Archive for February, 2006

Two disparate passions

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 7, 2006
in Clothing and Fashion, Men and Masculinity, Sports and Vanity
. 14 Comments

How many men in American wasted time on these two sites today:

New York Metro’s Fashion Week Report

The scout.com message board on college football recruiting.

I care passionately about both subjects, and can while away far too much time fantasizing about new outfits to wear and debating the merits of Cal’s latest haul of high school seniors.

I once had a subscription to Women’s Wear Daily and, simultaneously, several premium memberships at various college football recruiting websites.  (Ask me for recommendations!)  Am I odd?

A peevish note about abortion marches and beauty contests

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 7, 2006
in Abortion, Feminism and Vanity
. 81 Comments

First off, I can report that my boxing technique has begun to improve exponentially.   Though my jump rope skills would not carry me far on an elementary school playground, they now permit me to get a real workout in.  Thanks to all who contributed advice last week!  I continue to enjoy hitting things, even if my training sessions now begin at 5:15AM. 

I’m trying to combine learning to box with training for the LA Marathon next month; I haven’t done the local race since 2001.  My friends and students always ask me, "Are you doing LA this year?"  And when I tell them about some other marathon, they look disappointed.  Like it or not, most non-running locals only connect mentally to the big Los Angeles Marathon.  So this year, I’ll be there.  As of this post, my goal is modest — I’d like to break 3:45 if possible…

Moving on:

From Feministing and Rachel at Alternet, I’ve learned about the "Battle of the Babes".  This pro-life site, reporting on last month’s "Walk for Life" march in San Francisco last month, offers a photographic essay to answer the burning question, "Which side has the best looking women?"  The author of the post offers a number of photos side by side, and doesn’t directly answer her own question — though her implication is clear: pro-lifers are cuter.

It’s an offensive strategy, regardless of intent.  It deliberately references the old canard that all feminists are ugly.  It would be laughable save for the fact that I’ve heard from more than one of my students over the years that fears of how their looks would be labeled kept them from calling themselves feminists.  One student told me a year or two ago, "If I say I’m a feminist, people will just say ‘That’s because you’re too ugly to get a man.’"  She spoke from experience, and her expression made it clear that the tired old line about feminism and undesirability had resonated with her and caused her genuine hurt.

But as angry as I am with the pro-life web page that ran the photos, I’m also angry with this bit of commentary from staunch feminist Rachel Neumann at Alternet.  She wrote of the pictures:

Yes, there’s something beautiful about the wild disarray of the reproductive rights activists compared to the scary silent uniformity of those who are supporting forced childbirth…

Talk about exchanging one stereotype for another!  If the right claims all feminists are ugly, is the best we can do in response is claim that pro-life women are all "silent", marching in "scary uniformity"?  I’ve been to plenty of marches on the abortion issue, and as those who know me well know, I’ve marched on both sides.  (Not on the same day, mind you.  I may be a mercurial ENFP Gemini, but even I maintain some consistency over a 24-hour period.  My ideological fluctuations happen with the regularity of, say, the Olympics.)  In those marches, I’ve noticed one thing: most of the marchers on both sides are women of reproductive age.  Women in their teens, twenties, and thirties always seem to constitute the majority in both the pro-life and pro-choice camps.  This is not surprising; they are the biggest stakeholders in the struggle over reproductive rights.  And Ms Neumann, pro-life women are not "silent"!  They chant and sing with the best of the pro-choicers.  They don’t march in uniformity either.   (Actually, no one ever really "marches" at these things.  But who would turn out for a more accurately billed "Stroll for Choice" or "Amble against Abortion"?)

What makes me angry is that even now in 2006, both sides are still trading the tired old epithets.  "Feminists are fat and ugly."  "Pro-life women are docile Stepford wives who can’t think for themselves."   As someone who has not only been on both sides of the issue, but has known and loved a great many women across this great emotional and ideological divide, these stereotypes infuriate and sadden me.  And what makes me angriest is that they both trade in the most pernicious lie of all: That a woman whose views on abortion are different from one’s own is somehow less of a woman.   Both Neumann and the pro-life blogger with her beauty contest are, wittingly or no, suggesting that their sisters on the other side of the issue have failed to grasp an essential component of what it means to be a woman.  In 2006, we shouldn’t have to say that pro-choice feminists are beautiful; we shouldn’t have to say that pro-life women are rational and autonomous.  But apparently, we still need to.

