I was on a long walk with a Jewish friend the other day, and I asked her about what Christians know as Proverbs 31. She didn't recognize it by that title, but when I quoted a few lines, she said, "Oh, the Woman of Valor passage!" She was shocked and appalled to learn that many Christian women view it as a checklist of desiderata at which they will surely fail. She called it a poem and was very eager to explain to me that in Jewish tradition it is memorized by men, not by women, and used for the purpose of blessing their wives, not challenging them. That led into a discussion of Reformed Jewish exegesis, which emphasizes historical context and looks for transferable principles, and an informal poll as we walked of whether it would be actually be useful to our husbands for us to rise before dawn and prepare food for them (conclusion: her husband doesn't get up early, and even Jesus barely wants to talk to me before about 8 AM).
Around month four of trying to literally obey everything in the Bible (and some things that aren't) pertaining to women ( and sometimes to everyone) Rachel Held Evans had the same conversation with her Orthodox Jewish informant. She heard everything I did, and also learned that the poem's vocabulary lent triumphal overtones to the everyday tasks of cooking, providing, shepherding, planning, and maybe even working out, summarizing all these seemingly mundane activities with the phrase "eshet chayil," "woman of valor." This phrase may be sung by the husband to his wife at Sabbath dinner, or used by women to encourage each other upon any accomplishment. Cleaned your bathroom? Woman of valor! Earned a paycheck? Woman of valor! Stayed up all night with a colicky baby? Woman of valor!
Nevertheless, Rachel decided to dedicate one month to working her way through the poem the evangelical-Christian way, like a checklist. She tried to learn to sew. She got up at some imaginary hour of the morning. She cooked three meals a day. She worked out. She went to the city limit marker on a major highway and held up a sign that said "Dan [her husband] is awesome." Because when you are writing a stunt memoir, that is how you roll. And I do love me a stunt memoir.
The idea was to 'take all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible for a year,' but I think she ran out of instructions, because she devoted whole months to Biblical practices that apply to everyone, such as the observance of Yom Kippur and the pursuit of just behavior. Now I'm curious about whether a man would run into the same problem, if he limited himself to commands just pertaining to men. His arms might get tired, depending on how long his prayer times were...
Evans also practiced mindfulness in everyday tasks, cut Martha a break, redefined modesty, waded into the Mommy Wars, called her longsuffering husband "Master" for a whole year, tried to submit to her husband in all things (until he ordered her to knock it off), and learned about Greco-Roman household codes. I don't imagine anyone would agree with every single conclusion she reached, but she sure was an entertaining and thought-provoking traveling companion.
I have spent my whole Christian life trying to figure out what my faith tells me about being a woman, yet I certainly heard some new ideas from this book. If it is crucial to your theology to believe that roles, tasks, duties and privileges vary greatly depending on your gender, you should skip this one, but if you are starting to think that out of the 31,102 verses in the Bible, a very small percent are specific to only one gender, this book may be of interest to you.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
The Man Who Destroyed America: Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God.
Okay, I exaggerate. Even Frank Schaeffer himself doesn't claim that he is personally and singlehandedly responsible for the current election season. But the full title of his autobiography is, after all, Crazy for God: How I Grew up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. So he cannot be accused of underestimating his own importance -- or that of his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, founders of L'Abri Fellowship.
The senior Schaeffers were vital to my experience of the Christian faith. In the late 60's, Francis Schaeffer, already a deep thinker, teacher and writer about the intersection of Christianity and culture, became very interested in the hippie movement that called into question "bourgeois" and "plastic" values. By the time I became a Christian in 1974, it was almost trite to say that authors like Samuel Beckett and musicians like Bob Dylan-- the artists who were the wallpaper of my secular upbringing-- were asking the right questions, maybe even doing God's work without knowing it. Everyone (except me; I could NOT get through it!) was talking about Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live?The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture and its vision of the redemptive power of popular artistic expressions.
