Disaster Area

Movies and Gender Roles

I just got back from staffing a diocesan youth weekend here in Seattle (appearances by both bishops - yay!). The theme was "Now Playing", basically a movie-themed weekend. I thought a fun game would be "guess the movie" based on a synopsis, a good review and a bad review - with any obvious details removed, of course. Well known movies only, of course.

I got my info from Amazon, as the bad reviews especially are easy to pick out with just a mouse click. One really interesting one star review was this one - see if you can guess the movie:

There's no way to put a good spin on this bad plot. The little meek heroine gives up her voice to get the man. Not too subtle, is it? The interesting woman in the movie is the smart, intelligent, proactive and powerful woman. Why can't they offer women role models who are powerful, smart and good? Powerful women are scary so they must be evil and seek to harm and diminish and denigrate other women. So much for sisterhood. It's very disappointing that in the 21st Century, we're still peddling this extremely negative message to little girls. And what must the heroine give up in order to have her man? Let's see...her voice, her talent, her home, her dreams, but alas, it's all worth it. Or so we're led to believe. Yuck. I am profoundly disappointed that these type of movies are still popular amongst parents and children alike.

At first I was taken aback, but quite quickly I was taken with how accurate the review was. Any guesses as to which movie it is? Answer after the jump...

Scary Movie V

No, this isn't some lame compilation of spoof scenes from movies that weren't even worth making in the first place, never mind immortalizing in a spoof. No, this is the genuine article - a movie that will give you nightmares. Check out Jesus Camp. Go see the trailer, then come on back...

International Day of Women plus Four

Apparently the International Day of Women was four days ago on March 8th. Rachelle got a grid blog going and quite a few people took part. I wasn't particularly moved to participate, but it did make for interesting reading. Rachelle's own post was interesting, in that it obsesses a bit about Marc Driscoll, founding pastor of the in/famous Mars Hill church here in Seattle. I quote:

"I’ll admit, I’ve been afraid. I’ve been afraid to say anything contrary about Mark Driscoll and his institution. I’ve been afraid of his column in the Seattle Times, his titles, his affluence, the power of his charisma and his money and the shear(sic) numbers of followers."

"Mark Driscoll is a very powerful man in Seattle. He was listed as one of the 25 most influential people in Seattle magazine. In an era where religion reporting is rare, he has the powerful position of being a religion columnist for the Seattle Times."

From these and other quotes, you might think that Seattle was about to be named DriscollTown any minute. Which is pretty laughable if you know Seattle. The success of Mars Hill is pretty much a weird anomaly in the city famed for grunge music, a laid back, laissez-faire lifestyle (we might have even invented it if the French hadn't beat us to the punch by a few centuries), Microsoft, Boeing and which is sometimes known as San Francisco North. This is the city where the Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral is a highly regarded gay man who was a protege of Desmond Tutu and who is now a candidate for Bishop of California. This is the least churched state in the country. What fundamentalist religious leanings there are in Seattle have almost all been imported via those who migrated here from the South and Midwest.

And really, the position of "religion columnist in the Seattle Times" is maybe a smidge above that of cat-catcher in the average one horse farming town, but honestly I'm not even sure about that. Not only that, Driscoll shares the one weekly religion column (Saturdays) with The Rev. Patrick J. Howell, a Jesuit priest and dean of Seattle University's School of Theology and Ministry, Aziz Junejo, host of "Focus on Islam," a weekly cable-television show and a frequent speaker on Islam, The Rev. Patricia L. Hunter, an associate in ministry at Mount Zion Baptist Church (yes, a *gasp* female pastor - that must gall Driscoll no end) and Rabbi Mark S. Glickman who leads Congregation Kol Shalom on Bainbridge Island. Now, that's Seattle diversity for you.

So Driscoll only gets a column about every five weeks. And Driscoll is not a particularly good writer. Whether it's the toning down of the message that he must do for a mainstream audience, or the sheer inability to project his alleged personal charisma via the written word, it's just not that good. Check for yourself with March 11's column. It's not even Chicken Soup for the Soul material. Sample dreck:

"According to the Bible, God made the world and all the people in the world in a perfect state of goodness to operate together in flawless harmony. But because of human rebellion against God, everything and everyone in the world is now infected with imperfection, like a virus corrupting every file on a computer. Subsequently, God spends each day frustrated with the state of people and the world."

Driscoll sure knows his computer-savvy audience, and I just love the way he knows what God feels.

I make this point for a reason. As Rachelle points out in her post, Marc Driscoll and his misogynistic theology harms women. No question. Not only that, he's training other men to do the same. The strongest reaction I had to any of posts linked on Rachelle's blog was that of Renee (aka iphy) which harked back to a brutal incident back in 2003. Here's one of Driscoll's Acts 29 (church planting organization) proteges displaying a complete and utter lack of pastoral care by attacking a first-time visitor to his church on her own blog. Unbelievable.

Still, I believe the likes of Driscoll are better off left to condemn themselves with their own words and actions. Driscoll's public screw-ups are pretty well documented. He has been drubbed on a regular basis by the theology faculty at Seattle Pacific University (which is still a pretty conservative school with strong Methodist roots.)

And I guess my final point here is that people like Driscoll only have power if you let them take it. I still see way too many emergent folks (almost exclusively those who are emerging from fundamentalist evangelicalism) far too concerned about what the culture they are leaving behind thinks. For those of us who don't share that background it's (still) just really annoying.

I can even work this around finally to the New Testament reading from the lectionary today:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Oh yeah.

Feelgood Do-Gooding

The recent round of back-slapping rock stars raising awareness to save the world left me feeling somewhat uneasy. Just like Live Aid back in 1985 that didn't really do much except make a bunch of rock stars and their fans feel good about each other, I got very much the same vibe from Live8. Were any real lessons learned from back then? It appears not.

The main thing that makes me feel uneasy about Live8, and indeed the G8 conference itself, is that it all looks like a kinder, more compassionate colonialism. "We'll save Africa!" they cry, but I get the feeling that only Africa can save Africa. And Africa has to want to save Africa - we can't make them do it. The west can help, but we can't make Africans stop killing Africans because they're the wrong tribe or religion, nor stop them from spreading deadly diseases.

I thought maybe I was the only person in the world who felt this until I just read an editorial in the Seattle Times by Bruce Ramsey who put this all into words much better than I could. For instance, he kicks off his section on Africa with this:

Start with Africa. In the 45 years since most of its countries became independent, sub-Saharan Africa has absorbed half a trillion dollars in aid in today's money. This attempt at continental uplift was a kind of experiment. No country had ever become rich and successful that way.

What was the result of aid? "A road, a dorm, a school, a bank, a bridge, a cultural center, a dispensary — all were accepted," wrote Paul Theroux in his travel memoir "Dark Star Safari" (2003). "They were like inspired Christmas presents, the things that stop running when the batteries die."

"Inspired Christmas presents", indeed. Echoes of Do They Know It's Christmas, anyone?

He continues:

"Last week, an economist in Kenya told an interviewer: Stop sending us aid. In the hands of African politicians, aid corrupts; in the hands of the Western do-gooders, it creates a new class of philanthropic overlords, described by Theroux as young foreigners tooling around in air-conditioned Land Rovers.

"New class of philanthropic overlords". Or, as I put it above, a kinder, gentler colonialism.

Ramsey puts into words so much about what I've been feeling, it's uncanny.

Food for thought, at least. Looks like I'm going to have to buy that Theroux book...

Stupid Evangelical Tricks: Part XXVII

...that this piece from BP (Baptist Press) News is the tackiest, meanest piece of crap to come down the pike in quite a while. (heads-up courtesy of Will). Will takes the high road and actually does a nice job of trying to get to the heart of the Evangelical/emergent contretemps. Me, not so much. It incensed me no end, so I figured I'd vent a bit.

I'm sure the Southern Baptists have heard of the tradition of not speaking ill of the dead. Some of them no doubt consider themselves to be Southern Gentlemen who would in no way stoop so low, especially a mere two days after someone passed away.

But then, the mean streak in mainstream Evangelicalism runs pretty deep, so it's no surprise that the SBC and its various mouthpieces just couldn't resist unleashing the hounds before the body is even cold.

I get the impression that if we were to rewrite the story of the good Samaritan with David S. Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, as the priest or rabbi, that he would not pass by on the other side of the road. No, he'd cross over and give the victim a few swift kicks to make sure he didn't get up ever again.

Dockery says that, way back when, "We (he and Grenz) immediately found that we had much in common and developed a healthy friendship." He also says that "Stan was a good friend to me and to many others across Baptist life."

It's a shame that Dockery apparently couldn't return the favor, even by waiting just a few weeks to embark on his personal critique of Grenz' work and personal spiritual life.

The BP News (Baptist Press) slogan is "Witness the Difference".

Yeah, I can see the difference pretty clearly, thanks very much. Whatever you're peddling I want absolutely none of it.

We'll Have a Gay Old Time

So as the Flintstones, sorry, I mean the Anglican Primates, meet in Northern Ireland this week, it was appropriate that I spent my drive to work this morning listening to Tony Campolo's talk on homosexual issues at the San Diego conference. As I wrote previously, I attended all but the first twenty minutes in person, so this was more of a refresher than anything else.

First, let me say how absolutely amazing I find Tony Campolo. Here's a conservative evangelical who is a million miles from the shrill right-wing political suck-ups to our beloved president. The religious right label Campolo a delusionary liberal, when by any objective standard he is what he says he is - a conservative evangelical. What the religious right hates about TC is his absolute, utter, steadfast integrity in preaching the gospel as he sees it.

That gospel finds in him a heart for the poor, the disenfranchised, the sick, the needy, anywhere in the world. In his talk he wends his way around the traditional anti-homosexual arguments and finds that, for him, only the passage in Romans 1 essentially prohibits monogamous Christian homosexual relationships as we know them today. He rejects all other oft-quoted scripture on the issue as irrelevant or inapplicable to the situation we find ourselves in today. While he ends up on the other side of the fence to me I have immense respect for the integrity of how he arrives at that position. Not just that, despite holding that position, he argues strongly that there is no excuse for homophobia in the church.

His wife disagrees with him on gay relationships (determining that Romans 1 is primarily about temple prostitution and other wacky goings on at Aphrodite's temple) and is (I presume from his comments) in much the same place I am. A loving, stable, gay relationship that exhibits the qualities of the fruit of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, etc.) to at least the same degree as heterosexual relationships, can certainly be blessed and honored.

TC also talks about speaking to an assemblage of Anglican bishops (he doesn't say when - presumably sometime in the last decade, and George Carey was Archbishop of Canterbury at the time.) At that time TC notes that the Anglican communion featured Bishop David Jenkins (widely believed to be somewhat heretical, often cited as doubting the resurrection), Bishop John Spong (pretty much a heretic any way you look at it, but specifically on the issue that the bible has no authority) and significant supporters of the Jesus Seminar (there is no such thing as a living god at work today). All of which the Anglican bishops tolerated because "we're such an inclusive bunch". Yet he berated them soundly for jumping on the anti-gay bandwagon like a bunch of drunken pirates on their first shore leave in five years because "we have to draw the line somewhere". OK, that pirate analogy was mine, not his, but believe me, he pulls no punches.

I guess the bottom line to this whole situation is that he and his wife disagree vehemently on this issue. Yet they remain happily married. Why, and how can this be a model for a church about to be rent asunder?

Because TC opines that if we're going to "draw the line", shouldn't the defining issues be:

• that Christ is risen from the dead
• that the bible has authority (although I think we can still debate what the nature of that authority is)
• that there is a living god at work in the world

...rather than homosexuality? Hmm, don't you think?

And then we get to the actual Primates meeting this week, only to find that Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola and his reactionary friends have hijacked the agenda:

"Led by the primate of Nigeria, Dr Peter Akinola and primate of Central Africa, Dr Bernard Malango, the anti-gay evangelicals used their numerical strength to force the meeting to put subjects such as Aids and world poverty on the back burner and to spend all week debating the threatened schism over homosexuality."

It's good to see that trivial issues of little concern to Africans like, oh, AIDS and world poverty are now firmly on the back burner in favor of issues 5,000 miles away in New Hampshire.

One final point from TC's talk. He suggests that the end of denominational structures is in sight. Decisions in all denominations are being made more and more at a congregational level.

As I heard this at first I thought surely not, but as I've pondered it more and more I believe it to be true. If this is the beginning of the end for a power structure like the Anglican communion, then maybe that isn't the end of the world. In fact, I'm sure it isn't. Once upon a time we needed vast superstructures to know the people we were aligned with. Now with, for instance, the blog world, we know that on a much finer grained level. I'm not sure where this is all headed, but I don't think it's necessarily bad.

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM...

With Monty Python on my mind, here comes a minor rant.

According to Worldvision, I might not have noticed that there's a CRISIS IN ASIA!!!

Who knew?!?!?!

I'm glad they're keeping me informed several times a day via my inbox that there's a CRISIS IN ASIA!!!

Worldvision Galactic HQ is about 20 miles from where I live and one of my fellow Vestry members works there in the IT department. He mentioned at our meeting on Tuesday that he was having trouble getting email out because the Worldvision servers were bogged down. I asked him,

"Do you think that's maybe there's a slim glimmer of a chance that it's because Worldvision is sending out EIGHT BILLION SPAMS A DAY TELLING PEOPLE THERE"S A CRISIS IN ASIA???!!!"

He thought that, yeah, maybe that was it...

As if that isn't enough there's Sojourners. I signed up for their email list a couple of weeks ago. Somehow they construed this not so much as a "let us keep you informed of developments in the Sojourners world on an occasional basis", but more of a "may we please SPAM YOUR MAILBOX DAILY so we can get Jim Wallis's new book onto the best seller lists?" Anyway, the latter approach seems to be working because the book is currently #2 on Amazon's best seller list.

Now admittedly both of these are somewhat solicited spam (had to sign up for the mailing list) but please people ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Don't make me keep posting in BOLD CAPITALS and with multiple exclamation and question marks?!?!?!

At what point does the end cease to justify the means?