Rachel Held Evans's Blog, page 53

Why patriarchy won’t survive the information age…

“The pastor opened a manilla file folder and slid out a few sheets of paper. I spotted my name on the folder, Facebook-blue across the top of one page, and my blog header on another. My mind raced as I tried to process. The pastor has a file on me. My gut was right. They don’t like who I am.

‘Someone has brought your blogs and Facebook posts to my attention.’ He pointed to the print-out of my Facebook wall and a couple of blog posts, peppered with underlines and notes.

‘You shared a post on Facebook that supports egalitarian views of men and women, in direct opposition to our church’s teachings. You know that we believe men are to lead and women are to submit. We are asking you to stop sharing things that disagree with the teachings of our church.’”  read more

From more extreme stories like that of Malala Yousafzai to more relatable stories like this one from my friend Joy Bennett, the world is hearing the voices of women in a way it hasn’t before. Women are able to connect with one another, share their stories, build platforms, and garner followings—with or without the permission of the power structures that would otherwise regulate their voices.  No longer must a woman sit frightened and silent through a sermon that demeans her; now she can connect with women from around the world who understand and who are beginning to speak up. 

Dan often encourages me with this reminder: I may be forbidden from speaking at the church down the street because of my gender, but through the blog, I often speak to more people in a day than pass through that church in a year. 

That’s both exhilarating and frightening. What a responsibility! 

So my prediction is that patriarchy won’t survive the information age. Well, I suppose some form of it will survive till kingdom come, but I predict it will be greatly diminished. I just pray that evangelicalism won’t be one of the last holdouts. 

What do you think? 

[This is meant to be a conversation-starter. What else is there to consider? ]

The Dark Stories

an excerpt from A Year of Biblical Womanhood and something of an Advent reflection:

"There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you."
—Maya Angelou

I’m glad I have a biblical name. It’s a name as old as the storied shepherdess of Paddan Aram—a woman so captivating her husband pledged seven years of service in exchange for her hand, a woman whose determination to bear children sent her digging for man- drakes and bargaining with God, a woman brazen enough to steal her father’s idols and hide them in a camel saddle, a woman who took her last breath on the side of the road, giving birth, a woman whose tomb survived obscurity, conquest, earthquakes, and riots to become one of the most venerated and contested sites of the Holy Land.

Beautiful, impetuous, jealous Rachel. Rachel who fought to legitimize her existence the only way she knew how. Rachel who, though it killed her, won.

With Rachel, I notice the details. I absorb her stories as a child does, wide-eyed and attentive, the distance between long ago and yesterday as close as a memory. And like a child, I long for more, wishing at times that I could sit beneath Anita Diamant’s fictionalized Red Tent, where Dinah learned the history of her family from four mothers—Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah—who Dinah says “held my face between their hands and made me swear to remember.”

We recall with ease the narratives of Scripture that include a triumphant climax—a battle won, a giant slain, chariots swallowed by the sea. But for all of its glory and grandeur, the Bible contains a darkness you will only notice if you pay attention, for it is hidden in the details, whispered in the stories of women.

My quest for biblical womanhood led me to these stories late at night, long after Dan had gone to sleep, and I conducted my nightly research by his side in bed, stacks of Bibles and commentaries and legal pads threatening to swallow him should he roll over. The darkest of these stories mingled with my dreams, and I awoke the next morning startled as if I’d been told a terrible secret.

Perhaps the most troubling of the dark stories comes from the lawless period of Judges.

Jephthah was a mighty warrior of Gilead and the son of a prostitute. Banished from the city by Gilead’s legitimate sons, he took up with a gang of outlaws in the land of Tob. Jephthah must have earned a reputation as a valiant fighter because, years later, when the Gileadites faced war with the Ammonites, the elders summoned Jephthah and asked him to command their forces.

When Jephthah reminded them that they had expelled him from the city, they promised to make him their leader if he agreed. The opportunity to rule over those who once despised him proved too much for Jephthah to resist. As Jephthah charged into battle with his countrymen behind him, filled with “the Spirit of the Lord” (Judges 11:29), he made a promise to God: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering” (v. 30).

The text reports that God indeed gave victory to Jephthah. He and his troops devastated twenty Ammonite towns, thus deterring the Ammonite king from further attacks. When Jephthah returned home, glowing with sweat and triumph, “who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of tambourines” (v. 34). She was a virgin and his only child. The Bible never reveals her name.

When he saw her, Jephthah tore his clothes and wept. Surely he had expected an animal to come wandering out of the first floor of his home where they would have been stabled, not his daughter. He told his daughter of his vow and said he could not break it. The young girl resolutely accepted her fate. She asked only that she be granted two months to roam the hills and weep with her friends over a life cut short.

Unlike the familiar story of Isaac, this one ends without divine intervention. Jephthah fulfilled his promise and killed his daughter in God’s name. No ram was heard bleating from the thicket. No protest was issued from the clouds. No tomb was erected to mark the place where she lay.

But the women of Israel remembered.

Wrote the narrator, “From this comes the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah” (vv. 39–40).

They could not protect her life, but they could protect her dignity by retelling her story—year after year, for four days, in a mysterious and subversive ceremony that perhaps led the women of Israel back to thesame hills in which Jephthah’s daughter wandered before her death. It was a tradition that appears to have continued through the writing of the book of Judges. But it is a tradition lost to the waxing and waning of time, no longer marked by the daughters of the Abrahamic faiths.

I wanted to do something to bring this ceremony back, so I invited my friend Kristine over to help me honor the victims of the Bible’s “texts of terror.”

…We prepared for the ceremony for weeks—Kristine with wood and paint, I with poetry and prose. Finally, just before Christmas, while the tree was lit and paper snowflakes hung from the windows, Kristine came over with a heavy paper bag in her arms. We sat on the living room floor with the coffee table between us and began the ceremony.

We started with the daughter of Jephthah, whose legacy inspired me to honor her the way Israel’s daughters once did. I read her story from Judges 11, followed by a short poem by Phyllis Trible recounting the young girl’s tragic end. Kristine lit a tall, white taper candle on the coffee table, and together we said, “We remember the daughter of Jephthah.”

Then Kristine read the story of the concubine from Judges 19 who was thrown to a mob by her husband, gang-raped, killed, and dismembered. I lit a tiny tea candle, and together we said, “We remember the unnamed concubine.”

