Feminary linked to this excerpt from a book by Matthew Fox (the theologian, not the actor of Party of Five and Lost fame), The New Reformation. The excerpt is a list of “95 Theses: Articles of Faith for a Christianity for the Third Millennium.” I really love lists, have I mentioned that?Go read the list for yourself (the page also provides German translations for each, I can only assume as some sort of Lutheran historical reference). I picked out a few of my favourites, as well as some that were severely thought-provoking. Here they are, along with my responses.

3. God is always new, always young and always “in the beginning.”

I love thinking about the non-linear nature of God. There’s something fun about making your brain hurt by trying to comprehend the incomprehensible and paradoxical. The idea that there is a being, a force, a spirit that exists independent of time. That just because our existence is linear doesn’t mean all existence is.

OK, I admit, it’s also a very sci fi concept and maybe that’s why I like it.

After all, with me, it goes something like this:

THINGS I LIKE
1. Lists
2. Sci Fi

15. Christians must distinguish between Jesus (an historical figure) and Christ (the experience of God-in-all-things).

This is a really intriguing notion. I have nothing else to add.

25. There is a priesthood of all workers (all who are doing good work are midwives of grace and therefore priests) and this priesthood ought to be honored as sacred and workers should be instructed in spirituality in order to carry on their ministry effectively.

I think of the people I know who fill this definition, Christian or not, religious or not. Some of the people I know who embody this definition of priesthood are definitely not religious, since religion has a tendency to curtail their practice of grace-giving.

46. The human psyche is made for the cosmos and will not be satisfied until the two are re-united and awe, the beginning of wisdom, results from this reunion.

I have no idea what that means, but it sounds really good. And very science fictiony.

49. God is experienced in darkness, chaos, nothingness, suffering, silence and in learning to let go and let be (via negativa).

I’d like to engage this idea more. So many of us grew up with the teaching that “God is with you in the valleys as well as the mountain tops” (Which, by the way, always struck me as a strange metaphor, but that may just be me being a acrophobic prairie girl who prefers solid, flat ground to precarious peaks). But I want to know what kind of relationship God has with the darkness — i.e. is God part of the darkness? Is the darkness part of God? What kind of darkness are we talking about, anyway, because there are different kinds. I mean, there’s depression, heartbreak, the stuff that makes for angsty ballads and then there’s the stuff that’s unquestionably evil, like child abuse and sexual abuse. It’s easy to get poetic about darkness when you’re suffering from seasonal affective disorder. It’s another thing entirely when a young child is caged, starved, and beaten to death (as in the case of Phoenix Sinclair, a young girl whose death has rightfully garnered a great deal of media attention in my city, lately).

55. God speaks today as in the past through all religions and all cultures and all faith traditions none of which is perfect and an exclusive avenue to truth but all of which can learn from each other.

This is a statement which evangelical Christians are trained to greet with suspicion and even derision. I tend to believe it anyway.

86. Chaos is a friend and a teacher and an integral part or prelude to new birth. Therefore it is not to be feared or compulsively controlled.

This speaks to what I was rambling about in my last entry and what Steve touched on in the comments. This might be something I need to work on accepting on a personal level — that chaos, a lack of understanding, or whatever, is not something to be feared.

P.S. Matthew Fox has a blog. He’s also one of the folks behind the Cosmic Mass. You may have seen, as I did, a television news story about the mass, multimedia interactive event involving lasers, DJs and lots of dancing. I myself could get all snarky on the Cosmic Mass (like the fact that for $450 YOU TOO can learn to put on the Cosmic Mass! Or the fact that there’s a cover charge [$12, $15 at the door]), but I’m not really in the mood tonight. I’m just going to let Dr. Fox’s theses stand for now. Light show or no, they’re worth thinking about. Check them out and let me know what you think.

post-modern faith, christianity, religion, cosmic mass, matthew fox

technorati tags: post-modern faith, christianity, religion, cosmic mass, matthew fox

I haven’t felt much like writing this week because I’ve been in an awful mood. It’s been hard on me, but probably harder on the people who live with me. I’ve taken some steps to rectify the situation but I’m a bit slow coming out of it.

So, the question is: is it better to make a whiny blog post or to post not at all? We’ll see. Also, please make sure to turn your sarcasm-decoders on, you’ll need them later.