The almost sperm donor: an anecdote

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 6, 2006
in Faith, Having children, Photos and Vanity
. 14 Comments

First off, this new picture is of me with my darling sister.  This is not my wife (I’ve had four emails making that false assumption since last night)!  I’ve added a caption to make it clear.

Russell Fox has a nice post on progressive Christianity up, and he quotes from my post last Friday on the same subject. 

The still-active thread below my Wendy Wasserstein post has turned to the topic of the ethics of donating sperm.  In the absence of an argument, let me share an anecdote.

When I was a 20 year-old undergraduate at Berkeley, I saw an ad for sperm donors in the Daily Cal.  The ad promised $50-100 per week, and I wandered down to a little medical clinic on University Avenue to ask more questions.  I went in to a comfortable, modern little office, and was promptly asked to fill out a long form about my medical and family history, as well as about my academic background and personal appearance.  I was then handed a plastic cup with a lid (like those used to collect urine samples, and directed to a little room.  I "made a deposit" (the phrase used by the woman behind the counter), handed over the cup, and was told to call back later for results.  After all, I needed to find out if my sperm was "fit" enough!

I went back to my co-op, and because my ability to keep secrets at that time was nil, promptly shared my adventure with my housemates.  At dinner that night, I had about a dozen folks, men and women, weighing in on the subject of sperm donation.  Some encouraged me to continue to do it if I was accepted, while others warned me against it.  Some pointed out something in the brochure I hadn’t noticed:  regular "donors" were expected to "contribute" two to three times a week, and ought not to have ejaculated for 48 hours prior to the "donation."  (I don’t know if this is still the rule, but it was the requirement back in 1987.)  Explaining the math (my weak point then and now), my friends noted that that would put a serious crimp in my private life with my girlfriend!

But it was my housemate "Letty" who changed my mind for good.  Letty was a devout Catholic, and I was — at this time — on the cusp of converting.  She had been mentoring me in the faith, and though nothing romantic ever transpired between us, Letty and I were very close.  She gave me reading lists of Catholic books, and took me to mass at the Newman Centre.  Letty didn’t join in the teasing at dinner, but after the meal, asked to speak with me alone.  She talked with me about how I would feel in years to come, wandering down the street and looking curiously into children’s faces, never knowing if one might be my child.  "I know you, Hugo", Letty said; "That thought will haunt you forever."  She also gave me the standard but compelling spiel about the real meaning of conception.  Contrary to what I wrote in my Wasserstein post, Letty convinced me that each conceived child ought to be conceived in an act of marital love, with the promise that two loving parents would raise that which they created together.  She was so winsome and compelling, she had me nearly in tears.  And she changed my mind.  I never called the sperm bank to find out if they wanted me to be a regular donor.

Yes, the fear of not being able to have a regular sex life scared me.  But even though I was not living according to the Catholic ideal of premarital chastity, I still was moved by Letty’s thoughtful defense of church teaching about conception.  I was moved, too, by the very real fear of having children whose names I would never know, and whose strange yet familiar faces I might gaze at on the street with a mixture of dread and eagerness.

I haven’t worked out a coherent set of beliefs about artificial insemination.  But I am so glad I didn’t become a regular donor back in 1987.  Had I done so, some of my current frosh might literally be my children, a thought too strange and terrifying to contemplate for long.

A brief reflection on Betty Friedan

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 6, 2006
in Feminism and People
. 22 Comments

As everyone has been saying, the icons of another era are fast leaving us.  The latest, of course, is Betty Friedan, who died Saturday at 85.  Almost everyone in the feminist blogosphere has written about her passing, and there is much that is good and interesting to read.