Next we honored Hagar, whose banishment from the house of Abraham nearly cost her life. I read her story from Genesis 21 and a poem by Tamam Kahn titled “No Less Than the Prophets, Hagar Speaks.” For Hagar, we set aside a damask votive, which we lit before saying together, “We remember Hagar.”

Finally, we remembered the Tamar of the Davidic narrative, whose rape in the king’s house left her desolate and without a future. A heartbreaking poem from Nicola Slee pulled each of the stories together and connected them to the silent victims of misogyny from around the world. We resolved as Slee to “listen, however painful the hearing . . . until there is not one last woman remaining who is a victim of violence.” We lit a white pillar candle and said together, “We remember Tamar.”

Then Kristine unveiled her diorama. Constructed of a small pinewood box turned on its side, the diorama featured five faceless wooden figures, huddled together beneath a ring of barbed wire. Nails jutted out from all sides, with bloodred paint splattered across the scene. Glued to the backboard was a perfect reflection of the five feminine silhouettes cut from the pages of a book. Around this Kristine had painted a red crown of thorns to correspond with the circle of barbed wire. Across the top were printed the words of Christ—“As you have done unto the least of these, so you have done to me.” Kristine and I talked for a while after the ceremony was over—about our doubts, about our fears, and about how sometimes taking the Bible seriously means confronting the parts we don’t like or understand and sitting with them for a while, perhaps even a lifetime. Ours was a simple ceremony, but I think it honored these women well.

Those who seek to glorify biblical womanhood have forgotten the dark stories. They have forgotten that the concubine of Bethlehem, the raped princess of David’s house, the daughter of Jephthah, and the countless unnamed women who lived and died between the lines of Scripture exploited, neglected, ravaged, and crushed at the hand of patriarchy are as much a part of our shared narrative as Deborah, Esther, Rebekah, and Ruth.

We may not have a ceremony through which to grieve them, but it is our responsibility as women of faith to guard the dark stories for our own daughters, and when they are old enough, to hold their faces between our hands and make them promise to remember.

***

Read more in A Year of Biblical Womanhood.

I've heard from several readers who have actually incorporated a similar memorial into their church worship service, which I think is beautiful. Hopefully I'll get the chance to share some of those pictures and stories in the future. I've also encountered quite a few Christians who are absolutely livid that I included these stories in a book about biblical womanhood. I guess I don't think simply pretending these stories are not there is a viable option for dealing with the text in a faithful, honest way. So I stand by including them. No apologies. 

Sunday Superlatives 12.9.12 & a Programming Note

Around the Blogosphere...

Best Satire: 
“Africa for Norway” 

See Dianna Anderson’s post at Think Christian, “Africa for Norway and Narratives of Pity” 

“In academic parlance, this technique is called Othering. In charity and in the church, we often turn “the poor” into this group we cannot identify with on any scale larger than pity. And pity is a tremendously dangerous thing in the world of social justice. Pity can very easily function as a dehumanizing tool - it turns the pitied person into a helpless object that needs “saving,” rather than a fully functional human being who is caught in a system of poverty and oppression. Pity of a people group makes their life circumstances an inherent part of their being, rather than part of a system in which everyone is complicit. It not only erases the pitied, but it erases our own complicity in the issue.”

Funniest Video: 
Jon Stewart with “War on Christmas: Friendly Fire Edition”

Funniest Caption:
Pinterest, You Are Drunk with “’Tis the Season to Emotionally Manipulate Your Children”

Best Advent Reflection (nominated by Preston Yancey):
Kelley Nikondeha with “My advent ache” 

“What I feel now can best be described as a deep longing, a yearning, a groaning for the world to be set right at long last. I finally feel a connection to our ancestors who spent hundreds of years living between a fresh prophetic utterance and the arrival of Good News swaddled in a stable. All those generations endured a weighted waiting – heavy with broken stories. The ancients suffered occupation, exile, land loss, war and other injustices that robbed them of shalom. ‘How long, oh Lord?’ echoes through the canyon of intertestamental time and now I join the lament. I’m pining alongside the patriarchs and matriarchs of faith, grafted into their incessant questions about the promised deliverance.”

Best Conversation-Starter:
RJS at Jesus Creed (responding to Out of Ur) with “Is evolution a must-win issue?”

“Frankly I don’t really care one whit if the Republicans (or the Democrats for that matter) get their act together on this issue. Nothing of importance to me is tied up with political identity – absolutely nothing. But I do care deeply about the church and the future of the church as the body of Christ. Not only is the age of the earth battle not worth fighting – it is a battle that cannot be won. Arguing for a young earth is as ineffective as arguing that F≠ma, that energy is not conserved, or that a ball thrown into the air will not fall along an easily calculated path.”

Best Photoblog:
Buzzfeed with “The Most Powerful Images of 2012"

Best Reminder:
Sarah Bessey with “In which it’s a two-part invention” 

“Be grateful for your disillusionment because it will push you away from revere-ing your own self or your heroes of the faith or the mystics or doctrine teachers or bloggers or missionaries or churches. Now we can learn from one another, as partners and friends, but we are pointed towards the only true example for humanity, the true Shepherd, the true Father, the true Mother, the true God. We can now embrace each other in our humanity, flawed, and moving together towards our true selves with open hearts to God.”

Best Point: 
Robert Cargill with “The difference between persecution and being corrected”

“There is a difference between persecution and the loss of privileged status. There is a difference between persecution and being corrected of an error. There is a difference between persecution and being wrong. Just because you didn’t get what you want doesn’t mean that you are “persecuted”. It means you can’t have everything.”

Wisest: 
Richard Stearns at Huffington Post with “Goodbye, Christian America; Hello, True Christianity” 

“The kind of Christianity the world responds to is the authentic ‘love your neighbor’ kind. Its appeal can't be legislated through court battles and neither can courts stop its spread.”

Smartest:
Brian LePort with “Three Hermeneutical Paradigms to Use When Studying the Doctrine of the Virgin Birth” 

“ Where we Christians struggle at times is realizing that these different approaches are different language games sometimes intended for a variety of audiences. When we try to use the historical-critical method apologetically to 'prove'  something like the doctrine of the virgin birth we have gone the wrong direction, not because it didn’t happen in space-time history, but because historical-critical methodology includes the presupposition of methodological naturalism, something that can never 'discover' a virgin birth anymore than one may have been able to discover Jesus was born of a virgin if his DNA was studied to examine the genetics of his 'father'."

