Archive for April, 2005

Thursday Short Poem: Kelleher’s St. Peter’s

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 7, 2005
in Poetry
. 1 Comment

Much of the world’s attention this week is on Rome; this is one of the few poems I know that refers specifically to St. Peter’s Basilica.  Tim Kelleher and I had similar experiences there; my one visit to the Vatican came in October, 2000 — it was remarkable and difficult to put into words.  I wish I had been there at midnight, as he was.

St. Peter’s Square

The great bell tolls midnight
stirring echoes: emperors,
martyrs, prophets in chains.

Above Rome’s Seven Hills
life and death still wrestle
in a match already won.

The last toll rolls like a tide
through Bernini’s columns,
over the ramparts, and disappears.

And for just an instant I am
at the center of all my selves,
before I set out head-bowed,

stone by stone across the piazza
with no one in the world to tell.

I like "life and death still wrestle/ in a match already won…"

Another round of search terms

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 6, 2005
in Blogging
. 3 Comments

Some of the search terms folks have used to find me in the past 12 hours include:

convincing childfree women to change their minds (I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that one)

white men married to black women (later this year, bub)

anti-feminist backlash (silly searcher, there’s no such thing)

older men, younger women (at least twelve different searches for this)

are women hurting themselves with loads of college debt (good question)

rape cases, defense 

female circumcision pics (Yikes. I hope that’s for research and not arousal)

cats porn peta (Feline pornography?  Has PETA stooped that low?)

friends with benefits (Usually, it’s the guy who benefits.  Ask around.)

i want to block porn on my office computer (come work at PCC, we’ll hook you up)

how much did Jane Mansfield weigh (poor woman gets decapitated forty years ago, and folks still care?)

catholics object to use of tampons  (not once they learn basic biology and theology they don’t)

fictional stories about men with boobs

hiring domestic cleaners feminism (Depends on what you pay, IMHO)

men’s soccer nude (Yikes, blocking a free kick just got tougher)

hugo sex  (Some of the MRAs are clearly asking this as a question)

asexual child abuse feminism  (where to start?)

sensitive men suppressing masculinity (Yup, I founded SMSM years ago. We have a secret plot to rob robust males of their natural male energy.  Someone found out. Uh oh.)

More on the retreat, and the smell of boys in the morning

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 6, 2005
in All Saints Pasadena, Men and Masculinity, Youth and Youth ministry
. 5 Comments

I’ve been thinking more about this past weekend’s retreat.  Specifically, I’ve been thinking about boys.  (In the era of pedophile priests and Michael Jackson’s misfortunes, that’s a dangerous thing to say, I suppose!)

One of the things I love about working with the teen guys at All Saints is getting the chance to watch young men grow.  I’ve been working with All Saints boys for several years now; guys who were high school freshmen when I started are now college sophomores.  I’ve witnessed them grow a foot or more; I’ve watched them start to shave, and I’ve watched them make the often painful transition towards young manhood.

When I first started working with youth, about five or six years ago, I was scared of working closely with teenage boys.  The anxiety was specific:  what if the guys didn’t think I was cool?   What if they thought I was just a clumsy geek, which is how I thought of myself when I was 15?  My own memories of an awkward adolescence haunted me.  So in a moment of worry, I expressed that fear to a former youth pastor, Sarah,  at All Saints.  She laughed, gently, and said "Hugo, they’re not thinking about you.  They’re wondering what you think of them!"  Of course, she was absolutely right.  Teen boys don’t need an adult man trying to prove his coolness to them.  Teen boys need adult men who are comfortable in their own masculinity, and who are more interested in affirming and nurturing and guiding them than in getting validated by them.  I’d like to think I’ve become one of those men.

As an ENFJ (or ENFP), I tend to like to connect with other people on a "feeling" level, and do so quickly.  Working with teen boys was, for that reason, initially a great challenge for me.  Skills that worked well with young women (lots of eye contact, a gentle request to "Tell me what’s going on") tended to overwhelm most 14 and 15-year old guys.  I learned that feelings were only going to come out in certain contexts.  With some boys, that may mean during a long hike, when we can talk without facing each other.  For others, it will come only after a long discussion about whatever it is that the guy is interested in.  I’ve worked with teen boys who were fascinated with baseball statistics (which I find dull) and with boys obsessed with video games (which I find infinitely duller).  Yet I forced myself not merely to express polite appreciation for their passions, but to take an active interest in what they were doing so that I could ask intelligent questions — and gain their trust. 

