Browsing Tag

Mark Driscoll

Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 42-64, "Men and Marriage"

This was the first chapter that the book went flying. Honestly, I’m surprised I got to chapter three before that happened. This chapter was just … frustrating as hell to read. There’s so many problems with this chapter, and I’m going to spend my time today focusing on one of them, but it is important to at least point out a few other glaring problems.

First, he depends on a single researcher to make his arguments. 22 of his 29 citations come from W. Bradford Wilcox. I looked Wilcox up and you can tell from his list of publications that he has an obvious agenda, and he thinks “soft patriarchy” is a fine idea– he also does a lot of mixing up of correlation and causation in his conclusions. Wilcox is the head of the National Marriage Project, an organization that has a history of misrepresenting data in order to make their point. That Mark Driscoll only cites one person who agrees with him so exactly on everything is … awfully convenient. At best, it’s ridiculously shoddy research (and parroting Wilcox is basically all that happens from pages 57 to 63).

The second glaring problem with this chapter is the basis for a lot of his assumptions is his own personal experience. On some level we all do this, mostly unconsciously. What else are we supposed to form some of our assumptions on, if not our lives? However, when you’re a rich white American evangelical, your personal lived experience is going to be one of enormous privilege, and assuming that your mind-boggling advantages and opportunities is normal for everyone else will inevitably be a problem. Things that work for a neurotypical cishet able-bodied white Christian man who’s paid heaping amounts of money to yell curse words and insult people every week will not work for everyone, but he consistently does that through this entire chapter, mostly by demonizing men who don’t act exactly like an idealized version of himself (best examples of this are on pages 45-48).

However, the biggest problem is Mark’s main argument that complementarianism is the only possible theological conclusion and the only possible solution to abusive marriages.

The most rage-inducing thing about this chapter is how many times Mark describes abusive marriages, but not even once uses the word “abusive” to describe it:

Do you ever hit her? Do you ever shove her? Do you ever push her? Do you ever grab her, restrain her? Do you ever raise a hand and threaten her? Do you ever threaten her with physical violence? Do you give her that look, that pierced, glazed, angry, don’t-push-it-now’s-a-good-time-to-shut-up look? Do you tell her, “I’m getting very angry; you should just shut up right now or it’s gonna go bad for you? Do you get right in her face? Do you intimadate her with your presence? Do you play the role of the bully to push your wife around? (49)

What he’s just described is physically abusive. But, to Mark, this is simply “bullying.”

How do you speak toy our wife? Do you have nasty nicknames for her? Do you raise your voice? Do you threaten her? Do you give backhanded compliments? … If you start saying critical, cutting, demeaning, cruel, or disrespectful things about your wife, your children will be left in the awful position of choosing between their mother and father. Invariably some of your children will despise their own mother and speak evil of her in an effort to remain loyal to their father. (51)

First: that is verbal abuse. Second: Invariably? What the hell? But, worse than describing abusive acts and then minimizing them, he goes on to do this:

You honor your wife physically by being safe for her, protective of her, and tender with her. In this way she will see your strength as a blessing instead of danger … which means he needs to honor and protect [her weakness] rather than exploit it.

That is benevolent sexism (that link is truly excellent reading, I highly recommend it). There’s a few different forms of sexism: hostile, casual, and benevolent. Hostile sexism is what a lot of the “not all men” types are thinking about when they’re disagreeing with feminists, and, honestly, it used to be commonplace, but other forms of sexism are taking its place. Hostile sexism is what you get when you read Elliot Rodger’s manifesto. Casual sexism is “everyday sexism.” It’s cat calling and jokes about kitchens and sandwiches.

Benevolent sexism, though, is the belief that women are weak, innocent, home-guarding angels that need to be put on a pedestal and protected. It seems innocuous enough on its face; it’s chivalry and nobility and treating women right. Benevolent sexists spend a lot of time talking about how much they respect women, and how much they value women, and how men should honor women by opening up their pickle jars and putting their coats in puddles and treating them like “crystal goblets” (49).

However, the basic assumption of benevolent sexism is that women need to be protected by the men who own them. Daughters are protected by fathers, wives are protected by husbands, and they “protect” women from the big ugly nasty world that just wants one thing from us. In Mark’s words: “We are to be tough in carving out safety and protection for women and children in a world that abuses them” (44).

Missing from this framework is the understanding that women deserve respect because we are people. For example, Mark talks about how Grace was “overwhelmed with the demands of young children,” but instead of saying that “so I decided to shoulder my fair share of the responsibility, after all they’re my children, too, and I’m their parent,” he says that he started “helping out” as an act of service. Grace, in Mark’s head, is the woman-thing that he needs to protect and serve, not the person who is an equal partner in their marriage and who deserves to be treated with respect.

Benevolent sexism might initially seem like it’s not harmful, but it is. Nothing that assumes that women are intrinsically weak and vulnerable can be good. Historically speaking, the view that women are “weak and vulnerable” has been the main argument behind some of the most flagrantly misogynistic church teachings.

Benevolent sexism is just hostile sexism masquerading as a nice guy.

September 29, 2014 by
Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 19-41, "Friends with Benefits"

When I was in graduate school, one of the books I had to read was The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, and one of the chapters was written by Mark Driscoll– unsurprisingly, it was on swearing. I didn’t know anything about Mark Driscoll at the time, but I figured out quick that he was a pretty big fan of Martin Luther. As I’ve come to know more about Mark, that he sees himself as a “Martin Luther 2.0” should surprise absolutely no one, and that comes across pretty clearly in this chapter. The first five pages are dedicated to Martin Luther’s marriage to Katherine von Bora, and Mark cannot even begin to contain his enthusiasm:

Their marriage was a public scandal and arguably the most significant marriage outside the Bible in the history of the world.

Just … sigh.

