Autumn Reinhardt-Simpson's Blog, page 4

Women and the Discipline of Compassion

The thing I love best about feminist theology is how easy it is to describe to someone who has never heard of it. Feminist theology is about humanization. It is about taking the focus off of the abstract and instead attending to the daily existence of all human beings. It is rejecting abstract dogmatic concepts in favor of praxis. Of course, the impulse to living in a feminist theological context is found in compassion. It is through compassion that we are led to reject damaging dogma. It is in compassion that we find our deepest and most generous theological impulses.

And yet, I’m convinced that compassion is still something we don’t quite get. We use the word as though it means mercy. But does it? Mercy, to me, implies a power relationship. The oppressed cry for it and the oppressor grants it (or does not). Mercy does not require “com” (together) “passion” (suffering). It requires only will. Others believe that compassion is a synonym for kindness. But kindness doesn’t exist in a vacuum. From where does it spring?

Compassion, actually suffering WITH someone, is quite hard to come by. I don’t mean by this that most people in this world are shitty, just that we’ve come up with less difficult ways to engage with others, ways that allow us to keep a degree of healthy distance. The trouble with compassion is that it can only really take place through an emptying of self combined with the desire to fully love the other – much like Christ did. And although we laud this ideal, how can we, as twenty-first century people, really get on board with letting go of the “I” so that we can love more fully? How is it possible to let go of our precious egos?

What IS the “I”? As a post-enlightenment people, we tend to equate our mind with “I”. Our likes, dislikes, emotions, thoughts – those are all what make me me. And yet, wise people throughout the centuries have not thought so and have believed that discipline through meditation can teach a person to shed this illusive sense of “I”, what we now call the ego, in favor of a more universal “I” that is no “I” at all.

Here is an experiment. Take a moment right now to observe your thoughts. Right now, mine are telling me that I probably appeared like a total nutcase to the person with whom I just had a meeting. There is also a voice telling me that that is nuts, that I’m proud of how different I am and that I was just fine. In fact, there are several voices in my head judging the event and creating a narrative.

So, tell me, if I am my thoughts and feelings, then who is the “I” observing them? Who is saying, “I am thinking that so-and-so probably thinks I’m crazy.” Who is this “I” that is not making judgments about anything but merely observing what is going on in my head? I have no answer to that, nor does anyone else. And yet, it is this “I behind the I” that is observational and free of judgment that we really need if we are to truly become compassionate people. You can’t just decide for compassion, you have to make it into a discipline and learn to be at home with this hidden “I”. You must be able to separate your identity from your thoughts and emotions. Buddhists know this. Saints know this.

Emptying yourself so that you can fully experience the suffering of others has often been a trait universally ascribed to women. After all, isn’t one of the complaints we have against sexism that women are expected to abandon or sacrifice themselves for others? And if we have been socialized to do this, aren’t we automatically more compassionate as a gender? I argue that no, we aren’t, and that is simply because compassion as a practice demands an intentionality fully centered in a desire to love and understand another. When we empty ourselves as a social obligation, we are not fully intentional. Moreover, the kind of “compassion” we perform in this example does not necessarily require a true emptying but rather a denial of ourselves. Finally, abandoning self for others in this sense does not rely on the “I behind the I” but rather on the “I” constructed in our egos and social identities.

When women practice compassion as an intentional act, this emptying of self is done not as a gendered sacrifice of all she is, but as a spiritual practice of discovering her true self and that of the other person. Moreover, practicing the “I behind the I” helps her to develop self-compassion which is then passed on to her companion in a gift of true connection. Thus, practicing true compassion enables self-knowledge, self-compassion, connection, and healing – all goals of feminist theology.

It is when we can become self-knowing and self-compassionate that we can fully enter into the experience (have compassion with) another and it is that experiencing from which theology is born. Good theology is not made in universal decrees and inflexible dogma. It is born in experience and built from the ground up.

