The Billy Grahams have never been good at scandal. It’s just not their forte. In recent weeks they’ve cooked up their own family-style dust-up but it’s remarkable how tame the whole thing is, especially in a year where evangelicals have done far more spectacular things.

The Washington Post revealed that Franklin Graham, he of the Iraq-war-supporting and father-succeeding, wants his parents to be buried on the grounds of the ministry campus he’s building. Well, specifically, he wants Ruth Graham there since it seems like she’s the closer of the two to the pearly gates. Ruth wants nothing of the sort — according to the article, she has a spot picked out in the mountains and she has no interest in being an attraction at Franklin’s theme park. OK, it’s a library, but still — it’s being created as a tourist attraction, and can you imagine all the Protestant pilgrims dutifully parading down the garden path to prostrate at the graves of dead evangelists. (This is where people in my family would say something like, “That’s so Catholic!”)

A lot of progressive evangelicals (for real, sometimes you can put those two words together!) are withdrawing from Franklin Graham and this is likely to only hasten that process.

It’s been one month and one day since my last post, and in that meantime I briefly entertained the thought of making some sort of anniversary post, since I began this blog on December 4, 2005. One year ago I was far more engaged with religiosity and was happy to be so, and now, I’m not. I definitely feel more relaxed now that I, once again, have quit church and the accompanying Bible study, though I miss seeing the people. (Sometimes. Sometimes I go to the parties and the social events and I feel vaguely uncomfortable in the soirée’s unavoidable churchy quality. The formality masked with a ironed-khaki casual veneer, the minced words and carbonated beverages.)

Last night Steve said I should blog more and he’s right, perhaps, but all the religion-related stuff I want to blog about I can’t because it’s all about actual people and actual people’s behaviour. I don’t have much to say in the ethereal academic realm, in the esoteric theoretical realm. It’s all about the stupid things that stupid people do (and the not so stupid, they’re not all stupid) and I don’t really want to throw that up on the internets for all to see. It’s not fair or ethical. (See, the non-religious have ethics too, believe it or not.)

Steve also said I should blog about stuff other than religiony things and again he might be right.

Regardless, I suppose today, scant days before Christmas, I’ll reflect a bit on that holiday. I’m actually considering going to church this Sunday for two reasons — to hand out some cards and sing the relevant songs. Singing is basically the only part of church I actually like. I like singing so much that I can enjoy singing pretty much any songs regardless of their style or content, though in the latter case I suppose it’s not as true. I do get worn down by all the androcentric language pervasive in most Christian musical worship, but since I’m not going regularly I guess I can handle it.

(That reminds me — props to Bonnie & Dylan, old Bible school friends whom I visited earlier this month, for keeping their song choices gender-neutral for the meeting of their church plant, which meets at their house, when I was in town. That was very thoughtful.)

Anyhow, I love Christmas, and even, I think, the religious aspects. I mean, to me the birth of every baby is a miracle so it’s hard not to drum up wonderous feelings when presented with the nativity tale. My favourite Christmas songs are all religious ones (”O Holy Night,” “What Child is This?”), and as I said, church seems far more palatable at Christmas time.

I like buying/making presents for my family and close friends; I like eating chocolate; I like spending time with friends who are back in town for the holidays, as I did last night. I love the snow, the winter night skies, and driving home from church on Christmas Eve. When we get home we’ll eat too-rich foods and open presents, ’cause we’re German and that’s the way we do things. Then we’ll sleep in on Christmas morning and open our stockings around noon, eat some chocolates for breakfast and get ready for a fancy meal later in the day.

You can’t go wrong with this stuff.

If you’re reading this, I wish you only the best things for the holidays. For real.

xo

As some of you know, I work at a magazine. Here is an excerpt of an article a friend of mine wrote, “reviewing” the Franklin Graham Festival that came through town a few weeks ago for the upcoming issue. I share it with you now.

