between Prejean, pageant officials, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, and pageant owner Donald Trump — revealed more incriminating details, such as Prejean's half-naked photographs and pageant-funded breast implant surgery. Prejean’s avowed Christianity also prompted questions about the effectiveness of pageant preachers and Christian women's involvement in the questionable beauty pageant scene.
In the book, Prejean skirts some of the major issues that circulated in media gossip — including her relationship with Michael Phelps, the photographs, her breast implants, and heated comments in her parents’ divorce records — by acknowledging but quickly dismissing them.
Regarding the breast implant surgery, she writes, “It was a choice I had to make, and I made it; and as with all my choices, I’m prepared to stick by it.” It is an interesting answer, considering the book was inspired by another choice she had to make on stage. The book is more about Prejean’s right to make her own choices than an argument that she made the right ones.
The closest she comes to expressing regret is her admission that she did not always listen to the right people. She admits to putting herself “in a position to be exploited” when she signed on to the Miss California pageant, which is also the closest she comes to repudiating her involvement in the pageant scene. “For me, pageants had always been about competition and using that sash and tiara for good,” she wrote. “Now I saw the whole pageant as a sham, glittering and fake. Many of the people I had worked with and the girls I competed with were wonderful. But we were trapped in a system run by petty egos, shallow values, and a sort of venomous incompetence.”
Continue reading "Carrie Prejean's Book Urges Women to Stand Up for Beliefs" »
Are We Obsessed with 'Cute'?
What images of dancing babies and sleeping kittens say about our collective unhappiness.
Irresistible cuteness, in pictures and videos online, is overwhelming America, says Jim Windolf in December’s Vanity Fair. Office workers gather around YouTube videos of toddler antics, the Mini-Cooper has been out-cuted by the Smart Car, and the website Cute Overload (filled with pictures of puppies, kitties, and bunnies) gets 100,000 hits a day.
Part of this new addiction is as ancient as our human nature, Windolf writes. Ethologist Konrad Lorenz proposed in the 1940s that we naturally want to care for any small, vulnerable creature. “Lorenz suggested that infantile characteristics — big head, big eyes, the very round face — stimulate caretaking behavior,” Marina Cords, a professor of ecology, evolution, and environmental biology at Columbia University, told Windolf.
Then why, if we’ve always been attracted to adorable infants, is the cuteness craze gaining ground now?
Part of it is certainly the accessibility. Thousands of websites and e-mail forwards offer the goods. Bored with a work project or with doing laundry? Pop onto the Internet or your phone for a quick pick-me-up.
Another part of it, according to Windolf, may be our collective unhappiness — lengthy wars on two fronts and a struggling economy. He points to Japan, where he says cuteness took hold in the post-war 1940s and 1950s, influenced heavily by Disney’s Bambi and Fantasia. Now big-eyed, infantile anime characters can be found almost everywhere in Japan, from airplanes to condoms to ATM cards (and, as Her.meneutics blogger Lisa Graham McMinn covered, on body pillows made to look like young girls). “Cuteness in Japanese culture” even has its own Wikipedia entry.
A Quest to Question Mainstream Media
Connecting the dots between what we see on screen and who we become.
Many people who know me as an author and women's ministry speaker are often curious about why I started a film company. They seem to assume there is a split focus there. Perhaps there is, but because I see media in a more holistic way, one of the reasons I started Citygate Films was to influence the diet, so to speak, of what is being consumed in mainstream media. I also have a heavy concern that the "screen generation" is being fed more harmful images and narratives than uplifting ones.
For example, this is how my day has gone so far. I checked the news, and saw stories about a 15-year-old girl who was brutally gang-raped by anywhere between 7 to 10 men outside of a high school while at least a dozen others stood by and watched it without interfering, and a sadist who allegedly raped, murdered, and stowed the bodies of at least 10 women in his home. Those are just the stories in CNN's headlines — the tip of the iceberg nationally. There are numerous local stories about child sex abuse and murder that don't even make the national news.
Next, I checked my Twitter feed, which carried news of many nonprofit organizations (Christian and mainstream) that are working to improve the conditions of women and girls around the world. High on their list of concerns is sex trafficking and enslaved prostitutes.
I then started work by listening to a media panel about "transmedia" efforts — telling a single story across a variety of media platforms. One of the panelists spoke without shame of working with a clothing company that sponsored an interactive game about a stripper. The gamer controls the stripper's actions, which this media expert cheerfully said allowed the player to either make the stripper engage "in the most depraved actions" or "save her." It's an odd sponsorship, given the fact that the sponsor's clothes aren't seen very often. (The clothing company wasn't mentioned in this panel, but I wish it had been so that I would not patronize their stores or product.)
In the Loop: Down syndrome abortions on the rise
What the women's blog editors are reading today.
In Britain, Down syndrome abortions are on the rise
According to a recent study, around nine in ten British women who are told they are going to have a baby with Down syndrome decide to terminate the pregnancy, resulting in 1,100 abortions each year. Diagnoses of Down’s have also increased significantly, from 1075 in 1989-90 to 1843 in 2007-08, due largely to the rising number of women who wait until their 30s and 40s to have children, the study reports.
Abstinence-only sex education at risk
Newsweek reports on “The Future of Abstinence” as President Obama’s 2010 budget cuts funding for the Title V grant program and all abstinence-only programs. The Senate Finance Committee voted to restore funding to the budget, but the measure is unlikely to pass in the House. "The open question is whether these organizations will continue to thrive when federal funding is no longer available," says Alesha Doan, author of The Politics of Virginity: Abstinence in Sex Education (Greenwood Publishing, 2008). "What is the underlying support in society for this?" Many programs may now have to turn to private donations and funding in order to continue.
German Protestants choose first woman leader
Margot Kaessmann became the first female leader of the roughly 25 million German Protestants, and only the third female to head a major Christian church. She is a particularly controversial choice for the EKD, an umbrella group for 22 Lutheran, Reformed, and United Churches, because she is divorced, but she received 132 of 142 possible votes, and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) welcomed the choice.
"The election sends a signal to the church worldwide that God calls us to leadership without consideration of gender, color or descent," LWF general-secretary Ishmael Noko told the Ecumenical News International news agency at the synod in Ulm. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church in the United States and National Bishop Susan Johnson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada are the only other female heads of large churches.
Continue reading "In the Loop: Down syndrome abortions on the rise" »
Penny Pinching as a Christian Virtue?
The spiritual dimensions of frugal living.
Recently, my child who was home-schooled for six years attended a conference called Gathering Around the Un-hewn Stone. I make note of his educational history because I feel responsible for inspiring alternative ideas that catalyzed more alternatives than I imagined when he was 8.
The event opened with a lecture, "The Ecological Endgame of Industrial Civilization as a Crisis of/for Faith," which was purported to be about the moral bankruptcy of progress as an article of faith in modernity and, by default, of Christianity for the past 300 years. Resistance involves learning how to brain tan a deer, forage for food, and live out “attachment parenting” — a phenomenon about which my son has no need of instruction, given that he clung to me like a monkey when he was a boy.
In her book, In CHEAP We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue, journalist Lauren Weber espouses similar values, which, like rank materialism, are as old and American as Manifest Destiny. Last week Atlantic economics blogger Megan McArdle reviewed Weber’s book for The New York Times, and compared it unfavorably with the work of financial adviser Dave Ramsey, whom she describes as a “popular evangelical guru.”
Weber grew up without much heat in her home and surprised herself by following in her father’s frugal footsteps. McArdle takes issue with Weber’s idealization of fiscal asceticism, but not with Ramsey’s "save now, worry less later" approach. She says Weber’s idea of thrift as a moral virtue is problematic because it unduly worships parsimony. And McArdle rightly notes that if dumpster-diving “freegans” weren’t living off the largesse of their guilty neighbors, they’d have to get jobs like everybody else. The same could be said of Gathering Around the Un-hewn Stone attendees reveling in a buffet of supermarket overstock, but not of trash eaters around the world who have no other choice.
Where Someone Loves Us Most of All
Is Where the Wild Things Are too wild for children?
Every night while I was growing up ended just the same. "Mommy loves you, Daddy loves you, and Jesus loves you most of all," my mom would say as she tucked me into bed. The ritual was a reminder, enforced through years of repetition, that no matter how far I ventured out into the world, which can be scary, cold, and unloving, I would always have a safe place with the people who love me and a God who loves me more. This is such an important lesson; children need to know that no matter what happens "out there," they are loved. Love doesn't make problems go away, but it grounds us in something greater than ourselves and our problems.
Most children's movies emphasize can-do messages: You can do anything you want if you believe in yourself! Go out and have an adventure! And then along came Where the Wild Things Are.
Perhaps you've heard of it? In production for nearly 10 years, it was last weekend's highest-grossing film. It's also been the source of much controversy, particularly over whether the children's movie is even appropriate for children.
When a Newsweek reporter asked Maurice Sendak how he would respond to parents who might ask if the adaptation of his book is too scary for children, he replied, “I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate.”
But what we allow our children to watch is important. And many children will want to see this movie; the trailer set the hype machine in motion months ago (the first time I saw it, I cried). The movie has been called too philosophical, too postmodern, too psychological, and too bleak for children. Perhaps we think children need something easy to digest. But that is the true genius of the original book, and of great children’s literature: It does not talk down to children or their ability to understand and process, whether consciously or subconsciously, the complexities of their own lives.
The Goal in Mind
Should athletes openly express faith in action, or is it distracting?
The University of Minnesota apologized on behalf of its Goldy Gopher mascot for making fun of a prayerful opposing player last weekend.
A YouTube video shows the Penn State defensive end Jerome Hayes kneeling in prayer and the mascot taking a knee in front of him. “We have reiterated to Goldy the importance of exercising appropriate religious sensitivity in the future," he said in a statement. Penn State won 20-0. (h/t Eric Gorski)
Other accounts of faith and sports have appeared in several outlets recently, including USA Today’s recent coverage of Messiah College’s stellar athletic program. With less than 3,000 students, the Christian school in Pennsylvania has an undefeated Division III women’s soccer team that is ranked No. 1 and a No. 3 ranked men’s soccer team). Last season, both soccer teams and the softball team won NCAA titles, not to mention past national championships.
[The women’s team sings] more Christian songs in raucous harmony, laughing, singing and bonding all at once. The white cinder-block walls seem to reverberate, as if at a tent revival, until the women switch gears and end with the sweet, solemn I Love You, Lord.
And here the secret of their success is plain to see: Each wears a game face with joy on it.
"As Christians, we are asked to believe some pretty strange things that just defy logic, like Jesus was born to a virgin," athletics director Jerry Chaplin says. "If we can believe those things, how hard is it to believe we can win a national championship?"
Brady’s article on Messiah coincides with the release of Tom Krattenmaker’s book Onward Christian Athletes: Turning Ballparks into Pulpits and Players into Preachers and column in USA Today. Krattenmaker writes that some Christians, like college football star Tim Tebow, send a message that can be offensive to people. “If their take on God and truth and life is the only right one — which their creed boldly states — everyone else is wrong.”
Addicted…to Facebook
A new study suggests negative consequences from the rising social media use on Christian college campuses.
Updating their status. Posting pictures. Checking out the news feeds of their friends. It’s all in a day’s work for today’s college students.
One-third of Christian college students spend 1-2 hours a day on Facebook, according to a new study from Gordon College professors. Twelve percent use Facebook for 2-4 hours each day, and 2.8 percent report using it from 4-7 hours a day. This is in addition to the time they spend on other forms of electronic media, such as blogs, Twitter, and the internet. And it doesn’t even count the time they spend texting, talking, or using applications on their cell phones.
More than half of the students reported they were “neglecting important areas of their life” because they were spending too much time online. And when given the definition of addiction as “any behavior you cannot stop, regardless of the consequences,” more than 10 percent said they believed they were in fact addicted to some form of electronic activity.
