Archive for the 'Faith' Category

“God Writes Straight With Crooked Lines”: more on Spitzer, sin, redemption

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 11, 2008
in Faith, Men and Masculinity and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 11 Comments

As we await what must be the inevitable resignation announcement from Eliot Spitzer, it occurs to me I’ve posted a few times on the all-too-well-known theme of a fall from grace on the part of an admired — invariably male — public figure. Here’s a selection:

Private virtue, public justice: some very long thoughts on men, leadership, and the lie of “compartmentalism”

“There Never Was a War that Was Not Inward”: a long reflection on Ted Haggard

“The inner darkness of the redeemed”: in defense of Mel Gibson

Lengthy musings about Clinton, feminism, erotic justice

The titles of these posts are sufficiently descriptive as to require no further explanation. What I’ve said about Bill Clinton, Antonio Villaraigosa, Ted Haggard and Mel Gibson (an odd quartet indeed) more or less applies to Eliot Spitzer. And the bookers from the major chat shows have already called up the legion of pop psychologists who appear at times like this, all proffering an answer to the timeless question: “Why would a man like X, in his position, with so much going for him, do something so monumentally stupid?” By now we know all the answers: sexual addiction; deep-seated shame and the desire to be punished; self-destructiveness; mid-life crises; good, old-fashioned hubris. And because falls from grace are often breathtaking in their suddenness, we are fascinated as the ancients were fascinated. These are, as everyone points out, very old stories. Continue reading ‘“God Writes Straight With Crooked Lines”: more on Spitzer, sin, redemption’

The obligatory “Yes, Virginia, you can be a feminist and a Christian without compromising the core tenets of either” post

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 10, 2008
in Christianity, Faith and Feminism
. 16 Comments

Just in time for International Women’s Day last week, the religious right launched a pair of angry broadsides at the feminist movement. Kurk Gayle let me know about this positively bizarre op-ed by Alice Lindsey: The Paradox of Feminism. A day earlier, an only slightly-less strange piece by Colleen Caroll Campbell ran at the National Review: Faith of the Feminine.

Both essays make the same point: feminism is profoundly hostile to faith, particularly Christianity. Feminists, however, are misguided; according to both Campbell (a former speechwriter for the current president and a robust defender of a narrow understanding of orthodoxy) and Lindsey (a former Episcopal priest who has renounced her ordination and joined a church that doesn’t affirm women in the priesthood), Christianity is the great liberator of women. Lindsey writes:

History shows that wherever Christianity has spread, the treatment of women has improved. Allow me to cite but one example. My great grandfather was a pioneer missionary in India. He established a seminary there, but after time it became apparent that Christian men could not evangelize Indian women who lived sequestered lives. Therefore, my great grandfather decided to train women converts to be midwives and nurses so that they could minister to Indian women at a critical time. So he established a nurse training center and even today the majority of nurses in India are Christian females.

We’re often reminded that the plural of anecdote is not evidence. Lindsey, bless her, doesn’t even bother with getting to the plural. Continue reading ‘The obligatory “Yes, Virginia, you can be a feminist and a Christian without compromising the core tenets of either” post’

Lifting the cloud of self-involvement: on Lent 2008

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 13, 2008
in Faith
. 5 Comments

It’s Lent. This will be the earliest Easter of my lifetime (March 23), and indeed the earliest Easter since 1913; we’re already a week into the Christian season of discipline and reflection.

My sacrifice “for me” this Lent is the usual one: no desserts or sweets (other than plain fruit) until after sundown Easter Eve. That’s easy enough for me to do; I oscillate easily between indulgence and self-denial. Of course, as Christians, our sacrifices ought to be more than simple acts of restriction that primarily benefit ourselves. (No one around me is helped in any notable way by my temporary abstinence from sugar.) And though in the past I’ve made commitments to do more volunteering or give more money, I wanted to do something different for Lent 2008.

