Hermenuetics

Why Santa Belongs in Your Kids' Christmas

I'm tired of hearing Christian parents use the SATAN anagram. St. Nick was a saint.

I hear curious rumblings this time of year among Christians that letting children believe in Santa is wrong. That giving children a myth implies that the Nativity story is insufficient. That letting them believe that good behavior earns gifts makes them greedy or legalistic. That belief in Santa means bowing to materialism and all things plastic.

But what if Christians embraced the Father Christmas myth while rejecting the materialism attached to it? Myths, after all, are time-honored methods of communicating truth through story, and the Santa Claus myth is no exception. (Please, don’t tell me his name is an anagram for Satan. Santa comes from the Latin sanctus, meaning holy or saint. Santa’s name likely evolved from a real person, Nicholas, a Christian man whose extreme generosity helped strangers.) I’d like to propose that teaching children about Santa Claus does not conflict with teaching them about Jesus. In fact, I propose that the Nativity story and the Santa myth may have more in common than we’re prone to believe.

Some stories, such as fables and parables, are not empirically true, but they are true in that they point to realities about God’s world and the human condition. Some stories are empirically true and also communicate this kind of truth. The Nativity story is a perfect example of the latter. The Santa Claus myth is a great example of the former. Santa Claus embodies Christian values such as kindness, generosity, forgiveness—every child soon realizes that even if they have not been perfect all year, Santa comes through. Santa brings gifts to children both deserving and undeserving. While Santa is not a Christ figure—that must be clear—the Santa myth is not the problem. The problem is that we have let advertisers hijack Santa, turning Christmas into a retail event.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:00 AM | Comments (74)

The Bible, Gender, and ‘Dad-Mom’ Debate Continues

Owen Strachan offers a rejoinder to Laura Ortberg Turner’s critique.

Laura, thank you for your remarks. You took me aback with your confession! I'm glad to be in conversation with you. There are many points worth careful consideration in your thoughtful post. Now, this self-professed “Dad Dad” will respond.

First, let me say that I have no problem doing dishes and helping my wife in different ways. An example: For nearly three years my wife and I had no dishwasher at our Highland Park rental. Loving my wife in a Christocentric, self-sacrificial way meant rolling up my sleeves multiple times a week to attack hard-bitten lasagna pans and ramekins formerly consecrated to delicious ends. I would venture that I do a good sight more of this kind of work than did my grandfather. Manhood must not be determined by the culture, but it does look a bit different in diverse times and places. That's not biblically problematic in my view.

The question, though, is whether I am to take on the burden of such work as a man. My read of numerous scriptural texts is that I am not. I try to help out where I can, but I am called of God to break my back to provide for my family so that my wife can care for my children and also my home in order that they and it might flourish. The pattern for such a life comes from texts both obvious and less expected. Genesis 3:16 shows that the Fall brings the curse to bear on the woman's sphere of cultivation: children. Verse 18 shows that the Fall brings the curse to bear on the man's sphere of cultivation: provision, whether located in the four walls of the house or outside it. We are redeemed from the curse, but not from God's wise plan—and childbearing and provision are not effects of the Fall.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 10:00 AM | Comments (108)

The Bible, Gender, and the ‘Dad-Mom’ Debate

Laura Ortberg Turner and Owen Strachan discuss whether Scripture dictates that women work inside the home.

Editor's Note: Owen Strachan, professor of theology and church history at Boyce College in Louisville, recently wrote a post critiquing a Tide commercial on "Dad Moms" as one more indication that our culture denigrates true masculinity. His post elicited strong responses from Her.meneutics writers. Amid a flurry of tweets, Strachan offered to engage Laura Ortberg Turner in a point-counterpoint. Here is Laura's response.

First, a confession:

I really don’t want to like you, Owen.

And I’m disappointed in (although not entirely surprised by) myself for having that reaction first. This is an issue that gets my blood boiling more quickly than almost any other, and after reading your blog post about “Dad Men” and the cultural decline of masculinity, my first response was toward division, away from unity, and toward a mentality that says that if you don’t agree with me, you must be wrong. I am sorry for that.

To be clear, I still think you are wrong on this particular issue. But the far more important thing than who is vindicated by a jury of our peers—because we will both have our supporters and detractors—is that you are my brother in Christ, and that no amount of ambiguous biblical interpretation can do anything to that truth. So with that confession, an apology to you, and a commitment to treat you with love and repentance when I fail.

To the issue at hand, a few important areas of disagreement and discussion:

First, the distinction between working “at home” and “outside the home” (as you make in referring to Titus 2:5) is mostly a false one in that it reads the Industrial Revolution into the ancient texts. We find both men and women at work throughout the Bible, but in those times, work (largely agrarian) was not something that people left home to do. Being busy at home also meant being busy at work.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:48 AM | Comments (25)

Ben & Jerry’s ‘Schweddy Balls’ and Scatological Humor

Why I’m not joining ‘one million moms’ in a boycott.

So, one million moms are up in arms over “Schweddy Balls,” the, uh, gutsy, name of Ben and Jerry’s newest flavor: rum-flavored vanilla ice cream adorned with fudge-covered malt balls.

One would think such an unsavory name for something that should appeal to taste not mortify it would negate the need for a boycott.

But the controversy provides an excellent opportunity to think biblically about scatological humor, which in its narrowest sense, centers on bodily excretions of any kind, or more generally, refers to any obscene humor. When it comes to humor of any sort, it’s sometimes hard to tell when the realm of manners crosses into that of morals. For manners and morals are not the same thing, and the lines connecting the twain don’t always meet.

I would argue, however, that the name of the latest Ben and Jerry’s flavor might be an offense against manners, but it’s not immoral.  I’d say it’s just a rather puerile example in a long tradition scatological humor:

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 11:30 AM | Comments (32)

The Her.meneutics Gender Debates (Part 2)

We talk to theologian Russell Moore about Bachmann, the divorce culture, and why a feminist reading of Scripture would often be easier than a complementarian one.

Yesterday on the blog, we heard from theologian William Webb, an egalitarian who says the Bible's "redemptive movement" shows that because of Christ, women are more, not less, free to exercise gifts in church ministry and beyond. Today we hear from popular pastor and blogger Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and, as of today, the board chairman of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Moore says that headship in marriage actually empowers women, and that complementarians and egalitarians can find common ground around fighting a pornographic culture that reduces women to sexualized bodies.

Many evangelicals who would elect Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann for President wouldn’t attend a church with a female pastor. Is there a contradiction here?

On the face of it, there is no contradiction since Scripture teaches that the church, not the world, is presently the outpost of the new creation. The state in this age doesn’t — and can’t — reflect God’s kingdom purposes in the way that the church or a family can.

I would gladly vote for someone to be my president who disagrees with me on whether or not infants can be baptized. I wouldn’t want that same person to be my pastor, because we will have to decide together who and how to baptize. The Kuyperian principle of “sphere sovereignty” is helpful here.

On the other hand, that’s the ideal and, very often, not the reality. Unfortunately, American evangelicals have too often longed for a secular authority to serve as a spiritual leader, and political professionals have been all too willing to exploit this by teaching candidates to parrot evangelical-sounding phrases and “testimonies.” In such cases, political leaders become totem-like for evangelicals. An attack on a candidate who identifies with “us” is an attack on “us” or, worse, on Jesus. That’s unhealthy, regardless of whether the politician is male or female.

In the case of evangelical over-identification with political partisanship, though, there can be a subtle shifting in what it means to define a woman’s life, or a man’s, as a “success.” There is quite a bit of inconsistency in evangelical complementarians talking about a “gentle and quiet spirit” while cheering Ann Coulter’s latest sarcastic barbs.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:49 AM | Comments (91)

The Gender Debates Come to Her.meneutics

In the first of a two-part series, we hear from egalitarian theologian William Webb on Michele Bachmann, slavery, and his 'redemptive-movement' reading of Scripture.

Submissive wife and president of the United States — an oxymoron, if you ask many journalists analyzing the faith of 2012 hopeful Michele Bachmann. In a recent GOP debate, responding to the question of whether she as president would submit to her husband, Bachmann said, “I'm in love with [Marcus]. I'm so proud of him. What submission means to us, it means respect. I respect my husband. He's a wonderful godly man and great father.” Journalists have spent days analyzing her response, seemingly baffled that a modern woman could take the words of an ancient text so seriously.

Yet evangelicals have taken the Bible’s words about men and women very seriously — enough to write tomes on what Paul meant when he told wives to submit to their husbands, when he said he did not allow women to assume authority over a man in church, and when he said women would be saved through childbearing. Inter-evangelical debates have traditionally centered on whether Paul’s injunctions forbid women from leadership in ministry, and whether male-female complementarity describes a work-home delegation of “roles” between husband and wife. Today and tomorrow on Her.meneutics, we’ll hear from two prominent theologians who have carefully thought through these and other passages. The first, William J. Webb, is an egalitarian New Testament scholar noted for his “redemptive-movement” approach to the Bible. The second, Russell D. Moore, is dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, as well as a pastor, writer, and blogger, and complementarian. First we hear from Webb.

Many evangelicals would be uncomfortable attending a church pastored by a woman, even though they would vote for Bachmann or Sarah Palin as U.S. Commander in Chief. Is there a contradiction here?