In the rest of the chapter, Mark is going to spend a lot of time trying to convince us that he isn’t a raving misogynistic chauvinistic pig and that complementarian headship in marriage isn’t demeaning to women in any way whatsoever. However, the way that Mark writes about Katherine upends that completely:

What is perhaps most curious is that their marriage did not start with love or attraction, as Katherine was not physically attractive . . . Martin even confesses to his friends afterward … that the proud and haughty Katie alienated him . . . Even Martin’s friends were not fond of Katherine. He reported that many cried with grief upon hearing of his hasty marriage. (21)

Katherine was not physically attractive? Aish. It’s not exactly as though Martin was some sort of Adonis, but Mark says absolutely nothing about his looks. And, when talking about their “awkward” early days, due– according to Mark– to their “monasticism,” he only gives an example of Katherine being awkward, not Martin.

As the story goes on, Mark describes the blossoming friendship and romance between Katherine and Martin Luther, but it’s clear from the previous five pages that Mark thinks the love that Martin felt for “Katie” was not only in spite of himself (“Good God, they will never thrust a wife on me!”), but in spite of Katie, as well; after all, Martin married an ugly harpy– a harpy who worked very, very hard and sat with him while he wrote his letters and was just there for him as he did all of his amazing man-stuff while Katherine … kept a garden.

~~~~~~~~~

The rest of the chapter is Mark and Grace arguing about how important it is for married people to be friends. Which, ok, there’s nothing wrong with that argument on its face. I think friendship can go a long way in a marriage, and I have a hard time envisioning a successful marriage without friendship– all of the happily married people I know are friends. So, while I don’t necessarily have a problem with the message of the chapter as a whole, I do have a problem with how a lot of the specifics get presented, because things like this happen a lot:

I wanted the friendship but without the conflict. I didn’t understand that true friendship involves healthy conflict and hard discussions as God reveals sin and repentance, and reconciliation takes place. (25)

There’s an important word missing there: can. Friendships can involve conflict. However, the way that Grace has phrased this– and from things they both say later on– it is assumed that all friendships must involve conflict, or they are not actually friendships:

We may say we are someone’s friend, but unless we are quick to pursue them in the sin they have fallen into, we are not really much of a friend. (40)

I disagree with that. This is coming from someone who hasn’t even been married two years yet, so feel free to tip in your two cents, couples-with-more-experience, but drawing on both my experience as a partner and as a friend, I don’t think this is true. All of my friendships have involved some sort of conflict, true, but those have been the moments when our friendships have been the weakest and the most unloving. In my marriage, my goal isn’t to “pursue him into the sin he has fallen into,” but to love and accept and encourage.

I’ve had the sort of friendships that Mark and Grace are advocating for here, and one thing I’ve learned after a short lifetime of “friends” who want nothing more than to “sanctify” and “edify” me is that it sucks. Hardcore. I can’t imagine if Handsome treated me the way that Mark thinks partners should treat each other; I would be miserable and unhappy. The fact that my partner encourages me, and loves me, and accepts me for who I am right now while also dreaming with me about everything we can be together is wonderful. We both want to become better people– more loving, more generous, more kind . . . but we are not going to do that by harping on each other every time we think the other has “fallen into sin.”

Also, Mark doesn’t actually believe this, since he fired, excommunicated, and publicly shamed pretty much anyone who dared to disagree with him, particularly regarding accountability.

Interestingly enough, this first assumption– that true friendships are about “edification”– leads to another problem I have with this chapter: Christian elitism.

Only when marriage and family exist for God’s glory– and not to serve as replacement idols– are we able to to truly love and be loved. (28)

It is through the presence of God the Holy Spirit in our lives that we are able to love our spouses. (30)

We are convinced that the couples who pray … together stay together. (36)

The more his need for her and her need to help him are celebrated as gracious gifts from God, the faster oneness and friendship blossom in the marriage. (38)

That last one is also just icky– because they say that a wife needs to “celebrate being helpful as a gracious gift from God.” Whee. Complementarianism isn’t demeaning or chauvinistic at all. Not even a little bit. But the biggest problem I have (for the moment) with these statements is that they frame non-Christian marriages as less than. They probably wouldn’t go so far as to say that non-Christian marriages are doomed to unhappiness and divorce, but by making the claim that we need to place “glorifying God” as the center purpose of our marriage in order to truly love, what they are saying is that people who don’t think of “glorifying God” as a goal cannot truly love. They can love, sure, but not truly love. Any happiness a non-Christian experiences in their marriage is because of luck, probably. Because they couldn’t possibly be building a healthy marriage filled with trust and love and respect and kindness and acceptance– not without God, at least. Not really.

Christian elitism comes out in a lot of ways in Christian culture, and they’re usually wrapped up in sentiments like this one– and it frustrates me no end because of how baldly false it is. I’m friends with a lot of atheists and agnostics, and my friendships with them have been richer and more meaningful and more challenging than most of the friendships I’ve ever had with Christians– and the relationships that I have now with Christians don’t have anything “more” than my relationships with atheists. In fact, most of the friendships I’ve had with Christians have been profoundly negative and have ended horrifically because they felt more entitled to judge and condemn me than to love me.

In short: being friends with your spouse = good. Doing it the way that Grace and Mark think is good (such as, for Grace, “forcing herself to trust him,” 25) = bad.

September 22, 2014 by
Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 3-18, "New Marriage, Same Spouse"

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[content note: sexual violence, emotional abuse]

I’m doing something different with Real Marriage than how I reviewed Fascinating Womanhood and Captivating; with the last two books, I’ve read the entire thing before I started and then did one chapter at a time, trying to keep the message of the whole book in mind. After reading the first few chapters of this book, I realized I couldn’t handle that– not spiritually, not emotionally, not psychologically. So, for this review, what you’ll be reading from me will lean in the direction of gut reaction and instinct, since I don’t know where Mark and Grace are taking this.

The first chapter is Mark and Grace telling their story, starting from before they met each other, through dating, engagement, and what seems to be the bulk of their marriage. This chapter is mostly written from Mark’s perspective, as he wrote 46 paragraphs and Grace wrote 11. What I found the most disturbing, however, is what Grace says about her side of the story. It is … well, it reminded me of this:

bad dobby

Most of Mark’s paragraphs are him patting himself on the back for living such a good, moral life even though he was surrounded by “brazen prostitutes” and “manipulative women”– he even left his own fraternity, guys, because of the drinking! Wow, isn’t he just great? But Grace’s sections are full of self-flagellation; her teenage and young adult years are summed up by her as “living a lie,” and the few things she says about her marriage are full of “oh, how much I sinned against my husband! I did not feel that I was worthy of his love!”

