It’s been a good weekend so far. I spent some time with some people I love and had some good conversations, about which I’d like to post, but later. I think good conversations come about when you don’t lie. Like, when you see a friend and you haven’t seen him or her in a long time and they ask you how you are and what you’ve been doing, you tell them, actually things are pretty crappy for me on many levels right now and the thing that keeps me busy most is reading theology and writing in my religion blog.

NB — People are more likely to open up re: religion and spirituality while drinking.

What I want to write about right now is communion, that essential Christian sacrament. Even I, who is willing to toss out many things concerning Christian tradition, will call the sacrament of communion “essential.”

The thing is, I really hate how it’s done at my church. We do it in the ultra-sanitized way, with silver trays of tiny plastic cups filled with Welch’s (the Official Juice of Communion). The bread comes on silver trays as well — carefully cubed morsels of tasteless, nutrient-free white bread. Communion is, and indeed always has been, the only time I eat white bread. (As a child, I was raised on whole wheat, and as a nutrition-obsessed adult I eschew all products of the oven that are not whole-grain and heavy enough to be used as a blunt object weapon in case of burglery). For a while in the ’90s we had little pieces of matzoh bread, but some time during my sojourn away from church they switched back.

The pastor always makes a statement before the cup is served to the effect of, “Don’t take communion unless you have a Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ™,” as though if you do take communion without a PRwJC™ something very bad will happen to you, like the bread will expand in your stomach as it would when it’s fed to the ducks at the park, and you’ll die.

I’m exaggerating. The pastor actually always makes the statement in a very nonchalant, casual style, but it always sticks in my brain. Especially because I never really know if I’m a Christian or not.

I’ve written earlier about how Gail Ramshaw’s book Under the Tree of Life spoke to much of my experience in terms of many aspects of religious life and practice. This passage about communion was no different:

The single-swallow shot glasses prefilled with wine that one encounters at some communion services these days are an American God-for-me invention that shrinks the communal largess into a dose of medicine for me: one tablespoonful once a week, and my devil will vanish. Rather, the point of God-for-us is that my access to God is communal, my reception of God is communal, my participation in the divine life is communal. (71)

I don’t know how my fellow churchgoers feel look at communion on an individual level; actually, I don’t know how the senior pastor really feels about it. Maybe we just do it this way because it’s the way we’ve always done it. I’m certainly not assuming that the people in my church look at communion as a tonic, as Ramshaw, perhaps too cynically, describes. I sincerely doubt it, actually.

I wonder sometimes if I should go back to the way I did things during my unChristian phase, on the rare occasions when I would attend a service. I would pass the dishes long without taking. I can honestly say I don’t care what the people around me think, so that’s no burden to me. (If they’re watching to see who takes from the plate and who doesn’t, that’s their own problem.)

But that wouldn’t solve anything at all. I believe, as Ramshaw does, that communion isn’t something you can do by yourself. It’s group activity. And maybe that’s what I’m frustrated with — that the single-serving juice-and-bread is diluting the aspect and keeping me from experiencing the true reality and meaning of communion in the way I would like to.

I’d consider asking people in my Bible study to take communion with me, but that’s the kind of thing that can get folks in the church really riled up. In my experience, if you do things like communion or baptism outside of the conventional contexts, you get in trouble. A youth pastor I know (who will remain nameless unless he chooses otherwise) got in trouble for serving communion to his youth group with the only available foodstuffs at the time, Doritos and Coca-Cola. On one level I can empathize with the church leaders’ freakout. On the other hand, Doritos and Coca-Cola are to 21st century teenagers what bread and wine were to first century disciples.

For me this isn’t an aesthetic issue. I just want a little more authenticity.

technorati tags: communion, youth, gail ramshaw, christianity, religion, sacraments, jesus

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Before we proceed with today’s blog entry, please sit back and relax for a short presentation from:

Marginally Funny Christian Joke Theatre

Mom: Did Jam start her new job this week?

Brother Mark: I don’t know. She was waiting on a background check.

Jenny: Well, if Heather was starting this week, then Jam should be too. Don’t they have the same job?

Brother Mark: I don’t know.

Jenny: That’s what I was lead to believe at B.S. on Sunday night.