Absolutely. I see a glaring inconsistency in the way that hierarchalists (I consider “complementarian” a misleading name) understand and apply Scripture. If one sees the Bible teaching restricted leadership — it speaks to issues of leadership in all three domains — home, church, and society. Not just home and church.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:41 AM | Comments (47)

For Those Grieving on Mother's Day

How Christ meets women during a holiday that's often marked by unmet desires.

Mother's Day is a tricky holiday. Like any holiday, it is sweet for some and bitter for others. For some, it’s both.

I remember feeling on the outside looking in on Mother’s Day, first as a single woman and then after I miscarried our first. Our church had an entrance near the nursery called the Family Entrance. Could I use it? Were we a family? I finally used it regardless, almost as an act of defiance. Now, as the mother of a 4- and 6-year-old, I can deeply appreciate someone setting aside parking near an entrance that kept me from having to walk my toddlers across a busy intersection. But at the time I was dealing with emotions that weren’t swayed by practical realities. I just wanted to be a mom. And that sign at the church entrance reminded me I wasn’t.

It is an age-old conundrum in humanity in general and Christianity in particular: How do you honor someone who has something good that you want too? How do you applaud the sacrifices of one without minimizing the suffering of the other? I don’t know exactly, but I do think there is an overarching principle that's helpful.

Motherhood is not the greatest good for the Christian woman. Whether you are a mom or not, don’t get caught up in sentimentalism that sets it up as some saintly role. The greatest good is being conformed to the image of Christ. Now, motherhood is certainly one of God’s primary tools in his arsenal for this purpose for women. But it is not the end itself. Being a mom doesn’t make you saintly. Believe me. Being a mom exposes all the ways you are a sinner, not a saint. Not being a mom and wanting to be one does too.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:09 AM | Comments (24)

Sin, Grace, and the Royal Wedding

What I'll tell my 6-year-old daughter about marriage as we watch the festivities together.

I’m just going to say it: I can’t wait for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding. One, I love weddings. (The dresses! The flowers! The dancing!) Two, I love pomp and circumstance. Probably because much of my life feels chaotic, the order and ritual of weddings, graduations, funerals even, move me. Three, I love princesses — not the Disney kind, mind you, but the real kind.

The kind I discovered, in fact, back when Will’s mother, Lady Diana, married his dad, Prince Charles. I was 9, and while my mom rolled her eyes at the “charade,” I was enthralled. It was during that charade that I discovered that real-life princesses lived in big houses with tons of dogs and had country houses with tons of horses. And that they got to travel around in beautiful clothes and say nice things for which people gave them roses.

What a life, I thought. A perfect life.

Which leads me to the fourth reason I’m excited: because I have a 6-year-old daughter who will love this wedding too. She will love it because she’s a romantic at heart who loves the Disney sort of princesses and their Prince Charmings and happily-ever-afters. She’ll watch this and think, like I did, What a life. A perfect life.

I’m excited about William and Kate’s wedding because I need to kill this off in my daughter. Or at least scuff it up a little.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 1:23 PM | Comments (86)

How Do I Explain Easter to My Children?

The reality of a human raised from the dead is hard enough for adults to understand, much less kids. But here are some approaches I've taken.

I don’t know how to explain Easter to my children — Penny, 5, and William, 2. I’ve tried two approaches so far. I’ve talked about it directly: “Some people killed Jesus and he died and God made him alive again.”

When I said that, William asked, “What does died mean?” I tried to explain death as something that takes people away forever. Penny asked, “Where is Jesus now?” and when I said, “Jesus is in heaven and all around us,” she responded, “But where is Jesus now?”

Then Penny went to Sunday school last week, where her teachers decided to reenact the Passion of Jesus. I was sitting in church when, halfway through the sermon, one of the teachers brought Penny to me. She sat by my side, coloring, for the rest of the service. Her teacher later explained that when Penny had seen Jesus nailed to the cross, she stood up to leave.

I asked Penny later, “What happened in Sunday school? Did you learn something about Jesus?”

Without looking at me she said, “He died. I needed to see you, Mom.”

“Do you know what happened when he died?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

The direct route didn’t get us far.

Then there’s the indirect approach. Another time this Lenten season, I asked William, “Do you know what Easter is all about?”

His eyes lit up the way they do when he knows the answer to a question: “Bunnies!”

“Well,” I said, “kind of.”

I understood his confusion. He came home from preschool with Easter eggs. A man at our local coffee shop gave him a chocolate bunny. And we have an “Easter tree” on our kitchen table, with forsythia in bloom and painted wooden eggs dangling from the branches. So, I thought, maybe I could explain Easter using the springtime symbols, and we could talk about death and rebirth, about caterpillars and butterflies or chicks hatching or crocuses in bloom.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:30 AM | Comments (7)

Nancy Pearcey: How to Respond to Doubt

The most effective way to prevent teens from leaving the faith is to openly discuss the reasons they want to.

“Critical thinking?” the radio host burst out. “Most people on the conservative Christian Right would say that’s one of the biggest dangers we have — this 'nonsensical' idea of critical thinking.”

I was talking with the arch-liberal Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. He had invited me on his radio program “Culture Shocks” to talk about my newly published Saving Leonardo. Yet when I explained that the book dissects secular worldviews to help people develop critical thinking, Lynn seemed incredulous. Conservative Christians discourage any questioning of their faith, he asserted.

He was painting with a broad brush, but admittedly there is some basis for such a negative stereotype. In fact, it has become one of the main reasons young people are leaving the church.

Drew Dyck, in a recent Christianity Today article, “The Leavers,” reports that when talking to someone who has left the faith (or is thinking about it), Christians rarely engage the person’s reasons for doubt. Typically they “have one of two opposite and equally harmful reactions”: Some “freeze in a defensive crouch and fail to engage at all.” Others “go on the offensive, delivering a homespun, judgmental sermon.”

My students say they encounter both reactions. One teen who is struggling to decide what she believes is discouraged because her parents’ primary response is, “Why can’t you just have faith, like we do?”

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:43 AM | Comments (26)

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.

My husband, whose passion for sports knows no boundaries, could be heard screaming in Trenton, New Jersey. We live in Oregon. I know one of these days I’m going to be kneeling over his body as paramedics arrive to treat him for an ESPN-induced stroke. You know that fellow in Wisconsin who shot his TV because he didn’t like Bristol Palin’s dancing? If we had guns in the house, I’m pretty sure my husband would have shot somebody on ESPN by now.

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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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:38 AM | Comments (23)

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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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 12:00 PM | Comments (40)

A Course in Dying 101

What Christians can teach our death-denying culture.

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

“Dad, are you sad?”

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

“Are you sure? Maybe you’re worried?”

“No, I’m not worried.”

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

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

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

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

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:19 AM | Comments (9)

James Lee and 'Filthy Human Children'

The environmental activist's views on human life were obviously extreme and very wrong. But should we rethink limiting our family sizes?

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

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

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

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:57 AM | Comments (16)

Preserving Man and Beast

Humans are more valuable than animals — which is precisely why we can't be indifferent to animal suffering.

Jeffrey Kluger’s recent Time magazine cover story, “What Animals Think,” explores new research about the human-like intelligence of animals. A Bonobo (cousin of the chimpanzee) can learn hundreds of words. Dogs demonstrate social skills by following a pointed finger to its object. Crows bend wires to create fishing hooks. Elephants appear to mourn their dead.

Christians can and should marvel at the surprising points of connection between human and animal. But overemphasizing our commonalities can lead to dangerous territory. The Bible articulates a hierarchical model of creation, with humans “ruling” over the animals (Gen. 1:26). (Of course, much depends upon how we interpret the word rule. More on that later.) Genesis depicts humans as set apart from the rest of creation, for only humans have been created “in God’s image” (Gen. 1:27). In addition to prioritizing humans through the actions of his ministry, Jesus affirms the distinct nature of humans when he addresses human anxiety: “You are worth more than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:31). In other words, God cares for all of creation, but God endows humans with particular worth.

Unfortunately, as Kluger notes, “For many people, the Bible offers the most powerful argument [against animal rights] of all. Human beings were granted ‘dominion over the beasts of the field,’ and there the discussion can more or less stop.” He is right: The Bible has been used to wrongly justify disregarding, even abusing animals. In contrast, a proper understanding of humans “ruling” or “stewarding” role should lead to greater flourishing for human and animal alike.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:34 AM | Comments (30)

Have We Forgotten Haiti?

Counteracting our fleeting attention spans.

The hubbub has died down. Other tragedies have struck; our attentions have been averted. A little over eight months ago, Haiti experienced one of the worst natural disasters in history. Since then, Chile, Turkey, and now Pakistan have faced their fair share of environmental turmoil. We watch helplessly as nature devastates the homes and lives of thousands, and then we turn our attention to the latest earthquake, then back to the wars, celebrities, Apple products, and the ordinary everyday.

The reports on Haiti are slower now that the country has entered reconstruction. No longer are we bombarded with television ads to “donate now,” nor are we hit with the gruesome photographs that once streamed onto televisions, websites, and magazines as the events unfolded (though we have heard plenty about singer Wyclef Jean’s bid for the Haitian presidency). To stay up-to-date with the aftermath now requires more intentionality on our parts.