And this is where I get incredibly fuzzy on the details, as both Mark and Grace are deliberately vague: apparently during the early days of their dating relationship, Grace “sexually sinned” with another man. There is no distinct timeline given, and I’m left wondering things like if they’d both verbally committed to a monogamous relationship at the time, or if their perspective on dating relationships now is coloring their dating relationship then, and what the “sexual sin” was; but what has me the most concerned is that they mention several times that Grace was sexually assaulted, and her assault caused some significant trauma for her. I can’t tell whether or not this “sexual sin” was actually being assaulted, especially because of things like this:

I felt God had conned me by telling me to marry Grace, and allowed Grace to rule over me since she was controlling our sex life. (10)

When I discovered her sin against me and that she had punished me with resulting years of sexual and emotional denial . . . (13)

Then, after more than a decade of marriage, a root issue was finally revealed. Grace’s problem was that she was an assault victim who had never told me or anyone else of the physical, spiritual, emotional, and sexual abuse she had suffered … In forgiving and walking with Grace  . . . (16)

And if you have unconfessed sin and/or a past of sexual sin, including pornography, fornication, sexual abuse, bitterness, and the like, we pray this book leads to the healing of your soul and your marriage. (18)

There’s a pattern through this entire chapter, and it is victim blaming. Both acknowledge that Grace was sexually abused, and that this abuse affected their sex life. She experienced pain and discomfort during intercourse, and Mark describes her as “checked out”– this is known as disassociation, and is common with sexual violence survivors.

However, all of that is framed as Grace’s fault. She “punished” him because she was traumatized– her needs as a sexual violence survivor was her “ruling over him.” He had to “forgive her.” In the last paragraph of the chapter, being sexually abused is listed as a form of “unconfessed sexual sin.” So, even if the “sexual sin” that they’re talking about back when they were dating was consensual, it’s clear that even if she’d been assaulted, Mark’s reaction would have been exactly the same: it’s a sin, her trauma and pain was her “punishing him,” and he needed to forgive her for her “sexual past” of being sexually abused.

What is just as horrifying to me is how Mark and Grace describe at least the first decade of their marriage: Mark says his actions were “overbearing and boorish, so angry and harsh, that I had not been the kind of husband who she could trust and confide in with the most painful and shameful parts of her past.” He said he used his words to “tear her down,” that he “condemned” her, and he links this with Grace “shutting down.” Grace describes it– in the scant few paragraphs where she’s allowed a voice– as him being “angry” and “harsh.” She describes her own reaction as “distant” and that she reacted to his diatribes and “harsh words” with silence.

I do not know Mark and Grace personally. I have never met them, and I did not observe them during this time. However, what they’ve spent fifteen pages describing sounds an awful lot like Mark being an emotional and verbal abuser. Apparently finding out that Grace had been sexually abused caused Mark to do some heavy re-thinking, but that just breaks my heart even more.

My partner and I had been dating for a couple months when we initiated any sort of physical romance, and it took me a long time to finally open up to him about what I’d been through. Before that, all he knew was that my last boyfriend had been a “jerk.” He didn’t push me, he didn’t question me. He waited for me to talk about it when I was ready, and was willing for that to be never. However, he didn’t need to know that I’d been raped in order for him to pay attention to my boundaries and to not just respect but love my physical needs.

He was so incredibly careful and gentle about making sure I was ok with anything we were doing. When I mentioned one day how much I loved his way with me– that he was respectful and loving– he looked at me like he didn’t know what I was talking about. For him, it was of course he would respect what I wanted, what I needed. Of course he wouldn’t cross my boundaries. Of course he thought of my enjoyment, my fun, my laughter and pleasure as paramount. This is normal, he told me, and it took me a very long time before I believed him.

American culture accepts violence against women as normal. Of course a penis will tear a vagina the first time they have penetrative sex. Of course men are sex-fueled robots. Of course women should expect reactions and behavior like Mark Driscoll’s. He had every right to feel bitter and tormented and angry because he’d had the bad luck to marry a traumatized sexual violence survivor who displays some symptoms of PTSD and couldn’t be his own personal porn star in bed.

That Mark Driscoll needed to know that his wife is a survivor in order to respect her needs during sex tells me everything I need to know about him.

Update 9/16/14 12:57a: for readers who have engaged in the comment section, please read my new comment here. My deepest apologies for letting that go on so long. I should never have let it begin.

September 15, 2014 by
Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: xi-xiv, "Preface" and "Introduction"

preacher

Ok, so I read four pages of Real Marriage this morning. There’s eleven chapters, so with that plus covering the preface and introduction today, I’m going to try to wrap this up in three months and avoid as much of the “multiple weeks dedicated to one chapter” thing that happened a few times with Captivating. I don’t think you or I could handle it.

Like Fascinating Womanhood and Captivating, Real Marriage will inevitably have statements that I agree with, mostly because they’re common sense. And, the first time I read these pages this morning, I thought I could agree with a good portion of what he said in the preface, which is subtitled “How Not to Read this Book.” And then I read it again, and even with some of the things that I started out kinda-sorta agreeing with, I have a few problems.

Don’t read sections of the book and tell your spouse, “I told you so.” This book is not meant to be a pile of rocks for you to throw at each other in bitterness.

That feels fairly common-sensical, right? In general, “I told you so” isn’t a statement that’s going to help bring healing and friendship back to a damaged relationship. No one enjoys hearing something like that. But, when I chewed on this for a little bit, I stumbled into a question: what else are you supposed to do with a marriage-advice book? Maybe not use the words “I told you so,” but if you and your partner are experiencing problems that you’ve tried to talk to them about before, and a book you read describes what you feel the problem is … isn’t pointing to a chapter and saying something like “this really made sense to me” or “I feel this way” or “she said what I’ve been trying to communicate really well in this chapter” something that will just happen? And isn’t that . . . sort of the point?

And I don’t think Mark would outright forbid someone from doing that– he just forbids us from doing it “in bitterness.” Which puts a horrible burden on someone who’s experienced a lot of hurt from their partner. Being honest for the first time can be messy and painful, and I feel that Mark might be trying to force happy-happy-joy-joy expressions onto people who are feeling raw.

There was one “Do Not” that struck me as both amusing and troubling:

Don’t read as a critic trying to find where you think we might be wrong. Although we seek to be faithful to the Bible, this book is not the Bible, and, like you, we are imperfect, so there will be mistakes. Take whatever gifts you find in this book, and feel free to leave the rest.

I didn’t exactly laugh when I read that– I snorted and smirked and rolled my eyes. A “mistake,” Mark, really? Like, oh, I don’t know, calling women “penis homes”? (Note: I do not agree with the title of that article, which implies a cause-and-effect relationship that doesn’t exist.) The problem is, I’m not going to find mistakes in this book. I’m going to find sexism and misogyny and since there are chapters dedicated to sexual assault, probably heaping, steaming mounds of victim blaming and rape myths. Those things are not mistakes. They are wrong, and the beliefs that Mark and Grace hold are directly responsible for churches excusing domestic violence and marital rape.

