I would like to state for the record that I'm a social justice loving Christian.

This Just Makes Me Happy

Yes, I do do theology with my stomach. And I would totally give a Food Network show hosted by a priest a chance. If I had cable, that is.

Apron Vestments

Obama = Kara Thrace

Harbinger of the Apocalypse and all that good stuff.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

As is usual when Tim LaHaye and the monstrous work of bad writing and worse theology known as Left Behind is brought up, the Metra is left to say: What, what now? Of course, Rachel Maddow said: What, what now? with far more style than I can muster.

Question, if the Anti-Christ will be a commie socialist, why was the early Christian community described in Acts functioning as a commune?

No, Georgia, just no....

And in yet another stunning display of anti-intellectualism, the GOP in Georgia attempts to ban classes (graduate-level classes!) on queer theory. (Via Feministing.)

Doubtlessly, they are aware of the academic throwdown between queer theory and gay and lesbian theory and are only doing this to help out the gays and lesbians.

I wonder how badly the field of queer theology would break them.... And I'm sorry folks, but your basic readings for queer theory....so less steamy than a good ol' time with Plato or even a decent chunk of Christian saints' lives.

"born?" oh, alternet....

By born, certainly you mean "is fondly rocking the cradle of its great, great, great grandbabies"....although, yes, the scale of organization is certainly growing.

There's absolutely nothing new about the evangelicals and fundies hard-selling "Biblical" submission as liberation for women. Nothing new. I swear I'm remembering a similar argument being made in the 1880-90s in the Gospel Advocate as regards first-wave feminists (who didn't really do much to challenge gender norms), but don't quote me there. It's been a few summers.

And, actually, Twisty Faster is definitely onto something with her "women hate you" label. The worst of the brainwashing is carried out by the older women. Or, as is frequently becoming the case, by only slightly older girls who are honored with the position of a young women's ministry -- where they can make the marry and submit model look oh-so-cool to the younger things. This is possibly because the menfolk don't see one or two nutty unwomen-in-training to be much of a real threat.

Minister too tired for seven days of sex.

(yes, that was CNN's headline, deal)



I wonder what he would think of the early Christian practice of celibate marriage. And I'm bothered (but not hot) from the emphasis on wives realizing they needed to be more available to their husbands, and not so much the other way around. Seriously though, this is about the third evangelical minister I've heard of running something like this in the past year or so.

The Hegemony of Representation

Two semesters ago, whilst reading an article on unofficial Soviet art, I encountered the quite useful term -- a hegemony of representation. I can't remember the technical definition, so here's how I internalized the term: what you get when one ideology or model dominates discussion and dicourse to the point of excluding all other models. By creating and maintaining a hegemony of representation, one group within society can effectively oppressive minority groups whose lives and realities are not reflected by the dominant paradigm. Pretty much a common sensical no brainer. But a useful concept when you want to analyze political function.

I am not now, nor will ever be, a member of the pre-pregnant party.

The Apostate on pregnancy, abortion rights, and bodily control.

I agree. One hundred percent. You should see me freak out when I think too much about the shard of wood embedded in my leg -- the drugs I would have to be on to carry a pregnancy to terms would probably result in a miscarriage anyway. Reproductive control is psychologically important.

And read down in the comments, it's also true that women are simply expected to hand over control of our bodies far more frequently than men, and with no fuss. If a man avoids doctors, the response is a shrug -- boys will be boys. If a woman avoids doctors like the plague and maintains an extreme distrust of medicine -- we're categorized as being irresponsible. Probably because for a good chunk of our lives we're categorized as "pre-pregnant."

Yes, Picard would totally kick Kirk's Behind

And I don't know enough about Doctor Who to make a prediction, but I totally wish I could see this production of Hamlet.

As usual, Fox News Should Be Ashamed

The story is that Mary Winkler has been awarded full custody of her daughters, who will continue to have visits with their paternal grandparents.

Unfortunately, the media vilification of Ms. Winkler continues with Fox News in the lead. Their headline for the balanced AP article: "Killer Mom Gets Kids" with a blurb that only identifies Matthew Winkler as a preacher and Mary Winkler as the convicted killer. (The screencap below is of Fox's home page, which I frankly don't care to link to.





I've previously ranted about similar treatment of Ms. Winkler by the Memphis Commercial Appeal and CNN, but that biased coverage pales in comparison to this travesty of journalism.

Fair and balanced, Fox News? Yeah. Better word is hypocritical.

h/t to Fran

More on the Knoxville shooting

Two pieces of analysis from the writers at Alas, A Blog.