 

 

 

Hard Choices – A Ramble

I am a pretty sensitive person. I’ve always been that way. When I was a kid, I cried all the time. Everything felt so sad, whether it happened to me or to someone else. I had a hard time understanding why people did the things they did or how, once they did the thing, they could go on without understanding the repercussions, without completely breaking down. I guess it’s no surprise that I’m still like that. I have spent years trying to hide it. I mean, once you’re a “crybaby” people tend to assume you’re unstable or that your emotions are superficial. You learn pretty quickly to do your weeping in secret.

But what if it is not you? What if it is the world that is unstable and superficial? What if you are just the kind of person who finds it difficult and overwhelming to live in such a world? I make no claims here that I am somehow superior or deep, just that I need, for my own sanity, to entertain the idea that my reactions to hurtful things, people, and events might be normal.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our shared humanity. Actually, not lately. I’ve always had this on my mind. It’s always there, lurking behind every other thought. But lately it’s been more to the fore as I read about shootings back home in the states or watch our president mock people. One response to these tragedies and general assholery is to deny the humanity of the perpetrator. I don’t mean the condemnation that such people rightly deserve. I mean the actual stripping of human status from a person who has done a terrible thing. This makes sense in a lot of ways and I don’t automatically judge people for it. It’s an emotional protection. It allows us to release anger while protecting ourselves from the consequences. We can abuse, and even kill that which isn’t human.

I experienced this with my friend Coolie. Coolie was a multiple murderer on death row. He had committed a terrible, terrible crime, the worst of which was that he murdered children. People hated him. Loathed him. They called him a monster. When people found out about my relationship with Coolie, they assumed that I somehow overlooked his crimes, decided they weren’t that serious, or excused them. To those people, it was the only way I could possibly maintain a friendship with him. Others thought that I must be very generous, that I was able to “love the sinner and hate the sin”. The truth was rather more complex. Or simple. The truth was that I never even tried to reconcile the Coolie who dished with me about Game of Thrones with the man who had murdered children. I never tried because it didn’t seem necessary. Coolie was a human being who murdered a family. He was not a monster to me because that implies that human beings don’t kill each other. But they do.

I experienced this again more recently with another very dear friend, someone I really admired and had missed since moving to Canada. She cut ties with me after I posted an article that said, in essence, that people should not stop being friends with someone simply because they are Republicans, that to do so reduces people to an idea. Again, that stripping of humanity. To her, my willingness to recognize Republicans as people was equated with excusing some of the awful things Republicans have done and, as a black woman, that was hard for her to take. She told me what she thought about me as a person and it was devastating. I had no idea that this was what she had always been thinking.

I don’t fault her or Coolie’s survivors. I understand why the survivors wanted Coolie dead and thought that my friendship with him was my stamp of approval for his actions. I understand why my friend assumed that I was excusing bigotry when I defended the basic humanity of Republicans. Both she and the survivors were people severely personally affected by these people and it is difficult to form complex thoughts about someone who has hurt you. It is hard for me, too. But I know that if I allow myself to dehumanize anyone that I contribute to the many ways we inflict violence, physical or otherwise, on each other – violence that is cyclical and neverending and which ends up destroying us alongside our target.

My ultimate problem is that I can see these people, all of them – Coolie, my friend, Republicans, the murdered family – as normal people. I see them laughing at a joke, I imagine what their favorite food is or what it felt like for them to be in love. I think about how excited they might get at Christmas. In fact, to make this even weirder, I can’t help but imagine it and it costs me the people I love. I feel like I am always staring at a huge screen full of everyone’s lives playing out simultaneously in front of me and all I can think is how so very alike we are.

***

I still cry a lot. But now it is hidden crying, done on the long drive down the Anthony Henday highway toward my house each evening after work or the gym. I can’t imagine what life would be like if people saw me weeping all the time which is what I feel like doing most days. No way could I be seen as capable, as an author, researcher, powerlifter, woman strong enough to look her foes in the eye. I would just be seen as the mess that I am, fit for nothing but the couch. I cry for our human family at the same time that I hate them for being so terrible. I cry because I don’t know how to hate enough so that my friends will love me.

