Hermenuetics

Iranian Christian Women Freed from Evin Prison

Coming on the heels of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (Nov. 8), Christian religious-freedom groups celebrated a victory yesterday in Iran. Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad, 30, and Maryam Rustampoor, 27 — two Iranian converts to Christianity — were freed after being imprisoned for 259 days.

Authorities raided the women’s apartment, which contained "Christian literature," on March 5. The women were charged with anti-state activity, spreading Christianity, and apostasy (deserting one’s faith), and were placed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

In Iran, apostasy alone is punishable by execution or life in prison. The country has been placed on several watch lists of places that repress religious freedom. Recently, Iran has come under fire for jailing believers following raids on churches and homes belonging to Christians.

While in custody, reports came that the two women endured “intense interrogations which have reportedly included sleep deprivation and other psychological pressure.” In the past, Evin in particular has been accused of denying its inmates basic rights, and both women suffered from poor health that went untreated. Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari just released a memoir about her hellish eight-month stay in Evin following a routine visit in 2006 with her elderly mother.

Additionally, the women were heavily pressured to reclaim Islam. Back in August, a judge urged them to renounce Christianity. When Esmaeilabad and Rustampoor would not do so, they were sent back to jail “to think about it.” According to BosNewsLife, at one point in the hearing, one of the women said God had spoken to them through the Holy Spirit:

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:40 AM | Comments (1)

Wheaton Students Advocate for Woman President

Out of the 111 members schools of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), six are led by female presidents. Some current and former Wheaton College students are hoping their alma mater becomes the seventh, once president Duane Litfin retires in mid-2010.

An “Open Letter to the Presidential Selection Committee” — penned by ’05 male graduate Ariah Fine and posted online Friday, October 23 — “strongly encourage[s] the committee to search diligently for a female or minority candidate to be in the final pool of candidates.” Circulated primarily on Facebook, the letter calls on the committee to uphold its stated commitment to hire someone who will “champion ethnic, economic, and gender diversity.”

As of November 2, the letter has garnered 351 signatures, and was sent to the committee right before the application deadline of November 1. Fine said he received confirmation that the committee had received this letter and a similar one he sent this spring, but hasn't heard from any of the committee members.

The letter claims that the number of white male presidents leading CCCU schools is much higher than those leading secular U.S. colleges, citing the statistic that only 2 percent of CCCU schools are led by females, compared with 21.1 percent of secular schools. Fine said he found these statistics from a 2005 Christian Higher Ed article summary available online, and makes this screenshot available.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:50 AM | Comments (20)

Reforming a Girls' Reformatory

In August, Beloit Juvenile Correctional Facility in northern Kansas closed its doors. Heather Hollingsworth’s coverage for the Associated Press highlights the triumphs and downfalls of one of the country’s longest-running girls’ reformatories.

Beloit was started in 1888 by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which ran it for a year or two before handing it over to the state. A separate reformatory for juveniles was still a relatively new concept; up until the mid-19th century, children and adult were jailed in the same facility.

Beloit's WCTU had good intentions to shape “incorrigible” youth into morally upright women. Like other reformatories, girls at Beloit worked in the gardens or at nearby farms and took care of the institute’s animals.

“But with the high-minded ideals of the reformers, there was a dark side as well,” explained Ned Loughran, executive director of the Council for Juvenile Correctional Administrators in Braintree, Massachusetts. “These kids were an eyesore for the upper classes of society. The solution wasn’t to change the conditions they were growing up in, the poverty and lack of parental supervision. The view was to get them out of sight. Then people forgot they were there, and abuses crept into the system.”

One of Beloit’s worst times took place between 1935 and 1936 under superintendent Lula Coyner. With a growing belief in eugenics, Coyner forced 62 girls, nearly half of Beloit’s inhabitants, to be sterilized. The girls had to go to the police to stop Coyner, who was planning for more residents to have their fallopian tubes removed. Under other superintendents, girls had been physically and emotionally abused in other ways.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:04 AM | Comments (2)

Signs of Faith in Sarah Palin's Book?

Sarah Palin may not be writing a second autobiography for Christian audiences as previously reported, but perhaps her evangelical co-author will persuade her to include more details about her faith.

Shortly after she was nominated as John McCain's vice presidential candidate, media outlets seemed to dig for details about her Pentecostal background. But the focus on Palin's faith appeared to fade after the election as she became a grandmother, battled with her daughter's ex-fiancee, and resigned from her Alaska office.