I wrote yesterday that I had mixed feelings about Friedan’s legacy.  On the one hand, there is no question that she deserves tremendous credit for helping launch the revival of the feminist movement in the 1960s, first with the extraordinary Feminine Mystique of 1963 and then with her pivotal role in founding the National Organization for Women three years later.  It’s impossible to imagine the modern feminist movement without her.  As so many others have said, Friedan gave voice to an entire generation of women who had been told the greatest of lies, the lie that says that happiness is ultimately only found in a life lived for husbands and children.  She exposed that lie beautifully, and helped millions of American women realize "Wait, I’m not the only one who feels this way."  Plenty of women of my mother’s generation still remember how amazed they were when they first read the Feminine Mystique, and realized that what they had thought of as their own personal dissatisfaction was, in fact, damn near universal.

But even in a time of tributes and accolades, we can’t forget the "lavender menace", a term that Friedan infamously coined in 1969.   Friedan, like a number of conservative feminists, saw her movement as calling for a reconfiguring of heterosexual relationships along more egalitarian lines.  But throughout her life, she seemed bewildered by those women who shared her political commitments but did not share her romantic and sexual interest in men.  Rather than build feminist solidarity between lesbians and straight women, Friedan sought to purge NOW of lesbians.  She feared for the future of the movement, but she also — according to those who knew her — seemed genuinely and persistently unnerved by queer folks.

Friedan also quarreled with most of the later leaders of the feminist movement, like Gloria Steinem and Patricia Ireland.   Her 1981 manifesto, The Second Stage, was a startling statement of essentialism (the notion that women are, biologically speaking, more inclined to be nurturing and relational than men).  A long excerpt from that book is here.    She wanted the movement to de-emphasize sexual issues, for fear that they were inflaming the right. She wrote: …the sexual politics that dis-torted the sense of priorities of the women’s movement during the 1970’s made it easy for the so-called Moral Majority to lump E.R.A. with homosexual rights and abortion into one explosive package of licentious, family-threatening sex.

To be fair, it was written right after the election of Ronald Reagan, and Friedan was trying to reconfigure her movement to be successful in a more conservative era.   From a political standpoint, she made some wise suggestions, but she also managed to alienate an exceptional number of young feminists, particularly those who did not share her color, her affluence, and her sexual identity.

In the end, I can’t help but think about the death just ten months ago of Andrea Dworkin, another — very different — icon of the feminist movement.  Dworkin, like Friedan, quarreled with and horrified a number of erstwhile allies.  Indeed, Andrea was almost a mirror image of Betty Friedan: almost everything Friedan embraced, Andrea rejected.  Dworkin was so eager to include the marginalized and the wounded that she frightened folks with her powerful rhetoric; Friedan was so eager not to frighten middle America that she tried, time and again, to purge the feminist movement of its more radical voices.  In different but oddly similar ways, both women ended up on the outs with most of the contemporary leadership of the women’s movement.  And yet the feminist movement was better for their work, their writing, and, perhaps, even their passionate, devoted and often curmudgeonly criticism from the sidelines. 

Schwyzer photos

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 5, 2006
in Family and Photos
. 3 Comments

It’s Sunday, and I don’t normally post on Sundays.  I do promise a post on Betty Friedan for early this coming week.  I have very strong and, frankly, very mixed feelings about her legacy, and promise to share soon. 

In this album are five photos taken yesterday; we went up to Santa Barbara, to spend time with my Dad, stepmom, sister, uncle George (visiting from Manhattan) and my aunt Christa (visiting from Austria).   I like this one with my little sis and this one of five Schwyzers. 

Off for many things, including Super Bowl party shopping.

“The right has hijacked Christianity”: A response to Heather

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 3, 2006
in Christianity and Politics
. 39 Comments

I got a note from a regular reader, Heather, in response to my post earlier this week on Christian obedience.  Heather writes:

I… avoid organized religion for many of the reasons you cite as to the whys of liberal Christians avoiding the word “obedience.” My experience with religion has been one where the leadership of the church demanded blind obedience to their absolute, corrupt power. And the religious right, in my opinion, has hijacked Christianity. While I believe the teachings of Buddha and other religious and spiritual traditions are just as valuable as Christianity, I wouldn’t have a problem identifying myself as a Christian if it weren’t for the religious right. I don’t want to be associated with them in any way, shape or form. If you ask me if I’m a “Christian” I have to say “No” because of the political context that the word has taken on…

I’m sure this isn’t a new story for you but I’m curious as to what you say to your liberal friends who might be inclined to be more religious if it weren’t for their fear of being associated with those damned right-wingers (and their influence on Christian congregations).