When a South Korean “Cult” Knocks on the Theologian’s Door

I come from the land of religious opportunity. In the United States, one can find every an outlet for every religious idea under the sun. So imagine my delight upon discovering that my adopted country of Canada harbors some of the most fascinating and obscure religious sects in the world. Imagine my further ecstasy when I realized that I don’t need to go in search of them – they come literally knocking on my front door.

Earlier this week as I was sitting at my desk, I heard a knock at the door. Like most 21st century people, I was startled. No one knocks at the door unexpectedly anymore unless it be UPS or a salesperson. As I walked toward the entryway I caught a glimpse through the window of two well-dressed middle aged Korean women.  Definitely not salespeople. In fact, the women informed me upon opening the door that they were missionaries from the Church of God, sent to share with me the good news of God, Our Mother. Well, perhaps they were salespeople after all.

I can’t begin to describe to you the excitement that overcame me. I’m moderately acquainted with this particular sect but had never met a member in person. Without any elegance at all, I burst out, “YES! GOD, OUR MOTHER! CHURCH OF GOD!”

Needless to say, the women were taken aback. Finally one of them spoke. “You know Church of God?”

“Yes,” I said excitedly, “God our mother!”

The other woman spoke up and said, “Are you sure you know us? There are lots of Churches of God.”

“Yes,” I said again, “God our mother! Jang Gil-ja!”

The women murmured together for a minute before smiling and leaving, all without having delivered their good news.

***

 

This wasn’t the first time I had members of a Korean sect knock on my door. Earlier this year, a group of people from another South Korean sect visited me. Their technique was different. They came as a registered charity, collecting money for an affiliate that then funnels the money directly to the sect leader and messiah for his private use. This is not terribly unusual. There are, by some counts, as many as fifty people in South Korea currently calling themselves the second coming of Christ. South Korea, for reasons yet unclear, has become a hotbed of messianic religion since the split of the peninsula in the 1950’s.

Let’s take a look at a few of the major players:

Perhaps the most commonly known South Korean sect is the Unification Church (aka “moonies). Founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in 1954, the church is most well known for its mass wedding ceremonies. Though there are some reports of brainwashing and other practices, the church is largely seen as simply eccentric. In fact, though the Unification Church still exists, it has fallen into the background as even more eccentric and even dangerous new religious movements have emerged from the peninsula.

The next most prominent Christian messianic sect in South Korea is known as Shinchonji and also as “New Heaven and Earth” though its legal name is Shinchonji, Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony. Founded by Lee Man-hee, Shinchonji generated a significant amount of controversy for its use of benign sounding front organizations such as Mannam Volunteer Association, Mannam International Youth Coalition, International Peace Youth Group, International Women’s Peace Group, and Heavenly Culture, World Peace, and Restoration of Light (yep, that last one is real). The group has been accused of using bible studies to lure unsuspecting people into the church where communal living is promoted. Some former members have accused the church of using sleep deprivation and other mind control techniques to keep members isolated from friends and family. In 2016, the Church of England was alarmed enough to send out warnings to its members to be wary of Shinchonji which was operating a bible study from a warehouse in London and recruiting all over the country.

The women who came to my door are members of a prominent messianic sect as well. The World Mission Society Church of God was founded in 1964 by Ahn Sahng-hong, believed to be the second coming of Christ. Like many new religious movements in Christianity, the Church of God believes they are restoring truth to a corrupted church. They also believe in a duality called God the Father and God the Mother. God the Mother is believed to be an actual living woman named Jang Gil-ja.

I really feel like I can just stop here. So many of these new religious movements within Christianity in South Korea just sort of all blend into each other in my own mind so, I can only imagine the same is true of people who DON’T study this stuff for fun. Suffice it to say, there are a ton of these messianic South Korean churches and they send their missionaries to North America.

