Christianity

Threads of Hope

farhana — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

I have to admit to watching this film with much trepidation. Too many films and documentaries are dedicated to analyzing the poor state of women’s lives in the developing world, but few dedicate their focus to researching and explicating the systemic inequalities rooted in patriarchy, that exist to reinforce women’s conditions. However, while watching I was determined to keep an open mind and value the work and perspective of a young woman of color, endeavoring to make a difference in the world by documenting women’s lives in Kolkata, India.

This is a short piece by American student Amanda Ibrahim, who with a scholarship, traveled to India for two weeks to document the effects of the ConneXions vocational training on the women who worked in the training center. ConneXions, Ibrahim narrates, focuses on creating job opportunities for women by training and employing them in fair trade textile production. One of the stated aims is to make women self-dependent while providing them with an opportunity to help their family with money.

Though the camerawork was good, the footage was quite limited. Only a few people and places in Kolkata were included in the film. Much of the filming was done at the center with the management team and the women participants. When the women were depicted, they were always carrying out particular gendered roles, including cooking, cleaning, dancing and sewing. When they were interviewed, they seemed shy, awkward and as though either reading from a cue card or being prompted by the person next to the camera. Two women, Shibani and Krishna were interviewed more extensively, and both assert that through their work at ConneXions their lives have been transformed; they can now afford to put food on the table and pay for their children’s schooling. At one point, Shibani proudly states that everything she makes goes to her family and children. At this point, one could probably ascertain the reasons for women being the recipients of this program.

Though I appreciate the altruistic aspirations of the ConneXions project, this film, and the limitations I expect Ibrahim experienced, the main contentions I have with this film all relate to its limited analysis.

My lesser contention is the overarching theme of Christian ministering that ran throughout the film. The film opens with the words of a Christian prayer, and you later learn that the ConneXions vocational training center was founded by a Swedish couple, who had come to Kolkata as Christian missionaries through the non profit organization Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor. The homepage of Servants states that these Christian communities participate with the poor to bring hope and justice through Jesus Christ. All of the managers state their Christian position, and one in particular states that she teaches the women the gospel. What you don’t know by watching this film is whether the women are coerced into listening to the gospel or converting religions in order to access the training program. I am always weary of Christian missions particularly considering its mostly violent history with Canadian, South American, and Australian indigenous communities. That an immediate alliance and little analysis is done on the role of Christian ministering in the slums of India indicates the religious bias and socio-political naivety of the director.

My greatest contention with this film is its focus on female empowerment through Christian vocational training. I don’t dispute that the women are becoming empowered by receiving trained in textile production, and having then the potential to seek employment in the tailoring industry. However, the explicit goal of achieving empowerment through becoming self-dependent does not stand up against the stated end-result of these women spending everything they earn on their family. Self-sufficiency does not always equate empowerment. This is encapsulated in the comment of one of the young girls interviewed who shares innocently that she will have to leave the center in the very near future because she has to get married and will soon be just a housewife. This project perceives these women as simply reproducers and passive recipients of services. It offers a band aid solution to women’s disproportionate poverty by training them in a skill that would lead them to meeting their most basic needs, without addressing systemic gender inequity and the social, economic and political relations between men and women that perpetuate women’s oppression in India.

Ibrahim ends her film by depicting a group of smiling women, stating that the women who work at the center are blessed with deep friendships, which might be true, but which functions to generalize and romanticize the experiences of these women without providing evidence to support this statement, masking their relations with each other and with the center's management.

An interesting short film by a young female filmmaker, admirably attempting to foreground women’s lived experiences in the developing world. I only hope that her future directorial endeavors offer more mature and critical analysis.

Written by: Toni Francis, January 12th 2011

Voices of Witness Africa

andrea — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Cynthia Black

Claiming the Blessing

Voices of Witness Africa honors the truth and plight of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Anglicans in Africa, who have often been excommunicated by the Anglican Church. This is an admirable task for the producers of this film, since their target audience is Anglican bishops at the Lambeth Conference, a meeting of bishops which happens once every ten years. The producers must work not to overly offend the church bishops that they are trying to win over. However, this tension to represent various sides of the issue leaves the film with a sense of having been diluted to be palpable.

Producer/director Cynthia Black, an Episcopal priest herself, conceived of the thirty minute film after a successful response to the first Voices Of Witness film released in 2006, which featured LGBT Episcopalians from the Los Angeles area and was premiered during the General Episcopalian Convention in Columbus, Ohio. A short preview of Voices of Witness Africa was shown twice at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, supposedly to a standing-room-only audience.

Interviews range from LGBT people who are afraid to show their faces and sitting in shadow to retired Anglican Reverends who dare to openly support the cause—all offer an explosive and potentially deeply moving perspective. I saw pain in their eyes—pain from the persecution within their culture, their families, and yes, the church that they love. I kept waiting for the pain to be expressed. It never really was and, in that, the film itself doesn’t feel to match the bravery and courage of the individuals that it is featuring, who are in many cases risking life imprisonment and even death to tell their stories.

This movie feels like a tentative first step into the stormy waters of a growing advocacy for the Church to become more progressive or risk perpetuating the sense that it is living in the dark ages. You can feel in the people interviewed how their love for a God that is lovingly accepting of them and a church that represents that acceptance is what drives them to talk about it.