The last “Do Not” of the preface is probably going to be something I comment on a lot as we move through this book. In the opening salvo of Captivating, Stasi Eldredge tried to make it clear how different her book was from other “how to be a godly woman” books– she wasn’t going to give us a list. She was just going to show us . . . well, what turned out to be a rather gigantic list, although the items on it were more abstract that Helen Andelin’s “wear chiffon and florals.” Mark is doing the same thing:

Don’t copy our methods. The principles in this book are more important than the methods. Principles are timeless and unchanging. Methods vary from marriage to marriage and person to person. Many marriage books focus too heavily on methods that worked for one couple’s marriage, but because you and your spouse are unique, those methods may not work for you and your marriage.

On its face . . . there isn’t a glaring problem here, and I can agree with a surface-level interpretation of what he’s saying. However, when he says “principles,” what he means is complementarianism, which is, by definition, a method, so … yup.

What the Introduction makes clear is something we already knew: Mark is obsessed with sex. I counted, and in one-and-a-half pages, there are seventeen references to sex, including one mentioning how sexualized our culture is. Also, Mark wants to make sure that we know how incredibly experienced he is at the ripe old age of 41 (at time of publication), and how he’s a pastor so that means he knows stuff.

In fact, the whole section reeks, at least to me, of the “touch not the lord’s anointed” bullshit that I grew up with. It’s possible I’m being overly sensitive to that, but I don’t think so, not with “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE ME” showing up on the first page.

September 8, 2014 by
Feminism

Mark and Grace Driscoll's "Real Marriage": Review Series

real marriage

A little while ago, I put together a list of the most popular Christian marriage advice books. I made this list based on a variety of factors; I looked at a bunch of “best of” lists and found the ones that showed up on more than one, or had the most reviews– and the most positive reviews– on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christianbook . . . I also tried to limit the list to books that were extremely popular and well-known, that appeared frequently in church curriculum or pre-marital counseling materials. After I had the list, I put up a poll on the next book I should review as part of an extended review series. Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge was the winner, but the close second was Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll.

Since Real Marriage was only published in 2012, it’s not a book that’s been able to have a “lasting impact” of any kind, but it is a book that’s been in the public consciousness since it came out, most recently because of how it became a “New York Times Bestseller.” It’s also been a polarizing book and has caused a lot of controversy.

I’ve been aware of Real Marriage since it came out, but since it was written by Mark Driscoll, I deliberately didn’t pay much attention to it. I think I read one review and then shrugged my shoulders in a general feeling of “meh– just Driscoll. Again.” Since I decided I was going to review it, I’ve been trying to avoid read what other people have concluded about it so that I can have as much of an open mind as possible. I’m already aware that I’m not going to like it, but I don’t know much of anything about what’s in it. For Captivating I read a lot of other reviews before I started mine, and that meant that I noticed what other people had noticed, like all of their movie and pop culture references, and I think I might have paid more attention to things like that than I ordinarily would have.

I wanted to try to avoid doing that, but I still wanted to include how other people have received the book, so I came up with this: the star-rating system. So, here’s what the ratings say about the book:

Out of almost 3,700 ratings, 87% of them are positive, as in the were rated with 3 or more stars. On Amazon, about 60% of people gave it 5 stars;  on Goodreads, 30% of the ratings are 5 stars, and 46% are 5 stars on Barnes & Noble. Apparently it’s a well-liked book, regardless of the controversy it’s caused. At this point, I’m hoping that there’s something in there that I can like or agree with. Flipping through it, I noticed a huge section of it is dedicated to sex, and from what I’ve heard about Driscoll’s “Song of Solomon” series, I think there might be something we can agree on in there. The back of the books is even, in a way, sort of promising.

In Real Marriage, Pastor Mark Driscoll and his wife, Grace, share how they have struggled and how they have found healing through the power of the only reliable source: the Bible.

They believe friendship is fundamental to marriage but not easy to maintain. So they offer practical advice on how to make your spouse your best friend– and keep it that way.

And they know from experience that sex-related issues need to be addressed directly. Five chapters are dedicated to answering questions like:

  • Should I confess my pre-martial sexual sin to my spouse?
  • Is it okey to have a “work spouse”?
  • What does the Bible say about masturbation and oral sex?

Stunningly honest and vulnerable, Real Marriage, is like a personal counseling session with a couple you cannot surprise, you cannot shock into silence, who will respond to every question with wisdom, humility, and realism.

If you want to have a long-lasting, fulfilling marriage you should read this book. Wrestle with this book. Pray over this book. Sharke this book. And discover how God can use it to change your life.

See what I mean about sort of, though? Addressing sex directly, instead of euphemistically? That’s, well, a little different. How he is apparently going to talk about it, though . . . hmm. We’ll see.

September 2, 2014 by
Feminism

the church won't rein in misogyny, but bloggers will

misogyny

I’m guest posting at Convergent Books today about the Acts 29 Network’s decision to remove Mars Hill from its membership.

My friend, like the evangelical community at large, was captured by Driscoll’s apparently genuine and forthright style. The outspoken pastor rocketed to an extremely influential position among evangelicals, at least partly because he comes across as ballsy. It is said that he is willing to say out loud what the rest of us are thinking.

And that is exactly the problem.

Recently, the board of the Acts 29 Network—an organization founded by Driscoll—removed Driscoll and Mars Hill Church from the group’s membership. Acts 29 said Driscoll had become a “distraction.” A message from the board members, made public by Acts 29, went even further in asking Driscoll to “please step down from ministry for an extended time and seek help.” Such an action, when taken by an established evangelical church-planting network, attracts attention.

Further, LifeWay Christian Resources has—at least temporarily—removed Driscoll’s books from its stores’ shelves in order to “assess the situation regarding his ministry.” But, like others, I am left to wonder about the timing of this move. Was it merely the only PR move left to a major Christian retailer that had been selling Driscoll’s books for years—apparently without reservation?

You can read the rest here.

August 14, 2014 by
Theology

fundamentalists, evangelicals, and certainty

question mark
photography by Marc Domage, installation by Robert Stadler

My small group is a little shy of your run-of-the-mill “Bible studies” and other evangelical-culture-approved curricula, so for the past year we’ve been reading through different religiously-oriented books, and for the next couple of months we’re going through Gregory Boyd’s Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty. I’m only to chapter five, but I think I’ve already recommended it around a dozen times. I think Boyd addresses an incredibly important question I’ve heard so many people asking: what does it mean to have faith, to believe? The typical evangelical teachings about faith usually involve this nebulous idea that “faith” equals “certainty”– that you feel sure. That if you can just convince yourself that God will heal a loved one . . . that God will heal that loved one.