But here’s where it gets even dicier. Many of these churches set up various front charities to serve as a means to funnel money back to their leaders or messiahs. In many of these groups, the leaders live exorbitant and ostentatious lifestyles while their followers are forced to live communally and often in very poor conditions. Despite all this, the missionaries that come collecting for these “charities” come prepared with their government-issued charitable organization badges to show you that they are supposedly legitimate. It seems that, at least in the country in which I now live, Canada, the government doesn’t do much investigation into these groups. The missionaries are free, with the good wishes of the Canadian government, to go collecting money to send back to their leader.

So, my friends, though you may be like me and find these groups interesting enough to want to invite into your home, just make sure you keep your wallet to yourself. None of the money goes to help anyone other than one of fifty self-proclaimed messiahs needing a new jet.

 

 

Post-Theism? What the Hell is That?

I got a chance to speak at the Ever Wonder conference in Edmonton, Alberta the first weekend in September. My topic? Post-theism, of course! Below is a transcript of the talk. Let me know what you think.

***

 

I am a post-theistic Anglican with one foot in the humanist world and one in the Christian world. As an author and a theologian, I think of myself as a bridge for those I minister with. I myself am unimportant. What I envision is providing the example of a new way of being, a visible answer to the question, “Do I have only two choices – that of supposed “belief” or “unbelief”?” Popular culture tells us that this is so and that we need to take up arms in either of these ill-defined camps. But that way of thinking is an illusion. It does not describe what a good number of people experience in their spiritual and intellectual lives.

Many people are unaware of the idea of post-theism despite, I believe, being functionally post-theistic. Post-theism is different from popular conceptions of the terms atheism, theism, nontheism, etc. We can quibble about what these words really mean, mainly because we don’t actually have even academic consensus, but broadly speaking, post-theism is a nontheism (in other words a non-belief in a supernatural god) combined with the sense that to even ask the question about whether such a god exists is unimportant and sometimes even distracting. Post-theists can be religious or nonreligious. They come in many varieties from those who plumb the depths of religious traditions, including Christianity, for the wisdom of their ancestors, to those who reject those traditions and God language entirely. I myself am of the first type. I revel in God language, finding in it a rich source of inspiration for the otherwise unnameable fluctuations of the human condition. Though I understand and fully advocate the need to think twice about what we mean when we speak of God, I think most current attempts to abolish God language absolve us of the heavy task of having to examine what God might actually be. Theists don’t have a monopoly on God or God language. Not all gods are omnipotent. Not all gods are supernatural. Not all gods are even beings.

I was raised in a religiously neutral family back in the states. I had an interest in religion but it was rather academic. By the age of 12 I was calling myself an atheist and I held some pretty antitheistic ideas. But something weird happened when I was 21. While I felt I was being intellectually honest in my atheism, it was not enriching or fulfilling me personally. In 2000, I decided that it just might be possible to be a religious atheist and I became, of all things, a Roman Catholic.

I was drawn to the meditative pace of the liturgy, the sense of common humanity that the mass can inspire. But I was also drawn to Catholic social justice teachings, finding there a way to live out my values in a way that “hard” atheism was too broad to encompass. But I hadn’t taken my life as a feminist and reproductive justice activist into account. Well, rather, I had some naïve idea that I would be able to navigate the situation, holding fast to my love of the liturgy as well as my convictions. I also discovered that I had a calling and that it wasn’t to the convent, the only avenue open to me as a Catholic woman. But the final nail in my Catholic coffin was dealing with a family crisis that left religious hypocrisy laid bare before me. I began to see that my thinking about faith, about religion, and, most importantly, about what God means, was so vastly different from those around me that I no longer felt like I was at home in the Church. So, I left.