The Dangers of Demagoguery

My additional comment here is that Tennesseans have experienced not one, but two major incidents of demagoguery put into action this year. The first was the burning of the Islamic Center in Columbia, TN. And now this. Maybe Tennessee will manage to wake up at some point and recognize their political grandstanding does actually hurt people.

Also from Alas: Guns, Killing, and People

Yay, Kiera Knightley!

Kiera Knightley is insisting that her breasts not be digitally enhanced in the publicity for her upcoming movie. What a novel concept!

Knoxville Church Shooting

A gunman walked into a Knoxville area Unitarian-Universalist church yesterday and opened fire, killing two members and injuring others. His actions probably were influenced by the church putting up a sign declaring support for GLBT persons. The Knoxville police report that in a letter he wrote he claimed to target the church because of it's "liberal stance on things."

There's a number of blogposts following this with more info:
Box Turtle Bulletin: here, here, and here
Pam's House Blend
and
The Wild Hunt

Eye rolls of the Day

First and foremost -- Christians feel "offended" by English translations of the Koran being left on their doors. Read more at Barthlomew's Notes on Religion. (Via. The Wild Hunt and The Jaded Hippy.)

Now how many Gideon Bibles and Chick tracts have I scored lately? Hmm...

Second, via Ramblings a gay man is suing Zondervan and Thomas Nelson claiming that the references to homosexuality in the KJV and NKJV and probably NIV have violated his constitutional rights by causing him emotional suffering.

The intent of the publisher was to design a religious, sacred document to reflect an individual opinion or a group's conclusion to cause "me or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence ... including murder," Fowler wrote.

You know, I'm sure that the translations in question have caused him pain and contribute to the anti-gay bigotry of evangelical Christian culture. I'm inclined to think that the verses implied are, in fact, mistranslated. (Of course, I also think that to a great extent they are untranslatable.) And as for Zondervan's study materials, I don't think too highly of them. But, seriously, is this the best way to go about educating people as to the problems with those translations and study materials? And to paraphrase answers to one family of anti-porn arguments, the Bible doesn't kill people, violent bigots kill people.

In defense of the rest of us on the super-progressive side of world, this is not how we generally operate. I shall now return to reading subversively. ;)

Let's Talk About Sex

The following theoretical was written as a response to a question about how to determine correct sexual ethics on a rather nicely varied discussion board of the Christian persuasion. I'm debating whether or not to post it, and probably sign it -- the celibate libertine.

I’m very wary of declarations of the “Biblical” code of sexuality. I think to a very large extent concepts don’t translate well between 1st and 2nd centuries C.E. and today.

The Biblical view of sexuality is complicated, to say the very least. For instance, if I said that rape (in the modern sex-without-consent understanding) is immoral, I would hope that I wouldn’t get much argument. But if you consider the way marriage has worked for the vast majority of human history, an awful lot of sex-without-consent has taken place while being dubbed marriage. (Ladies, close your eyes and think of England!) The idea of consent is constructed in a very different way – for instance, modern ethics would insist (and rightly so) on the consent of both parties involved; whereas, historically, the consent of the fathers involved was considered to be more important to forming a legitimate marriage or sexual union. Examples off the top of my head: Lot offering his daughters to be raped and the rule in Deuteronomy 22: 28-29, where if a man “rapes” a unbetrothed girl he’s to pay off the father and marry her. (I recognize that the law at least ensures financial security for the woman involved, or perhaps just relives her father of needing to provide for her – but I think it still illustrates the vastly different understanding of “moral” behavior in different times.)

The Bible is also an extremely androcentric book, which is another point to consider. There was a thread on another board about whether or not masturbation was moral. Well, the directly applicable Bible verses relate only to male masturbation. If we limit the scope to the Old Testament, this also applies to homosexuality. Male homosexuality is condemned, but there’s no mention of female homosexuality. Much of the Bible also assumes a male audience – one illustrative quip I’ve heard is that if a group of lesbian women were instructed that they were not to lie with a man as with a woman, the response would be something along the lines of “well, of course!”

My point is not that the Bible, Church tradition, community standards, what have you, should be ignored -- a egotistic standard of sexuality that is not in conversation with these and other sources is certainly not going to be moral. My point, which I think, a number of us here would agree on to varying degrees, is that reasonable people could disagree of the exact parameters of "moral" sexuality in good faith.

Working from Jesus’s command to love your neighbor as yourself, and the recognition of the basic personhood of women, I think the most fundamental rule for any Christian of any gender would be that exploitative sex and nonconsensual sex are absolutely wrong. The description of marriage in Ephesians 5 is one of the relatively few positive descriptions of human sexuality in the Bible. Frequently, the headship of the husband is emphasized as the defining feature, but it really is more proper to emphasize the idea that the husband is to love his wife as his own flesh. The trust, love, and loss of egotism in the relationship between the two partners is the defining element.* In fact, my feminist addition, is that the androcentric nature of the text should lead one to emphasize the action of the husband as the defining factor. (Now if we harmonize this with Galatians 3:16, treat husband and wife as arbitary constructs of human society, things get interesting.)