Bravest (especially when you consider the comment section; sheesh!): 
Emily Maynard with “Modesty Rules: Is a Woman Responsible for a Man’s Lust?”

“There were endless options for violations and validations in Modesty-land, depending on the exact situation and circumstances. It didn’t take long for me to absorb the idea that I wasn’t a person with a body—I was an outfit with the power to control the morality of men. I believed the lie that I was responsible for everyone else.”

Best Response to the Aforementioned Bravery: 
Luke Harms with “On Modesty and Male Privilege”

"Shifting the blame to women just passes the buck along and enables men to continue being skeezy pervs. "Oh, I'm getting all lusty because she's wearing skinny jeans and a v-neck." No bro, you're getting all lusty because you have a distorted view of women as objects that you need to get under control."

Best sentence:
Scot McKnight with “Desire to be biblical”

“Being biblical is sometimes not biblical enough.”

Best paragraph:
Beth Felker Jones at Her.Meneutics with “Why Mark Driscoll is wrong about Twilight”

“I believe that Driscoll’s teachings about gender—teachings that take cultural stereotypes about femininity and masculinity and call them “God’s will”—feed the same beast that allows Twilight to flourish. To focus critique of Twilight on the fact that it is a vampire story gives a free pass to the mistake at the heart of the story, that in which a boyfriend or husband is confused with a savior.”

Best Headline: 
Peter Enns with “St. Nicholas: What can I say? He was a beast.”

“Nicholas was a beast. Mother Teresa, Oskar Schindler, and Samuel L. Jackson all rolled into one. What an absolute crushing beast.”

Most Inspiring: 
Amanda King with “I’ve started telling my daughters I’m beautiful”

“I don't want my girls to be children who are perfect and then, when they start to feel like women, they remember how I thought of myself as ugly and so they will be ugly too. They will get older and their breasts will lose their shape and they will hate their bodies, because that's what women do. That's what mommy did. I want them to become women who remember me modeling impossible beauty. Modeling beauty in the face of a mean world, a scary world, a world where we don't know what to make of ourselves.”

Most Vulnerable: 
Christina Gibson with “Christmas Baby and Risk”

“There’s no way around this whole risk thing.  It is the language of our stories.  Risk is the musical score of our symphonies.  It’s jumping up when you could lay down and climbing out of bed instead of hibernating. We don’t live unless we risk.”

Most Enlightening (nominated by Connie Esther):”
Psych Central with “The Myth of the Strong Person” 

“People who are perceived as ‘strong’ tend to carry the demeanor of people who ‘don’t take stuff from others.’ This can create avoidance and fear from others, rather than openness and connection.”

Most Relatable: 
Kristin Lucas with “On Stress and Egg Casseroles” 

“You want to know what doesn’t stress me out? Making big decisions. Watching Project Runway. Reading enormous books that contain words like teleological and salvific and eschatological. Pulling apart intricate theories and arguments—and sometimes shifting the tectonic plates of my life a little. Coming up with new ideas. Allowing teenagers to paint my hair purple. Talking to people about God. Being the dissenting voice. Poetry. Saying what I need. Praying for people. Offering to pray for people. Letting aforementioned teenagers play with my phone without putting a password on it. Writing. Playing dodgeball. Condensing chaos into a neat, tidy little package. Asking my husband to help me with the egg casseroles….I used to think there was something wrong with all of this. That maybe I was wired incorrectly. Or at least strangely. I mean, who in their right minds would rather write a 10 page research paper than cook something (relatively simple and uncomplicated) for some very nice people? Yes, I would…I don’t think there’s anything wrong anymore. I am learning who I am, and I am learning to be okay with it."

On the blog…

Programming Note: So as you may have noticed, since the big book release, I’ve fallen out of my regular posting schedule and neglected some of our regular series: the Bible series, the Esther series, the “Ask a…” series, and so on. Never fear; these will return! But not fully until after the holidays. Thanks so much for your patience. I never dreamed this fall would be so….crazy. But instead of feeling guilty, I’m just going to blog when I can, start planning and scheduling for the new year (good stuff ahead!) and hit it hard again in January. Sound good? 

Most Popular Post:
“5 Things You Don’t Have to Leave Behind When You Leave Fundamentalism”

Most Popular Comments: 
In response to “Barbara Kingsolver and Church Misfits,” Amy wrote: 

“I was raised by agnostic parents and was saved and joined the Southern Baptist church at 13. At my first youth group camp, the topic of men being ‘over’ women and women not being allowed to teach/ preach came up. As a girl who'd skipped a grade in school and hadn't quite caught on to the concept of polite modesty, I raised my hand: ‘But what if the woman is smarter than the man? Wouldn't God want the one that He made smarter to be in charge?’ Crickets.”

and Leanne wrote: 

“When I was a pre-teen, the Sunday school teacher told our class of girls that God had a very special, life verse in the Bible for each of us. You could find yours by looking at the verse corresponding to the day on which you were born, in Proverbs 31 which is for women. I was born on the 7th, so my "life verse" would be Prov 31:7. [pregnant pause while you all look it up and guffaw!] It says, "Let them drink to forget their poverty and remember their troubles no more." I asked her how that could possibly be my life verse, in a church that forbade alcohol. She was stymied and my questioning continues!”

This entire comment section is worth reading! So many great stories. Thank you for sharing

So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog? 

Ruth - A Woman of Valor

By Diana Trautwein

She is old now. So old. Frail, forgetful, easily confused, convinced that she is always doing something wrong. So convinced, that she creates elaborate, imagined stories that center on the low opinion others supposedly hold about her.

And it breaks my heart.

Sadly, this is the way of aging for many. The synapses misfire, the dreams cross over into real time, the fears and anxieties of a lifetime bloom larger and larger, becoming tales of terror and disgrace. And no matter how many times I tell her that no one believes she is a terrible person, she returns to the same central, misguided, self-obliterating fantasy. And she inhabits it, completely convinced that always, always, she gets it wrong.

Can you hear this? Can you see it? THIS is the too-high cost of wrong-headed teaching about humankind, most especially about women. This is the fruit of a viper-filled tree of second-best, the-husband-always-knows-better, the male ego is a fragile, to-be-protected-at-all-costs thing, even if that cost is the very soul of the woman who protects it. And this is the fruit of living with a verbally abusive, alcoholic father who repeatedly squanders the family savings - and the hearts of his own children - in pursuit of his  demons.