Yet Haiti still needs help — direly. This week, a special recovery commission announced that more than $1.6 billion is needed to rebuild the country’s economy and agriculture sector, a primary source of jobs. A Monday New York Times editorial predicted that overhauling the country’s educational system, making it universal and nearly free, will take about 20 years. Meanwhile, about 1.5 million Haitians are still living in makeshift tent camps; only 4 percent of the rubble has been cleared; bodies are still being dug up; hunger continues; and grief will be present for a long time.

In mid-May, the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University estimated that American donors had contributed $1.3 billion to relief efforts, but that it expected donations to drop off soon. “We’re a nation with a short attention span; three to six months after a disaster, donations approach zero,” said center executive director Patrick Rooney.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:07 AM | Comments (9)

A Theology of Jiggly Thighs

What a graying supermodel can teach Jesus' female followers.

Splattered across the media this week is Kristen McMenamy, a supermodel and mother of three who was featured on the August cover of Italian Vogue. She appears inside in a striking (some say offensive) photo spread, lying on her back against jagged rocks, wearing a black feathered dress, in a way designed to mimic the aesthetic of the Gulf oil spill images. But I was more intrigued by the model’s hair: The 45-year-old boldly flaunts her naturally long gray locks, telling Vogue Daily, “You can get older and still be rock-’n’-roll. I thought all that gray hair would make a beautiful picture.

I’m a fan of embracing the way God made us, but I have to confess feeling a little conflicted about the hoopla. I suspect my reticence is not unrelated to the fact that McMenamy still has the body of a Barbie.

At age 41, I have most of my cranial pigment, but I see where things are headed. If I live enough years, if you live enough years, the physical downhill slide is inevitable. The pigment fails. Once-toned arms get flabby. Other things start to jiggle, sag, wrinkle. If all this weren’t insulting enough, physical losses give way to social losses as we lose the ability to turn heads with our beauty.

As is my way, I like to make issues like sagging breasts and jiggly thighs theological. Specifically, I’m dying to get a handle on the divine logic behind the aging situation. What holy madness drives wrinkles and age spots?

I humbly invite you to join me in considering one weird possibility: I wonder if this process that is clearly happening against our wills — as the volume of beauty products that promise to reverse aging’s attests — isn’t what Jesus has been inviting us to embrace, all along, with our wills.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:07 AM | Comments (21)

Why I Can't Boycott Mel Gibson

And it's not because he is "too talented," as Salon wrote last week.

From Arizona’s controversial immigration law to Mel Gibson’s recorded rants, I’ve heard a lot about boycotts lately — and I can’t get over who’s encouraging them. For me, boycotts conjure up my childhood, when trips to K-mart were rare because of dubious dealings, and the Waldenbooks chain was shunned entirely for selling pornography. Those are just the boycotts I remember, but they always seemed religious in nature.

So it was strange to learn at Salon about a movement under way within Hollywood to boycott Gibson’s work over newly released taped “conversations” with his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva (don’t believe his rants were bad? Read the transcripts — then decide if you want to hear the recordings). Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams makes no reference to a particular moral or philosophical viewpoint as a context for her piece, but she nonetheless plunges into the moral and aesthetic quandary of shunning Gibson films altogether, musing that he might be “too talented” to boycott.

Yes, it was strange to see boycotts discussed in a mostly secular context, but not altogether surprising. If I were traveling abroad and asked for a summary of U.S. Christians’ view of The Passion of the Christ and Gibson — especially after some of the charges made against him — I’d say that generally speaking, he got a pass. When The Passion came out in 2004, a friend invited me to a talk by a scholarly Jew who persuasively argued why he saw anti-Semitism in the film. I didn’t know enough to confirm or disprove most of his points, but his argument seemed reasonable, without excessive reliance on emotional appeals. Yet among Christian friends, the buzz about the movie was unabashedly positive, often excited. We seemed too delighted that “our story” was getting major, positive play to engage the more troubling questions possibly raised by the film. It seemed disloyal to admit possible shortcomings, possible prejudice, possible . . . sin.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:37 AM | Comments (51)

No Right to Rest for Weary Anglicans

Why churches like St. James in Newport Beach still need support from worshipers who have left the battle.

Such is the fatigue over the Anglican-Episcopal splintering that two weekends ago, when the Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles consecrated the denomination’s second partnered gay bishop, the event didn’t make a blip on many evangelical news websites. Also largely unnoticed was the previous week’s press release from St. James Anglican Church in Newport Beach, California, stating that it would appeal the latest California Court of Appeal ruling in its property dispute with the Episcopal Church. Christianity Today reported on St. James’s court case as recently as January, but for embattled congregations, months can feel like years.

St. James broke ties with the Episcopal Church and briefly joined the Anglican Diocese of Luwero, Uganda, in 2004 before becoming a member of the Anglican Church of North America last year. The court case is set to determine who gets its building and other assets.

Those of us with any investment in these matters cannot succumb to our weariness if we deign to call ourselves people of conscience and conviction. Until there is resolution, we owe faithful allegiance and support to the persons and congregations that are still wrestling with these difficult issues. Both prayer and words of encouragement cost little, while St. James has set up a webpage for donations to aid in its legal defense. Expressing public support, as I’m doing here, may not change anything, but it lets warring congregations know they are not forgotten and that others stand with them.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:19 AM | Comments (19)

Modesty: A Female-Only Virtue?

Scripture suggests that modesty means more than keeping the right parts covered.

About this time four years ago, Calvin College students, ready to enjoy the long-absent Michigan sun, spent hours each day on the campus lawn, “studying” for finals and playing Ultimate Frisbee until dusk. Calvin, affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church (and — I must say — a contender for the “Christian Harvard” label long held by Wheaton College), has no written policies on student clothing, though staff and students have debated that decision. But as tank tops and skirts began appearing on campus every spring, RAs and staff would somberly remind female students to mind our hem- and necklines, lest we let a brother stumble. “Women don’t realize how visually wired men are,” the reasoning went. “We shouldn’t wear things that lead their minds to impure places.”

Sexual immorality, of course, is a serious matter, Scripture attests, and research abounds on real chemical differences between men’s and women’s brains. Further, a thriving Christian community requires its members to think beyond their own preferences, about how personal decisions impact others. But, as I watched hoards of my male peers bounding across the lawn wearing nothing but flimsy track shorts — think Juno’s Paulie Bleeker — I wondered if they had received any wisdom or direction about their dress. Is modesty a virtue only for women?

This question arose in a personal way this Easter, which is a days-long celebration at the church I attend. A single friend asked if he could sleep on my roommate’s couch one night to avoid driving 45 minutes home late Saturday and coming back early Sunday. I obliged, seeing the setup through a logistical lens. We talked a bit Saturday night before heading to our respective rooms, my conscience undisturbed. On Sunday morning, I tiptoed past the sleeping friend to the kitchen. He, likely not thinking twice, soon entered the kitchen shirtless, wearing boxer shorts — and he went on to engage me like he might have while wearing khakis and a sport coat. Blushing and baffled by his nonchalance, I had to consciously “bounce my eyes.”

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:13 AM | Comments (49)

Perplexed by the Pill

How birth control pills — which turn 50 this year — led me to believe I was in control of my life and my body.

The Pill turned 50 this year, and Time magazine commemorated the anniversary last week with Nancy Gibbs’s cover story, “Love, Sex, Freedom and the Paradox of the Pill." Gibbs thoroughly and thoughtfully provides a scientific and sociological history of birth control, while addressing some of the ethical questions raised by the little tablet, swallowed by more than 100 million women worldwide every day. Gibbs sets up a strong contrast in how people respond to the Pill: “Its supporters hoped it would strengthen marriage by easing the strain of unwanted children; its critics still charge that the Pill gave rise to promiscuity, adultery, and the breakdown of the family.”

As a Christian who has taken the Pill intermittently for over a decade, I find myself on both sides of the divide, caught between an ethic of hospitality and of stewardship, between individual responsibility and collective consciousness, between traditional family values and feminist theory. Reading Gibbs's article didn’t answer all my questions, but it forced me to admit that the questions needed asking.

A year or so into our marriage, my husband, Peter, and I went away for a weekend. In the middle of an expensive dinner — both of us content with the “just us”-ness of our lives — I said to him, “Do you ever think about never having kids?”

"All the time," he replied.

We were young. We hadn't had sex before marriage. I wouldn’t have called it entitlement then, but in retrospect I admit that I felt entitled to “my” life with “my” husband. Kids were an afterthought, something that might come, someday, if we felt like it, and if a convenient time arose.

We both eventually changed our minds. We realized that kids are never convenient. More, I wanted to see Peter become a father. I wanted to give something of myself to a child. We wanted to have a family. But although we changed our minds, we didn’t change our perspective on having children. When I went off the Pill, we still thought we were in control.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:30 AM | Comments (33)

Marriage: A Dying to the Self

Paul Tripp's What Did You Expect? refreshingly goes beyond gender roles to arrive at the crux of marital problems: serving the kingdom of self.