The film proceeds at a dizzying pace with a frenetic quality that makes it difficult to really be moved by the poignancy of what is being shared in only thirty minutes. More time for the stories to unfold of these fascinating, inspiring, and bright souls and more shots of the individuals in their daily lives would have enlivened the experience. The DVD includes a twenty-seven page study guide with suggested exercises for discussion groups and a full movie transcript—which seems excessive given the short length of the film itself.

Although this is undoubtedly a film made by Anglicans featuring Anglicans for Anglicans, this doesn’t mean that those of us who are not practicing Anglicans (or even Christians) won’t be touched by the experiences and perspectives of the film. Yet, we also may not feel as compelled by the desire to win over a church that has not kept its promises to listen to their suffering and persecuted parishioners. Instead we may wonder—isn’t it time to go beyond just an advocacy for “open listening” from the Church, and to demand sweeping change and progressive reformation that could pressure the political and judiciary systems to end the persecution of LGBT parishioners?

Written by: Jillian Vriend, November 3rd 2010

Sins of the Mother

annette — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Victoria Christopher Murray

Touchstone Books

Will we eventually be accountable for the decisions we made in the past? This is essentially the idea that Murray explores throughout her book Sins of the Mother. Through the use of multiple first-person narratives, Murray follows the actions and reactions of her characters after the young daughter of her protagonist and converted sinner, Jasmine Bush, is kidnapped.

I only realised half-way through reading the book that Sins of the Mother is the fifth instalment by Murray to follow Jasmine Larson Bush. Though I consider it a stand-alone book, and have not read any of her previous work, many of the references to Jasmine’s “sin-filled” past, without much follow-up substantiating these references, led me to believe that there were earlier instalments.

Sins of the Mother explores the struggle of faith that Jasmine Larson Bush and her family encounter upon the abduction of her young daughter. Primarily a Christian book, Murray’s characters have their faith, their relationship with God and with each other, put to the test as they search relentlessly and almost hopelessly for Jacqueline. As this book is a continuation of Jasmine’s life, it is predominantly a story of her spiritual development.

I found this book gripping, and quite a page-turner in its suspense, and the strength of the characters born out of their faith, quite admirable. However, I found a lot more aspects of the book frustrating and lacking. One of the most notable aspects of this book is its reference to an African-American, Christian community in New York City. Jasmine is the wife of the pastor of one of the largest churches, and because of this status has the respect and awe of her community. It was frustrating that there were multiple references to money, opulent lifestyles and spending habits, and importance put on status in the community as opposed to character development. Jasmine came off as a fickle woman, who thrived in her role as the wife of an important pastor and the mother of his children. Jasmine’s success was that she was the wife of someone important. Her character was shallow and after the abduction of her daughter, the stereotype of the neurotic damsel in distress who depends on the comfort and strength of men to console her.

Murray writes this book from several character perspectives, allowing for the “development” of several characters whose lives are intertwined and immediately impacted by Jacqueline’s abduction. However, the characters weren’t very complex, their reactions to their circumstances predictable and their roles stereotypical, and I found the multiple first-person narratives made the story drag on for much longer than it needed to. The emphasis on a glitz and glamour lifestyle as adding value to one’s life, particularly for up and coming Christians, limited character development, and the incessant references to sex, money and the status that comes with having it, is the biggest shortcoming of this book. Women in this book are mothers, partners and wives. Other than the character Alexis, who tries to exert her autonomy, but to little avail, women are as strong as the men who support them, and their identities thusly defined.

Written by: Toni Francis, October 1st 2010

Hannah Free

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Wendy Jo Carlton

Wolfe Video

If LOGO and the Hallmark Channel had a baby, they would name her Hannah Free.

The story goes like this: an aging lesbian couple, together for four decades, both now find themselves confined to the same nursing home, but unable to see one another. Free-spirited butch Hannah (Sharon Gless) is paralyzed after falling off a roof, and is denied access to her comatose lover Rachel (Maureen Gallagher) by Rachel's bitter born-again Christian daughter Marge (Taylor Miller of TV's All My Children).

Bedridden and lonely, Hannah spends most of her time napping, journaling, reading mail, and talking to an imagined younger version of Rachel (Ann Hagemann). It is through these (highly contrived) plot devices that the audience is taken back into chapters of Hannah's history: her childhood chasing after little blond Rachel through wheat fields, her Depression-era youth happily roughing it in Alaska, her WWII military service as a pilot in the Women's Army Corps. Her younger version is played by relative unknown Kelli Strickland, who spends the majority of her onscreen time locked in tepid PG-13 sex scenes with Hagemann's Rachel.

One day, following a tense interaction with Marge, a young woman named Greta (Jacqui Jackson) wanders into Hannah's room, all wide eyed and with polite questions. She draws out from Hannah her unfortunate circumstances, and quickly offers to come by at 3 a.m. to take Hannah to see Rachel. We soon learn that Greta is not just motivated by altruism; she is Rachel's great-granddaughter, and herself a lesbian. Hannah and Greta strike up a friendship, and Hannah later shares her journals with Greta; more flashbacks ensue. The third act sees Hannah, Marge, and Greta come together to make a very difficult end-of-life decision on behalf of the woman they all hold dear.

Notice my usage of the term third act? It's a common term in references to films, but it is especially appropriate in the case of Hannah Free, a film adapted for the screen by playwright Claudia Allen. Film buffs are aware that play adaptations fall into two distinct categories: those that successfully make the leap from stage to screen (e.g., Crimes of the Heart and Steel Magnolias) and those that don't. Sadly, Hannah Free just doesn't.