It’s a crazy idea, and I really do think the book is worth reading. I’ll let you know for sure when I finish it.

But, as I was reading it last week, something he talked about jumped out at me: that this approach of “feeling certain” is incredibly attractive– he describes it as “blissful.” It didn’t take me more than a second to connect this to fundamentalism, because if there’s one thing that unites fundamentalists, it is how incredibly certain they are.

When I did my series on defining fundamentalism, I asked all of you to explain what had drawn you to fundamentalism in the first place, and almost unanimously the response was that fundamentalism was comfortable– that the black and white nature of how fundamentalists approach questions made things simple. Fundamentalism is straightforward. Fundamentalism is easy, and given that we live in a world filled with horrible suffering, that this one approach to faith means you don’t have to struggle with soul-deep questions is compelling.

It occurred to me that this “certainty model of faith,” as Boyd calls it, might be what’s fueling Christian fundamentalism in America. Because, if certainty really does equal faith, and Christians are spending most of their energy trying to convince themselves, then it almost seems that becoming a fundamentalist is inevitable. It’s unlikely that evangelicals are going to go gung-ho and they’ll all start touting KJV Bibles or giving up their Christian rock, but when it comes to the practice of faith, how can fundamentalism be avoided if what we’re seeking is certainty?

There’s a term I’ve seen popping up in different conversations– fundigelical. From watching conservative evangelical culture over the past few years, I’ve noticed that there’s been a slow blurring between evangelicalism and fundamentalism. It used to be that evangelicals were insanely liberal by fundamentalist standards, but now? I can barely tell the difference anymore. And maybe that’s just because I’m a progressive Christian so everything to the religious or political right of me all looks the same, but I think I have a little more discernment than that.

I’m looking at things like the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and The Gospel Coalition, and I paid close attention to the Southern Baptist Convention last year . . . and what I’m seeing disturbs me. When men like C.J. Mahaney, whose sermons are indistinguishable from any fundamentalist diatribe I heard growing up, are the leaders of entire evangelical movements, when they are closely connected to one of the largest American denominations, it forces me to ask if whether or not fundamentalism is creeping into evangelical culture. When men like Mark Driscoll draw mile-wide lines in the sand, separating “us” and “them,” I start wondering– how truly different is modern evangelicalism from the fundamentalism I grew up in?

They certainly look different.

But are they, really? Once you get passed the haircuts and the ankle-length skirts, they don’t seem to be. Ideologically they’re practically inseparable– both sets hold to The Fundamentals:

Inspiration and Inerrancy of Scripture
Deity of Christ
Virgin birth
Substitutionary atonement
Physical resurrection and physical Second Coming

As a progressive Christian looking back at what I used to believe, this list seems a little… interesting. None of these things are what anyone would define as “the essentials for salvation,” but this, apparently, is the Hill Worth Dying On to fundamentalists. A specific and relatively new atonement theory, selected from among at least a half dozen others? An approach to the inspiration of Scripture that cannot be proven, not now and not in the future, since we have never had the autographa— and an approach that is, in practice, absolutely useless? A single, solitary approach to eschatology that is a massive departure from almost two thousand years of church teaching?

These are what fundamentalists in the historical sense of the term decided that they were going to be absolutely certain of– and they are the core ideas of evangelical theology. When I poke around some of the evangelical blogs that I read consistently, they tend to make it clear that in order to write for them you have to believe The Fundamentals.

When I first started writing here, when I created this blog, almost all of my focus was on the Christian fundamentalist mindset that I grew up in. But, over the last year, there’s been a slow shift in the language I use– from fundamentalism to conservative evangelicalism to evangelicalism, and it was not a conscious decision. Part of it was that I moved on from talking about my childhood to things I’ve noticed as an adult in mainstream evangelicalism, but another part of it was that as I became more and more exposed to American evangelicalism I stopped being able to make a clear delineation. There just . . . wasn’t enough of a difference for me to treat them as clearly separate things.

And I’m beginning to think that it all goes back not to what people believe, but how they believe it.

February 11, 2014 by
Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood Review: feminine role vs. working wife

hammock

First of all, I want to address a comment that I keep getting on posts like this one: that Helen Andelin (or someone like her) doesn’t speak for modern, mainstream evangelicalism. That all of these women and men hold to rather extreme positions and the bulk of evangelicals today disagree with them. And, in one way, that is absolutely correct. They are extreme. They made their money and got to where they are today by being extreme.

However, and I’ve said this before and I will say it until I am blue in the face: For every single concept Helen has promoted in this book, there is a modern evangelical person making the same exact argument.

I’d like everyone, before we get into today’s post, to read “When a Woman Makes a lot of Money,” by Mary Kassian, published in June last year. Mary Kassian also published a book with Nancy Leigh DeMoss last year called True Woman 101: Divine Design, and you can find two posts I wrote critiquing an online interview they had with Focus on the Family here and here. Read through everything that they said, and tell me that what they say aren’t the same exact arguments Helen’s been making. They talk about how being “strong and independent” can only lead to “dysfunction” and ultimately depression and suicide. They say that not adhering to old-fashioned gender roles will make your children gay. They tell women in abusive marriages to “lay down their rights.” How is any of that substantively different from what Helen’s been saying?

And, they even say this:

Don’t make decisions based on practicality. You may have a job where you earn more money than your husband, and it may be practical for you to go out and earn the money and for him to stay home. But there’s something in terms of identity that you’re going against when you do that . . . Women have a unique and specific responsibility for the home in a way that men do not have.

Helen says this, almost word-for-word. And Kassian, in the article I linked to, said this:

Because when you boil it right down, you’re not going to be satisfied with a man who’s a beta boy. Deep down, every woman wants her man to be a man. And you’ll only inspire him to be a man when you act like a woman . . . when you choose to stand against culture and embrace, delight, and live according to God’s created design.

And you’ll only inspire him to be a man when you act like a woman.

That’s the only message in Helen’s book, really. She harps on it every single chapter:

When a man is in the presence of a tender, trustful, dependent woman, he immediately feels a sublime expansion of his power to protect and shelter this frail and delicate creature. In the presence of such weakness, he feels stronger, more competent, bigger, manlier than ever.

Yes, the language Helen is using is right out of the 60s. But it’s the same idea. And who are the people making this argument today? Focus on the Family. Moody Publishers. John Piper. Mark Driscoll. Some of the biggest, most influential people and organizations in evangelical culture are simply presenting the same argument in 2010 language. And if I sound frustrated, it’s because I’m terrified.