What I see in my aging, valiant mother is the broken heart of a little, little girl who took on a task much too big for her fragile shoulders to bear. She protected her mom, she kept order in a disordered household, she stood up to the loud, denigrating comments of a loutish father. She was the spark-plug and the load-bearer for an entire family system. Not all of that system was sick, not by a long shot; much of it was warm and welcoming. But the darker shadows are what persist in the slowly failing, 91-year-old mind of that girl who grew up in the turmoil of the 1920s and 30s.

In the church of her youth, my mother found both salvation and judgment. She met Jesus and knew the love of God. But for far too long, she knew that love only in the context of a rigid code of behavior, one based on fear, anger and a very particular kind of group identity. Appearances mattered - in her family of origin and in her church family, too. And she worked so hard to look good. What she never quite internalized was the amazing truth that she was good.

She was good because of Jesus at work in her; she was good because she looked out for the people on the edges; she was good because she took her faith very seriously; she was good because she was beautiful on the inside as well as the outside; she was good because she had the gift of hospitality and used it with flair and grace her whole long life; she was good because she took care of so.many.people:

An aging maiden aunt, one who had loved her as a little girl, dying of breast cancer in the 50s - got weekly visits and home-cooked food.

Neighbors, wherever she lived, got regular visits, genuine concern about their children and families, home-baked goodies on a beautiful plate, invitations to dinner and parties, prayers for health and healing and happiness.

Soul-friends got regular phone calls, notes of encouragement, hilarious greeting cards, a truly listening ear, earnest prayers, pick-me-up stories and gifts of grace.

High-school Sunday school students got excellent teaching, thoughtfully prepared each week for 15 years. And they each got personal time, too - breakfasts at restaurants, hand-written notes, weekly prayers.

Her three children got undying support for all their endeavors, thanks and praise for jobs well-done, encouragement to stretch and grow and become.

Her parents, even her difficult father (who mellowed with age), got regular visits, thoughtful gifts, kind words.

Her husband got so much support - emotional, physical, spiritual. He became the good man he was because of the woman who loved him.

How I would love it if my mother could read and understand these words; she cannot. How I would love it if my mother could know, deep within herself, that she is a woman of valor; she does not. How I would love it if my mother could hear the good, good news that, “Jesus loves me, this I know…” And this, somehow - by God’s grace - this finds its way into the pieces of herself that remain.

And how does this happen?

She sings the old hymns. This is the good she remembers - those gospel songs from long ago, and they come back to her, sometimes in snippets and phrases only, but they come back. And she hums them to herself. She asks me, multiple times, if I ever have songs in my head. I say, oh, once in a while. And she says . . . she says . . . I hear them every day.

And I am so grateful.

***

Married to her college sweetheart for over 40 years, Diana is always wondering about things. She answers to Mom from their three adult kids and spouses and to Nana from their 8 grandkids, ranging in age from 2 to 21. For 17 years, after a mid-life call to ministry, she answered to Pastor Diana in two churches where she served as Associate Pastor. Since retiring at the end of 2010, she spends her time working as a spiritual director and writes on her blog, www.drgtjustwondering.blogspot.com She also contributes monthly at www.deeperstory.com/home/family. For as long as she can remember, Jesus has been central to her story and the church an extension of her family. Not that either church or family is exactly perfect . . . but then, that's what makes life interesting, right?

This post is part of our Women of Valor series. Eshet chayil—woman of valor— has long been a blessing of praise in the Jewish community. Husbands often sing the line from Proverbs 31 to their wives at Sabbath meals. Women cheer one another on through accomplishments in homemaking, career, education, parenting, and justice by shouting a hearty “eshet chayil!” after each milestone.  Great women of the faith, like Sarah and Ruth and Deborah, are identified as women of valor.  One of my goals after completing my year of biblical womanhood was to “take back” Proverbs 31 as a blessing, not a to-do list, by identifying and celebrating women of valor. To help me in this, you submitted nearly 100 essays to our Women of Valor essay contest. There were so many essays that made me laugh, cry, and think I’ve decided that, in addition to the eight winners we featured in August, I will select several more to feature as guest posts throughout the fall. 

We have honored a single mom, a feisty professor, a midwife, a foster parent, an abuse survivor, a brave grandmother, a master seamstress, a young Ugandan woman who reached out to a sister in need, and many more. 

Read t he rest of the Women of Valor series here.

Guess where you can find "A Year of Biblical Womanhood"...

Costco!

Well, at select Costcos: 

Costco #222 2835 Route
35 Hazlet NJ
Costco #321 20 Stew
Leonard Dr Yonkers NY
Costco #1008 211 W.
Blackstock Road Spartanburg SC
Costco #386 98 Seaboard
Lane Brentwood TN
Costco #634 5020 Norton
Healthcare BD Louisville KY
Costco #632 1500 Gemini
Place Columbus OH
Costco #680 1150 Bunker
Hill Road Houston TX
Costco #675 12405 N.
Gessner Road Houston TX
Costco #644 2887 South
Market St. Gilbert AZ
Costco #646 4810
Galleria Parkway Sparks NV
Costco #746 29315
Central Ave Lake Elsinore CA
Costco #455 12700 Day
St Moreno Valley CA
Costco #1001 2700 Park
Avenue Tustin CA
Costco #482 4801
Central Ave Richmond CA
Costco #740 1470 Marvin
Rd. NE Lacey WA
Costco #487 11100 S.
Auto Mall Drive Sandy UT

I’m telling you this because we’d of course love to see the
books in more stores, but that depends on how this first round sells. So if you
live near one of these stores, you’ve got another option for picking up the
book for Christmas. (For a full list of retailers, check here.)

This is Christ’s body, broken for you…

“Oh I was just a baby when that happened,” she said before stacking my plate and cup onto her own tray to take them to the cafeteria dishwasher.  

These kids are so polite, so confident. Not how I remember junior high. 

We were talking about September 11—a date that for this eighth grader marked history, not memory. For her it was a picture in a textbook, some old video footage. For me it was a clear, cool day that seemed too beautiful to contain the fear and horror caught in my chest. 

“Maybe I should use a different illustration,” I said, second-guessing myself for the hundredth time that day. 

