Natalie Burris

Pro-life evangelicals and prior inconsistent statements

The Gospel Coalition blog recently rounded up some evangelical leaders' calls for civil disobedience. Requiring religious employers to provide health insurance that covers contraception (regardless of who actually pays for it), is effectively forcing pro-life Christians to violate their conscience. These evangelicals claim that some of the drugs to be covered are abortifacients.

Such violation of religious liberty will not stand.  These men, along with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are so concerned about human life that they will not tolerate even the most remote connection to birth control that results in the ending of even the most basic forms of human life.  Innocent, defenseless lives are at stake here.

Chuck Colson says he loves his country, "but I love my God more . . . I've made up my mind---sober as that decision would have to be---that I will stand for the Lord regardless of what my state tells me."  

Rick Warren so bravely proclaimed, "I'd go to jail rather than cave in to a govement mandate that violates what God commands us to do."  

Richard Land and Barrett Duke wrote an impassioned call to Christians to oppose this measure, which is an "affront to all people who are pro-life" (emphasis added).

I'm in my last semester of law school, and have been trained to impeach witnesses up on the stand because of a little something called a "prior inconsistent statement."  Our justice system is so concerned with the credibility of witnesses that we have carved out an exception to hearsay rules, which normally prohibit out-of-court statements, so that those words can be used against witnesses if they make previous inconsistent statements.  Once the witness is confronted with the inconsistency, she is impeached and her word is no longer credible.  

To me, Colson, Warren, and Land have lost credibility based on their prior inconsistent statements about their support of innocent, defenseless human lives and whether they would put the state before their faith in God.

In 2003, when the Bush administration was preparing to pre-emptively invade another country, many evangelical leaders offered their support, or at least helped justify, this military action, which resulted in over 100,000 documented Iraqi civilian deaths.  When allegations later surfaced that the U.S. military was using an especially heinous form of torture on prisoners of war, some evangelical leaders again stepped up to help justify torture.

Chuck Colson reasoned that "if a competent authority honestly believed that [torture] was the only way to get information that might save the lives of thousands, I believe he would be justified."  Yes, this is the same Chuck Colson that you just read about above, who proclaimed that while he does love his country, he wouldn't let his state get in the way of his stand for the Lord.  

Rick Warren, in 2008, performed some post-hoc rationalization for the Iraq invasion, despite the Bush administration's later-disproved reasons for invading in the first place: "whether or not they found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is beside the point."  Yes, this is the same Rick Warren who valiantly rails against a government who makes us violate God's commands.

Richard Land stated in 2006 that the Iraq war "was just; I think it was one of the more noble things we've done."  Yes, the same Richard Land who, as we saw above, so passionately protested against government action that is an affront to people who are pro-life.

None of these men offered such an unequivocal statement in support of innocent, defenseless human lives when the U.S. decided to invade Iraq and later sanction torture.  No one called for civil disobedience when reports started pouring in of civilian deaths, or of the U.S.'s best and brightest being blown up by roadside bombs, or of those same best and brightest being driven to suicide once they're home, or of the estimated 900,000 Iraqi women who are now widows.

Such duplicity disgusts me.  I know no one is perfect and that stances change, and I'm certainly not claiming to be perfect.  But such pompous calls for civil disobedience simply make my stomach turn.  I can't help but think of the death and destruction in Iraq that was abetted by some U.S. evangelicals.  The juxtaposition doesn't sit well with me, and I have a feeling it doesn't sit well with many other people in my generation.  

If you want to make valiant, impassioned, public calls to put your faith in God before your obedience to the government, at least be consistent.  Because if not, even an inexperienced law student would have you impeached on the stand in a heartbeat.

Should the government promote family values? Whose family values?

In response to Republican presidential candidates' rhetoric, I'm sharing portions of a paper I wrote last semester.  Here are part 1, part 2, and part 3.

We've seen that slaveowners promoted slave marriage when convenient for whites, and post-bellum freed slaves were encouraged to marry so as to not burden white taxpayers. 

Current government marriage programs tied to welfare benefits, along with politicians who use family-values rhetoric, are no different from this early, hypocritical marriage promotion.  These programs and rhetoric have undertones of so-called “civilization” of certain “unruly” populations, and in reality, fail to benefit families of color.