In the Loop: Matters of Life and Death
What the women's blog editors are reading today.
The New York Times tackles pro-life issues
The New York Times featured a report on pro-life street protesters explores the role of faith, particularly evangelical Christianity, as a motivation to action, and describes not just the controversy surrounding the practice but also the self-reported success stories it has inspired. The article profiles Deborah Anderson, a 62-year-old activist, who describes her “first triumph”:
After becoming pregnant with a boyfriend while separated from her husband — and deciding to have the baby despite friends’ advice to abort, she said — she was a single mother with a bumper sticker on her Chrysler Fifth Avenue that said “the heart beats at 24 days for an unborn child.”
One day in a parking lot near her home, Ms. Anderson said, a woman came up to her and said she had been on her way to get an abortion when she saw that simple statement and changed her mind. “There was a 2-year-old in the back seat,” Ms. Anderson said.
You can read more thoughts about holding abortion signs at our sister site, Kyria.
The Times' Lens blog also profiles Monica Migliorino Miller, an associate theology professor at Madonna University and the director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, who produces the photographs of aborted fetuses that show up on protest signs, billboards, and trucks. The piece features a slideshow of her work. Warning: it’s very graphic.
The Times also reported on “selective abortion,” or the decision of some parents to terminate one or more fetuses in a multiple pregnancy. It suggests that this is sometimes necessary to ensure the survival and health of the remaining fetuses.
Iran drops charges of anti-state activity against 2 Christian women
In March, two Iranian women were arrested on charges of anti-state activity, propagating the Christian faith and apostasy. On Tuesday, the state of Iran dropped the charge of anti-state activity against Maryam Rostampour, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30. However, if convicted of the remaining charge of apostasy, the two women, who are reported as in poor health, could still face the death penalty.
Top 10 Posts of the Last 30 Days
What you may have missed on Her.meneutics in September.
The editors here at the CT women's blog are taking deep breaths after what has been a whirlwind month for the blog — and one that's seen plenty of thoughtful commentary from you, our readers. A quick glance at the most-read posts of the last 30 days reveals that stories centered on the family, sexuality, and health are those that you most want to talk about, and those that incite the most passionate response.
On that note, we aim to continue covering books, news, and ideas that are most pertinent to evangelical women. But because we have only so many eyes and ears, we need your help in knowing what those pertinent topics might be. So we encourage you to write Her.meneutics' editorial advisers, Katelyn Beaty, at kbeaty[at]christianitytoday.com, or Sarah Pulliam Bailey, at spulliam[at]christianitytoday.com. And in the month ahead, look for coverage of the ethical dimensions of in-vitro fertilization, coverage from sister website Kyria of the recent Christianity21 conference, and (fingers crossed) more guest blogging from Carolyn McCulley, author of Radical Womanhood and writer at a blog of the same name.
And now, in case you missed them the first time around:
(10) "Snakes, Spiders, and the Science of Gender," by Elrena Evans // Comments: 10
Why do women tend to be more afraid of creepy crawlies than men?
(9) "Redeeming Roman Polanski," by Alicia Cohn // Comments: 17
Looking for a Christian response to a child rapist with powerful friends.
(8) "Anne Graham Lotz, the Church, and Me," by Alicia Cohn // Comments: 12
Like Lotz, I've never doubted faith in Christ, but I have mightily doubted the goodness of church.
(7) "Signs of Faith in Sarah Palin's Book?," by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 20
Palin is writing her book with an evangelical author.
(6) "The Confusing Case of Caster Semenya," by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 14
The South African runner may lose her gold medal after gender test results are released.
This Is Your Brain on Evangelicalism
NPR reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty's Princeton lecture last week revealed a woman highly ambivalent about evangelical spirituality.
In 1995, NPR religion reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty was interviewing members of Saddleback Church for a Los Angeles Times Magazine article on why some churches grow and others don’t. She talked with a woman named Kathy Younge about her spiritual journey. Younge was suffering from recurrent melanoma, but she didn’t believe God was trying to kill her; she believed he was giving her a transcendent purpose. As Hagerty and Younge were talking, the journalist says, the air grew thick, moist, and warm, as if someone was breathing on them. She felt enveloped in a circle of light.
This is the story Hagerty opened with at a Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion lecture last week. She was there to discuss her most recent book, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality (which CT magazine reviewed this May). I was surprised to hear her validate evangelical faith so openly given that, as a regular attendee of the center’s lectures, I’m accustomed to hearing that faith's adherents talked about as if they were part of a carnival sideshow.
The experience presented Hagerty with a crisis. She says she was “spooked” and shut down the discussion quickly, but on the drive back to LA, she began asking herself questions: What happened? Was it a delusion? A chemical reaction? God?
The veteran journalist set out to answer some of these questions for herself, others like her, and her NPR listeners — most of whom, she said, aren’t members of the Southern Baptist Convention. In her research, she discovered that 51 percent of Americans say they’ve had a dramatic spiritual experience, but that 93 percent of National Academy of Science members don’t believe in God. “If 51 percent of Americans had schizophrenia, scientists would want to study it,” she concluded. She decided early on to include her own experience in the book, because, she said, journalists tend to be like anthropologists, treating their subjects as specimens. She wanted readers to know she was one of them.
Banned Books and Blasphemy
Being offended by the right things, and letting God handle the rest.
If you want to read To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, or the Lord of the Rings trilogy, now is the perfect time to start. Last week was National Banned Books Week, designated to promote these and other books once or currently banned from libraries around the country.
Sounds like a good idea, right? Oh, and others on the list include Hang-ups, Hook-ups, and Holding Out: Stuff You Need to Know about Your Body, Sex, and Dating, Sex for Busy People: The Art of the Quickie for Lovers on the Go, and other publications of questionable literary merit but attention-grabbing content.
Still, all things considered, celebrating freedom of speech with Banned Books Week seems like a no-brainer to this journalist and English major. A week to celebrate works of great literature rejected by the uncultured masses who don’t understand them? Sign me up. And if, as one Christian philosopher once wrote, “All truth is God’s truth,” we have nothing to fear. Once the dust settles from the resulting collision of ideas, the truth will still be standing.
But amid the hullabaloo about John Steinbeck and Harper Lee, maybe we’re missing something. It’s easy to support a week celebrating banned high school books; it’s a little harder to put your money where your mouth is when safety and sanctity are on the line.
The Danish cartoon fiasco is one example. The cartoons caricaturing Muhammad created an uproar four years ago when artists received death threats for creating them. Last month, Yale University Press omitted the cartoons from an upcoming book, The Cartoons That Shook the World (H/T to Mollie Ziegler Hemingway at GetReligion for pointing that out).
In the Loop: Two Memoirs, One Tweet, and No Votes for Letterman
What the women's blog editors are reading today.
No 'Christian version' of Palin memoir after all
Going Rogue, Sarah Palin’s forthcoming memoir that is already a bestseller before its November 17th release, will not be accompanied by a “Christian edition” as previously thought. In August, Vanity Fair reported that Palin’s memoir was “to be published . . . not only by HarperCollins but also in a special edition by Zondervan, the Bible-publishing house, that may include supplemental material on faith.” However, Zondervan publicity director Karen Campbell today told U. S. News & World Report that "Zondervan never planned on publishing a separate Christian edition of Going Rogue with supplemental material. From what I understand,” she said, “it was misreporting."
Reported rape hits 20-year low
Thanks to advances in DNA technology, the rate of reported rapes has hit a 20-year low. According to USA Today, the FBI estimates that 89,000 women reported being raped in 2008 — 29 women for every 100,000 people. That's down from a high of 109,062 reported rapes in 1992, or 43 women for every 100,000 people. Scott Berkowitz, president of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, a victims' advocacy group, noted that new technology helps prosecutors put away many rapists after their first offense, preventing them from harming others. Additionally, he noted, the past 20 years have seen a shift in public awareness. "There is a much greater understanding that this is a crime,” he said, and women are now more likely to report a rape without fear of judgment or disbelief.
Memoir describes 15 abortions in 16 years
Yesterday marked the release of Irene Vilar's memoir Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict, which describes her 15 abortions in a span of 16 years. Other Press, a small publisher in New York, is publishing the book 51 other houses turned down. Publisher Judith Gurewich, who is also a practicing psychoanalyst, offered this interpretation:
I never saw this story as having much to do with abortion, except that it happened to be the target of her pathology or her neurosis. Her behaviour is very, very similar to anorexia or bulimia. It’s some kind of an addiction where she wants to impose her own rule on her own body. The fact that, of course, this involves a more complicated target makes it rather different.
Continue reading "In the Loop: Two Memoirs, One Tweet, and No Votes for Letterman" »
Redeeming Roman Polanski
Looking for a Christian response to a child rapist with powerful friends.
Film director Roman Polanski was recently arrested on a 32-year-old charge of statutory rape, which he pled guilty to in 1977 before fleeing the country. Now, while Polanski fights extradition, Hollywood rallies for his freedom, and news sources turn it into a story about a celebrity instead of about our justice system, others are asking, “What if Polanski were a Catholic priest who had abused children?”
Meanwhile, many Americans are scratching their heads. Unfortunately, it seems many of the people quick to give their opinion on this issue got their facts from Wikipedia and assume it wasn’t as appalling as it sounds. Well, they are wrong. (Warning: Reading the facts may make you sick.)
Hollywood hasn’t forgotten, however, because apparently Hollywood never blamed Polanski for raping a 13-year-old girl in the first place. (To be fair, there are exceptions.) People protesting the “Polanski persecution” include Harvey Weinstein, Peter Fonda, and Whoopi Goldberg, among others, who are all old enough to know better. No, it’s probably not fair that the only reason the L.A. Police Department knew Polanski would be in Switzerland was because he’s famous. It’s not fair that Polanski has been celebrated — and publicly awarded, including an Oscar in 2003 —for the 32 years since he fled the country, either. His arrest in Switzerland, in fact, came about because he had a Lifetime Achievement Award to accept.
But as Jeri Thompson, wife of Law & Order mainstay Fred Thompson, and no stranger to celebrity culture, wrote, it’s “one more piece of compelling evidence of just how out of touch the ‘artistic’ community is with the rest of America.” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said yesterday that such an explanation is a little too easy, just as it would be to say that Catholics are out of touch with the rest of the denominations.
'Homeless Chic' and the Homeless
Does the 'poorgeoisie' fashion trend trivialize a serious reality?
One million children in the U.S. currently face homelessness, and one of the fastest growing segments among the homeless is families with children. Despite these alarming statistics, it’s the fashion industry’s fixation with "homeless chic" that has sparked the most public debate as of late.
W. magazine's September issue featured a spread called “Paper Bag Princess.” It depicted models on dingy streets wearing high-end shopping bags fashioned as clothes. Italian Vogue's September cover showed two models in tattered layers with dirty faces, hobo sticks in tow. Indeed, Details magazine heralds the arrival of the “poorgeoisie” in “How Looking Poor Is the New Status Symbol.” Steve Kandell writes:
Just because the cultural moment is dominated by bloodlust for the heads of AIG executives doesn’t mean public sentiment has turned against the accumulation of material possessions — it’s just that the material in question is likely to be double-brushed flannel. And that’s the advantage guys who look like Devendra Banhart have over guys who look like Patrick Bateman: The poorgeois are in cultural camouflage, blending in perfectly with a landscape full of genuine privation. The fact that their accoutrements may cost more than many suits is their secret pride.
This isn’t the first time homeless chic entered the fashion lexicon. In spring 2000, designer John Galliano created a stir when his newspaper-clad models took to the runway carrying empty bottles of liquor, tin cups dangling from their backs.