She laughed, patted my arm like the grownup in the situation and said, “You’ve got this. Don’t worry. Just say something funny and everyone will love you.” 

Funny. Got it.  

When the first group of junior high students arrived for the weekend retreat, streaming out of their crammed First United Methodist Church buses like ants out of a disturbed bed, I marveled at their young faces. These were just kids, former babies whose September 11, 2001 included a naptime. 

I’d spent the week before reworking all my usual talks for a younger audience, whittling them down to their essence, working in more stories and updating my illustrations, taking out any references to menstruation. When I asked Dan for advice, he made a crack about Gangnam Style…which I had to google. 

“Oh man, I’m screwed,” I said, dropping my head to the dining room table as an Asian man danced on my computer screen. “I don’t even know if this is supposed to be ironic or cool! These kids are going to hate me.” 

I worried, and reworked, and stayed up late arranging PowerPoints. I solicited advice on Facebook, which included several gentle reminders not to try too hard with the whole relevance thing; they can see through that. 

Don’t try too hard. Got it. 

Despite all my preparation, I felt panicked when I took the stage after the band finished the first night, steams of vapor from the fog machine still clinging to the set, 500 young faces looking eagerly back at me.  I’d gotten up at 4 a.m. that morning to catch my flight and had consumed about five cups of coffee since then. The week before I’d been interviewed by Barabara-freaking-Walters in New York City. No problem. But 500 junior high students? I might just pee in my pants. 

I felt inadequate for the task. I wanted to do right by these kids. I wanted them to know how much they were loved—by God, by their church, by me. The Methodists, I was sure, had chosen the wrong speaker. And only a few parents had had the good sense to call and warn them ahead of time.

Fortunately, I’d planned a fun audience-participation-style game as an opener, complete with a Gangnam Style reference, which the students loved. They were laughing, hard. Maybe this would work out after all. 

I muddled through four presentations that weekend, and four more a few weekends later when 600  high schoolers attended the same event. It wasn’t my best work, I knew that, but the kids really seemed to connect with it, and I got good feedback from the youth pastors. 

“You’re so real!” one 14-year-old girl marveled. “Like one of us!” 

Real. Got it. 

The climax of each weekend happened on Saturday night with a communion service following my presentation. A pastor led the service, but I had the privilege of joining some of the student leaders in serving the bread and juice. 

And this is when everything changed. 

I held a loaf of bread in my hands, tearing off a piece for each pair of cupped hands that went by, slowly, as music played. 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

I said it over and over and over again. More than a hundred times. 

And each time, I peered into the face of the one receiving the gift: a lanky boy with pimples and bangs avoiding my gaze; a pretty girl, no more than 13, tears brimming in eager, thankful eyes; a guy wearing his Bama cap because he heard I was a fan, whispering “Roll Tide” as he dipped his bread in the cup; adults receiving with a grateful familiarity, mouthing “thanks be to God” and folding their hands in prayer.  

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

The music swelled, and I was surprised by how many of these kids looked me square in the eyes, approaching the Table with vulnerability and openness, souls laid bare. In their faces I saw relief, joy, sadness, distraction, eagerness, shyness, familiarity, boredom, peace, fear, and hope…so much hope. I saw broken families and fights with friends and doubts about God and insecurities about the van ride home. I saw that longing to start over again, the longing to be known. 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

There were boyish grins and tear-streaked cheeks and freckled faces and wrinkled laugh lines. 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

There were flashes of white teeth against brown skin, stifled giggles, runny noses, tattered t-shirts, designer shoes. 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

There were babies on hips, bandaids on fingers, and braces on teeth. There were slumped shoulders, awkward limps, the smell of sweat, the sound of sighs. 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

“This is Christ’s body, broken for you.” 

I said it over and over and over again until I believed it. I said it until I knew in a way I hadn’t before that it wasn’t my job to do right by these kids; it wasn’t about me at all. I could only proclaim the great mystery—that Christ had done right by them, his body broken for them, his blood shed for them.   This was enough. I could not explain why or how, but it was enough. 

Christ's body. Christ's blood. Got it.

I see now why it is important for our pastors and priests to serve communion. 

It’s important because it steals the show.

It’s important because it is enough, all on its own. 

After the second communion service with the high school students, a bunch of us celebrated with a light show and dance party, because that’s how the Methodists roll. I broke out my truly horrid dance moves to the cheers of the students, wholly unconcerned for once in my life about my coolness factor. Somewhere in between the choruses of “Call Me Maybe” I realized just how much I needed these kids…and here I’d been thinking they needed me. Communion has a way of flattening things out like that, a way of entangling our roots and lowering our guards. 

Perhaps every Lord’s Supper should conclude with a dance party. 

[Special thanks to the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church for inviting me to hang out at Ealge Eyrie in Lynchburg this year! ]

Barbara Kingsolver and Church Misfits

So right now I owe about
fifteen people articles or interviews, but instead I’ve gotten myself lost in
Barbara Kingsolver’s excellent new novel, Flight Behavior, which in Chapter 3
includes an absolutely fantastic church scene that you really must read for
yourself.

Kingsolver often writes about
church, but in a way that suggests she might have been something of a misfit in
that context. A church misfit myself, I soak these stories in every time. Two
excerpts in particular capture some of the tension I’ve felt through the
years. 

The first is from her 1998
novel, The Poisonwood Bible. When I first read these words from the character
Adah Price, I drew in breath. They so perfectly captured my own discomfort with
my church’s teachings about hell:

According to my
Baptist Sunday-school teacher, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for
being born in the Congo rather than, say, north Georgia, where she could attend
church regularly. This was the sticking point in my own little lame march to
salvation: admission to heaven is gained by luck of the draw.

At age five I raised my good left hand in Sunday school and used
a month’s ration of words to point out this problem to Miss Betty Nagy. Getting
born within earshot of a preacher, I reasoned, is entirely up to chance. Would
Our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Savior as that? Would he really condemn
some children to eternal suffering just for the accident of a heathen
birth?…Miss Betty sent me to the corner for the rest of the hour to pray for my
own soul while kneeling on grains of uncooked rice. When I finally got up with
sharp grains imbedded in my knees I found, to my surprise, that I no longer
believed in God.