During our engagement, my husband and I dutifully pursued premarital counseling. A well-meaning seminary professor and his wife graciously walked us through some of the highlights and lowlights of their marriage and how they had addressed issues. We covered faithfulness, forgiveness, and the roles of a husband and wife. But what I remember most about the evening was feeling that I already had marriage figured out. We were both seminary students who loved God, knew Scripture, and had great communication skills. That, coupled with our mutual love, meant that we were could do marriage “right” and avoid the sinkholes that had doomed other relationships.

Twelve years later, I am still, by God’s grace, happily married, but I continue to be confronted with the extent of my foolishness in those early days. I have faced unfulfilled expectations, disappointments, and unmet needs, just like every other married person has. Minimally, I could have better anticipated the hard seasons of marriage if I had understood the biblical concepts fleshed out in Paul David Tripp’s new book, What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage (Crossway).

Tripp's biblical wisdom burrows beneath the layers of roles, communication mishaps, and felt needs that are the typical driving forces of Christian marriage how-to manuals, and arrives at the fundamental root of all marital problems: who or what we worship. To date, this is the first Christian book on marriage I have read that does not use the words submission or headship. Nor does it refer to the most classic passage on marriage, Ephesians 5. There are no listening techniques or explanations of gender differences. The kingdom model that Tripp describes transcends gender, roles, and the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” ideas that pervade most approaches to marital troubles.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:43 AM | Comments (16)

Finding the Right Words for Disability

Following Jesus' example in John 9, I want to see beyond 'the problem' when I encounter people with disabilities.

The word retarded has made the news lately. The Special Olympics designated March 3rd as a day of awareness about the hurtful and inappropriate ways that word is used. Before that, Sarah Palin excoriated Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, after he used the word to describe some of his fellow Democrats. Palin went on to defend Rush Limbaugh in his use of the word to also describe the Democrats, something that caused another round of blogposts and op-eds.

It’s great to draw attention to a hurtful word. But the problems within our culture go far deeper than the use of the word retarded as a slur. When it comes to talking about disability in general, even those of us who want to be sensitive, just, and kind often don’t know what to say or how to say it.

I write as the mother of a child with Down syndrome, yet I’ll be the first to admit that I also struggle with language here. Do I call it "disability"? "Special needs"? "Developmental delays"?

The most telling example of my own loss for words came a few months ago. My daughter Penny and I went to a birthday party, and I met another mom. She said, "I have a child with special needs, too." She pointed out the window. "My daughter is ten. She's the one with the walker."

Over the course of the afternoon, I found myself watching this woman's daughter, whom I’ll call Abigail. Abigail fed herself pizza. Abigail's body looked like spaghetti. She could crawl and walk with the walker, but she couldn't navigate the stairs. I didn't hear her speak more than one syllable, and the meaning of her utterances was often unclear to me. Abigail was thin and tall and beautiful, with smooth skin and kind eyes and a gorgeous smile.

And I didn't know what to say. I wanted to get to know Abigail and her mom, yet all I could do was watch. I thought about asking, "What is her diagnosis?" Or, "Where is she in school?" Or, "Do you like your therapists?" But all those questions seemed wrong, somehow, focused on figuring out Abigail's "problem."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 3:03 PM | Comments (6)

Botox: A Threat to Our National Security

How our cultural fear of aging and dying is giving some terrorists a financial boost.

One of my favorite Bible passages is from Psalm 34. Verses 4 and 5 read: "I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed" (ESV).

I have seen that kind of radiant beauty on those whose hearts are contented in God, who are eager to proclaim all of his blessings and mercies upon their lives. I firmly believe that is the most attractive beauty there is, because it edifies and builds up others. Yet I also know the strong pull of the cosmetic and cosmeceutical industries and the promises they make to stall or turn back the ravages of time. So I write this post with a bit of ambivalence, knowing the money I spend at various salons.

That said, I have never been Botoxed. My dermatologist did inform me a few years ago that it was time to start, because it would keep my fine lines from becoming deep wrinkles. I frowned (deepening those lines) and shook my head. There was no way I was going to stick a neurotoxin in my face, I announced. I was sure that in 20 years, we'd discover why that was a bad idea. She looked at me placidly and said, "I hope not, because I have a face full of it." Maybe she was looking at me in wide-eyed horror, but I couldn't tell.

Likely it won't take 20 years. We are now discovering a new problem associated with the Botox craze: an increased risk of terrorism. The Washington Post recently ran an article about how officials fear that the toxic ingredient in Botox could become a terrorist tool:

In early 2006, a mysterious cosmetics trader named Rakhman began showing up at salons in St. Petersburg, Russia, hawking a popular anti-aging drug at suspiciously low prices. He flashed a briefcase filled with vials and promised he could deliver more — "as many as you want," he told buyers — from a supplier somewhere in Chechnya.

Rakhman's "Botox" was found to be a potent clone of the real thing, but investigators soon turned to a far bigger worry: the prospect of an illegal factory in Chechnya churning out raw botulinum toxin, the key ingredient in the beauty drug and one of world's deadliest poisons. A speck of toxin smaller than a grain of sand can kill a 150-pound adult.

No Chechen factory has been found, but a search for the maker of the highly lethal toxin in Rakhman's vials continues across a widening swath of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. U.S. officials and security experts say they know the lab exists, and probably dozens of other such labs, judging from the surging black market for the drug.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:38 AM | Comments (4)

Where Was God in the Earthquake?

A theological response to the Haitian calamity from Fleming Rutledge.

At the time of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, David Bentley Hart, the Eastern Orthodox theologian, wrote a column in The Wall Street Journal that attracted wide attention. Bill Eerdmans, of Eerdmans Publishing, contacted Hart and asked him to expand the column into a book. Hart did so, and the resulting The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? is the most useful short treatment of the problem of evil and suffering that we have.

A tweet I saw this morning reminded me of Hart's book. The tweet said, "Why don't we have earthquakes on Park Avenue? The people of Haiti are so poor."

Why, indeed?

A frequent response heard from Christians is, "God has some purpose in this." "Something good will come out of this." "Haiti will become stronger as a result of this."

In one sense, all these things are true; however, these are deeply wrong responses, both theologically and pastorally. In a long chapter on the problem of evil that I wrote last year for my forthcoming book on the Crucifixion, I reflected long and hard on these matters. Glib, monochromatic responses to catastrophe should have no place in our faith.

It is important to maintain two contradictory attitudes at once in many areas of Christian theology, and this is one of those areas. These are the two clashing points of view in this case:

Point of view #1: The Creation does declare the glory of God, and the "Thunderstorm Psalm" (Ps. 29: "The Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon . . .") proclaims that message magnificently. God is not only the Creator but also the One who rules over the cosmos. The theophany (a manifestation of the power of God) in the Book of Job (chs. 38-41) is the preeminent biblical passage treating of this subject, and the phrase "the doors of the sea" is derived from 38:8.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:17 AM | Comments (33)

The Real Problem with Mary's Baby Bump

Jesus' mother likely didn't face the public shame associated with unwed mothers.

This Christmas you may hear a sermon or two comparing today's unwed mothers with a well-known one from the ancient Mideast: Mary, the mother of Jesus. Reflecting on the alleged public shame Mary endured as an unmarried mom-to-be, we hear, the single moms in our midst deserve our special compassion and care. (Christianity Today's most recent issue featured Bob Smietana's reported piece on churches' support for single moms.)

Without discounting the crucial need to support single moms and their children and stand against the shame that our culture can dish out to them, Lynn Cohick, associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, suggests a different read of Mary’s story. In her recent book, Women in the World of the Earliest Christians, she researches the historical context of marriage and motherhood in the first century A.D., and believes that Mary did not experience shame during her pregnancy. Cohick explains.

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Mary was betrothed to Joseph, which was a legally binding arrangement in the Jewish culture. All that awaited the couple was the wedding. If they engaged in sexual intercourse with each other, that was not seen as a violation of any cultural norm. Later rabbinic writings allowed that a future groom who had sexual relations with his bride-to-be at her father’s house was not guilty of immoral behavior.

If pregnancy occurred before the wedding, this was not a problem because the parentage of the child was secured. What is shocking is that Mary is pregnant and Joseph knows he is not the father. The problem is not that a betrothed couple had sex, but that presumably Mary had sex with another man — she committed adultery.

This explains Joseph’s reaction to divorce her, for that was the legal remedy when faced with infidelity during the betrothal period. And as Matthew tells us, Joseph wanted a quiet, “no fault” divorce (Matt. 1:19). This probably reflects the current perspective on divorce that was promulgated by at least one group of Pharisees, the Hillelites. They argued that Deuteronomy 24:1 should be interpreted that a man must divorce his wife for infidelity/adultery and also for any matter that seemed right to him. Another group of Pharisees, the Shammaites, held that Deuteronomy 24:1 taught that only for adultery could a husband write divorce papers.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 8:01 AM | Comments (10)

The Trouble with Depicting Jesus

Is a Bible showing the Holy Family in traditional Indian clothes any worse than one depicting them as doe-eyed Caucasians in pastels?

When the New Community Bible first released in 2008, it sold 15,000 hardcover copies in a few short weeks.Yet the resulting hue and cry over certain aspects of the Bible, the first to be produced by Indians, for Indians in simple English, has resulted in a few revisions before the second edition went to print this November.