Depending on one’s understanding of the Bible, Church tradition, which Church tradition, I also believe that there can be a number of good faith understandings of how that principle should be put into practice. Additionally, while I firmly disagree, I don’t take issue with the belief, based on a literal reading of the Bible or logical paths, that homosexual activity is a sin provided that the person holding said belief treats all people with basic human respect. And now, I'll piss people off and say that treating all people with basic human respect means NOT forcing your opinions on what constitutes sin onto someone else's life via the secular government.

‘Tis complicated. To not even bring up the issue of exactly how the categories of immoral, unethical, and sinful should be broken up. Cheerios!

*There's varied several texts I'm drawing this idea from: First, a podcast from Ancient Faith Radio, you can find at: http://audio.ancientfaith.com/paradosis/par_2008-06-18_pc.mp3
For an extremely different and yet similar understanding see Vladimir Soloviev's essay, "The Meaning of Love" (which was actually written to defend a long-running affair). It's published in the collection The Heart of Reality, trans. Vladimir Wozniuk.

mmm...catharsis

My excuse for seeing Wanted is that I, as a Russian major, must support the foray of director Timur Bekmambetov into American cinema.

My reason is that he's a slick and stylish director, and I like slick and stylish movies -- even if they're a bit low on the substance part. That and I'm in a mood where an ultraviolent flick is good for the mental health.

To begin, Wanted meets my basic demand -- it was worth the ticket price. (5.50 -- yay, for the local cinema's ladies' night!) Bekmambetov used an interesting series of cuts to keep the exposition from being too dull. (Can the Time Warp be dull?) The car chases were thrilling. The violence was creative and artful. The pacing felt a little slow at moments, but overall, it worked.

The movie relies heavily on a voice-over from James McAvoy. I'm not certain how I feel about it. I suspect it was a nod to Fight Club. The film also bears some strong similarities to Bekmambetov's campy Russian vampire film of gloriousness Night Watch. Both films open with a lesson in the history of the film's universe -- in Night Watch, the formation of a truce between the armies of light and darkness and here, the formation of the mysterious Fraternity. Both films have an underlying theme of creating and preserving balance (more on that later). The parallels between Wesley and Anton (the protagonist of Night Watch) are extensive -- wimpy dude suddenly finds himself killing things in visually nifty ways. And there are daddy issues.

Oh yes, and Konstantin Khabetsky -- who played Anton in Night Watch and appears to be Johnny Depp to Bekmambetov's Tim Burton -- appears as a Russian assassin with a collection of pet rats and a damn good bottle of vodka. (Platinum Russki Standart -- I wants it, precious!) His character is a little "off" -- I think blazhennii might be the Russian word for him -- and throughly delightful. We also have an Easter egg with the buzzing flies. Poor flies.

James McAvoy did well with his character he was believable whether he was wimping out, babbling in terror, or kicking ass. Morgan Freeman was predictably solid and created enough ambiguity around his character to make the twist that shall not be revealed fairly satisfying. Angelina Jolie was the weak link. Yes, she's hot with the guy and tattoos. But she apparently has two modes in this movie. Grim face and smirk. What happened to the Angelina Jolie of Girl, Interrupted?

If you go to this film, go expecting style, enterntainment, creative ways of inflicting a lot of damage. Do not go if you want a lot of substance.

But lest it be said that film has no substance at all, I will argue that it has some. The theme of balance provides some meat -- particularly if you wanted to force the film into conversation with the larger body of Russian philosophical work on the difference between egotism and individuality. Our assassin squad seems to operate with a binary of the wolves and the sheep. Are you going to be a sheep, blindly stumbling to your "destiny," or are you going to be a wolf and take destiny into your own hands? The movie doesn't provide a clear answer -- which I do think was on purpose -- and I like that. I wish that the film had taken a little more time to explore not playing that game at all -- which is suggested by the wishes of Wesley's father for his son, but whatever. Summer action flick.

Also, no one in their right mind should bring their six year old to this film. Someone did. The film is rated R for a reason. Shame on you, parent who did so!

WTF?

Don't ask how my internet browsing ended up at beinggirl.com. But, eww! Shouldn't there be some sort of public outrage over this garbage being handed to girls?

"Shaving is a part of growing up. It's ladylike and fun so EMBRACE it."