And then this excerpt is from Flight Behavior, describing the
main character, Dellarobia:

For a year she’d gone with Cub to Wednesday Bible group and
loved the sense of being back in school, but her many questions did not make
her the teacher’s pet. Right out of the gate, in Genesis, she identified two completely
different versions of how it all got started. The verses could be a
listen-and-feel kind of thing, like music, she’d suggested, not like the
instruction booklet that comes with a darn appliance. A standpoint that won no
favors with the permanent discussion leader, Blanchie Bise, cheerleader for
taking the Word on faith. For crap’s sake, the first rule of believable was to
get your story straight.

The church scene is not entirely negative if you keep
reading, and is in fact quite inspiring. Kingsolver never sets out to slam the
Church; just to put into print the words that are secretly running through a
lot of people’s heads.

My first awkward Sunday School moment happened in first or
second grade when I raised my hand and asked why, in Noah’s flood, God would
drown all of those innocent animals when it was the humans who were being
disobedient. The teacher pointed out that God spared two of each kind, but that
hardly seemed fair to me.  What made
those two camels more worth saving than the rest of them?  (Apparently, my aversion to salvific election
goes back a few years.) It didn’t occur to me until junior high or high school
that the flood would have also drowned thousands of children….which didn’t seem
particularly pro-life on God’s part.

What about you? Did you ever ask the “wrong” question in
Sunday School? Do you still ask those questions?

5 Things You Don’t Have to Leave Behind When You Leave Fundamentalism

…although sometimes you have to rediscover them: 

1.  Love for the Bible

Fundamentalists often treat the Bible as a
set of propositional statements designed to conform to modern, enlightenment-influenced
expectations. It is flattened out and simplified, used as a weapon against
other people and a prop for pet political and theological positions.  And so I see a lot of people leaving their
Bibles behind on the bookshelf when they leave fundamentalism. This is
understandable, but heartbreaking and unnecessary.

Leaving
fundamentalism means learning to accept the Bible on its own terms, loving it
for what it is, not what we want it to be. 
It has been such a joy to rediscover the Bible in a way that respects
the cultures and contexts in which it was written and assembled. For example,
the creation account of Genesis 1 is arguably more meaningful and more profound
when we understand it, not as a modern science text, but as an ancient Near Eastern
temple text that honors Elohim as ruler over creation.  Similarly, it will not do to simply shrug off
as irrelevant those sections of the epistles that seem to relegate women to
certain roles. Instead, we have to get a better sense of their context and
purpose, which in my experience has revealed them to be radically progressive
and Christ-centered, meaning quite the opposite of what they are often said to
mean. Of course, there are still those text that trouble me profoundly—the
genocidal conquests of Canaan, for example—but I’ve come to believe that
wrestling with the Bible is better than ignoring it. To those willing to keep
digging, the Bible will not disappoint.

2.  Church

This one has been a real struggle for
me, and I know it’s a struggle for others as well. One of the hardest things
for a recovering fundamentalist to find is a community of faith where they feel
safe yet challenged, included yet taught. I don't know about you, but sometimes it seems like cynicism
follows me through every church door, nipping at my heels like a pesky dog as I
find my place in the pews. If you’re like me, you’re a little bit scared, a
little bit picky, a little bit tired. You’re rolling your eyes about the
American flag in the corner, or the special music, or the building fund, or the
lack of diversity. Sometimes it’s just easier to stay in bed. (Okay, often it’s
just easier to stay in bed.) But we have to be careful of applying the same
fundamentalist attitude we’re trying to leave behind to our thoughts and
reactions to church. It’s not about finding the perfect community; it’s about
helping to build the right community. …Now if someone could tell me exactly how
to do that, I’d love to know.

3.   Discipline

There’s legalism, and then there’s
discipline. One is practiced out of guilt and fear; the other out of love. One
sucks all the grace out of faith; the other nurtures grace and helps it grow. I
know a lot of people who, after leaving a more legalistic church environment,
go through a period of detox in which they avoid any sort of spiritual discipline—prayer,
fasting, tithing, etc.— altogether, as these things had always been used as
measures by which Christians judged one another. This detox period is
understandable and perhaps even necessary. But it can be helpful to reintroduce
these disciplines into your life when you’re ready, when they can be practiced
out of love and commitment to Christ rather than guilt.

4.  Friendships

It can be tricky navigating
relationships with old friends after you’ve left fundamentalism. Some will
inevitably be changed; others will be lost. Often, in an effort to get a new
start, folks will cut off all their connections to a certain faith community.
In some extreme cases, this may actually be the only healthy thing to do. But
most of the time, it’s worth putting in the extra effort to maintain
relationships with friends and family with whom you disagree. This may mean
some uncomfortable moments over coffee or at the dinner table, but as much as
it depends on you, look to Christ as your example and try to live peaceably
with the people around you, even when they start yelling about Barack Obama
being the anti-Christ. (Check out our series on changing faith and changing
relationships.)

5.  Holiness

This is a scary word because it can be
easily manipulated and lorded over people to require submission and conformity.
But I’ve known many people to leave fundamentalism only to make a string of bad
choices that alienate them from God, themselves, and other people. Folks who
had once been forbidden from drinking any alcohol at all find themselves
getting drunk every weekend. Those who had once been forced to find their
identity in their virginity end up swinging the opposite direction by growing
reckless with their sexuality. Those who had once been made to feel guilty for
each purchase end up succumbing to materialism. Perhaps the hardest part of
being released from prison is knowing what to do with your freedom. But leaving
fundamentalism doesn’t mean leaving behind your self-respect or your commitment
to imitating Christ. It means pursuing holiness out of love, not fear or guilt. 

One person who is great at all of these things is Justin Lee, who blogs at Crumbs from the Communion Table and recently released a book entitled Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate. Having been subjected to some of the worst that fundamentalism has to offer, Justin has managed to emerge from his negative experiences in the Church as a man of wisdom, grace, and love. So be sure to check him out. 

So what would you add to this list? What have you struggled
with leaving behind as your faith has changed and evolved?

Gifts That Give Back, 2012!

It’s cyber-Monday! As has become tradition here, I’ve
included some ideas below for gifts that give back. This year I focused on
people and organizations that are close to my heart….so there aren’t as many,
but I can vouch for each.

Coffee

Our dear friends Quentin and Jessica McCuiston are hoping to
adopt a little girl from South Africa, but international adoption is expensive.
They still need to raise close to $20,000 dollars before Christmas in order to
bring this particular little girl home with them. I know without a doubt these
two will be amazing parents. They are creative, fun, courageous, wise,
committed to their faith, and they make a great team together. I’ve known them
since high school and could not be more proud to call them friends.