An obviously horrified Jon Schledewitz arrives to take pictures for Uptown just as Newsboys lead singer John James (real name) begins to lead a cheer usually only heard at international hockey matches: “CAN-A-DA! CAN-A-DA!” thousands of voices cry out. Geoff and I both have the look of fear. Finally after a relentless evangelical seizure song by John James, the Newsboys are finished. The legion of screaming Jesus children fall quiet and walk like zombies to sit in perfectly ordered rows at the back of the floor. After a couple of hymns led by the Tommy Coomes Band with Tommy Walker, it’s time for the main event. Sporting a Harley Davidson motorcycle jacket and a resolute smile, Franklin Graham takes the stage and is immediately attacked by a yellow jacket. (Go wasps!) The preacher quickly kills the insect with a [copy of the Winnipeg] Free Press and then starts preaching some of his classic tunes. “Abortion is Murder” and “Homosexuality is a Sin” garner relatively little applause. Then he starts inviting those who have sinned to come up to and repent so Jesus can give them a sponge bath and wash their souls squeaky clean. Schledewitz follows a few of them only to be stopped by Graham security. We’re not so daring to get more tape. By now, our recorder is out of juice and there would be no point. I’ve had enough from the man who, on previous occasions, wanted to nuke Afghanistan and called Islam an evil and wicked religion. “He’s giving Jesus a bad name,” I tell Geoff as we quietly exit out into the streets. God bless reality.

Sex columnist Dan Savage weighs in on Ted Haggard, and while I generally don’t copy-and-paste wholesale from other pieces of writing, I don’t know how many of my readers are also Savage Love readers so I’ll risk it:

If you believe that Jesus Christ can change the sexual orientation of a believer, why on earth did he refuse to cure Haggard? He founded a church that has 14,000 members! Thousands were brought to Christ by Haggard’s preaching. Mixed in with Ted’s meth-fueled gay sex romps and hypocritical gay bashings were, without a doubt, thousands of good works.

Did Jesus help Haggard out? No. Haggard struggled with temptation all his life. He tried to battle off his “dark” desires, but nothing proved effective. There was no cure for Haggard, no miracle. No matter how long he struggled, no matter how much faith he had, Haggard’s sexual orientation remained unchanged. Nothing helped. Not prayer, not Jesus H. Christ on his cross.

Nothing.

If giving his heart to Jesus couldn’t cure Haggard, what hope is there for the likes of me? If Jesus can’t be bothered to work a miracle for the most powerful evangelical minister in the country, what “hope” is there for the average dyke?

None.

The ex-gay thing is over. It’s dead. It was bullshit from the start, and it’s bullshit now. And I will personally track down and bitch-slap the next fundie douche who sends me an e-mail explaining how Jesus can cure me. And I will personally track down and shit in the mouth of the next cable-news anchor who entertains—even for an instant—the notion of a miracle cure for homosexuality.

I know this is basically the line of thought that I and a few folks who appear on the sidebar links there have had lately — both when it comes to homosexuality and pretty much any other area of life where God supposedly has ultimate power. Of course, here it’s presented with Dan Savage’s usual, shall we say, zest.

Personally, I do feel a little sorry for Haggard. But not too sorry, because in the end he was a victim of his own regime. When you build the weapons you’d better be prepared to die by them.

Harry Lehotsky, pastor of New Life Ministries here in Winnipeg died last night. He was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer this spring. He was 49.

I just got the news myself so I’m not really ready to eulogize him. Actually, all I’m thinking about is my friend, his son Brandon. Last week we were talking over pizza in a church basement somewhere and it was too much to bear. Too much sadness, too much pain knowing that the end was so near. All I can think about is myself, and how my dad almost died three years ago but medical science had a cure for him. That wasn’t the case for Brandon, though. Maybe in twenty years they’ll have a cure for pancreatic cancer they way they do for cardiomyopathy, but they sure as hell don’t have one now. What makes me so lucky? Because honestly, there’s not much in the way of divine intervention, here. Our fathers live and die by the abilities of modern science, nothing more.

Brandon is one of the best, most easy-going guys I know and I hope this doesn’t change that. Though how could it not? How would it not change you if your dad, an amazing guy who actually made a difference in the world, died so young? When you were so young?