Palin's 400-page memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, is due out from HarperCollins and Zondervan November 17. (Coincidentally, it's the same day Zondervan releases Rick Warren's The Hope You Need. Warren became the target of criticism after he was chosen to lead the benediction at President Obama's inauguration.)
Going Rogue's product description suggests that Palin will write about "the importance of faith and family," but is still fairly vague. She chose to work on her book with Lynn Vincent, co-author of Same Kind of Different As Me (which is becoming a movie starring Samuel L. Jackson), and a former writer for World magazine.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 12:19 PM | Comments (25)

Keri Wyatt Kent: The Priority of Neighbor-Love

Keri Wyatt Kent, a Chicago-based author known for her writing on spiritual formation, wants her most recent book, Simple Compassion, to connect readers’ inner world to the larger world and its need for justice seekers. In each of the book’s 52 devotions, Kent provides Compassion Steps (looking inward) and Community Steps (providing tips for group discussion and outreach efforts). In the end, Kent says, she wants her readers to remember the small but effective steps they can take to serve Christ in others. Christianity Today intern Elissa Cooper recently spoke with Kent.

How does Simple Compassion relate to your other books?
My other books are about spiritual formation — about connecting your faith with everyday life. If we are being formed in the image of Christ, then we have to look at what Christ was like. He was a compassionate person. He reached across social lines, he associated with people who were poor, and he associated with people of different social standings than him. If we are being formed in the image of Christ, then we are developing a heart for the poor and for those on the margins of society. Compassion is the logical next step in spiritual formation.

What exactly is compassion, and why is it so challenging?
Compassion is caring about the welfare of someone else as much as you care about your own welfare, which is what Jesus calls us to do. It’s challenging because we are naturally hardwired to look out for ourselves. That’s one thing we in 21st-century America have lost sight of: the Christian life is not the life of health and wealth and ease. It’s challenging to live a life of compassion, but I think it’s more rewarding, just like anything that’s challenging.

You write that many Christian women believe they can’t make a difference, or that others don’t want them to use their gifts. Do women have a more difficult time acting on compassion than men do?

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:50 AM | Comments (1)

In Their Own Words: Laura Ling and Euna Lee

Much has been written about Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two American journalists captured this March, imprisoned for five months in North Korea, and released on August 6. But on Wednesday, for the first time, their story was told in their own words.

Lee and Ling’s story has unfolded over the past few months, and I have watched with interest, both because they are journalists and because they are women. I have tried to see myself in their situation in order to understand what they went through. But I have to admit, it is difficult to imagine myself hiking at sunrise across the border from China into North Korea, living in a third-world prison — or flying on a jet with Bill Clinton. It is even hard to imagine how they felt, behind the scenes, when they taped the “thank you” video posted the week after their return, much less during the ordeal in prison.

Instead, as I followed the story, I kept coming back to unanswered questions: Who are these women? What motivates them? And how did they survive?

Their statement didn’t do much to answer these questions, but this sentence at least provides a clue: “One of us, Euna, is a devout Christian whose faith infused her interest in the story.” Slowly, a new mental picture forms that is based on our shared faith.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:21 AM | Comments (3)

Juanita Bynum Returns to Conference Stage

“This too shall pass,” Pentecostal teacher Juanita Bynum wrote to fans after months of intense media attention following a 2007 parking-lot assault by her husband, Bishop Thomas Weeks. Now, it appears it has.

Renaming herself “Juanita Bynum II” on her website, Bynum has signaled a return to speaking at conferences for Christian women. Now, with media attention swinging her way once more, the question is how — and how long — Bynum, who first gained notability for drawing large crowds at T. D. Jakes’s “Woman, Thou Art Loosed” conferences, will be defined by her past.

In a strange case of symmetry, last month Paula White, a high-profile Pentecostal teacher whose marriage unraveled around the same time as Bynum’s, made news when she took the helm of Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Florida. The two break-ups made headlines in part because they seemed to reveal a pattern, leading Charisma and Time magazines to ask, “Is Marriage Still Sacred?” and “Are Mega-Preachers Scandal Prone?” Time interpreted the incidents as proof that “divorce, once a taboo in evangelical culture, is now a fact of life.”