One way you can help out is by purchasing fair trade coffee
from Just Love. This stuff is tasty, let me tell you!  Best of all, for every bag of coffee you
order, $5 goes to Quentin and Jessica’s adoption fund.

I recommend the fair trade Sumatra and the fair trade
Ethiopian Sidamo: Oromia

Or, you can always just make a tax-deductible donation to
Quentin and Jessica’s adoption fund via Lifesong. Quentin and Jessica’s home
church, Apostles NYC, has paired with Lifesong and has graciously given a
matching grant of $5,000, so your donation will go a long way! Be sure to
specify preference McCuiston #3252
adoption in the form provided. 

Accessories

If you’ve spent much time on the blog, you know I’m a big
fan of Hill Country Hill Tribers, a non-profit
that provides supplemental income and marketable skills for Burmese refugee
artisans living in Austin, Texas. Not only do I love their products—(I own three
necklaces that always get compliments)—I love their community. As you may
remember, we partnered with HCHT for our Women of Valor essay contest. One of
my favorite contributions to that series was the story of Ra Noe, a HCHT
artisan and true woman of valor.  

For gifts, I recommend one of
the kachin necklaces made by Christine, or the woven eternity scarf made by Ra
Noe.

Prints

If you’ve been considering
purchasing an Old & New print since you saw the project featured on the blog a few months ago, today would be a great day to do it. Old & New donates proceeds from
print sales to Blood: Water Mission, a fantastic charity. For Cyber Monday,
they’re hoping to raise $300 in print sales. As a special offer, they’ve
reduced the prices in their Soceity6 shop today. With each print sale, they’ll
make $2 for Blood:Water Mission, which means if they sell 150 prints, they’ll
reach their goal of $1,000 donated this year—a mark that will provide a
rain-water catchment tank in Lwala, Kenya.  These are gorgeous prints.
You my recognize a few that have been featured on the blog:

Design by Brian Danaher for the Old & New Project

Design by Lindsey Mccormack for the Old & New project, used with permission.Chocolate

Don’t forget to buy fair
trade for you stocking stuffers!

My #1 favorite:  
Divine 70% Dark Chocolate with Raspberries

My #2 favorite: 
Equal Exchange Organic Dark Chocolate with Almonds

My #3 favorite: 
Green & Black’s Organic Dark Chocolate Espresso

Bath & Body

Founded in 1997 by Becca Stevens, an Episcopal priest on
Vanderbilt's campus, Magdalene is a residential program for women who have
survived lives of prostitution, trafficking, addiction and life on the streets.
Thistle Farms is the organization’s social
enterprise. The
women of valor enrolled in the program create natural body care products and
candles.

I
recommend the travel survival kit.

General

Pure Charity & The Legacy Project: So this is pretty cool. With Pure Charity, your everyday
purchases at stores like Target, Best Buy, and Walmart can earn you money back
in a personal giving fund.  All it will
cost you is a few minutes of time to sign up with Pure Charity. You
can still shop sales and promotional prices, and the rewards will add up with
no cost to you. And once you’ve racked up a little money in your fund, you can
in turn donate the money to a cause on Pure Charity. I suggest supporting the
Legacy Project from Help One Now. Some of our favorite bloggers—Sarah Bessey,
Kristen Howerton, Mary DeMuth, and Jen Hatmaker—are building a school in Haiti,
an I don’t know about you, but I dig the idea of a portion of my wrapping paper
purchases going toward this goal! 

Ten Thousand Villages: one of the world’s largest fair trade organizations and a
founding member of  the World Fair Trade Organization, Ten Thousand
Village has been around for a long time and has just about the best variety
you’ll find online. (They also have plenty of brick-and-mortar stores across the
country.) You can always count on beautiful, quality products from Ten Thousand
Villages.  They’ve got some pretty serious Cyber Monday deals going on
today.

http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/go...

Goats and Stuff (for others, not you)

From World Vision: Ducks ($18),
chickens ($25), or a goat ($75). In
Bolivia, I saw firsthand just how effective World Vision’s agricultural fund
can be. The gift of livestock helps families lift themselves out of poverty in
a way that is sustainable and dignifying. Last Christmas, we gave chickens in
honor of extended family members who live far away, and each of them received a
personalized Christmas card letting them know that a chicken had been given in
their name. It was a hit, and so much better than sending bulky packages or
gift cards they may or may not use. You can check out their gift catalog here. 

From Samaritan’s Purse: You know Operation Christmas Child
with the shoeboxes? Well my sister Amanda basically makes that happen. Okay, so
she has a lot of help, but making sure those boxes get filled and sent is a big
part of her job at Samaritan’s Purse. 
But SP does a lot more than Operation Christmas Child. The organization
is swift in responding to disaster relief and does amazing things to help
refugees around the world. You can check out their gift catalog here. 

From CWJC - Christian Women's Job Corp: This is another organization my sister has worked for (yeah, she's that kind of woman), and I know from firsthand experience it does amazing work. Right now, during the CWJC's "Be a Light" campaign, you can choose a "star" that will help empower a family in middle Tennessee break the cycle of poverty. $25 will provide free childcare for a child of a mom or dad enrolled in computer classes. $50 will provide a job coach to an unemployed job seeker. $125 will pay a single mom’s GED testing fee. $250 will enroll internationally-born residents in Conversational English Classes. $500 will provide food, rent assistance, and bus passes for an unemployed woman as she searches for jobs. $1,000 will enroll a GED graduate in a college/job training program. Learn more here. 

Christmas Cards

I love Unicef’s Christmas cards because they have so many bright and colorful ones to choose from. I buy them almost every year. But you can find a nice list of charities that make Christmas cards—from Autism Speaks to The Humane Society to The Make a Wish Foundation—here.

***

I’ve got my own little Cyber Monday deal today. Leave a
comment in the comment section with your own suggestions for gifts that give
back and you will automatically be entered to win a signed copy of A Year of Biblical
Womanhood. Contest runs through 12 a.m., November 27.

So, what gift ideas do you want to share?

Sunday Superlatives 11/25/12

Around the blogosphere...

Funniest Caption: 
Catalog Living with “Lighting a Fire Under You” 

Best Thanksgiving Series: 
Kristen Howerton reports from her family’s trip to Peru—the funny, the inspiring, and the scary. 

