The Demise of Paige Patterson

Paige Patterson, the Southern Baptist iconic leader, has been the topic of much controversy this past week due to his ouster from Southwestern Seminary.  In an article from Christianity Today, they report that the trustees voted to remove him from the leadership of the seminary.  Sarah Jones, one of my former students at Cedarville University and currently with The New Republic, writes an excellent article about the implications this has for the Religious Right. All of this brings back a memory I had of Paige Patterson from my days as a faculty member at Cedarville University.  Paige was and still is a trustee serving on the board of Cedarville.  This particular day, Paige was the speaker at chapel.  As he started out his talk that day, he began with a joke.  I am sure this was to get the interest of the 3000 twenty-somethings who were required to attend chapel each day.  His joke revolved around his story of an experience he had while officiating at the baptism of an adult woman.  He went on to relate that this woman was "very heavy" and how he struggled to maintain his balance while attempting to immerse her under the water.  Everyone laughed at the image he related, at the expense of the dignity of the occasion and the respect for women.  I was highly offended  and remember walking out of chapel without hearing another word he had to say.  That was my first experience with Paige Patterson and since then, I have continued to follow him with great sadness as he bullied his way through the Southern Baptist convention and squashed all women who got in his path.  Soon after I left Cedarville University, following the lead of Paige, the board of trustees ruled that no women could teach men in the bible department.  My disgust for Paige Patterson has continued to grow through the years, cumulating this week as these disgusting comments have been made public.  Last week, a petition was started to oust Paige as a trustee from Cedarville.  I encourage all who are reading this to sign the petition.  Shame on you Paige Patterson!  Your disdain for women over these past years has come to light now and  you must pay the consequences of what you have done.  I do not delight in this but I do rejoice in the victory of women who have been misused, abused, and made fun of for decades by men like Paige Patterson.  Your days are coming to an end!

The Christian F-word

I read this great posting by Laura Turner on the Christian F-word in Christianity Today.  I was inspired to come here to blog about my personal experiences within the Christian world and use of the word feminist.  Like Laura, I rarely ever heard this word in my world growing up.  That is rather unusual since I grew up during the exciting 70's and the 2nd wave of feminism.  However, in my Christian world, feminism was not something that was discussed - it was unilaterally rejected as sinful and ungodly.  I regret that I was well into my 30's before I read Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystic.  When I did read it, it rocked my world.  It told my story.  It gave me hope.  That was when I started calling myself a "Christian Feminist."  I received much the same reaction as some of my LGBT friends tell me they got when they came out of the closet.  I do not mean to imply that my self-identification cost me the same as my LGBT friends, but it was a shock to me that the Christian world rejected the premises of feminism and rejected me when I labeled myself as one.  Later, when I joined the faculty of a Christian university, I was told to never use the F-word to identify myself.  That it would be political suicide on this campus.  Again, shock and disbelief.  In my years on that campus, I rejected the advice and proudly proclaimed feminist ideology.  I taught feminist theory, researched feminist topics, and surveyed the students for their attitudes toward feminism.  And I experienced progressively greater isolation from students and faculty due to my identification.  There was a small group of faculty and students that banded with me to try to enact change on our campus.  Mostly we were met with disdain and sometimes even accusations of heresy.  I am no longer at that institution and as I look back on the experience and look at where that institution stands today, I am heartsick.  Today, this institution has banned females from speaking in chapel, identified strongly with the complementarian viewpoint, and is working to remove females from all positions of authority, including teaching in the Bible classes.  For several years while at this institution, I would have students write down 5 words that described feminism.  I got responses such as:

• God haters
• Unbiblical
• Bra burners
• Man haters
• Bitches

This is just a short list.  There were many responses I could not even use here.  And there were sadly only a handful of positive attributes.  I wept in my office every time after collecting their responses. I am no longer at a Christian university.  I will never again teach at one.  At my present university, I have found that my gender matters very little to the students or the faculty.  I am accepted for who I am and not judged for being a feminist.  It is refreshing and liberating.  So I relate to Turner's article today and encourage all of you who are still fighting the fight in the Christian world to stand strong.  For myself, I abandon the fight to you.  

Toxic Faith

I follow several blogs from some great thinkers in Christianity.  I am extremely grateful to them for expressing thoughts I find difficult to verbalize.  Today was a great example.  Derek Flood writes on Red Letter Christian the following:

Here’s a simple rule of thumb: if your theory of the cross completely contradicts everything Jesus stood for and taught… it’s probably wrong. It’s sad that I need to say this, but the gospel is rooted in love of enemies, not in retribution. Retribution is the opposite of forgiveness. So the idea that the entire work of Jesus was to fulfill the demands of retribution is simply absurd. It’s high time we went back to the focus of Jesus, which was not on violent demands for so-called justice, but on restoring broken lives, and showing enemy love. That’s what the cross is really about.
However, centuries of reading the assumptions of punitive justice into the Bible won’t be easy for us to shake off. It’s become so ingrained, so indoctrinated into our religious imagination that it seems almost self-evident to us now. Therefore, we will need to take a fresh look at Scripture in order to recognize that the model of restorative justice is indeed at the heart of the biblical narrative.