I appreciate issues-driven cinema as much as the next bleeding heart liberal. Admittedly, Hannah Free does address a variety of pertinent topics. These include the concepts of a loving versus “legal” family in regard to LGBT relationships and which decisions each partner is allowed to make regarding the other; the general dearth of quality elder care, specifically care for aging LGBT folks; and living openly in rural communities. With its story told by a predominantly female cast, and emphasis placed on both respect for lesbian elders and multi-generational lesbian representation in families with the character of Greta, the film also has a decidedly feminist bent. Still, Hannah Free is heavy-handed—and hokey.

As it relates to issues of health, family, and LGBT equality, Hannah Free is a relevant film. As a worthwhile cinematic experience, however, it falls woefully short.

Written by: M. Brianna Stallings, July 20th 2010

Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation, and the American Protestant Empire, 1812-1960

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Kathryn Kish Sklar, Connie A. Shemo

Duke University Press

A great deal of important criticism has emerged recently in the area of women’s contributions to the history of evangelical Christianity, and this collection brings together some of the scholars largely responsible for this upsurge in interest. Among them is Jane Hunter (The Gospel of Gentility), as well as critics studying the records of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American women working for missionary organizations and religious groups as they imposed and also perhaps transformed American imperialism. The somewhat sunny description of this project, an examination of “the work of American women missionaries in American cultural expansion,” might strike students of post-colonial theory—or even readers of fiction like Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible—as strangely euphemistic.

It’s hard to read these accounts of women who traveled throughout the world and affected and were affected by the various cultures with which they engaged without remembering the outcome—that is, the devastating consequences of colonialism and the horrific exposure of the arrogant and naïve assumptions that underlay these “missionary” efforts. One of the mainstays of the archival holdings of my own institution is an enormous collection of missionary papers: letters, diaries, and other records kept by the legions of Christian women from the American southeast, sent on global missions to “convert the savages.” On the one hand, it’s extraordinary to follow these women, who had been bound by the conventions of domesticity, at once to view the world through their own apparently inflexible filters—and yet also be themselves changed by the experience.

The argument of Competing Kingdoms takes this observation one step further: women’s involvement in missionary work transformed the nature of American colonialism itself. Kingsolver’s missionaries are victimized by their cultural arrogance and ignorance, but they are ultimately transformed by this exercise in “cultural expansion.” And so readers here are asked to view the global efforts of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), or of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), for example, as complex in their motivations and results. Amy Kaplan’s brilliant phrase “Manifest Domesticity” captures both the connection of these movements to aggressive American expansionism and also to the “sentimentalized domesticity” inherent in much of women’s religious practice which, by virtue of exposure to international travel and cultural difference, was itself altered. Hunter notes that the mission was to convert the “savage to homebody,” and of course the conversion experience operated on those doing the converting, as well.

Ian Terrell’s essay on the WCTU and Hunter’s treatment of the YWCA both suggest the possibility of further scholarship on the complex role organizations like these played in the lives of women and in the cultures they affected. The essays generally represent careful archival scholarship, admirable in scope, covering singular figures and particular cultural instances—in the Philippines, Congo, Egypt, India, Ottoman Empire, Rhodesia, China, Japan—although none representing Central or South America.

In studying African American missionaries in Congo, Sylvia Jacobs concludes that “mission ideology always assumed a negativism about the society in which missionaries worked” and that missionaries “could respect African culture, society, and religion but still want to change them.” The most compelling part of this story is the transformations that occurred within those who sought to transform others. Whether or not these women collectively mitigated the effects of American colonialism remains an open question.

Written by: Rick Taylor, July 2nd 2010

Whom Not to Marry: Time-Tested Advice from a Higher Authority

admin — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Father Pat Connor

Hyperion

After reading Whom Not to Marry by Father Pat Connor, a Catholic priest, I contemplated the different ways to approach this review. I could discuss the practical aspects of this book, but Maureen Dowd already addressed this in a July 6, 2008 op-ed in the New York Times. I could parody Whom Not to Marry, but Father Connor seems so earnest and well-meaning I couldn’t mock him in good conscience (and I’m not even Catholic). I could take a liberal stance and point out that this book is heteronormative, patriarchal, and antiquated. However, I’m much less offended by this instruction manual than I am by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider’s The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. Connor at least encourages women to find someone who treats them with respect and kindness, rather than giving lessons on how to seduce men by playing hard to get.

Whom Not to Marry is based on Connor’s lecture that he shares with audiences of young women. He structures the book around 1 Corinthians 13:4-13, from the Bible: “Love is patient, love is kind...” If you’ve ever attended an American or Christian wedding, you’ve certainly heard this read, usually by a relative. I don’t want to be dismissive and say this is cliched, but Connor is certainly not introducing a new idea. Not to mention the fact that as a Catholic priest Connor has never been married himself, but gleans his experience from premarital counseling and presiding over ceremonies.

Full disclosure: I’m married and believe everyone should have the right to marry. At the same time, I respect that there are many people opposed to the institution of marriage. To enter into marriage should be an individual choice. This is the fundamental weakness of Whom Not to Marry. It assumes every woman wants to marry a man.

Another weakness of the book is that Connor does not criticize the institution of marriage, or at least the wedding industry in the U.S. I would never expect him to violate the tenets of his religion, but the book doesn’t account for social context. In many ways this book is ahistorical, and attributes failed marriages to women’s bad judgment, rather than considering the social pressure to marry quickly, traditionally, and with spectacle.