Dad: B.S.? Brother

Mark: Bible study. Mom (to Brother Mark and Jenny): I don’t like those conspiratorial grins on your faces.

And… SCENE.

* * *

I haven’t had much time for blogging this week as this is the annual pledge drive at my campus/community radio station. This is my fifth year volunteering there, and while I no longer do a show, I still help out when I can. During my sojourn away from church, I think the radio station became kind of a church subsitute to me. Like church does for many people, it became the locus of my social life, the place where I spent spare time, the place where I logged my hours of volunteerism. Like churches, campus/community radio stations are traditionally male-dominated, though like churches, that’s changed in recent years. Thankfully the record-collecting culture that shaped C&C radio throughout the past century is being opened up to women more — I guess I’m proof of that. (That said, men outnumber women in music programming. The women who have been getting involved in C&C radio are primarily involved in spoken word [C&C parlance for “talk”] programming. I’m an example of that — when I did a weekly show, it was a feminist spoken word one. SURPRISE SURPRISE.)

Today, most of my close friends who live in this city are radio station people, and while I don’t spend nearly as much time up at the station as I did during my university days, I still feel comfortable and welcome there. Well, the latter part is kind of debatable right now. Like any community organization (eg. church) the station isn’t perfect and has its problems. The station is made up of over 100 human beings who, as human beings do, have a tendency to mess up a lot at various levels of severity. Staff stay on longer than they should, certain volunteers grow weary of doing all the work, and so on. Actually, one thing our C&C radio station would do well with is the church tradition of firing ineffective leadership (perceived so rightly or wrongly). But I’m not naming names.

I guess what I’ve learned from involvement in a community organization other than the church is that the church is subject to the same pitfalls as any other organization, and vice versa. Which maybe makes me want to cut churches a little more slack.

technorati tags: church, community, christianity, religion, community radio

I’m the daughter of a pastor, colloquially known in some Christian circles as a PK. I freakin’ hate that abbreviation. Some people wear it like a badge of honour, some people use it to belittle and box-in. There are plenty of reasons to hate the label and that’s why I’ve never applied it to myself or to anyone else to whom it may apply.

My experience is quite atypical of that of many children of clergy, actually. Growing up in the church is a difficult and precarious thing for any kid, whether her parent is the pastor, the moderator, the women’s ministries coordinator, the pianist, the organist, whatever. When I look back on my childhood, I think the difficult aspects of the church stemmed from that sort of general involvement rather than the fact that my dad was the pastor.

Like I said, my experience is not typical. I lucked out and spent most of my growing-up years in a remarkably functional church, where there was little discord. Whatever there was my parents successfully hid from me. My brother and I were treated well. I’ve heard stories about other clergy kids being told things like, “You’re the pastor’s son/daughter, you have to set an example.” No one ever said that to me. Or if they did, I blocked it out of my memory because it’s complete bullshit.

When I look back on my life, being a pastor’s kid meant mostly one thing: presents.

When I was two, we moved out to a parsonage in the country. The rambling house was right next to the church, in the midst of wheat and barley fields cut into squares by gravel roads. My mom was in the middle of a difficult pregnancy, so on Christmas Eve she didn’t attend the service. But after the service, the doorbell started ringing, various parishoners seeking an audience. Not to chide her for her non-attendance (after all, physician-ordered bedrest is an excuse even the most religious can abide). No, they wanted to drop off the presents, for me. Granted, I was a really adorable (if moody) child, but that Christmas Eve set a precedent for years to come. Basically, being the pastor’s kid meant getting special treatment. More attention, more love. And it really was love — presents are nice, but I always felt that people cared about me, and even as a kid I knew that was more important than trinkets.

I never really had any pastor-kid friends until I went to bible school — there, four of my closest friends were children of clergy, and because the school was a denominational one, two of them had lived in the very same rural parsonage I had. In fact, one still did live there. It was super cool to go there on weekends and eat real food and sleep in the basement where I had watched countless hours of Mr. Dressup and built blanket forts with my brother.

Anyway, I don’t think my experience was much different from that of any kid with very devout parents. Which is good, I guess.

Sometimes I wonder what makes one church-raised kid rebel/resist their religion and others not. What makes one person able to incorporate their history and childhood faith into an adult one? Why is it for some a seamless transition, and others not?