Is bad grammar ladylike as well? That one I may have in spades. (Yes, the comma in the quote is also missing on the website.)

And just ugh! Not that I feel the need to be embraced as ladylike with my gloriously hairy legs, but . . . how on earth did this myth that women shaving their legs is somehow natural and innate become so f'ing pervasive? Oh, yeah, marketing. Like this crap!

Shaving one's legs is not a part of growing up. It is a part of a particular ideal of feminine beauty that one should feel free to participate in or reject.

As my sister -- who does shave -- says: They're your legs!

Discernment is a Big Word

When one is the resident of a Religious Studies department, one sees a lot of flyers advertising meetings for the pre-ministry kids on how to discern the call to the ministry. With the combination of my background in CofC land and my cynicism of organized religion – I typically ignored them. Other than stopping to think: only RS people can come up with such a impressive sounding way to phrase that classic post-adolescent problem: what the heck am I doing with my life?

Now, the Metra is finding that she wishing she had better heuristic devices for dealing with said question. Discernment might have to be a foreign word to adopt into the vocabulary – like theois, or Eucharist, or sanctuary.

So why isn’t discernment a strong part of the Southern Restoration Movement heritage? Part of it probably the anti-intellectualism you get in CofC land. Discernment is just a fancy word with too many syllables. The Christian Chronicle has a rather nifty and informative little article up on the history of the Harding Graduate School of Religion. It touches several times of this anti-intellectualism. Even someone from my generation has probably heard the crack that Harding is where you go to graduate from religion. This attitude goes hand in hand with the notion that the Bible is sufficient for its own interpretation, and the sneaky notion that there is only one correct interpretation of the meaning of scripture which will be blatantly obvious to all people irregardless of gender, socio-economic status, race, sexual orientation, etc.

(At the point in time, a quip repeated by Deryn Guest in When Deborah Met Jael comes to mind. If the audience of the verse: “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman” is a lesbian woman, the answer is a hearty “well, of course!” At this point in time, I ask – how are we defining man and woman in this context? The social location of the person reading the text – it’s quite important.)

You can guess where I fall on the question. Firmly on the side of being an overly intellectual smart-ass.

But I think the absence of an idea of a process of discernment is also an effect of the CofC’s take on the priesthood of all [male] believers. For a long time, the idea of having a minister paid by the congregation was heresy. A preacher should have a job on the side to support himself (and his family). This is less en vogue today, but there’s still this assumption that every boy in the congregation should aspire to hold a church office. More likely the pressure is to aspire to be a deacon or an elder – the notion that God might call certain people to these positions and not others appears to be non-existent. (The notion that God might not be calling all persons in possession of an uterus to marriage and children is even more non-existent.) There is, however, a lot of effort put into training all the little boys for their roles in public worship. The attitude might be well described as: of course, God is calling you to lead the church, why would you need to discern that?

Of course, I’m not at all convinced that the Divine works like that. Nor am I convinced that view of the Church is Biblical, if we’re placing a great deal of emphasis on that element.

And, now, I’m off to continue looking for a good heuristic device to make off with. Lock up the techniques of discernment, my friends, Metra is breaking out the hunter's camo!

Embodiment, bodies, resurrections, all that fun stuff.

If you're looking for something thought provoking to read, you should check out this article on debates over the practice of cremation in Judaism. It raises a number of questions about the psychological benefits of funerals, the problems with modern burial practices, and the ecological impacts thereof.

Continuing Commentary on Mary Winkler

...from your friendly neighborhood Restoration Movement feminist guerrilla.

In latest news, the custody battle for the girls continues. I've said before that I'm not certain what would be best for the girls. There needs to be substantial proof that Ms. Winkler's mental health has stabilized before full custody for her should be considered, and I haven't heard anything that isn't a rumor to suggest that the girls aren't being well cared for by their grandparents. (I do think that visitation rights for Ms. Winkler are in order at this time and am delighted to here that she's been visiting with her daughters.) In any case, my sympathy is first and foremost with the girls.

That's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how Ms. Winkler has been subtly condemned by the media. Case in point, today's article from the Commercial Appeal.

The first paragraph identifies Ms. Winkler as "the woman convicted of killing her preacher husband" (emphasis mine). Now, in the area in which the CA circulates, identifying Matthew Winkler as a preacher is automatically going to build up sympathy for him. The fact that Ms. Winkler was only convicted of voluntary manslaughter because she was able provide sufficient evidence to back her witness that Matthew Winkler was abusive is not mentioned until the third paragraph. The order in which the information is presented is a subtle sign that the media has condemned Ms. Winkler and privileges the image of the "preacher husband" over her testimony.

Yes. I find it a bit problematic.