I don’t think I would actually recommend Father Connor’s Whom Not to Marry to anyone that I know. It’s very reminiscent of Good Housekeeping relationship advice columns that my grandmother may have clipped. Sweet and with the best intentions, but predictable and naïve.

Written by: Claire Burrows, June 27th 2010

Fish Out of Water

admin — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:01:00 +0000

Directed by Ky Dickens

First Run Features

In Fish Out of Water, Ky Dickens recalls her effort to reconcile her devout, Christian faith with her homosexuality. She claims she feels like a “fish out of water,” because, after coming out during her senior year of college at Vanderbilt, she was ostracized from her academic community, but, at the same time, didn’t quit feel an affinity to the gay community at large. To remedy this intense feeling of conflict within her self, Dickens set out to study the Christian scriptures, mostly by traveling the country to consult leaders of the Christian faith. What she discovered during her journey was that many people lean blindly on the Bible—believing, for instance, that the Bible ordains that homosexuality is a sin, but, for the most part, these same people have very little idea about what actually is written in the Bible.

Therefore, Dickens’s objective in the documentary is to examine, through a series of interviews with key Christian leaders, the seven verses (of over 6,000 total) that are cited as the key verses used to buttress Christians’ condemnation of homosexuality and, specifically, same-sex marriage. Especially revelatory are the four verses analyzed from the Old Testament (the final three are from the New Testament scriptures written by Paul in Romans, 1 Timothy, and 1 Corinthians). In the creation story that begins Genesis, biblical scholars discuss how God created Eve as the “fit helper”—ezer kenegdo, a “corresponding helper”—for “Adam” (meaning human of no gender). Eve was not created as his servant or slave, but as a life companion, in which Adam can find strength to live life to the fullest. Not only does this explication turn misogynist interpretations of the Bible their heads, but it also works to clarify that the primary function of this creative coupling was to not “be fruitful and multiply,” but to live harmoniously. Eve was not meant to be the vessel for man’s reproduction, neither does this injunction to “be fruitful and multiply” connote that sexual relations, of whichever sort, that do not seek to reproduce are “unnatural.”

Another fascinating discussion focuses on the Sodom and Gomorrah story, which is cited by the ignorant masses as proof that homosexuality is “unnatural” and that “sodomites” will be subject to the wrath of God. The moral underlying the tale is not about the unnaturalness of homosexuality, but the consequences of failing to provide hospitality to strangers. Lot offers two strangers shelter for the night, to the dismay of the local villagers, who turn violent from what appears to be sheer boredom. They want to “know” (ie, rape) the two strangers, who turn out to be angels—and these angels unleash their fury upon the villagers, while allowing Lot and his family (his wife, who turns to salt, and his two daughters) to flee the village before it is destroyed. The two daughters, eager to create their own tribe, decide to get their father drunk and then rape him in order to procreate to begin their own tribe. Via analysis of this story, it becomes apparent how irrelevant and ineffective this verse is in a bigot’s arsenal against homosexuality—because it has nothing to do with same-sex relationships or marriage.

Overall, Dickens offers us a more satisfying take on the conflict between the Christian faith and homosexuality than other pieces, especially the tepid For The Bible Tells Me So, which had little substance in relation to is political bite. The focus on exegesis rather than politics renders the documentary a much stronger weapon against blind faith and bigotry. Fish Out of Water is a heartfelt but serious film for those who, like Dickens, long to ease the conflict between their religion and their sexuality. As well, it could prove a quite powerful tool if utilized in pedagogical settings, to dispel misconceptions of scripture in society.

Written by: Marcie Bianco, June 25th 2010

Jesus Boy

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Preston L. Allen

Akashic Books

Star-crossed intergenerational love between a Christian matriarch and a young church pianist sounds like an unlikely fictional masterpiece, but in Jesus Boy, Preston L. Allen’s empathic, intricate storytelling skillfully unfolds this improbable tale of religious conviction, sexual desire, and social pressure to conform.

While striving to maintain a virtuous private life—and wholly failing to do so—Elwyn Parker struggles with his public image as a young preacher. At the tender age of sixteen, his childhood crush becomes pregnant by another boy, confusing his chaste heart. At the same time, his aged mentor dies, leaving a grieving widow with whom Elwyn takes up, despite their twenty-two year age difference and to the great surprise of them both. Suddenly, sexual vices overwhelm a story of deeply religious believers, who struggle to make sense of the contradictions between spiritual dogma and physical and emotional desires. Most of the story’s characters live hypocritically at best; yet, their humanity is striking and a clear reminder of what it means to live with wholly unrealistic expectations of oneself and one another.

Between the evangelical language and the geography, the novel had additional resonance for me personally. Set in South Florida towns like Lakeland and Plant City, I could easily imagine not only the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters congregations and their church buildings but also the two-lane highways that connect some of the small cities mentioned. My maternal grandparents, retired ministers, have lived in that area for the last decade and attend two church services every Sunday: one in their trailer park, where grandpa leads the worship service, and one at a Church of God in Lakeland.

The book takes many turns, and sometimes I would be reading for several pages about a newly introduced character before all the pieces fell into place. Allen layers themes of familial obligation and incest with religious judgment and piety, all the while undoing any assumption you might make about essential underlying elements of a functional intimate relationship blossoming in the shadow of slavery and racialized poverty. Feminist in the sense that the author exposes the humanity of each character equally, Jesus Boy will encourage the most progressive thinker to reevaluate their moral judgments about love, parenting, pregnancy, and May-December romances.

