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 Bailey.
books we're reading
The Power of Choice in 'Downton Abbey'
The British World War I drama, depicting a world away, teaches me how to live in my own.
On the last episode of the wildly popular PBS drama Downton Abbey, one character tells another: "You've broken the rules, my girl, and it's no use pretending they're easily mended."
The popular British import, set in World War I, portrays the aristocratic Crawley family and the cadre of cooks, maids, and butlers who tend to them, in all their relational and class-based drama. The show is all about rules, whether bowing to class structure or honoring commitments from the past. The rules present the extraordinary obstacles in this show . . . except that they’re not so extraordinary, really, and that’s one of the many reasons this show works.
Downton's surprise success is often chalked up to an unrealistic sense of nostalgia over an intriguing and lavish lifestyle at the turn of the 20th century, borne out by the inevitable market surge of "inspired by" books, clothes, food, and jewelry. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's easy to understand why this show is considered a soap opera that appeals mainly to women.)
But my favorite aspect of Downton is its emphasis on humans’ agency and accountability despite social and economic barriers. The characters are never excused for their choices by circumstance, class, gender, time period, or even the unfairness of the rules to which they so tightly cling.
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Learning the Spiritual Disciplines from a Mormon Blogger
Jana Riess's Mormon background does not detract from Flunking Sainthood's message.
Jana Riess discovered she’d been changed by her attempts to practice the classic spiritual disciplines such as fasting, service, and prayer when she received a phone call informing her that her father was dying. He’d abandoned the family while she was growing up. She hadn’t seen him in 26 years.
“Here’s what I learned from my father’s sudden reappearance and death: all of those unsuccessful practices, those attempts at sainthood that felt like dismal failures at the time, actually took hold somehow,” Riess writes in her new memoir, Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor (Paraclete). “They helped form me into the kind of person who could go to the bedside of someone who had harmed me and be able to say, ‘I forgive you, Dad. Go in peace.’”
The call came shortly after Riess--known best for her long-running Beliefnet blog (which just moved to Religion News Service) and Bible-tweeting project--had spent an entire year sampling spiritual disciplines, one per month, accompanied by her reading of appropriate companion spiritual classics. The result, Flunking Sainthood, made the 2011 Publisher’s Weekly Top Ten list in the religion category.
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The 99 Problems with Jay-Z’s Use of “B----”
The celebrated rapper insists he’ll continue to use the word despite the arrival of his newborn baby girl, Blue Ivy Carter.
When Jay-Z and wife Beyonce welcomed their first child, daughter Blue Ivy Carter, into the world on January 7, Jay-Z joined the ranks of hip-hop dads that include T.I. and Fat Joe. Just two days after Blue Ivy’s arrival, the proud papa released a new single, “Glory, Featuring Blue Ivy Carter,” making the baby—babbling alongside her dad—the youngest person ever credited on the U.S. Billboard charts. Jay-Z sings,
The most amazing feeling I feel
Words can't describe the feeling, for real
Baby I'll paint the sky blue
My most greatest creation was you.
As the final notes of “Glory” fade out, we hear Blue Ivy Carter’s newborn cries and coos. For older listeners, the sounds will recall Stevie Wonder’s 1976 hit “Isn’t She Lovely?” featuring Wonder’s own infant daughter Aisha.
It would all be very heartwarming were it not for the recent brouhaha in response to a January 13 post from WENN, announcing that Jay-Z had written a poem for Ivy Blue in which he denounced the sexism—namely using the word “b----” to refer to women—prevalent in so many of his lyrics. What the mighty Oprah Winfrey had failed to do in 2010, when she challenged Jay-Z on his derogatory sexist language when he appeared on her show, a tiny little baby had, reportedly, done.
WENN claims Jay-Z penned these paternal words for his offspring: "Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich/I didn’t think hard about using the word bitch/I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it/Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it." It’s the kind of redemptive story that those of us who do not know even one single Jay-Z lyric desperately want to be true.
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Why Women Leave the Church -- and Come Back Again
Jim Henderson's 'The Resignation of Eve' offers first-hand accounts (and no small amount of editorializing) of women struggling in local congregations.
In 1997, Mary Belenky, Blythe Clinchy, Nancy Goldberger, and Jill Tarule published an important book titled Women’s Ways of Knowing, in which they explored how women understand themselves, their minds, and their relationship to knowledge, and considered whether the cognitive process of knowing is different between the genders.
From their research, the authors discerned five relationships to knowledge, the most basic being “Silence.” “Silent women” were often stranded in an elementary stage of knowing, having no personal voice with which to reflect on knowledge. Without a voice to represent their own perspectives of the world, these women were virtually dependent on the opinions of others.
Studies like this one demonstrate the power of having a voice. Expressing one’s self and feeling heard are uniquely human activities that give us confidence to grow and create. We see this human need even in Scripture, including in the psalmist’s statement, “There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard” (19:3).
The power of voice also composes the premise of Jim Henderson’s new book, The Resignation of Eve: What if Adam’s Rib Is No Longer Willing to be the Church’s Backbone? (BarnaBooks). Picking up on Barna Group’s recent findings about women exiting the church, Henderson (pastor, author of Jim and Casper Go to Church) brings the statistics to life with flesh-and-blood stories of evangelical women.
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The Best Christian Marriage Book You’ve Never Heard Of
Dwight and Margaret Kim Peterson's book offers advice for a realistic and positive marriage.
On the shelf of your church’s bookstore, Are You Waiting for ‘The One’? (InterVarsity), by Dwight N. and Margaret Kim Peterson, might look like any other Christian book on dating and marriage. Look a little harder.
The new book, subtitled “Cultivating Realistic, Positive Expectations for Christian Marriage,” is refreshingly different, captured in those two words realistic and positive. Instead of hard-and-fast statements about the One Best Biblical Way to Do Relationships, the Petersons offer a gentle, reasoned approach that allows room for Christian singles and couples to discover, within the context of faith, what works best in their own unique relationships.
The couple says the book was born out of a course they've taught for years at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. And they say the course has been as much of an education for them as for their students.
“Neither of us was really familiar with the large collection of Christian marriage literature out there,” Dwight, a professor of New Testament at Eastern, recently told me. When students started bringing in popular Christian relationship books for the couple to look at, “we were sort of . . .”
“Aghast,” supplies Margaret, an associate professor of theology. “Disappointed,” Dwight adds, “at their lack of depth and wisdom.” Many of the books, written by young Christian leaders who knew firsthand the contours of the current dating scene, tended to apply a “black and white, there must be an answer to everything” mindset that can lead to problems down the road, says Margaret.
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'Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus’: To Adore or Abhor?
What we can take away from the viral video that elicited such visceral reactions.
I’m guessing at least 15 of your friends have posted Jefferson Bethke’s “Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus,” and maybe yet another 15 of your friends posted response pieces. Don’t worry: the phrase ‘false dichotomy’ will not appear anywhere in this article. And we will not discuss at length the merits of Christian spoken word as a subgenre (perhaps another time).
Bethke risks appearing supremely arrogant by claiming to love Jesus and hate religion—an arrogance of which, I must point out, I am as guilty as anyone. To separate Jesus from religion is to create a false dichotomy an untrue juxtaposition of two non-mutually exclusive concepts. Jesus did not come to abolish religion. He did not come to abolish the law. (Matthew 5:19) He came to do what he is still in the business of doing: to redeem all.
We do not get to separate ourselves from the Church, as Christians. We do not get to claim non-religiosity simply to fit in, or to feel better about ourselves. As a friend of mine put it, to say that you love Jesus but hate religion is akin to saying you love your best friend but hate his wife. That relationship will not last.
Making pronouncements about religion certainly isn’t new. When Anne Rice ‘quit’ Christianity back in 2007, she said, “It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.” How else are we to respond, except to carry on in our quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious ways. Buying into this false dichotomy—err, wrong-minded thinking doesn’t do anyone any good. It separates the individual from the group to which they belong in the name of Jesus Christ.
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'Miss Representation': How the Media Harms Both Women and Men
America's mainstream media plays a key role in women's under-representation in power and influence.
It’s generally accepted (though not always acknowledged) that women are poorly portrayed in media. Filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom is particularly aware of this; when she first started pursuing an acting career at 28, an agent told her to lie about her age and keep her Stanford MBA off her resume. And as an adolescent, Newsom struggled with self-esteem issues and an eating disorder. Thus, when she became pregnant with a daughter, she began to wonder what pressures her child would face from the media as she grew up.
The result is Newsom’s first documentary, Miss Representation. The film’s premise is simple enough: How does the media’s presentation of women affect women’s representation (or, in many cases, under-representation) in positions of influence and power in America?
The short answer: Poorly.
Now, Newsom never discounts or denies the many advances American women have made in business and politics over the last century. But there is the underlying sense that women are currently in a degenerative, self-perpetuating cycle. The average teen spends 10 hours a day consuming some kind of media and sees at least 500 advertisements a day – advertisements that are generally Photoshopped, creating even more unrealistic expectations for the human body. The results are disturbing: 53 percent of 13-year-old girls have a negative body image, and by the time they turn 17, that number rises to 78 percent. A whopping 65 percent of women and girls have eating disorder behaviors.
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When Higher Education Is Neither: Why Should I Earn a Degree?
Thoughts for adults considering returning to college in 2012.
I recently found myself at a dining table full of accomplished acquaintances, and the conversation wandered to the subject of alma maters.
“Where did you go to college, Michelle?”
I hesitated before answering: “I didn’t finish college.” Among the highly educated crowd round the table, there were a couple of seconds where I felt like I’d showed up at prom wearing sweats and a bandanna.
The conversation drifted to other topics, but a woman sitting next to me noted my momentary discomfort. “Why don’t you go back to school and finish your degree?”
It is a question to which many adults respond in the affirmative each year. Forty-seven percent of new and returning students are 25 or older, according to The Association for Nontraditional Students in Higher Education. Most adults have packed-full lives, and returning to the classroom means reprioritizing family, work, and church or community commitments. In addition, returning students need to figure out how to pay for school. The cost of higher education has risen in recent years at more than twice the average rate of inflation. Though many are questioning whether the price tag of a college education is worth the economic benefit, according to a recent Pew study 86 percent of college graduates surveyed felt that their education was a good investment.
Many adults head back to school including job training, preparation for a new career, or personal enrichment. I have been dancing with the question of returning to college for most of my adult life.
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Why 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' Is Hurting Women
Lisbeth Salander is less a female role model than a projection of a base male fantasy.
My first encounter with Lisbeth Salander was a Facebook status. In case you’ve been under a rock for a while, Salander is the heroine of the new film based on the New York Times best-selling novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by the late Swedish author Steig Larsson. The Facebook status had a young woman reading the book, proclaiming her own likeness to Salander. My immediate reaction, though I knew nothing at that point about the book or the character, was “uh oh”— for wannabes seldom want the right be.
I didn’t add Dragon to my already long reading list, but the recent release of the U.S. film adaptation offered a promising girls’ night out after a long bout of end-of-semester grading. Promise delivered. The movie was entertaining, if dark and rough, but not one I’d see again. To me, the most intriguing part of the story was Salander, who apparently has ignited a new obsession among moviegoers now joining longtime fans of the books. One website has compiled a lengthy list of the contradictory descriptions of Salander—ranging from hero to anti-heroine, from interesting to terrifying—proving her to be a kind of Rorschach test of cultural icons. The trendy clothing chain H&M has even announced a new “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” line. Clearly, the character the The New Yorker touts as a new kind of heroine is catching on.
And that’s a shame.
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A Facebook Skeptic? News Flash: You Are in Control
Facebook is too big a mission field for the church to ignore.
Okay, I get it: Facebook is not for everybody. I hear complaints all the time about privacy settings. I also frequently hear the groans from people who have never tried Facebook or get pushback from church leaders, older folks, and parents who are concerned that social media are killing the brain cells of our young people and not allowing them to connect intimately.
The New York Times recently ran an article highlighting Facebook’s plans to expand its membership beyond its current 800 million active users through its much-anticipated public offering (which I will not participate in). “Shunning Facebook, and Living to Tell About It” quotes Facebook resisters saying things like, “I wasn’t calling my friends anymore,” and my personal favorite, “I don’t want all of my information out there.”
My response: Call your friends, and don’t put all of your information out there. The article presents several of the concerns addressed in this article. At the core, however, it also reveals some “shunners” want the benefits but are paralyzed from taking the plunge to join Facebook. One resister actually said, “If I have a crush on a guy, I’ll make my friends look him up for me [on Facebook].” Clearly, she understands at least one benefit of using the site.
After responsibly using Facebook for several years, I don’t quite understand the resistance. (I should probably add that I do not play any of the Facebook games or participate in third-party features.) It’s as if some think of Facebook as a thief that comes in to steal all of your personal information and then sell it to the highest bidder. Facebook can “see” only the information that you provide, and you can set your own privacy settings to determine what to share and with whom you share it. Remember, you are in control.
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Our Writers' Favorite Posts from 2011
Some in-house selections from the past year.
When our regular readers think back to memorable posts from 2011, they'll most likely think of the most controversial ones, many of which appeared on yesterday's roundup. But what of the 250-some other posts that appeared on Her.meneutics over the past year? To remember those and introduce them to readers who missed them, we asked 10 of our regular bloggers to select a favorite post written by a fellow blogger. Here's what they chose:
Michelle Van Loon's pick:
Why It's Your Job to Break the Women's Ministry Stereotype, by Sharon Hodde Miller (October 11, 2011)
Michelle: Sharon's piece about shattering tired women's ministry stereotypes challenged me to do more than just whine about the way things are, though I'm exceedingly good at doing that. I am putting together an applied theology morning workshop for the women of my church inspired in part by Sharon's words.
Sharon Hodde Miller's pick:
Confessions of a Breadwinner Wife, by Karen Swallow Prior (May 3, 2011)
Sharon: In conversations of this sort, it's easy to dismiss men to the realm of silent party as women air their grievances. That is not what Karen did with this piece. Instead, it was really an ode to her husband, and I came away from the piece with great respect for her husband and the marriage between them.
Karen Swallow Prior's pick:
Guarding Your Marriage without Dissing Women, by Gina Dalfonzo (May 31, 2011)
Karen: As a married Christian professional woman, I loved the wisdom (and humor) in this post about being wise-but-not-ridiculous in acknowledging our human fallibility without automatically sexualizing or demonizing every opposite-sex friend or colleague.
Gina Dalfonzo's pick:
Welcoming Doubt to Christian Education, by Karen Swallow Prior (September 16, 2011)
Gina: Karen brings much needed honesty to the perpetual education debate among Christians, and shows the important difference between true education, which broadens minds, and indoctrination, which closes them.
Amy Julia Becker's pick:
The Praying Pedestrian, by Anna Broadway (April 7, 2011)
Amy Julia: Months later, I still find myself grateful for Anna's description of how prayer has changed her perception of her neighborhood. This piece was not only informative but also transformative as I seek to integrate spiritual disciplines like prayer into everyday life.
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The Top Her.meneutics Posts of 2011
The year in review at the women's blog.
2011 was a year of tremendous growth for Christianity Today's women's blog, now entering its third year. First, in sheer numbers, we saw the number of readers nearly double since last year (to 1 million unique pageviews in 2011), and welcomed plenty of new readers through our Facebook and Twitter feeds (with no small thanks to a few evangelical celebrity retweets!). But perhaps more importantly, we saw the writers who make this blog tick (and who published books all their own in 2011) hone their ability to shed truth, deep thought, and charity on some of the most foundational issues within our movement — e.g., How can men and women relate in ways that honor God? How should Christian parents discipline their children? How do singles balance the demographic realities of delayed marriage, prolonged adolescence, and the "mancession" with the virtue of chastity? These and other foundational issues appear on the following list of the top-read posts of the year. We thank you, our readers, for returning daily to follow the conversations and adding your own (mostly charitable) two cents.
It's no surprise that a recurring theme in the year's list is sexuality, whether in marriage or mass culture, and no doubt we'll continue to talk about sexual ethics throughout the new year. But we also want to acknowledge several posts that had nothing to do with sex; for this, we asked our regular writers to select a favorite 2011 post written by a fellow writer. For the list of our in-house favorites from the year, check back tomorrow.
And now, if you missed them the first time, enjoy the top-read Her.meneutics posts of 2011!
(10) The Argument for Girl-Boy Wrestling, by Caryn Rivadeneira (February 22, 2011)
Joel Northrup cited his Christian faith for refusing to wrestle Cassy Herkelman in last week's Iowa state championship. I say his Christian faith should have taken him to the mat.
(9) An Open Letter to Donald Miller on Your Engagement, by Karen Swallow Prior (June 23, 2011)
First, congratulations. Second, let's talk about that list of qualities we should want in a spouse.
(8) Another Assault on Little Girls, by Jennifer Grant (January 3, 2011)
Vogue Paris's "Gifts" photo spread is one more example of how our culture robs children of innocence.
(7) Miss America and the Bikini Question, by Katelyn Beaty (January 20, 2011)
Do modern-day pageants ask young evangelical women to compromise their values an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny too much?
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Etiquette Isn't for Dummies: How Manners and Ministry Relate
Proper etiquette is less about rigid rules and more about loving others.
Don’t tell my husband: As soon as I saw that the new Emily Post’s Etiquette (18th ed.) released in October, I thought, I know what I’m getting Rafi for Christmas!
If you know my husband, this will surprise you. Rafi doesn’t exactly seem the fussy manner sort, the type who would enjoy this book. He’s definitely not a stern Captain Von Trapp at the table, reminding our kids of their place, of their do’s and don’ts. And because he’s been married to a feminist long enough, he knows better than to pull off any mindless gallantry.
But still, Emily Post has a special place in our relationship. While we initially bonded (and probably fell in love) over our shared love of dogs, my own love for him deepened the day I saw a copy of Emily Post’s 14th edition on his bookshelf. I particularly liked the red-tassel gradeschool bookmark that hung across the top of the huge volume.
“You’ve read that?” I asked.
“A good chunk of it.”
His aunt had given it to him for Christmas when he was 14—just after he started prep school, and before launching into the world of dating and then college and then job and family, where, his aunt had rightly assumed, good manners were important.
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A Word to Michelle Duggar's Critics: What it Means to Publicly Grieve a Miscarriage
In a culture that doesn't have rituals for mourning a miscarriage, the Duggars' memorial service may become a helpful model.
I’ll just say it: I’m inclined to criticize the Duggars.
Yes, a part of me wants to respect their right to have “as many children as God gives” them. But I also have real concerns about their choices. I’m concerned that their view of God’s “control” over fertility is problematic on theological and pragmatic levels. While I’d affirm with them that children are a gift and a blessing, I also think that there are many good reasons to welcome fewer children than one could physically conceive in a lifetime. I worry about the daughters who are raised up as junior mothers, for the sons who are pressed into a model of patriarchal responsibility (with an emphasis on financial independence) beginning at a young age. And I worry about Michelle and mothers like her, whose bodies may not be able to withstand near-continuous pregnancy for decades.
I finished the Duggars' newest book, A Love That Multiplies, days before the news of Michelle’s miscarriage broke. As I read the book, which tells the agonizing, touch-and-go story of Josie’s early emergency C-section and rough start as a baby born 16 weeks too soon, I felt for the Duggars. Hearing their story in their own words humanized them in a way that tabloids never could. Despite discomfort with some of the ways they’ve worked out their understanding of Christianity, I couldn't help seeing them as fellow believers who love every one of their 19 children as ferociously as I love my 2. And so, while I can more easily imagine running for President than having even half their number of children, I felt deeply sad for them at the loss of the daughter they’ve named Jubilee Shalom, whose brief life the family will remember with a memorial service Wednesday at their Arkansas church, where they handed out black-and-white photos of Jubilee.