Beginning with 1996's welfare reform, marriage initiatives promoted by conservative politicians at the national level pledged to assist single-parent poor families, ideally lifting them out of poverty.¹ The statistics were on their side: non-marital families tend to be worse off economically than families headed by married couples.²  Children in single-parent families fare poorer in several areas than do children raised by married couples.³ 

In 2003, Congress authorized $750 million, in conjunction with welfare programs, for “healthy marriage promotion” and fatherhood initiatives.⁴  The Bush administration heavily supported these programs.

One program, for which I personally recruited in 2006 and 2007, offered workshops for married and unmarried low-income couples expecting a child.  The workshops provided relationship skills, conflict resolution, and budgeting advice.  Each couple was also assigned a case manager. 

The couples received incentives for attending the workshops, receiving “bucks” which they could “spend” on diapers, clothing, and other items for their baby.  A fatherhood specialist worked with fathers-to-be on specific areas, such as employment, which, hearkening back to the post-bellum era, supports the notion that a gainfully-employed husband and father will keep his family off welfare.

While on its face, this program appeared to benefit couples who struggle financially, I eventually began to question whether millions of federal dollars should be directed toward personal relationship skills.  One description of an unmarried couple on public aid stated:

Anthony and Pam don't need love; they have it. They need health care, a supportive environment for treatment, food, and shelter. At some point, the government decided to start teaching people to find love and marriage instead of providing them with things they need.⁵

Marriage promotion programs have turned out to be ineffective in improving relationships.  The results of such well-meaning programs are dismal.  The divorce rate did not change and marriage rates did not increase.⁶  Meanwhile, poverty persists.  Efforts by a majority white government to impose a certain moral code are detrimental to society and to individuals.  Taxpayer funds are used to support efforts that patronize adults, working under the assumption that marriage is a cure-all for our social ills. 

Because of disproportionate incarceration rates, domestic violence, substance abuse, and other effects of living in a system that often impedes upward mobility, marriage simply cannot serve as a cure-all.

As we've also seen with welfare's history, marriage promotion programs are merely a more explicit form of imposing a white normative view of the "traditional" family: a married heterosexual couple with biological children, without any regard to economic and racial factors.  One marriage program went so far as to refuse benefits if the wife's children were not biologically the husband's.⁷

On the surface, policymakers of all stripes should be in favor of supporting healthy relationships, but such support does not necessarily have to exclude families who do not fit the norm.  A couple can be involved in a healthy relationship even without marriage or when some children are not biologically both spouse’s.  Government programs that funnel large sums of money toward marriage-only solutions erase alternative, equally viable forms of family, depleting resources that could be used elsewhere.

I see a contradiction with family-values rhetoric.  Many Republicans and Christians claim the church, rather than government, should be the one to help the poor.  These folks argue that government should stay out of providing social services, and don't want to see their tax dollars used for such purposes.  But when it comes to "values," many conservatives do not have a problem with government promoting a certain family model using millions of dollars in federal funds.  

Which one is it?  If you want government to stay out of the church's role in caring for the poor, wouldn't you also want government to step aside so the church can foster healthy relationships, including marriage and fatherhood?

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¹ Julia M. Fisher, Marriage Promotion Policies and the Working Poor: A Match Made in Heaven?, 25 B.C. Third World L.J. 475, 477 (2005).

² Vivian Hamilton, Will Marriage Promotion Work? 11 J. Gender Race & Just. 1, 1 (Fall 2007).

³ Id.

⁴ Id. at 2.

⁵ Aly Parker, Can’t Buy Me Love: Funding Marriage Promotion Versus Listening to Real Needs in Breaking the Cycle of Poverty, 18 S. Cal. Rev. L. & Soc. Just. 493, 494 (Spring 2009).

⁶ Id. at 495.

⁷ Id. at 497. 

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"That's a lot of code": conservative rhetoric on welfare

 

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In response to Republican presidential hopefuls' rhetoric, I'm posting portions of a paper I wrote last semester.  Here are parts one and two.

Like slavery, welfare's history informs "family values" rhetoric.  While conservatives promote family values, their policies ultimately help few low-income families of color and employ racialized rhetoric.  One initial goal of federal housing programs, for instance, was to encourage morality in families.  

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (“TANF”) favors heterosexual married couples.  Marriage promotion as welfare policy is a modern reincarnation of the “civilization” of “unruly” slaves.¹  Just as slave marriage was promoted at masters’ convenience, marriage was used post-bellum to privatize freed blacks’ economic mobility, minimizing government responsibility. 

Post-emancipation, states used marriage as a so-called “civilization” tool, which forced African-Americans to conform to white family constructs and which regulated black behaviors.  Some slaveowners had disregarded slave families, but now whites suddenly wanted black couples to marry—only within their race.  With black husbands working, there would ostensibly be no need for black women and children to seek government assistance.  This assumption persists today: if black women and children were part of a traditional family, welfare demand would decrease.  

Modern aid for women with children began in the 1920’s, but only for women deemed "deserving."  Participants were 96% white and 3% black.²  Under the 1935 New Deal “Aid to Dependent Children,” the first formal welfare program, white widows were considered most entitled to support, while immigrants, unmarried women, and women of color were reluctantly included.  In 1937, 85% of recipients were white women, while 13% were black women.³  

Women of color now comprise the majority of those on welfare.  Thus, a stereotype of the typical welfare recipient emerged: “a lazy, promiscuous black woman who lives in luxury at taxpayers’ expense.”⁴

Melissa Harris Perry, on the Colbert Report, recently discussed stereotypes of black women, one of which is a "Jezebel."  This stereotype, around since the antebellum area, is similar to the welfare queen and pigeonholes black women as sexually promiscuous, having children with several different fathers.  Meanwhile, a thrice-married white man runs for president nearly with impunity.

With the majority of welfare recipients no longer white, whites' sympathy level has dropped.  States with larger minority populations on welfare impose harsher restrictions.⁵  And using law to promote an ideal of family, similar to post-bellum attempts, has produced a racialized discourse hostile to unmarried black parents.  Debates especially portray women of color as bad mothers, just as in the antebellum period. 

Although 33.3% of TANF recipients are black, 31% white, and 28.8% Hispanic, the image of a “welfare queen” is a black single mother.  No longer focused on “worthy" white widows, TANF discourse casts judgment onto unmarried black women who allegedly won't work and “won’t use birth control.⁶

Candidates rail against those supposedly unwilling to work with a wink, knowing whites are in on the shared understanding of whom is really being referenced.  (see Gingrich's "really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have nobody around them who works" in the above video).

Rather than prophetically critique it, many U.S. white evangelicals buy into this code-speak hook, line, and sinker.  Evangelicals view lack of personal responsibility as the reason black single mothers use TANF.  Grace, in an excellent series on race and gender, discussed some telling data from Michael Emerson and Christian Smith's Divided by Faith.  White evangelicals blame racial disparity on poor choices, such as "having too many children."  Emerson writes:

In their use of these cultural reasons [for racial inequality], white conservative Protestants do not mean patterns of behavior rooted in values (e.g., blacks have many children because they highly value large families), but rather that blacks are making poor choices (e.g., black individuals do not exercise responsibility in child-bearing, faith, or speech).

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¹ Angela Onwuachi-Willig, The Return of the Ring: Welfare Reform's Marriage Cure as the Revival of Post-Bellum Control, 93 Cal. L. Rev. 1647, 1653 (2005).

² Id.

³ Id.

⁴ Madeline Howard, Subsidized Housing Policy: Defining the Family, 22 Berkeley J. Gender L. & Just. 97, 124-5 (2007).

⁵ Elena Christine Acevedo, The Latina Paradox: Cultural Barriers to the Equitable Receipt of Welfare Services under Modern Welfare Reform, 20 Berkeley J. Gender L. & Just. 199, 208 (2005).

⁶ Martha L. Fineman, Images of Mothers in Poverty Discourses, 1991 Duke L.J. 274, 282 (1991).

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Health care v. defense spending

The health care bill (the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act) will cost $1 trillion over 10 years.  However, as the below video illustrates, the proposed defense budget for 2011 is $1.6 trillion - for one year.  The video also shows how 53% of the U.S.'s budget finances the military.  Let's remember this during the presidential debates this year.

 

 

 

And James McGrath shared this great cartoon last week:

What does U.S. slavery have to do with white evangelicals and political rhetoric?

This post is part of a paper I'm sharing as a result of disturbing, racially-coded rhetoric used by Republican presidential hopefuls.

Although many politicians uphold family values as a cure to social problems and see the decline of family as a moral failure, such discourse privileges the European-American hegemonic definition of family.  I've previously defined hegemony, which is a dominant group enforcing its norms against others.