(This issue actually came up on the blog just over two years ago.  At the time, I had left All Saints Pasadena and was worshipping at Pasadena Mennonite Church.  I wrote this post in frustration, annoyed with the All Saints senior associate for liturgy, for refusing to identify herself as a Christian to a stranger on an airplane — for exactly the same reasons that Heather cites.  Though I’ve come back to All Saints, I stand by what I wrote back then.)

One of the things that breaks my heart is the degree to which a relatively small group has, in the minds of the American public, successfully appropriated the label "Christian."   This is largely thanks to the work of the actively organized "religious right", though that term actually encompasses a variety of groups in uneasy alliance.  Too often, secular liberals aren’t interested in — or capable of — distinguishing between (for example) conservative Calvinists, fundamentalist Baptists, and hardcore Pentecostals.  The "religious right" includes all three members of the body of Christ, and many others besides; this often leads to some fairly heated doctrinal discussion.  (Ever hear a serious Five Point Calvinist get into a shouting match with an Assemblies of God pastor over the issue of whether or not the "gift" of tongues is still valid in the modern church?  I have, and it wasn’t pretty!) 

I wouldn’t say, as Heather does, that the right has "hijacked" Christianity.  I don’t question the sincerity of a Jerry Falwell, of an Albert Mohler, a Richard Land, or (even when he tries my patience), a Pat Robertson.   In the Father’s house, there are many rooms, and within that great big house, there is space indeed for our conservative brothers and sisters.  But it’s a big house, and if there’s room for Jerry and Pat, there’s room for Gene Robinson (the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion) as well.   It’s not that the right has hijacked Christianity as it is that the Christian left has been silent for too long.  When we have spoken up, we have too often done so without invoking the name of Jesus — and that has helped to foster the continued misperception that most American Christians share the views of the Republican party on social and economic issues.

Many progressive Christians are accustomed to working in coalition with secular liberals.   When we march against war, or in defense of undocumented migrants, or for women’s rights,  or in favor of inclusion for sexual minorities, we do so in solidarity with a whole host of left-wing groups who do not share our particular faith commitments.  And being good liberals, we are reluctant to offend our allies.  So we don’t talk much about Jesus, or how it is that we connect our faith to our social justice work.   It’s no wonder that the Christianity of the left seems so superficial!  When was the last time any of us heard a sermon from Al Sharpton that was based on a rigorous explication of the New Testament?   How often do we hear from Jesse Jackson how his relationship with Jesus leads him to take the stances he does?  Whatever you think of Jerry and Pat, they make an explicit connection between Scripture and politics; at best, leaders on the left do so obliquely and too often, they don’t do it at all.

But if the left is truly inclusive, it can include those of us whose political commitment to progressive ideals has been shaped by a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  It can tolerate those of us who believe in the "great commission", which involves sharing our own stories of conversion.  As progressives, we can’t and won’t demand that our allies share our faith commitments — but our allies cannot demand that we be silent about our beliefs in order to gain the right to march alongside of them!

One of Jesus’ favorite rhetorical tasks was to begin by saying "You have heard that X is true, but I tell you Y."  Few things are as consistent in His ministry as his contempt for conventional wisdom.  As left-wing Christians, we need to say publicly "You have heard that to be a Christian is to support the causes of the political right, but we say that the body of Christ is more diverse and more marvelous than that.  We will make no false choice between Jesus and justice."  We might not convert all of our progressive allies, but we’d make it clear to them that there are many of us who combine an evangelical passion for the Lord with an enduring commitment to justice for the poor, radical equality for women, and civil liberties for all.

Heather, there are many of us who are serious Christians and serious progressives.  Check out Sojourners magazine.  Check out the work of Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, and Ron Sider.  Check out Evangelicals for Social Action, and Christians for Biblical Equality (I belong to both).  We’re all around you, sister.

Friday Random Ten — Random and Randomer

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 3, 2006
in Friday Random Ten
. 3 Comments

This week’s "random 10" from our Itunes party shuffle brings up seven of my songs, and three that my wife downloaded.  I discern no theme whatsoever, but once again am moderately chagrined at my continued unhipness.