Sara Zarr Talks Faith, Art, and Imperfect Christians
How to Save a Life, her newest novel for young adult readers, is about several lives that need saving.
Young adult novelist Sara Zarr is no stranger to the genre, with three award-winning books to her name (Story of a Girl, Sweethearts, and Once Was Lost, which Her.meneutics contributor Laura Leonard reviewed last spring). Her latest book, How to Save a Life (Little, Brown, 2011), received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and landed on its “Best of 2011” list.
How to Save a Life is the story of several lives that need saving: 18-year-old Mandy Kalinowski is pregnant and has been sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. Robin MacSweeney, who was unexpectedly widowed 10 months before, is adopting Mandy’s baby. Jill, Robin’s daughter, isn’t sure how to define herself or fit into the world now that her father, one of her best friends, is gone. And, of course, there’s Mandy’s baby.
The story opens with an exchange between Mandy and Robin, setting up an undocumented adoption. As Mandy moves in with Robin for the final weeks of her pregnancy, Jill must come to terms with the stranger living in her house and rekindle relationships she cut off after her father died. The story comes across as a heartfelt, sincere approach to young grief and love as Mandy and Jill both learn to move past despair.
Zarr lives in Salt Lake City with her husband, Gordon, a teacher. She enjoys Flannery O’Connor’s book of essays, Mystery and Manners, and used O’Connor’s short story title, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” as the epigraph for How To Save a Life.
“She’s a writer that all the popular people in Christian arts and faith circles talk about all the time,” Zarr said. “I tried reading Wise Blood two years ago, and I need someone to explain it to me. I don’t want to pretend like I’m some intellectual person who understands Flannery O’Connor.”
Zarr has blogged about theology, adoption, and How to Save a Life here and blogs on her website here. She talked with Her.meneutics’ Ruth Moon about faith and writing.
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Why Women Are Obsessed with Pinterest
The spirituality of the booming online "self-expression engine."
“Men are more visual than women.” It’s a refrain we’ve all heard to explain the differences between men's and women's sexuality. If you want proof of the contrary, look no further than Pinterest.
What is Pinterest? TechCrunch describes it as a “self-expression engine” along the lines of Twitter and Facebook. Users can create virtual “mood boards” or “vision boards" on which they can collect images. Users can create separate boards for any kind of interest--fashion, art, books, decor, crafts, recipes, workout ideas, inspirational quotes--and “pin” to those boards images that reflect their style and tastes. Users can share these curated collections with friends or inspired strangers. The community is a large part of the draw--users can browse and search the entire network, which now includes over 1.5 million actives users (the majority of whom are women).
I am one of them. I first heard of the site a few months ago. A friend insisted I had to join and rapturously boasted she’d “wasted so many hours” poring over pages of pins (she assured me this was a good thing, and after a few minutes on the site I would realize she was right on both counts). I now have six different boards to which I regularly post. They’re mostly of clothes I can’t afford but like to look at, and a few home decor ideas I’ll never try but would like to think I could. As of right now, I follow 65 people: mostly friends, but a few I don’t know but have decided have excellent (read: similar) taste. And 65 people follow me, including more than a few I have never met. And I have spent many hours scrolling through page after page of recipes, hair styles, incredible home libraries, and vintage cookware, looking for inspiration. What I thought would be a mindless time waster has become an active pursuit, and I tend to my boards as one might a garden. Whenever I get an e-mail that someone new is following my boards, I feel validated in my tastes, and, in some small way, in myself.
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Why Teens Drift Away from Faith
It may have to do something with their marginally Christian parents.
Every week after Sunday School, I try to figure out if our kids have learned anything. Do they understand the stories they heard? Do they know the characters? Do they know God’s love for them? Do they understand anything about sin or forgiveness or praise? Usually, I get reports about coloring and friends and blank stares when it comes to the Bible. My ears perked up last week when Penny, who is almost 6, mentioned Jacob. I was all set to get the picture Bible and review the story from Genesis when it came out that Jacob was a kid in her class.
There’s a part of me that wants to outsource our children’s spiritual education to our church. My once-daily habit of “quiet time” has mostly fallen by the wayside due to the incessant demands of getting our whole family ready to walk out the door at 8. I stumble when I try to explain forgiveness or sin in terms our children might understand. We do pray before meals and before bed. We do talk about God and Jesus. We don’t do “family devotions,” though we do sing “church songs” in the car. But I worry that as my kids grow up and become more independent, they will fall away from the tenuous connections I’ve offered to God.
And so when I saw the book Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids (Zondervan), by Kara E. Powell and Chap Clark (both at Fuller Youth Institute), I immediately wanted to read it. It is less directly applicable to parents of young children than I had hoped, yet it still offers both a big picture foundation for passing along faith that will “stick” with our children and many practical suggestions for how to do so. Powell and Clark combine their personal experience as parents, anecdotal evidence from conversations with college students from Christian homes, and analytical research about what makes faith last to offer a comprehensive and very readable book that both encourages and challenges parents as we attempt to pass along our faith to our children.
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Saving Men from Their Own Sex Slavery
According to Daniel Walker, author of God in a Brothel, it's not just children who need rescuing from the global sex trade.
“When I was a boy listening to an invitation to adventure, I had no idea it would be so painful," writes Daniel Walker in God in a Brothel: An Undercover Journey into Sex Trafficking and Rescue (InterVarsity, 2011). "But I also failed to understand why it was that this grace was so amazing and how it could be that this unlikely gift would ultimately triumph over my fear and shame.”
In his heartbreaking yet hopeful story, Walker recounts his own experiences as an undercover detective, reminding the church to engage modern-day slavery. “Slavery is an inherent part of our Christian heritage, going back to the Garden of Eden where humanity was enslaved, right through to the greatest abolitionist, Jesus, who sets us free [and] seeks us out as free beings to set others free,” Walker told me on a recent visit to Christianity Today.
Walker talked to me about his book (which is being sponsored by Compassion International and Hagar International as part of the Anti-Trafficking Tour) and how he came to see that Christians are "bearers of the most wild, dangerous, untamed force for good in the world."
One of the things I appreciated about your book is that you humanized men who purchased sex, noting that they too are enslaved.
There are books from people doing undercover work who say, “These are despicable, disgusting lowlifes.” And they are. But it’s easy to forget that we were all slaves and we’re set free. They’re enslaved by something that’s much more visible.
What are ways to help men escape this form of slavery?[In my former detective work,] we were holding people accountable for the evil they did, which ultimately we believe sets them free. By bringing them face to face with the injustice they perpetuated, they have two choices: they come to a point where they confess and accept their penalty as the way to freedom, or they go down the path of denial and deeper forms of slavery.
I wanted to make it clear in talking to these guys—like the guy who said, “You know, I hate my life and I hate what I do”—that he is powerless in his enslavement to the desires he’s fed through pornography and other means.
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Why My Kids (Mostly) Don't Watch TV
Children need to interact with creation, not just observe it.
When my boys (now 3.5 and 6) were very small, they rarely watched videos. In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics urged parents not to allow any screen time for children under age 2. Last month, the academy reaffirmed its statement, supporting it with additional research findings. The report (you can read it in full for free here) explains that children younger than 2 aren’t developmentally capable of learning anything from events on a video—contrary to what the marketers of “learning DVDs” for babies would have us believe. There simply is no evidence that children this young can learn from watching videos.
The report also noted that “secondhand television”—programming in the background but not necessarily directed at children—distracts parents from their children and children from their play, with possible long-term effects on children’s attention, memory, and reading comprehension. The article went on to cite other frightening statistics, suggesting that TV watching displaces developmentally valuable playtime, reduces literacy, and is associated with negative health effects.
Not surprisingly, the AAP report makes plenty of parents uneasy. After all, popping in a DVD can keep the kids quiet and out of trouble for a while, and who wants to feel guilty about that, especially since, as Rhiana Maidenberg points out at the Huffington Post, we parents spend, on average, much more time playing creatively with their kids than they did 30 years ago? “With the ever-increasing expectations placed on parents," she writes, "maybe we also need to allow for some latitude when it comes to giving parents the occasional break [by letting kids watch TV].”
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'Sex + Money': The Domestic Side of a Global Problem
Young filmmakers journey cross-country to show film on sex trafficking in their own backyards.
What struck me the most about the film Sex + Money: A National Search for Human Worth, which screened at Portland State University this month, is how young.
Thirteen- and fourteen-year olds, and some as young as eleven, being led into sex trafficking.
I have twin sons who just turned 14.
The PSU event was one of two Oregon screenings in the 50-state tour that the Sex + Money filmmakers are offering through December 17. The comprehensive documentary covers domestic sex trafficking and the modern-day abolitionist movement to stop it.
The screening drew 300 people in a city known for its livability, as well as its sex trafficking problem. In 2010, Diane Sawyer and Dan Rather reported on the trafficking of humans in the city. In fact, some of the footage in the Sex + Money film was shot in Portland.
Screening attendees included students, activists, social workers, and lawmakers. Jamie Broadbent, from the child welfare division at the Department of Human Services, Lynn Haxton, attorney with Youth Rights and Justice, and U.S. Attorney Kemp Strickland led a question-and-answer panel session after the film.
The seed for the film was planted in Morgan Perry, now 24, while she was a communications and mass media major at the University of the Nations, a Youth With a Mission (YWAM) educational institute in Hawaii.
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Her.meneutics' Fall Reading List
The books our writers are currently devouring.
Amid the frazzled pace of kids' soccer games, church Fest-i-Fall outreach events, and preparations for two major holidays, Her.meneutics' regular writers have managed to squeeze in some pleasure reading. We've offered summer reading lists before, but the frenetic pace of fall may just mean you're needing some "beach" reading all the more. Enjoy - and make sure to add your own reading selections in the comments section!
A special thanks to CT editorial resident Morgan Feddes, who helped compile this list, and who added a selection of her own (hint: it's the basis for a cold-war spy thriller in theaters this December).
Michelle Van Loon
Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray and Still Loving My Neighbor, Jana Riess (2011)
There has been a rash of books written with the stunt-like theme of trying something new or different for a set period of time. These authors are usually hoping for deep wisdom or fresh direction in their lives. Jana Riess’s memoir does just the opposite as she details her year immersed in auditioning spiritual disciplines, accompanied by reading of companion classics to illuminate her journey. She shares her struggles with disarming honesty and humor, and discovers that “a failed saint is still a saint.”
Ruth Moon
There but for the, Ali Smith (2011)
I'm reading this because it got a good New York Times review (original, I know), but also because I like the premise: "At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. An eclectic group of neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and Miles's story is told from the points of view of four of them." There's a section for each word in the title and I'm still on "There," but so far it's witty and semi-profound, so I'm enjoying it.
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Halloween and the Werewolf Within
Two new Christian books embrace monster stories as ways to understand the human heart.
I snuggled up close to my daughter as we each cracked open our brand-new books, ready for some quiet reading time. It lasted about 30 seconds.
And I guess I’ve always been sort of interested in weird stuff. Stuff like werewolves and vampires and zombies and houses where you go into the bathroom and turn on the faucet and out comes blood. Stuff like that.“He’s just like you, Mama!”
My children know me well. Indeed, I share Zach’s interest in weird stuff. Not so much the blood out of the faucet, but the monsters and spooky houses? Yes. Love it. At least in stories. In fact, I’ve written about my love of the “ooky-spooky” here at Her.meneutics, and have defended my love of Halloween and all the accompanying creepiness as things that actually draw me closer to God.
So you can imagine my delight discovering that not one but two new books— Night of the Living Dead Christians: One Man’s Ferociously Funny Quest to Discover What It Means to Be Truly Transformed (Tyndale House) by Matt Mikalatos, and The Zombie Killers Handbook: Slaying the Living Dead Within (Thomas Nelson) by Jeff Kinley—were hitting the shelves this month, and also propose that monsters can play a key role in our spiritual development.
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When Child Discipline Becomes Abuse
Inside the book that has recently been cited in three cases of child murder.
A Washington couple was recently charged with the death of their 11-year-old daughter, Hana, whom they disciplined by withholding food and shutting out of the house; she died of hypothermia and showed evidence of malnutrition. Last year, 7-year-old Lydia Schatz died after being beaten by her parents for mispronouncing a word during her reading lesson. And five years ago, 4-year-old Sean Paddock suffocated to death when his mother bound him tightly in blankets as a form of discipline.
This training, not to be confused with “discipline,” may be carried out something like this:
Place an appealing object where they can reach it. . . . when they spy it and make a dive for it, in a calm voice say, ‘No, don’t touch that.’ Since they are already familiar with the word ‘No,’ they will likely pause, look at you in wonder, and then turn around grab it. Switch their hand once and simultaneously say, No.
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An Open Letter to DC Comics
How to stop making it so hard for me to love you.
Dear DC Comics,
Since you are my favorite comic book publisher, I am so excited that your risky decision to reboot 52 of your comic book titles seems to be paying off.
However, I applauded your initiative to simplify your storytelling, and hoped it might re-center on the moral drama of priority-setting, the often competitive brute and moral strength, choice, and consequence. After all, those qualities got me hooked on superhero stories in the first place, and it’s those kinds of character dilemmas that I have most enjoyed dissecting with other fans. Continue reading "An Open Letter to DC Comics" »
For this, I would celebrate your success wholeheartedly — if it weren’t for a controversy triggered by the reboot of several of your female characters, in particular, the alien Starfire.
Fantasy author Michele Lee asked her 7-year-old daughter how she felt about the revamped Starfire. Here’s a snippet of their conversation, one you’ve apparently caught wind of:
A Woman's Place in Christian Higher Ed
Surveying the new research on women leaders at CCCU schools.
Spiritual writer Frederick Buechner once defined calling as the place where a person’s “greatest passion meets the world's greatest need.” But what of a person’s leadership? This summer, researchers in Christian higher education surveyed 16 top leaders at Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) member schools to see how their leadership was related to their sense of calling. All the leaders interviewed for the survey, published this summer in the journal Christian Higher Education, are women. (A preview of the study is available here.)
Over the past 50 years, in both the West and developing countries, women have made significant strides in government, business, and education. In the United States, where it was once improper for a woman to even express a desire to vote, women now constitute over half of the electorate and occupy many of the nation’s top positions. In 2007–2008, for the first time, women earned the majority of degrees. According to the U.S. Department of Education, women earned 57.3 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, 60.6 percent of all master’s degrees, and 51 percent of all doctoral degrees. And the number of women holding university presidencies has more than doubled from 1986 to 2006.
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'Unbroken' by Jesus
Louie Zamperini's life included Olympic races, torture, and starving on shark-infested waters, but the real thrill was a 1949 Billy Graham crusade.
Look at the word unbroken.
An uncommon word that begins with a common prefix. Un- is so familiar that its meaning is rarely considered. Those two little letters just mean “not,” don’t they?
It makes good sense, then, that Laura Hillenbrand used the prefix in the title of her new biography, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. The title pays tribute to the strength of the book’s subject, Louis Zamperini — an Olympic distance runner, war hero, and former POW who survived outrageous challenges, beatings, and torture with body and spirit in tact. Zamperini, in fact, is still living, at age 94 in Hollywood, California.
Hillenbrand's book has garnered much popular and critical acclaim, but some reviewers have complained that her choice is “generic," even a “goofy mushball of a title.” “Not broken? That’s the best you could do?” They seem to sneer at the word, insisting that Zamperini’s life story is so extraordinary that it deserves a grander title.
Best known for Seabiscuit, another story of unlikely resilience, Hillenbrand has noted that she doubts that any person in history besides Zamperini has found or will find himself in the position of grasping the underside of a failing life raft while beating away sharks with warplanes shooting at him from the sky.
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Spanking in the Spirit?
In Corporal Punishment in the Bible, William Webb says pro-spankers like James Dobson and Wayne Grudem are less jot-and-tittle than they realize.
Each week, it seems, stories of parents arrested for spanking their children make the news. Periodically, proposed bans on spanking are considered, but are typically shot down on grounds that such bans tread on parents' rights. Such bans are also met with opposition from some Christians who believe that since the Bible appears to require corporal punishment of children, bans on spanking would prevent Christian parents from living out biblical convictions. Leaders such as James Dobson, Wayne Grudem, John Piper, and Albert Mohler — conservative evangelicals, to be sure, but not at all of the Michael and Debi Pearl stripe — agree that Scripture requires parents to discipline their children corporally. A quote from Focus on the Family's website sums up their beliefs: “the Bible's word on discipline clearly demands that parents be responsible and diligent in spanking.”
In a new book, Corporal Punishment in the Bible (InterVarsity), William Webb, professor of New Testament at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Canada, examines the Bible's strange and sometimes disturbing passages about corporal punishment, such as, “Blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost parts” (Prov. 20:30), and, “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die” (Prov. 23:13). Webb, like the aforementioned scholars and leaders, once believed that Christian parents who sought to apply the Bible's teachings to their lives were more or less obligated to spank their children, and taught his seminary students the same. Over time, while parenting his three children (one of whom suffers from a degenerative brain disease), Webb grew aware that the Bible's texts on corporal punishment bore little resemblance to the restrained and lovingly limited spanking taught by Dobson and others. In seven important ways, he argues, pro-spankers have moved beyond the concrete, specific instructions of Scripture to a form of discipline that is, unquestionably by contemporary standards, ethically superior to what's actually on the pages of Scripture.
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Chaz Bono Brings Transgender Issues to TV
His appearance on Dancing with the Stars brings gender issues to the national spotlight, eliciting consternation and praise. How will Christians respond?
After ABC announced the newest lineup for Dancing with the Stars(DWTS), many were taken aback by the backlash of comments about contestant Chaz Bono.
Formerly Chastity Bono, Chaz is the first transgender competitor on the show, which is also what he is best known for (the documentary Becoming Chaz was nominated for three Emmys yesterday). Within days, the Internet was clogged with complaints, debates, and defenses (including from Bono’s famous mom Cher) about Bono’s participation in the reality TV dance show. One widely circulated comment on ABC’s board states: “I am not about to risk the potential for on screen dialogue about sex changes and gender confusion while my 7 and 9 year old are watching.”
Others believe Bono’s appearance is inappropriate for young viewers. The American Family Association's OneMillionMoms.com, which also protests contestant Carson Kressley, formerly of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, says, “Email ABC Network and let them know that we will not tolerate these subjects being forced into our homes. DWTS airs 8/7 central when children are awake and Christian families will not enhance the ratings by watching the show when it returns September 19 unless this issue is taken care of and these cast members are replaced.”
Similarly, psychiatrist Keith Ablow of Fox News urged families not to watch, as he believes Bono’s situation will glorify gender confusion and lead impressionable children to think it’s okay to choose a gender. Meanwhile, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins dubbed DTWS's new season "ABC's Too Left Feat."
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Inviting Christ to the Dinner Table
A conversation with theologian Norman Wirzba, author of Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating.
While eating for optimal health and weight loss has been an American obsession for at least 100 years, the past decade has seen growth of a different kind of awareness; a food movement comprising culinary, agricultural, ethical, and environmental concerns. Writers such as Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, and Barbara Kingsolver have shown us that the choices we make about what to eat touch more than just us. Americans have long been able to spend a lower percentage of income on food than any other industrialized country, but cheap food comes at a price, including environmental degradation, diet-related diseases (like Type II diabetes), and egregious suffering on the part of people and animals.
In Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, Duke theologian Norman Wirzba (author of Living the Sabbath) adds a distinctly Christian voice to the ongoing dialogues of the food movement. His approach begins with recognizing food as a gift from God. I interviewed Wirzba recently to ask him about his approach to eating, weight loss, and dealing with “less than ideal” meals.
What differentiates your perspective from others within the ‘food movement’?
Lots of writers have helpful things to say about our food system. But not many are saying why eating matters to God, or that food is God’s love made delectable. Eating well does help heal our world. And eating well brings pleasure to God and witnesses to God’s kingdom. Growing and sharing food is a vital, daily part of our ministry as ambassadors of God’s love.
How is food “God’s love made delectable”?
Eating is one of the most pleasurable things we can do, and it is something we must do frequently, which means it practically invites us to think about what we are doing and how we can do it better. It is incredibly rich in the way it touches so many domains of life (with ecological, agricultural, social, ethnic, political, economic, and religious implications). When we pay attention to eating, we start paying attention to a lot else. I think the heart of a Christian theology of eating is about receiving, and then sharing, food as the sensory expression of God’s love.
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Are Evangelical Women Primarily Interested in Parenthood?
Maybe many are, but there is so much more to the story. Welcome to Her.meneutics.
Rachel Held Evans is soon to complete her “year of Biblical womanhood,” which has included stunts like sleeping outside in a tent during her period and following her “Biblical Woman’s Ten Commandments,” which include “thou shalt submit to thy husband’s will in all things,” and “thou shalt not cut thy hair.” As part of the project, Evans has also interviewed women who incorporate literal practices from Scripture into their daily lives: conservative Mennonites, a Quiverfull mom, and an orthodox Jewish woman. Evans, who has no children and has even confessed to being afraid of motherhood, noted that while she would not have a child as a part of the experiment, she would be looking for creative ways to mother--which included a weekend spent with “Chip”--a RealCare Baby “infant simulator.”
Evans, who has, in recent months, taken on Mark Driscoll and Donald Miller, is embarking on the project for “egalitarian reasons,” says a recent Slate article by Ruth Graham. Evans herself says that the project is aimed at exploring “biblical womanhood” because “while many hail [it] as the ideal, few seem to agree on exactly what it means, so women like me receive mixed messages about how to honor God with our decisions.” As one believing the Bible to be “inspired by God,” her project aims not to belittle the Bible or poke fun at earnest believers, but, in her words, to “creatively investigate our application of [the Bible].” Overall, it looks to be an amusing and interesting project with an important point: no one really applies ALL of the Bible literally.
Graham’s profile, however, seems to frame Evans as particularly daring within “the insular world of conservative Christianity”: she’s an egalitarian, Graham writes, “within a world where there’s an ongoing debate over whether husbands are the masters of their wives” (really?); she’s one of the “rare prominent evangelical women who isn't primarily interested in parenthood” but who instead “tackles thorny theological questions, gender issues, and the future of the church.” Graham, who in a Twitter exchange noted that she went to Wheaton, reads this blog regularly, and goes to church, seems to paint Evans as a renegade in an “insular world” of evangelical moms.
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My Husband's Affair - with the Church
Eileen Button's The Waiting Place describes a marriage complicated by a pastor's overcommitment to his congregation.
We wait for grief to loosen its stranglehold on our hearts. We wait for signs of hope in the Horn of Africa. News that the economy is recovering. The kids to go back to school. The workday to come to a close. To get to the front of the line at the grocery store.
In Oh the Places You'll Go!, Dr. Seuss called life’s waiting places “most useless.” Eileen Button, author most recently of The Waiting Place, says it's in the "wobbly," in-between times where she finds the love of God. She issues a vital reminder to those who wait that “now – even the most difficult now – isn’t forever.” And, as a woman whose husband is the senior pastor of a growing congregation, many of Button's “difficult nows” are related to the church.
Button, a newspaper columnist, college professor, and mother of three, is the kind of writer who conspiratorially grabs readers by the arm and leads them into the realities of life behind closed doors and polite smiles. In this book, we stumble into the house with her family after a burglary. Later she paints a vivid picture of both women as she measures the awkward space that exists between her mother and herself. Her “pastor’s wife” confessions are most striking as they reveal the challenges of fulfilling that role.
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Maggie Goes on a Diet: A Story for Children?
How a new book simplifies the larger female relationship with food.
With a title like Maggie Goes on a Diet, it’s hard to believe author and publisher Paul Kramer did not anticipate the criticism he and his publishing house would receive when the book recently appeared on Amazon for pre-order. Not even in print yet, this book has been hurtled into the middle of the ongoing debate regarding childhood obesity, eating disorders, and how exactly to teach young children about healthy eating habits.
If the title doesn’t make you cringe, maybe the product description will: “This book is about a 14-year-old girl who goes on a diet and is transformed from being extremely overweight and insecure to a normal sized girl who becomes the school soccer star. Through time, exercise and hard work, Maggie becomes more and more confident and develops a positive self image.” Add to that the book’s reading level — ages 4 to 8 — and the cover image of an overweight girl imagining a thinner self in the mirror, and the result seems more likely to cause psychological damage than a desire to eat better and exercise.
The public’s reaction is split. Some believe the book at least provides a healthy alternative to poor eating and no exercise; others say it could spark eating disorders. Time quotes psychologist Carolyn Becker, who sides against the title: “They are trying to promote healthier behavior, but at the same time they're likely promoting weight stigma. . . . For some people, getting healthier may or may not lead to significant weight loss. It's also quite possible to lose weight on an unhealthy diet.” Yet many believe Maggie’s approach to weight loss is healthy and applaud her efforts. As the Los Angeles Times wrote, “The key — as Maggie discovered — is not only to eat healthier foods but to exercise.”
As reasonable as the Times sounds, something that stems from years of images of perfect bodies thrust in our faces has many women in an uproar about Maggie’s experience.
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'One Thousand Gifts,' Reconsidered
A second take on Ann Voskamp's bestseller about gratitude.
Like every other woman in Western Christendom it seems, I’ve been reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. This month our family moved from San Francisco to Austin, Texas. The book group for the church I visited last week? Reading it in October. The women’s group of the church I looked up on the Internet? Reading it in September. And why? With its lyrical — some might say grammatically adventurous — prose ("I am all eye, seeing through life as glass to God"), the book is nothing like the prose we’re used to from our Zondervan-pressed inspirationals.
Though everyone may be talking about it, not everyone is convinced that the book belongs alongside C. S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers in the devotional canon. Two weeks ago, regular Her.meneutics writer Rachel Stone critiqued the book, believing Voskamp’s emphasis on Eucharisteo (joyful gratitude) is overreaching as “the key that opens all locks” in the Christian’s spiritual life. Stone expressed concern that gratitude was being upheld as an additional requirement for salvation to be effective.
Stone also noted that Voskamp’s “wrestling to be grateful for everything” is not necessarily biblical, citing a scene from the book in which one of Voskamp’s sons throws a piece of toast in his brother’s face. In that moment of anger and frustration, time seems to pause and Voskamp grasps for thanksgiving, a “Zen-like acceptance” that seems Stone says runs counter to biblical examples. Stone cited the Book of Job and Jesus’ prayer from the cross as proof that thanksgiving is not a proper response to all of life's circumstances.
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The Battle for Bert and Ernie
As Change.org asks Sesame Street to 'marry' the roommates, our culture risks losing another archetype of non-erotic male friendship.
When I was 4, our local PBS station gave away stuffed Ernie dolls as part of its pledge drive. As soon as I saw the announcement, I did exactly as WTTW hoped I would: I ran to the other room and begged my dad to send money. Six weeks later, I got my very own Ernie doll.
Of all the Sesame Street characters I loved, Ernie was my favorite. The way he wore his hair. The way he snickered. The way he bothered Bert. I was crazy about him. And once I had my own sweater-striped Ernie, he became my favorite nighttime snuggle buddy. Unlike Bert, who had to sleep in the bed next to him, I got to hold Ernie right up in the crook of my elbow. I loved it.
Maybe it’s because I have these fond memories of bedtime with Ernie that I reacted so weirdly to a recent online petition at Change.org urging the folks at Sesame Workshop (the creators of Sesame Street) to marry Bert and Ernie, as well as to introduce a transgender character. While, of course, the rumors of their sexual orientation have been around for years, even in my childhood, those rumors have always seemed harmless enough and easy to brush off.
But this organized effort — which had over 9,300 signatures as of this writing — troubled me. I remembered the sway PBS had over me, and worried about what this sort of sway would communicate.
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Taming the Twitter Tongue
Why I'm still not tweeting.
Ever since I was little, God has been teaching me the same lesson over and over again. My growth has been slow and nearly imperceptible at times, but God has not flagged in his insistence that I learn to tame my tongue.
The process has been painful, to say the least. I have a mortifying memory of smart-mouthing a high school teacher and a number of cringe-worthy interactions with famous people. I have grossly miscommunicated myself through e-mail, offended friends and family with too much honesty, and generally embarrassed myself by over-sharing. Over time I recognized this pattern as a real problem, so I launched a spiritual offensive against it. Drawing on Scripture for help, my prayers were shaped by verses such as Proverbs 17:28: “Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.”
Thankfully, God was faithful to answer my prayers and I have witnessed growth in this area of my life. Nevertheless, my tongue has remained an Achilles heel that I have continued to monitor closely. It is also the reason why, thus far, I have not joined Twitter.
Now I am not opposed to the tool itself, which has tremendous power to encourage believers and build up the church. The reason for my hesitancy has less to do with Twitter and more to do with human nature. The instantaneous broadcasting of spontaneous thoughts presents even the most diligent Christians with risk. Several months ago John Piper posted the tweet heard round the world, bidding farewell to Rob Bell and launching a flood of controversy. More recently, a minor Twitter kerfuffle developed between two prominent Christian authors that drew responses from their Twitter followers, including Her.meneutics. Our own re-tweeting drew subsequent criticism via tweets.
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Watching 'The Help' as an African American Woman
The new movie powerfully demonstrates that racial reconciliation happens not primarily through speeches and "diversity training" but through everyday friendships.
“Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it doesn’t disturb anyone else.”
That’s the writing advice given to Skeeter, the only single white female and college graduate among her well-to-do white girlfriends who are all married with children. In the small town of Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s, Skeeter reaches out to the African American maids of her so-called friends to speak her truth.
The truth is, one of Skeeter’s best friends, Hilly (a professing Christian and wife of a politician), is a high-minded and demoralizing individual who thinks it is perfectly normal to host a fundraiser for the “Poor Starving Children of Africa” and yet draft an initiative to require that all white families build separate bathrooms for their “help”; in Hilly’s words, “They have separate diseases than we do, and I’m just trying to protect our children.”
The help of which Hilly speaks are the African American maids and lead characters Aibileen and Minny, who spend their entire lives cooking food for white families, cleaning their homes, and looking after their white babies. Hilly is the one who spews the venom of lies and hatred that causes racism to persist. Skeeter and the rejected “white trash” Celia Foote are the bridge builders who take the risk to enter into relationships with the maids and get to know them as people.
Like many other African American women, I was a little apprehensive about reading a book and then going to yet another movie where black people are depicted as victims who need rescuing from the good white folk. Hollywood has followed that tag line with movies like The Blind Side, Save the Last Dance, Amistad, and Radio to name a few. Of course, African American women are equally unexcited about Hollywood’s depiction of yet another maid or “mammy” role.
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Why Gratitude Is Not Enough
Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts threatens to turn thanksgiving into the key to our salvation.
I spend most of my time on domestic chores and child care, and I’m inclined to see those tasks in a sacramental light, looking for moments to reflect on with gratitude. Also, I cherish the seemingly small. My son’s dimples, my tomato plants grown from seed, and wild animals and flowers call me to spontaneous thanks and praise of my Creator. Thanking God is both biblical and psychologically beneficial, a correct creaturely response to his goodness. So for all these reasons, I was intrigued by Ann Voskamp’s new book, One Thousand Gifts, and its growing popularity. Its subtitle — "A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are" — and Voskamp’s challenge to list 1,000 things to be grateful for seemed to me to hold promise.
The book, following the popularity of Voskamp’s blog, loosely chronicles Voskamp’s journey from doubting God’s goodness to a deep commitment to practicing gratitude. Early in childhood, Voskamp’s family lived through something unspeakably tragic: the accidental death of her younger sister when she herself was a preschooler. The death cast a long shadow of fear over Voskamp’s life, bringing up the age-old problem of pain and the questions that plague the very depressed: Why delight in anything or anyone at all if nothing lasts? When a friend jokingly challenged Voskamp to list 1,000 things for which she was grateful, Voskamp took up the challenge, and began seeing gratitude’s importance confirmed everywhere she looked.
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When God Told Us to Adopt
Amy Julia Becker talks to fellow Her.meneutics writer Jennifer Grant about her new memoir, Love You More.
Fellow Her.meneutics writer Jennifer Grant recently published a memoir, Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter (Thomas Nelson), that traces her and her family’s decision to adopt her youngest daughter, Mia, from Guatemala. Mia became a sister to Jennifer’s biological children, Theo, Ian, and Isabel, when she was 16 months old. I had a chance to interview Jennifer recently about the story of the Grant family, as well as the ethical and theological challenges and gifts surrounding international adoption.
How did you and your husband decide you wanted to adopt?
In Love You More, I write that “the idea of adopting a child lingered in me like a song you cannot get out of your head. I felt like someone was missing. After the miscarriage, I could not shake the feeling that my kids were meant to have another sibling. As the fourth and youngest child in my own family, I sometimes felt like I was waiting for our fourth to come home and complete our family picture.”
And then I had an experience — a mystical one that I describe in the book. It felt like God had sent me a certified letter announcing that we would adopt.
What were the greatest challenges in adopting Mia?
Once we had accepted her referral and had a name and a picture, it was miserable to have to wait to bring her home. It was an emotionally draining time, one in which I learned, at least a little bit, to let go of control, live with uncertainty, and trust God in new ways.
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The Redemptive Narrative in Jaycee Dugard's Captivity Story
Why children play a vital role in the stories from women who were abducted.
Since the first Europeans arrived here, captivity narratives have enthralled America’s collective imagination. These real-life accounts of settlers seized by American Indians retaliating against invading peoples expressed both the dark underside and the eternal optimism of the early American experience.
Modern times have seen a resurgence of this centuries-old genre, but with a more sinister, sadistic twist: the updated version of the captivity narrative narrates the harrowing experiences of sex slaves at the hands of their captors.
Such stories have made the headlines this summer, most notably in the release of A Stolen Life, the memoir of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped at age 11 and kept a sex slave in a hidden suburban compound in California for 18 years.
A less publicized account, even more horrific than Dugard’s (as if one could even imagine such a thing) is that of twins Kate and Will Stillman, whose story is featured in the August issue of Glamour. In this case, not only were both brother and sister subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of various members of the family that enslaved them, but they were also cruelly tortured physically and emotionally in ways that make Dugard’s captor appear saintly by comparison. And, yes, I realize how insane such a statement sounds.
One cannot even imagine living through, let alone being born into, such circumstances—unless one is as imaginative and able as Emma Donoghue has proven to be in creating just such a character in her fictional account, stolen from the news headlines, of an abducted woman and the child born to her in her captivity. Donoghue’s award-winning novel Room is ingeniously narrated by 5-year-old Jack, born to his “Ma,” a prisoner in the backyard bunker (“Room”), which Ma has told him is the only real world that exists. The novel has garnered accolades from both readers and critics for telling so sensitively such an otherwise sordid tale.
Continue reading "The Redemptive Narrative in Jaycee Dugard's Captivity Story " »
'Bridesmaids,' Marriage, and Real Happiness
Where are all the popular stories about happy single women?
Movies have taught me a few valuable lessons.
There may be a train platform in between numbers 9 and 10 in London’s King’s Cross Station. If two men are fighting for your attention, and one is very pale and the other is Native American, well, watch out — they may not be men at all, especially if one smells like wet dog.
And the lead girl always, always gets the guy.
I watched Bridesmaids this weekend, about two months behind the rest of the world. I read up on it beforehand: Dana Stevens at Slate called it a “giddy feminist manifesto." Watching the film is a “social responsibility,” claimed Rebecca Traiester at Salon, an opportunity to “persuade Hollywood that multidimensional women exist, spend money and deserve to be represented on film.” (Michelle Dean at The Awl disagreed, noting that all the conversations in the film about weddings were still really about men.)
Maybe it is a feminist film, especially if feminism in film means men make hardly any screen appearances and are primarily asses when they do (I’m talking to you, Jon Hamm).
But it seems odd that this giddy feminism would result in the same formulaic rom-com result as The Devil Wears Prada, Pretty Woman, The Proposal, and about every other romantic comedy I can think of having watched in my lifetime.
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A Parenting Manual for Bad Kids
Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson's Give Them Grace proceeds from the belief that all children - and parents - need the gospel more than they need how-to tips.
Many parenting books promise fast results for raising children who always obey, toddlers who never talk back, and teens who keep the faith. The marketers of such books get that we consumers will buy almost anything if it promises speedy outcomes and comes in a tidy list of dos and don’ts.
Give Them Grace is divided into two sections: foundations of grace and evidences of grace. In the first, Fitzpatrick and Thompson present the gospel story and its implications for parenting. They assert that we often spend our time parenting by rules alone rather than reciting the story of redemption, which provides our children a way to follow the rules. They emphasize that salvation is all of God, which is a parent’s only foundation as they raise children:
Raising good kids is utterly impossible unless they are drawn by the Holy Spirit to put their faith in the goodness of another. You cannot raise good kids, because you are not a good parent. There is only one good Parent, and he had one good Son. Together, this Father and Son accomplished everything that needed to be done to rescue us and our children from certain destruction (50).
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When Sex Becomes an Idol
Jenell Williams Paris's The End of Sexual Identity seeks to overturn the power that sexual identity labels — homosexual and heterosexual — have in and outside the church.
In the past few months, I couldn’t help noticing the flurry of articles about the PCUSA’s decision to ordain people in same-sex relationships, the repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, the passage of same-sex marriage laws in New York, and the decision of Chaz Bono, daughter of Sonny and Cher, to become a man.
Yet conversations about sex and sexual identity emerge as often around our dinner tables as on the front page of the paper. Recently, a pastor told me about a married member of his congregation who routinely cheats on his wife with other men. A friend described helping a female friend pick out an engagement ring so she could propose to her girlfriend. Another friend sat at our dinner table and talked about leaving the church after years of celibacy because he couldn’t deny his gay identity. Jenell Williams Paris, an anthropology and sociology professor at Messiah College, seeks to enter this cultural conversation in her new book, The End of Sexuality: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are (InterVarsity Press). Moreover, Paris seeks to change the conversation within the church. Her analysis of contemporary culture offers a helpful aid to Christians trying to wade through the complex issues surrounding gender and sexuality in the modern age.
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A Daughter's Grief Observed
Meghan O'Rourke's luminous The Long Goodbye traces the final months as her mother succumbs to cancer.
Meghan O’Rourke is best known as a literary and cultural critic, a contributor to Slate, and the onetime fiction editor at The New Yorker. But she is a poet first, as is clear from the opening pages of her new memoir, The Long Goodbye. A chronicle of the final months of her mother’s life and the months afterward, O’Rourke’s book is luminous; her words evoke her tremendous love for and grief over her mother with a grace that few writers can match:
Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. . . . A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without the sky: unimaginable.