On our recent South America trip, I spent a bit of time thinking about what it was I wanted my “extra Lenten discipline” to be. Read more Scripture? Attempt — for the 937th time — to integrate meditation into my morning rituals? Those all seemed too familiar, too tried (though no less true for having been tried). As it turned out, I got my inspiration for what to do from one of the many novels we brought along for our three week journey. (I find that I do most of my reading when I’m away from my normal routines; during the regular semester, there’s never much time for pleasure reading.) I can’t remember which novel it was (though it might have been something by Nadine Gordimer), but the chief character in the book was a middle-aged woman who felt keenly the pain of “becoming invisible.”

Last August, I wrote a little bit about the “slide into invisibility“. But as I read my book, it struck me that one of my most glaring character defects is that I really don’t “see” the people around me as well as I should. This isn’t about a failure to see older women as sexual creatures (which was the point made in the book); it’s bigger and broader than that. What I realize is that all too often, my own self-absorption keeps me from really connecting with most people as they really are. As I sat on the plane from Santiago to Ushuaia, I thought of how many people I talk to, speak with, write to every day. And it hit me, as it hasn’t hit me in a very long time, how poor a job I often do of truly “seeing” them. Continue reading ‘Lifting the cloud of self-involvement: on Lent 2008′

A note on Blair’s conversion, and on missing Rome

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 26, 2007
in Christianity, Divorce, Faith and People
. 10 Comments

Like most who have followed the life and career of Tony Blair, I was not surprised in the least by his decision to be received into the Roman Catholic Church, a decision made formal in a private ceremony last week. Long-affiliated with the fine old Christian Socialist Movement, his theology seemed to have been moving towards Rome for some time. (When Blair’s son Leo was born in 2000, a number of years younger than his other children with his wife, Cherie, there were very public rumors that the couple did not practice any form of artificial birth control, in keeping with Catholic teaching.)

I’ve had mixed feelings about Tony Blair for years now. But I wish him well, of course, as he moves forward on his spiritual journey. A great many Englishmen and women before him have “returned to Rome” before him, and he goes in fine company.

A little bit of me — just a little — is envious. My own religious peregrination has been fitful and dramatic, but it started with a late adolescent conversion from the atheism of my parents to Roman Catholicism. I was baptized and confirmed at the 1988 Easter Vigil, where I took the confirmation name Thomas. For a brief time, I seriously considered the priesthood — so great was my enthusiasm for the Church. My first marriage was solemnized with a full mass at St Paul the Apostle in Westwood, one of the larger Catholic parishes in West Los Angeles. During the first year of that marriage, I was a regular and enthusiastic communicant.

It was the end of my first marriage that, for me, made staying a Catholic untenable. Though we agreed on little else during the divorce process, my first wife and I were committed to not seeking an annulment, despite pressure from some of her Catholic relatives to get one. What had been done might now be undone, but we weren’t going to deny it had been done in the first place! And with the divorce came the bar from the eucharist. No more wafer and wine made into bread and blood for me, at least not in the Roman style.

I drifted away from Christ for the next few years after that 1992 divorce. When I came back, it was as a Protestant of one kind or another: an Anabaptist, a non-denominational charismatic, an Episcopalian. But here’s the rub: often, whether I’m at a Mennonite, Episcopal, or evangelical worship service, I find myself feeling as if what I’m participating in is somehow incomplete. There are churches, and then there is The Church. And while all the churches are somehow part of the Body of Christ, there is still for me a sense that the truest Church is Roman. Though I very rarely attend Mass any more, I admit that I feel something when I do that I have not felt anywhere else — and I have worshipped in more than my share of elsewheres.

I’m blissful in my fourth marriage. The chances of reconciling with my first wife are zero. I would never dream of raising our future children in a church community that didn’t see their parents’ marriage as being as licit and good as any other. As I understand it, the price of being allowed to become a regular communicant in the Catholic church would mean leaving my wife — or enduring a chaste marriage for the rest of our lives. I’ve checked this out with a few of my friends who know their canon law: without an annulment of my first marriage, or without a commitment to chastity within my current one, I’m going to have a hard time gettin’ to the communion rail. That price is much too high to pay.

It’s odd — I was a Mass-going Catholic for less than five years. That’s not even an eighth of my life. And yet Rome has a hold on me that nothing else has. And when I see the once-married Tony Blair received into the Church, my happiness for him is not untinged with envy.