~~~~~~~~~~

Anyway, on to the actual chapter for this week. It’s about everything you could have expected: she lays out all the reasons a woman that could possibly justify a woman working outside the home, and it’s when your family is destitute and starving, you are putting your husband through college, or if you have no children at home (although she warns that you must be available to your children and grandchildren at all times).

Then we get the reasons for why you should never work, and one of them is “to do something important.” If a woman wants to make noble contributions, to use her gifts, talents, abilities, skills, or intelligence to try to make the world a better place: nope. You have a “false notion.” As amazing as curing cancer might be, you must be in the “simple routine of your home,” because, if you aren’t, your children are going to hell. No, really. That’s what she says. Then she goes on to give a few pages of quotes from “career women” who regretted having careers.

She also, fascinatingly, brings up something some of you have mentioned: someone apparently pointed out the hypocritical contradiction of telling other women that they’re not allowed to be career women when she herself is a career woman. Her response is hysterical:

Call me what you like, business executive, career woman, or working wife, but I never looked at it this way. To me it has been a mission of charity . . . the personal sacrifice has been well worth it.

I never wanted to be a career woman, see? I wanted to be a stay-at-home wife! That’s what makes it ok! I didn’t want to do this. It was a sacrifice, a necessary evil!

Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that.

Then she moves on to the age-old question: should daughters be allowed to go to college? Answer: no. Because it could make her independent (“by doing so she loses her need for manly care”), she could escape her marriage (“the ability to make money can be a dangerous thing for a woman”), and she’d lose out on the opportunity to read lots and lots of literature! (apparently, it “makes you more interesting” to men).

Also, if women go out to work, it could “rob your husband of his right” to be needed and masculine, and you could even lose your “womanliness” and your “charm.” (charm = attractiveness to men, as defined by Helen). Also, you’re destroying society when you work and wrecking untold damage on our national economy (something she says with absolutely nothing to support her).

So, there you have it, all you women who work: you’re hurting men, making yourself unattractive, and you’re also ruining the United States economy. Go you.

February 10, 2014 by
Theology

looking for monsters under my . . . theology

courtyard

We paused, me, Martha*, and Peter*, the second we stepped out into the sunlight. It was one of those pristine, gorgeous spring days: the kind where brick and stone soak up all the sun, the air is clean and balmy, and you want to sit outside, lean back in an Adirondack chair, and close your eyes. We’d just walked out of a classroom discussion that could have only been had by literary majors– we’d just spent close to an hour dissecting “My mother is a fish” in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. None of us had anything pressing, so in a spontaneous decision that was clearly prompted by the spring breeze and an azure sky, we went for some coffee, then settled into the courtyard.

Many of our conversations lately had been of a theological bent: Peter was fascinated by the fact that both I and Martha had graduated from a college that had expressly forbidden any discussion of Calvinism or Reformed theology whatsoever. Martha had become Reformed, and I — well, I still haven’t decided. Peter, however, had grown up familiar with Reformed theology; it was his first language, and he was passionate about theology– and discussing it. He’d become a resource for me, someone who had enough of a handle on Calvinism to explain it to me, and someone who had the time to do so.

That afternoon, sitting in the dappled sunlight of a mostly-abandoned courtyard, I encountered something I didn’t know how to name, even though I recognized it– and it frightened me. Sitting at the vaguely Grecian concrete table underneath the swaying arms of a redbud tree, I listened to a man who was saying words I’d never heard before– but saying them in a way that was so familiar to me I trembled.