On one level, when we eulogize Harry Lehotsky, it will be easy because he accomplished so much and made this city better and affected so many people. He built affordable housing, he built a restaurant that serves good, inexpensive food, he fought for a neighbourhood that was ignored and forgotten by the rest of the city. His funeral will be massive, and we’ll all grieve together. But in the end, he wasn’t even 50 years old yet. He could have done way more. He had a family that needed him. His sons are all out of high school, but they still need him. Can all of his accomplishments really balance out the inherent tragedy of this?

I have a complicated relationship with this holiday. It began simply enough, with trick-or-treating country-style while we lived at a rural parsonage. The Halloween of my kindergarten year was marked by my dressing in a cat costume and piling into a car with some other church kids (One of whom, Becky, was dressed as a bag of garbage if I recall correctly and I sincerely doubt that I do) and driving around the range roads of northern Alberta where each farmyard would net us a full-size chocolate bar or several tasty Kool-Aid-infused popcorn balls.

We moved to a city the next year and I still trick-or-treated, but in the urban fashion, i.e. on foot. I was a (pink) rabbit.

But then, things changed. I don’t know what the impetus was, but my parents converted to the school of thought that Christians ought not celebrate Halloween in any manner, least of all gallavanting around the neighbourhood ringing doorbells. In later years, my mother explained to me that Halloween was quite a get for the devil: “It’s the two things kids love best: dressing up, and candy!”

To be fair, my brother and I did still get the candy; half an ice-cream pail each, not a bad haul for not having to leave the basement. Which is where we hung out, every Halloween, with all the upstairs lights turned out so as not to alert any trick-or-treaters to our residence. All the upstairs lights, that is, except one: the oven light, the door left ajar so it cast a ghoulish blue glow over the kitchen (but not down the hallway, where I skittered on my way to the bathroom only the most desperate of pee-breaks). And that, of course, was the most cutting irony. On the night in question, we the family who didn’t celebrate Halloween, had the creepiest house on the block.

I did have a few opportunities to dress up during my elementary years, even after the trick-or-treating ban. There was occasionally an alterna-Halloween party at the church, where costumes and candy were permitted but any mention of pumpkins or witches was not. One year I was a princess in a blue gown with a sparkly cape that was continually choking me as other party-goers stepped on it. Another year I was (and how’s this for Evangelical cred?) an Israellite. In a pink-and-white striped robe and matching headdress. Probably the less said about that, the better.

My parents’ aversion to Halloween was so instilled in me that even once I was ostensibly able to make my own decisions about celebrating the holiday I still responded to it with an overwhelming “meh.” Only in the past few years have I begun to tentatively embrace it. Because mom was right: if there’s two things kids like, it’s costumes and candy. And since I still think of myself as a kid, there are two things I like: costumes and candy.

This year I celebrated with a Saturday-night dance party. I went as Olive Hoover from the movie Little Miss Sunshine and had a great time. I have also eaten massive amounts of candy, which has now formed an extra layer of protective padding around my belly.

I’m not entirely unsympathetic to my mom’s plight. Christian culture does a lot to demonize (ha) anything remotely pagan. In the face of peer and liturgical pressure, what’s a believing parent to do? I don’t know. I do wish they had just let us go trick-or-treating. I know I felt pretty awkward and generally dreaded the end of October, especially since we’d usually get pulled out of school for the afternoon of Halloween when there was usually an assembly and whatnot. I mean, most kids don’t mind staying home from school, but on the funnest day of the year? That’s just mean.

Is shutting your kid away from Halloween festivities really going to shield them from the “evils” of paganism? Christmas has deep pagan roots, but you don’t see any Christians boycotting its celebration (for obvious reasons, but it seems kinda double-standardy). Is the adrenaline rush of a kid-friendly “haunted house” constructed in the gymnasium of an elementary school really going to throw a Christian worldview into question, our counteract some fundamental tenet?

Like I said, I don’t know, and in the end all parents are just trying to do the best they can, whether they’re Christian or Pagan. All I know is, I have a lot of Halloweening to make up for, so I’m already thinking about next year’s costume…

My brother and I have this tradition of me buying him t-shirts from Threadless. This I do mostly out of self-interest so my brother doesn’t look like a hobo. Also, I love him, I guess.

Anyway, I like to buy when they have their $10 sales, as they do right now. And when I saw this one, I thought, YES.

It is entitled “BFF.”*

(Check out the product page, with more pictures, here.)

I hesitated because I thought that maybe he wouldn’t actually wear it that much. I knew he’d wear it to Bible college, where he’s in his last year of studies, just to get a rise out of his classmates. But once he graduates and presumably becomes a youth pastor?

I think he’s going to buy it for himself, though. I mean, $10 sale!

*For those of you who are challenged in the arena of pop-culture initialisms, “BFF” stands for “Best Friends Forever.”

So I guess awhile ago I said something about writing in this blog more regularly? Turns out I was full of shit apparently. I’m not entirely sure why I haven’t been writing — I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m not feeling particularly theist these days and don’t know how to go about religious discussion bearing that fact.

I haven’t been keeping up with the blogs of those folks you see on the sidebar (and some who aren’t on the sidebar — I do try to stray outside the mutual admiration society every now and again). This has been a mistake, as I see some of you have been making startling, intruiging, thought-provoking posts and hopefully I’ll find it within myself to respond in kind.

Anyway. As you may recall, I’d given up going to church (First Church of Suburbia, herewith known as FCoS) at the start of the summer; I have not returned. I had planned to keep going to the “College and Career” “small group” (it’s not small — it has an average of 15 people). And I had gone… for the first few weeks at least. But I’m done. Now I’m done with both services and Smallies, so I guess I’ve quit church entirely now? I dunno.

The reason I quit Smallies (or, at least, begun a break. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll calm down) is… well, there’s no one reason. But I guess I’m just tired of spending two hours a week being one of two badasses in the group, trying to push boundaries and bring up new ideas and ways of looking at things that don’t involve the usual Christian platitudes and Sunday-School answers. I’m not interested in dealing with a group where thought-provoking discussions are shut down (And where Christianity isn’t a patriarchal religion, apparently).

I don’t really want to get into it too much in detail because a certain amount of confidence should be kept. But I’m sure you can extrapolate.

I know some of you are curious about the outcome of the meeting with the worship leader guy a few weeks back. Well, at the meeting proper I behaved myself (that is, kept the snarky comments to a bare minimum) but also totally chickened out and didn’t say any of the things I was planning on saying, due to the presence of some people who I didn’t really know if I could trust with my oh-so-radical ideas (I guess I’m really more scared of rolled eyes than I realized).

I mentioned in the comments of that last entry that the worship leader is in fact a really awesome guy, and he proved that by emailing me afterward and saying he was open to hearing my actual real thoughts. So, I told him. And gave him a link to this blog. And he didn’t write back for a week, and I thought maybe he was scared off but today he wrote back and was exceedingly cool in his response to everything I said about gender and even the non-theism thing.

Anyway.

I wonder if I should write a letter to the “small” group or something? My brother told me he’d explain my absence, since my frustrations are shared equally by him (the only difference is that he has an actual belief in Jesus to keep him going).

Ugh.

The worship leader at church has asked all the folks my age to come to a meeting on Saturday to talk about worship and “what meaningful times of worshipping God look like” for us.

My first reaction was, well, I don’t really worship God much these days so I shouldn’t go. But then I thought, well, one of the big reasons I don’t go to church is because of the pervasive androcentrism that make it extremely unpleasant for me to even sit through a service as a passive observer, let alone a worshipper.

So should I go and tell him that?

I’m curious as to what you, dear reader, would do if you were in this situation (however unlikely it might be that you would be in the situation.

Let’s say you are at a non-accredited (that is, not for credit in a recognized degree program) Bible school abroad, in a country where you do not speak the language. You are enjoying the experience and one weekend you, and a fellow student, go to a salon where you pay over $150 and sit in a chair for many hours in order to have your hair arranged in the dreadlocked style.

You return to the Bible school campus and are told by Leadership that you have a choice to make: you can stay home from upcoming “outreach” trips to nearby churches which are sometimes conservative, or you can go on the outreach, after cutting off your dreadlocks.

What do you do?