But Schaeffer also foresaw the limitations of this new peace culture. Frank quotes him as saying, "You wait; the hippies are going to wind up more middle-class, bourgeois and materialistic than their parents... If they are asked to make a choice between freedom and security, they'll choose security." Obviously it took 9/11 to bring this prediction to full flower, but by the time I was in college in 1978, it was already starting to happen. Hippies were long-gone, and the new fad was pink and green, Muffy and Biff, and "greed is good." My formerly radical church, that didn't even have a name and that taught a Christian version of "Turn on, tune in, drop out" that involved dropping out of college to evangelize the world ASAP (since Jesus could return at any moment, rendering your college degree pointless), suddenly adopted the "Church as Corporation" model and made us all Tom Peters disciples seeking to glorify God through the Search for Excellence.
Meanwhile, we had suddenly become aware of the abortion issue. This, too, was Francis Schaeffer's doing. He and Frank joined forces with C. Everett Koop, soon to become the Surgeon General of the United States, to put together Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, a critique of the "culture of death" they saw developing in America. Roe v. Wade was only a few years old when women-- and a few men-- began protesting it, and our campus movement was no exception. In 1980, we took a bus trip from Kansas to the Democratic National Convention in New York City (and, yes, that trip was exactly how you are imagining it) to ask for a pro-life plank in the platform. Frank feels that there was a critical moment where the Democrats could have owned life issues-- after all, they were already associated with the expansion of civil rights, so this was a logical extension for them. But that ship has sailed...
Also at this same time, Edith Schaeffer and her daughter, Frank's sister, Susan Schaeffer Macauley, were changing the daily domestic lives of evangelical wives. Edith wrote a book called The Hidden Art of Homemaking that explained how a woman could find a creative outlet and a ministry by making her home beautiful-- a practice that not even Frank can deny was extremely important to her at L'Abri. Macauley, who had been Frank's teacher for stretches of time when she was in her teens, had discovered that a homeschooling woman could find intellectual as well as artistic challenge even as she embraced a conservative definition of being a "keeper at home." Her exhortations to use the Great Books-- meaningful and beautiful literature that had withstood the test of time-- was the bedrock of all 11 years of my homeschooling career.
So whether Francis and Edith Schaeffer and their children, Frank and Susan, changed and/or ruined America, their activities certainly paralleled and possibly inspired all the themes of my youth. Even the way Frank resolved his spiritual struggles was almost stereotypical of my generation of evangelicals: he joined the Greek Orthodox church. Some of our fellow Boomers have also found that this ancient communion is the perfect antidote to the rapid change that can take place in newer movements.
Frank's account of these years is full of contradictions. Most spectacularly, there is Frank's obvious and deep ambivalence towards his parents. He can't quite seem to figure out whether he views them with deep affection and respect or considers himself to have been abused in some way. Os Guiness, a former L'Abri worker, strongly defends Francis from Frank's criticism-- if you can't get that article to open, some of the same thoughts are available from less personally involved sources that also address Frank's more general criticisms of the greater evangelical context of that period. Given that some of Frank's allegations just don't hold up to fact-checking, it does make one wonder whether Frank prioritized accuracy at any point in his writing.
Then there's Frank's attitude towards himself. He is by turns self-serving and self-flagellating, dropping names and painting himself as one of the key figures in the transformation of American politics in the 80's, yet also airing his own personal, political and spiritual dirty laundry throughout the book.
Finally, there's Frank's writing style. It's gripping. It's irresistible. It's like a big bag of potato chips-- you suspect it is bad for you, but you just can't stop -- until, all of a sudden, it's not, running aground on pages of name-checking or bizarre allegations or uncomfortably scatalogical reminiscences. All the reviewers agree that this is a (for the most part) fantastically well-written book that may or may not actually have anything worthwhile to say. What kept me turning pages through thick and thin, though, was this sense that I was getting a backstage tour to the backdrop of my life, and that was definitely worth the ride.
The senior Schaeffers were vital to my experience of the Christian faith. In the late 60's, Francis Schaeffer, already a deep thinker, teacher and writer about the intersection of Christianity and culture, became very interested in the hippie movement that called into question "bourgeois" and "plastic" values. By the time I became a Christian in 1974, it was almost trite to say that authors like Samuel Beckett and musicians like Bob Dylan-- the artists who were the wallpaper of my secular upbringing-- were asking the right questions, maybe even doing God's work without knowing it. Everyone (except me; I could NOT get through it!) was talking about Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live?The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture and its vision of the redemptive power of popular artistic expressions.