Akashic Books consistently publishes quality fiction, and Jesus Boy is just one more must have title in their catalog. If you only read five novels this year, this should be one of them.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, April 27th 2010

Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Edited by Hannah Faith Notess

Cascade Books

Jesus Girls is a truly beautiful array of humbling feelings and bittersweet experiences, from fears of generational sin to tales of exchanging the pants off your own body with those from a hitchhiker. Divided into sections—community, worship, education, gender and sex, and story and identity—many of the stories were first printed in publications like Geez Magazine. To be clear, the writers are both reformed Christians and current believers.

Trained to tell the story of one’s life as personal “testimony,” editor Hannah Faith Notess instead describes her “un-testimony”—a reverse conversion of sorts, though admittedly usually a less linear, much more complicated, character-filled than a come-to-Jesus testament of personal awakening. Notess explains that whereas Jesus and your sinning self are the primary roles in evangelical conversion narratives, experiences of conversation—in either direction—never happen in a vacuum and are often heavily influenced by our own church communities.

Notess also made a special point to emphasize women’s voices in this collection. “Even in evangelical circles that approve of women’s leadership, it seems, too often women are only called upon to speak on ‘women’s issues,’” she explains. She also points out that in many evangelical traditions, women are taught to be silence in church congregations, even while their testimonies are often just as—if not more—powerful than men’s stories of conversation and salvation.

The collection is based largely on stories of North American evangelism, and while many types of evangelical congregations are not included, that is hardly a weakness of this book. Some of the stories are more interesting or personally relevant than others, and some—like Anastasia McAteer’s “Exorcizing the Spirit” or an essay about swimming lessons—are admittedly startling amidst tales of DC Talk CDs, test-run mission trips to India, and those stiff paper candle skirts that catch candle wax. Perhaps because accounts relating to gift subscriptions to Brio magazine and Jack Chick comics so excite me, a few of the more serious accounts failed to seize me altogether.

Several of the accounts feature women under ten regularly choosing to accept Jesus into their hearts or experience voluntary baptism. As someone who did both of these things during the same developmental periods of my life, these stories were comforting in the normalcy. There are also stories of a different kind of acceptance, like protestant Angie Romines’ desire to be in her story’s namesake, the “Catholic club,” or Kirsten Cruzen’s story of surviving life as a child of missionaries—“a missionary kid, an MK.”

Most comforting for an agnostic such as myself—if also most disturbing—are stories of early confusion, like Shari MacDonald Strong’s account of her inability to grasp women’s supposed original sin at only five years of age. Despite her love of greater knowledge and the Bookmobile, by her teen years, she has been effectively desexualized and demoralized by her church. Later, codependent and abusive relationships stem from so little self-esteem, personal empowerment, and knowledge of the opposite sex. No doubt many feminists who grew up in a church—myself among them—have had to navigate similar quandaries.

Some essays offer engaging, seemingly unintentional contrast as well. Stephanie Trombari details her battles with mental illness that led her to Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, a “tent revival meets United Nations” faith healing community. And in Carla-Elaine Johnson’s “Family Time,” nurse-type attendants standing around the sanctuary to take care of anyone who “fell out” during rhythmic “stomping.” Depending on whom you believe, faith will either make you collapse or find true healing in concepts like “emotional health gospel.”

One writer tells of having an abortion at nineteen, a devastating event that nevertheless made her move “from pro-life or pro-forgiveness.” After living through myriad scandals including adultery, suicide, and her church splitting in two, unable to choose one of two pastors, Paula Carter writes, “I worry that people who grow up in the church learn to deny their own humanity.” It became clear to her that the church people were simply unable to live up to their own standards. With a bittersweet sentiment that made me laugh out loud, Carter wrote, “It is hard for me even now to reconcile the expectations of church and the reality of being alive.”

From the very real experience of being called to ordination to the confusions of the trappings of faith—as in, the belief that the right music and the right books will yield a saved self—Jesus Girls is a joyous, if sometimes harrowing, exploration of what it means to grow up female, evangelical—and sometimes, even feminist.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, January 1st 2010

Girl Mary: A Novel

admin — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Petru Popescu

Simon & Schuster

The Mary in Girl Mary__ is known by many names and revered by many people. Type “Mary” into Google and the first match is a Wikipedia entry for “Mary (mother of Jesus),” her best known role. She is a major player in the spirituality of millions, yet much of her life remains a mystery. Girl Mary, a work of fiction by Petru Popescu, takes Mary the mythical figure and makes her human while telling a captivating account of her life just before Jesus.

Popescu’s novel marries Judean history with that of Augustan Rome. It begins from the perspective of a young Roman who calls himself Apella, but later reveals his real name is Pontius Pilate—the man who would ultimately sentence Jesus to his crucifixion. He agrees to work as a spy for Augustus Caesar, who wants to declare himself God, by visiting a tribe of Jews from which Caesar has heard the son of God will come. Pilate is told to find a miracle and bring it back to Caesar so the Roman people can be convinced that it came from their emperor.

Mary, of course, belongs to the tribe Pilate visits whose people were banished from their home, Nazareth, by their king. Part of Pilate’s plan is to gain the tribe members’ trust by persuading the king to let them back into Nazareth. Pilate unintentionally falls for Mary throughout this process, but her heart belongs to Joseph, a carpenter she met when she lived in Nazareth. The novel follows Mary’s physical journey back home and her emotional journey of being in love.