GOP pundit: we want poor social conservatives, just as long as they know their place

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 14, 2007
in Faith and Politics
. 8 Comments

Rich Lowry in today’s National Review Online, expressing the anxiety that the right-wing punditocracy has about Mike Huckabee, and the damage he’s doing to the conservative elite’s golden boy, Mitt Romney:

The GOP’s social conservatism inarguably has been an enormous benefit to the party throughout the past 30 years, winning over conservative Democrats and lower-income voters who otherwise might not find the Republican limited-government message appealing. That said, nominating a Southern Baptist pastor running on his religiosity would be rather overdoing it. Social conservatism has to be part of the Republican message, but it can’t be the message in its entirety.

Bold emphasis mine.

Well, that’s more candor than I expect from GOP strategists: “we like poor uneducated social conservatives, but only as long as they know their place, which is to provide votes so we can do the important stuff.” It’s a bald admission of what the left has known for a long time: the GOP uses the “God, gays, and guns” issues to bring in voters whose economic needs are utterly incongruent with the Republican message.

Lowry continues:

Huckabee has declared that he doesn’t believe in evolution. Even if there are many people in America who agree with him, his position would play into the image of Republicans as the anti-science party. This would tend to push away independents and upper-income Republicans. In short, Huckabee would take a strength of the GOP and, through overplaying it, make it a weakness.

In other words: social conservatism, once you scratch the surface, is embarrassing.

Right-wing evangelicals are to the GOP what African-Americans have traditionally been to the Democrats: a group that is heavily courted come election time, but whose deepest concerns are routinely dismissed by the party elite. I’m an evangelical whose views on most issues are very different from Mike Huckabee’s. But on behalf of my “fellow believers”, I’m a bit stunned by the dismissive, patronizing tone Lowry strikes in his message.

Shorter Lowry: “Conservative evangelicals to the back of the bus, because you scare folks.”

In praise of cacophony: rejecting Romney’s “symphony of faith”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 6, 2007
in Christianity, Faith and Politics
. 44 Comments

I left home for the office this morning just before Mitt Romney started his speech about faith. I couldn’t find it on the radio (I was a bit surprised that NPR didn’t pick it up, and I mean that seriously rather than facetiously), and couldn’t get it to stream online. So I’ll have to content myself, for now, with reading excerpts from the speech that the Romney campaign released in advance.

I’m an evangelical who has spent almost his entire life in the secular academy. There are few other serious Christians in my department; most of the colleagues to whom I am closest are firm atheists. Indeed, I note that more and more folks I run into these days seem willing to call themselves atheists rather than agnostics. There seems to be more openness about unbelief, and I appreciate that we live in a climate where those who are genuinely convinced that there is no God at all don’t feel pressured to use the safer language of uncertainty and doubt.

Romney said this morning:

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

Mitt’s got it right when he suggests that it is unreasonable to ask anyone to divorce their spiritual convictions from their politics. The post immediately below this one is a brief polemic against compartmentalization, albeit a very different kind of compartmentalization. But to a serious believer, a Sunday morning (or Saturday morning) faith is poor beer indeed. If the relationship I have with God is the transcendent Fact of my life, it’s absurd to suggest that that Fact shouldn’t inform and guide everything I do — including how I teach and how I vote.

But the parallel to teaching is important. My faith makes me, I’m certain, a better teacher. That doesn’t mean that folks who don’t share my faith can’t be good teachers (better than I in many cases). It doesn’t mean that folks who have no faith at all can’t be wonderful instructors and mentors. It is simply true that in my case, my faith has made me an infinitely kinder, more patient, and less self-absorbed person. (Whatever notable tendencies I still have towards self-absorption, are, of course, attributable to the obvious reality that I, like all converts, am still very much a work in progress.) If someone asks me, “Hugo, why do you do what you do the way you do it?”, faith is going to be part of my answer. But the fact that my teaching rests on a spiritual foundation doesn’t mean that I am entitled to inject my spiritual beliefs into the classroom. If I can be a fairly religious person, and work day in and day out without talking incessantly about how my faith undergirds everything I’m doing, then I’m quite confident that others can do the same. That’s not compartmentalization, because I’m not living at odds with my faith or hiding my faith. I’m just choosing not to bludgeon folks with the cross. I’d like it if my fellow believers in public life felt the same way.

