Sophia and Gender

I'm reading the book She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse by Elizabeth Johnson for an independent study with a female student.  I can't say that I consider myself a "feminist" by any stretch of the imagination.  I refer to God as "He" and "Father" - and I attend a church that does not allow women to preach or even sit on the council.  Not that I don't have "feminist"impulses...I believe that women should be allowed to preach from the pulpit, and I'm not convinced that the way we understand sexuality in the church is very helpful.  I just finished Jacques Ellul's The Subversion of Christianity in which he argues that  in the beginning Christianity was egalitarian, only to inherit essentially pagan views of gender through the years.  Johnson, who I believe is Roman Catholic, makes simliar, and quite convincing claims.

Once again today I opened my mouth in Gen 300... imploring students to rethink our understanding of gender and sexuality.  I appealed to St. Bernard, Hildegard of Bigen, Julian of Norwich, and implicitly presented Jurgen Moltmann's Trinitarian understanding of gender and the image of God.  I argued that the reason there is little difference between the sexual practices of Christians and non Christians is because we share similar views of sexuality and gender.  So often gender and sexuality are portrayed as additives - not really essential to our human identity.  This leads, I believe, to a utilitarian view of sex (primarily as a means of reproduction and orgasms) as well as a dismissal of any serious engagement of gender issues.  What if being made in the image of God included our sexuality?  What if gender was considered an essential part of our human identity?  What if sex really correlates with divine perichoresis?  I asked these questions today in class.  The response?  They thought I was making up "stuff".

I tried to tell them this discussion is as old as Christianity itself.  I tried to tell them that I'm not smart enough to come up with this on my own.  I tried to allude to the mystical perspective of Calvin who talks about being united to Christ in love... becoming one with Christ... language that drips with sexuality.  I tried to tell them that if we reclaimed even a small part of this perspective of gender and sexuality the sexual practices and perspective of the Christian community would be wildly transformed.

One students was interested... perplexed enough to talk to me after class.  The rest were either irritated, amused, or indifferent.

Another glorious failure.

Smart People and Polar Bears

I've been keeping up with the tragic news of the professor from Alabama who shot up her colleagues, apparently after being denied tenure.  A few days ago I was part of conversation with colleagues regarding the exploits of profs at some of the most prestigious schools in the country.  While they may have been geniuses in their fields... such discernment obviously did not translate into other areas of life.  How can people so smart be so incredibly stupid?  I know, I know - the answer is sin, total depravity, blah blah blah...  Such answers are not very satisfying.

I've been teaching at the college level now for almost 4 years.  I'm in the midst of trying to get into a PhD program (emphasis on the "trying" part).  I recently read the blog entry of a woman who has seemingly been rejected by a program she thought she had a good chance of getting into.  Her words reminded me of the politics involved with the process - not that the many other aspects of life are any less political.  The process of applying to 7 different programs, visiting 4, being silently rejected by 1, left waiting by the other 6 - has been eye opening.  Don't get me wrong... I met with many wonderful scholars of high integrity with whom I would love to study.  I also have, at this point anyway, a positive feeling about beginning a PhD program - even after listening to some well intended people tell me about the dark night of the soul that is the dissertation.  That being said I can't help but wonder about a simpler life.  By simple I don't mean a life without problems... a friend recently reminded me that to switch professions is to trade one set of problems for another.  What I mean by "simpler" is to take life as it is given... to not have to dissect every word, every action - to live a healthier distance from the abyss of cynicism.

I don't pretend to understand why smart people do very stupid things.  Yes... I'm sure depravity has something to do with it.  This afternoon I watched my kids play in a snow cave that I dug out for them -  they were pretending to be polar bears trekking across the arctic snow.  I tried to remember what it was like to lose oneself in play... to act like a polar bear without having to philosophically justify the ontological possibility of actually being a polar bear.  Maybe I'll spend the night in the snow cave and give it a try.