O’Rourke’s reflections on what a mother means — and what her mother meant to her — are achingly sad in light of her loss, but no less a beautiful tribute to a mother who loved children, dogs, and life itself (“YOUR A GOOD MOM. YOUR A GOOD SEWER. HOW COME YOU ARE SO NICE,” [sic], O’Rourke wrote in a card to her mother at age 6), an Irish-Catholic schoolgirl turned atheist private-school headmaster, a stunningly beautiful, witty, warm, and intelligent woman until the day she breathed her last. She was at home on Christmas morning, her favorite day of the year, surrounded by her family, including Meghan, her two brothers, and their father.
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What You Don't Know about Obama's Mama
A review of Janny Scott's new biography, A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother.
In a culture of “helicopter parenting,” in which mothers are tempted to manage every moment of their children’s lives to ensure future success, it's peculiar that no one seemed interested in Barack Obama’s mother when his political career began to skyrocket. Maybe the anomaly of his absentee, Kenyan father was so enticing that no one gave much thought to the oddly named Stanley Ann Dunham. No one, that is, except Janny Scott.
In 2008, Scott left her job as a New York Times reporter to research the life of then Senator Obama’s late mother. She interviewed hundreds of Dunham’s family members, colleagues, and friends. She traveled all over the world, tracing her subject’s journeys. Scott’s meticulous research shows; hers is an absorbing book that details Dunham’s rich, disordered life.
Having read Scott’s book, the fact that Dunham has been summarized — perhaps most often by the president himself — as “a white woman from Kansas” seems comically hollow. It was with much more care that Scott chose the title A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother for her biography. Scott said that if she had used the adjective unconventional in the title, “some people would have thought it was a pejorative. Others would have thought it was high praise.”
“Singular,” she wrote, “is neutral. But there’s no mistaking its meaning: This person was remarkable, one of a kind.”
A family friend of the Dunhams described the milieu in which Dunham grew up as a “Leave it to Beaver . . . kind of society.” Indeed, Dunham gave birth to the son who would be known as “Barry” when Leave it to Beaver was still on the air. (She stopped using her unusual first name after high school.)
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Top 10 Posts of the Month
What got Her.meneutics' readers talking in June.
Her.meneutics devotees might notice two new names in our top 10 list below. Having only written for us a couple times, both women approached us boasting fascinating and varied CVs. Enuma Okoro (@tweetenuma) is a Nigerian-American who holds an MDiv from Duke Divinity School, where she directed the Center for Theological Writing. She now lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she has found time two write two books — Reluctant Pilgrim and Common Prayer (with Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove) — and write regularly at EnumaOkoro.com. Natasha Robinson (@asistasjourney) is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (2002), and served six years active duty as an officer in the Marine Corps. Currently, she is co-director of the women’s mentoring ministry at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro, North Carolina, and founder, writer, and speaker for His Glory On Earth Ministries. In her spare time (!), she attends Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary full-time and is a wife and mother. Natasha writes regularly at A Sista's Journey.
Judging from the popularity of their posts, both women will continue to provide our readers with thoughtful commentary on news and books that matter to evangelical women. And now on to the list!
(10) How to Talk about Having Children, by Sharon Hodde Miller // Comments: 53
Maybe God intended babies to mess with our well-planned lives.
(9) Lessons from an Expletive-Laced Picture Book, by Ellen Painter Dollar // Comments: 28
Self-sacrifice can make parents unhappy and unhealthy — or it can help cultivate the abundant life God desires for us.
(8) Why 'Happy' Isn't a Christian Word, by Enuma Okoro // Comments: 15
How to practice hope during the happiest season of the Christian year.
(7) Why Men Should Read Jane Austen, by Gina Dalfonzo // Comments: 31
And, how we all should read works like Pride and Prejudice.
(6) Should Christians Pursue External Beauty? by Enuma Okoro // Comments: 21
A controversial Psychology Today article arguing that black women are less attractive than others got me thinking about real beauty.
Continue reading "Top 10 Posts of the Month" »
Reading Scripture with Sex Abuse Survivors
Elaine Heath's We Were the Least of These offers a healing balm, but should be read alongside more traditional interpretations of Scripture.
Laura survived a rigid and abusive fundamentalist upbringing, then married a Baptist minister who sexually abused her. Now she’s an atheist. Vyckie was a wife and mom in the Quiverfull movement who now also leans toward atheism, believing that the Bible necessarily leads to oppressive patriarchy. For these women, and for other survivors of sexual abuse (SA), church just doesn't feel safe, because church — and not just the Catholic Church — is where SA happens. Because of these women's experiences, the image of a male God, presumed by some scriptural interpretations to be primarily interested in men and male interests, is decidedly unattractive.
In the spirit of Phyllis Trible, whose now-classic books God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality and Texts of Terror pioneered explorations of women in Scripture, Elaine A. Heath, professor of evangelism at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas, has written a book offering hope to SA survivors and those who 'journey with them.' The title, We Were the Least of These (Brazos Press), hints at Heath's guiding concept: that far from being misogynistic, the gospel is truly good news for victims of SA, that whatever has been done to them ('the least of these') has been done to Jesus, whose death and resurrection is "a living power that lifts us out of the black holes of our lives, that heals our wounds, that removes our shame."
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Beyonce Is Wrong: Girls Don't Run the World
Why her message of female power is hurting the African American community.
According to the first single from Beyonce’s highly anticipated album 4, girls indeed run the world. Thanks to her musical contribution to First Lady Michelle Obama’s "Let’s Move" campaign, her recent Billboard Millennium Award, and surprise farewell performance to honor Oprah, all eyes from middle-age school rockers to professional intellectuals are on Beyonce. The 29-year-old is an influencer. From the words of her recent hit, “my persuasion can build a nation,” and she knows it.
Beyonce has built a musical career based on girl empowerment and the seduction of men. In her efforts to empower women, though, she has endorsed a self-absorbed world where a false view of love reigns supreme. Her songs reveal a worldview where men and women indulge in lust, lavish spending, and fantasies of catering, upgrades, and joy rides. I don’t see much responsibility or empowerment of either sex in that kind of behavior.
Yet the lyrics of her recent single acknowledge the men who respect what she does. In her skimpy attire, she seduces them while singing we have "endless power, our love we can devour when you’ll do anything for me."
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What We're Reading This Summer
We're taking pleasure in books in the middle of texts and tweets.
In honor of the official start to summer and my plan to read many books by the pool, I picked up Alan Jacobs' new The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction this past weekend. The book is full of reminders of the joys of reading in the midst of Twitter and texting temptations. Shut down the computer, put aside the cell phone, lock your gadgets in the car before going into a coffee shop, the Wheaton College English professor recommends. He warns, however, against turning reading into a chore.
So this is what I say to my petitioners: for heaven's sake, don't turn reading into the intellectual equivalent of eating organic greens, or (shifting the metaphor slightly) some fearfully disciplined appointment with an elliptical trainer of the mind in which you count words or pages the way some people fix their attention on the "calories burned" readout--some assiduous and taxing exercise that allows you to look back on your conquest of Middlemarch with grim satisfaction. How depressing. This kind of thing is not reading at all, but what C.S. Lewis once called "social and ethical hygiene." In Lewis's view, which I largely share, the tendency to think of reading in these terms arises when critics, especially memberrs of what Lewis called "the Vigilant school," convince others that they are the proper guardians of reading and the proper judges of what reading counts.
Read at whim, Jacobs says, with serendipity. He cautions against creating lists for fear of turning reading into broccoli. "This choosing reader is never merely passive, never simply a consumer, but constantly engages in critical judgment, sometimes withholding sympathy with a thoughtful wariness, and then, in the most blessed moments, when trust has been earned, giving that sympathy wholly and without stint," he writes.
Without wanting to turn reading into a mere list, we still want to offer some ideas to spur your reading, so our gift to you this summer solstice includes which specific books we plan to read this summer. We have offered lists in years past, but as our group of contributors grows each year, we limited our writers this year to pick just one book they plan to read. You'll also see an entry from Morgan Feddes, CT's new editorial resident, who helped me compile the links for this post. Jump in and let us know what books you plan to read.
Katelyn Beaty
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith (1943)
Smith's protagonist, Irish-Catholic girl Francie Nolan, is like an Anne of Green Gables after a street fight: bookish, perceptive, longing to understand her world (1920s Brooklyn) yet alienated by its harshness, and hopeful about life's possibilities, despite the alcoholism and economic injustice that plague her family of four.
Amy Julia Becker
The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time, Judith Shulevitz (2010)
Shulevitz, a sometimes-practicing Jewish woman and journalist, reflects on the history of the Sabbath and its role within our culture as a way to ask questions about the ethical dimensions of time.
Anna Broadway
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott (1995)
This is a book on writing that I've heard about for a while but not had a chance to read until I recently snagged it from a friend's book-giveaway pile. I'm only a few chapters in, and it's already very funny, encouraging ... wonderful.
Alicia Cohn
The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman (2010)
Rachman's novel is about a failing English-language newspaper in Rome that (I hope) promises a poignant reflection on disillusionment with life and work.
Continue reading "What We're Reading This Summer" »
Why Men Should Read Jane Austen
And, how we all should read works like ‘Pride and Prejudice.’
Nobel-winning novelist V. S. Naipaul recently started a firestorm with his remarks about female writers in general and Jane Austen in particular. According to the Guardian:
In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society on Tuesday about his career, Naipaul, who has been described as the "greatest living writer of English prose", was asked if he considered any woman writer his literary match. He replied: "I don't think so." Of Austen he said he "couldn't possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world".He felt that women writers were "quite different". He said: "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me."
The author, who was born in Trinidad, said this was because of women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world". "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too," he said.
Naipaul’s words caused controversy for obvious reasons: They were self-serving, condescending, and, as any of Austen’s millions of devoted readers could attest, wholly untrue. Not only was Austen’s talent equal to that of virtually any other great writer, but she was about as “sentimental” as a surgeon’s scalpel.
As my friend Lori Smith writes in her book A Walk with Jane Austen, “Biographers sometimes wrestle with Austen’s complex character—the good Christian girl with the biting wit, with the ability to see and desire to expose the laughable and ludicrous. . . . She had a capacity for devotion as well as an ability to wryly, if at times harshly, engage the world around her.”
But Naipaul’s words will blow over before long, as publicity stunts tend to do. What should be troubling us is that his attitude seems to be deeply embedded in our culture. I’ve known quite a few men—educated, well-read men—who either dismiss Austen as “chick lit” or simply never bother to give her a thought. (I’ve even heard one man say that she didn’t know what she was talking about because she never married.) There are men who still read and enjoy her, but their number seems to be diminishing.
One reason for this, I’m afraid, is the way that many of us women read (and watch) Austen these days—drooling over the romances while passing over the satire and ignoring the fact that, as Lori puts it, “the triumph of the books . . . is not only that the relationships come together but the kind of people who are allowed to come together—two people with characters that have been hammered out a bit, with faults that have been recognized and corrected.” In other words, the books are not just about love triumphant, but about the formation of good character and good values.
Continue reading "Why Men Should Read Jane Austen " »
Taste and Smell That the Lord Is Good
Molly Birnbaum's book Season to Taste reveals how our sense of smell connects us to places and people.
In a new book, Season to Taste, Molly Birnbaum looks for answers to this question after severe head trauma following a car accident erases her sense of smell. Her quest aimed not only at seeing if she could at least partially regain her sense of smell — an aspiring chef, Birnbaum had to indefinitely postpone attending the prestigious Culinary Institute of America — but also at unearthing the significance of smell to the human experience.
In finding answers, Birnbaum is filled with anxiety beyond the practical question of whether a chef who can't smell, and therefore can barely taste, can cook. Is it even possible to regain a sense of smell? (Anosmia has a dismal recovery rate.) What if there's a gas leak while she's alone? Does the science of pheromones (the scents apparently responsible for much of what attracts humans to each other) suggest that she will never feel love or desire again?
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Why Romance Novels Aren't Emotional Porn
Just because such novels are about escape doesn't mean they are destructive.
I slink into bed, click on my light, and grab the book. Guilt shakes me a bit. After all I’ve read about these sorts of stories, I figure by the end I’ll hate my husband or hunger for more of the escape they offer.
So why do I risk this? Because the night before, I had sat next to its author at a book-signing. Because she and I chatted and laughed for hours. Because I really liked her. And because I want to find out if it's true: Whether she, as a romance novelist, is really just an emotional pornographer.
The belief that popular romance novels are "pornography for women" has been around a long time. In my tenure as editor of Marriage Partnership magazine a decade ago, we ran stories of women addicted to romance novels, whose obsession with romantic ideals had destroyed their marriages. Other articles have claimed romance novels are sort of a gateway drug to actual porn for women. Others still say that even romantic comedies are a sort of emotional porn. And just a few weeks ago, popular Southern Baptist theologian Russell Moore wrote about a new book that equates romance novels with porn.
While Moore doesn’t morally equate the two, he sees strong similarities. “Both are based on an illusion,” Moore writes. Even with Christian romance novels, Moore says, “A lot of this genre . . . is simply a Christianization of a form not intended to enhance intimacy but to escape to an artificial illusion of it.”
Hence, my guilt.
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The Top 10 Posts of 2011 - So Far
What got our readers talking this year.
Compiling top 10 lists give editors like me a chance to remember the good, hard work that has gone into their publications in recent days. Putting together the list below, the good, hard work that came to mind was primarily that of the tireless writers who faithfully contribute to Her.meneutics, some since the blog's inception in 2009. Our mission statement, in case you've missed it in the left-hand navigation bar, is to provide "news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women." Without the evangelical women on our blog roll, Her.meneutics would have little reason to exist.
But of course, without Her.meneutics, our bloggers would have many reasons to exist! Some of them, in fact, have found time to blog, teach, parent, participate in church life, and publish books of their own. Gina Dalfonzo (best known at CT for "The Good Christian Girl: A Fable") just released 'Bring Her Down,' a Kindle book about Sarah Palin and the media. In July Jennifer Grant will release Love You More (Thomas Nelson), about adopting a 15-month-old girl from Guatemala. Also in July, Elrena Evans releases This Crowded Night (DreamSeeker), centered on the women found in the Four Gospels. In August Amy Julia Becker will release A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House), about grace and her daughter, Penny, who has Down syndrome; and also in August, Caryn Rivadeneira releases Gumble Hallelujah (Tyndale), about praising God amid disappointment. We're excited to see the cultural impact our writers will have beyond the women's blog.
A note about metrics: Our top 10 lists are based on number of unique pageviews per post, and thus do not necessarily reflect posts' popularity among readers or editors. If you had favorite posts from 2011 that don't appear below, make sure to list them in the comments section. Now to the list!
(10) Sex Sells - So Does Virginity, by Sharon Hodde Miller (April 27, 2011)
Nickelodeon star Miranda Cosgrove is being marketed as the embodiment of purity in a sex-saturated culture. Why Christians should be concerned.
(9) Why I Don’t Want to Be a Chinese Mother, by Amy Julia Becker (January 17, 2011)
I don't want to be an American mother, for that matter.
(8) What Are Wedding Vows For, Anyway? by Gina Dalfonzo (January 31, 2011)
Not much, if Carol Anne Riddell and John Partilla's wedding announcement in The New York Times "Vows" section means anything.
(7) Confessions of a Beth Moore Convert, by Karen Spears Zacharias (March 29, 2011)
Why the Bible teacher with the big Texan hair may just be our female Billy Graham.
(6) When Christians Get Divorced, by Amy Julia Becker (March 23, 2011)
A popular Christian blogger recently announced the end of her marriage. How should churches respond to those grieving?
Continue reading "The Top 10 Posts of 2011 - So Far" »
Sex and Salvation according to Picasso
Seeing the huge Picasso exhibit now touring the world reminded me of why Christians should make time for the fine arts.
Amid the press of daily demands, most of us think we don’t have time for enjoying the fine arts. A recent visit to a Picasso exhibit reminded me why Christians especially should make time for it.
If Horace’s adage is correct, that good art both “teaches and delights” (a description that certainly applies to the works of the Creator), then Pablo Picasso has rightly earned his reputation as one of the great artists of the modern age.
"Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musee National Picasso, Paris," an exhibit touring worldwide during renovation of its permanent home in Paris, proved Picasso’s ability to delight even before gaining admission to the show. On the day I attended, traffic was gridlocked, the parking garage was full, and those like me with pre-paid reservations for an appointed time found out our tickets granted a place in line with hundreds of other ticket holders. And no wonder: During its three-month run at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (one of only three U.S. stops), a whopping 229,729 people made time for Picasso.
Of course, just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s good. But Picasso really is good. Known for his place in the avant-garde as one of the originators of cubism, Picasso also produced works in the schools of naturalism and classicism. This exhibit of 176 pieces from among those Picasso selected himself for his personal collection featured a breathtaking array of mediums, styles, genres, and techniques: chalk drawings, classical portraits, sculptures, collages, bronze busts, and photographs.
To dismiss Picasso’s more abstract paintings as mere child’s play, as some do, is a great error. This was a serious artist. To prepare for the creation of his greatest masterpiece, Les Desmoiselles d ’Avignon (1907), Picasso produced 1,000 sketches and studies. Although the eleven-room exhibit represented a fraction of the works produced over a lifetime (Picasso began painting as a teenager and didn’t stop until his death in 1973, at age 92) from it, a worldview clearly emerges. So, too, does the reminder that Christians who wish to have significant influence in the culture ignore the arts at their peril.
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Why Divorce Devastates Children
Divorce pulls the rug out from under a child's sense of self, contends Andrew Root in The Children of Divorce.
I begged her not to marry him. Our family members pleaded — all to no avail. She would have none of it. She claimed we were being negative, blind to all of his wonderful attributes. Only recently, after eight years of a tense and tumultuous marriage, after giving birth to three beautiful girls now ages 7, 6, and 5, and after he reconnected with his junior high flame on Facebook and filed for divorce, does she now see what we all saw back then.
This week, a dear friend who lives across the country contacted me to tell me that her husband left her in February without any explanation. She’s reeling. They’d been married 20-plus years, and she didn’t see it coming. No one did. To top it off, in the next week or so, her two daughters will graduate, one from high school and the other from college. These young women are now forced to negotiate important milestones in the midst of the dissolution of their Christian family.
Strangely, these sad stories came while I was reading The Children Of Divorce: The Loss of Family As the Loss of Being (Baker Academic), by Andrew Root, professor of youth ministry at Luther Seminary.
Root’s book is meant not to chastise or heap guilt on parents who have divorced, but rather to help the Christian community understand the ramifications of divorce from a child’s perspective. The child need not be under the age of 18 either; Root's thesis is that no matter the age, divorce, even “the good divorce,” has profoundly negative effects on a child’s ontology, or sense of being. Root writes that “even in instances when divorce was a great gift to one or both parents, it was a silent nightmare to a child. What I am asserting is that divorce . . . leaves major marks on children, marks that reach all the way to the core of their being.”
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Lady Gaga: Where's the Outrage?
What happens when a pop culture phenomenon becomes a 'religious experience.'
During her appearance on American Idol last week, Lady Gaga told the audience, without being prompted, that she wasn’t interested in judging the contestants, only in bringing out what was special about each of them. “I want to free [my fans] of their fears and make them feel . . . that they can create their own space in the world,” Gaga has said, a goal that sounds nearly salvific in nature. When an interviewer recently called Lady Gaga the “Billy Graham of pop,” she claimed, “I'm teaching people to worship themselves.”