But some industry insiders have found more sensitive ways to approach the new reality of so many. Alongside shots of socialites, fashion editors, and the affluent in cities around the globe, street style photographer Scott Schuman featured a striking photo of a homeless man on his popular blog, The Sartorialist. While his shots don’t usually include commentary, he provided three paragraphs defending what he knew would be a controversial photo. He says:
Snakes, Spiders, and the Science of Gender
Why do women tend to be more afraid of creepy crawlies than men?
My toddler son is taking a class this fall about bugs. "Learn about insects and their important role in our environment and everyday lives through stories, crafts and games," the brochure boasts. "Great class for boys and girls!"
As long as I don't have to be one of those girls, I'm fine. I plan to spend the class time hanging out with my 6-month-old, as far away from the bugs as is legally allowed. While my son hears stories about spiders and makes crickets out of pipe cleaners and black plastic combs, I'll be doing something else — anything else. And while he and his classmates are tromping outdoors with boxes of live insects, I'll be practicing that Lamaze breathing that does nothing for labor pains — but perhaps does something for bug phobias.
According to a recent Boston Globe article, women are four times more likely than men to be afraid of bugs, spiders, snakes, and the like. Yet no discernible gender difference exists for specifically modern phobias (the article mentions needle injections and flying). Why is this?
To find out, David Rakison of Carnegie Mellon University conducted an experiment with 11-month-old infants. He showed them a series of pictures — a snake, a spider, a flower, and a mushroom — paired with either a happy face or a frightened face. Baby girls quickly associated the snake and the spider with the frightened face, reports Science News. Baby boys did not.
Rakison believes the discrepancy may be evolutionary in nature. In prehistoric times, he theorizes, snakes and spiders posed a greater threat to women than to men, in terms of the survival of the species, because children could not survive without their mothers. Thus, the female brain has evolved in such a way as to recognize this danger from an early age.
Debates about evolution aside (although feel free to take it up in the comments section!), I could probably come up with an alternative explanation for why girls are more afraid of snakes, at least, and it would probably run something like this: Snake tempts girl. Girl succumbs. Sedition, eviction, perdition.
Any takers?
Continue reading "Snakes, Spiders, and the Science of Gender" »
In the Loop: Christians in Court, Women in the Army, and Writing on Faith
What the women's blog editors are reading today.
Rifqa Bary’s case returns to court
Many Christians have rallied around Bary, but in Sunday’s St. Petersburg Times, Christian attorney Craig McCarthy outlines why he thinks Christians should support Bary’s parents, whom he defended in court from August 10 until September 3. He discusses the implications the case may have for Christian parents; he says, “homeschoolers in particular ought to pause and weigh the power of the state to take your child into foster care against your feelings on this case and whether or not you would wish to be afforded a competent defense should religious biases be used against you some day.”
Christian couple may lose hotel after discussion of faith turns to allegations of criminal offense
Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, owners of the Bounty House Hotel and members of an evangelical church in Liverpool, England, were arrested in March over comments made during a discussion with a Muslim guest on the differences between Islam and Christianity. The comments under fire: Mrs. Vogelenzang described Muslim dress as putting women into “bondage,” while her husband is reported to have described the Islam prophet Muhammad as a “warlord.”
Mr. Vogelenzang denies his charge, while Sharon admits she used the word bondage, but claims she was not trying to offend. Because of the bad publicity generated by the case, the hotel has struggled to fill rooms, and the Vogelenzangs risk losing their business. The Christian Institute, which is funding the legal defense of the couple, says they are being persecuted for speaking about their faith.
Continue reading "In the Loop: Christians in Court, Women in the Army, and Writing on Faith" »
Keri Wyatt Kent: The Priority of Neighbor-Love
The spiritual-formation expert says justice is really about becoming more like Jesus.
Keri Wyatt Kent, a Chicago-based author known for her writing on spiritual formation, wants her most recent book, Simple Compassion, to connect readers’ inner world to the larger world and its need for justice seekers. In each of the book’s 52 devotions, Kent provides Compassion Steps (looking inward) and Community Steps (providing tips for group discussion and outreach efforts). In the end, Kent says, she wants her readers to remember the small but effective steps they can take to serve Christ in others. Christianity Today intern Elissa Cooper recently spoke with Kent.
How does Simple Compassion relate to your other books?
My other books are about spiritual formation — about connecting your faith with everyday life. If we are being formed in the image of Christ, then we have to look at what Christ was like. He was a compassionate person. He reached across social lines, he associated with people who were poor, and he associated with people of different social standings than him. If we are being formed in the image of Christ, then we are developing a heart for the poor and for those on the margins of society. Compassion is the logical next step in spiritual formation.
What exactly is compassion, and why is it so challenging?
Compassion is caring about the welfare of someone else as much as you care about your own welfare, which is what Jesus calls us to do. It’s challenging because we are naturally hardwired to look out for ourselves. That’s one thing we in 21st-century America have lost sight of: the Christian life is not the life of health and wealth and ease. It’s challenging to live a life of compassion, but I think it’s more rewarding, just like anything that’s challenging.
You write that many Christian women believe they can’t make a difference, or that others don’t want them to use their gifts. Do women have a more difficult time acting on compassion than men do?
Continue reading "Keri Wyatt Kent: The Priority of Neighbor-Love" »
In the Loop: Pre-Sex Prayer, More Women Pastors, and Father-Daughter Baseball Bonding
What the women's blog editors are reading today.
A new study published in Reproductive Health demonstrates that states with “increased religiosity” tend to have the highest teen birth rates. In order to determine religiosity, researchers averaged the percentage of respondents who agreed with eight theologically conservative statements, including, ''There is only one way to interpret the teachings of my religion," and, ''Scripture should be taken literally, word for word." The researchers also found a link between high religiosity and lower abortion rates.
Garrido Invokes Faith in Defense
USA Today profiles the religious motivation behind Philip Garrido’s kidnapping, rape, and imprisonment of Jaycee Dugard and the daughters he fathered with her. He often invoked Jesus and God to defend his actions, but, according to the report, his faith “had morphed from traditional Christian beliefs to a nearly indecipherable dogma that placed Garrido as a prophet who held the keys to a deep secret.”
Former FBI profiler Ken Lanning, who specializes in kidnapping and child abuse cases, said, “A lot of them, when they're molesting children, put a lot of time and energy into trying to convince themselves that they're not bad people. In some cases the element of religion will come into it, and they will use varying aspects of their religious belief to justify all of this.”
In the Loop: The Women's Blog News Roundup
What the women's blog editors are reading today.
"In the Loop," a new feature at the CT women's blog, is designed to keep you on top of the news cycle throughout your week. Handpicked by the blog's editors, these stories are ones we suspect will be of particular interest to evangelical women. Stay tuned as our bloggers go deeper with many of these stories to provide further analysis.
1 in 33 women sexually targeted by clergy
One out of every 33 women who regularly attend worship services have been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader, according to a study released by Baylor University researchers last week. Study co-author Diana Garland, dean of Baylor’s School of Social Work, told The Washington Post, "With a spiritual leader or moral leader, you've really added a power that we typically don't think about in secular society — which is that this person speaks for God and interprets God for people. And that really adds a power."
The Post also reports on various denominations' efforts to address clergy misconduct and reports some of the study’s most alarming statistics: More than two-thirds of the offending clergy were married to someone else at the time of their offense, and close to one in 10 respondents — male and female — reported having known about clergy sexual misconduct occurring in a congregation they had attended.
Women make headlines at U.S. Open
Kim Clijsters of Denmark won the U. S. Open this weekend, becoming the first mother to win a Grand Slam event in nearly 30 years. Even more remarkably, the win came in just her third match since returning from a 27-month retirement that began in May 2007, when she became pregnant with her now-18-month-old daughter, Jada Ellie.
The women provided nearly all the drama, both good and bad, in Flushing this year. First reporters crowned 17-year-old Melanie Oudin of Marietta, Georgia, “America’s Sweetheart” after she beat four highly ranked opponents and advanced to the quarterfinals. Then Serena Williams made headlines after a profane outburst over a foot fault that cost her the semifinal match against Clijsters.
ACORN Exposed by Undercover Activist Posing as Pimp
FOX News aired videos that showed employees of ACORN, a community action organization, assisting an independent filmmaker posing as a pimp to put together an application for an illegal loan for a brothel. "Don't get caught," the ACORN staffer says on the tape. "It's against the law what you're doing and there's a chance you'll get caught." Following the videos' release, the U.S. Census Bureau on Friday dropped ACORN from its list of partnering groups in the 2010 Census. ACORN officials have accused FOX News and the filmmaker, James O'Keefe, of dubbing over the tapes, and plan to seek legal action.
Continue reading "In the Loop: The Women's Blog News Roundup" »
The Confusing Case of Caster Semenya
The South African runner may lose her gold medal after gender test results are released.
What might have been weeks of celebration have become ones of public scrutiny for Caster Semenya, the South African runner who won the women’s 800 meter final at the World Athletics Championship August 19. Due to Semanya’s 8-second gain over her time in 2008, as well as her masculine appearance, the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) required the 18-year-old to take a gender verification test. Initial test results confirmed that the teenager has three times the normal levels of testosterone for women. Rumors swirled about Semenya’s head coach, Ekkart Arbeit — who was accused of giving female gymnasts steroids in the 1970s — and whether he had given Semenya similar treatments.
Now, a source close to the IAAF probe has told an Australian newspaper that the test showed that Semenya “had internal testes and no womb or ovaries,” calling her a hermaphrodite later in the report. (Medically speaking, the source is wrong: a hermaphrodite is someone who has simultaneously functioning male and female sex organs. Thomas Rogers at Broadsheet helpfully clarifies the differences between a number of rare intersex conditions.)
While the IAAF stated today that it will not release its findings — which could disqualify Semenya’s win — until November, media have already picked up on the hermaphrodite label. Semenya’s parents and other South Africans have responded angrily, not only because the test might strip Semenya of her gold medal and an athletic career, but because it has exposed Semenya to sexual humiliation and her family to shame. Whether or not Semenya is biologically female, she has understood herself to be a female her whole life — something Semenya asserted with jewelry, makeup, and trendy clothing in You! this week (pictured above). As she told the South African magazine, “I am who I am and I am proud of myself. God made me the way I am and I accept myself.”
How do Christians make sense of Semanya’s story?
Top 10 Posts of the Last 30 Days
If you didn't catch them the first time, here are the most popular posts from August.
Welcome back to Her.meneutics after what was hopefully a restful Labor Day weekend for you and yours! If you didn't catch them the first time, here's a round-up of the most popular posts from August. In the month ahead, look for an interview with Keri Wyatt Kent, author most recently of Simple Compassion, a post from Christine Scheller on debates about male circumcision (about which Christine says she "knows more than she ever wanted to know"), and, in light of news in Florida and Quebec, discussion about how and to what extent parents can shape their children's religious beliefs.
(10) "Teaching an Old Dogfighter New Tricks," by Laura Leonard // Comments: 8
Michael Vick appears truly repentant. Can we forgive him?
(9) "Deciphering the Pennsylvania Gym Shooting," by Ruth Moon // Comments: 21
What George Sodini's journal reveals about women and violence.
(8) "Half the Sky: A Must-Read Book," by Carolyn McCulley, guest blogger // Comments: 6
The fight for women's dignity worldwide, the 'cause of our time,' needs Christians now more than ever.
(7) " Juanita Bynum Returns to Conference Stage," by Alicia Cohn // Comments: 8
Self-declared prophetess emerges after domestic abuse court case and TV circuit.
(6) "What the TNIV Means for Evangelical Women," by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 22
To see it go won't mean that much, actually.
(5) "Breast-feeding Dolls: Cute or Creepy?" by Elrena Evans // Comments: 17
I'm pretty ambivalent about Bebe Gloton, the world's first electronically nursing doll.
(4) "Jenny Sanford Offers Forgiveness After Husband's Affair," by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 27
In her first post-affair interview, Mark Sanford's wife tells Vogue about learning of her husband's infidelity — and offering forgiveness.