A Good Pagan

I sometimes think I would have made a wonderful pagan.  I love the music of Led Zepplin... their sound makes me think of druids and norsemen - in part because it makes me think of The Lord of the Rings.  The pulsing beat of heavy metal music has made me happy ever since I began to learn to play the guitar... nothing gives me more pleasure then a power chord fused with gutteral screams and a 4/4 rhythm.

 I love to experience and reflect upon the natural world.  Even though I am deeply immersed in a tradition that emphasizes the development of creation - most of the time I want to leave it alone.  I find there is something awe inspiring about the sight of ruins... the created world taking back our human attempts to control the natural world.  Lately I've been reading Norse myths - maybe as an attempt to recover my heritage - or relive my comic book days.  I loved reading comics about Conan the Barbarian and Thorr, and I am particularly fond of Tolkien's essay On Fairy Stories in which, while discussing the relationship between history and myth, he envisions the voice of an angry red haired Scandinavian farmer thundering through the mountains.

I'm teaching the Theology senior sem. course again this semester - which I very much enjoy.  Last time I taught it I had students read G.K. Chesterton.  I appreciate Chesterton's generosity (except, ironically, toward Calvin and Calvinism!).  I can't remember the source but I do recall reading a selection in which he discusses how Christianity does not abolish the festivals of paganism... it absorbs them.  Christianity takes them up - changes their focus - and allows the party to continue.  For Chesterton Christianity provides the freedom to engage, and dare I say enjoy, ancient mythology, greek philosophy, and Led Zepplin.  The tradition of which I am a part wants to discern all things pagan from all things that are biblical and therefore distinctly Christian.  A difficult endeavor - more difficult then we are willing to admit I think - but I get it.  But I will always have a Chesterton side to my theology because it gives me the freedom to be a bit pagan... to be able to be Christian and still listen to Them Crooked Vultures.

The Antichrist in a Brave New World

The Christian conception of God – God as god of the sick, God as a spider, God as spirit – is one of the most corrupt conceptions of the divine ever attained on earth.  It may even represent the low-water mark in the descending development of divine types.  God degenerated into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes!  God as the declaration of war against life, against nature, against the will to live!  God – the formula for every slander against “this world,” for every lie about the “beyond”!  God – the deification of nothingness, the will to nothingness pronounced holy!

Friedrich Nietzsche The Antichrist


I used this quote in class today along with some quotes by Karl Marx and Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials).  I referenced them in the context of a discussion of the book Brave New World - specifically the question: When does Christianity become soma?  I happen to think the end of Brave New World is brilliant - the Savage hangs himself - in some ways crushed beneath the weight of the Brave New World.  I asked the Gen 300 students if that should be the fate of the Christian community ... trampled by the brave new world around us.  Or - has Christianity become more like Mustapha Mond - hell bent on gaining power in the form of efficient control and manipulation...keeping the masses in a perpetual state of numbness.  


Obviously Nietzsche believed that Christianity is hostile to life - forcing humanity into an upward posture in which we try to break away from our humanity, away from passion and emotion, always looking toward something else.  We become enslaved to a form of divine determinism that erodes our humanity and the vitality of earthly life.  While I may not be able to go with him the full way, I believe his critique is important.  Religion - Christianity included - can become a means of control.  Walter Brueggemann refers to this as the "Royal Consciousness" - the domestication of God for the sake of military, economic, and cultural power... the sacrifice of life, passion, and vitality for the sake of stability. 


I raised this with the students today as an attempt to jolt us out of our slumber.  It is easy to read a book like Brave New World and think that its not talking about us - that it refers to some future danger or at least the "world out there."  But certainly it doesn't refer to us...we are Christians after all.  My purpose today was to suggest that not only is the Brave New World upon us... but that we have unknowingly fallen prey to bouts of the "feelies", "orgy porgy", and "soma."  


Martin Luther, in the context of scholasticism, referred to the god who is not God - warning against the domestication and idolatry that results from the absolutizing of doctrinal systems.  Such a god may be used to enslave, corrupt, and numb... but it is not the God of the bible.  Brueggemann suggests we follow the example of the Old Testament prophets who lamented, raged, poetically and passionately proclaimed the word of the Lord in the face of the Brave New World.  The question I left for students to struggle with - What does it mean to follow a crucified Christ in a Brave New World?  Did they understand the question?  Do I understand the question?  Not sure...

