Subjectivity, Text, Interpretation, and Faith

This is a letter I wrote to someone dear to me after s/he asked about my faith, with only a little editing. Edits will be inside brackets.

“Hey [person who is dear to me]

Thanks for opening up what I think can be a fruitful dialogue. I’m composing this for you as well as for me so I can put down some thoughts […].

The subject line [‘Subjectivity, Text, Interpretation, Faith’] shows in an abstract way how I think we arrive at faith. Children are not born religious or really anything. The faith that they accumulate or don’t comes from life experience. Subjectivity in my model includes all that goes into making a person: habits, decisions, mistakes, parents, thoughts, relationships, abuse/acceptance, bodies, societies, communities, wars, money, education, livelihood, hobbies, etc. I wouldn’t say any one of these things are necessarily more important than any other [after further reflection, I find some of those elements far more influential than others] in self-formation; selves are an amalgam of things that become more or less stable over time.

We bring all (or sometimes only parts depending on how integrated we are as persons) of ourselves to the texts that we read. Based on our experiences we can reject or accept things in texts rather quickly. At other times there are texts that give one pause, particularly if they are eloquent, beautiful, jarring, peculiar, or any combination of these things. If I read a headline, I bring a political bent, previous thinking, as well as openness to the text at hand. More often than not it goes out of my mind by the next day because of the nature of that genre of text. Texts such as the Bible, which contain rich layers of genre and human interest, I […] give more time to.

When I told you today that I hadn’t really touched a Bible that much in a while, unless for class, [it] is because I have spent a lot of time […] ruminating over various passages. Some of these textual interactions have been with me since I was a boy: humans are special (image of God; even if I am probably more of an agnostic now, this value has continued to develop in me even after I left tradition), we are built for community and owe to our communities (brother’s keeper, not good for [hu]man[s] to be alone; the owing of ourselves to our communities is a more recent development), redemption (not so much in an orthodox understanding, but in a narrative sense, I have experienced redemption after Sarah’s and my relationship became better). Things that have moved me beyond reconciliation with evangelicalism (if one assumes inerrancy an integral part of that label): patriarchy as divinely ordained[…], death penalties for trivial things (blasphemy, sorcery, men having sex with men [note the lack of the same standard for women!- original brackets], Sabbath breaking [technically one is to be cut off from the people, but that’s essentially a death sentence in that context- original brackets]), proclivity to war, authoritarianism, embeddedness in monarchy and empire, the concept of messianism, the injustice of [substitutionary] atonement theory, racism/ethnocentrism, slavery, and choosing ambiguities of faith over certainties of reason (particularly when the two are in conflict).

On interpretation, I see it as organically springing from our persons as described above. We can be trained in various interpretive models–the more traditional ones that involve history, language, syntax, and sociology–or more avant guard [hehe, avant-garde] ones like feminist, queer, post-colonial, ideological/Marxist, reader-response, deconstruction, economic, and African-American (this could probably fit entirely under post-colonial approaches). The more avant guard [again, avant-garde] ones call into question the traditional historical-critical approach that understood there to be one inherent meaning per text. Scholars such as Dale Martin have demonstrated that when two scholars beholden to the same historical-critical methods approached one text, they arrived at diametrically opposed conclusions.

Probably where I fit in interpretation is synthetic. I think we have to make use of the building blocks of history, language, and syntax (kind of the historical-critical school in a nutshell) but texts tend not to just sit there as “fully interpreted” if we stop at “this verb means this in such and such tense when followed by the definite article in Hebrew and when used by the leader of a family household.” If that’s what it meant for such a person, what, if anything, has that to do with me? That question involves what I call the gap. There is a vast chasm between ancient literature and myself, of time, language, and culture. I can fill in some of that, but inevitably I fill in with tools from my training, my community, and my life experience. This is why there’s no such thing as a commentary on the Bible without an author. There simply is no such thing as a biblical interpretation without human subjectivity involved. At all. Some are uncomfortable with this. When I came to this realization, it was preposterously disconcerting, especially since I was raised with the idea that the Bible is the only authoritative rule for faith and practice. If that’s the case, we’re screwed. Tons of traditions agree on the idea of inerrancy, but then claim that they have the right interpretation in the bag, regardless of how much diversity of opinion there ends up being.