In my case I wonder if it’s just flat-out a personality issue. I’m a cranky bitch, always have been. “Strong-willed” is the term, I believe. Though, I’d like to think my struggle with/against Christianity is about more than some kind of inborn antipathy.

Part of me has always been jealous of the people for whom faith is so easy. For whom religion is easy. The people whose eyes close tight in prayer and you know they really believe, that the structures and the symbols all make sense to them.

As a kid, I was always waiting for, praying for that moment when it would be the same way for me. But now I don’t think that moment will ever come, and I have to be OK with that — I have to accept it. Which is harder than it sounds.

technorati tags: childhood, religion, church, christianity, prayer, faith

Did you grow up believing that Welch’s grape juice was the official juice of communion?

That’s because it is!

When Dylan told me that Welch’s grape juice was actually originally created to be a non-alcoholic communion beverage, I demanded a source (journalistic training, see. Plus it seemed quite urban-legendy).

From the offical Welch’s site:

1869 - Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch, a physician and dentist by profession, successfully pasteurizes Concord grape juice to produce an “unfermented sacramental wine” for fellow parishioners at his church in Vineland, N.J., where he is communion steward. His achievement marks the beginning of the processed fruit juice industry.

So if your church is using the store brand, you better learn ‘em.

technorati tags: grape juice, church, communion

The above graphic is taken from the Church of Craft website.

Something I haven’t talked about on this blog as of yet is the fact that I’m a knitter. This is one of the things as which I identify, right along with “woman,” “feminist,” and — well, let’s leave the parade there for now.

I always have at least one knitting project on the go (”on the needles” in the technical parlance) and I find it endlessly comforting and relaxing and indeed quite necessary for my mental health.

Right now I’m pondering this: could I possibly get away with knitting in church?

I knit in pretty much all other public environments; waiting rooms, public transportation, coffee shops. In university I would knit in classes where note-taking was not imperative, and where I didn’t care whether the prof would be giving me the stink-eye.

I already knit during one religious gathering, the weekly small group/bible study. Usually I sit beside a group member who forgot her bible, and have her hold mine for both of us while I add a few inches to the sleeve of a sweater.

I knit during the sermony-portions of the annual winter camp retreat, where the associate pastor (the one assigned to the hinterland sojourn, the senior pastor doesn’t make it out these days) gives his missive. But that was at the retreat, a relaxed environment, where we’re all sleep deprived, groggier still from eating too many pancakes. The casualness of the situation is emphasized sartorially, in our denim, sweatshirts, and slippers.

In both of those situations I feel perfectly justified in knitting. I’m the type of person who listens better when her hands are busy, when she’s doodling or otherwise digitally engaged. Having something to do with my hands frees my mind to focus on aural stimuli, in the form of sermons. Not that I’m much of an aural listener to begin with, but it helps. Now, it’s not that I always feel beholden to actually listen to sermons — I don’t beat myself up if my attention lapses or my mind wanders. I’ve long since given up on feeling guilty for those sorts of offenses.

But I can’t help but stop short pulling out the needles during the sermon. I feel like that might be crossing some line. Sure, knitting would be more constructive than, say, playing solitaire on my PDA. Still, I worry about distracting my pewmates. There’s probably more than one of them who would be thinking, “What the heck is she doing? Knitting in church? That’s so… wrong! She shouldn’t be allowed to do that! Why isn’t she paying attention to the sermon!” and so forth. And believe me, I’m loathe to cause anyone to stumble, or force attention away from the adorable animated graphics on the PowerPoint.

Most people would probably take it as a disrespectful action. I wonder if it might actually be. After all, if I went to a more interesting church, I probably wouldn’t feel the desire to knit. For some reason I still want to behave respecfully in a church. I may have rejected a lot of the stuff I grew up with in terms of religion, but I still think strapless dresses for church weddings are tacky. The clickety-clack of the needles probably would be, too.

So like I said, maybe I’m at the wrong church. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m at the “wrong” church, but I don’t have the energy to go find another one, especially since it’s pretty unlikely I’d find one where knitting during the sermon was de rigeur.