(And for the record, the notion of a “religion of secularism” is silly. But suppose someone did want to start such a religion, committed to the notion that the Divine Being is Absent, Never Was, and Never Will Be? The America I want is an America where that “religion” would be able to take its place in the public square too.)

But I’m particularly troubled by the (admittedly eloquent) concluding lines of Romney’s speech, sure to be remembered longest:

In such a world, we can be deeply thankful that we live in a land where reason and religion are friends and allies in the cause of liberty, joined against the evils and dangers of the day. And you can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me. And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion — rather, we welcome our nation’s symphony of faith.

Bold emphasis mine.

Yikes. I hit my knees a lot, Mitt, and I worship the same Almighty you do. I’m heartened to hear you will be my friend and ally. Tell me, will you also be a friend and ally to my mother, who does not believe in God? (For that matter, will you be a friend and ally to many of my Anabaptist friends, who believe in God but don’t kneel?)

And I wince at the notion that faith is a symphony. Symphonies, as we understand them, are innovations of the Christian west. The image that pops into my head is of the Catholics in the string section, the Baptists blowin’ their horns, the Eastern Orthodox on their woodwinds and the Pentecostals on percussion. Perhaps they’ll play “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and it will sound very pretty. But will there be Muslims? Will there be atheists? Will there be Buddhists and Hindus? Will there be animists and Wiccans?

Real diversity is not harmonious. Real diversity is African and Japanese drums, the throbbing of synthesized beats, the rich, challenging melodies of an Indonesian gamelan — and French horns. Put that all together, and it isn’t going to be a beautiful symphony. It’ll be beautiful yes, but it will be the beauty of a great big messy cacophony, like what happens when you put plastic musical instruments into the hands of second-graders on a sugar high. And that great big messy cacophany is my America, Mitt. It’s the rancheras I hear blasting as I drive through Highland Park, it’s the hip-hop bumping from the car stereos as I walk on Crenshaw. It’s the ululating of Sephardic Jewish women at a Kabbalistic wedding, and it’s the speaking in tongues of Pentecostals at a late night prayer meetin’. It’s noisy and it’s difficult to understand and it doesn’t all fit together.

Religion has a place in the public square. But it doesn’t get to define the boundaries of the public square. Public displays of faith have their place, indeed — but so too do public displays of humanistic secularism. The right to pray as one chooses is inextricably linked to the equally important right to scoff at those who pray. Real ecumenism, real diversity, is not simply making the case for common ground between Mormons and evangelical Protestants, arguing that each has a part to play in the grand symphony of faith. A real commitment to diversity is embracing not only all believers, but embracing all those who are in varying states of unbelief. I say this as a Christian who loves Jesus, and I say it on behalf of those whom I love who share my convictions — and those whom I love who don’t.

UPDATE: I wish I could say that the way I originally spelled “cacophony” was deliberate. When dealing with Greek suffixes, I’m better on manifestations than sounds, so “phany” always “looks right” to me. I’ve changed it to the right spelling now.

“Fixin’ to make a fire in the dark and the cold”: some notes on loving “No Country for Old Men”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 3, 2007
in Faith and Movies
. 21 Comments

Though I haven’t been to see many films lately, the best thing I’ve seen this fall — hands down — is No Country For Old Men. Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald, and Woody Harrelson, it’s a rich, engrossing, and for me, deeply satisfying picture.

Before I saw the film, several friends who had seen it told me that they had loved the first two-thirds but “hated the ending”. I went into the theater with their warning in mind, but found to my relief and surprise that the ending was one of the best things about the movie. Plot spoilers below the fold, folks, so click at your own risk. Continue reading ‘“Fixin’ to make a fire in the dark and the cold”: some notes on loving “No Country for Old Men”’

Once was lost, but now I still am: some thoughts on conversion and remaining teachable

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 27, 2007
in Christianity, Faith and Relationships
. 5 Comments

I’m still mulling the whole race, sex, and Full Frontal Feminism controversy. More on that soon.