This successful mode of evangelism — the discipleship of Gaga, so to speak — is significant because even though Lady Gaga proclaims a fairly conventional “peace and love” message, her marketability relies on her ability to make that message outrageous (thus, the bizarre makeup and leotard she wore during American Idol).
Gaga has even referred to her Monster Ball concert tour as a “religious experience” and “pop culture church.” And the result Lady Gaga promises in return is a transformation not all that far removed from Oprah Winfrey’s message of self-empowerment through extreme makeovers and confession.
It might seem an unusual comparison, but Lady Gaga and Oprah — who both appear in the top 10 on Forbes’s most powerful women list — have crafted similar cultural personas when it comes to outrageous extravagance, cultivating an audience-as-family dynamic (Oprah with her personal appeals and studio setting, Lady Gaga referring to her fans as “little monsters”) and supposedly all-inclusive non-judgmental outlook.
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When Christian Teens Doubt
Sara Zarr's Once Was Lost beautifully captures the moment when an evangelical girl encounters the real world.
When you're a teenager, everything is the best - or worst - thing that’s ever happened to you. This is the blessing and curse of the years from age 12 to 20. What can match the all-consuming passion of your first crush, or the devastating assurance that no one has ever been through what you are going through, that no one could possibly understand how hard it is to be you? These emotions, in their painful, confusing, and worldview-altering messiness, are the subject of Once Was Lost, Sara Zarr's wonderful young adult novel, out this year in paperback.
I've been a fan of young adult fiction since long before I fell into its target audience and long after I outgrew it. In all those years of reading, rarely did I find a character asking the kinds of questions I was asking about life and especially faith. The tendency of Christian YA fiction is to veer toward the didactic; it’s risky to allow characters to question their spirituality. But that is what makes Zarr’s books (Story of a Girl, Sweethearts) such a treat: she uses the particular experience of being an American Christian teenager to explore the big questions that many struggle with long after high school.
Samara Taylor is definitely struggling. After a DUI lands her mother in New Beginnings, an upscale suburban rehab facility, Sam ends up home alone with her father, an overworked pastor who can face any problem except those in his own family. Then Jody Shaw, a 13-year-old girl in Sam’s church youth group, disappears, and Sam’s hometown and church take center stage of a national media circus. Sam can't help noticing that the circumstances have led to a lot of alone time for her dad and her single female youth leader who keeps trying to get her to open up about her problems. And just as she is pulling away from her closest friends, Sam stumbles into a relationship with Jody’s older brother, Nick, who seems to be the only other person who knows what it’s like to have your life upended by tragedy.
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Beyond SlutWalk: A New Conversation about Sexual Assault
Why Justin and Lindsey Holcombs' new Crossway book, Rid of My Disgrace, is the perfect conversation starter.
Last month thousands of women took to the Toronto streets dressed in lingerie and miniskirts. Calling their movement SlutWalk, they were protesting a police officer’s statement to college students, after a wave of sexual assaults at York University, that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” Organized mainly through social media, SlutWalks have now occurred throughout Canada, the U.S., and Europe. The goal, say organizers, is to debunk the belief that victims of sexual assault are responsible for the assault because of their clothing — or for any other reason.
Christian singer Rebecca St. James, discussing SlutWalk with Sean Hannity on Monday, put to words this entrenched belief. The newly married St. James said, “Women are asking for sex if they are dressed immodestly.” While she said “there is never an excuse no matter how a woman is dressed for a man to abuse a woman,”
I mean, I love the t-shirt modest is hottest. I absolutely believe it. I got married two weeks ago to a holy hunk. I have lived out purity. . . . I think there has to be a responsibility though for what a woman is wearing, personal responsibility. . . . Purity and modesty go hand in hand. I think when a woman is dressing in an immodest way, in a provocative way, she has got to think about what is she saying by her dress?
If SlutWalks and “modest is hottest” t-shirts sum up the current public conversation about sexual assault, then we need a better conversation. That’s why Rid of My Disgrace: Hope and Healing for Victims of Sexual Assault (Crossway Books / Re:Lit) comes as a breath of gospel-infused fresh air.
Authors Justin Holcomb and Lindsey Holcomb are uniquely gifted to write this book. Justin is a pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle and director of the Resurgence, and has taught classes on sexual violence at the University of Virginia. Lindsey worked at a sexual assault crisis center, then at a domestic violence center, before serving as a deacon at Mars Hill, where she counsels SA victims. Together they provide a theologically rich and meticulously researched resource for women and men who have suffered any forced sexual conduct or behavior — which is an estimated 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men in the U.S.
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The Happy Death of Soap Operas
Social media and real-life drama have replaced soaps as the daytime audience's entertainment of choice.
When, last month, ABC executives announced the cancellation of two of their network’s soap operas, devout fans of All My Children and One Life to Live panicked. They signed petitions and threatened to boycott ABC if the decision was not reversed. They may have expected, however, that their efforts would be futile. Again and again in recent years, daytime dramas – even the long-running Guiding Light, originally a radio show before the onset of World War II – have been canceled.
In their desperation, ABC soap enthusiasts even sought divine intervention to save these shows. But, as much as she empathized with their feelings of grief, Oprah said there was nothing she could do. With her hands folded primly on her desk and speaking in a patient tone, Winfrey addressed her supplicants in a YouTube video, explaining that soaps no longer have the audience to keep them on the air: “Believe me,” she said, “if there was a dime left to be made from them on broadcast television, it would still be happening.”
As of this writing, more than 560 soap fans have left comments in response to Winfrey. They accuse her of callously dismissing the genre of daytime drama. They say she is insensitive to the feelings of actor Susan Lucci, who has played Erica Kane on All My Children since 1970. Others seem genuinely disturbed that Winfrey would be motivated by financial gain.
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Churning Butter in Bonnets with Laura Ingalls Wilder
Wendy McClure's The Wilder Life answers why we all wanted to live the pioneer life of Little House on the Prairie.
Have you ever connected with someone through a mutually loved book? Of course, there are many ways to love the same book, but some books inspire a similar kind of devotion in their fans. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series seems to call forth reverence for their author and protagonist, Laura, and a persistent yearning to enter her world. Thousands of Laura fans embark each year on their own searches for the historical Laura, visiting the sites and homes where the Ingalls and Wilders lived.
Wendy McClure has written The Wilder Life, a funny, insightful memoir about her adventures pursuing “Laura World” — the partly historical, partly fictional, partly fantastical mental space she inhabited as a child and revisits by re-reading the books, researching the history of the Ingalls and Wilder families, and traveling to their every homesite. Along the way, McClure, a Chicago-based children’s book editor, purchases a half-dozen bonnets and attempts to recreate the "vanity cakes" Ma made in Little House on Plum Creek — a recipe for which begins, “take 2 pounds of lard,” among other things. Throughout, McClure is trying to figure out why these books, more than any others, so captured her imagination in childhood as well as adulthood.
For readers like me, who dreamed of being Laura or Laura’s best friend, who longed for pinafores, butter churns, and the occasional blizzard, McClure’s journey will elicit laughter and some new reflections on why, exactly, Laura’s stories have held readers in enduring enchantment. Even as each of us imagines the worlds of Laura’s words differently, many seem to share a fascination in the real world (now mostly lost) and real people (now all dead, and with no living descendants) behind the stories. Those stories, though frequently regarded as "straight" biography, are more likely fictionalized. (For instance, Carrie was born on the prairie, not in the Big Woods, as the books have it, and when the Ingalls family moved to Indian Territory, Laura was only 3, not 6 or 7, as the story has it.)
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Sex Sells - So Does Virginity
Nickelodeon star Miranda Cosgrove is being marketed as the embodiment of purity in a sex-saturated culture. Why Christians should be concerned.
In February I reviewed Peggy Orenstein's new book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. The book takes a hard look at the culture that imposes itself on our nation’s daughters, and challenges the notion that it is altogether harmless. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I highly recommend it. In a media atmosphere where the facts are often harnessed to fuel fear, Orenstein manages to inform her readers with sobering research without crossing into full-on paranoia.
In a more recent New York Times article, “The Good Girl, Miranda Cosgrove,” Orenstein continues her exploration of the themes in her book. The article features teen star Miranda Cosgrove, who shot to fame in her role on the hit Nickelodeon show iCarly. Cosgrove, who turns 18 in May, stands at the edge of a precipice with her adulthood stretching out before her. And like the teen stars that have preceded her, many are watching to see how she will emerge in the next season of life. Gracefully, clumsily, or catastrophically?
Orenstein is troubled by the media pressure cooker in which young women like Cosgrove exist. But even more concerning is the manner in which these young ladies’ virtue is marketed like a product. For the NYT, Orenstein wrote,
For as many seasons as the illusion can be maintained, [teens stars] remain, at least onscreen, uncomplicated, untroubled good girls, on the verge of, but never actually awakening to, their sexuality. There is a lot of money to be made — and a lot of parental anxiety to be tapped — by walking that line.
At this point in her career, Cosgrove shines as an unsullied embodiment of all the qualities a parent desires in a role model. No objections here. But things get complicated when Christians consider how to respond to an industry that uses morality as a marketing device. Should we praise these young women as role models, or hold them at arm’s length?
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'Three Cups of Tea,' Three Cups of Me
There's ego behind every published fabrication, including Greg Mortenson's, and Christ is its remedy.
The publishing world has been aflutter recently following a 60 Minutes segment that raised doubts about the truth of author and philanthropist Greg Mortenson’s work and writing.
Mortenson, best known for the 2006 memoir Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee whose nonprofit, Central Asia Institute (CAI), has raised tens of millions toward educating children, especially girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to CBS report interviews, however, a number of stories in Mortenson’s books — including one where he’s kidnapped by the Taliban, one where all the yaks of a region are loaned to him for a school’s construction, and one where a Pakistani village helps him back to health after he happens upon it, ill and lost — are fiction. What's more, Mortenson could be liable for up to $23 million in back taxes from "excess benefits" he received from CAI through 2009.
For now, the Montana (home to CAI) Attorney General has promised to investigate, the CAI has pledged transparency in the process, and Mortenson’s reputable friends have been cautiously coming to his defense. It seems possible to assume that the teacup is half-full: that the unlikely school-builder isn’t also a liar-writer, that his motives have been sound all along.
Yet oh, have we been here before.
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Navigating the Sea of Electronic Media
How we can foster a family environment that deters sexting, distracted driving, 'Facebook depression.'
The New York Times last week told the story of eighth grader Margarite, who “sexted” (sent a naked photo of herself via cell phone) her boyfriend. When he and Margarite broke up, the boyfriend forwarded the message to another girl—a former friend of Margarite’s with whom she was having some trouble—with the caption, “Ho Alert!” The girl forwarded it, and soon the whole school had access to the photo that the 14-year-old meant for her boyfriend’s eyes. Several students were eventually charged with child pornography for their role in forwarding the message, although charges were eventually downgraded to harassment, punishable by community service.
As my oldest daughter prepares for middle school next year, I’m pondering the best ways to equip her to handle the changes and challenges of adolescence with wisdom and grace. One of my central concerns is how to help her (and our other two children) navigate the digital world of cell phones and laptops. Sexting, distracted driving, cyberbullying—these modern scourges can leave kids damaged, lonely, in legal trouble, or even dead.
Recognizing that online activity (sexting and cyberbullying, as well as less overtly threatening Facebooking and texting) has potentially negative effects on kids’ physical and mental health, the American Academy of Pediatrics is urging pediatricians to inquire about media use during check-ups. Experts have coined the phrase “Facebook depression” to describe the plummeting self-esteem that can result from constant exposure to friends’ happy status updates and photos indicating a packed social calendar. Although it has yet to show a causal link, one study found that teens who text a lot (120 text messages or more per day) are more likely to engage in sexual activity and drug use. Experts speculate that factors contributing to excessive texting (impulsivity, a need for constant stimulation and social interaction, inadequate parental supervision) also contribute to risk-taking.
What is a parent to do? Some parents might ban electronic media altogether, but that’s not the right answer for most of us. Electronic connectivity will play a larger and larger role in the workplace and education. I am a writer for whom online media are indispensable for sharing and marketing my work (and frankly, central to both my social life and my household management). My husband is a librarian transitioning his university library from being a repository of printed material to an access point for online resources. My daughter’s middle school homework will require Internet access, as many teachers post homework on web pages, rather than passing it out in class. Facebook, e-mail, and texting can also be tools for enhanced connections between people, if used with respect for others and within limits. Forbidding my kids from using computers and cell phones would be shortsighted and, really, impossible.
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How I Learned to Love a Show about Mormon Polygamy
Despite its troubling views on marriage and family, HBO's Big Love always felt like an allegory for real people I know.
Years before TLC launched its polygamous reality show Sister Wives, Tom Hanks and company produced HBO’s award-winning drama series Big Love, about a family of polygamists who emerged out of a creepy Mormon splinter group.I’ve watched all five seasons of Big Love, including Sunday night’s series finale. Creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer told the Los Angeles Times this week that the series emerged from their marriage, with the goal of communicating the idea that marriages can endure change. What appealed to me about the show was how it parsed the challenges of breaking free from a closed religious community while grappling with the community’s best ideals and penetrating reach.
The plot centered on two families from the sect, the Grants and the Hendricksons. The Grants represent legalism and corruption, while the Hendricksons represent an amalgam of religious identities. Bill Hendrickson was kicked out of “the compound” as a teenager and was taken into the Mormon fold, where he met and married Barb, a woman of high Mormon pedigree. After many years of marriage, Bill senses a call back to polygamy. Barb goes along with his vision after a life-changing bout with cancer. Bill marries Nicki Grant, the daughter of his arch-nemesis Roman Grant, and then Margene, a much younger woman with sparse religious identity.
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The Divine Grace of Diapers and Dirty Laundry
A harried mother of three rediscovers Kathleen Norris's classic The Quotidian Mysteries.
I sat in the chair with a sleeping baby on my lap. I held her close, and I prayed. I prayed about the things I wanted to be doing — responding to e-mail, taking a shower, writing an essay. And I admitted my fears to God: Those things feel so much more important than this. Yet I saw the lie I was succumbing to, and I looked once more at my daughter’s round face, and I prayed that I would have faith in the importance of holding my child.
It takes faith to be a parent. It takes faith for me to care for our three children day after day. It takes faith to believe that this 30-minute episode of crying, or this midnight, bleary-eyed feeding, or this time-out for hitting your sister, or this poopy diaper — that these will bear fruit. That they matter, and even eternally.
In the midst of dirty clothes and unmade beds and the daily scramble to get food on the table, I remembered a little book I read a few years ago. As I nursed our daughter, I re-read Kathleen Norris's The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women's Work. The book itself is relatively old — published in 1998 after Norris gave the Madaleva Lectures at St. Mary's College in Indiana — but the contents are timeless.
Its epigraph offers a definition: “Quotidian: occurring every day; belonging to every day; commonplace, ordinary.” My life right now feels very ordinary and very repetitive. I am tethered to a child who needs to eat every three hours, who relies on me as her sole source of nourishment. And it is easy to believe that the quotidian stuff of life is the meaningless stuff, the stuff that gets done only to be taken up again, the stuff that gets in the way of “real” work or play.
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The Newest Gnostic Christian Diet
Lysa TerKeurst's Made to Crave comes dangerously close to suggesting that food is bad.
There’s a long history behind Lysa Terkeurst’s bestseller, Made to Crave, recently out from Zondervan. All jokes about “Calorie Baptist Church” and attendance-boosting potlucks aside, American evangelicals have long worried about weight, health, and food. Early writers of Christian diet literature felt that God couldn’t be glorified in fat bodies, nor could souls be effectively won for Christ by overeaters. Recent contributors to the conversation reject this view, but not the conviction that food and eating are spiritual issues.
Made to Crave falls within this tradition, but unlike other programs, it specifies neither what to eat (a la The Maker’s Diet or What Would Jesus Eat?) nor how to eat (a la Gwen Shamblin’s Weigh Down Diet). Instead, it aims to be “the missing link between a woman's desire to be healthy and the spiritual empowerment necessary to make that happen.” It’s message is simple: Instead of craving food, crave God.
Much in this book will appeal to readers. TerKeurst’s writing is casual and confessional; she dishes the details of her struggles with candor and charm. (More than one Amazon reviewer said something like, “I felt like Lysa and I were sitting in the same room.”) Built into the book’s message and marketing strategy is the creation of a community of "Made to Cravers": "Friends don’t let friends eat without thinking.” You can sign up online for free magnets for your car and fridge and for the “21 day challenge.” The book has already hit a number of bestseller lists, including The New York Times's; there’s a workbook and DVD series. You can feel the movement gaining momentum. So what’s the substance of it?
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The Charlie Sheen Has Worn Off
This Lent, given the disturbed actor's slow self-wrecking, I'd like to fast from celebrity news.
For the past few months, Charlie Sheen has given our distraction-hungry culture a particularly delectable snack. “Hey look over here!” he grins. His grandiose, self-delusional bragging, his unapologetic hedonism, and his remarkable ability — whether it’s a result of mental illness, years of heavy drug use, that “Adonis DNA,” or a combination of the three — to call the broken parts of his life whole is stunning.
“Winning!”
The disturbed actor has been offering us the intimate details of his life on a plate, and we’ve been grabbing them by the handful, wolfing them down, and licking our fingers in expectation for the next course. But, after a few weeks of noshing on Charlie’s braggadocio and the perverse details of his life, the novelty of it is — forgive me — losing its sheen. We’re sick of hearing about him, but no worries: there’s an app for that.
Our culture wipes its mouth with the back of its hand and glances absentmindedly around the room. What’s next, we wonder. We want a new distraction.
Well, we could divert our gaze toward the April wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The Internet buzz gets louder and we turn our heads toward important questions such as: Is the bride-to-be getting too skinny? Could she be pregnant? How does she compare with her fiancé’s iconic mother. Hmm . . . like Princess Diana, Middleton 29, is admired as a fashion icon, commits herself to charitable causes, and, of course, is adored by William. But is she a mere “commoner?” (Was Diana? What does that mean, anyway?)
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Toddlers, Tiaras, and Surviving Princess Mania
A review of journalist Peggy Orenstein's new book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture.
At the end of March, I will bid farewell to my twenties and celebrate my 30th birthday in style. My husband has planned an amazing trip to Disney World, which means I will enjoy this milestone the same way I did my 6th birthday and many since.
However, this trip will be a little different from the rest. After reading Peggy Orenstein’s newest book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, I’m not sure I can ever look at those Disney princesses in quite the same way.
Orenstein is a contributing editor to The New York Times Magazine and author of numerous books including her popular SchoolGirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap. Her newest is an exploration into the cultural tsunami of princesses, pink, and glitter that has now come to define American girlhood. Not to be mistaken as a guide on parenting, this book is just what its subtitle implies. Orenstein has gone into the trenches of Disney marketing, Miley Cyrus concerts, child beauty pageants, and American Girl stores for an insider perspective. Along the way, she consulted with child psychologists and child development experts to discern the implications of this new trend. Her findings are compelling.
For instance, Orenstein deconstructs the Disney machine that hooks young girls early on with its Princess line of products (a marketing device launched in 2000), later transitioning girls to the “real life” princesses of Hilary, Miley and Selena. All of this is orchestrated under the assumption that children are safe with Disney, that this princess world enables parents to shield their kids from the darker edges of culture and stave off the onset of early sexualization.
This plan, unfortunately, backfires. After years of “protecting” daughters from the pitfalls of American femininity, young girls are instead primed for it. The emphasis on pink princesses produces a preoccupation with outward appearance. The role model thought to be found in Miley Cyrus turns out to be quite the opposite.