I’m kinda getting tired of being the only non-evangelical/non-conventional person in my small group. Well, I’m not the only one, as Brother Mark is there to back me up, but he’s been skipping a bit lately and I can’t blame him, because it’s been dreadful. We’re plowing through the rest of Randy Alcorn’s The Treasure Principle, which even the mainline kids haven’t liked, and on which I’m still planning on making an entry explaining why we’ve found it to be so obnoxious.

We’re going through the final four lessons in two weeks so we can move on to — drumroll please — Blue Like Jazz! For those of you not familiar with the latest in Christian non-fiction, Blue Like Jazz (subtitled: “Non-religious thoughts on Christian spirituality.” To which I say: quit trying to squirm out of the “religious” label, dude. No one’s buying it, nor should they) is a book by Donald Miller that Christian parents give to their wayward children in order to draw them back into the fold. OK, not really, but that’s why I ended up reading it. In our group, the only ones who have read it are Brother Mark and I, as well as Heather, the other resident Bad Kid (less religious than me and far less loud-mouthed).

Blue Like Jazz is not a particularly radical book. In fact, it’s pretty much entirely too conservative for me, making it perfect for the group. Miller’s about a more tolerant evangelicalism, which is better than the other kind. I like to think that Blue Like Jazz is a gateway book, i.e. a book that could possibly lead people to reading other books that would really change the way they think.

That said, I haven’t read the book in quite some time and would like to read it again in light of all that I’ve learned since the first reading.

Anyway, I’m starting to kind of feel like the token rabblerouser in the small group — the person who provides a different viewpoint, the presence of which allows the other group members to believe they’re not as insulated and dogmatic as they think. That’s a pretty harsh statement and I probably shouldn’t make it on the internet, but like I said, the bad mood hasn’t completely evaporated so I’m still really bitchy and I’m not really feeling like toning it down right now.

Over the past month I’ve been experiencing a good deal of study-induced euphoria, reading all kinds of great theology and other work by really smart, thoughtful people, and having good conversations with people as well. But recently I’ve been feeling far more pessimistic, especially when it comes to the Bible. It’s not that I’m so stereotypically pomo that I don’t believe in truth (or, Truth), but it’s that it seems to be buried under so many layers of culture, tradition and perception so as to be almost unknowable. The way any given person reads the Bible is so completely dependent on that person’s own paradigm and assumptions about the world and the way it works. Not just the world, either, but the nature of Jesus and his message.

While I tend to be of the belief that God exists independent of our acknowledgement, knowledge, or understanding of God, based on what I’ve seen and experienced, I also believe that we create God. Not necessarily in our own image (though we do that plenty), but in the image we want. I want God to be merciful and kind, so that’s what God is. I want God to intervene in my life, to heal illness, to cure the incurable disease, so God by God’s nature does those things. I want God to mete out justice on the evil (i.e. homosexuals, duh), so that’s also what God does. I want God to be a giver of ponies and maker of sparkles and rainbows. (But not the gay kind, they’re evil.)

Like I said, I’m pretty pessimistic these days about humans ever being able to really understand the truth about anything because we’re so busy creating what we think the truth should be.

technorati tags: donald miller, blue like jazz, god, christianity, religion, bible study

I’m reading this anthology my brother read in the course of his youth ministry studies, a volume called Stories of Emergence: Moving from Absolute to Authentic, edited by SCP favourite Mike Yaconelli. The back cover summary reads, “Follow the stories of people who were steeped in their beliefs… and walk with them on their journeys out of those beliefs.” I haven’t read them all — so far only Tony Jones (another SCP, um, favourite), and I liked his a lot. No beef with the Jonester for me. Today.

No, my beef is (however unsurprisingly) with the “former feminist.”

Frederica Mathewes-Green writes about her “Personal Journey through Feminism,” where she begins as a second-waver in the ’70s, becomes a feminist pro-lifer in the late ’80s and eventually abandons the feminist mantle altogether. She writes:

I even began to think that the whole theory was erroneous — that men and women rise and fall together, their situation affected by race or class, but not gender. A housemaid has more in common with her short-order cook husband and her bricklayer brother than with the wealthy female lawyer whose toilet she cleans. (143)

I totally agree. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT FEMINIST THEORISTS ARE SAYING THESE DAYS. I think what gets me most about this essay is that it’s in a book that will be read in bible schools all across the continent and 19-year-old boys headed for ministry will be reading this and accepting Mathewes-Green’s portrait of feminism as the ultimate, correct one. That’s pretty damn terrifying.