On a different note, my friend “Clive” and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about a mutual buddy of ours, “Keith.” I met Clive and Keith at my old gym a decade ago; we’re all about the same age and we were “lifting partners” and “spinning pals” for several years. Clive and Keith are both evangelicals, both graduates of the same small prestigious Christian liberal-arts college. In different ways, they both played pivotal roles in my return to Christ in 1998. In my early days of sobriety and conversion, I found it difficult to talk easily about what was happening in my life. Working out together was the shared activity that made our masculine intimacy easier, and in different ways, Clive and Keith were able to do some vital “witness work” to bring me home to Jesus once again.

As it turns out, Clive and Keith aren’t speaking much these days. According to Clive, Keith (a very successful self-made entrepeneur) has turned his back on a lot of old friends. Keith has a hard time, apparently, hearing constructive criticism without getting outraged and defensive. The three of us belong to a Christian subculture in which loving confrontation and an insistence on mutual accountability are vital — and yet Keith has grown increasingly certain that he doesn’t need that kind of gentle challenge. Keith’s marriage is increasingly stormy, his relationship with his four children is strained, and his hard-driving business practices have alienated old and new acquaintances alike. We’re worried about him, and Clive and I spent a bit of time chatting about ways to “get through” to him. Continue reading ‘Once was lost, but now I still am: some thoughts on conversion and remaining teachable’

Humility and humiliation, self-loathing and hubris: a long and personal post about addiction and self-awareness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 18, 2007
in Addiction and mental illness and Faith
. 11 Comments

I mentor a wide variety of students in an equally wide variety of ways. I’m fond of all of them, but I will admit I have a keen sense of responsibility to those students whom I know are my fellow addicts. In the various Twelve Step programs with which I have been affiliated, there is a key maxim: if you want to keep something good (like sobriety), you’ve got to give it away. Call it mentoring or sponsoring or advising, it’s vital to my continued recovery that I work with other addicts. And as luck would have it, I’ve struggled with a colorful palate of compulsions, so I can usually identify with what it is that the young man or woman with whom I am working is going through. And even when I can’t always relate to the actions they’re engaged in (though I almost always can), I can connect to their feelings. That spinning cycle that carries them compulsively from ecstasy to despair is very, very familiar.

Though I often tell anecdotes about my students, when it comes to issues of addiction I shy away from blogging about what they tell me in confidence, even if I go to great lengths to disguise their identity. Their pain is not fodder for my writing. But of course, I do get inspired to blog about things that come up in these mentoring sessions, and something came up this week with one young person that brought me instantly back to a younger, not-yet forgotten Hugo.

One characteristic I see in many addicts is one that was a key part of me for many years. From the time I was a child until I was well into my thirties, I had what most addicts have: a strange mix of brutally low self-esteem and extraordinary grandiosity. For years and years my head told me that I was fat, ugly, shallow, selfish, and unloveable. At the same time, my head told me that I was incredibly strong. My strength lay in my capacity to endure what I imagined no one else could endure, because — my ego told me — if anyone else was suffering what I was suffering they would go stark raving mad. Admittedly, I did go temporarily mad on more than one occasion, but also managed to get through college, earn graduate degrees, and hold down a tenure-track job while dealing with both addiction and periodic psychotic episodes. In my grandiosity, I chalked up that success in the midst of my despair to this great strength I had. Continue reading ‘Humility and humiliation, self-loathing and hubris: a long and personal post about addiction and self-awareness’

Evangelizing for the Animals

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 6, 2007
in Animal Rights, Christianity, Faith and Veganism
. 19 Comments

A happy story in the Los Angeles Times this morning: Evangelizing for the Animals.

On Wednesday, clergy from 20 faith traditions — including Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic — will sign a statement declaring a moral duty to treat animals with respect. At a ceremony in Washington, they will call on all people of faith to stop wearing fur, reduce meat consumption, and buy only from farms with humane practices. The Best Friends Animal Society, which brought the group together, plans to recruit volunteers to bring that message into at least 2,000 congregations nationwide.