And now for the top 3 . . .
In Their Own Words: Laura Ling and Euna Lee
One of the women, Euna Lee, was driven by her faith in Christ to cover the plight of North Koreans.
Much has been written about Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two American journalists captured this March, imprisoned for five months in North Korea, and released on August 6. But on Wednesday, for the first time, their story was told in their own words.
Lee and Ling’s story has unfolded over the past few months, and I have watched with interest, both because they are journalists and because they are women. I have tried to see myself in their situation in order to understand what they went through. But I have to admit, it is difficult to imagine myself hiking at sunrise across the border from China into North Korea, living in a third-world prison — or flying on a jet with Bill Clinton. It is even hard to imagine how they felt, behind the scenes, when they taped the “thank you” video posted the week after their return, much less during the ordeal in prison.
Instead, as I followed the story, I kept coming back to unanswered questions: Who are these women? What motivates them? And how did they survive?
Their statement didn’t do much to answer these questions, but this sentence at least provides a clue: “One of us, Euna, is a devout Christian whose faith infused her interest in the story.” Slowly, a new mental picture forms that is based on our shared faith.
Continue reading "In Their Own Words: Laura Ling and Euna Lee" »
What the TNIV Means for Evangelical Women
To see it go won't mean that much, actually.
As a blog centered on women, it seems only right for Her.meneutics to respond to Zondervan and Biblica’s major announcement that their gender-inclusive language Bible, NIVi (released only in Britain) was a mistake, and that they would no longer publish the controversial Today's New International Version (TNIV).
“Quite frankly, some of the criticism [of the NIVi] was justified, and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made,” said Keith Danby, CEO of Biblica, which owns the copyright to the NIV. “We fell short of the trust that was placed in us. We failed to make the case for revisions and we made some important errors in the way we brought the translation to publication. . . .”
Zondervan president Moe (Maureen) Girkins lamented that the TNIV “divided the evangelical Christian community,” and said the Michigan-based publishing house would begin phasing out TNIV-related products. “We’re trying to do this right and be as transparent as possible.”
Meanwhile, the Committee on Bible Translation has begun working on NIV 2011, which chairman Doug Moo said will reflect scholarly developments from the last quarter-century. He said the committee is undecided on how much gender-inclusive language the new NIV will include, and that it welcomes input at NIVBible2011.com.
As someone admittedly new to the debate surrounding TNIV — which some evangelical leaders believe abandons Scripture’s integrity in favor of political correctness — I had trouble finding much controversy in Tuesday’s announcement. The publishers focused not on the inherent errors of gender-inclusive translations but on the way they had introduced such a translation to the public. And they seem aimed more at producing a Bible that’s both accurate and accessible than condemning Bible readers who appreciate the TNIV’s use of humankind, men and women, et al. where the text is not gender-specific.
No matter, said Eugene Cho, a Seattle pastor writing for Sojourners' blog. Cho linked the disappearance of the TNIV to the “schizophrenic” landscape of evangelicalism, saying the TNIV was “immensely refreshing and encouraging” given “the increasing rise of the macho, masculine, and ultimate fighting Jesus presentation.” (My gratitude, though, for Cho’s link to Christianity Today’s April 2008 article “A Jesus for Real Men.”)
Continue reading "What the TNIV Means for Evangelical Women" »
Girl Dumps God
Carlene Bauer’s memoir recounts her de-conversion from Christianity for the literary set.
I wanted to love Not That Kind of Girl, a new memoir from “recovering evangelical” Carlene Bauer. On the surface, Bauer and I have a lot in common. We’re women who love the Bible, literature, and pop culture. We are aspiring writers who landed in publishing. She even grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs like me, entrenched in the evangelical subculture. And from early reviews, it was unclear just what, exactly, “recovering evangelical” meant. In the first chapter, Bauer describes her first encounter with the End Times, via a church basement screening of A Thief in the Night with her Christian classmates. At 8, her biggest fears suddenly included the government installing a bar code on her forehead or the back of her hand under a blood-red moon. She goes to bed at night earnestly whispering to God, “Could I live until I fell in love?”
This girl is me, I thought. I vividly remember telling my mom, myself at 8 years old, that I wanted to be excited for Jesus to come back, but if he could, it would be great if he could wait until I went to college, got married, and had a career and kids.
What critics are heralding as a “good-girl memoir” is actually a tragic story of faith, slowly and painfully lost. Bauer writes for a generation raised in the church of Dare to Discipline: “I sometimes wondered, sitting in church listening to ancient tales of obstinacy, if I had been born with original sin, because stealing and lying and saying mean things had never held an appeal.” For Bauer, faith comes easily at first, and even as she grows up and enters public school, she finds it easy to resist sex and alcohol.
But as her faith lingers during her college years at a Catholic university, belief in God feels like something she would shake off if she could only find the proper motive. Faith is a convenient foil to her introverted tendencies and dislike of the drunken parties and casual sex that consume her classmates. She secretly envies her friend Jane, who came to Christ in college, because it offers her a “platform for radical self-invention.”
Megan Hustad’s review for the Daily Beast identifies the conceit that makes Bauer's memoir one of interest for evangelicals:
[Bauer] aspires not only to be truly hip, she also wants to be taken seriously in New York’s snobbish literary scene. And she seeks to accomplish both of these goals while hanging on to her fervent faith in Jesus Christ. If life maneuvers received scores for technical difficulty, Bauer would be competing for gold.
Quest for a Father’s Love
Author Margot Starbuck talks about the universal need to be ‘seen, heard, known, and loved.’
In The Girl in the Orange Dress, Margot Starbuck chronicles her quest for her birth parents, for healing of physical and emotional pain, and for the unfailing love that is promised in Scripture, but which she had never felt.
Written with a light tone, the book contains episodes of outlandish behavior by its author—as she struggles through denial, insecurity, seminary, relationships, and an intense period of “seeking.” Alicia Cohn spoke with Starbuck about her book, which provides a personal encounter with the message that there is freedom in the love of Christ: freedom to be in health relationships, and freedom to be who he’s made each person to be.
What does it mean to be “heard, seen, known”?
At the end of Exodus chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3, when God’s people are suffering in Egypt, God says, “I see your suffering, I hear your cries, I know and I care.” Then God tells Moses to go do it, which kind of seems like a dirty trick. But as I began to look around the circle of people that God had put in my life, I became more and more convinced that that is exactly how God does it. God sees us, God cares about us, and God’s method is using human faces to liberate the oppressed, to seek justice, and to tell us the truth about who we are. God’s big plan is for a person to be a redeemer. Moses, my therapist, my friends, my husband function that way in [my] life. It feels as though that redemption was in the same pattern of God choosing to come as a person, in the person of Jesus Christ.
Is there a particular desire in women to be “heard, seen, known and loved” by a man?
If we haven’t yet received that in our bones from God, that is a burden to put on a man. When I was able to have that deep need met in God’s love for me, then I found that—not in a desperate way, but in a natural way—I would see in my husband’s face a reflection of some of the things that I longed to see in God’s face. He became kind of a human reflection of those.
How did you learn to deal with the tension between forming attachments and becoming clingy to people?
Half the Sky: A Must-Read Book
The fight for women's dignity worldwide, the 'cause of our time,' needs Christians now more than ever.
This past weekend, The New York Times Sunday Magazine devoted its entire issue to "Why Women's Rights Are the Cause of Our Time." Some very sober and powerful reading there — and not what you might think upon encountering a magazine with a title like that. In fact, these are real, global, and serious issues that should have the attention and ministry of Christians everywhere. More on that in a moment.
The lead feature was an excerpt from the forthcoming book by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn,a former Times correspondent who now works in finance and philanthropy. Here's a summary of the book, titled Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide — one that includes an honest fact about abortion that I was stunned to read in a mainstream publication. This is a good indicator of the journalistic veracity of this book's research:
Traditionally, the status of women was seen as a “soft” issue — worthy but marginal. We initially reflected that view ourselves in our work as journalists. We preferred to focus instead on the “serious” international issues, like trade disputes or arms proliferation. Our awakening came in China.After we married in 1988, we moved to Beijing to be correspondents for The New York Times. Seven months later we found ourselves standing on the edge of Tiananmen Square watching troops fire their automatic weapons at pro-democracy protesters. The massacre claimed between 400 and 800 lives and transfixed the world; wrenching images of the killings appeared constantly on the front page and on television screens.
Yet the following year we came across an obscure but meticulous demographic study that outlined a human rights violation that had claimed tens of thousands more lives. This study found that 39,000 baby girls died annually in China because parents didn’t give them the same medical care and attention that boys received — and that was just in the first year of life. A result is that as many infant girls died unnecessarily every week in China as protesters died at Tiananmen Square. Those Chinese girls never received a column inch of news coverage, and we began to wonder if our journalistic priorities were skewed.
A similar pattern emerged in other countries. In India, a “bride burning” takes place approximately once every two hours, to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry — but these rarely constitute news. When a prominent dissident was arrested in China, we would write a front-page article; when 100,000 girls were kidnapped and trafficked into brothels, we didn’t even consider it news.
So, How Are Those Summer Reading Lists Coming?
How to read the Bible in an age of anxiety; plus three book reviews from Christine A. Scheller.
![486261295_b71dd8bdd1.jpg](http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/upload/2009/08/486261295_b71dd8bdd1.jpg "Book stacks, The British Library (1978-97) by Colin St John Wilson. Courtesy of Steve Cadman, Flickr.com. <div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevecadman/486261295/"><a rel="cc:attributionURL" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevecadman/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevecadman/</a> / <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC BY-SA 2.0</a></div>")
With the end of summer in sight, your summer reading list is probably still untouched. If so, you are not alone. Los Angeles Times book editor David L. Ulin wrote last week on “the lost art of reading,” in which he muses on his past as an avid lover of the printed word and wonders what happened to his craving for books.
Our attention-deficit-inducing era of video games, multi-tab browsers, and YouTube videos hasn’t been around that long. If you’re like Ulin, you might have grown up devouring books only to find yourself now reading this, wondering, When was the last time I didn’t have to remind myself to sit down and read? Ulin admits that “some nights it takes 20 pages to settle down,” and only then by forcing himself to stay focused. He writes:
Today, it seems it is not contemplation we seek but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know. Why? Because of the illusion that illumination is based on speed, that it is more important to react than to think, that we live in a culture in which something is attached to every bit of time.
Ulin raises another question when he writes, “There is the fixity of the text, which doesn't change whether written yesterday or a thousand years ago." When Ulin writes that “reading has become an act of meditation,” he is talking about text itself — any text. But as Christians, perhaps we ought to consider this as a matter of biblical importance. As Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” and so is the Bible as the written revelation of him. How difficult is it for Christians in the digital age to sit still and allow the unchanging Word of God to permeate what Ulin calls “the buzz . . . a series of disconnected riffs and fragments that add up to the anxiety of the age”? Or, as Ulin put it, “How do we immerse in something (an idea, an emotion, a decision) when we are no longer willing to give ourselves the space to reflect?”
Alicia Cohn is an intern at Christianity Today magazine. She has written previous blog posts for Her.meneutics on marriage in Florida, the Breast Cancer Bible, and The Stoning of Soraya M.
Continue reading "So, How Are Those Summer Reading Lists Coming?" »
Beauty Pageant for Landmine Victims Scrapped
Cambodia's government says the contest makes fun of the disabled. The founder says he's only trying to humanize them.
The Cambodian government last week banned the Miss Landmine beauty pageant, slated for Friday in the capital city of Phnom Penh.
![3336811153_fd807abd72.jpg](http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/upload/2009/08/3336811153_fd807abd72.jpg "Courtesy of Christopher Michel, <div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmichel67/3336811153/"><a rel="cc:attributionURL" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmichel67/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmichel67/</a> / <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">CC BY 2.0</a></div>")
Government officials initially supported the contest but changed their view, saying the contest would damage “the dignity and honor of people with disabilities." Besides the view that beauty pageants inherently objectify their participants, many people believe Miss Landmine mocks the disabled. (The contest logo is a one-legged female outline sporting a crown with a danger sign in the background.) In Miss Landmine Angola 2008, women took turns walking and posing on the catwalk, many of them supported by crutches.