The traditional ideal of family, which many politicians want to impose, is a sole heterosexual married couple and their biological children.  Ideally, the husband is the main wage-earner, who earns enough to allow his wife to at least dedicate more time to childrearing, even if she also works. 

Welfare policy and its surrounding rhetoric rely on the above definition of family.  Traditional "family values" discourse is racialized, even without explicitly using racist language.

The white hegemonic notion of family has been simultaneously held from, used, and imposed onto black families both throughout history and today.  This type of family is held out as a cure-all for social problems, and many African-Americans’ failure to conform is viewed by white religious and political conservatives as a moral shortcoming.

Slavery and the historical development of welfare have served up racially-charged, damaging rhetoric.  Slavery began the systematic degradation of black families and the distortion of many whites' perceptions of blacks.

The disruptions and distortions began as soon as European-Americans brought African slaves to U.S. soil.  Early historians already blamed failure to form families on slaves' alleged character deficiencies.¹ 

(Note there is no singular definition of the antebellum slave family.  Whites’ systematic denigration of slave families should not detract from complex family structures in Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and other West African countries, commonly exploited by slave traders.  West African family models were communal and child-centered, and many did not look like "traditional" white U.S. families.)

Slaves were thrown into a system with no concern for family relationships, a system rife with double standards.  Family formation was allowed when convenient for slaveowners, but prohibited when considered a threat. 

The biological tie of a slave mother and slave father to their child was critical in conferring slave status, yet when white male slaveowners had children with slaves, this familial tie was downplayed.  No matter who fathered the child, she would be a slave if born to a slave mother.  To preserve white supremacy, slaveowners reinforced the socially-constructed racial caste system by emphasizing a clear demarcation between black and white.

In the antebellum South, some slaveowners encouraged marriage to ensure loyalty, while also portraying themselves as moral, benevolent masters.  But, a marriage could be dissolved at the master’s whim, or by a sale of one or both spouses.  In fact, a slaveowner’s desire to have his women slaves provide slave offspring would result in forcing women to live with various men at different times.  Monogamy—much less marriage—was not many slaveowners’ concern.  

Another systematic denigration is that black women were left out of the definition of a “good mother.”  Slave mothers were continually forced to perform backbreaking labor, so the era's dominant mindset, which emphasized women as nurturing, stay-at-home mothers, rendered slave mothers aberrant.²  

Slaveowners maintained racially-based slavery, but at a cost: relatives were ripped apart, and slaves were often prohibited from establishing families.  “Family” was an empty concept, allowed and simultaneously prohibited in paradoxical ways when convenient for whites. 

What do the rhetoric and hypocrisy surrounding slave marriage and family have to do with white evangelicals today?  This history informs the current "family values" rhetoric.  In my next post, I'll share the political rhetoric that reared its ugly head once welfare recipients moved largely from "deserving" white widows, veterans, and Depression-era families with temporary setbacks, to predominantly single mothers of color.  

A discussion of this rhetoric can't be done unless we acknowledge the hypocrisy (of many "devout Christian" slaveowners) and systematic degradation of black families as a result of slavery.  

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¹ Damian Alan Pargas, Boundaries and Opportunities: Comparing Slave Family Formation in the Antebellum South, 33 Journal of Family History 316-345, 316 (2008). 

² Adrien Katherine Wing, Laura Weselmann, Transcending Traditional Notions of Mothering: The Need for Critical Race Feminist Praxis, 3 J. Gender Race & Just. 257, 273 (1999).

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White evangelicals, welfare, and racially-coded rhetoric

With Newt Gingrich's recent win in the South Carolina Republican primary, many are discussing the role family-focused evangelicals played in the victory of a candidate who has been married three times and has reportedly committed adultery.  Evangelicals comprised two-thirds of primary voters, and Gingrich won 44% of their votes.  At least 98% of these voters were white.  

Gingrich ran an ad in South Carolina, the first Southern state to hold a primary this season, featuring his exchange with debate moderator Juan Williams.  Williams had asked about Gingrich's repeated references to President Obama as the "food stamp president."  Gingrich has also made disparaging statements about poor children, remarking they have no work ethic.

Critics call this type of rhetoric racially coded:

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues that the new racism entails individuals saying and doing things that perpetuate racial stereotypes and inequalities, but they do so in such a way that the offender is able to deny being explicitly racist.  One of the many types of new racist strategies Bonilla-Silva highlights is the use of racially charged code speak, or using indirect racial rhetoric and semantic moves to express an ideology that serves to reinforce white dominance over minorities.

I wrote a paper last semester that explored racially-coded language in "family values" and welfare-reform discourse, much of which is perpetuated by another Republican presidential hopeful, Rick Santorum.  

Santorum built his political career on promoting "family values" as the answer to social ills.  To move people off welfare, government must encourage the formation of families headed by heterosexual married couples.  Santorum authored the 1996 welfare reform act, which created Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ("TANF"), limited how long participants could rely on TANF, and capped funding.  The act also restricted food stamp eligibility.

Many conservative politicians and talking heads use coded "family values" rhetoric to rail against black low-income families (especially mothers, i.e. Reagan's infamous "welfare queens") and rally the white voting troops.  

Gingrich may owe his newfound success to dubbing Obama the food stamp president, as many white conservatives see the rise in welfare recipients as a moral failure and a threat to society.  If we would "get back" to the work ethic and family values on which our country was founded, we would see less poor, inner-city (read: black) families rely on government aid.

In light of GOP presidential candidates' disturbing racist rhetoric, and especially given many evangelicals' response to this rhetoric, I will share parts of my paper over the next few weeks.  

Much ink has been spilled recently over the African-American family (see Ralph Richard Banks' controversial book Is Marriage for White People?).  But I do not dare speak to or at black U.S. Americans who earn lower incomes or who are not in a "traditional" two-parent family.  

Rather, I'm interested in how the political discourse on family values and welfare has ugly undertones, often supported by white evangelicals.  Fred Clark at Slacktivist pointed out that Richard Land, "ethics czar" of the Southern Baptist Convention, defended Gingrich, accusing the NAACP of being too sensitive. Land even uttered the phrase “off the liberal plantation and out of the liberal barrio.” 

But aside from racially-coded language, the statistics, among all races, are intriguing.  Over the last 50 years, the number of married adults in the U.S. decreased by 20%.¹  Thirty-two percent of black adults are married, compared to 56% of whites.  Birth statistics tell the same story: the number of births to unmarried women in the U.S. rose from 5% in 1960 to 41% in 2008.  Among white mothers, 29% were unmarried in 2008, while 72% of black mothers and 53% of Hispanic-American mothers were single.  

Conservatives are not exaggerating numbers to incite panic about crumbling "family values."  But, using racially-coded language and blaming only people of color are too often hallmarks of some political and religious leaders' discourse.  This is why I'm interested in pulling back the curtain on such rhetoric.

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¹All statistics are from the Pew Research Center, Pew Social & Demographic Trends, The Decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families, November 18, 2010.  

Graphic source

"What is most important for democracy is...that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands"

I started classes this week, one of which is Wills and Trusts.  My textbook has some interesting statistics and quotes about the passage of wealth from generation to generation.  Note this edition was published in 2009, well before any catchphrases about the 1% were coined.  

The baby boom generation inherited, between 1987 and 2011, $6.8 trillion:

Much of this wealth was built by their parents between the late 1940's and the late 1960's when real wages and savings rates were higher and housing costs were considerably lower.  [...]  Of course not all will benefit equally, or at all.  The richest one percent will divide one-third of the worth of estates, each inheritance per estate receiving an average of $6 million; the next richest nine percent will divide another third for an average inheritance of about $396,000.  Much of this wealth will be property.¹

Four of the top 10 spots in Forbes' list of 400 richest U.S. Americans belong to relatives of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, while 3 of the top 20 slots are held by Forrest Mars' family.  Mars invented M&M's candy.  

The concentration of wealth in the U.S. decreased sharply from 1929 to the 1940's, leveling off until the 1970's. However, the 1980's saw a sharp rise in the share of wealth held by the richest U.S. Americans.  By 2004, the richest 1% owned 34.3% of family wealth, and the top 10% owned an astonishing 71.2% of family wealth.  Many wealthy people are wealthy simply by virtue of being born.

The textbook offers a quote by philosopher Robert Nozick, who said this "sticks out as a special kind of unearned benefit that produces unequal opportunities."  And Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:

What is the most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands.  In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.

We now enjoy less economic mobility in the U.S., and a recent study has suggested that conflict between rich and poor has surpassed even racism and nativism as a source of tension.  While many become rich simply by being born, 45 million others rely on food stamps to keep their family fed.

This is why I will be so intrigued with the 2012 presidential election.  Mitt Romney has warned against "a bitter politics of envy" in discussions about wealth inequality.  Romney even prefers to discuss questions about the distribution of wealth "in quiet rooms." 

My textbook authors imply that our system, with its entrenchment of wealth passed from generation to generation within privileged families, is a danger to democracy and equal opportunity.  An alternative to the U.S. system of passing wealth strictly within families is to require part or all of one's wealth upon death to be returned to society.  I use the word "returned" because no one becomes wealthy without help from society - take Wal-Mart for example.  It drives down wages by billions of dollars, so its employees have to rely on public aid.  Perhaps 4 of those top 10 richest U.S. Americans should thank the U.S. taxpayer for subsidizing the wages of their company's employees, thus helping the Walton's accumulate massive wealth.  Or am I simply being envious of their wealth?

I wonder if we've reached the breaking point, and discussions about wealth and inequality will bust out of those quiet rooms... 

________

¹Dukeminier, Sitkoff, and Lindren, Wills, Trusts, and Estates, 18 (2009, 8th Edition).

Do complementarian wives really submit to their husbands?

Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has been asked about her complementarianism.  How can she submit to her husband, while at the same time be a leader of a country?  This is nothing new.  Sarah Palin encountered these same concerns during her vice-presidential run in 2008.  At that time, David Gushee posed questions for complementarians in USA Today, one of which was, "Do you believe that Palin is under the authority of her husband as head of the family? If so, would this authority spill over into her role as vice president?"

One question recently presented to Bachmann was this:

[Y]ou described a moment in your life when your husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea. And then you explained, "But the Lord said, 'Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.'"  As president, would you be submissive to your husband?

Bachmann answered in part:

Marcus and I will be married for 33 years this September 10th. I'm in love with him. I'm so proud of him. And both he and I -- what submission means to us, if that's what your question is, it means respect. I respect my husband. He's a wonderful, godly man, and a great father. And he respects me as his wife.

Though I'm a feminist, I'm personally not bothered by the private decisions others make in the context of marriage, unless they entail physical or emotional abuse.  The part of complementarianism that bothers me more is the women-in-leadership issue.  However, I'm still intrigued that many women truly do not submit to their husbands.  Rather, they negotiate it, which exposes submission as an empty Master-Signifier as articulated by David Fitch and Slavoj Zizek.

Fitch, in The End of Evangelicalism, says that individuals believe insincerely in Master Signifiers and participate in rituals that cynically reinforce their ideology.  It seems like wives who negotiate submission to their husbands end up doing so insincerely and cynically, in an unintentional way. Also, submission is the conceptual object to which complementarians give their allegience, thus shaping themselves as a group.  

Bachmann's and Palin's political involvement could be considered an irruption of the Real, breaking in and exposing the emptiness of the Master Signifier of submission.  It reveals the contradiction of a woman president who must defer to her husband.  

Bachmann negotiates being both a female member of a conservative religion and possibly the leader of the free world by being sure to point out, "He respects me as his wife."  Many other complementarian wives negotiate submission as well.  Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore pointed out a few years ago that, in practice, many evangelicals are "unwittingly" living as feminists:

Evangelicals maintain headship in the sphere of ideas, but practical decisions are made in most evangelical homes through a process of negotiation, mutual submission, and consensus. That’s what our forefathers would have called feminism -- and our foremothers, too.

I verified this while writing a paper in college.  One study, by sociologists John P. Bartkowski and Jen'nan Ghazal Read, surveyed devout evangelical wives in central Texas.  Bartkowski and Read noted that women use the reportoire of their faith in strategic, creative, and subversive ways to meet practical demands of everyday life.  Therefore, women can keep up with "changing gender norms," such as working outside the home and running for president, while still holding to their faith.  

The language of submission enabled wives to draw boundaries between themselves and secular, feminist women.  However, each wife qualified her beliefs.  One complementarian stated outright that her husband doesn't have authority over her.  These women who embrace wifely submission frame it as their decision to let their husbands lead in the marriage.  And practically, the submission process involves negotiation, discussion, and compromise.  Like Bachmann, the wives in the study interpreted submission as "respect."

Another study, by sociologists Sally K. Gallagher and, one of my favorites, Christian Smith, concluded that, rather than holding to traditional hierarchicalism, evangelicals espouse symbolic traditionalism and pragmatic egalitarianism.  Symbolic male headship serves as an ideological tool evangelicals use to "maintain a sense of distinctiveness from the broader culture of which they are a part."  In the same way that Bartkowski and Read framed this creative re-working as "negotiation," Gallagher and Smith see evangelicals as "reconciling" modern economic life with their family life.  

The "trump card" that husbands enjoy in complementarian marriages is never played.  Each couple makes decisions jointly, and one husband, when discussing whether he would invoke his authority, said he "wouldn't even try," despite the fact that he self-identifies as a complementarian.  

If male headship in marriage is truly empty at its core and more of a symbolic boundary-marker, I would find that very encouraging.  Now, I hope that prohibiting women from having authority over men in all contexts will simply become an empty conceptual object.  Perhaps we are already seeing this?  John Piper stated it was acceptable for a man to "listen to" Beth Moore, as long as she doesn't become the man's pastor or shepherd.  Piper's response in the video contains qualifiers, just as respondents in the above studies had to qualify their beliefs in male headship.

I couldn't find complete versions of the studies online, but please email me if you are interested in a copy of one or both of the studies.  Amazingly, I still have my zip drive from college, which contains copies of the studies.  My packrat tendencies have paid off for once!

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When sex takes over politics

If you missed Frank Schaeffer's Huffington Post article about the latest in a string of political scandals, I highly recommend you check it out here: Anthony Weiner: Metaphor for How Sexual Selfishness Destroyed the Left's Agenda.

photo © 2011 mario | more info (via: Wylio)

While I don't agree with everything that Schaeffer wrote, he does make a very valid point for those who disagree with the Right.  The Right has established the political talking points and have set the agenda. The Right's obsession with sex, or rather, ridding our country of gay people and outlawing abortion, has forced the Left to address these issues over and over again.  I've often criticized the Right (and the Religious Right) for focusing on homosexuality and abortion at the expense of other issues such as poverty, but I never quite realized that the same phenomenon was happening on the Left as well.  

I don't mean to diminish the importance of reproductive and LGBTQ rights.  In fact, I recently wrote about the importance of taking a stand on these deeply personal issues.  But surely we can find a way to keep two issues from dominating our political discussions.  We are dealing with two--or three?--wars, high unemployment, and an immigration crisis, among other things.  It would be great if those who truly care about working on these issues could, to use a certain political party's pet phrase, "stay the course." Instead, with each election cycle or call to prove political loyalties, the sexual issues take up the most space in the discussion.   

Any other thoughts on Schaeffer's provocative post?

Waving Bibles in each other's faces

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the Bible has been used to both support and abolish slavery, oppress and liberate women, and promote and oppose war.  I shared how uncomfortable it makes me, as a progressive Christian, to read disturbing stories in the Bible and not know how to reconcile them.  I feel like I'm picking and choosing the parts of Scripture that appeal to me the most, while sweeping the dissonant parts under the rug.

This conflict becomes especially noticeable in American politics, and I'm sure we'll see more of it in the upcoming presidential election.  Sarah Posner, from Religion Dispatches, does an excellent job of pointing out how both sides of the political spectrum use the Bible, in her article, Paul Ryan’s Bible, Jim Wallis’, Or None of the Above?  Posner mentions that using the Bible for policy arguments has its limits and pitfalls, and, "When you wave a Bible in someone's face, just remember that someone can wave one in yours, too."

The 2012 election, unfortunately already being covered and re-covered in our 24-hour news cycles, will be my third presidential election as a "thinking Christian."  I know to watch for the code words that both sides use, and will be enthralled with the language, symbols, and other imagery that each candidate will invoke.  

But while I'm busy deconstructing phrases like "nanny state," "family values," or the scare words thrown around in the immigration debate, hopefully I can keep in mind that the Right isn't the only side who uses the Bible for their own gain.  The Left joins in the fun as well.  As Posner said, a representative from Catholics United tried to give Ayn-Rand-follower Paul Ryan a Bible with all of the verses supporting the poor bookmarked.

The cynical side of me sees both sides manipulating Scripture for their own purposes.  The idealistic side of me hopes we can transcend quoting Bible verses for political gain, and recognize this ancient collection of scrolls for the nuanced, polyvocal, confusing, and beautiful thing that it is.  I'm hoping my idealistic side wins out, but who has time for nuance in a 2-minute segment on CNN or in a televised presidential debate?

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