In another post, Derek writes about healing toxic faith. Both of these posts address the issue of how we, as Christians, are to treat the LGBT population.  For many years, I have struggled with the reaction of those around me to LGBTs and the hatred and rejection they exhibit.  It does not make sense to me.  It makes me want to reject Christians!  I am ashamed of how Christianity has treated LGBTs, especially my LGBT friends.  These posts I read today by Derek express many of my thoughts and I encourage you to read them.  Thanks Derek!

A Masculine Christianity

Thanks to Rachel Held Evans who alerted me to the latest controversy surrounding John Piper.  In a recent conference Piper announced that he has concluded that God's intention for Christianity is for it to have a "masculine feel."  Rachel Evans, author, speaker, and popular blogger, encouraged men to respond to Piper's latest proclamation.  It encourages my heart to read the numerous responses posted by men refuting Piper's outrageous claim.  You can read them  here.  Another great article on Piper's latest comes from Rachel Stone's posting on Her.menuetics.  Piper's comments do not surprise me - I have heard this story all my life.  I have been told that I am a second-layer citizen in the Kingdom of God, that whatever I say and think must be filtered through the lens of the males who reside above me in the hierarchy of my world.  It is time to end this and I see hope through the outcry that has emerged since Piper made his statement.  I have to believe that our daughters will no longer tolerate this kind of treatment,  nor will their spouses, brothers, and even fathers delegate their loved ones to places beneath them rather than beside them.

My Grandma

I can't post about one grandma without also acknowledging my other grandma, Alma Grace Smith.  This was another woman of strength from my past.  She died when I was just 21 years old, but I have great memories of time spent with her.  She bore and raised 13 children in the mountains of West Virginia.  I have recently been given a collection of letters she wrote to an uncle who died in Korea during that war. Each letter made me smile as I read her words detailing her love for her family and home. Again, her life was one of hard work and poverty but my fondest memory is of her belly laugh.  She would laugh till tears came to her eyes in that deep voice of hers. She loved with unconditional love. There were 51 grandchildren yet we all felt special in her eyes.  We all knew she would welcome us with a hug that enveloped us from head to toes.  Grandma, I still miss you every day.

A Generation Ago.....

Last week I visited my parents and came home with a photo album filled with pictures of my father's family that I had never seen.  I brought them home to scan for my dad so that we can save them for future generations and as I have been looking at the pictures, I have been struck with how different my life is from my great grandmother's.  The gendered reality of her life consisted of lots and lots of hard, physical work.  And she was a trooper.  She raised 12 children, two of which died during her lifetime.  She then also raised my father when his mother, her eldest daughter, died when he was 4 months old.  Most of this childrearing was done in abject poverty without the aid of electricity or indoor plumbing.  Her name was Clara Cather.  She was short and stout and possessed a very sharp tongue.  The pictures have been a poignant reminder to me that women's lives we and are lived in direct contrast to men's lives.  I see the toll of her labor as I view her pictures from early womanhood to late life.  She was a survivor and for that I respect her and love her.  I wish I had known her as an adult. I think she would have been an inspiration to me.  As women, we must remember to look to our past and take heart in the strength of the women who came before us.  Thank you, Clara, for the fiery character that all who loved you remember.

Sex and the City

Today is the day:  the release of Sex and the City Part 2.  For all you fans out there, here is a little sociological analysis of the show:

YouTube Video

Take a moment to watch this video from fellow sociologist Tracy Scott, at Emory University.  Thanks to Sociological Images for bringing this to my attention today.  I know it takes some of the fun out of it to analyze every little part of every little thing, but welcome to my world!!!  BTW,  I will be running out to see the movie at my first opportunity!!!

Unsung Hero in Feminism

I was recently alerted through a blog by Letha Scanzoni (72-27) about the unsung giant in the Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement.  She passed away in April at the age of 98 and you can read about her life in a New York Times article. I consider myself to be well-educated about the Civil Rights Movement but I confess this is the first time I have heard the name of this hero.  Why is this?  Perhaps it is my oversight and others are aware of her accomplishments but I rather believe it is because her accomplishments have not been hailed by historians.  And if that is true, why not?  It makes me suspect that there are many more unsung female heroes out there whose accomplishments we will never know.  It does not mean that their deeds were unimportant but it is disturbing to me that some kind of censorship has prohibited the accomplishments of women like Dorthy to remain buried.  I commend the National Visionary Leadership Project for highlighting Dorthy Height and encourage you to check out her life if you are like me and reading about her for the first time.