The evangelical community “is expanding its definition of values to include work on poverty and the environment. We hope to insert concern for animal welfare as well,” said Christine Gutleben, who directs the new “animals and religion” program at the Humane Society of the United States.

That program, funded at $400,000 a year, aims to persuade faith communities to take a series of small steps: offering a vegetarian entree at a fellowship meal, or insisting that the coffee cake set out on Sundays is made with free-range eggs.

The Humane Society is also seeking to enlist religious leaders in its political campaigns. In California, for instance, the group has been pushing a ballot measure to ban certain confinement systems for farm animals. Promotional ads show photos of hens in crowded cages and ask: “Is This Faithful Stewardship of God’s Creatures?”

I’m a member of the Christian Vegetarian Association, and they provide an excellent FAQ about issues of stewardship, dominion, and diet. I’m excited to see even some very conservative evangelicals (the Times article refers to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University) becoming open to issues of conservation and justice for animals. While most traditional Christians are not willing to place animal life on par with human life, it is encouraging to see so many engaged in critical reflection about justice, compassion, and conservation. Real change often needs to happen incrementally, and evangelical openness to animal rights issues is an exciting first step.

My wife went from eating red meat to being completely vegan in the space of a weekend. Pun intended, she gave up a carnivorous lifestyle “cold-turkey.” I went more slowly, surrendering first red meat, then poultry, then fish, then dairy and eggs. (We’ve both felt terrific on our vegan diets, and my wife’s doctors assure her that she will be able to remain vegan throughout any future pregnancy and while nursing a future child.) Asking all Christians to consider veganism may be imposing too much too fast. Asking them to buy meat that has been raised and slaughtered humanely, asking them to include vegetarian and vegan options at social events, and asking church communities to reflect on good stewardship may be the best way to begin.

A helpful and little-known bible passage: Proverbs 12:10. Good people are good to their animals; the “good-hearted” bad people kick and abuse them. The Old Testament world had no concept of “pets” as we do; the animals referred to here are working animals, livestock. If you’re going to raise animals for slaughter, you are required to treate them with kindness. Making that biblically sound point is a vital part of the battle for the hearts, minds, and palates of Christians.

And the Times article contains a tidbit I didn’t know:

Before he became pope, Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) spoke against force-feeding geese to produce foie gras and packing hens so closely “that they become just caricatures of birds.”

Would that he had spoken on the matter ex cathedra. Perhaps soon.

“Tikkun olam”, gender justice, and a notable lack of humility: a long response to John Spragge

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 31, 2007
in Faith, Feminism and Teaching
. 32 Comments

I’m dressed as Hugo Schwyzer for Halloween. T-shirt, eclectic jewelry, favorite jeans.

Regular commenter John Spragge, who blogs at Open Hand/Open Eye, has frequently taken issue with the way in which I make sweeping claims about feminism and the good life. He summarizes his criticism in this comment below Monday’s post:

I have three specific objections to Hugo’s presentation of his version of the “good life”: first, the implicit condescension and arrogance of one person or one culture setting themselves up as the arbiter of the “good life”, and ignoring or trivializing the presence, and the importance, of diversity in the world. Secondly, I just plain don’t accept that Hugo does not threaten people who differ from him. His proposal to adjust the rape laws, (see my comments to his post on “viral”), which happens to disadvantage people “wired” differently from him, certainly has some very threatening implications for those of us it might affect. Certainly, he does not renounce the possibility of using force to promote his ideas. And finally, he foists all this on feminism, without, as far as I can tell, bothering to consult women who need allies, and who might not want to have people who might support them told they should accept Hugo’s large, indigestible, “thick” vision of the good life as a price for supporting feminist ideas and principles.