Girl Mary brings Mary, Pilate, and Joseph to life in a way that religious texts don’t allow. The story is told from each of their perspectives, though Mary is the most developed character. Much of her development comes from the many conversations she has with God during her journeys. It’s clear she isn’t afraid to question God’s motives, especially when it comes to his creation of women and their suffering at the hands of men.

Popescu’s Mary is quite a bit less reserved than her biblical image. When Joseph asks her to marry him, she declines knowing she would be his third wife (he is set to marry two others before her). It’s clear that she values herself, and Joseph, too much to be his third. In a time when women are used as bartering chips, she acts her own negotiator and haggles Joseph into making her his first wife. Throughout the book, she proves that a woman can be virtuous without having to be submissive to those around her.

In Christianity, Mary is often used as symbol of what all women should aspire to be: pure and virtuous. However, Mary’s level of purity is an unattainable standard. In religious texts, she remains a virgin despite being pregnant with Jesus because he was conceived by a miracle of God. Popescu’s Mary is not a virgin. She has sex with Joseph, which leads God to plant the seed of his son into her womb. It’s a very small part of the book, but indicative of the story Popescu has created. Even though his novel is fiction, its detail and emotion make it feel more realistic than the texts—believed to be based on historical facts—from which the story originally came.

Popescu’s Mary is not only relatable, but the purity and virtue she exemplifies is attainable. He didn’t change her or her story much, but he made them both more rounded and a joy to read.

Written by: Jill Hindenach, December 24th 2009

Not That Kind of Girl

admin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Carlene Bauer

Harper

Carlene Bauer was a seven-year-old child when her mother became a born-again Christian, catapulting the family into a regimen that put avoiding devilish distraction front and center. Fear of imminent doom led to a morass of rules governing the Bauer sisters’ every move, rules that touched on modesty, piety, and propriety.

Bauer was born in 1973 and Not That Kind of Girl takes the reader from her early childhood, to her coming of age in 1980s New Jersey, to the present. Along the way she describes the implicit and explicit messages she received about what type of girl she was not to become. As she does this she reveals profound confusion about womanhood, autonomy, and integrity, the unraveling of which forms the crux of this intellectually stimulating, and often funny, memoir.

Not surprisingly, there are many questions. Is premarital sex really sinful? What about drinking and smoking pot? Is doubt always destructive? Can someone love language, literature, and rock music alongside the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? If so, how?

Four years at a Catholic college provide few answers, so not knowing what else to do, Bauer and a few friends move to Brooklyn, NY, post graduation. They’re hoping the city’s grit will help resolve these dilemmas, but distractions intrude—there’s the club scene, literary readings, parties, and a publishing job that gives Bauer a chance to hone her editing skills and wit, albeit for a pittance.

The years following the move are full of ups and downs, but it is Bauer’s continual search for meaning that keeps her from settling for less than she wants in relationships and employment. Still, confusion and guilt dominate.

“Christianity had taught me that reaching out your hand for what you wanted, since it might entail pushing someone else out of the way, was selfish and impolite,” she writes. “I could not reconcile my faith with my ambition—I could not stop thinking that one had to be suppressed for the other—and this left me too muddled to be shrewd.”

For a while, Bauer thinks that converting to Catholicism will provide clarity; it doesn’t. And then 9/11 happened. “I would be a fool if I opened my mouth to ask God to watch over us or give us peace after he had taken it away from thousands of people and might be preparing to end the happiness of everyone within the church and without. I could not seek consolation from him,” she admits.

Just like that, Bauer’s faith crumbles, at least temporarily; on the other hand, her quest for life’s purpose never waivers. It’s liberating, if hard, to shift gears into a more secular worldview, but the subtle change allows Bauer to find a satisfying job as a magazine fact checker, begin writing, and pursue a relationship that seems sustainable. As for God, who knows? Bauer’s odyssey is likely to be lifelong, and as her quest for divinity has broadened, she has begun to see, and write about, evidence of the spirit in music, poetry, nature, and city life.

Not That Kind of Girl is a revelatory and provocative work, a personal story that goes far beyond the boundaries of autobiography. Witty and deeply introspective, it shines a personal light on evangelism that proves 1960s feminists correct: The personal really is political.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, November 12th 2009

A Cup of Comfort, Women of the Bible Devotional: Daily Reflections Inspired by Scripture's Most Beloved Heroines

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:09:00 +0000

Edited by James Steward Bell, Susan B. Townsend

Adams Media

Let’s face it, regardless of our daily routines or obligations we can all use a bit of comfort from time to time. As such, I would strongly recommend A Cup of Comfort Women of the Bible Devotional, which I found to be less of a daily devotional and more of a mystical adventure. It seemed that each day’s message had been distinctly crafted just for me. There was always something valuable in the words that were shared—whether via the narratives or the quotes that lingered with me as I tended to the myriad of responsibilities that clamor for my attention each day.

This is actually one book that you can judge by its cover. True to its name, this daily devotional provides comfort and inspiration to a world weary soul, supplying the ideal amount of biblical wisdom to get your day started on the right foot. What I found particularly endearing about this devotional is the fact that it is the heroines of the Bible whose wisdom and experience is highlighted and presented. Prior to becoming a Christian I explored nearly every other mystical path out there: Sufi mysticism, New Age philosophies, Kabbala, Wicca, Buddhism, Taoism, and (she states somewhat shamefully) Hedonism.