Why the controversy? Open a copy of the Bible, produced by the Society of St. Paul in Mumbai, and you’ll see no changes to the text. But the accompanying illustrations might look a bit different: the Holy Family, for example, is depicted as poor Indian villagers, with Mary wearing a sari and a bindi, and Joseph wearing a turban and loincloth.

Some Protestant Christian groups have argued that the artwork and the references throughout (such as to Mahatma Gandhi and the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text) do not faithfully represent Scripture, while some Hindu groups have complained that the Bible will lead to illegal conversions in a country whose Christian population is only 2.5 percent.

I’m not going to argue that depicting Mary in a sari is historically accurate — obviously it’s not. But I would enjoy a browse through the religious images in the books and homes of the Christians who are criticizing this Bible.

In my own home, my daughter’s favorite Bible is the Precious Moments Storytime Bible, which depicts a doe-eyed, Caucasian Jesus surrounded by equally doe-eyed followers. My own feelings on Precious Moments artwork aside, the artist’s vision of Jesus isn’t any more accurate than one envisioning Mary wearing a bindi on her forehead.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:34 AM | Comments (21)

The Joys of a False Positive

What the apostle Paul has to do with the new mammogram guidelines.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released recommendations on breast cancer screenings November 16, stating that too many women were given unnecessary tests based on an initial “false positive” mammogram. The task force discouraged women ages 40 to 49 from regular screenings, saying they were not necessary until age 50. As cancer groups and women’s health organizations have decried the new guidelines, the task force clarified its position last week, saying that women can have mammograms whenever they want, but that they are more effective for women ages 50–74.

A recent “false positive” myself, I cannot tell you how happy I am to be in such a group. My first mammogram was suspicious, and the second did not clarify findings, so a third was done. A radiologist reviewed the results with me right away, showing me the trouble area (near the armpit, where 50 percent of breast cancer is found). My physician said that while the new spots could simply be more calcification clusters, their location and strange appearance raised concerns. So a biopsy was done, and — praise God — no cancer was found.

While the task force’s new protocols treat false positives as a negative thing — resulting in unnecessary anxiety and more money spent on unnecessary tests — I see false positives as the result of due diligence in preventive health care. But since my field of expertise is biblical studies, not health care, I won't get into the details of health care strategy. Instead, when I read the report a few weeks ago, I began thinking about the phrase “false positive,” which sounded like an oxymoron. And my mind turned to the “false apostles” that Paul writes about in 2 Cor. 11:13. These preachers taught a different gospel, disrupted the Corinthian church, and defamed the imprisoned apostle’s work. The “super apostles” are false because they masquerade as true but are not.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:38 AM | Comments (4)

Stanton Jones, CedarvilleOUT Come to Campus

As a resident director mentoring struggling students, I welcome open conversation about same-sex attraction.

Last spring, John* asked if we could meet at the Hive, our college campus snack shop. After a bit of small talk, he confided, “My friends said that you’re someone I’d feel safe talking to. And this is what I wanted to tell you: Since junior high, I’ve known that I am gay. I don’t think I’ll ever change. If you lined up one hundred of the most beautiful women you could find, I’d maybe be somewhat attracted to one.”

“Have you told your parents?” I asked. “Yeah. I came out right before I returned to school this year. I’m not looking forward to going home.”

Last year, Hope* told me that she struggled with homosexuality. Hope grew up in a legalistic Christian home where an older sibling had sexually abused her. Her parents have no clue about her struggles, and based on past experience, Hope believes her mom would turn suicidal should she discover her daughter’s same-sex attraction.

This semester, as we sat and talked in my apartment, her eyes beamed. “I actually had a crush on a guy who I worked with at Christian summer camp! I don’t feel so gay anymore.” But she also related how her ex-girlfriend recently ridiculed her faith in Christ, and how a female co-worker had confessed to having a crush on her. “The thing is, I have never told anyone I was gay. I don’t even know how she knew. Please pray that I would be protected from temptation.”

As a resident director and spiritual mentor at Cedarville University, a Baptist evangelical school in the Midwest, I interact with students in almost every facet of college life, and delight in encouraging them to follow Jesus closely in the midst of their struggles. I live with my husband and 2-year-old daughter in an apartment attached to a women’s dorm at Cedarville. In the past few years, the Residence Life Department has seen an increase in the number of students confiding their struggles with same-sex attraction. And because we believe the Bible expressly forbids homosexual behavior, yet desire help in being Christ to students who struggle with their sexuality, we invited Stanton Jones, provost and psychology professor at Wheaton College, to discuss the research published in his 2007 book, Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation, for Cedarville’s Critical Concern Series.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:04 AM | Comments (83)

The Day We Let Our Son Live

It ended up being the most important day of my life.

When it comes to the chance for those with genetic defects to live, the news has not been good on either side of the Atlantic. Last week’s Telegraph reported that of all women in the U.K. who find out through prenatal testing that their baby will have Down syndrome, about 90 percent choose to have an abortion. And yesterday, ABC News reported a near-identical rate among women in the U.S.: 92 percent of those who find out their child will have the chromosomal defect decide to abort. One geneticist at Children’s Hospital Boston found that, without prenatal testing, the number of Down syndrome births would have increased by 34 percent between 1989 and 2005. Instead, the number of Down syndrome births has dropped by 15 percent over that time.

Upon hearing such news, I remembered Ellen and Al Hsu (pronounced shee), a Christian couple who works at InterVarsity Press in Downers Grove, Illinois, and who faced the same situation as the women above. This is Ellen’s story of Elijah, their 4-year-old with Down syndrome, as originally told on their family blog, Team Hsu.

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I gazed in wonder at the blurry form on the screen. “Hi, Baby,” I whispered. The image of our baby was much clearer on the level-two ultrasound. The technician rolled the ultrasound wand over my growing abdomen, and I marveled as I watched our son squirm and suck his thumb. A new life forming within me.

Our OB/GYN had referred us for a level-two ultrasound after he noticed choroid plexus cysts on our baby’s brain during the standard 20-week ultrasound. I was anxious about what the maternal health specialist might find. We knew a couple whose ultrasound also had showed choroids plexus cysts, but whose baby was perfectly fine when he was born. We had spent the past week praying for our baby and hoping for the best.

Al walked into the exam room as the technician was finishing up. She hadn’t said much and explained that the doctor would be in to take a look for himself and to explain what he found. Al and I chatted quietly while we waited. I was relieved that he had made it before the doctor came in. Little did I know how much I would need him.

The doctor came in and began his exam. I was delighted at the chance to see more images of our baby. But my world was shaken when the doctor finally began explaining what he saw. “Something is very wrong with this baby.”

He continued to roll the wand over my tummy as he pointed to various spots on the screen and began listing all the “abnormalities”: larger than usual nuchal folds; clenched fists; possible club feet; something wrong with the liver; enlarged ventricles in the brain; possibly no stomach. My tears flowed as his list grew longer. My delight at the new life within me turned to icy fear, and I clutched Al’s hand tightly.

The doctor suspected a chromosomal problem, possibly Trisomy 13 or 18, birth defects caused by an extra 13th or 18th chromosome. He explained that both of these conditions are generally “incompatible with life.” We were told that if our baby was born alive, he was likely to die within a day. If we were lucky, he might survive for 6 to 12 months. We wondered if we should begin preparing for death instead of life.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 4:28 PM | Comments (24)

Redeeming Roman Polanski

Looking for a Christian response to a child rapist with powerful friends.

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

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

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

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

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:46 AM | Comments (18)

The President's Speech and Parental Rights

To what extent should the government shape children’s beliefs?

Children in many U.S. schools yesterday heard President Obama exhort the values of hard work and personal responsibility in his back-to-school address. Reformed pastor John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church praised the speech as “a wonderful gift of common grace from God to the students of our land.” Before the speech, many parents had protested the way it was framed — the Department of Education had given schools a “menu of classroom activities” that suggested students write about “how they could help the President” — rather than its content. Many parents demanded that their school districts provide alternatives to watching the speech or that they not show it at all. School districts were forced to respond with less than two weeks’ notice to the Education Department’s announcement.

Meanwhile, in Quebec, a court struggle recently broke out over a new, mandatory “Ethics and Religious Culture” course that will replace three separate religion courses for all students. Some Christian parents protested it as a violation of their right to choose their children’s religious education, but Quebec’s Superior Court ruled August 31 that the class does not violate the right to “freedom of conscience and religion” in the Canadian Charter of Rights. Here's how one law professor at the Université de Sherbrooke defended the ruling:

What parents were demanding was the right to ignorance, the right to protect their children from being exposed to the existence of other religions. . . . This right to ignorance is certainly not protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of religion does not protect the right not to know what is going on in our universe.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:10 AM | Comments (26)

What the TNIV Means for Evangelical Women

To see it go won't mean that much, actually.

As a blog centered on women, it seems only right for Her.meneutics to respond to Zondervan and Biblica’s major announcement that their gender-inclusive language Bible, NIVi (released only in Britain) was a mistake, and that they would no longer publish the controversial Today's New International Version (TNIV).

“Quite frankly, some of the criticism [of the NIVi] was justified, and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made,” said Keith Danby, CEO of Biblica, which owns the copyright to the NIV. “We fell short of the trust that was placed in us. We failed to make the case for revisions and we made some important errors in the way we brought the translation to publication. . . .”