1.  "Wuthering Heights", Kate Bush
2.  "Everybody’s Got to Go Sometime", Terri Clark
3.  "You Sang to Me", Marc Anthony
4.  "One Time, One Night", Los Lobos
5.  "Hot Child in the City", Nick Gilder
6.  "Scatterlings of Africa", Johnny Clegg and Juluka
7.  "Nothing Without You", Bebo Norman
8.  "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos", Joan Baez
9.  "Hypnotize", Notorious B.I.G.
10.  "Love Song for a Savior", Jars of Clay

We’re seeing Terri Clark in concert later this month, and I’ve been getting back into Kate Bush and Bebo Norman (the latter utterly unknown outside of Christian circles) a lot lately.  At least none of my 80s metal music came up this time.

Hugo’s “white boy teaching outfit”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 2, 2006
in Class, Clothing and Fashion, Ethnicity, Men and Masculinity and Race
. 34 Comments

I’m close to two colleagues of mine, one male and one female; one Latino and one African-American.  I’ve been teaching today in a mustard color Banana Republic t-shirt and blue jeans, and as I was walking back to the office from class just now, I passed these two colleagues in the hall.  As we exchanged wishes for a good weekend, one said to the other "There goes Hugo in one of his ‘white boy teaching outfits.’" 

The other laughed, and I joined in — but now I’m a bit bewildered as to what they meant.  (Several students overheard, by the way.)  I do tend to prefer a casual style (albeit a tight-fitting one), but I’m not at all sure what that has to do with race.  Is it some sort of veiled reference to white male privilege, where a white guy can feel comfortable wearing anything while a professor of color needs more formal attire?   Given that my dress style is often one more commonly associated with gay men, was there a homophobic slur in there as well?

Am I just over-thinking this?  Should I not wear mustard?

Any thoughts?

Myspace and the youth leader

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 2, 2006
in Youth and Youth ministry
. 12 Comments

Another very successful youth group gathering last night.   I say this every year, but I continue to be amazed by the depth,the generosity, and the goodness of "my kids" — even as I also see in them so much hurt and woundedness.

A couple of the kids were complaining last night about last week’s Dateline report about the popular Myspace internet site.  I don’t know of a single one of my teens who doesn’t "have a Myspace" page.  The Dateline NBC report was not something any of them watched, but some of their parents did.  It raised fears that the site, immensely popular with tweens, teens and twenty-somethings, was a haven for predators.  To the horror of more than one kid I know, parents have started demanding to view the pages their children have put up on Myspace, and are insisting on "editorial control" over the images and prose that their kids share with the world.

In the fall of 2004, I first started hearing about Myspace from my youth group kids.  I told them, "Hey, I have a blog too", and gave them the URL for this page.  But not surprisingly, those kids who did visit this blog found it boring beyond words.  They urged me to sign up for Myspace.  "Get a Myspace, Hugo, and you can be our friend!"  Myspace, you see, is based on creating communities of friends who get access to each other’s photos and blogs, and who can send each other instant messages.  I thought it sounded like a fun way to keep in touch with the kids during the week when I don’t see them (they have my e-mail but rarely use it), so I signed up.

I created my own little Myspace page, put up a few pictures, and quickly became "friends" with many of the kids in my youth group.   Since my page was listed under my own name (just as this blog is), a few of my students at the college quickly discovered it.  Soon I had several dozen friends, none of whom was older than 25, and most of whom were under 18.   But as I started visiting the pages that my youth group kids had created for themselves, I was a bit stunned.  It wasn’t just the profanity (and the poor grammar); it wasn’t the loud rap music that blared at me. (You can personalize your page so that your favorite song plays when someone visits.)   Frankly, what got me was the sexuality.  A number of the girls and boys put up provocative pictures of themselves.  None rose to the level of actual pornography — I’m told Myspace won’t permit that — but underwear is apparently adequate attire.  I definitely don’t need to see my teenagers in their underwear, nor do I need to read their answers to the endless polls they send around, all of which ask one version or another of the same question: "What have you done sexually, and how many people have you done it with?"