There’s a reason women of my generation separate ourselves from from our mothers’ feminism. Because our ideology has changed and grown! Because we stand upon the foundations laid by women in the first and second waves of feminism and honour the efforts and progress and achievements of the women who established that females were persons under the law, able to own property, hold jobs, and run for political office. But we will also expand our ideas and conceptions.

The only third-wave feminist voice she cites is Naomi Wolf. Maybe Mathewes-Green should try reading feminist tomes that don’t appear on the New York Times bestseller list, and then she’d get a better picture of the shape of things feminist.

The feminisms of today are no longer so myopic that they ignore the plight of women who are not white, middle-class North Americans. Indeed, feminisms of today are hesitant to bind women together in a commonality of experience. “Of all the ways that genuine injustice can appear,” Mathewes-Green writes, “gender seemed increasingly the most spurious grid to use.” My feminist friends and I know that there is no common women’s experience any more than there is a common male experience. Not all women give birth, not all women are mothers, not all women menstruate, not all women work. I am a white Canadian woman, born to middle-class, educated parents, I have far more agency and opportunity and freedom than a large percentage of men in the world. Feminists of my generation and background are not blind to this fact, though Mathewes-Green seems to think that we are.

Has Mathewes-Green even heard of bell hooks, who, in the ’80s, pushed second-wave feminism beyond the paradigm of equating success with equality with the ruling white male class? Is she at all familiar with the feminisms that focus on eliminating sexism which operates as one of many oppressive structures in society?

Mathewes-Green creates a very interesting metaphor in this essay — the Superman cape. She writes:

Feminism is only one of its many expressions; the causes, as I said, are interchangeable. It’s an intoxicating costume. For one thing, the Superman cape works like an invisibility cloak in reverse: put it on and you cant’ see your own faults. Instead, you see everyone else’s…

Superman-Cape attitude has now natural enemies. If opposition arises — and self-made heroes secretly hope it will — it just proves that the hero threatens the powers-that-be…

…it blinds us to our own faults, so exhilarated are we by the faults of others. We develop contempt for others and describe them and their beliefs in the language of insult…

The Superman costume is like the shirt of Nessus, a wedding gift to Hercules that was supposedly charged with supernatural power. In reality, it was saturated with poison… I began to see that feminism was bad for me. It inculcated feelings of self-righteousness and judgmentalism. It filled me with self-perpetuating anger. It blinded me to the good that men do and the bad that women do. It made me think that men and women were enemies, when we actually have a mutual Enemy — who delights in any human discord. (142-143)

I actually like the Superman cape metaphor. As I read Mathewes-Green’s description of the phenomenon, I experience a certain level of conviction. In the throes of ideology I do often become blind to my own faults. I have, too often, stooped to a “language of insult,” as indeed I may have in this very post.

But these have nothing to do with my feminism and everything to do with the fact that I suck.

The Superman cape can be worn in the name of many causes, as Mathewes-Green writes. I have seen it worn in the name of feminism, anarchism, conservatism and, of course, Christianity. Does that fact by itself condemn any one of those causes?

Feminism can, should be, is subject to criticism. Without critical thought it could never expand and grow (like some other movements I can think of). But what Mathewes-Green seems to have missed is that feminism has responded to critics like she, and is changing. It’s too bad she jumped ship before she realized that, though. And too bad all the bible school students reading this anthology won’t be reading bell hooks, too.

In the comments to my previous post, wasp jerky made the most delightful and thought-provoking comment:

I never cease to be amused that so many churches are squeamish about homosexuals in their congregations, yet have no problem with bankers. The Bible condemns usury and even calls it an abomination. Where’s the “God hates bankers” movement?

This issue resonates with me for a few reasons. First of all, biblical Christian financial ethics are one area with which I have little quarrel. Jesus preached a lot about money, and his teachings sure sound good (and, of course, extremely challenging). Also, the two gentlemen who lead my bible study group (one does it more often than the other) both work for bank! Can you believe it? Though the second only joined the ranks of the sellouts recently, having grown tired of not being able to make a living at the health-care job for which he trained and having to work part-time shifts at the gas station where he’s worked since he was a teenager. Which is totally understandable and I’m thrilled for him. He is one of my favourite people ever in the world. I’ve known him since I was five, and you know how most people suck when they go through the awkward teenage years? He didn’t. He was cool and kind and fun even then. He’s that awesome. (Also, the first banker and bible study leader got him the job in the first place. See? Christian community at work! I’ve gotten jobs from church people, too, and it’s a nice effect.)