Zondervan president Moe (Maureen) Girkins lamented that the TNIV “divided the evangelical Christian community,” and said the Michigan-based publishing house would begin phasing out TNIV-related products. “We’re trying to do this right and be as transparent as possible.”

Meanwhile, the Committee on Bible Translation has begun working on NIV 2011, which chairman Doug Moo said will reflect scholarly developments from the last quarter-century. He said the committee is undecided on how much gender-inclusive language the new NIV will include, and that it welcomes input at NIVBible2011.com.

As someone admittedly new to the debate surrounding TNIV — which some evangelical leaders believe abandons Scripture’s integrity in favor of political correctness — I had trouble finding much controversy in Tuesday’s announcement. The publishers focused not on the inherent errors of gender-inclusive translations but on the way they had introduced such a translation to the public. And they seem aimed more at producing a Bible that’s both accurate and accessible than condemning Bible readers who appreciate the TNIV’s use of humankind, men and women, et al. where the text is not gender-specific.

No matter, said Eugene Cho, a Seattle pastor writing for Sojourners' blog. Cho linked the disappearance of the TNIV to the “schizophrenic” landscape of evangelicalism, saying the TNIV was “immensely refreshing and encouraging” given “the increasing rise of the macho, masculine, and ultimate fighting Jesus presentation.” (My gratitude, though, for Cho’s link to Christianity Today’s April 2008 article “A Jesus for Real Men.”)

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:17 AM | Comments (31)

Girl Dumps God

Carlene Bauer’s memoir recounts her de-conversion from Christianity for the literary set.

I wanted to love Not That Kind of Girl, a new memoir from “recovering evangelical” Carlene Bauer. On the surface, Bauer and I have a lot in common. We’re women who love the Bible, literature, and pop culture. We are aspiring writers who landed in publishing. She even grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs like me, entrenched in the evangelical subculture. And from early reviews, it was unclear just what, exactly, “recovering evangelical” meant. In the first chapter, Bauer describes her first encounter with the End Times, via a church basement screening of A Thief in the Night with her Christian classmates. At 8, her biggest fears suddenly included the government installing a bar code on her forehead or the back of her hand under a blood-red moon. She goes to bed at night earnestly whispering to God, “Could I live until I fell in love?”

This girl is me, I thought. I vividly remember telling my mom, myself at 8 years old, that I wanted to be excited for Jesus to come back, but if he could, it would be great if he could wait until I went to college, got married, and had a career and kids.

What critics are heralding as a “good-girl memoir” is actually a tragic story of faith, slowly and painfully lost. Bauer writes for a generation raised in the church of Dare to Discipline: “I sometimes wondered, sitting in church listening to ancient tales of obstinacy, if I had been born with original sin, because stealing and lying and saying mean things had never held an appeal.” For Bauer, faith comes easily at first, and even as she grows up and enters public school, she finds it easy to resist sex and alcohol.

But as her faith lingers during her college years at a Catholic university, belief in God feels like something she would shake off if she could only find the proper motive. Faith is a convenient foil to her introverted tendencies and dislike of the drunken parties and casual sex that consume her classmates. She secretly envies her friend Jane, who came to Christ in college, because it offers her a “platform for radical self-invention.”

Megan Hustad’s review for the Daily Beast identifies the conceit that makes Bauer's memoir one of interest for evangelicals:

[Bauer] aspires not only to be truly hip, she also wants to be taken seriously in New York’s snobbish literary scene. And she seeks to accomplish both of these goals while hanging on to her fervent faith in Jesus Christ. If life maneuvers received scores for technical difficulty, Bauer would be competing for gold.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:58 AM | Comments (17)

Half the Sky: A Must-Read Book

The fight for women's dignity worldwide, the 'cause of our time,' needs Christians now more than ever.

This past weekend, The New York Times Sunday Magazine devoted its entire issue to "Why Women's Rights Are the Cause of Our Time." Some very sober and powerful reading there — and not what you might think upon encountering a magazine with a title like that. In fact, these are real, global, and serious issues that should have the attention and ministry of Christians everywhere. More on that in a moment.

The lead feature was an excerpt from the forthcoming book by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn,a former Times correspondent who now works in finance and philanthropy. Here's a summary of the book, titled Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide — one that includes an honest fact about abortion that I was stunned to read in a mainstream publication. This is a good indicator of the journalistic veracity of this book's research:

Traditionally, the status of women was seen as a “soft” issue — worthy but marginal. We initially reflected that view ourselves in our work as journalists. We preferred to focus instead on the “serious” international issues, like trade disputes or arms proliferation. Our awakening came in China.

After we married in 1988, we moved to Beijing to be correspondents for The New York Times. Seven months later we found ourselves standing on the edge of Tiananmen Square watching troops fire their automatic weapons at pro-democracy protesters. The massacre claimed between 400 and 800 lives and transfixed the world; wrenching images of the killings appeared constantly on the front page and on television screens.

Yet the following year we came across an obscure but meticulous demographic study that outlined a human rights violation that had claimed tens of thousands more lives. This study found that 39,000 baby girls died annually in China because parents didn’t give them the same medical care and attention that boys received — and that was just in the first year of life. A result is that as many infant girls died unnecessarily every week in China as protesters died at Tiananmen Square. Those Chinese girls never received a column inch of news coverage, and we began to wonder if our journalistic priorities were skewed.

A similar pattern emerged in other countries. In India, a “bride burning” takes place approximately once every two hours, to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry — but these rarely constitute news. When a prominent dissident was arrested in China, we would write a front-page article; when 100,000 girls were kidnapped and trafficked into brothels, we didn’t even consider it news.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:35 AM | Comments (6)

The Lutherans and Twister Theology

Julia's first-person account of the strange events at last week's ELCA convention.

When is a warning from God not a warning from God? Or a "we can't tell whether or not it's a warning from God"?

This question came up last week while I was covering the church-wide assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in Minneapolis. Members of America's largest Lutheran denomination voted to allow non-celibate gays to become clergy and paved the way for same-sex blessing ceremonies. Conservatives I talked to were devastated by the convention, but even they admitted that before the meeting began August 17, they knew they did not have enough votes to prevent the juggernaut.

Then the tornado came.

It was just before 2 p.m. on Wednesday, August 19, right before one of the first significant votes of the assembly. The Lutherans were slated to vote on a sexuality statement that, for the first time I know of, gave the gay-friendly view a place at the table as one of four theological positions Lutherans could have. If the statement passed, it indicated where the convention would go from that point on.

Then someone rushed into the press room and told us to vacate the place fast. A tornado had touched down close by, we were told. The police wanted us in a safe place away from the glass windows that encase the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Everyone rushed into the main hall to join some 1,045 voting members who were listening to a Bible study being led by a female preacher. (A few blogs say the debate on the statement had already begun, but that is not true. I was there). A palpable blanket of fear descended on the entire group as the doors to the outside hallways were shut, enclosing us in the giant hall, which was apparently was the safest place to be. We could hear the winds howling outside. I thought of my rental car parked nearby and hoped it would stay in one piece. After the Bible study, ELCA President Mark Hanson read the 121st Psalm to calm everyone down.

"We trust the weather is not a commentary on our work," said the Rev. Steven Loy, chairman of the ad hoc committee on the sexuality statement.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:39 AM | Comments (27)

The Persecuted Rifqa Bary?

Christians rally support for a 17-year-old believer who says her Muslim parents have threatened to kill her. Should they believe her?

Fathima Rifqa Bary's story is quickly circulating on blogs and Christian media as proof of Islam's violent roots and the cost of following Christ. While the latter is true no matter who's doing the following, the former is disputable in the case of the Ohio teen who fled her home two weeks ago to meet up with Blake and Beverly Lorenz, Florida pastors she had met on Facebook.

"They [my parents] threatened to kill me," Bary says tearfully in a YouTube video (above) posted Tuesday. She goes on to explain the logic of honor killings: "They have to kill me. My blood is now hallal, which means that because I am now a Christian, I am from a Muslim background. It's an honor, they love God more than me. They have to do this."

Bary says she hitchhiked and rode a bus July 19 from New Albany, a Columbus suburb, to Orlando, calling the Lorenzes upon arriving. She stayed with the pastors of the nondenominational Global Revolution Church until Monday, when she was placed into emergency custody with the Dept. of Children and Families.

"We are doing everything we can to protect her," Blake Lorenz told The Orlando Sentinel. Beverly Lorenz told The Columbus Dispatch they hardly knew Bary but took her in and called an abuse hotline last Friday, which prompted a visit from state police. Blake Lorenz said that he's "very concerned that the system will let her down."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:15 AM | Comments (52)

The Charismatic Alberto Cutie

Time will tell if the celebrity priest lives up to Church of the Resurrection's lively tradition.

It's been about three months now since we heard of Alberto Cutie, the former Roman Catholic priest who was caught kissing his girlfriend on a Miami beach. No sooner was he removed from his post than he left the Catholic Church altogether for the local Episcopal diocese, which welcomed him with much fanfare and sent him to pastor a local church.

As I looked at photos of Cutie, I realized there was something very familiar about the background: I used to attend that church.