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The Social Network's Women Problem
The likely Oscar Best Picture winner's disturbing view of women apparently come not from Mark Zuckerberg's world but from the views of writer Aaron Sorkin.
The Social Network is a Golden Globe winner for Best Drama and one of the most acclaimed films of 2010. The story of how Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook is a frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar this Sunday night, and there are people who will be gutted if it loses. It’s innovative, stylish, cutting-edge — all those things that have critics tripping over each other to praise and reward.
In one aspect, though, the movie harks back to the stone age: its view of women. In both the early scenes at Harvard University and the later scenes in California, women are there as sex objects and little else. They inspire vengeful fantasies; they strip at parties and go home with strangers; they reward creative nerds for their creativity with spontaneous sex in the bathroom; they get drunk and high and play video games (badly). And that’s about it.
In the film, women are barred from any role in either the technological or the business side of Facebook. A female intern at the company is only there to show off her rear end in a short skirt and then get arrested for doing drugs. Even a seemingly levelheaded and businesslike woman flips out for no apparent reason, and sets a gift from her boyfriend on fire just for the heck of it.
I’m not saying there aren’t women who act like this. But nearly every woman in an entire movie — a movie that’s supposed to be a serious drama and not a frat-boy comedy?
The film’s defenders point to the fact that The Social Network is bookended by appearances from two smart, sensible women. But these two, a student named Erica and a lawyer named Marylin, are there to give Mark contradictory messages about himself. (Erica’s there at the beginning to tell him he’s an [expletive]; Marylin’s there at the end to tell him he’s not an [expletive].) Both female characters are lacking in serious screen time and substance.
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A New Mission for the Burnt-Out Mom
In The Missional Mom, Helen Lee says women should expand their ministry focus to beyond the home front.
In a recent "Stuff Christian Culture Likes" post at Beliefnet, humorist Stephanie Drury poked fun at signs — positioned so that they can be read only when people are leaving a church building or parking lot — that read, “You Are Now Entering the Mission Field.” They remind churchgoers to share God’s love with the people they encounter “out in the world.” In the act of leaving the property, Christians are being sent out, as it were, on a mission.
When I was growing up, the word mission was used exclusively for those self-sacrificing believers who packed their bags and moved to a hot and sometimes unpronounceable locale. (Remember trying to read the words “Irian Jaya” as a kid?) Missionaries sent annual prayer letters to supporters, cards which pictured large “quivers” of children whose names were taken from the Old Testament, never shortened into nicknames and often began with the same letter of the alphabet. “Christmas Greetings from Daniel and Esther . . . and Jacob, Jonathan, Jesse, Judith and Jemima — on the Mission Field in Konang!”
But times have changed. Now instead of being “called to the mission field,” all Christians are urged to “live missionally.” But what, for the love of Jacob, Jonathan, and Judith, does that mean? In a climate in which we throw around terms such as emergent, organic, and Church 2.0 with such frequency that they lose whatever meaning they might have begun with, is missional another trendy, soon-to-be ignored modifier?
Not if Helen Lee can help it. Lee is a journalist, home-schooling mom and is author of The Missional Mom: Living with Purpose at Home and in the World. Since her book’s publication, Lee has engaged others in the work of nailing down what “missional” really means. In a recent interview with author and New Testament scholar Scot McKnight, posted on her website, Lee asked McKnight what “this new buzzword” means and whether its “popularity [is] matched by its practice.”
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Why Barbie Needs Ken After All
The power couple's Valentine's Day reunion may just teach Barbie that the world doesn't revolve around her.
The saga of Barbie and Ken isn't exactly the Song of Solomon. For one thing, the Mattel match is made of plastic. For another, Mattel probably doesn't mean for the couple to teach us a lesson about God's prevailing love. Yet Barbie and Ken remain the power couple of toys, ranking right up there with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, thanks to Toy Story 3.
Barbie and Ken publicly “broke up” in 2004, when Mattel, faced with competition from dolls such as Bratz, was looking for media attention. Barbie sales have improved since then. Now, Mattel has launched a campaign to put Ken and Barbie back in the spotlight through social media, and on Valentine's Day, the couple got back together, and their love "is red-hot once again."
“Barbie and I are destined to be together, don't you think?” Ken tweeted earlier this month. He signed up on Match.com (see video) and dedicated a cupcake to Barbie in New York City. Mattel plastered Ken’s message to Barbie (“Barbie, I know we’re plastic but our love is real”) on billboards in major cities. Aside from expressing confusion on her own Twitter feed, Barbie so far has been passive in the campaign. You can vote on how Barbie should respond at BarbieandKen.com or on Facebook.
Ken has remained a part of Barbie’s story for 50 years, almost as long as Barbie has held a place in pop culture. Barbie has been just fine without him, navigating a career as a politician, doctor, teacher, coach, chef, astronaut, singer, race car driver, and dancer (and all without aging). She also dated an Australian surfer named Blaine. So the question has been raised: Does Barbie really need Ken back?
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Facebook Envy on Valentine's Day
Social media have given single people one more way to be reminded of what they don't have.
It’s Valentine’s Day: the day of flowers, candy, and candlelit dinners, that is, for those fortunate enough to be part of a happy couple. For others, Valentine’s Day can bring on a few twinges — of loneliness, pain, envy, resentment, or some combination thereof.
But things have changed a little in recent years. I don’t mean that lonely people no longer feel those twinges. What I mean is that now they get opportunities to feel them all year round.
An article in The Washington Post talks about the concept of “Facebook envy," that feeling that can ambush a person when scrolling through status updates and seeing happy announcements or reflections. According to reporter Ian Shapira, this is a rapidly growing phenomenon.
There's no shortage of people who feel pain while scrolling through Facebook: Chronically single people may envy friends' wedding pictures, for instance, and those who've lost a spouse can feel overwhelmed by friends' wedding anniversary announcements. Infertile couples say they protect themselves by hiding most, if not all, Facebook posts from pregnant friends who can't resist hitting the site's "Share" button to show off, say, the latest in maternity ware.Staffers at Shady Grove Fertility, a large provider of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments in Montgomery County, said more and more patients talk about Facebook envy during consultations. . . .
At the McLean-based National Infertility Association, executive director Barbara Collura said many couples cannot fathom why friends post so frequently about their pregnancies. "What you're hearing in the infertile world about their pregnant friends on Facebook is: 'My God, they're obsessed. There's no filter.' "
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'When Gender-Based Parenting Goes Too Far': Author Response
Glenn Stanton responds to our recent review of Secure Daughters, Confident Sons.
Editor's Note: When we asked frequent Her.meneutics blogger Caryn Rivadeneira to review Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity (Multnomah), we knew it would get her — and readers — on a roll. The book, from Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family, covers two of the most thorny topics in evangelical circles: gender differences and parenting styles. In her blogging and book-writing, Caryn has given much thought to both, and her review received many amens from readers, mostly women, who have experienced traditional definitions of femininity to be confining and untrue. Yet we also decided to give Stanton the space to further articulate his views on the two topics. Below is his response, which we hope will move the gender-and-parenting conversation beyond well-trod lines of debate.
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These days, most discussions on gender unfortunately gravitate to one of two extremes. Either we reduce gender to mere plumbing and social construction, or we have what I call the “pretty-in-pinks” and the “macho-Joes”: neat and easy, black and white, a good boy is rough and tumble, real girls are gentle and sweet, and so on. In Secure Daughters Confident Sons, I want to help parents explore the vast terrain that lies between these extremes. It’s where most of us live. Can we speak meaningfully and authentically about male and female while navigating the space between? It is the best place in which to do so.
My book takes Genesis 1:27 — and thus what it means to be gendered persons — very seriously. In fact, Christianity takes femininity very seriously, for it “images,” or reflects, God in the world like nothing else can. There is no bigger statement about how special it is to be a woman. And men do the same in their male uniqueness. To dismiss or oversimplify femaleness and maleness fails to appreciate one of God’s greatest and fundamental gifts. It is the first thing God tells us about ourselves, and it is the first question we ask about every new human (“is it a boy or girl?”). Secure Daughters Confident Sons examines through the lenses of Scripture and new insights from science the place where gender demonstrates itself most vividly: parenting.
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When Gender-Based Parenting Goes Too Far
A review of Glenn Stanton's Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity.
I have never once second-guessed my gender, my sexuality, or my femininity. But a new book has tempted me to. Even though I recently spent eight years either growing babies in my womb or feeding them from my breasts, according to Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity (Multnomah), I am in fact a man — and a good one at that.
Consider author Glenn Stanton’s description of what “makes a good man,” in the chapter “What Makes a Good Man?” These men are:
- Explorative
- Determined to deliver the goods
- Needing to know what’s next
- Opportunists
- Chance-takers
- Initiators
- Active and aggressive
- Competitive and dominant
I am all of these things, in one way or another. Now consider what Stanton, the director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family and author of several books on marriage and parenting, says “makes a good woman,” in the chapter “What Makes a Good Woman?” These women are:
- Confidently enticing
- Seekers of intimacy over action
- Wisely receptive
- Security-seekers
- Prefers of modesty
- Care-seekers
- Word-users
- Desirous of equity and submission
- Wielders of soft power
- All about connecting
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Carla Barnhill, America's Next Advice Columnist?
The mommy blogger and former Christian Parenting Today editor is one of the top four finalists to become Good Morning America's new "advice guru."
Two months ago, Carla Barnhill was just a multitasking mom from Minnesota who did freelance writing and editing on the side. After working at several Christianity Today sister publications in suburban Chicago — editing Campus Life for several years before helming Christian Parenting Today magazine — Barnhill returned to Minneapolis to raise a family, continue writing and editing, and teach a writing class as a Bethel University adjunct professor.
Today, Barnhill is on the brink of becoming a celebrity of sorts, as one of the final four candidates for the new “advice guru” for ABC’s Good Morning America (GMA). More than 15,000 applied for the gig, and Barnhill has impressed the GMA producers enough to make it to the final round. While viewers have been voting online (Barnhill and Cooper Boone are far ahead of the other two finalists), the final decision, to come in the next couple weeks, rests with GMA.
Barnhill was interviewed live on GMA last week by hosts George Stephanopoulos and Elizabeth Vargas. While the appearance went well, Barnhill emphasizes that the “advice guru” gig is a writing job. That’s what attracted her in the first place: “It’s a journalism job. It’s writing about people and their lives, in a way to help them out. That’s what I’ve always done, and that’s what I love to do most.” (See her latest advice on fear-filled parenting here.) CT senior associate editor Mark Moring spoke with Barnhill about the competition — and broke the glass ceiling as Her.meneutics’ first male contributor.
What are your strengths for being an advice guru?
The writing part. That’s what I’ve been doing for 15 years. I’m a pretty intuitive person. I have a good sense of people, of what makes relationships work. Every problem is really a relationship problem, when you get down to it. I’m good at helping people get to the root of their relationship challenges.
You told GMA that most people know what they should do, but that they just need a nudge.
I think most people are good and want their relationships to work. But we don’t always know what to do. We let other things get in the way, or we let ourselves get talked into something that we don’t want to do. Sometimes you’ve just got to weed through the muck with people and help them see, “This is the right thing to do. It’s not going to be easy, but here’s how you can do it in a way that will work.”
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'Skins' Prompts Call for Child Porn Investigation
This time, the Parents Television Council is probably right about the British export that spotlights teens (and teen actors) engaging in a sexual free-for-all.
Do you know what your teenagers are watching? If it’s 10 on a Monday night, you might want to check that it’s not what the Parents Television Council (PTC) has called “the most dangerous program that has ever been foisted on your children.” In response to PTC, Salon observed, with characteristic snark, that such warnings are the best PR a TV show can get. They may have a point: the pilot episode of Skins, airing this week on MTV, got the highest rating for a new scripted series ever, garnering 3.3 million viewers, which Entertainment Weekly calls a “strong start.” Most of those watching (2.7 million) were within the “coveted 12-34 demographic” group.
But I doubt the kids are paying much attention to the PTC. The show’s big splash was due to at least two other factors. First, Skins is based on a successful British version, which has even fewer moral boundaries than the American show. Second, it was greatly hyped through social media well before its debut, creating an online community of young fans before it even aired; within days of the premiere, it had nearly 10,000 Twitter followers.
Newsweek describes Skins as a “controversial new series” that “portrays teens as experimental and sex-obsessed, lying to their parents and sneaking out at night. In other words, it shows them as they really are.” Well, I was once a teen, so I find it hard to disagree with this characterization, but that doesn’t make the show okay.
Don’t get me wrong. My pop-culture sensibilities are far from sensitive. (I'm even a member of that secret cult of Christian women who surreptitiously watch Sex and The City – or at least the edited versions that have gone into syndication.) The problem with Skins isn’t just the elements that border on the pornographic or those that normalize rampant recreational drug use, same-sex relations, and various sexual experimentations. Nor is the problem solely that the show’s “depiction of such activities is on a scale never before seen on TV,” as the PTC puts it.
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Why I Don't Keep a Mommy Blog
In a world that’s as impersonal and voyeuristic as ours, I want the things I do at home to be just for the people I see and touch daily.
Both my husband’s grandma and mine were short women named Charlotte who played piano and sang. They lived and died on opposite coasts, mine in New York, his in California. His was plump, old-fashioned, devout, taught toddler Sunday school, and ran a cattle ranch. Mine was skinny, stylish, progressive, atheist, a New York City editorial assistant, and a terrible housekeeper. I share my Charlotte’s love for cocktails, crosswords, writing, and Woody Guthrie, and many of her political views and pet peeves. I share the other Charlotte’s faith, love of children, and a sliver of her domestic ability. I love hearing how she slaughtered chickens, raised vegetables, preserved fruits, milked cows, hand-cranked ice cream, and sewed her clothes. California Charlotte’s journals record dry facts about ranch life. New York Charlotte’s files are full of typewritten poems clipped to rejection slips from The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. For my Charlotte, baking anything would call her feminist credentials into question; for his Charlotte, aspiring to write for any eyes but her own would have been treason against her housewifely calling.
That public-private divide is no longer as sharp as it was in the Charlottes’ lifetime. On Salon this week, in “Why I Can't Stop Reading Mormon Housewife Blogs," Emily Matchar admires the presentation of domesticity on popular “Mormon mommy blogs,” such as Nat the Fat Rat, C. Jane Enjoy It, and Rockstar Diaries, for “help[ing] women like me envision a life in which marriage and motherhood could potentially be something other than a miserable, soul-destroying trap.” The bloggers celebrate their homes, their husbands, and their babies. They are domestic goddesses inclined to DIY-projects and pie-baking and never without red lipstick and adorable vintage accessories — or the digital camera to capture it all in cool, hipster-influenced style. Their readers — many of them, like Matchar, “late-20-something childless overeducated atheist feminists” — find comfort in their vision of old-fashioned yet hip domestic happiness. As for the bloggers themselves, they have managed to bridge the gap separating the lives of those two Charlottes: many of their blogs are full of sponsors; many offer the chance to purchase a bit of their DIY-cool through their Etsy or Big Cartel shops, having created their own bankable brands of domesticity.
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'Passport through Darkness' Gives Victims Voice
Make Way Partners president Kimberly Smith's book is a must-read for today, Human Trafficking Awareness Day.
Stifling heat vapors appear on the horizon. Laughing hyenas cackle too close for comfort in the bush. Take a step closer toward a dusty canvas tent. Meet Kimberly L. Smith and travel into her desert world as she pulls back the flap door of her “tent of meeting” (Ex. 33:7). In Passport through Darkness: A True Story of Danger and Second Chances (David Cook, 2011), Smith gives you a front-row seat to God’s work amid monstrous evil in Sudan, Peru, the Congo, and Romania — and inside Smith’s own heart. With courage and transparency, she recounts how God helped her face her fears and live through challenges in her work as president of Make Way Partners (MWP), a Christian anti-trafficking agency based in Birmingham, Alabama.
Kimberly and husband Milton first learned of human trafficking in 2002 while serving as missionaries in the Iberian Peninsula. They found children being trafficked through an orphanage, and spent the next two years learning all they could about what’s called the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, one that brings an estimated 17,500 people annually into the U.S. alone. The Smiths gathered information from books and governmental reports but also, most importantly, from spending time with victims of trafficking and those most vulnerable in the streets, sewers, deserts, and jungles. Now Smith is working to build the only private and indigenous anti-trafficking network in Africa and Eastern Europe.
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What Celebrity Miscarriages Teach Us
If famous folk can open up to the world about their pregnancy loss, why can't we in the church?
Suddenly, it seems as if miscarriage is everywhere. Famous folks from Barbara Bush to Mariah Carey have recently disclosed previous pregnancy losses. Lily Allen suffered her second miscarriage in November, and Lisa Ling shared her own grief following a miscarriage on a recent episode of The View. Kelsey Grammer and his fiancée, Kayte Walsh, released a statement in October confirming the loss of their unborn child six weeks earlier. Giuliana Rancic and husband Bill opened up about their miscarriage this fall. A topic that historically has seemed taboo has somehow become hot tabloid fodder. OMG.
Lack of privacy is a given for the celebs among us, for we live in a culture that is breathlessly absorbed by the minutiae of famous lives. And whether you’re a hard-core subscriber to US Weekly and People or someone like me, slyly dawdling in the grocery checkout line so I can catch the tabloid headlines out of the corner of my eye, you can’t miss the obsession with celebrity baby-bump-watching. As gossip mag Life & Style's editor in chief Dan Wakeford has observed, "They've always been popular with readers, stories on babies . . . It used to be celebrity weddings, but not anymore. It's all about babies." Celebrity pregnancies are confirmed on Twitter and talk shows, and reporters try to outdo one another in cutesy cleverness, using tired witticisms about “buns in the oven” and coyly talking about “baby daddies.” Celebs are inevitably “thrilled” and “so happy” to announce that they are “preggo.” And really, what else are they going to say?
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Another Assault on Little Girls
Vogue Paris's "Gifts" photo spread is one more example of how our culture robs children of innocence.
The most recent issue of Vogue Paris (or should I say l'issue de janvier/février?) struck a nerve when it hit newsstands, upsetting the very readers who count on the magazine to be provocative. They’re guaranteed it. Vogue Paris’s editor in chief, Carine Roitfeld, once told a British journalist that she tries to include “something every month that is — how you say? — not politically correct. A little bit at the limit. Sex, nudity, a bit rock'n'roll, a sense of humour.”
Wait, I should clarify: Roitfeld is French Vogue’s former editor. Within a few weeks of the December issue’s release, Roitfeld announced that she was leaving the magazine. Some commentators speculate that the Cadeaux, or, for English speakers, “Gifts,” photo spread went too far, even for French Vogue. What, in this unfailingly erotic publication, could be so troubling that it would arouse rumors such as that one?
In “Cadeaux,” the models are very slim — but that's nothing new. Nor is it earth-shattering that they wear too much makeup or that there is something suggestive in the picture of the model inexplicably holding a toothbrush in her mouth. Aren’t such photos de rigueur for Vogue? It couldn’t be the opulence of the props or that the stiletto-wearing models recline on animal skins. Nor should their blank (yet at the same time, somehow, hostile) expressions raise eyebrows. Non, c'est vrai, all of that is to be expected.
So what could be so bad that it could possibly have cost Roitfeld her job?
I suppose the fact that the models are no older than six or seven years old might have something to do with it.
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Our Favorite Books by Women
Or at least the ones that we read in 2010.