What I enjoyed most about exploring these other paths was the central theme that allowed for focus on devotion to the balance of life, the essential connection between yin and yang, light and dark. Until I began reading this devotional I wasn’t able to see that Christianity also offers the balance of opposing forces. With each passage I was able to recognize the value of the feminine aspect of Christianity, which was something that had not been apparent to me via the most widely available Christian materials.

The reflections on life provided by the various contributors helped me to appreciate the wisdom that can be gleaned from the trials and tribulations that we all face. It is in difficult times that we often learn our most valuable lessons. If there was no dark, how could we recognize the light? It is the chiaroscuro of life’s travails that gives us our depth. Just as with a work of art, it is the light, the dark, and the myriad of shades in between that give feeling to the experience and texture to our vision.

Although I can’t say that it happens often, there have been times in my life that are akin to a fresh glass of lemonade on a hot summer’s afternoon: those moments of peace, when there are no proverbial fires to put out, no one screaming mommy, and no deadlines to meet. This is exactly where this particular devotional brings me: to a warm summer’s afternoon, with a fresh glass of lemonade in hand, a day’s work complete and time to reflect upon and marinate with all that has unfolded.

Written by: Susan G. Reyes Vasquez, September 8th 2009

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America and Found Unexpected Peace

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:06:00 +0000

By William Lobdell

Harper Collins

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.- Frederick Nietzsche

William Lobdell was a twenty-something flake. He blew one marriage and was on his way to blowing a second when a friend dragged him to a gathering of evangelical Christians. Lobdell was born again, and he started attending Sunday services. His wife, a lapsed Catholic, appreciated his newfound Christianity and joined with him in a subsequent odyssey through various Christian denominations. Lobdell was a born again with one difference: he was a journalist. By perseverance and prayer Lobdell convinced his bosses at the Los Angeles Times to put him on the religion beat. For eight years he reported on matters of faith. He interviewed Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church in Riverside, California and author of The Purpose Driven Life who spoke at Obama’s Presidential Inauguration. Lobdell was skeptical of Warren at first, but discovered him to be a plain guy who inspires other people—and is apparently never alone in a room with a woman unless she is his wife. Lobdell was as convinced of Warren as he was of the Lubavitchers, a Jewish sect that has been quite successful the last thirty years in motivating Jews to return to their religion.

Lobdell tried several Protestant congregations, but eventually decided Catholicism was the true Christianity. While a Christian, Lobdell prayed constantly. Once he prayed for $50,000, and how he got the money makes for an improbable—but true—anecdote. By and large, Lobdell was happy with his job and religion. When he was attending a year-long curriculum for Catholic converts, the news broke of the widespread molestation of children by priests and the attendant cover-up by church hierarchy. As the LA Times religious reporter, he covered the scandal. He saw in the church’s documents and at trials of priests the heinous criminal behaviour committed by supposed men of God. He faced the moral turpitude of the episcopacies sweeping the issue under the rug and—when this infamy wouldn’t disappear, but worsened—blaming the victims. He witnessed firsthand his soon-to-be fellow Catholics anger not at priests and the administration that had furthered the rape of children by transferring culpable priests from parish to parish, but at the victims who wouldn’t back down and demanded legal and financial redress for years of suffering.

The scandal shook Lobdell’s theodicy. He had allayed by means of the usual answer the contradiction of evil’s presence in a world that—according to faith—is closely supervised by a benevolent deity (i.e., we mere humans cannot possibly understand God’s plan). Now he saw evil close up, an evil perpetrated by men claiming to be God’s earthly representatives.

Lobdell dropped out of his Catholic convert program. Despite the ministration of Christian friends, he acknowledged to himself that bad things happen in the world, and there is no explaining this by appealing to a God with plans for us that we can never know. In short, Lobdell lost his faith and lost the idea of that God by which Christianity, Islam, and other faiths beguile, comfort, and frighten humans into religious belief.

There is something peculiarly, provincially American about Lobdell’s journey that speaks to the country’s obsession with religion, and its immaturity in spiritual matters. The question of a divine providence at work in human reality is a question much of Europe struggled with during the Enlightenment. The First and Second World Wars and the Holocaust seem prima facie confirmation for at the very least a divinity disinterested in acting directly in human affairs. That America has never torn itself apart in the sort of insane cataclysm that Europe did may be the reason why Americans still find religion to be a subject of such heated argument.

It is also of interest in the context of this book to consider alcoholism, Twelve-Step Programs, and the American obsession with religion. When Lobdell has doubts about God, he drinks. For Americans, it seems when they lose their religion they turn to booze. When alcohol ruins their lives, they turn to the Twelve Steps, which returns them to God. Lobdell never joins a Twelve-Step Program. When he loses his faith for good, he is comfortable with it and does not start drinking again. That itself is a worthy triumph and makes for a happy ending. Losing My Religion began life as a 3,800-word piece that Lobdell wrote for the Los Angeles Times. It was the last article he wrote as the newspaper’s religion writer. The article is concise while the book-length treatment contains many fleshed-out anecdotes, extra facts and stories, and lengthy portraits. The additional material is mostly helpful, but in sum Lobdell’s narrative seems a little padded because of it. The book version could profit from being more succinct by about twenty pages.

Special thanks to David Watson for his invaluable help in clarifying the meaning of Twelve-Step Programs in the American religious context.