But Schaeffer also foresaw the limitations of this new peace culture. Frank quotes him as saying, "You wait; the hippies are going to wind up more middle-class, bourgeois and materialistic than their parents... If they are asked to make a choice between freedom and security, they'll choose security." Obviously it took 9/11 to bring this prediction to full flower, but by the time I was in college in 1978, it was already starting to happen. Hippies were long-gone, and the new fad was pink and green, Muffy and Biff, and "greed is good." My formerly radical church, that didn't even have a name and that taught a Christian version of "Turn on, tune in, drop out" that involved dropping out of college to evangelize the world ASAP (since Jesus could return at any moment, rendering your college degree pointless), suddenly adopted the "Church as Corporation" model and made us all Tom Peters disciples seeking to glorify God through the Search for Excellence.
Meanwhile, we had suddenly become aware of the abortion issue. This, too, was Francis Schaeffer's doing. He and Frank joined forces with C. Everett Koop, soon to become the Surgeon General of the United States, to put together Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, a critique of the "culture of death" they saw developing in America. Roe v. Wade was only a few years old when women-- and a few men-- began protesting it, and our campus movement was no exception. In 1980, we took a bus trip from Kansas to the Democratic National Convention in New York City (and, yes, that trip was exactly how you are imagining it) to ask for a pro-life plank in the platform. Frank feels that there was a critical moment where the Democrats could have owned life issues-- after all, they were already associated with the expansion of civil rights, so this was a logical extension for them. But that ship has sailed...
Also at this same time, Edith Schaeffer and her daughter, Frank's sister, Susan Schaeffer Macauley, were changing the daily domestic lives of evangelical wives. Edith wrote a book called The Hidden Art of Homemaking that explained how a woman could find a creative outlet and a ministry by making her home beautiful-- a practice that not even Frank can deny was extremely important to her at L'Abri. Macauley, who had been Frank's teacher for stretches of time when she was in her teens, had discovered that a homeschooling woman could find intellectual as well as artistic challenge even as she embraced a conservative definition of being a "keeper at home." Her exhortations to use the Great Books-- meaningful and beautiful literature that had withstood the test of time-- was the bedrock of all 11 years of my homeschooling career.
So whether Francis and Edith Schaeffer and their children, Frank and Susan, changed and/or ruined America, their activities certainly paralleled and possibly inspired all the themes of my youth. Even the way Frank resolved his spiritual struggles was almost stereotypical of my generation of evangelicals: he joined the Greek Orthodox church. Some of our fellow Boomers have also found that this ancient communion is the perfect antidote to the rapid change that can take place in newer movements.
Frank's account of these years is full of contradictions. Most spectacularly, there is Frank's obvious and deep ambivalence towards his parents. He can't quite seem to figure out whether he views them with deep affection and respect or considers himself to have been abused in some way. Os Guiness, a former L'Abri worker, strongly defends Francis from Frank's criticism-- if you can't get that article to open, some of the same thoughts are available from less personally involved sources that also address Frank's more general criticisms of the greater evangelical context of that period. Given that some of Frank's allegations just don't hold up to fact-checking, it does make one wonder whether Frank prioritized accuracy at any point in his writing.
Then there's Frank's attitude towards himself. He is by turns self-serving and self-flagellating, dropping names and painting himself as one of the key figures in the transformation of American politics in the 80's, yet also airing his own personal, political and spiritual dirty laundry throughout the book.
Finally, there's Frank's writing style. It's gripping. It's irresistible. It's like a big bag of potato chips-- you suspect it is bad for you, but you just can't stop -- until, all of a sudden, it's not, running aground on pages of name-checking or bizarre allegations or uncomfortably scatalogical reminiscences. All the reviewers agree that this is a (for the most part) fantastically well-written book that may or may not actually have anything worthwhile to say. What kept me turning pages through thick and thin, though, was this sense that I was getting a backstage tour to the backdrop of my life, and that was definitely worth the ride.