If God/Jesus/Spirit ruled as a physical personage, we would know who the right and wrong were, for then they could settle the dispute! They’re [the trinity] conspicuously silent when I really need them to come through. We could have real loyalists and real rebels. As we have it, we have a lot of people grasping at straws about the unseen and then holding people accountable based on that unseen thing that some apparently have access to[,] but [which] I don’t to corroborate it. I get along quite well with people even if they accept this. It gets hard when it gets political[,] though [,] for then the innocuous belief becomes a concrete political option that makes or breaks communities.

From my religious studies training, I was exposed to the debate between idealism and materialism. All religions have elements of both: you’d call one theology and one ethics, or the immaterial and material. Because of where I’m at, I focus on the material. If the Bible says, “If a man lays with a man as with a woman, that is an abomination,” (it says something similar to this in Leviticus; I’m just going from memory) and in the other form of that passage it adds the death penalty, I’m going to stop and think a bit before I do something [about the] concrete passage. Even if we account for genre and time, that is still present in the inerrant text. If two men happen to pork each other, and they aren’t doing it in public or to children, I see no reason why they should be stoned, particularly since passages like this one give no reason for the ruling other than “God said” or a sacred text said so. Such arguments from authority simply don’t do anything for me anymore. If there is not a rational basis and God is perfect, that [text] couldn’t have been spoken by God, for then it would be associating irrationality or tyranny with God.

This is getting long. Suffice it to say, I have access to God/Jesus/Spirit solely through a text and the person of Monte I bring to that text. The ONLY thing that would change that would be if they were to speak for themselves. Short of that, we are all gods […] since we end up being the final arbiter of which texts we find authoritative and which ones we don’t.

Love you. Thanks for speaking with me about this and for letting me speak candidly with you.

Even though some of the statements above are put pretty bluntly, or maybe as if I am hardened to change, that is not the case. I am open to dialogue. Challenge me on things. Question me. Ask what my narrative has to do with my interpretation. Ask for clarification. Provide difference of opinion. And defend it.

Again, love you
Mont”

A Book or Two I’m Pumped about for This Fall Semester

This fall I will be taking North American Religions with John Schmalzbauer and Jewish Mysticism with Vadim Putzu. Schmalzbauer is the Blanche Gorman Strong Chair in Protestant Studies with research interests in religion and American culture, evangelicalism, Ozarks religion, popular culture and religion, and campus ministry/religion in higher education. Putzu came to Missouri State last year. He is ABD from Hebrew Union College with research interests in Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, Jewish philosophy, Jewish history, and science fiction and religion.

Here are some of the required readings I’m really pumped about…and you should be, too…if you were me. As they come up this fall, I will be including my thoughts on them here on the blog.

1. The Democratization of American Christianity

This book is on reading lists everywhere for religion in America. Nathan Hatch wrote it twenty-four years ago, and it still calls for careful reading if you want to specialize in religion in America (which I do).

It discusses the rise of new Christian movements in the early United States that gained rapid influence because of their populism: the Christian movement, Baptists, Methodists, Black churches, and Mormonism.

Chapters include topics on democratic revolution in the late-eighteenth century, a crisis of authority in pop culture, the spread of sectarianism, and preaching, print, and music.

2. American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism

Having grown up in Pentecostalism/Evangelicalism, it’s interesting to read about the movements in the scholarly literature. People sometimes miss things when they are living and breathing something and not outside observers, or just aren’t historians.

Historians, such as Matthew Avery Sutton in this work, help frame how current movements/institutions came about, what they reacted against, how they gained popularity, and what struggles they had (within and without). Chapters include topics such as millennialism, fundamentalism, Christian nationalism, the culture wars, the Religious Right, and American exceptionalism.

3. Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life

This is a new book by Nancy Tatom Ammerman on the relatively young specialty in religious studies called “lived religion.” Lived religion doesn’t focus so much on doctrines or institutions so much as practices of everyday religionists in everyday life. For example, when is baking a cake more than baking a cake or selling flowers more than mere commerce for some people?

Chapters cover topics of the relationship of spirituality and religion (are they the same or different?), religion at home, religion in the public square, religion at work, and religion and health.

4. Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (American Beginnings, 1500-1900)

Amanda Porterfield in Conceived in Doubt discusses the rampant mistrust in old institutions (including religion) at the dawn of the nineteenth century. She argues that the optimism concerning religious independence (read=no state church) had waned by the early 1800s and that Evangelical ministers spread the message that biblical authority was the solution to a new American identity.

I’m intrigued by this book because I really don’t know where she’s going with it yet. By “religious skepticism,” does she mean agnosticism? Cynicism? Free-thought? Stay tuned to find out.

5. Religious America, Secular Europe?: A Theme and Variations

I’ve always been fascinated by the differences between Europe and the United States. They’re each part of “the West,” and yet they differ significantly when it comes to religion.

Peter Berger and others cover topics relating Europe and the United States like issues regarding constitutionalism, the Enlightenments (the book description only mentions it as if it were one thing, not taking into account the vast differences between British, French, and American secularisms [see link under #3 on my post “Link Wednesday 6“]), law systems, education, gender, class, and generation.

6. Changing Faith: The Dynamics and Consequences of Americans’ Shifting Religious Identities

Darren Sherkat covers shifting religious identity in the United States. I’m still not sure if the “change in faith” covers a demographic shift, conversion, or includes both. Pluralism has been an interest of mine for a little while now, particularly as it relates to how different religions relate to political discourse, and I think this work will give me a lot of empirical data to chew on.

7. Dixie Dharma: Inside a Buddhist Temple in the American South

My interest in this book is framed by an introduction to material culture and history of religion I encountered in courses last year with Martha Finch and Jack Llewellyn. One insight that stuck with me is that while religion influences other societal structures, it is just as much influenced by those societal structures. This is why one religious tradition looks so different between different times and places, notwithstanding ethnic, racial, gender, class, and other differences.

Jeff Wilson’s Dixie Dharma covers how region influences religious expression. How does Buddhism in the Northeast and west coast differ from that in Wilson’s coverage on a temple in Virginia? How does it differ from Indian and East Asian expression?

8. Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them

Robert Orsi discusses Italian-American Catholic experiences with saints in this book, but also theoretical issues in studying religious communities. One of those issues includes the difficulty of insider/outsider perspective: does the religionist or the scholar drive the research? I’m interested to see what he has to say, because he and Russell McCutcheon have had scholarly sparring matches over theory. It will be neat to play them against each other.

9. The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism

I really don’t know what Kabbalah is about other than that it’s a (the?) mystical tradition of Judaism and some celebrities have dabbled in it. It will be fun to have an entire semester to find out what it is. I had a similar experience going into my Tantra seminar last semester. All I knew of it was its American iteration where people lauded it as a way to have powerful, extended orgasms. There was a touch more to it than that.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed my Reading Rainbowesque flyby of some of my readings this fall. I wanted to include another treat for you if you’ve made it this far. Yesterday, I began following Suzanna Krivulskaya (@suzzzanna) on Twitter. She has an amazing resource page on her blog covering gender and nineteenth-century/general history of America. The vast majority of the resources are free.

Link Wednesday 5: SCOTUS Ruled; Now What?

It’s amazing what a few days away from the office can do to clear your mind. I just got back from Wisconsin this Sunday after visiting family. Wow did a lot happen since I wrote last. SCOTUS delivered their big decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. There was much despair. And there was much rejoicing.

In Evangelicalism, conversations moved to what needs to happen in its community regarding the decision. Amidst this background, I came across two very interesting sets of questions from very different points of view. They arise from the same tradition and use the same text.

Kevin DeYoung of The Gospel Coalition issued “40 Questions for Christians Now Waving Rainbow Flags.” Here are some of the questions he asked:

“3. How would you make a positive case from Scripture that sexual activity between two persons of the same sex is a blessing to be celebrated?”
“7. When Jesus spoke against porneia* what sins do you think he was forbidding?”
“11. As you think about the long history of the church and the near universal disapproval of same-sex sexual activity, what do you think you understand about the Bible that Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther failed to grasp?”
“12. What arguments would you use to explain to Christians in Africa, Asia, and South America that their understanding of homosexuality is biblically incorrect and your new understanding of homosexuality is not culturally conditioned?”

Matthew Vines, founder of The Reformation Project, issued a rejoinder, similarly titled: “40 questions for Christians who oppose marriage equality.” He asked such questions as:

“3. How many meaningful relationships with lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) people do you have?”
“12. Do you believe that same-sex couples’ relationships can show the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?”
“17. Did you spend any time studying the Bible’s passages about slavery before you felt comfortable believing that slavery is wrong?”
“18. Does it cause you any concern that Christians throughout most of church history would have disagreed with you?”

Each set of questions demarcates communities. I won’t comment on the virtues and vices of either. I assume my readers are educated. I will reiterate something, though: one faith, one text, very different questions.

After I read these, I was listening to a podcast with Amanullah De Sondy. He was discussing his book, The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities, on the New Books Network. There he made some keen observations about religious communities.

One of these has to do with the appropriation of texts. He asked what a text looked like outside the perspective of hegemony. In other words, if you are not part of a dominant class—whatever social marker that is—how does that affect how you envision a text or sayings? Both DeYoung and Vines are speaking from a place that may or may not be wrong. Which is in a more privileged position? Does privilege vary from situation to situation? If texts had as stable of meanings as we might like them to, there probably wouldn’t be as many interpretive traditions (=denominations, sects, religions) as we have today.

De Sondy’s comments had me thinking how much theology and legal reasoning try to make sense of native ambiguity in texts: ambiguity they recognize and wish to elide or naturalize into a preferred reading for their community. This ambiguity, however, is what I find so inviting and exciting about religious studies.

To illustrate interpretation outside hegemony, my friend and classmate, Samantha Nichols, wrote a post about the 4th of July. She included a speech by Frederick Douglass (delivered in 1852, before the Civil War) on the discourse surrounding the holiday:

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

What I am highlighting is that you cannot escape your life circumstance and how that colors your interaction with texts (among other things). Sometimes my circumstances prompt me to ask certain questions that people with other social markers ignore, and vice versa. Part of your life circumstances is the groups to which you belong and the groups you reject (for more on this, see my post on community).

I ask this to my reader: how do you arbitrate between two people who understand themselves as faithful to the same tradition, but have different life circumstances informing their interaction with the tradition? I conjecture that it’s probably whatever person’s views most closely align with your own. These debates, while ostensibly about who is most faithful to an original text, at least lend themselves to drawing battle lines: these sets of questions allow persons and communities to identify and align themselves with these two men to achieve certain aims.

*porneia is a Greek word. While this could simply be regarded as a rhetorical move to dismiss the opinions of people who do not know the language in which the New Testament was written, the fact that the New Testament was written in a language other than English seems to invite attention to what is happening in the original language. However, you could also just as easily say that the vast majority of people do not live out their religion by any reference to exegetical and theological tools like Greek—I think it worthwhile to mention that you would need to decide how much that religion is defined by official/institutional means and how much of it is defined on the ground by living, breathing believers.

Link Wednesday #2: Is Caitlyn Jenner Mentally Ill?

(~1350 words: analyzing Paul McHugh’s dealing with transgender issues)

Caitlyn Jenner’s last interview as Bruce Jenner occurred a little over a month ago. Then on June 1, 2015, she announced herself to the world with her new name and a cover shot. This prompted comments ranging from support to denigration.

So this link Wednesday has to do with one psychiatrist in particular who holds a lot of clout with conservatives who oppose to transgender persons (or what transgender people do, not their persons, according to the rhetoric).

1. “Surgical Sex” by Paul McHugh

Paul McHugh hopkinsmedicine.org — Paul McHugh
hopkinsmedicine.org

Paul McHugh was the longtime chief psychiatrist, professor of psychiatry, and department head at Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital. He has gained much publicity for his position against SRS. In this article published on First Things (see their About page here), he discusses why he opposes it. He primarily found the desire for SRS solely in men who could not deal with their own homosexual attraction and sexual experience. He wished to test his unease with these men by testing 1) if an operation resolved other “psychosocial issues” (“relationships, work, and emotions”) in them and 2) if operations performed on boys with abnormal genitals combined with raising the them as girls allowed them to be gender-adjusted in adult life as women.

Concerning his first inquiry, McHugh followed Jon Meyer’s research. Meyer had spoken with SRS patients years after their surgeries, finding that they were largely satisfied with their choice. McHugh inferred, though, that the surgery did not resolve other psychological issues present in them.