Kids, especially boys, need to be validated for their competence in something, be it role-playing games or football or their encyclopedic knowledge of old-school hip-hop music.  (Let me tell you, I once suffered through a lot of Grandmaster Flash to connect with one fella.)   I began to sense that too many adults demand instant candor and self-awareness from teenage boys.  When a teen is acting up, he may be asked by a well-meaning adult "What’s bothering you?"  Though it’s obvious the boy is upset, I’ve found that relatively few young men feel comfortable immediately disclosing what they’re feeling.  Heck, they may not even be aware of what they’re feeling,or they may lack the vocabulary to accurately describe their own emotional terrain.  I’m no expert, mind you.  But I have found that it’s critical to connect with boys on intellectual and physical levels before pushing for emotional disclosure.  In my experience, it’s this that makes connecting with adolescent boys so much more difficult than connecting with adolescent girls.  It’s also what makes working with the guys so rewarding.  (Which is not to say that I don’t love the girls I work with just as much.)

I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping in cabins (and on the floors of our youth center at church) with boys all around.  As any male youth leader will tell you, there’s nothing quite like the scent of a boys’ bunk house first thing in the morning on the second or third day of a retreat, when most of the guys — including the youth leaders — have not bothered to shower!   (It’s amazing, really, the odors that pour forth from eleven sleeping male bodies in one cramped space!)  This weekend, as my fellow youth leader and I woke the boys up and prepared them for their day, we laughed and joked with them about the mess, the smell, and the sheer delight of being in all-male space together.   I loved being there, the odor and the dirt and the snoring notwithstanding. 

As I’ve written before, as a teenage boy, all of my good friends were girls.  I disliked and distrusted men and boys, even as I craved their approval.  Over the years, slowly and painfully, I processed through my issues with men, and came to the point where I now have a community of men with whom I interact on a regular basis.  My goal with the boys of All Saints is to help provide them with what I didn’t have when I was a teen — a warm, nurturing environment where adult men affirm, validate and challenge them. It’s a chance to move away from the theories I espouse on this blog and in my classroom, and put them into concrete practice.  It’s a great challenge, and it’s an unsurpassed joy.  I love my guys.

The difficult case of Professor Pluss

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 5, 2005
in Abortion, Christianity, Feminism, People, Politics and Teaching
. 21 Comments

From my fellow Cliopatriarchs, I learned yesterday about the rather strange case of Jacques Pluss, who has been dismissed from his adjunct teaching job at Fairleigh Dickinson University.  Professor Pluss, it seems, is a member — indeed a leader — in the American Nazi Party.

Pluss, who holds a Ph.D. in my original field, medieval history, was teaching Western Civilization at FDU when he was abruptly dismissed in the middle of the semester.  The official story is that his dismissal had nothing to do with his politics; rather, he had missed six or seven class meetings this semester and was let go due to these excessive absences.  But whatever the reason for his dismissal, an FDU dean made it clear that his politics alone would bar him from ever receiving a future teaching assignment:

It’s not politics, it’s hate mongering,’’ (Dean John) Snyder said. “It’s just hatred directed at the very students he taught. His position would be untenable on the basis of student welfare. It’s our job to see to it that students are treated with respect and security.”

The problem is, as this article from the FDU newspaper makes clear, Pluss was scrupulous about keeping his Nazi politics hidden from his students, many of whom were African-American or Jewish. One student is quoted as saying

…he never once taught propaganda or expressed his views in class. He came off as being liberal in his thinking. An incident arose in class about racism, and he appeared to be very anti-racist.

There’s been some discussion at Cliopatria in the comments below this post. 

I have to say that I am troubled at Pluss’ dismissal.  On the one hand, I find it hard to believe (and frankly an embarrassment) that a University of Chicago Ph.D. could end up as a flak for a Nazi Party. (I won’t link to their sites, but it’s easy to find the various Nazi parties in this country.  They seem to be like Presbyterians, always going into schism.  No further analogy between Presbys and Nazis intended!)  On the other hand, if he really was successful in keeping his extreme views out of the classroom (and the students suggest he was), then I cannot accept the idea that public institutions ought to bar professors from the classroom on the basis of beliefs they hold outside the classroom, however radical and abhorrent those beliefs may be.  In this sense, I’m a firm liberal.