Written by: Neil Flowers, August 11th 2009

Lumo: One Young Woman's Struggle to Heal in a Nation Beset By War

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:14:00 +0000

Directed by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, Nelson Walker III

Goma Film Project

Lumo is a documentary, named after its central character, of an African woman healing from a rape endured by military men that left her with a medical condition called fistula, a tear in the wall between the vagina and bladder caused by violent rape. It left her incontinent and uncertain of her chances to birth children. Like so many women who bear the heaviest and agonizing brutality in war-torn countries, rape is the most barbaric and common war crime committed against African women. While others think of terror in the form of bombs, missiles, and heavy artillery, Lumo recognizes rape as the most treacherous act of war, which claims the lives of so many women and leaves them in unspeakable suffering.

The film follows Lumo as she travels from her village, where she has been rejected by her fiancé, neglected by her family, and ostracized by her community, to Goma, a region in the Democratic Republic of Congo where she will receive treatment from HEAL Africa, an internationally sponsored hospital that provides services for rape survivors. Lumo will stay at the hospital for an unknown period of time until she physically and psychologically recovers from her trauma.

Although the tempo is slow, the documentary absorbs every painful detail of Lumo’s healing process. As if reflecting the pace of healing itself, the arduous and tedious speed of the film unnerves the viewer as the agony of the fistula is unmasked. Leaking urine, one of the symptoms of the fistula, cast Lumo and these other survivors into a world where they are further violated and isolated because of their condition. The cinematography is gripping. The facial portraits of the women are burned into the viewer's memory.

Lumo also moves between disparity and the power of faith. It largely focuses on Christianity as a source of strength and hangs the hope of medical miracles on Jesus and images of God as the savior. The survivors are repeatedly told to pray for their healing and ask God for complete recovery.

Central to Lumo’s message is the unflinching commentary on the lives of the women who will return to their homes after months, or sometimes years, of treatment. They will return to the world of rejection and rebel-occupied villages where they will live in danger of being raped again.

The film interacts with other components of gender domination and oppression–state violence and government officials who use victim-blaming language–to expose all facets of the cycle which perpetuate the cycle of violence against and degradation of women. In every society, in every part of the world, sexual violence is a crime against humanity. It will transform its face based on language, environment, and culture, but Lumo points out that violence against women remains the greatest commonality among all social sins, and no nation has taken steps toward absolution.

After witnessing the journey of one woman, viewers will be compelled to search for Lumo in their own community, city, town, or village. Lumo can and is everywhere. She is anywhere and everywhere violence against women persists.

Written by: Lisa Factora-Borchers, July 28th 2009

My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike

admin — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 22:10:00 +0000

By Joyce Carol Oates

Harper Collins

My Sister, My Love is Joyce Carol Oates’ thirty-fifth novel in forty-five years. Ambitious and sweeping, the nearly 600-page tome explores a plethora of themes: the tabloid press’ obsession with celebrity; marital discord and fidelity; the pressure placed on children by achievement-worshipping parents; forgiving transgressions; the medicalization of normal human development; and the hypocrisy underlying Christian-inspired capitalism, among them.

The story is narrated by Skylar Rampike, a depressed nineteen-year-old whose six-year-old sister, Bliss, was brutally murdered ten years earlier. Bliss, a child-prodigy figure skater, was found in the family’s Fair Lawn, New Jersey home, hanging in the basement boiler room during the Christmas season of 1994. If it sounds familiar, it should. Like a Law and Order episode spun from a lurid news story, My Sister, My Love is a send up of JonBenet Ramsey and her family.

And what a family it is. Betsey is a hover mother of the highest order, hell-bent on making little Bliss a star. It starts serendipitously, when Bliss exhibits an uncanny dexterity that sends her mom into a what-if frenzy. First comes the name change; Bliss’ original name was Edna Louise, after her paternal grandmother, but she was re-christened "Bliss" after Betsey envisioned god instructing her to make the switch. This is followed by hormone injections into Bliss’ child-sized body, regular beauty makeovers to enhance the child’s appearance, and forced practice sessions, even when Bliss is in obvious pain from one or another injury.

While Betsey is over-involved and continually scheming for a place in the spotlight, the family patriarch is the opposite. Named Bix, he is an anti-Semitic womanizer, a politically conservative glad-hander who reveres money and status and is more than happy to keep his family at arm’s length. For his part, Skylar is everything his parents despise, a bookish, non-athletic kid with few friends.

It’s a recipe for trouble and the novel delivers it, in spades. Unfortunately, while there are moments in which the book is affecting, most of the time it falls flat. Among the problems is tone. At times, Skylar is extremely sympathetic—clearly grieving for his sister, tormented by survivor guilt, and filled with fury toward parents who push him out of sight because they are embarrassed by his anti-social mien. At other times, however, the narrator’s snarky voice is distracting. Oates may be trying to replicate the moods of a sullen teen, but like time in the company of a snotty boy-child, one wants to escape him rather than stay in his orbit. What’s more, the many tangents—including hundreds of footnotes meant to elucidate Skylar’s thought processes and intellectual pursuits for the reader—are annoying digressions that make the book longer and more detailed than it needs to be.

Oates is clearly making fun of upper class pretensions and the faux Christian piety and family values endemic to suburban Republicans. It’s a rich playing field, but sadly, My Sister, My Love_ reads like a bloated lecture delivered by a pompous windbag. It’s too bad because real life dramas can be wonderful jumping off points for imagined scenarios. What we get instead is as nauseating as the incessant coverage of celebrity shenanigans we’re continually fed, and we close My Sister, My Love_ feeling no more insight than we had when we picked up the novel for the very first time. It’s a huge disappointment from so gifted a scribe.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, July 26th 2009