Women

It’s Not Mumford, It’s the Music Industry: Whiteness

February 20, 2013 by Bo Sanders 103 Comments

I think a lot about issues of race, gender and class. I read about it and talk it over with people every week. I am working my way through an expensive program in order to write my dissertation about it. I care about matters of diversity and justice a great deal.

Ever since talking to my mentor, Randy Woodley at Wild Goose West last fall I have been thinking about this a little differently. Then with the happenings of the Emergent Christianity thing in Memphis … I thought I would bring out what I have been whittling away at in my workshop.
This is something I am working on and I would love your constructive feedback.

The problem isn’t Brian McLaren speaking at a conference.
The problem is if everyone speaking at the conference looks like McLaren.

The problem isn’t reading a book by a white guy.
The problem is only reading books by white guys.*

The problem isn’t having a man speak up front at church.
The problem is if we only hear men speak from up front at church.

You don’t even listen to podcasts!

Here is what I want to avoid. There was some grumbling on facebook when The Culture Cast was released and it turned out that both Jordan and Christian were white guys. Ironically, almost all the grumbling came from white guys – but that is a different issue.

One female friend said “where are the women podcasters?”

I suggested that since it was a concern of hers … why didn’t she tell us some recommendations. Why is she asking a question?

She responded that she didn’t listen to podcasts.

I was stunned.

I asked “then why do you care? What difference would it make to you?”

It would be like me complaining their aren’t enough black NACSAR drivers. I don’t watch NASCAR. I don’t even know how many black drivers there are. That reality is irrelevant to my existence.

I think that we need to care deeply about things that we are invested in. There are too many issues that matter for too much for us to get tangled in controversies vicariously.

We don’t except tokens.

We need to be careful of tokenism. Let me be clear on this: if you are group of white people who have organized a conference, already have 10 white speakers lined up and then think ‘we need some color – let’s see if we can get Randy Woodley’ … that is token. Randy got no say in the direction and organization nor had any power or influence. You just want to put a microphone in his face and have him do his schtick.

Token is an afterthought that serves primarily to help one feel good about being able to check off a box. If Randy was on the organizing committee – trust me the no conference would look the same.

In contrast to ‘token’ let me offer 3 examples:

Anthony Smith is an emergent voice and influence. He was in the movement before me and helped bring me in. That is not token. That is influence. Anthony Smith is influential.
When Tripp and I organized the Emergent Village Theological Conversation we said “Monica Coleman is our marquee speaker, our cornerstone, our prima donna.” And we did not do anything until she agreed to be our first round draft pick. She got session 1 to start the conference to set the tone and she got session 5 to end the conference so that she had the final word. We built the conference around that structure. We then invited others to come in around her.
When we inherited the Phoenix Big-Tent Christianity event many of the speakers were already in place. It was great to have Richard Rohr, Marcus Borg and Brian McLaren to boost ticket sales. But we wanted to highlight some voices that people had not heard a lot before. So, for instance, we structured the actual sessions that one of the ‘marquee’ voices was asking questions of one of the ‘emerging’ voices. For many people, that was the first time they had heard of Rachel Held-Evans. I will never forget watching her debate Marcus Borg about church folks understanding of creation!

I’m with the band.

Here is my big point:
The problem isn’t that Mumford and Sons are all white guys. We have to look at the way that bands form. It makes sense that the guys of Mumford connect and play.

The problem is if every band on the radio is white guys.

The problem isn’t that Bono is a white guy or that U2 are all white guys.

The problem is if every band on a record label is a bunch of white guys.

We have to learn to distinguish between how a band come together and how the music industry functions.

We also need to do this for church … and for christian conferences.

No conference or podcast is or can be the full expression of the kingdom on earth. It is not nor can it be heaven. It is not supposed to be. Like no band can play every type of music …

I understand our desire for diversity – I just want us to manage our expectations. Our problem isn’t with Mumford and Sons, it’s with the music industry.

The answer isn’t “add a black guy”. That is not how bands work.
Can you imagine somebody saying “why doesn’t Boys 2 Men have a women in it?” or “why doesn’t Destiny’s Child get Ricky Martin to join?”

The problem then isn’t with any church, podcast, organization, conference or person. Our concern is with how that all comes together in a less-diverse way than we would hope for and desperately need.

The answer then is not to ‘add a women and stir’ or to ‘get some color’. That is what we call token – and it is insulting to everyone involved.

The need is to examine the bigger picture. This includes how things are planned, who makes decisions, and in what ways can people access resources.

Here is a timely example: Tripp and I are singers and songwriters. Our friends Callid Keefe-Perry and Steve Knight are as concerned about the impact of technology on the church as we are. We have talking about it whenever we are together. We started this when we lived in 4 different parts of the country. Tomorrow, Steve Night is in town and we are going to record a podcast about the subject.

That is not a problem. We are Mumford, or U2, or The Stones, or the Beatles … we are just a band.
It is not a problem that we sing together – or in this case talk together. The problem comes if we are the only ones you hear.

___________________

*If you find yourself in this situation, here are some books suggestions

Quest for the Living God by Elizabeth Johnson

Christ the Key by Catherine Tanner

Teaching Community by bell hooks

Shalom and the Community of Creation by Randy Woodley

Many Colors or The Next Evangelicalism by Soong Chan-Rah

Triune Atonement: Christ’s Healing for Sinners, Victims, and the Whole Creation by Andrew Sung Park

Filed Under: latest Tagged With: black, book, books, color, conference, diversity, Emergent, Mumford, music, podcast, show, token, white, whiteness, WIld Goose, Women

Is the Internet for Women and Gays?

February 12, 2013 by Bo Sanders 5 Comments

“Is the internet for women and gays?” may seem like at odd question at first – but there is a story behind it. I am coming at the question as a researcher. I am doing research design at UCLA right now in preparation for my dissertation next year. One of the research questions is in relation to technology, the community of users interacts with the technology, and possible issues related to who conceived of and designed the technology.

An interesting case study is found in the Grindr social network community. Grindr is a widely popular mobile, GPS-enabled hook-up app for gays. The folks at Grindr had the idea to launch a ‘straight’ version called Blendr, and it has been massive failure. [You can read about why it failed here and here and here ]

One of the theories is that Grindr was conceived of and designed by gays. A hypothesis we were testing is that embedded in the ‘DNA’ of the technology was something inherently ‘gay’ that resonated with its users but was lost in translation when the conversion to Blendr was attempted.

During this research I have also become aware of a growing problem of cyber-bullying, particularly of women and LBGT persons. It shows up on Facebook, Xbox chat rooms during multi-player games, and blogs.

One article about women bloggers contained two different women’s experience.

“The death threat was pretty scary,” says HollaBack! cofounder Emily May. “And there have been several rape threats. But it’s mostly ‘I want to rape you’ or ‘Somebody should rape you.’ Most are not physical threats–they’re more about how ugly I am, how nobody would bother raping me because I’m so fat and hideous. Once, after reading all these posts, I just sat in my living room and bawled like a 12-year-old.”

Jennifer Pozner agrees. “Very rarely have I gotten negative feedback that doesn’t include either a rape threat or calling me ugly and fat. Or sometimes they tell me I’m hot, but they hate what I’m saying– they’d rather watch me on TV with the mute on.” Pozner’s threats have not been limited to online: One man left a letter at her door saying he’d “find you and your mom and rape you both.”

Ponzer says “It’s about the policing of women … using threats to keep us silent.”

It is clear that many of the same oppressive behaviors, patriarchal attitudes and hurtful rhetoric that plague us in the ‘real world’ show up in cyberspace. Is a matter for concern? Is this a surprising reality? Does this need to be addressed?

The question “Is the internet for women and gays?” seems to have 3 initial answers that each expose some significant underlying assumptions.

The first possible answer is “Of course it is! In fact, it is a powerful leveler of the social hierarchies and power structures that dominate our inherited cultural history” . The internet is seen to be a democratic space that allows for harmful elements to be exposed and for the community to vocalize and govern in ways that are newly empowering. It allows us the possibility to combat bullies and shame those who are hurtful to others.

The second possible answer relates to the idea that embedded in the DNA of technology are the values and priorities (as well a biases) of it’s designer. In this case, it would make sense that many of the same problems in Western culture are carried over into the technologies that are conceived of and designed by folks from the culture. It is the same shit by different means. Same prejudice – different medium.

A third possible answer is that technology is an empty vessel when it comes to values and we, as users, supply it with meaning and content. So a message board, Facebook page, blog and XBox chat room are just spaces that we utilize. They are neutral and can be used in socially positive (welcoming) or negative (aggressive or discriminatory) ways.

Why am I concerned about this?

This issues concerns me in two ways:

1) I am deeply troubled to read of women bloggers being threatened and intimidated – even virtually. I am concerned about stories I hear from the girls in my youth group about their Facebook experiences. My wife has worked in both Domestic Violence and Rape Crisis Counseling while I have been in youth ministry. Issues related intimidation, violence and oppression-suppression are serious and deeply impact the quality of someone’s life, their mental and emotional health and their capacity to participate in family, church and society.

2) Technology seems to be a good test case for a much larger concern that I have regarding leadership and community development in the next generation. This particular issue gives me great hesitation about getting too excited regarding this potential new era of open-mindedness, equality, acceptance and freedom. The issue is simply this:
We who have been trained, groomed, shaped, and socialized into the old forms – bring with us into the new forms, our patterns, values, ideas, permissions and prejudices.

It’s like whenever someone complains about a perceived shortcoming in the Emerging Church, I find myself saying

“yes … but part of that has to do with that which we are emerging from. These are inherited patterns because we are all embedded in systems that contain inherent values. It will take a while to entirely emerge out of that.”

To take this back to our initial question about technology. Technology isn’t the solution to the problems that haunt us. They may be helpful for bringing about the solution – but simply have an open room – Facebook, Xbox chat or blog – is not a fix in itself. The prejudices and issues of power that are ‘outside’ the room are brought in with the people who come in to use the space.

This seems to me to be an import issue to vocalize. My hope is that in simply naming it to raise awareness that technology is not inherently neutral, safe, or equal. There is more going on in our use of Facebook, Xbox chats and blogs than just our use of those technologies. They are not absent of the values, patterns, prejudices and social power dynamics of the world and culture that made them.

We need to be vigilant to address hurtful and harmful material in our technologies. Technology is not neutral – it is embedded with meaning and value.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, media, news, random Tagged With: Blendr, blog, bully, Facebook, Gridr, internet, intimidation, LGBT, men, sex, technology, threats, use, violence, Women, Xbox

The Silent White Guy and Invisible Black Women

February 6, 2013 by Bo Sanders 15 Comments

A record number of people read the post yesterday “Beyonce and the Bigger Question”. I want to thank everyone who commented on the blog, FaceBook and Twitter for making the conversation so fruitful and constructive. It is a difficult question and we certainly have an issue with race in our society.

I am also glad that people seemed to like the idea of Critical Theory and the structure of the questions that I put forward.

I did notice 2 places where the conversation trickled to an drip.

One is the issue of what white guys are allowed to talk about.

Two is the way to talk about the role of black women in our society without picking on Beyonce.

Let me give those some background:

My friend Hollie Baker-Lutz tweeted yesterday a sentiment that I hear quite frequently

“Uh oh, overheard in the university cafe: “and I can’t say anything in that class cuz I’m a white male, which is the worst thing u can be.”

I get this all the time from guys young and old alike. I think something may be missing from that equation however.
Here are two things it would be helpful to add to the mix:

an acknowledgement that the world is changing.
a familiarity of the word hegemony.

If you add those 2 things, it has been my experience that people are generally open to hear what you have to say. People are quite interested.

What they are not interested in is the hegemonic refrain. See, here is the problem: because that is the dominant cultural narrative … they have already heard it. They know it well. They may know it better than you because they have had to deal with it – whereas you have only assumed it and benefited uncritically from it.

The second issue came from my friend Janisha when she wrote in response to yesterday’s post:

I appreciate your article and your attempt to think deeply. I don’t think anyone except for black women can truly determine what are primary and secondary issues.
The place of black women in society as a primary issue has with it endless complications, including “taking back one’s physicality in the face of generations of oppression and marginalization.”
My place in this culture is directly linked to taking back my physicality, because my black womanhood is my physicality. They aren’t different. they cannot be separated. I will argue again, that this conversation is difficult to have unless you are a black woman, because who else can fully understand the implications of Beyonce?

MP responded:

I get what you (Janisha) are saying about the black woman conversation and I don’t want to butt into it, white man that I am. But that conversation would be about actual black womanhood, whereas this one is about public spectacle, one created and much enjoyed by white men. So there’s a white man conversation to be had about why we (white men) have created a category of “black women” who occupy this particular place in our spectacle.

… Bo, I wonder how to tackle the issue of “what place black women hold in our culture” without picking apart actual cases like Beyonce’s half-time show??

MP makes 2 excellent points!

- The first situation I would compare to ‘reader response’ approaches to text. We have the author-text-reader.
In this case we have Beyonce-Performance-Viewer.

So each of us viewers is related to the performance differently so ‘white men’ and ‘black women’ may be relating to the performance differently.

- In the second I just think that we need to be VERY clear the difference between an example and an anecdote. Focusing in one example can be illustrative or it can be problematic.

I would hesitate to use this performance by Beyonce as an example – she is not the only one who dances like this. Lots of performers do. Also white women (like Christina and Britney) do. So it is not unprecedented.

NFL Cheerleading squads do many of the same moves in much the same outfits … the difference is that
A) they don’t have a microphone and
B) we don’t know their name.

Which is a HUGE difference.
If we want to talk about male sexuality and football we should have the Cheerleader conversation. That is every team – every week.

If we want to have the ‘place that black women hold in our society’ conversation, then we would ask a different set of questions. Like ‘where were the other black women during the 5 hour broadcast of America’s largest TV event of the year?’ Since it is a commercial event … maybe we would even take a look at the commercials and ask how black women were represented.

Either way – isolating the one performance by Beyonce is not our best starting point.

Filed Under: conversations, engaging, latest, living, media, news, thinking Tagged With: Beyonce, black, cheerleaders, Christian, commercials, controversy, Culture, God, half time, hegemony, men, performance, privilege, race, racism, sex, sexuality, society, song, songs, SuperBowl, theology, white, Women

Beyoncé and the Bigger Question

February 5, 2013 by Bo Sanders 30 Comments

It is with great interest that I have read the blowback over the Beyoncé SuperBowl Half-Time Show. I have read several interesting articles – both in support and in criticism – of the spectacle.

I get why people want to talk about her outfit, her moves, and her assembled cast of all females – about modesty, sexuality, and female empowerment. I get why those are conversation points.

What is becoming a trend, however, is that I have little interest in that conversation – not until we have a more significant conversation first.

I think that it is time I lay all my cards on the table.

While I was in seminary, my mentor Randy Woodley, showed me how to look at bigger systems and structures than I was used to. I have continued down that road and during my time at Claremont have been in dialogue with a school of thought called ‘Critical Theory’.

Critical Theory has taught me to ask 3 initial questions in order to examine an issue:

Is there a pattern visible?
Is there something behind the main thing?
Is there any issue of power differential?

The Critical part is that we are going beyond the initial perceptions, the popular approach and the cultural conversation. The Theory part is that we are going to see if we might offer an explanation about the deeper issue.

SO let’s ask our 3 questions about the SuperBowl Half-Time hullaballoo.

Is there a pattern visible?

I would argue that there is. I noticed it just before kickoff – during the Nation Anthem to be specific. Alecia Keys was introduced, Jennifer Hudson had just sang with the kids from Sandy Hook … and I knew that Beyoncé was the halftime show.

I thought to myself:

“It’s odd that the only 3 black women involved in this TV spectacular are all singers.”

I noticed that CBS didn’t even have a black female sideline reporter like Pam Oliver (on FOX) for its NFL broadcasts. I watched the rest of the festivities – including all the military stuff – and was struck by the noticeable lack of black women associated with the event. Walter Payton’s daughter presented Jason Witten with the NFL Man of the Year award … but that was about it. None of the coaches or commentators … not even many of the commercials involved black women. This seemed significant since so many of the on-screen TV personalities, coaches and players are black.

Is there something behind the main thing?

It is easy to see the answer to this one. The answer is consumerism. While the game itself is ‘the main event’ the commercial aspect of the SuperBowl has become at-least or almost as big. Commercials this year sold for a reported 4 million dollars a piece. Like the controversy we covered yesterday in the ‘So God Made a Farmer’, commercialism-capitalism-consumerism is the unspoken thing.

It might be hard to see in a short blog post like this but Beyoncé isn’t the telling controversy. The more telling one was the criticism of Alicia Keys’ soulful rendition of the national anthem. People criticized her not just for sitting at a piano (!) but for altering the tried and true version of the song.

In CT when something is assumed – even if unstated – as a dominant form, it is called hegemony. It is a type of power or influence that may or may not be overtly communicated. If one were to look at just the first half of the SuperBowl broadcast, it might be possible to say that the major narrative when it comes black women is twofold:

you can sing – we like that.
but make sure you do it our way. Don’t do anything too much or too … you know… that’s not why you are here.

Is there any issue of power differential?

This is the one that we never get around to talking about. Maybe it’s because we don’t know how to or don’t have frameworks for it. There is a question that needs to be asked though: who decided that Jennifer Hudson, Alecia Keys and Beyoncé would sing? What did that committee look like? Who are in those seats of power?

Did the group that decided who would sing look like Jennifer Hudson, Alecia Keys, and Beyoncé?

I don’t know, I’m asking an honest question. It’s the tough question that no one wants to ask. Who has the resources? Who has the influence? Who makes the decisions? Who sits in the seats of power?

Now you can see why I am not interested in talking about whether Beyoncé should have had more clothes on, should have gyrated less or is a model for taking back one’s physicality in the face of generations of oppression and marginalization.

Those are all secondary conversations.

The primary conversation is about what place black women hold in our culture.

It is a much bigger conversation with much deeper consequences than if Beyonce’s hips and wardrobe were appropriate for a Half-Time show.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, media, news, post-something, thinking Tagged With: ad, Alecia Keys, Beyonce, black, book, books, controversy, critical, dance, half time, Jennifer Hudson, national anthem, Pam Oliver, power, race, racism, racist, roles, sex, sexual, show, sing, Super Bowl, theory, TV, Women

Randy Woodley on Race [MLK Bonus Trac]

January 21, 2013 by Bo Sanders Leave a Comment

In this bonus trac I ask my mentor Randy Woodley why it seems like over the last 30 years it seems like we are going backwards in some important areas of equality and liberation.

I have been saving this for Martin Luther King day because just before this question Randy and I were talking about my reading King’s Letter from a Birmingham jail for the first time in Randy’s seminary class.

Randy’s book Shalom and the Community of Creation is available on Amazon and Kindle and you can hear our entire conversation on the podcast.

Randy Woodley is the Associate Professor of Faith and Culture and the Director of Intercultural and Indigenous Studies at George Fox Seminary in Portland Oregon.

He is also the author of Living In Color: Embracing God’s Passion for Ethnic Diversity.

Edith and Randy run Eagle’s Wings Ministries. Randy is also a part of the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies (NAIITS).

Randy is also a member of Evangelicals for Justice along with Lisa Sharon-Harper (who was recently on the podcast for an Inauguration Special).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Filed Under: random Tagged With: America, church, Culture, history, Martin Luther King, minorities, race, Randy Woodley, voices, white, Women

Phyllis Tickle on Emergence Christianity

January 19, 2013 by Bo Sanders 1 Comment

Before the big event in Memphis to celebrate Phyllis and her book Emergence Christianity, Tripp got to chat with the first-lady of emergence. This is Phyllis at her best!

As many of you know there was concern leading up the conference and controversy coming out of it. This interview we recorded before all of it – that conversation is happening over at the blog.

You can get the book Emergence Christianity at Amazon and help the podcast.

We would love to hear your voice on the SpeakPipe. Go to the HomeBrewed Christianity homepage and click on the little microphone on the right hand side of the page. Leave us an MP3 message that we can use in an upcoming episode – or just let us know what you are thinking.

Remember: Easter comes early this year! Which means that Lent starts on February 13. Bo will be blogging through Tony Kriz’s new book Neighbors and Wisemen throughout Lent.

The Kindle version is only $9.99 .

Come and join the conversation.
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Filed Under: church history, emergent, features, podcast Tagged With: Bible, book, books, Christianity, church, conference, controversy, emergence, God, history, jesus, Phyllis Tickle, vision, Women

Preferring the Past: Phyllis Tickle, Radical Orthodoxy and the Tea Party

January 18, 2013 by Bo Sanders 73 Comments

There has a been an uproar this week over Phyllis Tickle’s closing comments at last weekend’s big emergent event in Memphis. It was a party to celebrate Phyllis and her book “Emergence Christianity”.

Friend of the podcast, Julia Clawson (who was at the gathering) wrote an amazing reflection on the odd series of events. You can read about it on Julie’s blog - One Hand Clapping.

I watched from an entranced distance as the whole thing unfolded this week. Apparently Phyllis connected the dots from women in the work place, to the Pill (birth control), to Christendom’s demise. All of which sounded good to me!

Then it took an unprecedented turn as Phyllis, it turns out, was not saying that was a good thing and suggested moms needed to get back to cooking dinner for their families and telling bible stories.

This threw everyone a little bit. There were already concerns about the lack of women, people of color, and LGBT voices on the stage. The trainwreck had just started (read Julie’s report for the actual progression of thought).

I read a number of responses including

Krista Dalton - who is scared of the witch hunt

Amaryah Shaye Armstrong - who want to retire the word ‘privilege’

Stephanie Drury – on covert misogyny

Suzannah Paul - tragically hip: privilege & the emerging church

Sarah Bessey – who is done fighting for a seat at the table

I also read some less measured responses and even attacks on twitter.

Now all of this happened while I was saying “The future of Christianity is not to be found in Europe’s past” in a critique of Radical Orthodoxy’s proposal to return to Aquinas and the Greek polis as a model.

I also had somebody staying in my house who is from a Red-State and who is tormented on Facebook by Tea-Party ‘supporters’ who are concerned, among other things, about the loss of their ‘old time religion/county’.

Back to Phyllis Tickle. There is some debate if she had the flu which caused her to not nuance like she normally does and thus spiral back to 1957.

I want to give her the benefit of the doubt personally. I almost can’t believe she said it – or meant it like it sounded … but for the purpose of our conversation here:

Let’s pretend that Phyllis said what she meant and meant what she said.

Do you think that the past was better? Is the solution to what ails us in the present going back to something in the past that we need to reclaim for our future?

I am not under that impression. I hold that all theology is contextual theology and so all expressions (even the Biblical record & the creeds) are neither universal nor timeless. All expressions are particularly located and unavoidably time bound. All products are embedded in a place and located in time.

Just to be clear: I love history. But I have no fascination with the past. It was what it was. We should learn from it but we can not return to it.

Someone reported that Barry Taylor – who I study with – said just the day before Phyllis’ odd statement that when we indulge nostalgia we re-create a past that never existed in the first place and how the only way to move is forward.

It reminds me of the book The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap. There are so many aspect to this romantically remembered past that need addressing. The two biggest hiccups seem to be

It was never really like that.
You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube – as they say.

Preferring the past is something like fantasy. It is part imagination and part escape. Even if it were like we imagine it, the simple fact is that we can’t go back. We don’t live then and can’t get there. There is nothing helpful about reminiscing for a romanticized imagined past.

This is why I like the post-liberal perspective of George Lindbeck (Nature of Doctrine) – not because that is what I want people to do but because he helps me understand what people are already doing. [What Phyllis said about moms and christian formation in the home could be taken right out of the post-lib playbook!]

What Phyllis is suggesting, is what the post-Libs and Radical Orthodox are driven by. It’s what the Tea Party wants for politics. It is a preference for the past.

I appreciate the past. I try, where I can, to honor the road that led us here. I try to find continuity with the tradition and embrace, where possible, historical practices that lead to life in an emerging reality.

Families have changed. That does not mean that we have to either-or go back to mom in the kitchen or give up on discipling the next generation. There are innovative and creative ways to encourage the formation of christian character in our young people.

To prefer the past is a game of selective remembering and editing. It is a least farcical and at worst harmful. God has place us here – now. That is a gift and an opportunity.

The nature of religion has a conserving element to it that unfortunately sometime goes from being one of the significant player in the room to the high-chair tyrant demanding its way.

I write all of this for several reasons. The first is that I simply can not believe that Phyllis said it. But she did and so I can not imagine that she meant it like it sounded. It just seems unfathomable to me.

It does however give us a chance to do three things:

Examine the habit of having only professional speakers or authors as the voices of our conferences and movement.

Move toward what I suggested for the Wild Goose Festival and have all sessions be conversations between thinkers and practitioners. Make all of our gatherings dialogues and not keynote addresses where a polished figure does their schtick.

Initiate a changing of the guard. If we don’t like how folks are invited to the table, we are free to make different tables. If we want to hear different voices, this is a great chance to do so. There is clearly a conversation about gender and sexuality that needs to be had. This might be the open door we need to set that up.

I would love to hear your thoughts, questions, and concerns.
HBC also releases a conversation with Tickle today. It was recorded before the conference so the controversy does not come up.

Filed Under: emergent, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: barry taylor, Bible, book, books, comments, conservative, controversy, emergence, event, family, Feminism, God, Julie Clawson, Lindbeck, mothers, Phyllis Tickle, radical orthodoxy, the Pill, tradition, Women

The Church and State are Married in a Civil Union

May 29, 2012 by Bo Sanders 18 Comments

In last week’s TNT episode, Tripp and I spend the first half hour talking about marriage and the church.

I learned early on in ministry to ask a simple question: If I as an ordained minister perform a wedding ceremony for a couple, but they have not secured a license from the state, then when I say “Before God and all these witnesses – I pronounce that you are husband and wife. What God has joined together, let no one separate.” Are they married?

Overwhelmingly the answer is ‘no’. That they are not married until that paper is signed and it is legal.
So it is indeed that piece of paper that is marriage and not the Christian ceremony that we perform.

This actually happened to me one time. A young couple had secured the marriage license but in all the fun and frivolity of the reception and photos, they forgot to get the paper signed. They were just about to get on the Cruise ship when they realized the mistake!
No big deal, we got it taken care of. What was a big deal was the family’s reaction! What would have happened if they had consummated the union and they weren’t even married??? (legally).

If what we are doing is nothing more than a thin Christian veneer over a civil institution, then one has to wonder why we are also so concerned about who can get married – or even have civil unions – according to our biblical morality.

It seems that the Church wants it’s wedding cake and to eat it too.

But that is a second conversation. There is a different conversation that we need to have first. Like I said, I know hundreds of people who do not (because of what they claim is their christian conviction) support same-sex unions or homosexuality in general. I get that. But why does that then translate into legislating one’s religious belief into a legal morality imposed upon others?

My point is that there is a secondary mechanism involved. There is something else working behind the scenes.

We see this in legislating who can get married based on a reading of the Bible … but we also see it in the assumption of when someone is officially married: when the Christian minister declares it or when the State license is signed.

We try to have the second conversation without having the first and that is why we never get anywhere. Christians ask the question “should same sex unions be allowed” without first addressing “why are Christian ministers performing as agents of the State?”

If the answer is what I suspect it is, then we may want to take the ‘separation of church & state’ verbiage down a notch and start thinking about how we are going to fund ministry if our tax-deductible status was not so convenient for people to ‘give’.

The same-sex union is a second conversation.
There is a conversation we should have first that no one seems too eager to entertain.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, bride, church, God, government, groom, homosexual, homosexuality, jesus, legal, marriage, men, same sex, state, union, Wedding, Women

Violence in the Hunger Games

March 23, 2012 by Bo Sanders 28 Comments

Writing a paper on Globalization calls for a serious study break and tonight I headed to the opening day of the Hunger Games. There are three things that you should know about my movie going experience:

My theater is one block from UCLA and I appeared to be the oldest person in the theatre.
LA is wonderful for diversity. This was the most eclectic group of folks I have watched an opening night movie with since I watched the Waterboy in New York (1998)
I have intentionally not watched a single preview or read anything about the movie whatsoever. I hate how previews ruin the narrative experience for me.

In short I will simply say this for the movie:

It was better than advertised.
The DeColonial themes in the first half of the movie were incredible (I will write more about this next week).
If you are contemplating going, you should go.

That being said, I left the theatre with three quotes running though my head. The first relates to a scene where a young person (on the badteam) is killed and the crowd I was with … cheered. Now, up to that point violence had been a very bad thing and an unwanted/inevitable element of oppression and Imperial spectacle. I’m not even focusing on the violence against women angle here – just the violence alone. Chris Hedges talk of war movies the same way:

“They turn war into porn. Soldiers and Marines, especially those who have never seen war, buy cases of beer and watch movies like Platoon, movies meant to denounce war, and as they do, they revel in the destructive power of weaponry. The reality of violence is different. Everything formed by violence is senseless and useless. It exists without a future. It leaves behind nothing but death, grief, and destruction.” - Death of the Liberal Class (p. 55).

As a Christian I am always amazed by an ever-present paradox.Often in my circles, folks who have air-tight orthodoxy cred and are in complete alignment with the Creedal formulations … have an openness to violence and a willingness for militarism the betrays the very story of the Jesus that they so passionately proclaim. Then they run into somebody like John Caputo who’s orthodoxy & ontology are surely suspect by who gets Jesus right:

“The kingdom of God is the rule of weak forces like patience and forgiveness, which, instead of forcibly exacting payment for an offense, release and let go. The kingdom is found whenever war and aggression are met with an offer of peace. The kingdom is a way of living, not in eternity, but in time, a way of living without why, living for the day, like the lilies of the field – figures of weak forces – as opposed to mastering and programming time, calculating the future, containing and managing risk. The kingdom reigns wherever the least and most undesirable are favored while the best and most powerful are put on the defensive. The powerless power of the kingdom prevails whenever the one is preferred to the ninety-nine, whenever one loves one’s enemies and hates one’s father and mother while the world, which believes in power, counsels us to fend off our enemies and keep the circle of kin and kind, of family and friends, fortified and tightly drawn.” -The Weakness of God, p. 15

I think I would rather be with Caputo and get Jesus right than to have the right Christology and miss the whole point with Jesus. The final quote comes from Franz Fannon in the Wretched of the Earth:

”The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization are simply a question of relative strength. The exploited man sees that his liberation implies the use of all means, and that of force first and foremost … (it) will only yield when confronted with greater violence.” (48)

I watched the movie tonight and drove home with these three quotes in my head. What do we do with movies meant to expose the Imperial spectacle of violence and end up glorifying it? Is this a case where the medium is the message and if violence is on a screen it can not communicate the badness of violence but exalts all violence? How do we as Christians navigate the spectacle of violence from our friends watching MMA to our congregants applauding war, electric chairs, drone attacks and torture? What if they have better Christology, Ontololgy, and Creedal subscription than we do … but get the violence question wrong and miss the whole point of Jesus’ life and death? And how do we who occupy the privileged place, the place of power, and the dominant narrative recognize that violence in support of the hegemonic status quo is not the same as violence against and in revolt of it? That what is good for the goose is not necessarily what is good for the gander if the goose is the only one armed to the teeth?

Post Script: I loved this conversation and am so grateful for the insightful and sincere responses. I am thankful for intelligent exchange without disrespectful or snarky dismissiveness. As I have watched the conversation evolve, it has become clear that something else is needed in the post. So I want to add it for future clarity.

Empire is a particular formation of government and power and, given its pretence to be global, generates a ‘collective spirit’, an anthropological construction, that allows and approves of certain behaviours, reactions, feelings, and attitudes of the social and political actors, that shapes a certain logic and way of conceiving life, and that imposes and translates itself into values and a hegemonic Weltanschauung (ethos).[1]

[1] Néstor Míguez, Joerg Rieger, and Jung Mo Sung, Beyond the Spirit of Empire: Theology and Politics in a New Key ( 2009), Kindle Locations 204–207.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, media, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, colonial, crowd, decolonial, Franz Fannon, God, Hedges, Hunger Games, jesus, John Caputo, Media, medium, Military, violence, War, Women

Bananas, Bullies and the Bible – you can’t start in the middle

February 6, 2012 by Bo Sanders 22 Comments

by Bo Sanders

Let me say upfront what I’m going to end with and then build from there:

You can’t verbalize the way things are – which is a result of the way things have been – as proof that this is how it should always be.

Creation ‘expert’ Ray Comfort famously made a fool of himself by producing a video with Kirk Cameron where he praised the glories of the (modern) banana as evidence of God’s grand design and love for human beings. You can watch the video here – it is a hoot. There is only one problem. Comfort was highlighting many of the adaptations and ‘improvements’ that were results of human modification through deliberate cultivation.

This the problem starting in the middle. You can’t just walk into the way things are, assume the status quo and then make a case for it. *

This is not an isolated school of thought. I was camping in a national park with a long time friend who lives in and loves his ‘red’ state. We were hiking out and enjoying the beauty when he began to tell me about how ridiculous the environmentalists are and how stupid it is to put all these regulations on industry – we are handcuffing these innovators who create jobs for people. His evidence was to point to the trees around us and say “look at all of this amazing space – what are they so worried about? I don’t see why we need to have all these regulations and get so upset at industry.”

I pointed out that if somebody 100 years earlier had not had the foresight to preserve this land, the timber industry would own all this land and would have harvested all these trees. It would look nothing like it did and we would not be walking or hiking there. He had literally never thought about that.

You can’t start in the middle and ignore how things came to be – then present it as evidence of how they should always be!

Then this week John Piper comes out and says In the Old Testament God was a King not a queen – Jesus was man not a women – and he picked men, not women, to deny him, betray him, doubt him and abandon him.

I may have tweaked that last part a little bit… but you catch my drift.

It would be like walking into a grocery store, seeing a steak wrapped in saran wrap on a Styrofoam platter and beginning to articulate how perfectly the steak was designed for your grill – how the saran wrap crumples in your hand for ease of disposal in the waste basket – how the steak is the same dimensions in thickness from side to side for consistent grilling. Clearly God designed this steak to go on your grill and for your enjoyment!!

This is the danger of starting in the middle.

Piper’s view of God is Comforts view of the banana and my buddy’s view of the national park: completely ignorant and disconnected from the narrative & trajectory that lead to it.

and here is where it gets serious: this is a consequence of privilege. I would love to ascribe it to some classicist view of god or an a-historical understanding of theology. It might be from those two things as well, but it is a consequence of privilege and the blind spot that results from it.

If you don’t account for socialization in things like gender – and instead argue for orginal design … if you don’t give validity to things like constructions and conditioning then you look at how society has been as evidence of how it should be.

Like Ray Comfort and his banana, John Piper ends up making the opposite point than he wanted to! Comfort intended to exalt the original design but instead highlighted human cultivation, influence and adaption. Piper desired to show how God has made us but instead showed how we have made God.

I believe in Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t make Piper’s point. Quite the contrary – Jesus shows us a different way to be a human by challenging the as-is structures of society, and changing the rules of who belongs and who gets to participate in what.

Did Jesus finish the job? No.
Did Jesus shirk every convention of his day? No.
Did Jesus establish a precedent and set us on trajectory towards liberation and equality for all? Yes.

If you are looking for a good read, I suggest Elizabeth Johnson’s She Who Is – you can listen to one of our interviews with her [here]

* I don’t have time here to get into the problem of a young earth, ignoring emergence thought or a having a magical ex nihilo God creating out of nothing.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: Banana, Bible, book, books, God, jesus, John Piper, man, masculine, Ray Comfort, revelation, society, Women

Living the Questions