That was when I was a reporter for the Hollywood Sun-Tattler, a daily of about 35,000 circulation when I moved there in 1983 as a general assignment reporter. Hollywood is a few suburbs to the north of Biscayne Park, where sits the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, Father Cutie's digs.

Back then, the church is not the smallish place it is today. Many of us drove 20 or more miles to attend Resurrection because it was the only openly charismatic church in the diocese. Two others were somewhat into the charismatic renewal, but Resurrection was huge on the prophecies, healings, and speaking in tongues the renewal movement is known for. It also had a healthy emphasis on the Bible and weeknight home groups.

It also helped that the rector, Cliff Horvath, and his wife, Nedda, had been committed to the place for years and held to rock-solid evangelical theology. Cliff was a risk taker when it came to things charismatic, and he drew many like-minded people to sit under him. The parish flourished with involvements in everything from Cursillo to Life in the Spirit seminars, and what was a quiet Anglican worship style when I first arrived became a full-blown swinging-on-the-chandeliers (I exaggerate a tad) church by the time I left in 1986 for a job at The Houston Chronicle.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:44 AM | Comments (13)

Corrupt Clergy and Forgiveness

Cases like last week's organ-brokering scandal in New Jersey leave no room for cheap grace.

In New Jersey this week, the news is corruption. Forty-four people, including three mayors, a state assemblyman, and five rabbis, have been arrested on various charges, including bribery and organ brokering. Shocking, even for New Jersey, many say. Ho hum, others sigh. For victims, the news is as fresh as an unexpected slap in the face. Imagine being the guy or girl who finds out that a rabbi was going to pocket $150,000 on the sale of your kidney. Imagine being one of those who learns he already has.

As Christians, we're fond of moral equivalence statements designed to inspire us to forgiveness. "There by the grace of God go I" is one. "The ground is level at the foot of the Cross" is another. I hate moral equivalence arguments. They impede the ability of victims to truly forgive. In this case, it is not the same thing for an impoverished father to sell a kidney to feed his family as it is for a member of the clergy to buy it for $10,000 while charging a desperate patient's family $160,000. One behavior, unchecked, may lead to another, but we empathize with the desperation and rightly deride the exploitation.

Still, corruption threatens its victims' souls nearly as much as its perpetrators'. The path of least resistance is to give in to bitterness and self-absorption, especially when expressions of anger at the injury or injustice draw condemnation from friend and foe alike. When our fellow believers hold up as models the Amish who immediately "forgave" the deranged Nickel Mines killer, for example, victims struggling with anger feel doubly violated. As one journalist discovered, even for the Amish, forgiveness is a complicated process.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:51 AM | Comments (6)

Building Up Without Walls

Paula White steps up as senior pastor of the troubled Pentecostal megachurch.

Popular Pentecostal teacher Paula White announced two weeks ago that she is taking the helm of the megachurch that she and ex-husband Randy White founded 18 years ago.

Paula's willingness to become senior pastor of Without Walls International Church - a Tampa, Florida, nondenominational congregation that once boasted 20,000+ members - shows immense optimism on her part, because the question remains if Without Walls has a future, or if it should.

Without Walls' leaders have been accused of preaching a prosperity gospel that says God will bless believers by making them succeed in all things, including in finances. One article reports that Without Walls used to have over 23,000 members (including celebrities and world leaders) and received up to $40 million in donations annually. All the while, the Whites were allegedly purchasing expensive homes and buying or leasing costly cars and private jets. Last fall the church faced foreclosure by the Evangelical Christian Credit Union, and is rumored to be in serious debt.

In August 2007, the Whites announced they were divorcing after 18 years of marriage. Since then, church membership has dwindled: three services have been cut to two, and hits to Without Walls' website and Paula's personal site have dropped dramatically.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:59 AM | Comments (8)

Breast Cancer and the Bible

Does HarperOne's forthcoming Pink Ribbon Bible push the boundaries of niche-marketing?

Gone are the days when personalizing your Bible meant choosing between a leather or patterned Bible cover.

The wide variety of Bibles currently on the market allows for customization based on age, sex, and interest. There are Bibles for teenage girls (with "a unique design that fits her lifestyle") and college students, Bibles for men and Bibles for women, picture-book Bibles (even Manga Bibles), and Bibles for occasions, like the American Patriot's Bible, released by Thomas Nelson this summer to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Now you can also customize the Bible to a particular cause. Last year, HarperOne released The Green Bible, to "help you see that caring for the earth is not only a calling, but a lifestyle"; now Tyndale House has a Hungry Planet Bible (part of a project "raising awareness of the plight of the homeless and hungry") and a Pray for a Cure Bible aimed at breast cancer support, released in 2007. This September, HarperOne will release the Pink Ribbon Bible. One dollar of every purchase will go to the Pink Ribbon Girls, a nonprofit organization providing support, education, and awareness of breast cancer. Although Pink Ribbon Girls is not a Christian nonprofit, founder Tracie Metzger says the Bible was an encouragement in her own battle with breast cancer.

These specialty Bibles allow their owners to identify themselves by a cause they feel passionate about, not just their stage of life or color preference. But are we shaping the Bible to our lifestyle more than molding our lifestyle to the Bible?

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:15 AM | Comments (19)

Nancy Guthrie: Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow

Well acquainted with suffering, Guthrie offers Jesus' words of comfort in her most recent work.

Nancy Guthrie is no stranger to suffering. After her second child, Hope, died within a year of birth from Zellweger syndrome, a rare, fatal genetic abnormality, Guthrie began writing Holding On to Hope, a book about coping with loss and grief. She was in the final stages of writing when she became pregnant with a third child, Gabriel, who was also diagnosed with Zellweger. Gabriel lived for six months.

Since Gabriel's death, Guthrie has written many books and articles, and has traveled around the country speaking at conferences about the Christian response to suffering. Her latest work, Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow (Tyndale), which came out last month, is an expansion of themes introduced in her previous books, adding, as Nancy writes in the introduction, "the perspective of years and further understanding of the Scriptures." Her.meneutics contributor Ruth Moon talked to Guthrie about the health-and-wealth gospel and how to comfort friends who are grieving.

What place do you want Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow to have on the bookshelf of Christian books about suffering? What niche does it fill?

I hope this book is not a "grief" book. It speaks to people who are grieving, but I hope people see it as a theological book. I hope that the book would be that theological thinking through of suffering, but also an invitation to those of us who say that Jesus means everything to us and that we want to follow him, to live that out in the hardest, lowest places of life, that when we enter into unimaginable suffering, it's obvious that Jesus is still everything to us, that he is still the solid ground beneath our feet, and that he is who we're grabbing hold of and depending on and whom we love and treasure and trust.

You organize this book around 11 statements from Jesus on suffering, such as, "I, Too, Have Heard God Tell Me No," and "I Am Giving Life to Those Who Believe in Me." Do you feel you learned anything while writing those statements?

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:48 AM | Comments (4)

Women's Ordination: A Crack in the Cathedral?

Female bishops outlawed, female priests tacitly allowed at last week’s Anglican gathering in Bedford, Texas.

After the Anglican Church in North America's (ACNA) momentous inaugural gathering, the verdict is out on whether the issue of women's ordination will inhibit the budding alliance from moving forward.

Last week more than 800 men and women gathered in Bedford, Texas, to elect an archbishop and ratify a constitution for the ACNA, a new alliance for churches that have left the Episcopal Church. Led by Robert Duncan, bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the ACNA comprises more than 700 theologically conservative churches with about 70,000 parishioners.

There were many central theological beliefs that last week's attendees could agree on in their constitution and canon laws, including the full inspiration of the Bible, the centrality of baptism and Communion to church life, and the authority of the historic church creeds. But for the time being, ACNA leaders have not reached full agreement on female priests. At this time, each jurisdiction is free to decide whether or not to ordain women, but jurisdictions cannot force others to either accept women's ordination or to stop practicing it. Women bishops are forbidden.

"For those who believe the ordination of women to be a grave error, and for those who believe it scripturally justifiable . . . we should be in mission together until God sorts us out," said Duncan in last week's opening address. "It is not perfect, but it is enough."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 12:15 PM | Comments (14)

Media Lukewarm on Laodicean's Meaning

Last night's spelling bee champ rattled off the word with ease, but media today haven't yet connected the Greek adjective to the Bible.

Last night Indian American girl Kavya Shivashankar, 13, won the televised Scripps National Spelling Bee and its $40,000 prize after rattling off the letters in Laodicean (pronounced lā-ˌä-də-ˈsē-ən). Like most spelling-bee words, the adjective doesn't get much use in everyday conversation, so news sources today have defined the word using American Heritage and Merriam-Webster Dictionary's entries.

American Heritage, 4th ed., second entry: "Indifferent or lukewarm especially in matters of religion."

Merriam-Webster's first entry is a little more helpful, but not one news source used it: "from the reproach to the church of the Laodiceans in Rev 3:15–16." Its second entry got the most play: "lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics."

Bible readers, of course, will recognize the Greek term from the Book of Revelation and from Paul's letters to the Colossians. Laodicea was a city along the river Lycus in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) founded by King Antiochus II Theos and named for his wife, Laodice, in the 3rd century B.C. Church historians believe that Epaphras, one of Paul's helpers, preached the gospel to the Laodiceans, as he did to the inhabitants in nearby Colossae about 10 miles away.