He laid out the full breadth of the hyper-Calvinist, neo-Reformed theological movement. In a sweeping scale he took me through much of the New Testament, pointing to verses and passages and using them to paint a landscape of God’s sovereignty in colors that were so vivid and garish it overwhelmed me. I continued asking questions, trying to understand, trying to think through what he was saying, to analyze it and contextualize it. But for every question I had, he had three triumphantly delivered answers.

Two hours later, I was weeping, and Peter was exulting. “Don’t you see?” He kept repeating. “You know the truth, but you’re denying it! You’re denying the plain word of Scripture. You’re denying God when you reject this truth.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few weeks later, I was at the Sonic drive-in with Martha, listening through my new Iron & Wine album, and we were talking about some of what Peter had said.

I made soft peaks out of my Oreo Blast with my spoon, pulling it up and twirling it until the peak curled over. “Do you agree with him?” I asked her, my voiced barely louder than the music.

It took her a minute to answer. “I . . . don’t know.”

“I can’t believe what he said is true, Martha, I can’t.”

She waited. Took a sip of her strawberry shake.

“That can’t be who God is. I can’t accept that kind of a god as real. It would break me. I’d never be able to love him.”

“Why not?” her voice was so gentle.

Broken and quiet, I showed her the smashed, glittering pieces of my story, the ones I was struggling to place into a mosaic I could understand. “If that’s who God is, then I’d want nothing to do with him at all. Because he’d be responsible for that. He’d be a monster.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today, I am still incredibly uncertain of where I am theologically. I appreciate a lot of the beauty I see in Reformed theology, and I choose to believe that people like Mark Driscoll and John Piper don’t really speak for it. I’m working through the tensions, enjoying a beautiful spectrum that I don’t really understand, struggling to piece together my faith one sliver at a time.

But something I’m coming to understand about my approach to faith and theology is that logic and reason don’t really matter to me — at least, not as much as they once did. Which, for me, is a shocking statement. I’m an analytical person. I examine, I reason, I think, I ponder. For much of my life (short as it is), my approach to faith has always been highly cerebral. I prioritized evidence, support, logic– I took “love the Lord your God with all your Mind” as my personal motto. I absorbed scholarship, I studied apologetics intensely, I searched for people like Lewis and Chesterton– thinking Christians.

Today, though, I’m in a different place.

I’m still the same person– nothing fundamental or radical has changed about me.

What has changed is that I found a monster under my bed, and in my closet, and hiding behind corners and in shadows. It’s the monster I created by believing that I could think my way through theology without any other guiding star. When I embraced the consuming desire for a cogent, structured, rational theological argument, I  abandoned ethics, morality, emotion, and humanity. Theology without heart, theology without a human awareness of hurt, pain, joy and beauty, isn’t theology at all. It’s a back-breaking tyrant.

On the first day of class, there was something I liked to tell my students: just because an argument is logical doesn’t make it right.

May 25, 2013 by
Feminism

how purity culture taught me to be abused

[warning: I am going to be talking about sensitive, sex-related issues today, including rape and sexual assault. ]

First, let me share my rationale for talking about this. When I started this blog, my intention was to leave a lot of what I’m about to say unsaid. I wanted to discuss, mainly, more of the philosophies and ideologies entrenched in the IFB movement and conservative evangelicalism at large, instead of some of my personal hang-ups.

But, I’ve been doing an incredible amount of reading recently, and her.menutics at Christianity Today has announced they’re going to be talking about some of these things, and they have been under heavy discussion by many writers, including Dianna Anderson and Sarah Moon. However, there is one area of this discussion that I’ve noticed is missing, and that’s what I’m going to be contributing today.

Essentially, I will be arguing that the modesty/purity/virginity culture, especially in more conservative areas, is one of the main reasons why Christian young women stay in abusive relationships.

Many writers have already made the connection between the purity culture and the rape culture, and they have done a much better job establishing that than I ever could. I encourage you to read their arguments. You can find more links on my “other dragon fighters” page. What these men and woman are arguing for is incredibly valuable, and they’re establishing a healthy, productive rhetoric; what I’m offering here is merely a subset to that discussion.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was fourteen, I went to a month-long summer camp at the college I would later attend. Like most Christian summer camps, this one involved going to a chapel service twice a day. Most of the time they were fun, lighthearted– until one evening they split up the girls and the boys. Great, I remember thinking, because I knew exactly what was coming. Segregation can only mean one thing– they were going to talk about sex. I sighed when they made the announcement. Again? I thought wearily.

That evening, when the camp counselors had shooed all the men and boys out of the building, the speaker got up to the podium. She didn’t even beat around the bush, but launched right into her object lesson. Holding up a king-size Snickers bar, she asked if anyone in the audience wanted it. It’s a room full of girls– who doesn’t want chocolate? A hundred hands shot up. She picked a girl close to the front that wouldn’t have to climb over too many people and brought her up to the stage. Very slowly, she unwrapped the Snickers bar, splitting the package like a banana peel. She handed it to the young woman, and asked her, very clearly, to lick the chocolate bar all over. Just lick it.

Giggling, the young lady started licking the chocolate bar, making a little bit of a show of it. At fourteen, I had no idea what a blow job was, so I missed the connection that had a lot of girls in the room snorting and hooting. The young lady finished and handed it back to the speaker. As she was sitting down, the speaker very carefully wrapped the package around the candy bar, making it look like the unopened package as possible.

Then she asked if anyone else in the room wanted a go.

No one raised her hand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My sophomore year in college, another speaker shared a similar object lesson– ironically, in the exact same room, also filled exclusively with women. She got up to the podium carrying a single rose bud. At this point I was more familiar with sexual imagery, and I knew that the rose had frequently been treated as a symbol for the vagina in literature and poetry– so, again, I knew what was coming.