I’m obviously no Nazi.  But I am an evangelical Christian male teaching women’s studies.  In my private life, I’m staunchly anti-abortion.  Though I’m still in my period of self-imposed silence from blogging on the subject, any visitor to my blog will know this — and obviously, many students visit my blog.  But I do everything I can to be scrupulously fair about the issue in my women’s studies classes.  I allude to having worked with folks on both sides of the issue, but I don’t say where I stand today.   It’s vital that my students feel that the material on such a sensitive subject is being presented impartially.

I have been told more than once by pro-choice feminists that it is problematic for me, a straight white Christian pro-life male, to teach the one class in the entire college that focuses heavily on reproductive rights issues!  I insist, over and over again, that my biology ought not to trump my teaching ability.  It is the worst sort of ghettoizing to suggest that only women can teach women’s history, only blacks teach African-American history, and so forth.  At the same time, those of us who are "outsiders" by virtue of race or sex have an obligation to be especially fair-minded and sensitive, particularly to the concerns of our students, most of whom are likely to be members of the particular group under discussion.

Many students find my blog.  If my students find this blog, they will learn about my love for chinchillas, my upcoming wedding, my passion for sports.  They will learn of my various strange spiritual peregrinations.  They will learn of my commitment to consistent-life politics and theology, and will learn of my particular brand of Christian feminism.  They’ll learn about marathoning and Mennonites, the joys of tenure and tattoos.  In other words, they’ll get a fuller picture of who I am than they will in the classroom.  The same thing is true of Professor Pluss’s students; when they visit his Nazi website, they’ll find  out who he "really is".  I’d imagine his students might be offended, and some of his students of color might be particularly horrified.  But what if a young woman, say one who had recently survived an abortion and is enrolled in my class, discovered my site and was offended?  What if she questioned my ability to continue to teach her, given my (somewhat ambivalent) commitment to the pro-life cause?  How is my case different from that of Professor Pluss? (Besides the fact that I have tenure!) Obviously, I think my own gently evangelical politics are a good deal more congenial than his, but that’s a highly subjective conclusion, isn’t it?

If Pluss was fired for his absences, so be it.  But Dean Snyder’s remarks above chill me a bit, and not because I have even the remotest sympathy for Nazi politics.  They chill me because I know that in some sense, he and I are similar in that our public lives outside the classroom call into question our fitness to teach certain courses.  And that troubles me immensely.

“No story but his own”: more on divorce and responsibility — UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 5, 2005
in Marriage and Men and Masculinity
. 22 Comments

A follow-up to last night’s link.  In responding to my piece last week on Divorce, Blame and Taking Responsibility, my anonymous critic wrote:

I find it interesting that Hugo would imply that men need to do something on the level of just "sucking it up and being a man." He wants them to be self-critical and eschew any notion of seeing themselves as victims. In this manner, Hugo affirms a traditional notion of masculinity: Men are primarily responsible, if not solely responsible, for resolving any personal problems they may have with women. Someone in another age might the express the sentiment thusly: "If you can’t take care of your business with the little lady at home, what else can you not take care of?" But from other writings by Hugo, you would think he would abandon such an outdated notion of masculinity.

Frankly, I can see how my friend came to this conclusion.  Let me say this:

Taking responsibility for one’s life is a very different thing from "sucking it up."   I’ve always believed that marriage (and divorce) is not a 50/50 game, or a 75/75 game, but a 100/100 proposition.  That means that each party in the marriage is completely responsible for his or her actions.   Thus in the aftermath of a divorce, it’s wrong to rail about the speck in your ex’s eye until you have first ruthlessly examined the log in your own.   When you are focused on the wrongs that your former partner inflicted, you do nothing to help yourself grow up.

After my divorces, I cried.  Lots.  I spent thousands and thousands of dollars on therapy. (Something that I found immensely helpful, by the way, and recommend to everyone.)   I prayed constantly, and sought out spiritual direction. I did lots of journaling.  I logged plenty of miles in the mountains with my friends, running with guys who listened to me as I slowly processed through the pain.  Crying and journaling and therapy do not constitute "sucking it up".  They aren’t compatible with traditional "sturdy oak" masculinity.