Paul mentions the Laodicean church in passing five times in his epistle to the Colossians, encouraging them to "see that [this letter] is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea" (4:16).

Laodicea isn't associated with an attitude of lukewarmness until the third chapter of John's Revelation, which lists the church in Laodicea among the seven named churches in Asia Minor.

"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!" John warns on behalf of Christ. "So, because you are lukewarm - neither hot nor cold - I am about to spit you out of my mouth" (3:15-16). The Laodiceans, who were apparently too focused on material riches, were rebuked for their wishy-washiness about the gospel.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:12 AM | Comments (6)

Jon and Kate Plus a Lot of Bitterness

The Gosselins need to confess their sins to Christian friends rather than to the TV camera.

I admit that for a while I was hooked on certain reality TV shows, but I've pulled the plug on several as of late, keeping my viewing list a lot shorter. (However, I've kept Deadliest Catch on the list because I can't get enough of men battling the Bering Sea - it's quite thrilling!) Reality TV has destroyed its share of relationships, so I have been hesitant to spend time becoming emotionally involved with the real-life people who inhabit it.

Sadly, its most recent casualty seems to be Jon and Kate Gosselin. The once-happy couple that has endured the challenges of multiple births have now turned on one another, and Monday night's episode, the fifth-season premiere, revealed the pain that pride, anger, blame-shifting, and resentment bring to a marriage.

Watching as a counselor, I was squirming in my seat. The problems they were describing (in separate interviews) were actually quite common and normal in most marriages. I've heard many people express their anger and sadness about feeling underappreciated, having to put dreams on hold, and enduring their spouse saying and doing hurtful things. The biggest test will be how the Gosselins, who are professing Christians, choose to deal with these universal marital issues. If Monday's episode was any evidence of how they are proceeding, things do not look good.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:53 AM | Comments (78)

A Weighty Issue

The church's silence on food addiction is ignoring sin — and hurting women.

Years of women being taught to develop a positive body image may actually be hurting them. A recent study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology surveyed 81 Philadelphia-area women who fell along all points on the body mass index scale. Conducted by Marisa Rose at the Temple University School of Medicine, the study found that, as the women's body mass index increased, two-thirds of them said they still believed they were at an ideal body size. When asked to pick out an ideal body shape from a series of silhouettes, 20 percent of the women categorized as obese chose an overweight or obese model.

This study points to the body-image confusion that has surfaced over and against Western culture's unhealthy emphasis on thinness as the ultimate feminine asset (e.g., the recent gossip about Jessica Simpson's pants size). The debate pits those who advocate health against those who preach unwavering self-acceptance, isolating the two as mutually exclusive. And Christian women often face an added, more complicated dimension as thinness becomes associated with moral purity.

As any woman who struggles with weight issues can well attest, finding a balance between loving yourself and changing bad habits can be psychological turmoil. I grew up bombarded by images of impossible thinness in ads and on TV, but at every turn - at school, at home, and at church - these standards were countered by messages of self-acceptance, even celebration. "We should be happy and proud to be who we are," I was told. "Don't let anyone make you feel bad about the way you look!" I internalized the messages all too well; for me, as I suspect it is for many others, the cycle of food addiction is deeply emotional and linked to my most essential understanding of self. Many of us have so successfully developed a sense of self-acceptance that we cannot find the motivation to break bad and potentially dangerous habits; to gain one would be to lose the other.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:35 AM | Comments (20)

Never Been Kissed

The Virgin Lips movement, and shades of ‘how far is too far?’

It turns out that Susan Boyle has been kissed. But her earlier claim that she hadn't was met with disbelief. So, too, are pre-20th century European mores, when premarital kissing was forbidden. Can you think of a recent historical movie where the hero and heroine didn't kiss before their wedding? Is it even possible?

Well, yes. It's more than possible. Some people have never been kissed without ever having decided against kissing. Others, like the Virgin Lips Movement, which The Tennessean recently profiled, are saying that premarital kissing is a morality issue for Christians.

The article starts off with Katy Kruger's wedding day, where she kisses for the first time in front of 200 guests. "I wasn't sure what to do . . . I thought I would mess up," she told The Tennessean. It turned out just fine.

The University of Missouri's student newspaper also published an essay on the movement, which emphasized that the idea isn't that weird.

Al Mohler writes that not kissing before wedding is an admirable decision, given our culture:

In the space of little more than a single generation, we have seen the breaking down of virtually every social and cultural support for sexual abstinence. Arousal and intimacy come with the romantic longing that marks the deepening relationship between a man and a woman. Young couples no longer court on the porch swing with the girl's parents sitting inside and very close at hand. Now, most young couples face the temptation of romantic contexts in which intimacy - and this means sexual intimacy - is a likely outcome.

The Virgin Lips Movement represents a serious effort to push back against this expectation and to create boundaries that will protect virtue and honor marriage.

The Tennessean's article mentions the usual objections to purity pledges: if you haven't, you won't know whether you and your fiance? have chemistry; if you try and fail, you'll feel terrible; purity shouldn't be a goal the way earning a bachelor's degree should. Idealists are unlikely to base their decisions on arguments like that.

Instead, they are likely to respond to I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. The Tennessean calls it "the Virgin Lips Movement bible."

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Posted by Susan Wunderink at 9:23 AM | Comments (37)

Humans in Creation: Another View

Nature's enduring value is not in what it can provide us.

Earth Day came and went last week, represented on Her.meneutics with a flurry of commenters responding to Kay Warren's piece, "Puppies Aren't People." On the same day, DisneyNature released Earth, a film blending spectacular beauty, heart-warming scenes of animal families, the realities of life and death, and the impact of change. According to Variety, Earth is the highest-grossing documentary for an opening weekend. As my husband, Mark, and I stood in line to buy our tickets, we learned that Disney is planting a tree for every ticket purchased in the first week of the film's release. So far over 500,000 trees will be planted in the fragile Atlantic Rainforest of northern Brazil.

Embedded in Earth's beauty and narration are reminders that ecosystems have been altered in ways that make flourishing difficult. We witness a polar bear struggling to survive, and while we don't see him die, it appears that he does. As the summer ice melts, he loses his platform for hunting and his ability to feed after hibernating all winter. But on the upside, we see mama polar bear introducing her cubs to the world, a bird teaching her young to fly, a whale migrating with her calf, and elephants with their cadre of babies trekking across deserts in search of water. Earth shows mamas at every turn - nurturing, teaching, chastising, carrying, and nudging. (Watch the trailer and get a two-minute sample.)

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:41 AM | Comments (4)

Kay Warren: Puppies Aren't People

When compassion for animals goes too far.

Recently, Rick was trimming a vine around our patio cover and accidentally dislodged a bird's nest with two blue speckled eggs. He brought it to me to see if I thought our grandkids would like to have it. Instead of experiencing pleasure at seeing a beautifully crafted nest, I was distressed. "Oh, that poor mama bird!," I immediately cried. "She's probably frantically searching for her babies!"

Rick's puzzled look brought me up short. "I guess I've seen too many Disney movies," I said with a laugh. "I'm acting like the bird has human emotions." Even though it was silly, I got a poignant feeling every time I looked at the nest.

Later that week I babysat my grandkids, who are on a strict gluten- and dairy-free diet, and it's hard to find anything decent to eat. I rummaged through the cupboard for lunch fixings and came across a cereal box featuring a cute gorilla. The back of the box featured the story of endangered East African mountain gorillas, and ended with a plea for "sponsorship of a gorilla."

It reminded me of an experience I had at Christmas. Late one night, I was channel surfing while wrapping presents. I normally skip commercials, but on one station, the lovely sounds of Silent Night began playing, and pictures of abandoned dogs and cats filled the screen. A famous singer, her voice thick with emotion, pleaded with viewers to "sponsor" these helpless, abandoned animals with a monthly donation. I felt tears forming as my emotions reacted to the seeming pleas for help in the big, beautiful eyes of these animals. Our family dog had died not too long ago, and I saw her reflected in the faces of the puppies. They had me.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:42 AM | Comments (132)

Priest Who Professed Islam Defrocked by Episcopal Church

An Episcopal priest who professed two years ago that she was also a practicing Muslim has been defrocked by the Episcopal Church.

Rhode Island Bishop Geralyn Wolf informed Ann Holmes Redding, who lives in Seattle, of the decision on Wednesday. Although she lives outside the diocese, Redding was ordained in Rhode Island and remained under Wolf's authority.

"Bishop Wolf found Dr. Redding to be a woman of utmost integrity and their conversations over the past two yeas have been open, honest and respectful," the diocese said in a statement. "However Bishop Wolf believes that a priest of the Church cannot be both a Christian and a Muslim."

The diocese learned in June 2007 about Redding's Muslim profession. It removed her from ministry temporarily and told her to spend a year on "discernment of her faith commitment."

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 4:23 PM | Comments (12)

Why Santa Belongs in Your Kids' Christmas

The Bible, Gender, and ‘Dad-Mom’ Debate Continues

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Sin, Grace, and the Royal Wedding

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