Instead of pulling together a predictable "best of 2010" books list, we at Her.meneutics thought our readers would enjoy a list of our favorite books written by women that we read throughout the year. Enjoy our recommendations, and add your own in the comments section.
Embracing Your Second Calling, by Dale Hanson Bourke (2010)
This book doesn't cover every facet of mid-life, but does a terrific job exploring the emotional and spiritual transformation that must happen in our souls at midlife. This meaty book doesn't rely on shopworn Christian cliches; in fact, Bourke's transparency about her own ambitions, losses, bitterness, and stumbling steps into her own third act are a refreshing companion on the journey to surrendering to God's purposes for the rest of our lives. ~Michelle Van Loon
The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time, by Judith Shulevitz (2010)
Sabbath, says Shulevitz, “is not only an idea. It is also something you keep. With other people." After spending my first 30 years keeping Sabbath with Seventh-day Adventists, I read quite a few Protestant books on Sabbath-keeping by people who liked the idea but had little experience of the practice. In Shulevitz, a semi-observant Jew, I finally found a contemporary author who gets it. Her survey, written as a memoir but packed with fascinating information, covers Christian as well as Jewish approaches to Sabbath-keeping. ~LaVonne Neff
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
To tell the story of a generation of African Americans who migrated from the Jim Crow South to northern cities in search of a better life, Wilkerson follows the lives of three people who made the trek. You'll be immersed in their stories even as you gain a rich new perspective on the courageous, difficult, and often-misunderstood journey they made. ~Hannah Faith Notess
The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God, by Leslie Leyland Fields, ed. (2010)
I don’t generally include an edited book among my favorites; this one is an exception, and I’ve been feasting and savoring it bit by bit for six months. Essays (most written by women) move between personal stories from their kitchens and thoughtful reflections, drawing me into deeper thinking about faith and food. We are invited to remember God’s bounty, our dependence on those mostly invisible laborers and processes that provide us with food, and to think about eating in ways that reflect good stewardship of all creation, including humans, animals, soil, plants, water, and air. Fields reminds us that an act so ordinary as eating is also deeply spiritual, and that eating well involves more than balancing nutrients and food groups. Essays end with a favorite recipe from each author; I highly recommend trying the perfect loaf of bread from the Sullivan Street Bakery. ~Lisa Graham McMinn
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi (2003)
This book recalls a clandestine book club in which the author and several other women read and discussed classic works of Western literature that had been forbidden by the Islamic revolutionaries during the Iranian Revolution. Nafisi’s story is a compelling testament to the power of literature and to the way in which the freedom to read is inextricably tied to political and religious freedom. ~Karen Swallow Prior
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'Tangled,' Kate Middleton, and Modern Princesses
Why Disney's newest fairy tale — and England's real-life one — give me hope for my 6-year-old niece.
It's a case of ironic timing: while media are enthralled by the prospect of another royal wedding, the Los Angeles Times reports that Disney's newest animated feature, Tangled, marks the end of its fairy tale era. (Disney countered that “the Disney fairytale,” at least, is alive and well.)
According to writers Dawn C. Chmielewski and Claudia Eller, young girls aren't that interested in playing princess anymore. The ideal of "femininity" has been supplanted by TV "tweens" such as Miley Cyrus and striving to be "cool" or "hot." Chmielewski and Eller say such ideals have replaced the princess tropes, which revolve around "finding the man of your dreams."
In my opinion, the modern pop starlet is just the less-clothed equivalent of the fairy princess, since little girls who dream of becoming Miley Cyrus are rarely thinking about the work involved in her job. So this doesn’t seem like a step forward to me. And even though idolizing a princess for marrying a prince doesn’t seem healthy, idolizing Lady Gaga is no better.
Disney’s attempt in Tangled to reinvent the tale of Rapunzel resulted in a much more traditional romance than Disney classics Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, which were about finding love while vanquishing evil. Mourning the possible "end of fairy tales," pastor Mike Cosper notes at The Gospel Coalition that they introduce children to the idea of meta-narrative. He writes, "Maybe the idea of being part of a larger story (like the redeemed kingdom of Sleeping Beauty) doesn’t connect to a world of narcissism, where the story is all about us (like Hannah Montana)." Likewise, First Things notes that Tangled effectively loses the moral context of the traditional fairy tale, in part by “streamlin[ing] its heroine, who still lives in a medieval tower, into a girl of contemporary spunk, daring, and godlessness.”
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Virtual Flirting Comes to Christian Colleges
Is LikeaLittle.com, the newest fad in Internet dating, a fun diversion or an impediment to healthy community?
A few weeks ago, a student at Cedarville University tipped me off to the latest craze to hit college campuses: LikeaLittle.com. She only half-jokingly ended her e-mail to me with the warning to “creep with care.” LikeaLittle is a new website whose tagline is, “dangerously exciting anonymous flirting experience.” Currently it targets college students, but it appears that anyone can post a comment, including faculty and staff.
Although LikeaLittle debuted on October 25, 2010, it appears it's about to go viral. Site statistics show that the number of Facebook “likes” increased by ten thousand since I started researching it two weeks ago (jumping from 2,000-plus to 12,395 upon last inspection). At Cedarville, where I work, Facebook “likes” and “shares” have increased by over 100 percent in the past five days (from 129 to 245).
The website, the brainchild of 2009 Stanford alum Kevin Reas, allows students, in tweet-like fashion, to anonymously and publicly post flirts about people they encounter or hope to encounter. Reas and the other founders say the site functions as a “flirting facilitator platform.” He explains that it "was born at Stanford in part due to my lack of game with women.”
Once students sign in to their college’s LikeaLittle site, they can anonymously post flirts. Upon posting, a student is randomly assigned the name of a fruit, such as "Kiwi" or "Strawberry." Each time a student starts a new comment thread, he or she receives a new fruit name in order to ensure anonymity.
Here are two comments that I plucked from the LikeaLittle pages of several Christian campuses. (The site has arrived at Calvin, Biola, Gordon, Indiana Wesleyan, Grove City, Houghton, and Geneva.) These range from the seemingly harmless:
Male, Brunette. I like how you walk soooo slowly. It's mysterious. And you have cool hair.
to the downright explicit (referencing a Bloodhound Gang song):
Male, Brunette. You and me baby aint nothing but mammals so lets do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.
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Christ Lifts the Widow's Veil
In The Undistracted Widow, Carol Cornish says her husband’s death opened a door to dependence on God that marriage had not permitted
“How do you celebrate a wedding anniversary with only half of a couple?” asked Margaret Nyman only 26 days short of being wed to Nate for 40 years. Her husband, who had succumbed to pancreatic cancer six weeks after his diagnosis, passed away surrounded by his wife and seven grown children. Like many of Margaret’s widow friends had already realized before her, losing her husband to death turned Margaret's life upside-down and brought uncertainty at every turn.
The unwelcome transition into widowhood is traumatic and often misunderstood by those who have not been affected by such a loss. But since most women will outlive their husbands, it is reasonable to anticipate that many of us will be widows in our lifetime. And despite the fact that many mental-health professionals gauge the death of a spouse the number one stressor a person will face in their lifetime, most women are caught unaware of the significant challenges they must navigate once their husbands are gone.
Carol Cornish, in The Undistracted Widow: Living for God After Losing Your Husband (Crossway, 2010), provides hope and direction for widows who desire to remain devoted to God despite the harsh storms that accompany their new season of life. Even though scriptural encouragement for widows is plentiful, Christian widows are often scrambling for resources that speak to their specific pain and heartache. Grief and bereavement groups may provide social support and connection, but the woman seeking to embrace her widowhood from a God-honoring perspective may easily come up short or be led astray by worldly counsel about where to find comfort in a time of loss.
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'Hallelujah' Comes to the Food Court
Why one performance of Handel's Messiah has attracted an audience of over 7 million.
Bored mall shoppers eat in a food court that could be anywhere in North America. Innocuous holiday music plays in the background. Suddenly, a woman poking at her fast-food tray, cell phone held to her ear, stands up and begins to sing: Hallelujah! A man in a gray hoodie and a few days' stubble joins her, as does a couple who appear to be in line for food. Suddenly, the entire food court is alive with singing, utterly ordinary people rising to their feet and belting out, The Kingdom of this world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
Some of the non-singing shoppers look embarrassed; some look enchanted. Some have risen to their feet, keeping alive the tradition of King George II, who, at the London debut of Handel’s Messiah in 1743, stood for the Hallelujah chorus, which praises Christ as the King of Kings. Tradition dictates that one does not sit in royalty’s presence.
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Steve Johnson's Genie-in-a-Bottle God
The Buffalo Bills' wide receiver blamed the Lord via Twitter after he dropped the winning touchdown pass in a 19-16 loss to the Steelers.
Steve Johnson was having a very bad, horrible, terrible day. The 24-year-old wide receiver had the opportunity to give the Buffalo Bills one of their sweetest victories: an unexpected win against the Steelers in overtime.
But he dropped the ball, in the end zone of all places.
Johnson said he will never get over dropping that pass. No matter how long he lives, no matter how many winning touchdown passes he caught before this one, or how many he’ll catch after this one, his obit is going to mention that dadgum dropped ball.
In his frustration, Johnson sent out a tweet not long after the losing game:
I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!!“AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO…”Johnson sent that message to God.
God has an iPhone?
God tweets?
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Wired Magazine's Women Problem
A provocative close-up of a woman's body on a recent Wired cover generated controversy. How should Christians react?
Perhaps you’ve seen some of the controversy around the December cover of Wired magazine. The cover is a close-up image of a pair of Caucasian breasts, referencing the cover story about a new bio-technology that allows women to grow more of their own breast tissue after mastectomy or for cosmetic reasons. While the technology is currently being used for breasts, it has potential to help repair other kinds of organ damage. The cover is certainly provocative and has garnered some complaints.
My husband and I subscribe to Wired and both really like their articles. In general, we find the magazine interesting and thought-provoking. We haven’t been too excited to read this particular issue, though, because the cover is so off-putting; we definitely don’t bring it out and about with us to read in waiting rooms or on public transit. It looks like a cover of Playboy. Not exactly the impression I want to make with strangers or colleagues.
Journalism professor and blogger Cindy Royal expands the critique of this cover to Wired’s whole history of covers. Wired editor Chris Anderson defends his editorial decisions in the comments section, and I’m sympathetic to his position. I think it’s unfair for Royal to dismiss the way Wired celebrates Martha Stewart and Sarah Silverman but count a Will Ferrell cover as celebrating men. I’m also torn about my desire to hold media I consume to a higher standard than the rest of the culture. After all, the tech industry is far from the only industry with a woman problem, and Wired isn’t the only magazine that regularly promotes men’s achievements more than women’s. (Publishers Weekly created a list of the “Best Books of 2009” that didn’t include a single female author, and only one man of color.) My point is that Wired, like everything else, is a product of a fallen world, and when you try to make money in a sexist culture, it’s easy to compromise or not notice your own privilege. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t critique sexism when we find it, but it does mean that well-meaning people frequently participate in a culture of sexism without realizing it.
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In the Shadow of Miscarriage
Elise Erikson Barrett's What Was Lost aims to help women who have suffered miscarriage reconnect with God.
Miscarriage has been in the news cycle recently. Former President Bush confessed in an interview last week that his mother, after miscarrying, kept the baby in a jar and showed it to her young son. Bush says that act solidified his pro-life stance and went on to shape his presidential policies. His confession started a conversation about cultural attitudes toward miscarriage in post-war America and today.
Contemporary American culture offers plenty of rituals surrounding birth and death. We know how to hold baby showers, congratulate new parents, offer condolences, attend funerals, and bring casseroles through it all. Why is it, then, that we don't seem to know what to do after a miscarriage? The grief that women experience after miscarriage is intense, and the people around them — family, friends, and co-workers — are often unable fully to understand that grief, finding themselves at a loss for words and acts that might bring comfort. Women themselves may find themselves surprised and confused by their own grief, struggling to walk through it and to understand it in light of the Christian faith. Though I've never had to walk down that particular valley, chances are that you or someone close to you has walked it: The American Pregnancy Association estimates that between 10 and 25 percent of all medically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage.
Which is why Elise Erikson Barrett’s recently published book is for you.
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Why I Boycotted Amazon This Week
When it comes to how-to books for pedophiles, defending the defenseless is more important than defending free speech.
I jumped on a bandwagon Wednesday. I was one of the thousands who tweeted out against Amazon.com’s decision to carry on its Kindle store the e-book The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-lover's Code of Conduct.
According to Philip R. Greaves II, his self-published book would “make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certain rules for these adults to follow.” Greaves hoped “to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter [sic] sentences should they ever be caught.”
Ah, lovely. This book, for sale at the same place I regularly order Christmas gifts for my own children. The ones this guy would probably want to molest, albeit “safely,” thereby receiving a “liter” sentence for doing so were he caught. I don’t think so.
So, even though I love Amazon, even though my own book is sold there, and even though I’m grateful Amazon gives us writers a chance to be read and critiqued and ranked, I joined the masses in an “#amazonfail” Twitter campaign. While others called for boycotts and aggressively shamed the company, I simply tweeted, “Glad to have ordered the new Wimpy Kid from @Borders. @Amazon, pull that pedophilia book! #amazonfail”
But even though my words didn’t scathe or scare, I wrestled with what I had written. With what I was asking Amazon to do. As a lifelong lover of books and language and ideas, I seemed to be joining the ranks of the old-school book burners, of those who took offense to a word or an image or an idea and moved to ban it from public discourse. But now, instead of burning a barrel of books on the library steps (I’m imagining that scene from Footloose), we were burning virtual books on Twitter.
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Friday Night Lights' Shining Female Lead
Why Tami Taylor is the best female character on television today.
Whenever I encourage someone to watch Friday Night Lights — which happens often, as I’m quite evangelistic about my TV shows — the response is always the same: “But that’s a football show.”
For most shows, I would leave it at that and move on. But Friday Night Lights, currently airing its fifth season on DirecTV on Wednesdays at 9/8c, with a run on NBC this spring, is not most shows. And while football is central to the residents of Dillon, Texas, anyone who has watched one episode can attest that their lives are about much more than football. At its core, this is a show about marriage and family and the everyday moments that make up a life.
The show revolves around Eric and Tami Taylor, the coach and guidance counselor at East Dillon High School in rural west Texas. In the season five premiere, the Taylors are practically the only remaining original cast members, and their marriage anchors the show. They impact the kids of East Dillon not just as coach and counselor but by example, their lives and love modeling what many of the teens don’t have at home.
Slate calls the Taylors’ marriage “the defining achievement of FNL, quite possibly the greatest marriage in television history.” New York magazine called the Taylors “the only living grown-ups on television: complicated, emotionally alive, intimate, and totally in love.”
And I’ll just come out and say it: I want to be Tami Taylor. Not until I started watching FNL did I realize the dearth of strong female role models on television. Like many women, Taylor wears many hats: wife, coach’s wife, mother, counselor, sister, friend. But what’s striking about Tami is that she often finds herself in situations where she does not know what to do, yet forges ahead and honestly addresses the situation head-on. Sincerity is her hallmark.
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Apple Takes a Bite Out of Sexting
Is a parental-control device the best way to teach teens that sending sexually explicit texts is a bad idea?
Apple recently secured a patent for technology that would allow the company to read, and censor, iPhone text messages. The patent was almost immediately dubbed an “anti-sexting device,” despite the fact the actual patent title is “Text-based communication control for personal communication device.”
The idea is that text messages will be subjected to a control system — an algorithm or perhaps an underpaid intern — that will flag objectionable content and prevent it from being sent. The logic is similar to that behind the TV Guardian, a device that filters so-called “mature” content from television and movies, based on a series of filters that users can turn on or off. (Perhaps this reveals my immaturity, but when reading through the list of TV Guardian options, “Hell/Damn Filter” made me snicker.)
I couldn’t find any statistics on how many homes own a TV Guardian, but I’m willing to bet it’s less than the number of people who own an iPhone.
The proposed Apple technology contains some laughable aspects, such as a grammar option, which would allow parents to set up alerts whenever their children’s texts contained an assault on the English language. This description, from the patent itself and quoted in PC World, sums it up nicely:
"A parent can . . . institute a condition to improve a child's grades. For example, the control application may require a user during specified time periods to send messages in a designated foreign language, to include certain designated vocabulary words, or to use proper designated spelling, designated grammar and designated punctuation and like designated language forms based on the user's defined skill level and/or designated language skill rating."
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Why Sex Ruins TV Romances
And it's not for the reasons you think.
If you’re a fan of USA’s Psych, as I am, chances are you went berserk when Shawn and Juliet finally kissed in the summer finale. Fans shrieked and squealed; message boards were overrun with ecstatic crowds; my best friend sent me multiple e-mails in all caps. It was big.
Yet for all the excitement, something felt a little . . . off.
It had to do with the fact that during the episode, Juliet had already slept with a new boyfriend and now was planning to go on a trip with him. It was in the foyer of this man’s home, while he was in another room, that she kissed Shawn.
For some viewers, maybe these circumstances would have added an extra thrill to the proceedings. For many of us, it put a damper on them.
I’m not just dumping on Jules here, because Shawn has been in bed with other women throughout the show. It’s not as if these sexual encounters have been overemphasized or graphic. But they happened — and that matters.
I don’t just mean it matters in a moral and spiritual sense, though it does. It also matters to the story. In fact, I believe American culture’s widespread acceptance of premarital sex is wrecking many of our most popular love stories.
Consider some of your favorite shows, and you may recognize the pattern. Some modern unwritten rule decrees that couples mustn’t marry until the end, or nearly the end, of a TV series, because it would ruin the all-important sexual tension. Yet this doesn’t preclude sex. They are allowed and even expected to have plenty of that, with each other and with others.
And that can warp a love story. Instead of being able to get emotionally invested in a couple’s growing attraction and root for them, we are stymied over and over again as one or the other ends up hopping into bed with someone else. Or we watch them share a bed for so long that actually making a lifelong commitment seems like an afterthought.
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Her.meneutics' Favorite Picture Books
We happen to think they aren't going away anytime soon.
Splashed across the front page of The New York Times last week was a sobering report on the demise of picture books, a long-standing staple of children's literature. According to the NYT, more parents are giving their children text-heavy books instead in preparation for rigorous standardized testing. As one bookstore manager said, “I see children pick up picture books, and then the parents say, ‘You can do better than this, you can do more than this.’ It’s a terrible pressure parents are feeling — that somehow, I shouldn’t let my child have this picture book because she won’t get into Harvard.”
We at Her.meneutics don't believe picture books are going away anytime soon. Our blog roll includes many writers who are parents and have found a handful of picture books to be an essential part of her family's bedtime ritual. One blogger, Elrena Evans, even has completed Ph.D. work in children's literature. As for myself, I grew up with a mom who was a children's librarian and who still insists on reading picture books to her grown-up children. We took the NYT report as a chance to reiterate our appreciation for how picture books ignite our and our children's early imaginations and quicken our awe at God's big world. Here are some of our favorites. Share yours in the comments section below.