Hugo: I don’t particularly agree with your view of the “Great Commission”; I would urge humility on all missionaries. But whatever my reaction to missionaries, particularly the “gun and gospel” variety, at least they did not claim the authority to impose their own perceptions and claims; they spoke in the name of a Gospel they believed had the authority of divine revelation. They preached not their own conception of the “good life”, but what they believed God had revealed and commanded them to preach. Most of the vision of the “good life” that we read on this web-log has no such authority. Your message seems to me to boil down to the claim that we have an obligation to live a radically egalitarian life, and you, Hugo, a white man who can live his vision of the “good life” thanks in part to the genocide of the rightful owners of the land you live on, will tell us exactly what “egalitarian” means. I personally have not the slightest intention of swallowing this contradiction. If you make, explicitly or implicitly, accepting your ideas part of the “price” for supporting feminism, do you have the consent of the millions of women who do not remotely have your privileges, and who actively need allies?

Some of Spragge’s complaints are legit, some aren’t. If you read his comments below the post about “enthusiasm and consent”, he seems to come dangerously close to defending rape. Demanding that both consent and authentic enthusiasm be prerequisites for “right sex” sets the bar too high for him (he worries, at times, about how young men with Asperger’s are likely to get laid if we adhere to the “enthusiasm” standard.) I have no problem advocating for the “enthusiasm” ideal as a universal good and an indispensable prerequisite (among many, perhaps) for healthy sex, and Spragge’s doubts don’t carry much weight on the matter. Continue reading ‘“Tikkun olam”, gender justice, and a notable lack of humility: a long response to John Spragge’

Malibu Presbyterian

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 22, 2007
in Faith
. 1 Comment

My good friend and former student Kristie Vosper is director of children’s ministries at Malibu Presbyterian Church. As many of you will know, her church burned to the ground yesterday morning, caught up in one of the many firestorms affecting Southern California.

Kristie blogs too, and she has a moving post up this morning about the loss of the church and the goodness of God in the presence of ashes. Kristie lost a great many precious possessions stored in her office; her guitars, however (she’s a formidable amateur musician) were rescued.

I’m praying for the Malibu Pres community this morning, and for all those — both human and animal — whose lives have been impacted by these fires. But as a sixth-generation Californian, I know that when you build in the canyons, sooner or later, you risk losing everything. Usually, it should be noted, in October.

The religious right lines up behind Romney: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 19, 2007
in Faith and Politics
. 15 Comments

I note that leading conservative evangelicals are quietly (and not so quietly) putting their eggs in the Mitt Romney basket. With Mike Huckabee going nowhere, Fred Thompson still mysteriously half-hearted, and Sam Brownback dropping out of the ‘08 race, most thoughtful social conservatives realize that Romney represents the only real chance they have to avoid having to cope with noted pro-choice philanderer Rudy Giuliani as Republican nominee.

Today’s endorsement comes from the professor and theologian Wayne Grudem, the leading defender of what egalitarian evangelicals like me sometimes call the “complementarian heresy”. This follows the endorsement of Romney earlier this week by Robert Taylor, dean at the ultra-conservative Bob Jones University.

The big question: will the fundamentalist Protestant elite succeed in convincing their footsoldiers that it’s okay to vote for a Mormon, or will a disconnect emerge between the relative pragmatism of folks like Grudem and Taylor and the evangelical base, many of whom will be unable to separate Romney’s politics from his LDS faith — which they regard as a cult?

I’m a progressive evangelical with no interest in supporting Mitt Romney. But part of me would like to see him gain the nomination (and then lose the general election), if only to strike a blow for religious tolerance. Maybe then Christian bookstores (like that at my own Fuller Seminary) won’t still stock books about Mormonism under “cults”, as it would be a bit awkward for evangelicals to view their political champion as a cult member!

UPDATE: I’ve been sent this link: Dallas minister urges vote for a Christian, not Romney

UPDATE II: Maybe Mike Huckabee is going somewhere. Lord knows, I like the way he talks about a responsibility to the poor; he’s a social conservative, but he makes good sense on some of the economic issues. After all, anyone who can attract the ire of the Club for Growth can’t be all bad. If I were a principled social conservative (I’m not, at least not the conservative part), I’d be an enthusiastic Huckabee guy.