Saturday, April 2, 2016
260-269 and 270-279: Social Justice, Churches and Ministries Past and Present
At this point, I am starting to feel that Dewey felt that he had decades to burn under the rubric of Religion, aka, Christianity. As we have already seen, he assigns a full 10 (240-249) to personal observance of Christianity and 10 more (250-259) to ministers and ministries of the local church. Turns out he then goes on to assign a full decade (260-269) to "Social and Ecclesiological Theology," which in practice means, "discussions of current movements and ministries of the Church worldwide," and another (270-279) to Christian history, which in practice means, "discussions of PAST movements and ministries of the Church worldwide." That distinction, of course, becomes problematic since today' news is tomorrow's history. He wraps that up with 10 more digits (280-289, coming soon to a blog near you!)assigned to various specific denominations (just in case they hadn't been dealt with previously as local, national or international churches or movements past or present.)
Combine these categorizations that seem tidy on paper, but actually split hairs, with cataloguers who may not know much about the book in hand or the subject matter in general, and the overall effect is that various topics in corporate Christian life seem all jumbled up, and all the more so because interspersed throughout are memoirs of people who had specific experience with one of these topics. If you want missionary biography or the lives of the saints, they're around here somewhere (usually, but not always, in 266 and 270, respectively), as are stunt memoirs like A.J.Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically (shouldn't that be in 220?) and all its spawn.
As it happens, I love stunt memoirs and even regular ones, so these two decades were a gold mine for me. They were a peek behind the curtain of my own personal Christian history. Crazy for God is Frank Schaeffer's highly readable, if not excessively accurate, take on his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, who pretty much singlehandedly founded the approach to faith that I came into and practice pretty much to this day. Larry Norman, Steve Taylor, Donald Miller, Relevant magazine, Marilynne Robinson, Makoto Fujimura, all owe a conscious or unconscious debt to the work Schaeffer, Sr., did to give evangelical Christianity a respect for the arts.
Philip Yancey was the editor of Campus Life magazine, and Campus Life was how I came to Jesus, so of course I was interested in his story, Soul Survivor. Or rather, the story of the authors and thinkers who have influenced his faith most positively. From GK Chesterton to C Everett Koop, from Gandhi to Henri Nouwen, it's an eclectic bunch, and the fact that an evangelical leader can find common cause with all of them is, I think, a testimony to Francis Schaeffer's influence on Christian culture.
In college, I joined a campus ministry that defies brief description. One thing's for sure: many of the founding members came from the Plymouth Brethren movement. Thus it was with great interest that I picked up In the World but Not of It, by Brett Grainger. He confirms that it's from the Plymouth Brethren that my church inherited such distinctives as political and cultural activism, the fervent espousal of Creation Science, and the insistence on women covering their heads, at least during prayer.
Women covering their heads... by the time I had read through the Bible once, it was obvious that my newfound faith presented some particular dilemmas for a girl who grew up in a household where Ms. magazine was de riguer. So as I stood before the hot mess that is 260-279 in my local library, you bet I chose A Year of Biblical Womanhood, by Rachel Held Evans. (Did I mention I'm a sucker for stunt memoirs?) I've been curious about Evans for a while now, and anybody who's going to go mano a mano with the Proverbs 31 woman has my attention anyway.
Speaking of Biblical gender roles, various definitions of, brings me to my last selection: Quiverfull, by Kathryn Joyce. I kind of don't want to write about this book, because, gentle reader, if you are unaware of this extreme interpretation of traditional gender roles and family structure, it is unlikely that learning about it is going to make you happier. Apparently some celebrity family called Duggar may exemplify some of its elements, but I wouldn't know. What I do know is that actual people I actually was friends with in my homeschooling days actually completely believed every single thing that's described in the links. It's obvious how some of these beliefs are damaging to women; may I just say that they are also surprisingly damaging to men, at least to those who were not endowed by their creator with exceptionally bossy tendencies, and are therefore made to feel inadequate in communities where this teaching prevails.
By now I've visited, attended, belonged to, or known an evangelist for a variety of churches. I have attended a Latin mass and seen Pope Francis. I have clapped with the happy and stood up, sat down and kneeled on cue with the "frozen chosen." I have met in homes, elementary school auditoriums, buildings with tin roofs, and cathedrals complete with stained glass and statues. I have sat on folding chairs, pews and sofas. And often have I had reason to wonder what a nonbeliever would make of the experience I am having. Jim Henderson did not just wonder. He hired his atheist friend Matt Casper to come with him to twelve of the most well-known churches in the country and report his honest opinions, and then they wrote a dual stunt memoir: Jim and Casper Go to Church. This book promises to be wildly biased, highly entertaining, and as insightful as any conversation with someone who you really respect and with whom you almost completely disagree. Can't wait!