The Church of Craft is vaguely/blatantly sacreligious/offensive to evangelical sensibilities; I know it was to mine, once upon a time. But these days, I feel like craft is my true religion. I keep trying to get Christianity to fit, but craft always has fit, with no effort, no aggravating seam allowances and pinpricks.

I’m downright evangelical about craft in a way I never have been about Christianity. Knitting is such a transformative, challenging, engaging experience that I try to pull everyone I can into the fold. At the winter retreat last weekend, I was filled with joy when I looked around the group sitting in front of the fireplace and saw three people — two women, one man — intent on their knitting, all three taught in the ways of yarn by me. I felt a measure of pride, of course, but it was mostly just happiness that they’d discovered an activity which is so beneficial. Beneficial for the mind and beneficial for personal well-being, in that one can create useful thermal items for winter wear. The quintessential beginner’s knitting project is a simple garter-stitch scarf, an item which, even when knit of the most pedestrian and inexpensive acrylic yarn is quite useful in a climate such as ours.

My own church of craft (well, we call it Stitch & Bitch, actually) meets irregularly on weeknights in living rooms or a deserted coffee shop. I spend time with women who are infinitely caring, accepting, and encouraging. Not all of them knit, but craft in all its expressions is related, so it doesn’t really matter.

Knitting is easy at first. Garter-stitch scarves are a snap, as are hats and mittens, once you learn the purl stitch and get the knack of double-pointed needles. Then you try to set a sleeve on your first sweater or knit a swatch of lace and things get ugly. But you keep going. Well, I do.

I have lots to write about, or at least I think I do, but for some reason I’m having trouble putting fingertip to keyboard. There are lots of things swimming in my head and yet…

Before I get to any of those things I have to write this post.

I’m warning you, it’s going to be long, personal, and all about MEEEEE. I’m going to go back to the beginning and you might be bored to tears but I feel like I should provide some context. I hope I don’t regret this. Here’s me crossing my fingers.

OK.

What happened was a few years ago I decided to break up with Jesus. A clean break. Nothing fancy, nothing overdramatic. I just needed some time and space. As far as boyfriends go, Jesus is a time-consuming one. First of all, he’s never there. Don’t give me that bullshit about how Jesus is Always with Us because when was the last time you had a face to face talk with your Lord and Saviour? Believe me, I have no problems grasping the metaphysical mumbo jumbo but I still think that you can’t treat a relationship with God the same way you treat a relationship with another human being.

That’s a discussion for another time, though. I’m getting off track. I left the religion and, therefore, the church, much to my devout parents’ dismay. I tried to tell them, look, I’m just trying to figure things out. I never said I wouldn’t get back together with Jesus. But my mom said, well, how can you figure things out if you DON’T GO TO CHURCH? (Why is it that people always make that argument whenever someone leaves the church? Anyone who has left the church knows how stupid a statement that is, but the people making the statement never do.)

Then my dad got sick and almost died. He was rescued by staggering achievements in medical science and a bit of luck (or providence, depending on whom you ask). And after that all happened, I came to this realization that circumstance had robbed me of a certain luxury that so many of my peers have: the luxury of taking your parents/family for granted. I guess this normally doesn’t happen until later in life, usually after one or more parents is actually dead.

I always try to make a point of learning from other people’s mistakes. I also try to learn from the near misses.

I came out of that period of time in one’s youth when one wants to distance oneself from one’s family/parents as much as possible. I realized that I am not as independent as I thought I was and that I need my family to survive in a multitude of ways, blah-blah-community-cakes.

I should be clear: during my sojourn from the religion, I never stopped thinking about spirituality and related things. I never stopped trying to figure it out. Believe it or not, even my mom realized this, in time. She said, Jenny, I can tell you’ve found some peace. I was shocked when she said that, and a little more shocked when I realized she was right.

I decided to return to my old church community for two main reasons. First, that community had supported my family during the Time of Almost Death and I figured I owed it another chance. Second, religion and faith is a huge thing in my biological family on both sides. Faith is what brought my great-grandmothers over the ocean decades ago, faith is what sustains my mother, who lives a challenging, difficult life with grace and courage.

For better or for worse, this religion/faith/church is my culture. It’s where I come from, and maybe it’s not where I’m supposed to be going. I cannot for the life of me recall when or where I read this, but many Buddhists will tell those interested in Buddhist practice not to abandon their cultural religious traditions entirely, but rather to recognize the way Buddhism augments all religions, expands upon them. Or something. As I said, I don’t remember.