Anyway. I’m ruminating about these things in case they should come up in the context of our formal study. Inasmuch as our study is anything resembling “formal” with me cracking jokes all the time. I try to keep it to a dull roar, I swear. Wait, I don’t swear, Jesus says to make no oaths, let your yes be yes. (I pay attention sometimes.)

Because we are North American Christians, we can’t have a bible study or small group without having study guide books. The book we’ve been going through this fall was selected by the first banker: The Treasure Principle, by Randy Alcorn.

At first I was relieved by this choice. I was afraid we’d end up with some study that would stir up the controversial issues, on which my perspectives most certainly differ from the rest of the group. (By “controversial issues,” I mean the usual, you know, homos, fetus-killing, but also more esoteric things like the Nature of Salvation and whatnot.)

I’m down with Jesus’ teaching on money, and I’m sure you know that Jesus preached a lot more about money than he did about homos, or, for that matter, sex. Interesting, no?

Now, the first banker’s intentions were totally good in choosing Alcorn’s slight volume. We in our group are all young, and good financial habits are best made early. Everyone, even the heathens, agrees that giving money away is good. Hell, pathological corporations give away money because it makes them look good. That tells you something. Philanthropy and charity are as nearly universally-held as any value can be in our society.

I’d been meaning to make a separate, longer post about Alcorn’s book and maybe I still will. Actually, I can say with a good deal of certainty that I will, because there was one point early in the book where the content almost made me puke. (How’s that for a teaser?) But for now I’ll suffice it to say that I was extremely pleased to find that my dyed-in-the-wool evangelical comrades increasingly took issue with The Treasure Principle. Partly for its obnoxious style — you know, it’s the kind of study guide that has you look up eighteen different verses, with no regard for context, to answer one question to which the answer is obvious (well, to which the “right,” proscribed answer is obvious). We all grew increasingly annoyed by the book’s focus on heavenly reward, but as I said, that’s a story for another day.

Let’s go back to wasp jerky’s original comment. “Usury” isn’t a word you hear very often, so let’s get a definition on the table:

u·su·ry (yū’zhə-rē)
n., pl. -ries.

1. The practice of lending money and charging the borrower interest, especially at an exorbitant or illegally high rate.
2. An excessive or illegally high rate of interest charged on borrowed money.
3. Archaic. Interest charged or paid on a loan.

It’s not like I’m going to go up to the first banker, point my finger, and say, “YOU, SIR, ARE GUILTY OF USURY! YOU ARE AN ABOMINATION BEFORE GOD!” and slap him on the cheek with a white glove or something. Under the modern definition, what banks do is not usury (those money stores, on the other hand, are a different matter). However, under the old definition, the biblical definition, any interest charged is usury. Not just the 18% credit card rate, not just the 50% money mart rate, but a measly 1%, or 0.0001%.

But the definintion has changed, as lexis continuously does, as culture continuously does.

A couple years ago, back when I was divorced from Jesus, a good friend came out of the closet, in a move that surprised no one (well, it did surprise some people, but most of the people he knows are Christians and generally Christians can’t recognize gay if you paint their house with it). I asked him if he were still a Christian. He said he was. I said, how? (I was pro-homo at that point, see, but I figured my pro-homo-ness and Christianity were incompatible.) He said, well, when biblical writers used the word “homosexuality,” they probably didn’t really relate it to the concept of two people in a committed, loving, mutually-beneficial, ethical relationship creating a home together.

I relate the “sin” of homosexuality to the “sin” of usury here to ask, if we can change the definition of the latter word, why can’t we change the definition of the former?

Just a question.

(Some of my favourite people are bankers.)

In most of my previous posts (few as they may be) I’ve referred a book called Under the Tree of Life: The Religion of a Feminist Christian by liturgical scholar Gail Ramshaw. I found out about this book from the Feminarian, who wrote a post that completely sold it, literally. That post sums up the enthusiasm and effusiveness I feel in reading the book. It really is that good. I second everything the Feminarian says and so will move on to some other discussion of the book.

It’s a very personal book — Ramshaw doesn’t ever write as though she’s creating the definitive feminist Christianity, but I can’t tell you how encouraging it was to read that there is at least one woman who has been successful in that endeavour. My feminism is one thing that, if it cannot be incorporated into faith, will force me to abandon Christianity for good. So it’s good to know that the two are not incompatible.