For a while, I hoped that my presence on Myspace might have the effect of encouraging the kids to tone things down a bit.  I sent messages to all of my "friends", asking them questions about school, life, and (believe it or not), God.  But if I thought I could chaperone the internet, I was quite mistaken!  I think my teenagers in youth group, many of whom I’ve known since they were in elementary school, love and respect me.  But I also know that they don’t see me as a parent, and they aren’t going to "tone down" their conversation or delete certain images just because they’ve invited me into their "space."  And after debating about it for a while, I deleted my Myspace account last summer.

I left Myspace for a couple of reasons.  Chiefly, I left because I was worried what a parent of one of my teens might think if they found me on their child’s "friends" list.  What, they might wonder, is a 38 year-old man doing on Myspace with a whole bunch of teenagers?  Given the raunchy nature of so much of the content, I realized that my continued presence on Myspace could raise some uncomfortable questions.  As an adult male who volunteers with teenagers, I’m already subject to considerable — and in today’s climate justifiable — scrutiny.  The last thing I need is to exacerbate the anxiety that many parents may already feel about entrusting their kid to a youth leader.

I also left because I wanted to preserve my own boundaries.  I’m adamant that the kids I work with at church, and the students whom I teach, can come and talk to me about absolutely anything.   Over the years, I’ve walked with young people through every imaginable issue: an unexpected pregnancy, the suicide of a parent, anorexia, cutting, drug abuse, sexual molestation, and the difficult journey out of the closet.  But while I am open to talking about anything, there are some images of my kids that I don’t need in my head, some words of theirs I don’t need to read!  If those who rely on me need my support, I’m easy to get a hold of.  But I’m not going to enter the frenetic social world of Myspace merely to ensure that those for whom I am charged to care can find me easily. 

I’m not a parent, I’m a youth leader.  Parents should monitor the internet usage of their minor teens.  Youth leaders, on the other hand, should discuss boundaries with kids in a group setting.  We’ve scheduled a "Myspace evening" in youth group for later this spring.  We’ll let the kids talk about what they like and don’t like, and then we’ll talk about boundaries.  We’ll talk about basic issues of safety, and we’ll talk about what makes the idea of creating a cyber-identity and a virtual "life" so compelling and seductive.  But while I’m eager to hear more about just what it is they love so much about Myspace, I’m not willing to step into that world again. 

Thursday Short Poems: Cohen’s “Abraham and Isaac I and II”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 2, 2006
in Poetry
. Closed

I came across the work of Nan Cohen in Plougshares magazine, and loved these two.  Like most folks in our theological tradition, the story of Abraham and Isaac evokes in me wonder, awe, dread, bewilderment, and, in the end, humility.  These two short poems are very fine.

Abraham and Isaac: I

He took him outside and said, “Look toward heaven
and count the stars, if you are able to count them.”
And He added, “So shall your offspring be.”

I have lived in tents and know how faint a trace
we leave behind us on the earth;
how, when the body fails, the soul folds
its light clothes and steals away

But now a child sleeps in my tent;
I would raise a tower of stone to shield his head,
and yet the thought that any common stone
must outlast him provokes such rage in me

I wake all night, alarmed and furious,
seeing nothing in the dark but dark.

Abraham and Isaac: II

And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son

I have lived in tents and often, at midday,
have I parted the tent-clothes and gone inside
with the light of day so blinding my eyes
that my wife spoke to me out of darkness,
saying, Take this dish, and eat

I have walked among the flocks on starless nights
with the blackness so filling my eyes
I put forth my hand,
as if the night were a tent,
as if some shape might glimmer in my sight
before the cloths of night fell across it.

Eyes full of light or dark,
night or day, I cannot tell.
I grope forward to lift the cloth
of this moment, and the next.

A note on obedience: a response to Chip

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 1, 2006
in Christianity and GLBTQ
. 17 Comments

Quick note before the post:  my colleagues and I all agree that the highlight of the State of the Union speech was the president’s promise to work to ban "creating human-animal hybrids".  We hadn’t heard that this was a major issue, but since he said it, we’re glad to know he’s against it.  So are we.  Anyone got an idea what he meant?  The head of Dolly the sheep on a human torso? (We even looked up the speech online, and there it was.)

This is a specifically Christian post, folks.

Quite some time ago, my regular reader "Chip" asked me why it is that progressive Christians place so little emphasis on the essential virtue of "obedience."    Obedience is, I think most of us would agree, an important aspect of the Christian walk.  Obedience to God, to His teachings, and to one’s own promises are all aspects of the concept.