It’s not that I’m a Buddhist; it’s just that I want to honour the strengths of my forebears and try to find a place in the faith that formed the framework of their lives.

So that’s it. No transformation/conversion story. Just a decision to engage myself in the church community in addition to my private study. I went back to the church (and indeed the faith) with some rules. The first rule: no guilt. I wasn’t going to let the church or the people in it guilt me into anything. Anything I was going to do had to come naturally — praying, giving, volunteering, bible reading, whatever. So much of my childhood was spent feeling guilty — not for doing bad things, because, while I was quite a little jerk most of the time, I didn’t do any of the big ticket sins like have sex or drink or smoke. The guilt I felt most of the time had to do with religious practice, i.e. reading the bible, praying, having the “quiet time,” i.e. not doing those things regularly. I also felt guilty for not “feeling it” in church or in worship services or whatever. That I wasn’t “growing spiritually” the way other kids were. I was too busy feeling guilty for not being a good enough Christian that I didn’t have time feel guilty for being an ASSHOLE. Which I was. Which is not to say I’m not one now, but I’m trying to keep it down to a dull roar these days.

Anyway, now I’m not holding myself to that bullshit. I go to church, because I like to see my friends and hold babies. If I daydream during the sermon, I don’t beat myself up about it. I don’t take notes, and I don’t feel guilty about that, either. That’s the deal I struck with myself, and maybe even God. OK, I’ll come back to church, but there’s no pressure.

Maybe you’re reading this and you think it’s all pomo crap. If so: too bad, bitches. I don’t care, because I spent too long caring about that sort of thing and poisoning myself in the process.

Love,
Jenny

P.S. GOD IS A SHE
P.P.S. (Not really, I just said that to freak you out)
P.P.P.S. (But that doesn’t mean you can keep referring to God with male pronouns)
P.P.P.P.S. (At least, not on my blog watch)

Sunday night I went to an ordination service. It’s not the first one I’ve attended, but it’s the first one I’ve attended as a critically-thinking adult. The other times were when I was a kid, including my own father’s, which I don’t remember at all save for the photographs which allow me to manufacture memories based on the images of my three-year-old self in white tights.

This ordination was for my old youth pastor, who’s still youth pastor, but after seven years has completed his Calvinist seminary education.

There’s a strict and boring order of service to these things, the lowlight of which being a talk by some pastor guy that went on and on. In truth it was only fifteen minutes (I was checking the clock, believe me), but seemed waaaaaay longer. That’s what happens, my dad says, when you try to preach without notes! You have to be a really good speaker to speak without notes and not make an ass of yourself. This particular pastor guy was not one of those speakers.

That’s the explanation my dad offered for why this pastor guy, when talking about young pastors going out into the world, referred to all the “young men” God has blessed us with to serve as pastors. Our denomination is loathe to ordain women, we all know this, but can we at least keep up some sort of rhetorical pretense of equality?! Again, my dad blamed this slip of the tongue on the pastor guy’s lack of notes, but I blame it on systemic sexism and idiocy.

Back when I went to bible college (a denominational one), there was a little bit of a kerfuffle when the dean of students was planning to leave her job with the college and go teach at a seminary in Brazil. Despite the fact that any man with her qualifications would have been ordained already, the denomination only saw fit to ordain her before her big missions thing to Brazil in the name of expediency, since ordained clergy have an easier time with immigration bureaucracy.

The dean of academics spoke out on her behalf, calling the situation for what it was: sexist, and racist. Sexist for the obvious reasons, and racist because why was a woman good enough to teach non-white people in Brazil but not good enough to teach white people men in North America?

Just once in my life I want to have a woman pastor. The church I currently attend has three full-time pastors and they’re all men. I could leave this church, I guess, but if all the feminists leave then how are things going to change? I don’t know.

I’ve been wondering for awhile when and if the point will come when I’ll have to leave this particular church, when what I believe and what they believe will be too far apart for me to have a place in the community. What draws me there now is the familiarity, the people I’ve known since I was five.