Christ-ianity

When does a belief system become unhooked from the thought of the person it was originally based upon? That was the question I had as I listened to the spring convocation address a week or so ago.  The speaker used the occasion to argue for just war theory - suggesting that only college freshmen should be excused from the naiveté of non violence.  The rest of us who might have such leanings are just dumb.  We're dumb because we don't know how the world works.  After all, evil is real - Nazis were real.  Isn't it interesting that it's always Nazis - its always Hitler.  What about the German Christians who allowed, dare I say supported, Hitler's rise to power?  I'm sure Romans 13 was invoked to legitimize the establishment of the Third Reich.  Is it possible that the very arguments used to support a "just war" against the Nazis provided the justification for the Nazi party?  Just a thought...

Funny thing about war... it seems like those who actually have to fight in them don't like them very much.  My grandpa would never talk about WWII - until he inexplicably started talking into the tape recorder.  Four to five tapes later what I remember most were the tears in his eyes as he talked about coming onto the beaches of Normandy after the D-Day invasion.  And when he said the only people who like to play dress up and march in the memorial day parades were the pencil pushers... the ones who didn't actually have to kill anyone.  My father says the same thing.  The big difference between my grandpa and my dad is that my dad won't talk about Vietnam.  He told me where to put the tape recorder in no uncertain terms.


Yet there we were - the faculty of a Christian college being lectured on the merits of just war.  Very little mention of the teachings of Jesus.  No discussion of whether the teachings of Jesus are normative for the Christian community.  It seems we've done Jesus a great service - we've taken his teachings into the 21st century.  We've used him to justify military retribution in the name of liberal democracy and freedom.  Divine justification for weaponized drones and military occupation.  When does a belief system detach itself from its teacher?  When we begin thinking we know better...

The Lief's North Carolina Family Vacation

An Insider

This past week my family and I took a trip down to Asheville, North Carolina where I gave a few presentations at the Youth Unlimited Convention. The presentations went fine, and western North Carolina is beautiful - a place I could easily see myself living for awhile. On the way back we stayed at a hotel in southern Illinois where I had an interesting conversation with a complete stranger.

For those who don't know, or don't care, I haven't cut my hair in over a year and a half. Its long and everybody has an opinion about it. My mother keeps asking my wife, secretly of course, when I'm going to cut it. Most people make some smart comment about being a professor - as if I'm trying to live up to some stereotype. My wife tells me I have a man crush on David Grohl (The lead singer of the Foo Fighters) - which actually may be quasi true. Whatever the reason for my barber boycott (I'm not even sure I know...) my appearance make over has led to some interesting experiences. I find there is a certain type of person for whom my long shaggy hair and unkempt beard puts them at ease. They find me approachable - like I'm one of "them" - whoever "them" is.

So I was standing outside the hotel the other morning - smoking a clove and reflecting upon the trip ahead of us - when a women in her 50's came outside and lit up a cigarette. As soon as she saw me she walked over and just started talking. She talked about how smokers are like social outcasts these days - kicked to the curb. She told me about her son - who she was going to visit - and the Sports bar and grill he has just opened in Kentucky. When I told her we were coming back from North Carolina she reminisced about a rebellious excursion to North Carolina with her friends when she was about 18 years old... for which she was grounded. "But it was totally worth it," she told me.

Maybe I'm making too much of it - but it seems to me you can tell who has lived a tough life. The way people talk can tell a tale of hardship and struggle. This woman didn't say so... but for some reason I think she's seen some things. I didn't say very much - I just listened and gave a few courtesy laughs - but she must have enjoyed our conversation because when I saw her in the elevator with her husband he asked "Is this the fellow you were talkin' to outside?"

Would I have had that conversation if I were sipping a latte, clean shaven with a preppy hair cut? Maybe - but I doubt it. Numerous people joke that I look like Jesus. Maybe that's why people want to talk to me.