Norwegian film director Morten Traavik launched Miss Landmine after a 2003 visit to the country of Angola in southern Africa. Civil war had recently concluded, and many landmines remained in the ground, causing injuries. When some children asked him to judge their own beauty pageant held in an alley, Traavik combined the idea of a pageant with raising awareness and support for landmine victims — or survivors, as the Miss Landmine manifesto prefers to call them.
UNICEF ranks Cambodia as the third most landmined country in the world. An estimated 4 to 6 million landmines remain in the ground 30 years after the military conflict between Cambodia’s former Communist regime, Khmer Rouge, and Vietnam. According to the Halo Trust, Cambodia is home to an estimated 25,000 amputees.
Continue reading "Beauty Pageant for Landmine Victims Scrapped" »
Top 10 Most Popular Posts, July
A round-up of the most popular posts of the last 30 days.
Here are the posts you clicked on the most during the fourth month of Her.meneutics. Thanks to regular readers and visitors for helping to make the CT women's blog a success. And stay tuned for coverage of Not That Kind of Girl, Carlene Bauer's memoir of reconciling her evangelical faith with life among NYC's cultural elite; an interview with Margot Starbuck, author of The Girl in the Orange Dress, newly out from InterVarsity Press; and other news and analysis from evangelical women.
(10) "Where Does Francis Collins Stand on Stem-Cell Research?" by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 7
The question is more pressing now that he is heading the National Institutes of Health.
(9) "Building Up Without Walls," by Elissa Cooper // Comments: 4
Paula White steps up as senior pastor of the troubled Pentecostal megachurch.
(8) "Jimmy Carter Speaks Up on Women," by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 9
The born-again President recently penned an op-ed condemning gender inequality in the name of religion.
(7) "Journalists Link Rising Teen Pregnancy Rates to Bush Administration," by Ruth Moon // Comments: 12
Rates of teen pregnancy, STDs rose during 2006-2007. Does this mean abstinence education isn't working?
(6) "Corrupt Clergy and Forgiveness," by Christine A. Scheller // Comments: 6
Cases like last week's organ-brokering scandal in New Jersey leave no room for cheap grace.
(5) "The Charismatic Alberto Cutie," by Julia Duin // Comments: 1
Time will tell if the celebrity priest lives up to Church of the Resurrection's lively tradition.
(4) "Harry Potter and the Vampire Battle," by Laura Leonard // Comments: 14
Yet another reason for evangelicals to embrace the boy wizard.
The Horrors of Orphan
Christian ministry fears the film will stigmatize older adopted children.
If nothing else, the latest box office horror flick has people talking. In Orphan, 12-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman plays the eponymous Esther, who is adopted by John and Kate Coleman (Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga) after their third child is stillborn.
(Yes, you read that right, John and Kate. I'll try not to get too derailed by non sequiturs involving other Jon and Kates.)
This John and Kate bring the newly adopted Esther home, only to learn that "happily ever after" apparently wasn't in the script. Bad things start happening — this is, after all, a horror movie — and Esther turns out to be a whole lot more than anyone bargained for.
Which is a problem, according to some people, especially for the Christian Alliance for Orphans, a Virginia-based parachurch ministry. Through its newly created website Orphans Deserve Better, the alliance is hoping to start a grassroots movement that will counter what it sees as the negative impact of Orphan. "However far-fetched some stories are," the alliance says, "they can still subtly shape our values and perceptions. So when a major motion picture leaves a lingering impression that orphans are damaged goods and that adoption can tear apart your life, those who know the deeper truth must speak up."
Rubbish, says Salon writer Kate Harding:
Harry Potter and the Vampire Battle
Yet another reason for evangelicals to embrace the boy wizard.
No, I'm not talking about Severus Snape and his vampiric qualities. Last night's midnight opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the latest installment in the blockbuster book-movie franchise, brought with it comparisons to another teen fantasy phenomenon, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series.
The sixth Harry Potter film features front and center the budding hormones of the now-16-year-old wizards, but, compared with Meyer's vampire oeuvre, J. K. Rowling's Harry seems downright innocent - a phrase rarely attached to the magical tales, at least among many evangelicals.
The "question" of Harry Potter - good fun, or evil vehicle for witchcraft? - has circulated through Christian culture since the first movie introduced the boy wizard to the mainstream in 2001. Eight years later - years that have brought the series' conclusion and Rowling's admission that her Christian faith deeply influenced her work - many evangelicals still oppose the book's positive portrayal of witchcraft and wizardry, fearing it gives curious children an entry point into the occult.
Christianity Today magazine has weighed in on the controversy; I personally believe the books are not only harmless, but can also deepen our faith by engaging our hearts and minds in an epic story that explores some very biblical ideas, a la Tolkien and Lewis. The series' conclusion relies heavily on Christian imagery (I'll stop there to avoid spoiling Deathly Hallows' incredibly powerful finale), and in the end, we see that the spells and potions are merely plot devices to depict themes of good vs. evil, the importance of sacrifice, and the power of love. Even the Vatican has stepped out in support of Half-Blood Prince, giving the film a surprising two thumbs up to its treatment of adolescent love.
Breast Cancer and the Bible
Does HarperOne's forthcoming Pink Ribbon Bible push the boundaries of niche-marketing?
Gone are the days when personalizing your Bible meant choosing between a leather or patterned Bible cover.
The wide variety of Bibles currently on the market allows for customization based on age, sex, and interest. There are Bibles for teenage girls (with "a unique design that fits her lifestyle") and college students, Bibles for men and Bibles for women, picture-book Bibles (even Manga Bibles), and Bibles for occasions, like the American Patriot's Bible, released by Thomas Nelson this summer to celebrate the Fourth of July.
Now you can also customize the Bible to a particular cause. Last year, HarperOne released The Green Bible, to "help you see that caring for the earth is not only a calling, but a lifestyle"; now Tyndale House has a Hungry Planet Bible (part of a project "raising awareness of the plight of the homeless and hungry") and a Pray for a Cure Bible aimed at breast cancer support, released in 2007. This September, HarperOne will release the Pink Ribbon Bible. One dollar of every purchase will go to the Pink Ribbon Girls, a nonprofit organization providing support, education, and awareness of breast cancer. Although Pink Ribbon Girls is not a Christian nonprofit, founder Tracie Metzger says the Bible was an encouragement in her own battle with breast cancer.
These specialty Bibles allow their owners to identify themselves by a cause they feel passionate about, not just their stage of life or color preference. But are we shaping the Bible to our lifestyle more than molding our lifestyle to the Bible?
Nancy Guthrie: Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow
Well acquainted with suffering, Guthrie offers Jesus' words of comfort in her most recent work.
Nancy Guthrie is no stranger to suffering. After her second child, Hope, died within a year of birth from Zellweger syndrome, a rare, fatal genetic abnormality, Guthrie began writing Holding On to Hope, a book about coping with loss and grief. She was in the final stages of writing when she became pregnant with a third child, Gabriel, who was also diagnosed with Zellweger. Gabriel lived for six months.
Since Gabriel's death, Guthrie has written many books and articles, and has traveled around the country speaking at conferences about the Christian response to suffering. Her latest work, Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow (Tyndale), which came out last month, is an expansion of themes introduced in her previous books, adding, as Nancy writes in the introduction, "the perspective of years and further understanding of the Scriptures." Her.meneutics contributor Ruth Moon talked to Guthrie about the health-and-wealth gospel and how to comfort friends who are grieving.
What place do you want Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow to have on the bookshelf of Christian books about suffering? What niche does it fill?
I hope this book is not a "grief" book. It speaks to people who are grieving, but I hope people see it as a theological book. I hope that the book would be that theological thinking through of suffering, but also an invitation to those of us who say that Jesus means everything to us and that we want to follow him, to live that out in the hardest, lowest places of life, that when we enter into unimaginable suffering, it's obvious that Jesus is still everything to us, that he is still the solid ground beneath our feet, and that he is who we're grabbing hold of and depending on and whom we love and treasure and trust.
You organize this book around 11 statements from Jesus on suffering, such as, "I, Too, Have Heard God Tell Me No," and "I Am Giving Life to Those Who Believe in Me." Do you feel you learned anything while writing those statements?
Continue reading "Nancy Guthrie: Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow" »
Top 10 Most Popular Posts, v. 3
A round-up of the most popular posts of the last 30 days.
Here are the blog posts that sparked the most reader curiosity during the third month of Her.meneutics. Thanks to both committed readers and stumble-upon visitors for making the CT women's blog a success! And, if there are particular topics you'd really like to see us cover, please send your suggestions to editor Sarah Pulliam (spulliam[at]christianitytoday.com) or editor Katelyn Beaty (kbeaty[at]christianitytoday.com).
(ten) "Declining Female Happiness," by Lisa Graham McMinn // Comments: 23
A new study reveals that feminism may be the source of our discontent.
(nine) "Trashing Sarah Palin's Faith, Family, and Femininity," by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 17
The outgoing Alaska governor has faced 10 months of serious scrutiny.
(eight) "Stand By Your Unfaithful Politician Husband?" by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 15
Christian politicians Mark Sanford and John Ensign recently confessed to having affairs, but their wives were absent from the press conferences.
(seven) "Top Clothing Lines Downsize Plus-Size Offerings," by Elrena Evans // Comments: 14
Which clothing lines are belt-tightening during the shrinking economy.
(six) "When a Pro-Life Blogger Goes Too Far," by Laura Leonard // Comments: 6
The case of 'April's Mom' is less an indictment on the pro-life movement and more the story of a deeply pained woman.
(five) "The Downside of Hooking Up," by Christine A. Scheller // Comments: 34
The message of 'female sexual liberation' comes with a cost.
(four) "Schuller's Eldest Daughter to Lead Crystal Cathedral," by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 13
Sheila Schuller Coleman to become her father's 'legs' in new role.
Sarah Palin: Andrew Sullivan's Punching Bag
The last thing the former governor needs is journalists criticizing her for being true to her own life.
No writer that I've read in the past 11 months has been more - dare I say - hysterically critical of Sarah Palin than The Atlantic's uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan. Eight months after the election, he is still harping on the failure of traditional media to investigate the parentage and birth of her son Trig.
With Palin's resignation as Governor of Alaska coming days after a scathing profile appeared in Vanity Fair, Sullivan is in fighting form. Yesterday, in one blog post alone, he called her a delusional liar, "the biggest farce in American politics in living memory" and a "hood ornament of a candidate." Palin may have been the wrong person for the job of Vice President, but she's nobody's hood ornament.
Nothing Sullivan has written about Palin has been more hypocritical than his condemnation of what he alleges is her exploitation of Trig and Bristol as props for the pro-life cause. Forget the fact that it was first-wave feminists and not religious conservatives whose motto was "the personal is political," Sullivan himself drags out his family to argue for gay marriage all the time and applauds others for doing the same. Not only that, but in the wake of George Tiller's murder, he posted anonymous reader e-mail after anonymous reader e-mail detailing unsubstantiated late-term abortion stories - thereby suggesting that perhaps even these gruesome acts should be legal.
Continue reading "Sarah Palin: Andrew Sullivan's Punching Bag" »
Trashing Sarah Palin's Faith, Family, and Femininity
The outgoing Alaska governor has faced 10 months of serious scrutiny.
It's hard not to draw comparisons between Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton. Both high-profile women are deeply beloved and passionately detested on both sides of the aisle. In fact, Christianity Today magazine came to both of their defenses during their most heated moments in the media spotlight. But Palin has faced particular scrutiny for her faith, thanks to her Pentecostal background.