One doesn’t get many sermons on obedience at All Saints Pasadena or other liberal churches.  We’re very good at talking about "justice" and "inclusion" and "love", all important Christian principles.  When it comes to making better economic and environmental choices, we’re even fairly good about talking the hard language of "sacrifice."  And though we might interpret the meaning of the words in ways that alarm or annoy conservatives, we do regularly talk about "the Cross", "salvation", "the kingdom" and, yes, "morality."

But it’s true we don’t talk much about obedience.   Part of the reason why is a purely semantic one — the term has a fundamentally negative ring to it, particularly to those of us in progressive congregations who may come out of backgrounds where we were told to "mindlessly obey" our elders and other authority figures.   We are aware — keenly aware — of the perils and pitfalls of blind obedience, even on the part of our fellow Christians.  It’s easy to see how we can be "too obedient" to be good Christians, not easy to see how we can be too loving or too welcoming.

Chip, in the end I think most progressives are obedient.  I’m just not sure that we define "obedience" in the same way.  But even as I say that, I will grant that for many liberal folks, there is a genuine discomfort with the word itself.  From a feminist perspective, the word "obey" has been too often associated with unilateral submission to male authority.  Those of us who believe that we are called by Christ to submit to each other are keenly aware of how earlier generations of Christians have misused the term obedience.  The language of Christian obedience has been used to justify slavery, it has been used to justify denying women suffrage, it has been used to justify domestic violence.   The fact that modern Christian conservatives don’t support those evils doesn’t vitiate the real fact that their theological ancestors did use the command to "obey" to support a whole host of what we now know to be cruelly heretical doctrines.

But what we also acknowledge is that there’s a very positive aspect of obedience as well.   At its best, obedience is about what the Kabbalists call "restriction"; it’s the conscious decision to remain faithful to promises and beliefs despite the overwhelming temptation to indulge one’s own desires.  Obedience to the commitments we’ve made and to the God in whose name we made them is a vital part of living together in Christian community.  When we break our promises to one another, we are disobeying the greatest commandments: to love God and to love each other.  It is obedience to God and to our commitments that prevents heartache and tragedy; it is obedience that compels us to be generous.  If I weren’t obedient, I wouldn’t tithe 10% of gross income, that’s for sure!

When progressives endorse same-sex marriage in the church, our conservative opponents accuse us of "disobedience" to Scripture, tradition, and so forth.  Over and over again, we are told that we have capitulated to modern secular culture and abandoned the teachings of God and His Son.  According to traditionalists, by endorsing same-sex marriage, we progressive Christians are encouraging people to follow their own selfish desires rather than obey God.   And the most frustrating thing is, most of the time we progressives don’t fight back against this argument.  We concede too easily, often because we’re so reluctant to talk about obedience.

But when we welcome gays and lesbians and marry them, we ARE being obedient.  Indeed, when we risk schism and international opprobrium, we do so because of a fundamental belief that we are obeying the Gospel.    Straight folks make up the majority of liberal Protestants in this country; permitting gay marriage doesn’t give us any new or special privileges.  Why then are so many of us in the Episcopal Church willing to argue, debate, and possibly get thrown out of the Anglican Communion all so that our GLBTQ brothers and sisters might feel completely included?   Secular liberal conviction isn’t enough to bring most progressives to the precipice of schism — what brings us there is a quiet conviction that to love radically, fearlessly, and inclusively is to obey the will of Christ.  We know, just as our conservative brothers and sisters know, that obedience has a cost.  And we know as believers we have to be willing to pay it.

Schedule change

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 1, 2006
in Blogging
. Closed

I’ve got an 8:00 class four mornings a week during the winter intersession, and most mornings I’ve had time for a quick post before it.  That schedule will now change a bit, as I’m taking my boxing classes MWF at 6:00AM — leaving me little time to get home, shower, dress, and get to campus in time to teach.  So on those days, the first post will likely come up during the noon hour.  I’ll have one up today.  I promised Chip a long time ago on the topic of progressive Christians and obedience.

My trainer told me this morning I’d made huge improvement in skipping rope!  Thanks for all the suggestions!