And that's my book haul from 260-279. Now, if you'll excuse me, I better get reading!
Combine these categorizations that seem tidy on paper, but actually split hairs, with cataloguers who may not know much about the book in hand or the subject matter in general, and the overall effect is that various topics in corporate Christian life seem all jumbled up, and all the more so because interspersed throughout are memoirs of people who had specific experience with one of these topics. If you want missionary biography or the lives of the saints, they're around here somewhere (usually, but not always, in 266 and 270, respectively), as are stunt memoirs like A.J.Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically (shouldn't that be in 220?) and all its spawn.
As it happens, I love stunt memoirs and even regular ones, so these two decades were a gold mine for me. They were a peek behind the curtain of my own personal Christian history. Crazy for God is Frank Schaeffer's highly readable, if not excessively accurate, take on his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, who pretty much singlehandedly founded the approach to faith that I came into and practice pretty much to this day. Larry Norman, Steve Taylor, Donald Miller, Relevant magazine, Marilynne Robinson, Makoto Fujimura, all owe a conscious or unconscious debt to the work Schaeffer, Sr., did to give evangelical Christianity a respect for the arts.
Philip Yancey was the editor of Campus Life magazine, and Campus Life was how I came to Jesus, so of course I was interested in his story, Soul Survivor. Or rather, the story of the authors and thinkers who have influenced his faith most positively. From GK Chesterton to C Everett Koop, from Gandhi to Henri Nouwen, it's an eclectic bunch, and the fact that an evangelical leader can find common cause with all of them is, I think, a testimony to Francis Schaeffer's influence on Christian culture.
In college, I joined a campus ministry that defies brief description. One thing's for sure: many of the founding members came from the Plymouth Brethren movement. Thus it was with great interest that I picked up In the World but Not of It, by Brett Grainger. He confirms that it's from the Plymouth Brethren that my church inherited such distinctives as political and cultural activism, the fervent espousal of Creation Science, and the insistence on women covering their heads, at least during prayer.
Women covering their heads... by the time I had read through the Bible once, it was obvious that my newfound faith presented some particular dilemmas for a girl who grew up in a household where Ms. magazine was de riguer. So as I stood before the hot mess that is 260-279 in my local library, you bet I chose A Year of Biblical Womanhood, by Rachel Held Evans. (Did I mention I'm a sucker for stunt memoirs?) I've been curious about Evans for a while now, and anybody who's going to go mano a mano with the Proverbs 31 woman has my attention anyway.
Speaking of Biblical gender roles, various definitions of, brings me to my last selection: Quiverfull, by Kathryn Joyce. I kind of don't want to write about this book, because, gentle reader, if you are unaware of this extreme interpretation of traditional gender roles and family structure, it is unlikely that learning about it is going to make you happier. Apparently some celebrity family called Duggar may exemplify some of its elements, but I wouldn't know. What I do know is that actual people I actually was friends with in my homeschooling days actually completely believed every single thing that's described in the links. It's obvious how some of these beliefs are damaging to women; may I just say that they are also surprisingly damaging to men, at least to those who were not endowed by their creator with exceptionally bossy tendencies, and are therefore made to feel inadequate in communities where this teaching prevails.
By now I've visited, attended, belonged to, or known an evangelist for a variety of churches. I have attended a Latin mass and seen Pope Francis. I have clapped with the happy and stood up, sat down and kneeled on cue with the "frozen chosen." I have met in homes, elementary school auditoriums, buildings with tin roofs, and cathedrals complete with stained glass and statues. I have sat on folding chairs, pews and sofas. And often have I had reason to wonder what a nonbeliever would make of the experience I am having. Jim Henderson did not just wonder. He hired his atheist friend Matt Casper to come with him to twelve of the most well-known churches in the country and report his honest opinions, and then they wrote a dual stunt memoir: Jim and Casper Go to Church. This book promises to be wildly biased, highly entertaining, and as insightful as any conversation with someone who you really respect and with whom you almost completely disagree. Can't wait!
And that's my book haul from 260-279. Now, if you'll excuse me, I better get reading!
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