I was raised some of these concerns with my small group the other week, and they immediately launched into a litany of praise of me, outlining how much they appreciated my contrary and slightly disruptive presence in their group. But I wasn’t fishing for compliments; I’m serious. I don’t know how long it will last, you know? A year, two, three… but eventually something’s going to have to give.

Then again, that night after the ordination service, I had a really good talk with my dad and brother and realized that the gap between their theology and mine may not be as wide as I thought it was. And at least they’re both feminists, though they’d never admit it or label themselves as such. But trust me, they are. (We can smell our own.)

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?

This morning I went to a different church than usual. I went with Jane, a woman who I’ve know for since I was five and she was seven. Now we’re in our twenties and she’s a nurse and I’m an independent music magazine editor and she is a committed Christian and I am… getting there. Anyway, we both attend the church in which we grew up, but it turns out that Jane has also been attending an additional church. I can’t fathom having enough energy or being enough of an extrovert to go to two services at two different churches, but I suppose Jane likes to make up for lost time since she has to miss quite a lot of Sundays due to the unforgiving schedule of a health-care worker.

She’s been going to a hip new church that’s not called a church at all but rather “Soul Sanctuary.” Very popular with our age-group, apparently. A few twenty-somethings had left our church for this one, Jane said. Our church is thriving — lots of kids, lots of teenagers, lots of 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s but very few 20s. Jane feels this quite acutely, being the oldest of the twenty-somethings who go to our church. And there are quite a few of us — we have a college & career small group that draws 10-15 — but not quite enough for Jane. She’s very social. I guess misanthropic introverts like me don’t notice it as much.

So we went to Soul Sanctuary and it was very nice. Chairs were wide and padded, lighting was comfortably low, worship band (boys on guitars and drums, girls on vocal and keyboard, band leader male) was quite good. After the singing time they take a break for coffee, tea, and pastries, and then go back to the seats for the sermon, which, somewhat counterintuitively, is about an hour long. But you don’t notice the length when your bum is comfortable and you have a cup of tea in your hand. And I have to admit, I’ve always wanted to go to a church where I could consume a hot beverage during the service.

However, I quickly realized that I won’t be leaving my current and long-time church for this one. Soul Sanctuary is very nice, but the differences between it and mine are purely cosmetic, aesthetic. When I was a teenager, this would have wowed me and I would have been all, “Soul Sanctuary is the best EVER!” But they’re just practicing the same kind of androcentric evangelicalism that I grew up with. The metaphors are all the same, the discourse is the same, essentially.

The sermon, preached by a man wearing one of those headset microphones that clips on your ear and sits over your cheek like they wear in musical theatre productions, was good enough. The pastor was preaching in relation to advent and exploring the incarnation of God in Jesus, whose birth we are preparing to celebrate by maxing out our credit cards. He preached from the book of John, and described how that book reaches out to the Greeks, explaning the arrival of God on earth in terms they could understand, using the philosophical concept of logos as a basis. The Greeks, unlike the Jews, were not expecting a Messiah and therefore needed birth of Jesus explained to them in terms that would resonate with their own culture and way of thinking.

In other words, the Jewish metaphors for God didn’t work for the Greeks and so early Christianity provided metaphors that did. And now, two thousand years later, we’re still using the same metaphors. God the Father/Son/Holy Spirit, God as Lord, God as Father. Prince of Peace.

I’ve been reading Gail Ramshaw’s Under the Tree of Life: The Religion of a Feminist Christian and am finally starting to create a feminist Christian spirituality of my own. I left the church and Christianity over two main issues: the way Christian texts are exclusive and even hostile to women, and eschatological confusion (the latter is a topic for another day).

I thought it was ironic that this man — a good guy, I’m sure, but very much in the mold of pretty much every other white male pastor I’ve known — was preaching about the inadequacy of certain metaphors to some communities and the value in the new metaphors in a church built around those same old metaphors. Like Gail Ramshaw, I don’t want to throw out the old metaphors entirely. I just want some new ones.

And I don’t want to be too harsh on Soul Sanctuary, because it’s obviously working for a lot of people and I’m sure all the people involved are genuine and loving and all that. And I shouldn’t judge a church on one visit. But these were the conclusions I drew today, based on the stuff that’s been rolling around in my brain of late.