Best Imagery (nominated by Kelley Nikondeha) 
Amy Lepine Peterson with “Speaking Faith as a Second Language” 

“At some point, despite feeling like all my neural pathways for language were overgrown with weeds, I began to appreciate what happened when our communication was reduced to the lowest common denominator. Beauty existed in that simplicity. We agreed on the most basic things, and didn’t have to push beyond them. When words failed us, we took action. When my electric motorbike ran out of battery power on a lonely stretch of ricefield, I found a pregnant woman, my age, alone in her small house. She plugged in my bike and macheted through a coconut for me, pouring out the sweet milk of hospitality for the stranger… It was in Vietnam, when my English was slipping away in my first year of teaching, that my faith language began to be renewed. Out of the Bible Belt for the first time in my life, I met people who had literally never heard the story of Noah and the ark, or Esther and Mordecai, or Mary and Joseph. I was shocked. The words were all new to them, and that made them become brand new to me…”

Best Response:
N.T. Wright with “Women Bishops: It’s about the Bible, not fake ideas of progress”

“All Christian ministry begins with the announcement that Jesus has been raised from the dead. And Jesus entrusted that task, first of all, not to Peter, James, or John, but to Mary Magdalene. Part of the point of the new creation launched at Easter was the transformation of roles and vocations: from Jews-only to worldwide, from monoglot to multilingual (think of Pentecost), and from male-only leadership to male and female together. Within a few decades, Paul was sending greetings to friends including an “apostle” called Junia (Romans xvi, 7). He entrusted that letter to a “deacon” called Phoebe whose work was taking her to Rome. The letter-bearer would normally be the one to read it out to the recipients and explain its contents. The first expositor of Paul’s greatest letter was an ordained travelling businesswoman."

Best Reflection: 
Winn Collier with “Like Thunder Follows Lightening” 

“‘Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth,’ say Barth. ‘Grace evokes gratitude like the voice of an echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning.’” 

Best Discussion: 
RJS at Jesus Creed with “Job is innocent and he proves faithful”

“Longman has a serious discussion of the theological implications of the innocence of Job. As Christians we need to take the entire Bible into account. The story of Job does not negate the words of Paul in Romans, or render the atoning work of Christ unnecessary. But it should, perhaps, challenge some of our assumptions and presuppositions as we try to understand the nature of God’s relationship with his creation.”

Best Point: 
Kristen Rosser with “‘Men must be spiritual leaders’ – Real Life Consequences”

“A few minutes later, I asked her why. “He’s just not a spiritual leader,” she answered. After we parted ways, Shawn turned to me and said, “I can’t help wondering how many otherwise beautiful relationships have ended due to misconceptions about spiritual leadership.” 

Most Informative: 
Neil Godfrey with “Why New Testament Scholars Should Read Ancient Novels” 

“So Hock’s concluding message is that ancient novels are indispensable reading for New Testament scholars…Hock asserts that ancient novels are, ‘in a word, indispensable — for corroborating and clarifying any number of details in the New Testament and for gaining new insights into the central interests and claims of the New Testament, whether Christological or moral.” 

Most Instructive: 
Brian LePort with “Educating the local Church” 
From “Avoiding Quick and Easy Apologetics” - 

“The flip side of this coin is the danger of what I call “quick-and-easy apologetics”. I am fine with apologetics. Apologists have strengthened my faith in many areas over the years, even when I come to disagree with a wide variety of their arguments. I don’t know how useful apologetics function as a means of converting people, but I have found that writers ranging from C.S. Lewis to Michael Licona have caused me to think afresh about my beliefs in ways that encouraged me to be a “thinking Christian”. But “quick-and-easy apologetics” can be the dangerous side of apologetical works. Sometimes apologists are desperate to provide an “answer” and often the answer is overly simplistic, or even worse, wrong in such a way that it is obvious that the apologist wanted to provide an answer more than the apologist wanted to provide a careful, thoughtful response.”

Wisest: 
D.L. Mayfield with “Mutuality”

“so we are learning here about mutuality. how it is the slowest of slow-cooked meals (starting with planting seeds and all). it drives me batty, to be honest. i would love to march down these graffiti streets like a 60-year old nun, head held high, doing the work of the Lord. heavens, i would like to use the degree i paid thousands of dollars for, to teach people how to read and write and help make life more bearable here. i would love to see a need and pounce on it, fix it, serve somebody. because this has always been who i am. please, please don’t ask me to give it up. but i have been asked, and my fingers have been uncurling slowly. just being a neighbor is one of the hardest, most boring things in the world.”

Truest: 
Addie Zierman with “When it’s like baptism” 

“And who knows if it’s faith or writing or both, but you edit like mad, and you submerge yourself in the dark mystery of it. You relive it and rehash it and turn it in 15,000 words shorter, and it’s all a kind of baptism. You come out a little clean, a little healed, a little bit more whole.”

[A big congrats to Addie! I cannot wait to read this book.]

On my nightstand...

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead By Brene Brown












Flight Behavior: A Novel By Barbara Kingsolver












Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible By E. Randolph Richards, Brandon J. O'Brien



On the blog…

Most Popular Post: 
“The Real Evangelical Disaster”

“This, I believe, is the real evangelical disaster—not that Barack Obama is president and Mitt Romney is not, but that evangelicalism has gotten so enmeshed with politics, its success or failure can be gauged by an election.”

Most Popular Comment: 
In response to “The Real Evangelical Disaster,” Chris Routley wrote: 

It's so interesting that Mohler speaks about "the cause of Christ" being at risk by people not voting the way he wants. I've lost count of the number of conversations I've had over the past few months where I've expressed my concerns at how the merging of right-wing conservative politics and evangelical Christianity that he endorses has in itself hurt the cause of Christ more than anything else in recent history. 

Having "good Christians" in office hasn't brought a single soul to Christ. Passing laws to make "unChristian" things illegal hasn't saved anyone. Supporting Chik-fil-A didn't demonstrate to a single person that they are loved by God and welcome in our churches to learn more about this God who loves so extravagantly.

What those things HAVE done is turn people away from God, and from wanting anything to do with the people who deem to speak on His behalf.

Want to help the "cause of Christ," Mr Mohler? Stop worrying about politics and start worrying about loving the people who need to know Him.

So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog?