Sanford anthropologist, Tanya Luhrmann, author of When God Talks Back, explained in a recent Christianity Today article “Why Women Hear from God more than Men Do.”

Why?

First, women pray more.  According to the 2008 Pew and Religious Landscape surgery 2/3 of women pray daily compared to less than 1/2 of men.

Combing frequency this frequency with one major skill: women are more comfortable using their imaginations.  Imagination is a vital soul muscle for connecting with any immaterial substance be it Harry Potter, your desire for a long-term marriage, your love of good ideas, the number seven (you cannot touch the number seven, only it’s symbol in perhaps a sponge letter in your son’s bathtub set) and, of course, God.

I can already hear the atheist’s response. So women are better at making things up and pretending their real? Great, just great.

At patheos blog “Love, Joy, Feminism” atheist Libby Anne writes about “The Psychology of God” and suggests that “hearing from God” is something Christians train themselves to do. And since you can also train yourself to hear a unicorn speak to you, why would this be evidence for God?

Wishful thinking, enough scripture, enough imagination and you will “hear” from God, too. Would you like some Kool-aid with that?

Interestingly enough, Libby Anne’s post was based on Tanya Luhrmann’s research, the same author of the Christianity Today post quoted above.

Same data, differential conclusions. Time to go to the source.

At Stanford’s University site, Luhrmann’s works is featured in an article titled, “How Does God Become Real to People?” where I found “Luhrmann said her research does not intend to prove or disprove the existence of God.”

Luhrmann believes listening to Scripture and training your spirit to detect God’s voice is a form of cultivation. It reminds me of the cultivated skill of listening for my husband’s quieter voice in a large group.

The training doesn’t prove I’m making him up. It does mean, however, that not everyone can hear his voice.

Since ninety-five percent of Americans believe in God, I want to leave the argument that hearing from God is make-believe (since it’s a minority view–ask me more in comments if you’re interested) and turn to the issue of experiencing God.

In Rachel Held Evan’s interview with Ask a Pagan, I found Jason Mankey‘s response indicative of many Americans.

As a spiritual person, I’m looking to connect with deity.  I very rarely felt connected to deity sitting in a pew listening to someone talk about God. I wanted to experience God.  I practice Wicca (one of several Modern Paganisms), and Wicca’s ritual framework allows me to have that experience with deity that I often felt was missing as a Christian.  There’s not a series of complicated rules separating me from the divine; it’s right there waiting for me anytime I want to experience it.  I felt complete and whole the first time I prayed to The Goddess.  

I can see how The Goddess felt more intimate (more in Ruby Slippers’ chapter “Finding the Feminine in the Sacred”).

I can also understand how connection with God is vital to a spiritual life.

Luhrmann explains, “I actually think there’s good evidence that having this kind of intimate relationship with God is good for you.”

I’m inclined to agree.

God talked with his people throughout Scripture (Gen. 12:1-3, Gen. 16:8, Act 9:10-16), I believe he can do the same even now.

How to Have Conversations With God

I haven’t always conversed with God. I used to just give God my laundry list.

Heal, help, save, restore, and I praise you for x,y,z. Amen.

A few years ago I began taking walks, Frank Laubach style, with God.

Laubach, a missionary to the Philippines learned to practice talking to God and then using his own voice to repeat what he thought God was saying in response. He explains,

I have just returned from a walk alone, a walk so wonderful that I feel like reducing it to a universal rule, that all people ought to take a walk every evening all alone where they can talk aloud without being heard by anyone, and that during this entire walk they all ought to talk with God, allowing Him to use their tongue to talk back–and letting God do most of the talking (Letters by a Modern Mystic, 41).

Laubach let God do the talking with his tongue.  Does it sound freaky?

It’s not possession.

It’s not losing consciousness.

It’s simply trying to hear God as best we can.

You listen by talking.

The things you might hear are not prophecy on par with the inspired Word of God, rather what you get is an experience of

1. asking God into your life, to contact you where you are and
2. hearing something tangible to analyze and compare with Scripture.

But isn’t this mysticism and sort of weird? you might ask.

Yes, it is weird, I’ll admit, if by weird you mean uncommon.

And yes, it is mysticism if you mean . . .

read the rest at Positively Human where I blog with other Soulation writers on apologetics and spiritual formation.

p.s. It’s worth clicking over, if just for the comments.

A mother gives a child her place in this world.

Photo credit: Kel Elwood

We are all walking tableaus of how we were raised.  Even the woman on the cover of Time’s most recent desperate cover (desperate in media stunt to usher women into a more mommy war), she tells us about her mother.

What? well you’d have to get a momma who breastfeeds her three year old. You’d have to know her to find out. But I bet you’ll be blessed with insight rather than judgment if you take time to listen to her instead of measuring her up by mere appearances (a picture can say so much and still say so little).

My son surprises me with his differences as much as his similarities to me.  He wants to paint when I watercolor, he wants to swim when I swim, he wants to cook when it’s dinner time.

He can also throw rocks at my head with the best of them. He loves Jeeping and watching bugs very closely, he wants to lay on the corgis’ heads, and he always has time to cuddle (all not me).

A perpetual cheerleader and participant, an easy kudos gallery for me to get more identity-making goodies than any mother would like to admit.  My son is not my cookie jar, but he tells the world how I make cookies.

Jackie Kennedy once said “If you don’t do a good job of raising your children, it doesn’t really matter what else you do well.”  C.G. Jung also wrote, ”Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their children than the unlived life of a parent.”  Two statements, two books leaning against each other.

The best gift my son could give me, on Mother’s Day, will be a smile over the life I treasure in addition to his.

Photo credit: Kel Elwood

I want my son to thank me for having my own life.

I want him to honor the time I spend away from him in the cultivation of my gifts and my soul as much as he values the time I spend teaching him to speak Spanish.  Motherhood is vital, but it is not the most difficult job in my life. Motherhood is precious, but it is not my anchor for purpose. Motherhood is deliciously satisfying, but it is not the most important thing I do each day.

The most important thing I do each day is listening to the Spirit of God and let this Wind of heaven teach me what I must do right now.  This is the legacy I want my son to have, listening like Legolas with his elfin ear to the ground, waiting for the one thing needful right now.

Mothers reflect the God of Israel in more than their mothering.  God who mothers us also takes care of other things: averting craters from hitting our blue globe, food for the Leviathan, textiles for the trees, water management to avoid another world wide flood, inspiration for the stars of heaven and their symphonies (Job 41).

Management of many things: the work of God and many mothers.

And we can’t do it all, which is why we rest, as God rested (Gen 2:1-3).  We do mothering in our unique way, reflecting God’s creativity in his created beings. For instance, we cease nursing our babies before others do, or we breastfeed longer than others, we teach our babies to sleep earlier or we bring them to bed with us, we have little schedule, but lots of routine, we teach them to eat solids at 4 months or at one year. We do mothering as the Spirit leads us.

And in all we do, we are giving our children a place in this world. We teach them to listen to the Spirit in their spirits, to walk into new ways where we didn’t walk.

And in the end all they really want, is what we all want: to be called by the name our mothers used when they weren’t ticked off at us.

If we can call our children by this name, we have done enough.

Photo credit: Tierney Gearon

“The purest definition of mother love.  For all the pain, for all the suffering, for all the disagreements between the generations, a mother gives her child her place in the world, as a daughter and as a future wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, and friend.”

Peony in Love

]]> http://soulation.org/jonalynblog/2012/05/the-best-mothers-day-gift.html/feed 12 http://soulation.org/jonalynblog/2012/05/whats-wrong-with-sm.html http://soulation.org/jonalynblog/2012/05/whats-wrong-with-sm.html#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 16:00:44 +0000 Jonalyn http://soulation.org/jonalynblog/?p=2126

I’ve listened with inner surprise as friends explained their preferences in bed.

You really do that? I want to say. We all have the capacity to surprise each other with what we do in private.

I’m not a sex therapist. I’m not a counselor.

But, as a philosopher I have some ideas. And with a bit of trepidation, I’m going to share them on the question on BDSM.

Photo credit: http://www.handcuffs.org/

BDSM is an acronym for bondage and discipline (BD), sadism and masochism (SM).The goal of BDSM relationships is to take on complementary but unequal roles (role-play like master/slave, pirate/captive, Nazi/Jew) in order to create a dominant/submissive situation.  Men and women who practice BDSM often get kicks from pain and humiliation (both receiving and inflicting).

I had to rely on wikipedia for that. I have no experience with BDSM. And I realize reading E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Gray makes me no expert.

I’ve already weighed in on the novel, for this post I want to zero in on the whips and punishment question.

Issue #1 – Masking Knowledge

Role-playing, as Phyllis from The Office says (yes, I’m quoting a fictional character for this one), can be “really fun.”  We all have good, silly, and ultimately hot, God-given fantasies we ought to explore a bit more (in the playfulness and fun of our marriage).  We also have fantasies that require corseting a person into a role that doesn’t fit them.

Which to choose?

Dominants (Dom) and Submissives (Sub) know all about role-playing. Their relationship depends on tipping the power ratio within love-making.  As a believer in the essential equality of men and women I want to ask: How does playing at subjugation rather than equality in bed affect life beyond the bedroom?

In the recent bestseller, Fifty Shades of Gray, Ana doesn’t want to become a Sub because it means giving up her freedom to touch Christian when she wants, to sleep with him each night, to know him beyond his role as a Dom.

I think Ana’s reticence is spot-on.

Love-making, intimacy, fantasies are for the ultimate end of knowledge.

Role-playing comes at a pretty high cost. If a husband always wants to play pirate to his wife’s captive role, the wife only learns one slice of who he is in love-making. She doesn’t get to see him vulnerable.

Finally, a wife or husband may assume a role that might actually clash with who they are.  I remember a story of a young woman who decided to play a genie during her honeymoon. Her husband was both baffled and seriously entertained.  I don’t mean sexually. He was doubled over laughing because the costume masked who she was and replaced her with a laughable charade.

Role-play requires a suspension of knowledge about the other person. Masks… doesn’t that belong more in the espionage and superhero realm than in love-making?

Problem #2 – Re-enacting Punishment

In one of the sadder moments in Don Draper’s life (AMC’s drama Mad Men) he invites a prostitute to his home. As she begins her work, he demands she slap him across the face.

Don Draper

“Again,” he yells.

She backhands him again. Slap, slap, slap.

Draper looks relieved.

Does he thinks he deserves it?  Followers of Mad Men know Draper’s self-loathing goes back decades. Don Draper isn’t even his real name.

BDSM bothers me because it offers a sexually arousing practice that re-enacts punishment.  Hugo Schwyzer explains that BDSM offers some abused people “recovery through ritualized acts of domination and submission.” (which is also Christian’s explanation of his past initiation into BDSM in Fifty Shades). To read more about BDSM as recovery (viewer discretion advised) see Not Your Usual BDSM and Abuse Story.

I do not believe some people (the ones that get knocked around more often than not) are hard-wired as Submissives. Nor do I think a Dom’s commands to stop drinking or get a job is the best way to develop a sense of identity. The Sub is still playing a role.

Further, I believe arousal at someone else’s pain indicates something about pain in that person’s life. If Sue gets turned on by hurting her friends, even if her friends want to be hurt, we call this a problem. Even if it’s between two consenting adults.

If Sue gets turned on by hurting her husband, even if he wants it, we can also call this a problem. Even if it’s between consenting adults.

As someone who has experienced people in authority taking liberties over me that I did not grant, the power of BDSM to both unleash and arouse feels (in my untried and unprofessional opinion) like dousing fire with kerosene and then claiming control over the flames.  As I’ve written previously (Sex, Food and Fifty Shades of Gray) just because something makes you feel powerful or turned on does not mean it is a power for good in your life.

Using pain, even willing pain (the BDSM code of ethics SCC—I know, more acronyms—means Safe, Sane and Consensual), to recover from worse memories says more about how bad life used to be. It doesn’t give BDSM a ringing endorsement.

Problem #3 – #FirstWorldProblem

BDSM often entails elaborate costumes, equipment and preparation.  Like the twitter trend #FirstWorldProblem (e.g. Freaking out because you lost your Ray-bans) BDSM seems to be a first world problem.

When you’re working to keep your children fed and away from prostitution in order to feed your family, BDSM appears as a final ditch aphrodisiac for bored, but wealthy married couples.  For some non-BDSM ideas of re-igniting your sex life please see my post Sex, Food and Fifty Shades of Gray.

I Can Imagine

Perhaps there are wives and husbands who can make love untinged by any sexual or emotional abuse, couples who role-play fantasies of authenticity. Perhaps they walk BDSM’s razor edge between pleasure and pain to successfully arouse each other without re-enacting or committing abuse.

I can imagine it, but I have yet to meet them.

A man walks past your office, he’s eating a sandwich that smells like heaven.  You notice it’s past lunch.  You want your own. You don’t steal this man’s sandwich, instead you go out looking for your own. You eat. You are satisfied.

Photo credit: Kel Elwood

A hot man walks past your office.  You notice him and you notice your own desire.  Not for him, but for your husband.  You recognize the rhythm, it’s time. After work (or lunch break?) you go home. You make love. You are satisfied.

But what if this man is a co-worker. What if he greets you regularly and you start to notice that he has become the fire behind your love making with your husband? Is this good?

It all depends.

Appetite 

Our appetite for sex, like our appetite for food, reveals how similar and different we are from each other.

When eating, we each prefer different portions, different times, different table manners.  We all have unique cravings.

We each have different triggers of our sexual appetite, different amounts of sex we want, different ways we want to do it.  We all have things (a scent, a song, a photo) unrelated to sex that turn us on.

Despite our different appetites, we all have lines we don’t want to cross.  We all know some sex, like some food, is not good for us.

Sexually Hungry

With E.L. James Fifty Shades Trilogy topping the New York Times’ bestseller list it’s rather obvious to me that women are sexually hungry.  If you haven’t had good sex in years, you will do a happy swan dive into Fifty Shades of Gray.  Thirty to fifty-year-old women are recommending the series as the jump start to mommy libido.

photo credit: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/business/media/an-erotic-novel-50-shades-of-grey-goes-viral-with-women.html

E. L. James Photo credit: Michael Lionstar

What Makes Sex Good?

Most marriages are like a hot bath. They’re great when you first get in, but after awhile they’re not so hot anymore (The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What it Really Takes to Stay Married).

The key ingredient to keeping marriage hot is desire.

Fifty Shades of Gray works, for some, because Gray was written as desirable.  E. L. James explained on The Today Show “I put all my fantasies, out there.”  You read enough sex scenes, you imagine that being done to your body and you put the book down and go hunting for your husband. No wonder husbands love the book.

So what can be wrong with a book that’s helping couples do it?

It all depends.  Once you’ve found your husband, who are you really making love to? Him or Gray?

It turns out you cannot judge your sex life simply by how easily or how often you get turned on.  You gauge your sex life by how much you desire your spouse.

The goal is to be turned on by the person you have married. To cultivate a taste for him.

Sex and Knowledge

As followers of the God of Israel, we want more than tittilation in bed. We want what Adam had with Eve.

We want knowledge, vulnerability, safety . . . and sex.  ”And Adam knew his wife” (Gen. 4:1).

Good sex is about wanting and feeling known. Even Ana craves that with Christian Gray “Do I know Christian intimately? I know him sexually, I figure there’s a lot more to discover.”

I have little doubt the next two books will find Ana discovering.  But if the first book is any indication it will be through co-dependently offering her body for more beatings so she can unlock Christian’s fear of being known. Then, they’ll live happily ever after.

Personally, if I need a jumpstart to my desire I’ll read Passionista: The Empowered Woman’s Guide to Pleasuring a Man or Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Relationships.  Or I’ll recall how the man I married makes love to me.

He knows me better than Christian Gray.

Fifty Shades of Gray is easy arousal because it doesn’t ask anything. You simply consume.

But I want my sexual cravings met with the real thing.

A husband with his body and soul in my bed.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as a country where sex slaves live behind walls in our town.

Much less appealing is the idea that we’re accomplices in the sexual slavery in the United States.

Since it’s National Child Abuse Prevention Month (between 500 million and 1.5 billion children are estimated to experience violence annually), since our local paper recently covered a sex assault charge perpetrated by a Christian school teacher and pastor (yes, even in our small “safe” town of Steamboat Springs) it is time to uncover what we can do to prevent sexual abuse.

We can all make major changes. If you don’t care for the reasons, you can skip to my nine steps at the end.

I read God in a Brothel: An Undercover Journey into Sex Trafficking and Rescue by Daniel Walker who worked four years as a undercover emancipator.

I learned.

Sexual slavery isn’t just a Thailand thing.

Jane is from Kansas, her mother was a prostitute and drug addict.  When Jane was six years old her mother’s pimp began molesting her and her sister.  Jane was raped by her mum’s pimp when she was seven. At thirteen he began selling her on the streets. At 13, she saw the huge demand for her services, regular customers paid $600-$700 a session for sex. Jane used the money to pay for rent and care for her younger sister.  When Jane’s younger sister was eight, Jane’s mother sold her to another pimp to fund her drug habit. Jane was fourteen at the time. She ran way to Phoenix and began work as a stripper.  She got pregnant and continued working the street her entire pregnancy.

Paraphrased from Daniel Walker’s God in a Brothel (IVP, 2011).

Is Jane a sex slave? Maybe not technically. But I’ve met girls who’ve faced lives like this. They’ve been invited by a friend to the camp where I’m speaking.  They come to speak to me from the shadows and weep until they are exhausted. Often they don’t know what to do, they’re in the foster system, or they’re corseted in a religiously abusive situation where they cannot breath a word about what they’ve experienced.

Consider Jeni who traveled to the United States from Seoul after being offered a well-paying sales job.  She arrived in the land of the free to discover the sale was of her body and her employers were sophisticated criminals.  Jeni was shuttled between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.  She began work at 10 am and worked until no more willing customers wanted her body.  She had no freedom of movement, she couldn’t even go on a date without requesting permission from her “employers.”

Paraphrased from Daniel Walker’s God in a Brothel (IVP, 2011).

Interview with Daniel Walker

Last week, I won a drawing to participate in a conference call to ask Daniel Walker some questions.

After a celebration jig, I prepared this question: What can Christians do practically in our churches to prevent sex trade in the USA?

What follows is my attempt to re-create Daniel Walker’s answer.

I don’t look to those who hold the keys of power in the state to change sex slavery. Never have governments said so much and done so little.

Suffragettes chaining themselves to 10 Downing Street, London" Photo credit: lebrecht.mediastorehouse.com/low.php?xp=media&xm=940491

Sunday School teachers, mothers, fathers, youth workers, Teach the story of Moses. Egypt is not simply a metaphor for God saving his people from sin, it’s a story of the God of Israel fighting against slavery.  Teach your children to stand up against injustice in the smallest forms.

Teach your youth to recognize evil. (Hunger Games is a great place to start)

They don’t have to fear the world, God gave them courage to step up for justice, to notice the smeared, the bullied and stand in the gap. Standing up against a bully is as much a part of discipleship as anything else.

Women’s groups in the United Kingdom chained themselves to the city halls to demand the vote.  Why aren’t women’s groups doing something?

(My heart beat faster when I heard this.  Women did do amazing things to get the vote. Women created an embarrassing ruckus and used their bodies and dignity to go on hunger strikes, to get attention and secure the right to vote to themselves. Why aren’t we doing more for our sisters? for children in this country?)

Men’s groups need to do more than go on wild adventures into the woods.

The United States has a history where groups in your church (Walker is a resident of New Zealand) established the Underground Railroad to rescue slaves. You didn’t wait for your government to save them. The people of the churches organized a movement.

My pen was smoking by the time he finished.

So what can you and I do about sex slavery?

1. Let’s start simple: lead a book club on Daniel Walker’s God in a Brothel. Use the discussion guide.
2. Teach the story of the God of Israel rescuing the slaves of Egypt. Yes, use Moses on a flannel graph. Share how God cares about injustice, redemption and rescue and wants us to fight for hope with his help.
3. Help the men in your life face their own objectification of young women. Why did thirteen year old Jane attract so many adult customers wanting sex?  Why are men sexually drawn to younger women/girls? The allure of girls for sexual partners is an idea grown from child pornography and media pressure that girls are sexually more appealing than women.  Men are taught to believe this. Hugo Schwyzer offers an appropriate critic on men who prefer girls to women “Can a Man Change his Sexual Attraction to Teens?“.  Read Schwyzer’s diagnosis, then consider inviting the men you love into a safe conversation about how media shapes their own desires for younger women.  Refuse to berate, express shock or disgust as they share. Douse their shame with compassion. For men to be fully human they must be safe to be vulnerable.
4. Think carefully about vacation trips (are you on Spring Break, think about it now) to any major metropolitan center (e.g. Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, Las Vegas, etc). I’m not saying don’t go. Instead, consider how your presence can be part of breaking the cycle of poverty and greed that fuels the Adult Entertainment industry.  Consider how you can vacation AND partner with a national organization like Treasures who shows you how to adopt a strip club and change lives. Or accompany JC’s Girls in Las Vegas to offer another story. Don’t visit big cities without considering how you’re part of the solution to sex slavery.
5. Give money specifically to end sex slavery. Consider Compassion International, Hagar International or NVader, Walker’s organization created to educate local law enforcement on stopping sex slavery in their own backyards. Or if you’re interested in casualty prevention, give to Soulation where we offer counseling, one-on-one chatting, regular resources and safe places to ask questions about identity, sexuality and God.
6.  Invite someone who is not in your socio-economic circles into your home. This summer we’re inviting a young woman who is facing her parent’s divorce and struggling to make ends meet to be our intern in White Woods. We’re offering her a place to stay and she is watching our son. We need her help, she needs our family.
7. Offer yourself as a mentor to one high school student (talk with the youth pastor or counselor at your local church or school) invite yourself into their life by buying a meal and LISTENING. Give them your cell, learn to text better and let them educate you on their life. Discover how difficult it is today to be a young man or woman who wants truth, dignity and love. Battle alongside them.
8. Ask God to bring one person into your life that needs help to escape the cycle of poverty.  Read Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution in preparation. This month our family has invited a young woman who’s lost her mother to alcoholism and is fighting to keep herself afloat to help us with childcare needs. She’s bright and about to head off to college, but she is not from the “typical” babysitter pool. She is helping us, we are helping her.
9. Talk to your spouse about what makes women valuable. Of course, I recommend you read Ruby Slippers: How the Soul of a Woman Brings Her Home and begin a small group to discuss further. I think what we think about the value of women in our churches and homes dictates the kind of men and women we raise, the kind of courage they will have when they face abuse of any kind.  How will your children respond when they meet a stripper, will they see them as a object, a project, or do they see a image-bearer? If this makes you surprised you need to download a free copy (yes free THIS WEEK!) of Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk. Go, right now. Stop reading this already and get a copy of the way to have conversations with people different from you and STILL talk about the God you love.
10. Any more ideas?

p.s. I did not receive God in a Brothel for free, nor was I contacted to endorse Walker’s book.

p.p.s. Next week, writing on Sexual Pleasure, Pain and Fifty Shades of Grey.

Apologists have earned a reputation for being obnoxious know-it-alls.

I should know. I am an apologist.

Apologetics can easily become the Christian sport where you watch your team fight and hopefully smear the rival.

So why would women aspire to become apologists?  Female apologists are curiosities, somewhat like female wrestlers.

Photo credit: news.3yen.com/2010-10-04/female-sumo-not-as-bad-as-you-might-think/

Female: apologist?

What the what?

What is Apologetics?

For the record, an apologist is a person who defends something. I’ve sat next to Vegan apologists and rode horseback with fashion apologists.  You probably sleep with someone who is an apologist over an issue you’ve privately vowed to never believe. My husband has been a faithful apologist of the beneficial pleasures of video gaming. Bless his heart.

My son, age two, in an apologist for putting all iPhones into “Pocket!” as he instructed me at the park this morning.

We all have things we want to defend, ideas we think are better for all people, for all times, in all places. And we can all defend our beliefs humility or like WWF wrestlers.

But apologetics is about more than defending God’s existence or the Trinity. 

Is abortion a viable option for a Christian?

Photo credit: mercyministriesnews.com

Does Jesus offer something that Buddha does not?

What if you’re a Christian and gay?

Does God value a woman’s voice as much as a man’s?

Is it wrong to be child-free?

Is sex before marriage really all that wrong?

Apologetics questions, all of them.

Culturally speaking I think a female apologist is geared for more potency in this polarized world.

Female apologists can twine the virtues of humility and love in ways many male apologists are missing. We see the need of knowing an atheist before we blast their ideas out of the water.

One example: A woman who has faced, or experienced an abortion is much more persuasive, apologetically, to talk about abortion’s unique issues, to argue for the enormous cost and value of a fetus.

The Hook that Pulled Me In

I didn’t grow up wanting to be an apologist. I grew up longing to be a librarian (the thought of all those books still makes my heart skip). I’m sure my gender played a role in keeping me from apologetics, or pastoring for that matter.

But I got sucked in senior year of high school, when I left my private high school of 500 to become a missionary to the big bad public high school of 2000.  I was sort of crazy for Jesus. But I was not crazy about the confrontations I faced: with the atheist guy in my AP English class or the girl who partied all weekend while making God look outdated.

I remembered them mocking the Bible together.

What did Jesus have to do with them?

That’s when I met Frank Pastore and J.P. Moreland (they were teaching local classes) and I learned that a whole branch of knowledge was devoted to understanding and defending Christianity. I learned of Dorothy L. Sayers and heard Dr. Eleanor Stump. I decided to get my Masters in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics. I learned that it was a religious philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe, who gave C.S. Lewis a run for his money.  I realized Biblical woman defended the God of Israel and paved the way for women like me, women like the daughters of Zelophedad, reluctant apologists like Naomi in the book of Ruth, Esther convincing the King of the Persian empire to spare the Jews, the Samaritan woman at the well convincing her entire village to come hear Jesus (John 4:39-42).

Women: Naturally Faithful?

I also learned that, as a female, my concerns were sometimes different than my profs and colleagues.  I attended seminary where women made up less than 2% of the graduating class. Not only did I never wait in line for the bathroom, but when I brought up apologetic issues that interested me (e.g. Are women’s souls different from men’s souls?) I got raised eyebrows, but no distinct guidance.  I felt like no one else was studying gendered souls or comparing the way Jesus, Buddha and Mohammad treated women.*

I found a major reason: people assume Christian apologists are like WWF wrestlers–they’re mostly male.

Photo credit: bellarminenews.com/?p=639

There’s a pesky rumor circulating among religions folks, a myth that women are more spiritually sensitive and therefore don’t really want or need intellectual reasons for the Christian faith.  ”Women are just naturally full of faith, they’ll naturally believe in God.”

Even though I’m itching to delve into this myth, let me merely give two examples.

First, the majority of the churchgoers, Bible study attenders and church volunteers are women (Barna Group, 2010). But, as Jim Henderson has pointed out in The Resignation of Eve: What if Adams’s Rib is No Longer Willing to be the Church’s Backbone? if women do not hear compelling, culturally relevant, valid reasons to attend church, they will stop attending.

Second, there as just as many atheistic women as there are atheistic men.  Why?

Women find doubts with the Christian story as much as men.  Want proof? Check out WhyiLeftChristianity‘s post “Female Atheist Bloggers Who Rock My World“ or cruise through the female bloggers at the Religious Portals, Patheos.com.

Wanted: Female Apologists

Since 1982, females have outpaced males in college graduation (Better Grades and Greater Incentives Explain why Women Outpace Men in College Degrees). While women’s academic achievements have not translated into equal wages or obliterating the glass ceiling, women are graduating from college in higher numbers and with better grades than men (New York Times, 2006). Women are using their newfound power in socially and morally significant ways (Women over 50 initiate divorce in higher numbers than men Wall Street Journal, 2012).

In my experience, the best cultural apologists are women.  (The reasons are worth another post entirely, but you can just look at  Ruby Slippers, Chapter 5 for some researched ideas on women’s uniqueness).  And since many female apologists for other religions were once Christians I cannot overstate the need for women to consider Peter’s beckoning to defend the faith (1 Peter 3:15).

Take Vyckie Garrison, a one-time Quiverfull follower, now single mother of seven who now runs No Longer Quivering. Garrison explained in a June 2011 interview with Politics USA,

My life as a devoted fundamentalist Believer had become a living hell of physical, mental and spiritual abuse. For all our efforts to know God, to love Him, discern His will and live out His precepts for a Godly home according to the Holy Bible, our family was going crazy. We hated ourselves and we hated each other and we all wanted to die . . . I have met dozens of women who have left, or are in the process of leaving, the Quiverfull lifestyle. Not all become atheists, but none escape without serious modification of their faith.

I do not recommend this book

Ms. Garrison is a powerful atheist who tweets to 13,000 followers @NoQuivering and writes extensively with a team of women at NoLongerQuivering.com (250,000 views per month). Her conclusions about the place of Christian teachings have found her more convinced that God does not exist than he does and is good.

Thousands of intelligent females argue daily for everything from atheism to Islam without hearing an articulate reason to believe otherwise.  We need more women on the cultural laywoman level (check out the hopeful list of women in philosophy of religion) dedicating their minds to understanding the cultural persuasiveness of non-Christian arguments so we can “always be ready to give an answer (Greek apologia) for the hope that is in us” (1 Peter 3:15).

We need women who can understand and articulate what Jesus thinks about N.O.W., about Buddhist mums who seem to offer more compassion that Christians, about Fifty Shades of Gray (which I will be blogging about soon). We need women to speak about a better way to educate youth groups about sexuality than “men are animals about sex and women need to be modest.”  We need women to weigh in on why and what to do about Christianity’s tendency to both rip families apart and mend them together (Are You Teaching Her About Jesus?)

As female apologist Mary Jo Sharp explained in my recent interview, “We need philosophically and theologically sound women to debate and challenge organizations that seem to presuppose all women should naturally be in agreement with their philosophy and actions.”

In 2010 Sharp debated a Muslim women in a Toronto mosque where both men and women were allowed to attend.  This was a rare opportunity.  Muslim women are often prohibited from dialog with men outside their family or mosque.  ”Christian apologetics,” Sharp explained, “will need women skilled in Islamic apologetics to speak with Muslim women, to go where Christian men cannot.”

The best way I’ve built my faith is to face some of the best arguments non-Christians can offer.  Anyone can face the opposing ideas if they go in prepared. I suggest reading one Christian apologetic book (suggestions below). Keep a trained apologist site at your fingertips to look up your questions and begin finding how God really does want us to love him with all our minds (Matt 22:37), that God wants childlike humility (not childlike faith) but grown-up minds.

Ingredients of an Apologist

What are the questions you have?  Most often the things that bug you are bugging a lot of people.

Consider that someone may have made your question their reason for abandoning the Christian faith.  We need your particular curiosity to find the answer that satisfies you. You may find in your asking that some answers do not come with a swift answer. As Rachel Held Evans gently explains, “I was pretty confident that I knew exactly what atheists and humanists and Buddhist believed… without ever having met any atheists or humanists or Buddhists in person.”

Women have this wonderful apologetic edge because we tend to more willingly launch into relationship with someone we may not agree with, if only to walk in their shoes, to see how their worldview helps them answer their heart’s cry.

Women, we need you in this work!

Want some resources to begin? A couple of primers on apologetics:

Living with Questions by Dale Fincher (yes, my husband) a most accessible, conversational approach to apologetics I’ve read.

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis a practical, philosophical guide to talking about from  objective morality, God’s existence, Jesus’ resurrection.

Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk by Dale Fincher and Jonalyn Fincher. I know, another plug, but in this book you’ll find the masculine and feminine, the apologetic and the counselor come together to offer tools to talk about faith.

Want to ask a hard question? Begin with me tonight as Ask LIVE! a one-one-one chatroom where you can ask any question you like.  

Or begin in the comments below

Or click into My Faith Hurdle  a compassionate, theologically sound, safe place to begin asking any faith question.

The invisibility of female apologists in the culture at large needs to end. And we can change that right here.

* I’ve since written about them formally (Ruby Slippers: How the Soul of a Woman Brings Her Home) and informally (www.rubyslippers.org).

“The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator.”

–Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd recently wrote, “Patriarchy is not men.  Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate.” I could not agree more. Patriarchy is held in place at least partially by women.

What is patriarchy? permanent rule by male/s. Other names it goes by: complementarianism, Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

As a seminary graduate who follows Jesus, these titles are misleading. I believe in the sexes complementing each other, and I believe in Biblical womanhood (and manhood, too).

So why is Judd frustrated with patriarchy?

En mass women and men have accused her new “puffy” face as a result of plastic surgery, a look that she explains is the result of 6 months of laziness.  Her response in The Daily Beast explains among other things that the problem with the public’s response in a patriarchal belief one version of beauty is all a woman like her can contribute.  Ashley Judd’s face and body are being picked apart by scavengers, patriarchal scavengers.

Photo credit: collage US Weekly (of course), photos: Gary Gershoff/WireImage.com; George Pimentel/WireImage.com

Now how is objectifying women a patriarchal thing?  I’m glad you asked.

First, let me share that Judd isn’t taking it lying down.

She insists upon forming a feminist discussion, not one driven by patriarchy or the standard that men’s bodies, goals or sexual fantasies determine women’s value. As she writes,

If this conversation about me is going to be had, I will do my part to insist that it is a feminist one. Who makes the fantastic leap from being sick, or gaining some weight . . . to a conclusion of plastic surgery? Our culture, that’s who.   The insanity has to stop, because as focused on me as it appears to have been, it is about all girls and women. It affects each and every one of us: our self-image, how we show up in our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings. 

First, she’s correct in seeing patriarchy as the cause. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Second, she is using “feminist” correctly. Though I’ve written about this before “What Does Feminism Mean to You?” with reasons Jesus was a feminist, it bears repeating in context of Judd’s quote.

Feminism is not a synonym for godless or lesbian. Feminist is not the opposite of “chauvinist” (sorry, Mark Driscoll). Feminist is not identical with a pro-choice advocate or a bra-less, hairy female.

Feminist when used correctly, as the most conservative dictionary defines it, means “Belief in or advocacy of women’s social, political, and economic rights, especially with regard to equality of the sexes.”

And feminism hasn’t won and is now being replaced by something more “sane.”

“We are no more a post-feminist society than we are a post-racial one. The goals of feminism have yet to be reached.” Lisa Solod explains in “What We Need to Talk about When we Talk about Sex and Feminism” at The Good Men Project.

And what exactly are the goals of feminism? my colleague Paul Franks asked after I tweeted Solod’s quote above.

I’m glad you asked.

Feminism is a belief that women are as valuable as men.

Valuable enough to choose the best career combining their gifts, their desires and their life goals.

Valuable enough to reflect God’s characteristics.

Valuable enough to be able and worthy contributors to every aspect of life.

This is not to discount women’s differences. I believe in our distinctions, wrote a whole book about them in fact (Ruby Slippers). But my conclusion is that every slice of society and culture,

from pulpit preaching,

to final decision making in the family,

to spiritual leadership,

to the highest office of the land

would benefit from unmuting women’s voices.

Feminism wants to actively reach for woman’s voice in every aspect of life. To include women as more than an ornament.

Most people say they agree with this idea, that women are not just ornamental. I know Christian patriarchalists who are emphatic that women ought not be objectified.

However, when a patriarchalist makes the man the spiritual leader of the home, they remove spiritual authority and responsibility from women.  This turns an adult female into a permanent underling of the tie-breaking male “head.” Not even Jesus subjected himself permanently to the authority of the Father (Matt 28:18). The wife becomes the receiver, the object of the male’s decision making. And any time a human is treated as an object, not a subject, you have objectification. The same is true in our churches, but that is another matter.

Why don’t more people take the term “feminist” as their own? Why are secular people quicker to own it than religions? My theory is that the term “feminist” has been so smeared by religious organizations that it confuses religious people. Feminist has become a scary term to take up in evangelical circles. It’s also an impossible term to adapt if you believe women cannot play certain roles, hold certain offices.

But until another culturally recognized (and I mean in secular and sacred places) term comes to light, I will use “feminist” to talk about this equal value of men and women.

What I appreciate is how Judd gets the danger of patriarchy.  Listen to her elucidate as I contextualize her quote above,

That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia (I had to look this up it means “among other things”), the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.

In closing Judd makes a call to sisterhood, ”I ask especially how we can leverage strong female-to-female alliances to confront and change . . . that there is no winning here as women.”

Small as I am, I offer her my alliance to confront and change.

The goal of feminism that women ought never be objectified is worth defending.