But though I did have some anger at my ex-wives, my therapists and spiritual advisers and good friends all helped me (gently) to focus my energy on my own part in the end of these marriages.  I’ll confess I often resisted; after all, it’s deeply satisfying to play the victim, and to self-righteously condemn one’s spouse for his or her myriad shortcomings!  But you know, it gets tiring being angry all the time.  It doesn’t help you heal, and it doesn’t help you grow, and it doesn’t help you become a better human being.  My friends and advisers wanted better for me, thank God, and I wanted better for myself. 

In all human relationships, there are at least two sides to every story.  This is a point made by theologians, great writers, and decent marital therapists.  But as a man and a Christian one at that, I know I must focus on my own sin and my own shortcomings in order to become who it was that I was meant to be.  In this regard, I often think of this line from the Horse and His Boy, one of the books in C.S. Lewis’  Narnia Chronicles, which I reread every other year or so.  When Shasta, the protagonist of this particular volume, asks Aslan (God) about someone else, he gets this reply:

Child", said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.

No one any story but his own.  As Christians, as adult human beings, I think there’s much for us to reflect on there.  Lewis doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about other people, and shouldn’t have deep and radical compassion for our fellow humans.  But we must remember that ultimately, our stories are our own — they are what we and God make together, and we are co-creators of our lives with Him.  When we focus on the faults of others, or worry obsessively about the sins of others, we avoid taking responsibility for the outcome of our own story. 

To refuse to play the blame game is not "sucking it up."  It’s not heroic masculinity.  It’s called being a grown-up, taking charge of one’s own spiritual and emotional destiny, accepting responsibility for one’s sins and shortcomings, and humbly but courageously seeking to change and grow.

UPDATE:  A couple of the commenters below, especially Michael, talk about how hard it is to cope with a divorce when things get ugly.  In my last divorce, I felt at times as if I wasn’t being treated fairly from a financial standpoint.  Whenever I felt that way, I turned to this passage of Scripture:

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

To be a Christian in divorce is to daily ask yourself, why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?  That’s the question to ask when your ex is making unfair demands.  I’ve been there.

Rape, Blame, and a parody of Hugoboy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 4, 2005
in Blogging, Links and Men's Movement
. 13 Comments

I have a critic: check out Rape, Blame, and Taking Responsibility (A Parody of HugoBoy). Have a visit, it’s not the usual MRA sort of thing at all.

Musings on John Paul II

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 4, 2005
in Christianity, People and Politics
. 28 Comments

How do I blog Pope John Paul II?

Let me suggest some links to things that have struck me that you might not have seen.  Read Uwe Siemon-Netto’s He Was My Pope Too, a fine evangelical Protestant reflection on John Paul II.  Excerpt:

Who else but John Paul II gave voice to my faith and my values in 130 countries? Who else posited personal holiness and theological clarity against postmodern self-deception and egotism? Who else preached the gospel as tirelessly as this man?

The Guardian has not one but two appalling obituaries.  Terry Eagleton’s He Has Blood on His Hands is, well, embarrassing.  Eagleton refers to JPII’s "neanderthal attitude towards women", and calls him in summation

one of the greatest disasters for the Christian church since Charles Darwin.

Charming.  The lead obituary is not much better.  It includes this remarkable declaration:

More divisive was his concept of a "culture of death" as he lambasted both the death penalty and abortion, which alienated many potential allies for social justice.

Well, his prophetic consistency on these two issues (he only gradually became a strong opponent of capital punishment) was one of the reasons I loved him so very much.  Even before my own conversion to the principle of the seamless garment, it was John Paul II whose teaching introduced me to the consistent-life ethic that I have come to embrace.  As most folks should know, the phrases "gospel of life" and "gospel of death" appear first in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae. 

I remember the first time I read this excerpt from that encyclical:

And how can we fail to consider the violence against life done to millions of human beings, especially children, who are forced into poverty, malnutrition and hunger because of an unjust distribution of resources between peoples and between social classes? And what of the violence inherent not only in wars as such but in the scandalous arms trade, which spawns the many armed conflicts which stain our world with blood? What of the spreading of death caused by reckless tampering with the world’s ecological balance, by the criminal spread of drugs, or by the promotion of certain kinds of sexual activity which, besides being morally unacceptable, also involve grave risks to life?

The secular left would love this — save for the bit about the "morally unacceptable sexual activity".  The right might embrace it, save for the suggestion that "reckless tampering with the world’s ecological balance" is a real problem, and not, as most on the right would have it, a pseudo-scientific fantasy cooked up by the enemies of progress.  Happily for those of us in the consistent-life community, John Paul spoke our language.  Heck, he gave us our language!

His words on the death penalty were heartening and clear:

…the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society.  Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

As the former governor of Texas and a fan of the pope’s "culture of life", would you care to comment on the phrase "practically non-existent", Mr. Bush?

Sigh.  I wish my brothers and sisters on the Christian right would not be so politely dismissive of the Holy Father’s fairly explicit environmentalism and anti-death penalty positions.  I wish my brothers and sisters on the left would pay more attention to his words on sexuality, the body, abortion, and euthanasia.

I was eleven when he became the pontiff.  Even then, I was interested in religion and history, and had followed the decline of Paul VI, the election and tragically brief papacy of the "smiling pope" (John Paul I), and then the election of Karol Wojtyla.  As a fiercely secular, left-wing teen, I joined my family in spluttering indignation at his anti-abortion, pro-child pronouncements.  In college, when I became a Catholic, I became a huge fan.   Even after I left Rome, I remained in awe of him, and more than in awe, a bit in love with him and everything he was and everything he stood for.

"Once a Catholic, always a Catholic" they say.  Frankly, I often daydream about going back to the Catholic Church.  (Every time my new issue of First Things comes in the mail, for starters.)  Three divorces and four marriages make that hard, I know.  I have no intention of reconciling with my first wife, and no desire to get any of those marriages annulled.  (The whole idea of annulment bothers me immensely.  It’s a mulligan for marriage, and I don’t like the idea.  I’d rather carry the stigma — if there is one — of multiple divorces.)  I’ve belonged to many churches and called myself many things, but in some sense, I think I’ll always be Catholic. 

Perhaps I am too obstinate to come back to Rome.  But John Paul II made me want to come back.  He still does, and perhaps he always will.  The pope died on April 2.  I was baptized and confirmed on April 2, 1988, at the Easter Vigil at Newman Hall in Berkeley.  Coincidence, surely.  But today, it doesn’t seem so.

Retreat report

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 4, 2005
in All Saints Pasadena, Faith, Music and Youth ministry
. 12 Comments

I will try and post something about John Paul II later today, but I don’t want to do so in haste.   I admired him, even loved him, and want to choose my words very carefully when blogging about him.

So a brief report on the weekend retreat is in order:

We took fifteen kids (six girls and nine boys) up to a camp near Big Bear, 7500 feet up in the San Bernardinos.  (My time in Bogota the last two summers and a couple of mountain 50ks has helped acclimate me to high altitudes; growing up, I never did well above 5000 feet.)  I drove eight of the teens in one van, along with a great number of suitcases and sleeping bags.  I usually let the kids pick the music we’ll listen to on the drive, though I do exercise veto power over certain varieties.   I’m happy to say that our kids were in a retro mood; nothing could have made me happier than to have fourteen and fifteen year-olds eager to listen to the likes of Prince, the Violent Femmes, the Divinyls, Elton John, and Simon & Garfunkel.  I feared having to endure 50 Cent and The Game;  instead, I got to sing along with the others to "Tiny Dancer", in unselfconscious imitation of that wonderful scene in Almost Famous.  I sing off-key, but lustily.

Conditions were comfortable but not luxurious, as befits a weekend retreat.  It was cold but sunny, and lots of snow was still on the ground.  For at least three of our kids, this was their first experience with snow, and despite the fact that it was really more icy slush than powder, they delighted in it.  Of course, we ate far too much all weekend long.  The cafeteria at the camp cranked out hamburgers and spaghetti, and we fortified ourselves with chex mix and chocolate chip cookies almost hourly.  (I’ve gained at least one waist size since Easter weekend, but at least the peeps are all out of my office.)

There are many activities we do on these confirmation retreat weekends, but by far the most important — and perhaps unusual by the standards of more conservative churches — is the writing of our own creed. During the past six months of regular meetings, our confirmation class has learned about the historic creeds of the church.  They’ve learned about Nicea, and they’ve at least heard of the Thirty-Nine Articles.  They’ve read the catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer.  But like teens everywhere, they’ve questioned what they’ve read.  And on retreat weekends, we give them the chance to write their own statement of beliefs. 

The kids don’t write the creed as individuals.  It has to be developed by consensus.  All fifteen had to agree on the final wording, and nothing could be included without unanimous consent.  Mind you, we do put parameters on the writing process: the creed must address God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. It also must include language that talks about the purpose of the church in today’s world.  But while it is required that the kids acknowledge the Trinity, it is not required that their creed comply with the traditional, orthodox formulas of faith.   This is the fifth confirmation creed I’ve seen All Saints youth write, and each of them has proved to be a unique consensus statement of where each particular class has happened to be.

The process of writing the creed is a tremendous challenge.  Most teens are used to doing things by majority vote.   And yet it’s remarkable how well (and how quickly) fourteen year-olds grow comfortable with a consensus model of decision-making.   They take turns facilitating the discussion and writing ideas on butcher-board paper. Every so often, one kid will grow frustrated — but others will quickly step in to move the process along.  During the entire creed-writing process, the adults sit silently.  We only intervene if tempers flare out of control, or if the process becomes hopelessly bogged down (miraculously, that happens more rarely than you might imagine).

The kids came up with a short creed in a bit over three hours.  (Hah!  We beat most of the great councils of the church hands down!)   The creed remains private, but will be presented by the confirmation class to the entire church in June.  After it has been made public, I’ll feel free to include it in a blog post, but until then, it remains between the teens and their youth leaders.

I love the effect the creed-writing process has on the teens.  Nothing else gets them to articulate their faith so well, nothing else forces them to listen to others so effectively.  I admit, when I first watched this process (back in 2001), I had my doubts.  As someone who holds much more conservative views than most All Saints parishioners, I was troubled by the idea of kids writing their own creed.  I argued that the time would be better spent getting the kids to accept Jesus into their own hearts.  At the very least, I felt we should be doing apologetics with the kids, helping them to understand the importance of the ancient creeds that have guided the universal church for well over 1500 years.  But let’s face it: my idea of a good retreat involves lots of guitar music, and lots of nailing — or thumb-tacking — one’s sins to the cross.   For me, a retreat ought to focus more on helping young people become "convicted of their own sinfulness."  That doesn’t mean fire and brimstone, nor does it mean an unhealthy preoccupation with sexual sins.  It just means that I wish we sometimes weren’t so damned scared of using moral language around the kids.  We make a huge mistake when we assume that "sin" occurs only in the political and economic arenas.  Sin is about what we think and do with our own bodies, and it is also about what how we participate in cruel and exploitative social structures.  So few churches manage to emphasize both messages to teens!   And All Saints gets the latter definition of sin just fine, but does a very poor job of discussing the former.

Now I admit, I don’t always like the language the kids use in their creeds.   They aren’t the bold, stark statements of certainty that my own evangelical heart would embrace.  But these teen creeds are often remarkably thoughtful.  More importantly, they almost always focus heavily on the obligation of the Christian to "be as Christ to the world".  Though the kids have trouble with the divinity of Jesus, they have far less difficulty with the mandate to follow Him — and though I’m often troubled by their lax theology, I am heartened by their praxis.

I think I can do more good with these kids than I could at a more conservative church.  If folks with evangelical theology leave liberal churches, we leave the kids within those churches to grow up with a monolithic view of what it means to be a Christian.  Our kids need to see that people can believe in Jesus and in justice, can support same-sex unions (the great All Saints issue) and still call Christ the unique Savior of all humankind.  They need to know that liberal politics can mesh well with evangelical faith — even if in that meshing, one’s own contradictions become exposed.

Off for retreat

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 1, 2005
in Athletics and Fitness, Chinchillas and Youth ministry
. 8 Comments

I’m up early on this Friday morning.  In a few minutes, Matilde will be coming out of her cage for forty minutes of romping with her Papa.  Not long thereafter, I’ll be off on what already looks like a hot day for a 15-16 miler.  (I’ve got to start getting in some longer runs before June’s Rock n’ Roll Marathon.)

I won’t post again until Monday.  This afternoon, I’ll be piloting a suitably large van up the winding roads of the San Bernardino Mountains, helping to drive a bunch of All Saints ninth-graders up for a confirmation retreat weekend.  Lots of time for prayer, discussion, and a great deal of junk food.  Full report next week.