The New York Times's Ross Douthat does a nice job outlining Palin's enemies:
Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)
Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You'll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You'll endure gibes about your "slutty" looks and your "white trash concupiscence," while a prominent female academic declares that your "greatest hypocrisy" is the "pretense" that you're a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.
Continue reading "Trashing Sarah Palin's Faith, Family, and Femininity" »
Am I My Sister's Keeper?
A new movie explores tensions between preserving a life when a terminally ill patient feels ready to die.
My Sister's Keeper, director Nick Cassavetes' (The Notebook) new weeper film starring Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin, releases today.
Fans of the original 2004 Jodi Picoult novel may be expecting a cinematic exploration of the ethical ramifications of PIDG (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis), the medical practice of engineering and selecting embryos for specific medical reasons.
After all, in both the novel and the movie, the drama centers on a cancer-stricken teenager and the younger sister who was engineered in a test tube to be an ideal donor of blood and bone marrow. (USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman, a fan of the novel, offers a succinct summary of the issue and its implications on her Faith and Reason blog.)
Although the film is faithful to the book in a number of ways, a significantly altered ending and a shift in emphasis make PIDG more of a plot point than a central theme. Intriguingly, a different, but closely related issue, bubbles up in its place.
A (Crooked) House Divided: the Gosselins Announce Their Divorce
Ten years, eight kids, and five seasons later, Jon and Kate call it quits.
And now it's official. As many have speculated in the week since commercials first aired promoting tonight's "big announcement" that would affect the entire family, Jon and Kate Gosselin announced their separation, and, later in the episode, their divorce. This expected announcment confirmed reports leaked this afternoon that Jon and Kate today filed the paperwork for their divorce in a Pennyslvania courthouse.
The subplot of the episode involved the design and construction of four "crooked houses" for the kids. While Jon and Kate fought over where to place them, the kids enjoyed the simple pleasures of "playing house." In a particularly heartbreaking scene, two of the younger children pretended they were getting married, presumably to live "happily ever after" in their little crooked houses. Kate said she hoped the houses would create many happy memories, but I can't imagine featuring them in this particular episode will do much to help that. It was difficult to hear their individual voices introduce each segment ("next on Jon & Kate Plus 8") with the knowledge of what was coming.
Continue reading "A (Crooked) House Divided: the Gosselins Announce Their Divorce" »
When a Pro-Life Blogger Goes Too Far
The case of 'April's Mom' is less an indictment on the pro-life movement and more the story of a deeply pained woman.
Last Sunday night, a popular pro-life blogger known as "April's Mom" or "B" posted the tragic news: Her newborn daughter, whom she had carried to term though diagnosed with a terminal case of Trisomy 13 and HPE, had died hours after a difficult home birth. This marked the end of the nine-month journey she had shared with the world on her blog, Little One April, where she chronicled her struggles, pains, and hopes as she traveled the journey many would have ended after such devastating news. She wrote often of the centrality of her Christian faith and pro-life values to her decision and motivation, and filled her posts with Bible verses and Christian music. Her readers lauded her courage, prayed for God to save the baby, and sent gifts anticipating her arrival: a baby hat, a pair of little shoes, a hair bow, a crocheted blanket. Pro-life bloggers rallied around this embodiment of the cause, linking to the blog and adding "Pray for April Rose" buttons to their own.
It could have ended there, but "April's mom" decided to post a picture of the baby, a picture that was quickly identified by some readers as not a baby at all, but a "Reborn doll," a vinyl toy made to look like a real newborn. The entire story quickly unraveled; April's mom was actually 26-year-old social worker Rebecca Beushausen, a Chicago-area woman who had not been pregnant at all, though she had lost a child in 2005.
All that is left of the blog now is an apology - and a media mess. In her final post, Beushausen wrote, "I am a Christian and while I wrote many of my posts under dishonest contexts, the God I shared with all of you and wrote about is still God; the Creator or life, Father and Savior. I hope to regain my relationship back with Him, fully, myself." She went on to apologize for her actions - she never intended for anyone outside her immediate circle to find or read the blog - and to link readers to a site for families actually dealing with T13 pregnancies.
So why did this happen? Beushausen told the Chicago Tribune that "I've always liked writing. It was addictive to find out I had a voice that people wanted to hear. Soon I was getting 100,000 hits a week, and it just got out of hand. I didn't know how to stop. . . . One lie led to another." But there's no hiding on the Internet; though Beushausen scrambled to remove the blog, along with its accompanying Twitter and Facebook pages, when it became clear she had blown her cover, the details of her identity came spilling out over the blogosphere and then the national news over the course of a few days.
Redeeming Twitter
It doesn't have to be for shallow updates.
The U.S. State Department asks Twitter to delay maintenance plans for the weekend so Iranians voting in Friday's election can communicate instantly, and defeated candidate Mirhossein Mousavi uses Twitter to organize protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The FBI tracks Twitter to stop a crazed Oklahoma City man from turning the April 15 Tea Party Protests into what he warned would be a bloodbath. Beating even The New York Times, a ferry passenger on the Hudson River uses Twitter to deliver the first reports and pictures of U.S. Airways Flight #1549's emergency landing.
The instant firsthand information sent from someone's cell phone or computer to the Twitter stream is appealing to this wiki culture; nowadays, we trust mass accumulation of knowledge more than we do an authority figure's research. Besides, there's nothing quite like being able to talk directly to the guy who watched the school bus tip over 20 seconds ago.
As popular as Twitter is (reporting over 7 million users this winter, with a 1382 percent growth rate from 2008), many people still don't know about it, or dismiss its usefulness when they learn about it. (As guest editor of Newsweek last week, satirist Stephen Colbert poked fun at the three-year-old site by proposing the cover story, "Hey, Have You Heard About This Thing Called Twitter?") I happen to know a few folks who have enjoyed a chuckle on my behalf when I call myself a "Twit." It's not worth the risk of being labeled a rabid Twitter evangelist, so I usually refrain from giving my whole spiel to my skeptical friends (I limit it to 20 minutes).
The Duggars: the Anti-Gosselins
When reality TV marriage actually works.
Even in the wake of the media circus that surrounds the Gosselin family, another reality TV show about an unusually large family premiered last night. WeTV showed Raising Sextuplets, which follows Bryan and Jenny Masche as they navigate raising six 16-month-olds. Like the Gosselins, the Masches are professing Christians. (In the show's opening sequence, Jenny shares that, despite the dangers involved in carrying a large pregnancy to term, "because of our faith, selective reduction was not an option.") In light of the Gosselins' recent troubles, it seems odd for any family to choose to expose themselves to the scrutiny that likely at least contributed to the Gosselins' marital problems. As Christians, we might ask, is it wise to enter a "public marriage" when the dangers have been so clearly laid out?
For proof that reality TV exposure does not itself destroy a family, we need look no further than TLC's 18 Kids and Counting, which offers a weekly peek into the life of the Duggar family. As part of the Quiverfull movement, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar abstain from all forms of birth control and, according to their website, "asked God to bless them with as many children as he saw fit in his timing." The show has followed them through multiple pregnancies, planning, building, and moving into a 7,000-square-foot home (built debt-free), and even the courtship, marriage, and pregnancy of Jim Bob and Michelle's eldest, Josh, and his wife, Anna.
What Are You Reading This Summer?
We've offered some lists if you haven't decided yet.
Summer's a time when you don't want to do any extra work, so we did the work for you and compiled a reading list - several, actually.
Some lists are lighter than others, but here's what Her.meneutics contributors plan to read this summer. If you need a little inspiration, check out some beautiful photos of extraordinary libraries.
Ruth Moon
The Believers: A Novel, by Zoe Heller
Saving History, by Fanny Howe
The Secret Life of Words, by Henry Hitchings
Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke
Elrena Evans
I'm currently reading Sara Miles' Take This Bread, and then I'm looking forward to reading an ARC of Joanne Rendell's Crossing Washington Square. Next up I'll probably read David A. Kessler's The End of Overeating (I have to wait for my husband to finish it first), all while anxiously waiting for my fellow Literary Mama Kristina Riggle's debut, Real Life and Liars.
LaVonne Neff
A Plague on Both Your Houses, by Susanna Gregory is on my nightstand.
I’m halfway through Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, by Christopher Buckley
I’m also halfway through Finding Happiness: Monastic Steps for a Fulfilling Life, by Abbot Christopher Jamison
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery
Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story, by Isabel Gillies
Secrets to Happiness: A Novel, by Sarah Dunn (the cover picture is irresistible)
Christine A. Scheller
Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, by Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan and Ann Swidler
Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice, by Stephanie Paulsell
Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community and Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life, by Simon Chan
So Brave, Young and Handsome, by Leif Enger
Before Prozac: The Troubled History of Mood Disorders in Psychiatry, by Edward Shorter
Top 10 Most Popular Posts, v. 2
What you clicked on the most during the second month of Her.meneutics.
Thank you to our readers and stumble-upon visitors for making the first month of the CT women's blog a success! Here are the top 10 posts you read and responded to since Her.meneutics launched on Thursday, April 2:
(ten) "Your Responses: AIDS in Uganda," by LaVonne Neff // Comments: 72
Part Two of 'Meanwhile, What about the Women and Children?'
(nine) "Beware! Dangerous Women," by Lynne Hybels // Comments: 5
They might just step up and do something.
(eight) "eHarmony Launches Gay Dating Site," by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 32
The company agreed to launch Compatible Partners after a user had filed a complaint, citing New Jersey's discrimination law.
(seven) "Strip-Searched Girl Heads to Supreme Court," by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 9
How far can a public school go in an anti-drug campaign without violating students' rights to privacy?
(six) "Breast-feed - If You Can Afford To," by LaVonne Neff // Comments: 19
Judith Warner's April 2 New York Times op-ed piece, "Ban the Breast Pump," was sure to stir up a hornet's nest.
(five) "Going Undercover to Expose Planned Parenthood," by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 18
Lila Rose's pro-life activism may be breaking state privacy laws. But does it matter?
(four) "Is There Such a Thing as Too Many Children?" by Elrena Evans // Comments: 21
Questions linger as last of Nadya Suleman's octuplets heads home.
(three) "Puppies Aren't People," by Kay Warren, guest blogger // Comments: 79
When compassion for animals goes too far.
(two) "Why Do We Love Susan Boyle?" by Sarah Pulliam // Comments: 18
She's become a YouTube sensation, but why do we love her so much?
(one) "The Other Miss California Controversy," by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 81
Carrie Prejean might have stood up for Christian sexual ethics by skipping the Miss USA pageant altogether.
Author Interview: Elissa Elliott
Her debut novel explores what the Book of Genesis would look like from the first woman's view.
Writers and artists have for centuries been using their imaginations to make the Creation and Fall accounts in Genesis come alive for readers. John Milton's Paradise Lost is the most epic and well-known example; others include Perelandra, the second installment of C. S. Lewis's space trilogy, and David Maine's provocative Fallen, from 2006. But what if the story of Adam and Eve were imagined from a - or the - woman's perspective? That's the question Elissa Elliott asks in her 2009 work of literary fiction, Eve: A Novel of the First Woman.
Elliott tells the Genesis story from the perspective of Eve and her three daughters, Naava, Aya, and Dara, who narrate the events of the summer leading up to Cain's murder of Abel. Although the women's voices vary in their believability, Eve's internal monologue as she lives out her curse (Gen. 3:16) adds depth to the sparsely outlined Genesis account. Elliott toys with possibilities, creating family rivalries and another, older civilization with which Eve's family collides to explain the motivation behind Cain's infamous murder. The result is a thought-provoking read.
Elliott, who spent two years at Biola University before receiving a degree in biology and an M.A. in education from UCLA, lives in Minnesota with her husband and child. Eve came out in January from Delacorte Press, and Books & Culture editor John Wilson gave Eve a mini-review here. Her.meneutics editor Ruth Moon sat down with Elliott recently to talk about her faith, women, and her debut novel.
What did you learn by writing from the perspective of Eve?
When I started writing the book, I thought I was going to redeem Eve. I thought I was going to pull her from the depths of obscurity and somehow raise her to a level of humanity. I came away with a more personal God who was concerned about me as a woman. He's been trying to talk to me but I cannot hear him, I cannot see him, and I get so obsessed with my everyday problems that I rant and I rave, but he's there for me.
The second thing is about women in general. Four years ago, I was co-teaching a married couples' Sunday school class that both my husband and I attended. On the days that I would teach, there were certain men who would leave the room and go sit in the café. Their wives would openly tell me they didn't want to be taught by a woman. I felt offended, not that they wouldn't want to hear me, but that they wouldn't want to hear a woman's perspective. So in writing [about] the women of the Bible, I wanted to give them a voice, I wanted to give them an avenue that perhaps God might speak through them.
Declining Female Happiness
A new study reveals that feminism may be the source of our discontent.
The data have been collected and analyzed and the determination made: Women are less happy than they were 35 years ago, less happy than men, and the gap between men's and women's happiness is growing. The National Bureau of Economic Research released the report in May, and according to its researchers, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, this decline in happiness is pretty much true for women across the board in industrialized nations.
But women can be CEOs, politicians, and college presidents. They are better paid and have more visibility and opportunity than they did 30 years ago, so why are women less happy?
Stevenson and Wolfers speculate that perhaps it's the overall decrease in social cohesion, or increased anxiety and neuroticism. Or maybe now that women have multiple roles, they are satisfied in one role, but miserable in another, bringing down their overall sense of happiness. Maybe the women's movement raised expectations for women, and their lives don't measure up to those expectations.
I'm sitting in a window seat on a flight mulling this over, heading home after spending a day at Pine Rest in Grand Rapids talking to psychologists, counselors, social workers, and pastors who work with girls and women. Bob Hosack, my editor at Baker Books, extended the invitation believing my ideas from Growing Strong Daughters would be useful. I tossed my speculations about why women are less happy than we used to be into the mix. Here they are:
Our raised expectations have a fair bit to do with it. So does a form of individualism that redefined women's expectations in the aftermath of the feminist movement. (Important note: I call myself a feminist.) We are predisposed to fall into an individualism that is all about me, and women followed men into that particular pit rather readily, but with somewhat different consequences.
‘Up’ Takes Disney Higher
Pixar’s latest hit takes Disney beyond its usual princess tales.
It's not shocking that Disney would create yet another film that features a child without a mommy and daddy, but Pixar's 10th feature film, Up, still manages to play on strong themes of marriage and fatherhood. Released last Friday, it pairs a crotchety old man with an obnoxiously chatty child to create both a tear-jerking and laughter-inducing film that sister site CT Movies called "a delightful, perspective-changing ride."
The first half of the film uses very little dialogue to show a beautiful picture of a husband and wife, Carl and Ellie, who dream of living in South America. Ellie works as a zookeeper while Carl sells balloons, and we see them live a full life filled with love for each other. But it's not the same happily-ever-after ending we tend to associate with Disney. We see the couple face numerous challenges, and they are never able to fulfill their hope of moving to Paradise Falls.
As 78-year-old Carl mourns his wife's death, a chubby 8-year-old knocks on his door to earn an "assist the elderly" Wilderness Explorer badge. Eager to be left alone, Carl shoos Russell away, badgeless.
Media Lukewarm on Laodicean's Meaning
Last night's spelling bee champ rattled off the word with ease, but media today haven't yet connected the Greek adjective to the Bible.
Last night Indian American girl Kavya Shivashankar, 13, won the televised Scripps National Spelling Bee and its $40,000 prize after rattling off the letters in Laodicean (pronounced lÄ-ˌä-dÉ™-ˈsÄ“-É™n). Like most spelling-bee words, the adjective doesn't get much use in everyday conversation, so news sources today have defined the word using American Heritage and Merriam-Webster Dictionary's entries.
American Heritage, 4th ed., second entry: "Indifferent or lukewarm especially in matters of religion."
Merriam-Webster's first entry is a little more helpful, but not one news source used it: "from the reproach to the church of the Laodiceans in Rev 3:15–16." Its second entry got the most play: "lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics."
Bible readers, of course, will recognize the Greek term from the Book of Revelation and from Paul's letters to the Colossians. Laodicea was a city along the river Lycus in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) founded by King Antiochus II Theos and named for his wife, Laodice, in the 3rd century B.C. Church historians believe that Epaphras, one of Paul's helpers, preached the gospel to the Laodiceans, as he did to the inhabitants in nearby Colossae about 10 miles away.
Paul mentions the Laodicean church in passing five times in his epistle to the Colossians, encouraging them to "see that [this letter] is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea" (4:16).
Laodicea isn't associated with an attitude of lukewarmness until the third chapter of John's Revelation, which lists the church in Laodicea among the seven named churches in Asia Minor.
"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!" John warns on behalf of Christ. "So, because you are lukewarm - neither hot nor cold - I am about to spit you out of my mouth" (3:15-16). The Laodiceans, who were apparently too focused on material riches, were rebuked for their wishy-washiness about the gospel.
Jon and Kate Plus a Lot of Bitterness
The Gosselins need to confess their sins to Christian friends rather than to the TV camera.
I admit that for a while I was hooked on certain reality TV shows, but I've pulled the plug on several as of late, keeping my viewing list a lot shorter. (However, I've kept Deadliest Catch on the list because I can't get enough of men battling the Bering Sea - it's quite thrilling!) Reality TV has destroyed its share of relationships, so I have been hesitant to spend time becoming emotionally involved with the real-life people who inhabit it.
Sadly, its most recent casualty seems to be Jon and Kate Gosselin. The once-happy couple that has endured the challenges of multiple births have now turned on one another, and Monday night's episode, the fifth-season premiere, revealed the pain that pride, anger, blame-shifting, and resentment bring to a marriage.
Watching as a counselor, I was squirming in my seat. The problems they were describing (in separate interviews) were actually quite common and normal in most marriages. I've heard many people express their anger and sadness about feeling underappreciated, having to put dreams on hold, and enduring their spouse saying and doing hurtful things. The biggest test will be how the Gosselins, who are professing Christians, choose to deal with these universal marital issues. If Monday's episode was any evidence of how they are proceeding, things do not look good.
Kris Allen Triumphs on American Idol -- in More Ways Than One
Lessons from the outspoken Christian's friendship with the competition, glam rocker Adam Lambert.
If you are one of the 28.8 million people who watched American Idol's season finale Wednesday night, you already know that Kris Allen, the 23-year old worship leader from Conway, Arkansas, beat out Hollywood rocker and musical theater vet Adam Lambert for the eighth season's title. Many saw this final battle as yet another chapter in the red-state/blue-state struggle, pitting Christian wholesomeness against bombastic worldliness. But in the days following Allen's surprise victory, the conversation has shifted from questions of whether devoted Christian voters propelled Allen past the season-long frontrunner, to the strong friendship the two performers have forged during the season.
Earlier this year, I wrote about the role of faith on American Idol. While contestants like Allen may benefit from "the Christian vote," non-Christian performers like Adam Lambert have been similarly embraced by voters who do not share his worldview. By allowing him into their homes (via TV) for the past few months, many viewers came to see Lambert as more than his sexuality. Writes Ann Powers in the Los Angeles Times:
Each singer has fans who should be rooting for the other one, according to the usual patterns linked to the culture wars. Some commentators have tried to make a stir over Lambert's sexuality - Bill O'Reilly questioned Lambert's appropriateness as a singing role model on his Fox News program. But he seems to have many Christian admirers. "My husband and I are Baby Boomer Christians and we LOVE Adam Lambert! After 8 seasons, we finally have the contestant who defines the title," wrote one reader in the comments section of Newsweek magazine's Pop Vox blog.
Continue reading "Kris Allen Triumphs on American Idol -- in More Ways Than One" »
Forgotten Little Pitchers
The difficulty of raising children in an adult-centered world.
![Cassatt_Mary_Nurse_Reading_to_a_Little_Girl_1895.jpg](http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/upload/2009/05/Cassatt_Mary_Nurse_Reading_to_a_Little_Girl_1895.jpg "Mary Cassatt, "Nurse Reading to a Little Girl," 1895.")
You would think she'd been talking to a classmate, but no; as it happened she had read this in a book on Ancient Rome. Since the school's fourth grade bookshelf includes a number of colorfully illustrated reference books on the period, her mortified teacher's first thought was that one of these adult books was the source. It wasn't; the information came from an Usborne book. In other words, it came from a book written and designed for children.
It is not very original of either this mother or me to complain that our children are under siege, but they are. Some days, the pervasiveness of it seems remarkable.
I have fourth grader myself, who loves to read and loves words, so many nights now she and her father tackle the Jumble word puzzle which lies opposite the comics page in our increasingly thin Louisville Courier-Journal. This is a new game for them, and it took a day or two for my husband and I to notice that right above ATCATK and YLROLWD lies the "Annie's Mailbox" column, with its sad parade of grief, trouble and abuse. We cut or fold the page now.
Our daughter would like to look at the rest of the paper also, but since the front page may feature a large colored photograph of people exploded by a suicide bomber, or the murder of a child, or a personal assault highlighted in large type, some days she can't. (I don't complain that the paper reports bad news, but I do object to the increasingly tabloid fashion in which some stories are covered.)
Stuff, the Sleeper Hit
Viral video on consumption may be coming to a church near you.
A year and a half ago, Annie Leonard released The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute video about the dangers of over-consumption. It "has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation," Leslie Kaufman wrote in Sunday's New York Times: "So far, six million people have viewed the film at its site, StoryofStuff.com, and millions more have seen it on YouTube. More than 7,000 schools, churches, and others have ordered a DVD version, and hundreds of teachers have written Ms. Leonard to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web."
Critics object to Kaufman's negative portrayal of big business, along with inaccuracies and oversimplification. Even if you agree with Leonard's main point - that we buy far too much, and that this is bad for us, for others, and for the earth - you may find the video unnecessarily confrontational.
Like it or not, chances are your kids (friends, relatives, coworkers) are going to watch this video, and it may come soon to a church near you. Stick with it, even if the first three minutes appall you. Leonard raises issues that Christians are already discussing (see, for example, the discussion of fair trade at the Ten Thousand Villages website) and that we need to talk more about with our kids. For example:
-- Let's assume that some businesses do operate for the benefit of humankind and the earth. How do these businesses care for the environment? What are their policies on work hours? Wages? Health benefits? Child labor? The products they make? The way they market their products?
-- Can a business care for the environment and its employees and still make a profit?
-- How much of my identity is related to things I buy? Which of my purchases have made me happier? Am I happier today because of anything I bought last year?
Donald Trump Says Miss California Can Keep the Crown
But will conservative Christians continue to put her on a pedestal?
If you haven't had enough of Miss California yet, she's still reigning in the news today. Donald Trump, owner of the Miss USA pageant, says Carrie Prejean can keep her crown, even after more racy photos were released online this morning.
A gossip site has posted more pictures of Prejean, some of which are topless. Trump called many of the pictures "lovely."
"We have determined that the pictures taken are fine," he said. "Some were very beautiful, some were risque, but, again, we're in the 21st century. . . . In many cases they were actually lovely pictures."
Trump and Prejean reminded the press at a news conference today that both she and President Obama oppose same-sex marriage. Several conservative Christian groups have praised Carrie Prejean for saying during the pageant that she is against same-sex marriage.
But Ben Smith writes that at the press conference, Carrie Prejean put some distance between herself and the movement, saying she stood by her beliefs but didn't plan to make a career of them.
"I am not working for the National Organization for Marriage. I spent about an hour with them," she said. Politico posted a short video from the news conference:
In an ad for USA Today, Focus on the Family asks "What would you sacrifice for your beliefs?"