And in my disappointment, I began again to navigate the choppy waters of antitheism. For those who don’t know what antitheism is, it is an opposition to the idea of gods, any gods. For three years I didn’t see the inherent problem with such a theologically unaware definition, namely that anything can be declared a god and that not all gods fall into the neat categories that some antitheists create for them. I became even more active in the atheist movement, publishing articles, writing blogs, appearing on TV, founding groups, serving on boards. And lest it sound like I’m picking on atheism, let me tell you that I don’t regret this. I think I needed atheism at that moment in my life to help me really think about what it was I believed in. But I was still in the old cycle, vacillating between hand-me-down constructs of “belief” and “unbelief” that I unquestioningly bought into.

During this time, my calling never went away, it just confused me. What was I supposed to do with it? I became a Humanist celebrant and chaplain but it still wasn’t right. Humanism, a belief in the ability of humans to better the world through reason, science, and technology, was, on its own, too vague and too scientistic (not to be confused with scientific) to be of any real use to me. I still had an affinity for Christianity and especially the life of Jesus but I couldn’t seem to make it work with the definition of reality I was being handed. And this was when I thought, “What if we don’t have simply two choices? What if our choices aren’t restricted to supposed belief or unbelief? What if philosophical humanism has a natural home within Christianity? What if I don’t have to police my “God language” because it can still serve a vital function in my faith life?”

I began to explore this question by reading the usual suspects – Paul Tillich, John Shelby Spong, etc. and a new world of possibility opened up to me. I started listening to the Nomad podcast, a show put out by two guys undergoing what they call a “faith deconstruction” and searching for what really matters to them. I began to delve into the history of Christian thought which is replete with references to a nontheistic God and chock full of humanism. And eventually, I found a place for both myself and my calling within the Anglican Church, a church so historically theologically open that the joke is that it is hard to find a Church of England priest who believes in God. In short, I found a context for my humanism. I’m hoping to be ordained a deacon within the church and continue my ministry working for reproductive justice and advocating for the needs of the post-theistic and nontheistic in our local congregations.

I relish my journey, every bit of it. I don’t reject a single moment of it. I’m glad I found new ways of naming God as well as new ways of understanding what the name of God has meant to people throughout history. I’m also glad that I had a cleansing period in which I could reject everything and start again. Because of my time in “hard” atheism, I feel much more grounded in what I believe. I’ve thought hard about it. I’ve studied. I’ve even, dare I say it, prayed about it when I felt like it. Because of this, I no longer feel the need to capture and cage the idea of God.

My journey has prepared me well, I think, for the work that I do now. As I said before, I’m often a bridge for people who are functionally post-theistic but have never heard the term or explored the idea. There are millions of people out there who have religious sensibilities but no language for it since its definition has been claimed by a false theist/atheist dichotomy. Readers of my blog, my articles, people who appear in my ministry work, tend to be those people who are not comfortable either with a “traditional” religious framework or strict secularity. They are the inbetweeners who haven’t yet realized that nothing is wrong with them, that they aren’t ignorant or sinful or lacking in education. I’m happy to provide a living example (as poor as it may be at times!) to show that we never have just two choices. But I also feel I need to say that those who choose one of the two traditional choices – there’s nothing wrong with them either. My way of being is not everyone’s way of being. Both of those two traditional choices provided me with an incredible learning experience, not to mention lots of great friends. Besides, I try not to imagine that I’ve reached the end of my journey. I haven’t come to some great revelation and now all I have to do is dispense wisdom. That’s ridiculous. As my journey has shown, I’ve gone all over the map in search of wisdom and will likely continue to do so. In a way, it’s my job as a theology student! My publishing record also shows the roads I’ve been on. I’ve written everything from theistic to antitheistic and now post theistic content. I’ve got a book coming out on Humanist celebrations from Humanist Press and the book I’m researching now is on post-theism. Later on, I want to write a more traditional lectionary (albeit with some non-traditional elements). So, I’m not done traveling yet, not by any means. Who knows where the future might take my thinking? For the time being, it is important only that I stay in dialog with my fellow humans, that I hear about what is most meaningful to them in their traditions, what has ceased to serve them, and what they envision for their own futures and communities. I’m thankful that this conference exists, that it has given us a chance to begin to spread the good news that there is not just one way of spiritual being.