The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein
I’ve deeply appreciated this book since the first time I read it, around first grade. I am pulled into Silverstein’s delightful story and illustrations about a tree who over and over again, joyfully and without reservation, gives of herself to provide for a boy. It is a story about love and self-sacrifice. Since childhood, I’ve wondered how the tree could be so utterly selfless. ~Marlena Graves
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg
Our family engaged this book with our children in the 1980s and '90s. Each page is a beautifully illustrated black and white drawing, a "mystery" with a title and first line. The rest of the story gets crafted by the parents' and children's imagination. Mark, my husband, used the book with our daughters more than I did, because he was the master storyteller. They would pick a page, and he would spin a tale. It's a marvelous way to bring storytelling back into our and our children's imaginations. ~Lisa Graham McMinn
Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch
This book was a family favorite when my children were young. It’s about the commitment of parents and children to care for one another throughout the stages of life. When my son Gabriel died, his brother placed our worn copy in his coffin. This year I found another copy that Gabriel gave me as a gift in 2004. Inside he wrote a note saying how much it meant to him that I had read to him and his brother when they were young. He also promised to take care of me when I am old like the son in the book takes care of his mother when she is too old to care for him. My son couldn't keep that promise, but I deeply cherish the thought that he wanted to, and it speaks to the power of picture books that this one's message resonated with him and his brother into adulthood. ~Christine A. Scheller
Time of Wonder, by Robert McCloskey
While I enthusiastically recommend McCloskey's better-known books — Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine, and Make Way for Ducklings — I urge readers not to overlook his lesser-known 1957 Caldecott winner. Dreamy watercolor illustrations and second-person narration envelop the reader in a meditative space perfectly suited to the book's subject: the end of a family's summer vacation at the seashore in Maine. The book explores the beauty, power, and mystery of nature with a subtle yet reverent awareness of a Creator. In a time when children have too much stuff and little time outdoors, Time of Wonder's pace and focus is refreshingly slow, thoughtful, and does what the best literature does — expands the reader's love for life outside its pages. ~Rachel Stone
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Freed by Bill Clinton, Saved by Jesus
The World Is Bigger Now recounts Christian journalist Euna Lee’s imprisonment in a North Korean jail.
Three Christians in the past year have drawn attention to North Korea’s repressive regime by crossing the river that divides the Communist nation from China. But unlike activists Robert Park and Aijalon Gomes, who wanted to get arrested, Euna Lee was just trying to do her job: reporting for Current TV on the plight of North Korean defectors. On March 17, 2009, she and fellow journalist Laura Ling were dragged by soldiers across the frozen Tumen River, then separated, interrogated, and imprisoned for five months.
In month four, Lee, a South Korean Christian, began walking and praying seven hours every day. And the walls of Jericho came tumbling down: After mounting pressure from human-rights groups and the intervention of Bill Clinton, the women were sent home on August 4. Days later, Lee was worshiping alongside husband Michael and daughter Hana at The Rock Church in San Diego.
In The World Is Bigger Now (Broadway), Lee recounts her efforts to retain hope and trust in God amid a 12-year prison sentence and threats of never seeing her family again.
You start the book by describing being dragged across the Tumen River by North Korean soldiers. You write, “As a Christian I always believed God would protect me. But where was he now? Why wasn’t he helping us?” As you look back on your hardships in prison, where was God?
When we were violently dragged by the North Korean soldiers from the Chinese side, I screamed for help, and I hoped that God would send somebody to rescue me from the situation. When I realized that no one was coming, I was desperate, and I felt so defeated.
I prayed every day crying out for help, but at the same time I was trying to figure things out by myself — what I could do, what I could not do. But whenever I told God, “Okay, it’s in your hands, I trust you,” all the burdens lifted from my shoulders. And there was a period of time that I got letters from my husband and friends and brothers and sisters from church, and all the letters told me that my husband and my daughter were okay. It felt like God telling me, “Don’t worry about them. They’re in my hands.”
Even though there were times I was impatient with God’s answer and was mad at him — I yelled at him and [called him] a liar — he sustained me. I journaled almost every day, and I made a wish list of things I wanted to do when I got home. One day recently, my husband and I realized we had done a lot of the activities on the list without planning. We were talking at our dining table, and we said, “God is so good. He is good.”
How did your faith inform your journalism work and your decision to go to North Korea on assignment with CurrentTV?
I believe God gives people different talent and wants to use them. As an editor, I was always looking for a bigger purpose [for] why God would put me in this position. When I learned about the North Korean defectors' situation from the documentary Seoul Train, I knew I had to something to help those people. And then when I was given the opportunity to tell their story, I was excited. I felt I finally found something that God wanted me to do.
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Top 10 Posts of the Summer
For those wanting to get back to the park and the poolside, here's a retrospective round-up, a list of the most-read posts from June to September. Enjoy!
(10) Confessions of a Church-Skipping Mom, by Ellen Painter Dollar // Comments: 33
Is it better to attend church burnt out and stressed, or occasionally stay home but miss corporate worship?
(9) Sexy Evangelism, by Amy Julia Becker // Comments: 31
Why our narrative about sex, dating, and marriage is a gospel priority.
(8) How Many Kids Should We Have? by Amy Julia Becker // Comments: 30
To answer the question, Christian couples need more than a few select Bible verses.
(7) Not Everyone Is Praying for Christopher Hitchens Today, by Karen Spears Zacharias, guest blogger // Comments: 38
I worry that Christians have jumped on praying for the atheist just to reaffirm their own faith.
(6) Little Girls and Single Ladies, by Elrena Evans // Comments: 13
The backlash to the video of 8-year-olds gyrating to Beyonce suggests there's still hope for our culture.
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Why There's No Narnia in Our Home
Forget Slaughterhouse Five — there's enough bloodshed in some of the best children's literature to raise my parenting fears.
Banned Books Week got off to a rousing start this year with the publication of a letter from Wesley Scroggins, Missouri State University professor of management, in The Springfield News-Leader. The letter, “Filthy books demeaning to Republic education,” listed books on Scroggins’s hit list, including Speak, Slaughterhouse Five, and Twenty Boy Summer, all of which are on the syllabus at the local public high school or recommended reading in the school library. Scroggins enumerated some of the books' offensive material, imploring parents and taxpayers to ask if this was how they wanted to spend their money and educate their children.
If nothing else, Scroggins’s letter shows that we’re still pretty divided on the subject of banned books, especially about what is and is not appropriate material for children.
Last year, in her Her.meneutics post about Banned Books Week, Ruth Moon concluded, “If we are going to get up in arms (rightly, I would argue) about banning things that are offensive to others, we at times have to be willing to take criticism and swallow offense ourselves. If all truth really is God’s truth, well, the truth can set us free, if we let it.” I spent some time thinking about truth and its role in literature — specifically children’s literature — last week, as I examined some of my own book-banning practices.
I shocked myself by becoming a book-banner the week I learned I was pregnant with my first child. At the time, I was enrolled in a Ph.D. program in children’s literature, and some of the books subsequently adorning my shelves I didn’t think suitable for my coming child. I wanted to have an open-shelf policy in our household of a thousand or so books, so any children’s book I didn't want a young child to read, I simply put in a box. Just for now.
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Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and a Young Man's Death
Why I hold Facebook's founder complicit — at least in part — for the suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi.
In 1998 while working as a reporter in Oregon, I wrote about the rising trend toward younger, more violent criminal offenders. "We've been warned that we are going to be dealing with a whole generation of kids without a conscience," said Maj. Larry Rowan, the county jailer. "The basic stuff we were all born with, that makes you feel bad when you do wrong — they don't have it."
I thought of that comment after hearing about the suicide of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi. The Rutgers University freshman jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate, Dharun Ravi, 18, and friend Molly Wei, 18, reportedly secretly filmed Clementi engaging in a sexual encounter with another male.
Ravi then allegedly posted a link to his Twitter account, providing a live feed from the hidden web-cam. Twitter accounts can and often are linked directly to Facebook pages, granting access to friends and gawkers near and far.
Shortly before his death, Clementi posted a message to his own Facebook account for all the world to see: "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."
Wei and Ravi are now facing charges of invasion of privacy. There are some, myself included, who wish the two were facing manslaughter charges. Although the third-degree offenses could earn them five years in prison, the media campaign to exonerate the guilty is already under way.
Wei and Ravi's lawyers claim that this was no hate crime. Ravi, his friends say, is an open-minded fellow. Wei's lawyers say she is the one who has been treated wrongly. This, they say, is nothing more than a bad prank gone awry. Boredom turned to horrordom.
I'm not buying it. Wei and Ravi aren't 13-year-old punks clawing for bragging rights in the junior-high lunch room. They are students at one of the nation's most notable schools. A basic four-year education at Rutgers runs upward of $100,000 or more. It has been reported that Ravi had a near perfect SAT score.
Any kid capable of writing an essay that grants them entrance into Rutgers knows the difference between a prank and invasion of privacy. But then, maybe Maj. Rowan had it right to begin with. Maybe Wei and Ravi lack that basic stuff you and I were born with, the thing that makes you feel bad when you do wrong: a conscience.
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Domestic Abuse: Coming to a Church Near You
Christian filmmaker Olivia Klaus goes inside California prisons to hear the stories of survivors of domestic violence who killed their husbands.
“How long am I to remain in this relationship?” This is the haunting question 65-year-old Glenda Crosley asks in the documentary Sin by Silence, about the abusive husband she killed in 1986. She has been in prison for as long as she was married — 24 years — and wonders when her ordeal will be over.
In the film, shot almost entirely inside the California Institution for Women, Crosley says the first time her husband, Sam, “truly got physical” was when she was eight months pregnant with their second child. He shoved her into a wall. Eventually she came to believe that the violence wouldn’t end until one of them was dead. According to The Bakersfield Californian, at the time of Sam’s murder, the couple was separated and having an argument in a parking lot. When Sam walked away from her car to the trunk of his, she believed he was going to get the tire iron he had threatened her with the week before. She rammed him once, drove away, then turned her car and hit him again. He died at the scene.
Elizabeth Leonard is the author of Convicted Survivors and a professor at Vanguard University, a Christian college in Costa Mesa, California. She says in the film that women who leave abusive relationships are often subject to “separation assault” and are 75 percent more likely to be murdered than before they left. So the answer to the question: Why didn’t she just leave? is not a simple one. In the same 2009 Bakersfield Californian article, Crosley’s daughter Stacy is quoted as saying she remembers her mother trying to leave several times and each of them ending with her father’s rage. She even blames herself for her father’s death because one of the times her mother returned was because a judge wouldn’t release her from a group home unless her parents were living together.
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Why Parenting May Be Your 'Highest' Calling
Researchers re-vamp Maslow's famed hierarchy of needs, replacing "self-actualization" with something more self-giving.
I’ve been following the comments on Amy Julia Becker’s latest Her.meneutics post with some interest. When the time came for my husband and I to make and act on a decision regarding the schooling of our eldest (a decision-making process that began long before said child was even conceived), I made a mental list of friends and acquaintances who were going to criticize our decision, no matter what choices we made. If we public school, these people will criticize; if we private school, those people will criticize; if we homeschool, still others will criticize. I didn’t make the list in order to sway our decision one way or the other, simply to be ready for the inevitable backlash we would — did — face.
Reading the comments on Amy Julia’s post, I’m saddened at some of the replies. Why is it that so many people, perhaps especially parents, feel the need to justify their own decisions by criticizing the decisions of others? At the risk of sounding like all I want is to hold hands and sing “Kumbaya," why can’t we all decide to support each other, acknowledging that every family is different and that God has different plans for our lives? Imagine if we could spend half the time we currently invest in criticizing other Christian families asking, instead, how we might best support them in the choices they have made, as their brothers and sisters in Christ?
It’s interesting that this conversation should take place at a time when psychologists are considering a shift to famed psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Long a fixture in the training of educators and workforce managers, Maslow’s pyramid argues that humans’ basic needs (food, water, air, sleep) must be met before they can begin to seek other, “higher” fulfillments. It makes sense: bereft of basic needs, people can’t concentrate on bigger goals. I saw this pyramid again and again when in college, minoring in education, used to stress that a child who feels hungry, tired, and unsafe is really not going to care about learning algebra, and with good reason.
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The Unfunny Side of Modern Feminism
What I observed at Double X's recent event on women and comedy.
Is feminism funny or humorless? That was the question asked and evaluated at a Slate event I attended in New York City two weeks ago called Double X Presents: The Smoking Bra: Women and Comedy. I thought the question was worth exploring because, like so many contentious topics, feminism doesn’t often inspire laughter. The problem is, I was looking in the wrong place for an answer.
I would describe the comedy event in detail, but doing so would violate Philippians 4:8, which instructs us to think on things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. Much of what I saw and heard was anything but that.
Double X editor Jessica Grose opened by introducing a “pioneering” female comedian whose claim to fame was passing gas on stage. Next, Second City alumnus Jenny Hagel, showed a film in which she plays an uptight gender studies professor who tries to convince a thief that she is a feminist, whether the thief likes the label or not. When reason doesn’t work, Hagel turns to rap. Some of her nimble descriptions are compelling, like when she says a feminist is someone who knows that if a guy buys her pie, she doesn’t owe him sex. Others are trite, like when she suggests a feminist is excessively curious about her own genitalia. Megan Kellie then showed a video of crass street interviews asking the question: Why do men think their private parts are funny and women don’t?
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The Trouble with Confessing in Church
As blogger Anne Jackson's new book makes clear, our church culture will need to change before individual confession won't turn into gossip.
I’ve come to believe that an institutional church is not a safe place for one person’s confession.Several years ago, while we were attending a small nondenominational church, Pastor Donn* announced at the end of Sunday worship that we would have a special mid-week meeting. “It’s important that all members attend,” he emphasized. “We have an important family matter to discuss.”
Most of the hundred or so members who showed up Wednesday watched Pastor Donn summon the Hickmans, respected leaders in the congregation, and their pale 16-year-old daughter, Missy, to the front of the sanctuary. He put his arm around Missy’s shoulders and told us he’d summoned us in order to snuff out gossip about Missy before it had a chance to begin.
He then asked Missy to confess her sin to us. Without lifting her eyes, the tearful, trembling young woman told us she had just found out she was pregnant. Missy’s boyfriend, the birth dad, did not attend the church and wasn’t present that night.
I couldn’t deny that the congregation rallied around the Hickmans throughout Missy’s pregnancy and into the first years of motherhood. But Missy was never again just Missy. She became Missy the project, Missy the Girl Who Got Pregnant and Stood Up in Front of the Entire Church. And while the meeting effectively cauterized gossipy tongues and rallied prayer and practical support for the Hickmans, it also served to make Missy Exhibit A whenever the church’s youth pastors gave an abstinence sermon for the next year or so.
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Not Everyone Is Praying for Christopher Hitchens Today
I worry that Christians have jumped on praying for the atheist just to reaffirm their own faith.
One of this generation’s most celebrated atheists, Christopher Hitchens, is dying. He has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
Since his cancer was made public, people of various faith traditions have been encouraging others to pray for the man who penned God Is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything, an indulgent bestseller rant against all things God. There’s an online push designating September 20 as Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day. There’s a Facebook page for those committed to Praying for Christopher Hitchens. Robert Barron, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, wrote an essay for CNN on “Why Christians should pray for Christopher Hitchens.” And Larry Taunton, executive director of the Fixed Point Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama, has issued a video blog urging Christians to pray for Hitchens.
Taunton recently drove to Washington, D.C., to fetch Hitchens and carry him back to Birmingham for a previously scheduled debate about all things God with David Berlinski, author of The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions. A reported 1,200 people turned up for the event.
Asked what he considered the most damaging tenet of the Christian faith, Hitchens said, “The idea of vicarious redemption is a disgusting moral teaching . . . it abandons moral responsibility. Faith is a refuge in cowardice.”
Hitchens is no lightweight atheist. He considers faith the least admirable of all virtues. He doesn’t even like the term "atheist" because it leaves too much wiggle room for the notion of God. In his most current book, Hitch-22, a memoir, he says, “I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with ‘you’ in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. That modesty is too arrogant for me.”
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Anorexia and the Body of Christ
Harriet Brown's success story using family based treatment for her daughter's eating disorder suggests we all could stand to share meals.
Harriet Brown’s new memoir, Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia, challenges popular beliefs about eating disorders. Many psychologists and nutritionists say that getting anorexics to eat won’t work until “underlying psychological issues” are dealt with, yet many anorexics die before that can happen. The deadliest of all psychological disorders, anorexia has an abysmal recovery rate: 30 to 40 percent recover completely; 20 percent die; the rest cycle in and out of hospitals and treatment programs.
When Brown’s 14-year-old daughter, Kitty, became anorexic, the author voraciously read up on the disorder. Dissatisfied with traditional explanations and terrified by the recovery rates, she encountered a lesser-known option: Family Based Treatment (FBT), or the Maudsley Approach. It sounds simple enough: Phase 1: Restore the patient’s weight. Phase 2: Return control over eating to the patient. Phase 3: Resume normal development. It’s done at home, with Mom and Dad sitting with the anorexic child at every meal, packing them with the calories needed for recovery.
Absurdly simple, or simply absurd? Amazingly, patients treated with FBT have close to a 90 percent recovery rate, more than twice the rate of patients treated with traditional methods. FBT seems so revolutionary because it has been assumed that no one — least of all, parents — should make anorexics eat. It’s wonderfully sensible that in FBT, parents (guided by professional therapists and doctors) manage their children’s care. Brown is careful to note that she and her family have their faults, but she comes across as a dedicated mother, one who admits that sending Kitty to a residential treatment facility would be in some ways easier, but who nonetheless, with her husband, faces down the “demon” of anorexia (as she calls it). She gives many reasons for why her family chose this path; perhaps the most persuasive is this:
We have something no one else in the world has: we love Kitty best. No one else in the world can possibly want her to get better as much as we do. No one else loves her as fiercely, as nonjudgmentally, as unconditionally as we do.
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ChristWire and Good Satire
The satirical website ChristWire is heavy-handed and not very funny. But might good satire help illuminate where we believers need reform?
I first learned of the website ChristWire from a Facebook friend who linked to a much-read post that lists questions for wives to answer if they think their husbands might be gay. My friend asked whether anyone knew if the list was satire, because it sure seemed like it. The answer to her question, according to New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer, is a resounding "yes." Having operated ChristWire since 2008 under pseudonyms, the founders revealed their true identities — and intent — publicly last week.
Bryan Butvidas and Kirwin Watson started ChristWire to be “something like what The Onion [a popular fake-news site] would be if the writers cared mainly about God, gay people and how both influence the weather.” The site’s tagline is “Conservative Values for an Unsaved World,” and articles are heavy on pronouncements about God’s vengeance against gay people (e.g., "Hurricane Earl Projected Path, Gay East Coast of America"), as well as racist rants and ridicule of celebrity lifestyles.
It’s ugly, hateful, over-the-top stuff intended as social commentary. But it appears that many readers don’t get the joke. Many commenters respond to ChristWire posts seriously, with both support and shocked contempt. According to Oppenheimer, even seasoned bloggers from established conservative and liberal news sites, such as RenewAmerica and the Huffington Post, were taken in.
The founders, a nondenominational Protestant and a practicing Catholic, insist that their target “is not Christians but those who do not question what they hear on the news.” Even so, a brief glance through ChristWire's topics suggest Butvidas and Watson are taking on a certain brand of Christian. While their portrayal of conservative Christianity is not completely fair or accurate, we shouldn't simply write them off as the product of a media culture that fosters stereotypes (although it often does), or of a godless popular culture (research consistently scores American culture high on religiosity, especially compared with secularized Europe). A few high-profile leaders in the evangelical movement have described natural disasters as God's punishment on gay people — or, more recently, on Haitians who purportedly practice witchcraft. Even if ChristWire mistakenly conflates a few leaders' comments with an entire Christian movement, we evangelicals are wise to understand how some prominent mainstream voices perceive us, and to ask if some of the poking fun is deserved.