This speaker asked us to pass the rose around the room, and encouraged us to enjoy touching it. “Caress the petals,” she told us. “Feel the velvet.” By the time the rose came to me, it was destroyed. Most of the petals were gone, the ones that were still feebly clinging to the stem were bruised and torn. The leaves were missing, and someone had ripped away the thorns, leaving gash marks down the side.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I could go on. I imagine many of you have heard similar object lessons. These “object lessons” aren’t isolated to evangelical culture, either– Ariel Levy writes about one she saw involving packing tape in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs.

However, all of these object lessons contribute to one message: your identity and value as a woman is tied to your sexual purity. If you surrender your virginity, you are worthless. Disgusting. Repulsive. Broken. Unwanted.

My generation has gotten that message loud and clear. Our virginity is the “greatest gift a woman can give her husband.” My own father, who was a virgin when he met my mother, on repeated occasions has told me that my mother having sex when she was in highschool bothers him — to this day, and they’ve been married twenty-six years. Mark Driscoll, in his new marriage-advice book, tells his readers that if he had known of a single sexual encounter his wife had at nineteen, he would not have married her. Finding out about it, over a dozen years into their marriage, sent him into a self-admitted emotional tailspin (however, we’re supposed to completely ignore the fact that he had sex, too).

There are so many other examples I could cite, both factual and fictional. The ultimate message is that if we give up our virginity, or even our “emotional purity,” which I’ll get to in a minute, makes us completely repulsive to “good Christian boys.”

I know a young man who told me, point-blank, that finding out his ex-girlfriend had sex made her unattractive to him, and that he would no longer consider “getting back” with her, even though until that point he had been relentlessly pursuing her.

He is not a virgin.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But what if your sexual purity, or your virginity, is stolen? What if you are sexually abused, or raped?

The answer, terrifyingly, is the same.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I met “John” at the tail-end of my sophomore year. He was handsome, charismatic, an excellent musician, talented, popular, and respected. He was running for student council president, was a part of the “in,” crowd, and… I was not. That had never particularly bothered me. Growing up IFB kinda means you get used to being a weird outsider. But, I could still appreciate those qualities. The night we met, he basically ignored me, which, I assume you can imagine, felt pretty typical.

My junior year, though, we were both percussionists in my college’s symphony orchestra, and the conductor asked us to be a part of the school’s major production that semester– The Pirates of Penzance. Rehearsals were four nights a week, from 6 pm to 1 or 2 am. As percussionists, we didn’t have a whole lot to do, except occasionally whack the cassa bass or the triangle. That left a lot of time for bonding… and, by the end, we were “talking,” the evangelical intermediary between “acquaintance” and “monogamous relationship.” We were official by February, and he proposed in August.

For my own emotional stability, I will be brief. The relationship was emotionally, verbally, physically, and sexually abusive. Like countless other stories, the abuse slowly escalated– I had no idea what was happening until it was too late.

Women in, or who have recently escaped from, violent relationships typically get asked “why do/did you stay?” Very frequently, they don’t have a solid answer to that question. There are a host of common reasons– daddy issues, economic stability, shame.

I know exactly why I stayed. I was crippled, paralyzed, and overwhelmed by fear. Fear that he would abandon me. Fear that, if he left, I would no longer have any value. John had literally ruined me, in my mind, for anyone else.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Long story short: he did leave me, breaking our engagement two months before the wedding. His reasoning: I was not “submissive” enough. One month before he broke it off, I had cut off anything sexual. I would no longer participate in the degrading phone sex where he referred to me exclusively as “bitch” and “whore.” I shied away from his touch. And I had the audacity to tell him that he couldn’t call me a “God damn fucking bitch” anymore. Yup. Definitely not submissive-wife material. I was certainly not Created to be his Helpmeet.

It’s been three years since then, and I’m now married to the most amazing, loving, gentle, tender man I couldn’t have even dreamed to ask for. But, I’m still healing from a lot of the abuse, and there are a few things I still violently struggle with, mainly that:

my internalized “purity” narrative tells me that what John did was not rape.

The first “sexual” thing John ever did was to put his hand, facing palm-up, on my percussionist’s stool. I was standing to turn the page, and when I sat down, he grabbed my ass. I found this titillating, exciting. I didn’t protest, I didn’t correct him. I coyly asked him what he was doing, and he said “oops.”

I wore v-neck sweaters that just barely showed off my cleavage, because he liked it. I wore a skirt that showed off my ass– because he liked it.

By the time he had become fully abusive, these behaviors continued, largely because I was terrified of what he would do if I didn’t. At one point our relationship was long distance, and he bought me a webcam. The first time he told me to take my shirt off, I told him no. I even shut my laptop. He spent the next two hours screaming obscenities at me, and he was violent the next time he saw me in person. The first time he raped me, I fought him– for one brief second, until he dug the band of his watch into my knee– leaving a cut so deep I have a long, puffy scar. It was a warning.

I have to constantly fight against the oppressive lie that an outsider looking in would think that I had consented. Geez, just because you never had an orgasm doesn’t mean he violated you. C’mon. You’re just frigid. 

I have to constantly fight that lie that because I didn’t “fight enough,” because I didn’t choose to immediately leave the relationship, that it meant that I deserved what happened to me.

I have to constantly fight against the lie that says because I wasn’t pure enough, that because I had “dressed provocatively,” because I had allowed myself to be alone with him, that I invited it. That I had allowed it to happen.

I have to fight the lie that says that maybe I’m making all of this “rape” stuff up to make myself feel better about allowing it to happen.

He didn’t actually rape you, you’re just saying that because you’re blaming him. You didn’t keep yourself pure, that’s all. You just know that if you really allowed yourself to face the facts, you’d see the truth. You’re a disgusting piece of shit. You’re worthless.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That last one is why the modesty/purity culture can be so incredibly damaging. Many girls and women I’ve talked to have it so deeply ingrained into them that it’s virtually inescapable. When it comes between choosing what’s worse– staying in abusive relationship, or facing the “reality” that you’ve “surrendered your purity,” guess which one we choose?

Photo by Al Tassano
January 31, 2013 by