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 11:55 AM | Comments (13)

Jenny Sanford Offers Forgiveness After Husband's Affair

You have to dig a bit, but Vogue's feature story on South Carolina First Lady Jenny Sanford is sprinkled with hints at the importance of her faith. The wife of Mark Sanford left the governor's mansion earlier this month to live in their home on the coast after her husband admitted to having an affair with an Argentine woman.

Unlike other women in high-profile political scandals, Jenny Sanford was praised by many for not standing idly by her husband during press conferences to save him face. She gave her first post-affair interview to Vogue, explaining how startled she was about the affair. "The person I married was centered on a core of morals," she says. "The person who did this is not centered on those morals.”

The reporter's first description is a bit odd (the Sanfords have wine on the kitchen counter!), but it sets a scene for the rest of the article.

The Sanfords are conservative Christians, but they’re not the teetotaling, proselytizing sort. There are bottles of wine on the kitchen counter. Ayn Rand is on the bookshelf, but so is Gabriel García Márquez. The Bible sits front and center on the coffee table, alongside Forbes magazine. “You could be friends with her for 20 years, and she would never bring up the religious stuff,” says her friend Marjory Wentworth, poet laureate of South Carolina and a self-described liberal who once worked for The Nation.

So we discover that Christians can drink wine and read and be friends with liberals. Moving on.

The author explains that faith was an important part of Sanford's childhood, but only touches on it briefly. "As a girl, she saw her father kneel next to the bed in daily prayer," Rebecca Johnson writes. "Faith also helped the Sullivan children cope with their mother’s longtime battle with skin cancer and the debilitating treatments she underwent to fight it."

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 4:27 PM | Comments (31)

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, 1921-2009

I saw Eunice Kennedy Shriver once, in December of 1963. I was standing at the back of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., waiting for a Mass in honor of her brother, John F. Kennedy, to begin. Most of the Kennedy family was seated in front when Mrs. Shriver arrived. She rushed past, so close I could have reached out and patted her full-length fur coat.

She was tall, with disheveled brown hair and hastily applied red lipstick. Her face was lined with grief. I saw other Kennedys that day, but Mrs. Shriver is the only one I remember — a 42-year-old, very pregnant force of nature, a woman in pain who knew exactly where she was going. That brief image keeps flashing across my mental screen as I read tributes to one of America’s truly great women, who died Tuesday at the age of 88.

A woman in an era when wealthy women did not work and almost no women went into politics, she may have achieved even more than her more famous brothers. Carla Baranauckas for The New York Times:

“When the full judgment of the Kennedy legacy is made — including J.F.K.’s Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress, Robert Kennedy’s passion for civil rights and Ted Kennedy’s efforts on health care, workplace reform and refugees — the changes wrought by Eunice Shriver may well be seen as the most consequential,” U.S. News & World Report said in its cover story of Nov. 15, 1993.

A child of privilege with personal connections to pomp and power, she worked tirelessly on behalf of the marginalized. J. Y. Smith for The Washington Post:

Her first job was with the State Department in Washington, where she was part of a program to help former prisoners of war become acclimated to civilian life. . . .

In 1947 and 1948, she was executive secretary of the Justice Department's National Conference on the Prevention and Control of Juvenile Delinquency. Having gained control of a $1 million trust fund at 21, she accepted a salary of $1 a year.

In 1950, she became a social worker at the federal penitentiary for women in Alderson, W.Va. In 1951, she moved to Chicago and worked at the House of the Good Shepherd, a youth shelter, and with the city's juvenile court system.

A prominent Democrat who disagreed with her party’s increasingly pro-choice stance, she stood up for the unborn and protested the abortion-rights agenda. The Susan B. Anthony List:

Eunice Kennedy Shriver was an early supporter of the Susan B. Anthony List and its mission to advance, mobilize and represent pro-life women in the political process. She and her husband, Sargent Shriver, also lent their time and talents to the efforts and activities of Democrats for Life of America and Feminists for Life.

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

Nancy Guthrie: Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow

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 Groups Lash Out at Letterman in Palin's Defense

Several women's groups have joined Sarah Palin's fight with David Letterman over his joke that Palin's daughter got "knocked up" by Alex Rodriguez during their recent trip to New York.

"It's worse than poor taste; it reflects ugliness in him. He would never say something like that about a liberal woman," president of Concerned Women for America Wendy Wright said in a statement. "But rather than deal with issues and ideas, he denigrates her as a human being."

The Alaska governor characterized Letterman's jokes as a reference to "statutory rape" since the only child with her at the game was her 14-year-old daughter, Willow. Letterman said the following night that the joke was in "poor taste," but he says he was joking about 18-year-old Bristol Palin, not Willow.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 11:35 AM | Comments (19)

Q+A: Kaffie McCullough on Craigslist

The same feature that has made Craigslist so popular - namely, unlimited free advertising - has brought the decade-old website under heavy criticism for providing unmonitored forums for prostitution in its 570 city hubs. After several state representatives met with Craigslist attorneys Wednesday, the site agreed to remove its "erotic services" section and replace it with an "adult services" section, in which posts will cost $5-10 and be manually reviewed by staff before going up.

While adding oversight to the free-for-all forum is an improvement, it's simply not enough - especially for stopping the sexual exploitation of children. Kaffie McCullough, who for eight years has led a statewide campaign to stop the prostitution of children in Georgia, is one skeptic. Her initiative, the Atlanta-based A Future. Not a Past. program, a wing of the Juvenile Justice Fund, released a study just this week on Craigslist and child prostitution. It showed that out of the 334 known adolescent girls in Georgia's sex trade, about 53 percent are advertised through Craigslist's erotic services section - what McCullough calls the "ground zero for pimps to profit from children." Further, the number of girls being pimped on Craigslist rose dramatically from November 2008 (100 girls) to February 2009 (176).

McCullough spoke recently with blog editor Katelyn Beaty about Craigslist's decision.

What was your response to yesterday's announcement?
I'm grateful that Craigslist is trying to monitor what's happening, because their erotic services [section] was clearly a place where young girls were being prostituted. I have mixed feelings as to whether this is going to work. I'd want to know what they mean when they say they're going to "monitor" it. And without training staff, for instance, the research that we've been doing since August 2007 says that people were not accurate when they'd make estimates as to whether somebody is young or not. I'd like to think Craigslist would be open to having training so that staff can screen more effectively.

I realize that all of this makes it harder for the perpetrators, but . . . the reality is that even if Craigslist had totally taken it down, that wouldn't stop the problem of the prostitution of children - it would just spring up somewhere else.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:33 AM | Comments (0)

Artist Profile: Anna Kocher

Anna Kocher is an artist in the greater Philadelphia area whose work has been displayed at her alma mater, Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, the Center Art Gallery at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Church of the Good Samaritan, where she and her family attend.

In this interview with Elrena Evans, Anna talks about what it means to be a Christian and an artist, and how motherhood has impacted her work.

Where do your faith and your art intersect?

My faith and my art have both been a part of who I am as far back as I can remember. I always believed; I always drew. Both have changed and matured and gone through times of drought and times of abundance.

In high school and early college, I had this feeling that I should do something practical. . . . But when I decided to pursue art in college, I had this rare moment of clarity and knew that it was the right thing for me to do. I've been grateful for that moment of insight and find myself clinging to the memory when I start to feel like maybe I should have been an accountant or something. (For anyone who knows me, the idea of me as an accountant is laughable.)

You write on your website, "We live in a society obsessed with the material and ideal but terrified of true, gritty physicality." It strikes me that motherhood - pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and just the day-to-day experience of raising small children - is steeped in "gritty physicality."

[M]otherhood . . . strips away the facade in so many different areas. I always had a sense that life was fragile, though I don't think I dwelt on it much. People always talk about how miraculous infants are, which I always took to mean something about how amazing and precious they are. After actually having an infant (two, as a matter of fact), I would say that the miracle is that they stay alive at all. It seems to defy reason that this tiny, helpless creature with sporadic, phlegmy breathing who spews up strange substances and seems, at times, intent on refusing everything that would help it sustain itself (sleep, milk, socks) would grow and flourish and become an individual with thoughts and opinions (strong, strong opinions).

Motherhood also strips away illusions you hold about yourself. Physically, you get to know your own body in a very different way. And, not to put too fine a point on it, it's not always pretty. It is also very revealing in less tangible ways. You find yourself coming face to face with the deepest parts of yourself, which, again, are not always pleasant. . . . Somehow being a mother manages to be so much more joyful and beautiful than I could have imagined before, but also more painful and difficult than I could have anticipated. It's humbling to realize how one-dimensional my understanding of motherhood was before having children, and instructive to apply that insight to issues of faith and truth.