Continue reading "Donald Trump Says Miss California Can Keep the Crown" »
Artist Profile: Anna Kocher
The Philadelphia painter finds 'gritty physicality' in motherhood and in faith.
Anna Kocher is an artist in the greater Philadelphia area whose work has been displayed at her alma mater, Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, the Center Art Gallery at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Church of the Good Samaritan, where she and her family attend.
![awakening.jpg](http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/upload/2009/04/awakening.jpg ""Awakening," by Anna Kocher.")
In this interview with Elrena Evans, Anna talks about what it means to be a Christian and an artist, and how motherhood has impacted her work.
Where do your faith and your art intersect?
My faith and my art have both been a part of who I am as far back as I can remember. I always believed; I always drew. Both have changed and matured and gone through times of drought and times of abundance.
In high school and early college, I had this feeling that I should do something practical. . . . But when I decided to pursue art in college, I had this rare moment of clarity and knew that it was the right thing for me to do. I've been grateful for that moment of insight and find myself clinging to the memory when I start to feel like maybe I should have been an accountant or something. (For anyone who knows me, the idea of me as an accountant is laughable.)
You write on your website, "We live in a society obsessed with the material and ideal but terrified of true, gritty physicality." It strikes me that motherhood - pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and just the day-to-day experience of raising small children - is steeped in "gritty physicality."
[M]otherhood . . . strips away the facade in so many different areas. I always had a sense that life was fragile, though I don't think I dwelt on it much. People always talk about how miraculous infants are, which I always took to mean something about how amazing and precious they are. After actually having an infant (two, as a matter of fact), I would say that the miracle is that they stay alive at all. It seems to defy reason that this tiny, helpless creature with sporadic, phlegmy breathing who spews up strange substances and seems, at times, intent on refusing everything that would help it sustain itself (sleep, milk, socks) would grow and flourish and become an individual with thoughts and opinions (strong, strong opinions).
Motherhood also strips away illusions you hold about yourself. Physically, you get to know your own body in a very different way. And, not to put too fine a point on it, it's not always pretty. It is also very revealing in less tangible ways. You find yourself coming face to face with the deepest parts of yourself, which, again, are not always pleasant. . . . Somehow being a mother manages to be so much more joyful and beautiful than I could have imagined before, but also more painful and difficult than I could have anticipated. It's humbling to realize how one-dimensional my understanding of motherhood was before having children, and instructive to apply that insight to issues of faith and truth.
What is the role of a Christian artist? One of your paintings, for instance, shows a man sitting on a toilet - is there anything fundamentally Christian about that piece?
A Campaign for (Kind of) Real Beauty
"Real" fashion models may present as many problems as their hyper-stylized counterparts.
Over the past week, I have mentioned the April issue of French Elle - whose cover features European celebrities without makeup or Photoshop retouching - to nearly every woman I know. Each of them has echoed the sentiments ringing from every corner of the fem-blogosphere: "What a refreshing response," they say, "to the airbrush culture that has become synonymous with American fashion magazines." "How great it is," they gush, "that we can celebrate natural beauty and provide a healthier standard for women."
But Matthew Yglesias of The Atlantic questions the assumption that the "Stars Sans Fards" (translation: "without rouge") on Elle's cover are somehow more "real" or even more "empowering" than the typical fare. He even considers this a step back:
A lot of people have done a lot of work over the years to get people to understand that images you see on magazine covers are not images of actual human beings. They're complicated collaborations between photographers, hairstylists, makeup people, and digital image-retouchers that use real people as an important element of source material. The results have an extremely vivid hyperreal quality to them that we intuitively respond to as if we're just looking at pictures of people, but we can come to understand what's really happening and that nobody ought to beat themselves up over not looking like a computer-retouched image.
So, now that we have "real" models to compare ourselves to - models who are still abnormally beautiful, professionally styled, and photographed in flattering light - might this standard of beauty be just as harmful as its hyper-stylized counterpart?
Blog Comments and Christian Courtesy
Some otherwise loving believers could use a remedial course in table manners.
When my children learned to talk, they began evaluating my cooking. Their commentary involved words like "I hate fish," "Don't make me eat that," and the all-purpose "Yuck." After a year or two of this, we decided it was time to give lessons in civil discourse.
"If I serve something you don't like," I explained, "you may politely refuse it. A simple ?No, thank you' will do. But if you say you say bad things about the food or about the cook, or if you make unpleasant retching noises, you will have to eat it."
Intelligent children, they decided not to risk a simple, "No, thank you." Perhaps I would take offense at their tone of voice and they would be forced to ingest - heaven forbid - fish sticks! mushrooms! avocado! To guard against such evils, they developed an elaborate approach to food avoidance: "Oh, Mother dear, those mushrooms look scrumptious, but I fear I must decline . . . ".
Several years ago, in an article for the Los Angeles Times, Richard J. Mouw - president of Fuller Theological Seminary and one of the most civil people I know - noted that "the family meal is the primary workshop in civility." Perhaps churches should arrange remedial family meals for people who leave comments on blogs.
I love it when polite, well-brought-up people of opposing viewpoints disagree vigorously. Iron sharpens iron, and let the sparks fly! Mature people know how to do this respectfully. They treat their opponents with courtesy, as they would wish to be treated themselves.
According to Mouw, civility
requires us to show tact, moderation, refinement and good manners toward people who are different from us. But civility also has an inner side - the struggle to get beyond our own perceptions, to see fellow human beings as creatures made in God's image, no matter how defaced and damaged they may appear.
"Every human being is a work of divine art," he says. "I can learn a lot about how to treat an unlikable person with reverence if I keep reminding myself of the value the person has in the eyes of God."
Bible Translated into LOLcat
We've probably all seen them floating around the Internet: those cat pictures, the ones ranging from morbidly obese felines to noxiously cute kittens, captioned with phrases like "Iz mah house!" and "I can has cheezburger?" They're LOLcats, an Internet meme that's become something of a phenomenon.
And apparently, now they have their own translation of the Bible.
The LOLcat Bible Translation Project, begun in July 2007, is nearing completion according to the website. It's a user-edited site — much like Wikipedia — so anyone can contribute translations. There's even a link to learn LOLcat, for those of us not in the know.
TV's Women of Faith
The medium has a long way to go in its portrayal of both women and Christians, but ABC's Lost may be a promising start.
Ninety-nine percent of all American homes have a television set. Like it or not, TV is a part of our everyday lives. We can't write if off as trivial; we're watching it, and so are our friends, family, and neighbors. There's a lot of junk out there, sure. But great TV - which is admittedly rare - is no less worthy of our attention than a great movie or book. At its best, a good show expands our understanding of who we are and what it means to be human. It affirms what's universal to the human experience and challenges us to consider the world from another point of view. But what about our point of view, as women and as evangelicals? Who is telling our stories?
Deciphering a Religion Journalist's Deconversion
William Lobdell's rejection of faith seems less examined than his own reporting for the Los Angeles Times.
Former Los Angeles Times journalist William Lobdell lost his faith reporting on both the shiny, happy face of American religion and its cancerous underbelly. I became interested in Lobdell's work when I lived in Southern California and was trying to get a grasp on the region's unique religious landscape. After reading his blog for more than a year, recently meeting him, and devouring his memoir — Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America . . and Found Unexpected Peace — I have a great deal of empathy for the man, as I suspect many religion journalists would. And yet, his conclusions don't ultimately convince.
Lobdell writes that he backed out of his imminent conversion from evangelicalism to Catholicism because he "didn't want to join an organization that was run by leaders so out of touch with the modern world that they never picked up the phone to turn in child rapists — something most of us would do automatically, even if the perpetrator were a member of our own family."
This is a truly na?ve assertion. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported in 2006 that 56.3 percent of child-abuse reports were made by mandated professionals — police officers, medical workers, and educators. Of the nonprofessional reporters, only 7.7 percent were family members. Furthermore, a 1992 U.S. Department of Justice report found that in 20 percent of cases when a female child younger than 12 years old was raped, the rapist was her father.
So should we stop believing in family because fathers rape and mothers often fail to report?
Continue reading "Deciphering a Religion Journalist's Deconversion" »
When Serving Makes You Sick
You grew up a pastor's daughter in Texas. What was your family's experience with burnout?
After my dad finished seminary, my younger brother and I were born, my mom had her tubes tied, and our family jumped into the world of ministry. We mainly pastored at smaller, rural churches in West Texas and at first, everything seemed perfect. [But] at my dad's third church, the politics started invading. I was only 9 at the time, but I could tell my normally involved, optimistic father was withdrawing. My mom wore her concern on her sleeve. I spied on a deacon's meeting and discovered the truth: Our church was full of a lot of mean and bitter people.
We moved to Dallas a few months later, and I'd like to say everything has been great since. But almost 13 years later, my parents are still deeply hurt from the last experience. They have only recently started attending a church. . . . Their faith in the local church has yet to be rekindled. That kind of brokenness breaks my heart every day. It also propels me forward with a passion I can't begin to explain.
How do men and women experience church burnout differently?
As I've extensively researched and interviewed thousands of church leaders and their families over the last two years, [I've found] there isn't much difference. Burnout doesn't play favorites.
Sometimes the force behind our burnout may differ, though. Genesis 3 mentions how, after the Fall, men will be slaves to the earth (work) and women will be ruled over by men. I see how many times men chase ministry like it's their work — and find their purpose in what they do. Ultimately, that leads to burnout. And generally speaking, many women fall to the approval of man. We are people pleasers by nature, finding our worth and affirmation of our calling by being a slave to man — not God.
Faith Takes Center Stage on American Idol
Christians regularly lament their lack of representation in mainstream entertainment, but this season, the most popular show on television features a cast of vocal Christians.
Surprised? While Christians are certainly not strangers to the American Idol stage, six of this season's top 10 - Kris Allen (shown right), Matt Giraud, Danny Gokey, Scott MacIntyre, Michael Sarver, and Lil Rounds - profess Christian faith, and many of them lead worship at their home churches.
Two weeks ago MTV.com ran an article highlighting the pronounced role of faith in this eighth season of the show. The story implicitly suggested that Christians watch the show and vote for these performers because of their faith, which elicited strong reactions both for and against the idea. Critics insisted that American Idol is a singing contest, and votes should go to the best singer, regardless of personal convictions. But many Christians support like-minded contestants because of what they represent: they are lights in the darkness, hope that Christians can eschew the perceived excesses of the music business and still succeed. "Christian music has always had this cheesy label attached to it," said Joanne Brokaw, who blogs about American Idol for Beliefnet's Gospel Soundcheck. "This shows that a Christian singer can have artistic integrity and they are people who can really sing." For a show notoriously fueled by personality at least as much as by music, is this really so terrible? If the objective is to produce a successful recording artist, we need look no further than the numbers.
Continue reading "Faith Takes Center Stage on American Idol" »
Ted and Gayle Haggard to Appear on 'Divorce Court' April 1
Three months after Alexandra Pelosi's documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard debuted on HBO, the founder of New Life Church and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals and his wife will be appearing on Divorce Court, the longest-running court TV show.
The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that Ted and Gayle Haggard are in Los Angeles now filming the show, which will premiere April 1. In an interview with Judge Lynn Toler, the couple will discuss Haggard's sex-and-drugs scandal involving a male escort that surfaced in November 2006 and led him to resign as pastor of the Colorado Springs megachurch. They will be speaking about how their Christian faith has kept their marriage from ending in divorce.
To promote the HBO documentary, the Haggards also appeared on Oprah and CNN's Larry King Live in late January. On the latter, Haggard described himself as a "heterosexual with complications." The couple tells Colorado Springs Gazette that they are scheduled to speak at prominent evangelical churches in coming months.
Continue reading "Ted and Gayle Haggard to Appear on 'Divorce Court' April 1" »
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