Hugo is a Martha too: on addiction moving laterally, and struggling to be still

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 17, 2007
in Addiction and mental illness, Faith and Vanity
. 12 Comments

My alarm went off at 5:30 this morning; I had a relatively easy seven-mile run scheduled. Though I had had gone to bed before 11:00 last night, and slept well, I woke up drained. I lay there for a few minutes, trying to decide whether to get up and force myself through the work-out, or turn off the alarm and catch another hour next to my wife. I’m glad to say I did the latter.

It’s very, very easy for me to neglect my self-care. Like a great many people, I make lists in my head of the various things I want to accomplish in any given day. Time for sleep and time for spiritual reflection usually get bumped to the bottom of the list in favor of both fulfilling vital obligations (teaching, grading, writing letters of rec, taking care of chinchillas, doing laundry) and not-so-vital ones (reading blogs and exercising several hours per day.)

I’ve got to keep a close eye on my addictive nature. When I first got sober many years ago, my sponsor said to me “Watch out, Hugo, the disease moves laterally.” I wasn’t sure what he meant at the time, but quickly found out. I gave up the alcohol, and turned (in no particular order) to compulsive sex, disordered eating, and — briefly — fundamentalist religiosity. It was in sobriety that my weight dropped to 145 pounds on my frame (I’m a lean 175 now, for comparison). It was in sobriety that I experimented with intolerant zealotry. It was while sober that I began to struggle both with pornography and reckless promiscuity; I traded physical intoxication for the high of seduction. The disease moved laterally indeed. Continue reading ‘Hugo is a Martha too: on addiction moving laterally, and struggling to be still’

“Acting in the courage of our uncertainties”: a reflection on Neuhaus, decision making, and the God who “waits on the other side of the decision”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 11, 2007
in Faith and Memories
. 4 Comments

When it comes to most issues, I have very little in common with the revered Catholic neo-conservative, Richard John Neuhaus. But in 2001, at the recommendation of my friend Steve, I started subscribing to his First Things magazine. I’ve renewed my subscription faithfully each year since, as I find the seriousness and the liveliness of the writing to be desperately good. (I wish that there were an equivalent publication on the religious left; Sojourners may match up better with my politics, but I rarely find articles within its pages that make me gasp at the beauty of the prose.)

Like a lot of First Things readers, I read the last thing in the magazine first: “The Public Square”, Neuhaus’ long, biting, frequently uncharitable but always delicious commentary on all sorts of matters political, ecclesiastical, and moral. And every once in a while, just when I’m about to get completely fed up with this ageing reactionary, he writes something so dead on right I leap to my feet in excitement. Last night, during chinchilla out time, I read this:

We are all uncertain about what God wants us to do. That is to say, we do not know for sure. Of course it seems silly, when you’re well past middle age and have spent your life doing what you believe you’ve been given to do, to always be getting up in the morning or suddenly stopping in the middle of the day’s work to ask, “Is this what I’m supposed to be doing?” I mentioned this to a young man who is discerning whether he has a call to the priesthood, and he was shocked, perhaps scandalized. He said, in effect, “You mean after all these years of being a priest, of writing books, of editing and lecturing, of organizing so many projects, you still aren’t sure you’re doing what God called you to do? How am I ever to know that God is calling me to the priesthood?” The answer is that we act in the courage of our uncertainties. I am fond of pointing out that the word decide comes from the Latin decidere, “to cut off.” You face choices—whether to be a priest, whether to go to this school or that, whether to marry a certain person, whether to pursue this line of work or another—and then you decide. And, in deciding, you have cut off the alternatives and pray you have decided rightly. But you do not know for sure. Or else you are trapped in the tangled web of indecision. In this connection, I have had frequent recourse, both homiletically and personally, to one of the most liberating passages from Saint Paul—1 Corinthians 4. He has been trying to explain himself and his apostolate to the Christians in Corinth. He doesn’t know whether he has succeeded, and then he says this: “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. . . . Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.” Do not judge before the time! I do not even judge myself! These are the words of a life set free from the tangled web of introspection and indecision.

We act in the courage of our uncertainties. That’s good stuff. Better than good; it’s perfect. Continue reading ‘“Acting in the courage of our uncertainties”: a reflection on Neuhaus, decision making, and the God who “waits on the other side of the decision”’