What is the role of a Christian artist? One of your paintings, for instance, shows a man sitting on a toilet - is there anything fundamentally Christian about that piece?

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:37 AM | Comments (3)

Elizabeth Lev Defends Mom's Decision to Turn Down Notre Dame

Politics Daily contributor Elizabeth Lev fired a smart defense this morning of Mary Ann Glendon's refusal to accept Notre Dame's Laetare Medal and to speak alongside President Obama at the school's May 17 commencement ceremony. Glendon sent a letter Monday saying she could not accept the medal because of Notre Dame's decision to give an honorary degree to someone whose pro-choice policies sharply contradict Catholic teaching. Lev, based in Rome, summarizes Glendon's consistent life ethic nicely:

Professor Glendon was to have been honored for not only for her scholarship, but for her second career, her pro-bono work - ranging from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the great civil rights issues of the present day - namely, the defense of human life from conception to natural death. Her concerns range from the aging and dying population to the unborn to the well-being and dignity of every life, regardless of race, religion, or economic status. Her outstanding work in this field has earned her the respect of the most brilliant minds of the international community, regardless of whether they agree with her position. So again, to see her merely as "strongly anti-abortion" instead of as a tireless defender of the dignity of life, is to reveal not only a lack of understanding of the subject's work, but also the writer's real interest in this question.

The person labeling Glendon "strongly anti-abortion" was Lev's Politics Daily colleague Kaitlynn Riely, whose Monday column criticized Glendon for not being more diplomatic and "engaging someone of an opposing view . . . [Glendon's] diplomatic style seems to be less suited for U.S.-Vatican relations and more for U.S.-Cuba relations," Riely quipped.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 3:14 PM | Comments (3)

Why Do We Love Susan Boyle?

If you haven't seen the viral video of Susan Boyle yet, take a few minutes to watch it.
It's worth it.

When Boyle appears on the American-Idolish Britain's Got Talent, she admits that she's never been kissed, tells the audience she's 47, and then shakes her hips playfully. The crowd snickers, the judges raise their eyebrows. Within moments of her performance, the crowd rises to their feet to cheer her rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream," from Les Miserables. Here are the lyrics from the classic piece:

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame

Several news outlets have referred to her as the church volunteer, and we know a little bit more from Mary Jordan's Washington Post article:

She always wanted to sing in front of a large audience, but mostly she just sings in church. On Easter Sunday, the day after her television debut, Boyle - dubbed "The Woman Who Shut Up Simon Cowell" in one headline - received a standing ovation when she went to Mass.

"We let out a wee bit of a cheer for her. We are quite proud of her," Boyle's parish priest, the Rev. Ryszard Holuka, said in a telephone interview. He added that Boyle is a "quiet soul."

"At gatherings and anniversary parties, she'd stand up and give a song," he said. "She never flaunted her voice; this is the first time it's been publicly recognized."

As Jordan writes, "Many have said it was a poor reflection on both the live audience and others watching that they were surprised when a 'frumpy woman' turned out to have the 'voice of an angel.' "

Here are some other reactions to Boyle's performance from across the Web:

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 1:03 PM | Comments (19)

MIA: Evangelical Women in Public Life

Yesterday, a couple other CT editors and I were attempting, audaciously, to name the most influential evangelicals in public life today. These are people we were calling "bridgebuilders," those who have an activist impulse to reach beyond the walls of the church to shape the broader culture for Christ.

The ones that came to our minds first:
pastors Rick Warren and Tim Keller
political leaders Joshua DuBois, Richard Land, Jim Wallis, and Frank Page
conservative pundits James Dobson and Chuck Colson
apologists Dinesh D'Souza and Lee Strobel
the hard-to-categorize Richard Mouw and Joel C. Hunter

We then spent several minutes trying to find a woman to add to this list of fine leaders, and we left the conversation fruitless. Sure, we could think of a few who had tremendous influence within the church, writing books and teaching the Bible, such as Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, and Anne Graham Lotz. But in terms of women doing influential work in American public life, we came up short.

Perhaps our endeavor was based on a faulty premise, that Christians who appear in The New York Times and FOX News are more worthy of our attention here at CT than are those 'normal' Christians who go about the work of ministry in a down-to-earth, local context. Still, can you help us think of the women we have forgotten who are shaping the broader culture for Christ?

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:25 AM | Comments (12)