It’s so hard to grow up in a religion that negates you. This is something I felt from a young age, reading articles about how to prepare oneself for one’s future husband in Brio magazine. In the evangelical circles in which I grew up, it’s not talked about, the fact that the bible is not woman-friendly (to put it mildly) on a fundamental level. In an organization where the leadership is primarily male, this isn’t exactly surprising, I suppose. Pastors just don’t get this, I think, to a large extent. Since they’re male, they don’t readily know what it’s like to read the bible and have these masculine metaphors, vocatives, and pronouns thrown up, constantly, wearing you down and leaving a woman with a portrait of humanity and divinity both that reflect so little of her. It’s not their fault on an individual level. Most of the pastors I have personally interacted with have all been quite progressive in their view of women and their role in the church, my own father included.

Here’s how Ramshaw summarizes the woman-oppression of the Christian faith as it is practiced pretty much everywhere:

So here is the rug that women have been swept under: God is referred to as he. God is named Father and called King. We are saved by the man Jesus. Jesus chose men as apostles. Males are the thinkers and the leaders in the church. Men are essentially more human than are women, yet men can image the divine as women cannot. Eve was our evil mother, Mary an impossible goal. Women are created for sexual activity, which is unavoidably sinful. Women are to emulate Jesus by serving others. The church licenses social strictures on women, who are to obey male authority. (40)

I don’t know if other ladies will feel me on this, but all of this sums up the source of the pain that I have felt trying to latch on to Christianity. It’s like this secret pain that they don’t talk about at church. They have those Bad Girls of the Bible bible study books, but they don’t have a study book called Your Holy Text Negates Your Validity as a Human Being: Discuss. I wish they did. I wonder how many other women feel this? Maybe not that many others. I don’t know. But I’d like to try and talk about it. Not just with women, of course. I’m a firm believer that men are partners in the feminist struggle, and I think that there are plenty of men who would have the same kind of “a-ha” moment when they realize what it’s like to be a Christian woman.

Back to Ramshaw. The first half of the book is more gender-focussed, and the second half branches out into broader theological territory. One thing I loved about the book was when she outlines beliefs that would have scandalized a, say, 16-year-old me. Like, that she doesn’t believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ or in heaven. It thrilled me, for some reason, to be reading things like that, reading Christian ideas that don’t jive with the mainline interpretation. The church failed me as a child in the sense that there are only certain questions you can ask. Mainline evangelicalism claims to welcome seekers and questioners, but they really don’t; there are only a few questions you’re allowed to ask, and “What if Jesus’ physical body didn’t actually rise from the dead?” isn’t one of them. I don’t know what I believe about the bodily resurrection or heaven, but I relish the opportunity to hear a completely different, yet still Christian, viewpoint on those subjects.

Ramshaw’s theology is firmly rooted in the community ethic that’s resonated so strongly with me over the past couple of years, and that informs her ideas about the body — the body as self and the body of Christ and the body as sexual. She writes about metaphor, and how it’s OK to toss out some of the old ones, and make some new ones, too.

Some biblical metaphors I will pick up, hold in my hands, and see that the silverplate has worn off, the base metal is showing through. These I shut away in the drawer, or throw away altogether. But others, I discover, are sterling. (38)

I came to the realization earlier this year that I personally cannot worship a male God. I think most people in my faith community would agree that God is neither male nor female, but if that’s the case, why are all our prayers to Father God in invocation of his wisdom? Why is this masculine pronoun so freaking omnipresent? Why is “Lord” so freaking omnipresent? In my own personal religious life (as I practice it outside the faith community), there are no gendered pronouns or vocatives. It’s a matter of what metaphors are right for me. Father God may work for you, and I wouldn’t dream of denying your right to use it (OK, actually, I might dream of a day when no one used gendered vocatives, but it would just be a daydream). All I know is that if I’m going to be Christian, there has to be some give in that area. I have to find some new metaphors,

As the title suggests, a favourite of Ramshaw’s is the tree of life. There are so many trees in the bible, and each of them illuminates, however dimly, a facet of God. Some criticize Ramshaw for too easily giving up the cross (which she doesn’t — she just loosens her grip a little). She says that she needs both the cross, and the tree. I imagine the image of a great tree which, when you squint a little, reveals the axes of the cross within its trunk and branches.

The shared symbol system doesn’t beam down from God, offering immediate fruits and granting peaceful shade. No, we have to tend it, prune it, prop it up here and there, protect it from tree-eating beetles. (143)

I find myself clinging to this idea a bit. The idea that we can change, the idea that the religion can change and still be alive and strong and true to its roots. Maybe its a bit of a pipe dream, but what isn’t?