Concerning his second inquiry, he followed the research of William G. Reiner. First, Reiner used comparative anatomy to conclude that even if boys were surgically altered postpartum, they had still been exposed to testosterone in utero. These young children, though raised as girls, preferred “boy” play: “enjoying rough-and-tumble games but not dolls and ‘playing house.’” Reiner’s case study on 16 “genetic males with cloacal exstrophy” found that once the youths had learned about their birth sex:

8 boys declared themselves male
5 continued to live as females
1 lived in sexual ambiguity
(2 had parents who had elected not to have the surgery performed on their children)

McHugh then concluded that gender identity flows not from socialization, but from genetics and intrauterine encounters with testosterone. I have two issues with McHugh’s inferences from the data and studies. The first has to do with the propriety of his first inquiry: is it appropriate to ask if SRS solves other psychological problems in a person? I’ll propose something and let you think about it: does gall bladder surgery have benefits for asthma sufferers? McHugh admitted that men who underwent SRS were satisfied with the results in the majority of cases. His contention is that it did not solve attendant psychological issues. Should that be expected? If I suffer from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, will treatment for one diagnosis work for the other two? Some medications help multiple things. For example, Depakote can be used as a treatment for seizures, migraines, or the manic phase of bipolar disorder. But this isn’t always the case, and to expect one treatment to affect multiple issues doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

My second issue has to do with McHugh’s use of Reiner: “sexual identity is mostly built into our constitution by the genes we inherit and the embryogenesis we undergo. Male hormones sexualize the brain and the mind.” If effects in the uterus are primarily what account for sexual identity, why did nearly 43% of the boys operated on live as females—i.e., according to socialization—or ambiguously? Wouldn’t his claim call for a much higher ratio of “boyness” trying to overcome female socialization? Can a claim for naturalness/normalcy hold if it only accounts for roughly 57% of the sample?

2. “Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution”

(Google the title; if you click on this link, you have to subscribe in order to read the full article)

I came across this article when another article referenced it. That article had the catchy snippets in its title: “Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: Transgender is ‘Mental Disorder;’ [sic] Sex Change ‘Biologically Impossible.’” (check out what the DSM-V says about it being a mental disorder; thanks to Brynn Tannehill; In the upcoming weeks, when I discuss the “institution” aspect of religion, I will discuss the politics of classification) While I read that article, I wanted to read the original. It is imperative in research to see what writers/speakers do with their sources in order to see if there are unstated motivations beneath their stated intentions.

I want to draw attention to one statistic provided by McHugh:

When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings. Some 25% did have persisting feelings; what differentiates those individuals remains to be discerned.(Monte’s emphasis)

He also refers again to his reason for stopping sex surgery at Johns Hopkins: “surgically treated patients” were satisfied with the surgery, but didn’t experience relief from other “psychosocial” issues which he doesn’t detail here.

In this article, he produces a much more relevant study to his aims. The Karolinska Institute in Sweden conducted a 30+ year longitudinal study on over 300 people who had undergone SRS. He highlights two things. One, 10 years following the surgery brought about mental health issues, and two, the patients had a 20-fold suicide mortality rate when compared with the general population.

Concerning the Vanderbilt/Portman study, McHugh admits that no one knows for sure why gender dysphoria continues in 25% of individuals who experience it as children. With him, I don’t know what to do with this. It could have genetic or social contributors, or a combination of the two. We just don’t know. However, he’s the psychiatrist, and he doesn’t offer any alternatives to SRS (besides “devoted parenting” for children and adolescents) or help. If you’re a public intellectual offering your two cents, provide some solutions.

The second study concerns me. That suicide statistic is astounding. An article by Mari Brighe (about The Transadvocate here) critiquing McHugh’s op-ed detailed many of his misuses of data, including the following quote from the Karolinska study:

It is therefore important to note that the current study is only informative with respect to transsexuals persons health after sex reassignment; no inferences can be drawn as to the effectiveness of sex reassignment as a treatment for transsexualism. In other words, the results should not be interpreted such as sex reassignment per se increases morbidity and mortality. Things might have been even worse without sex reassignment. As an analogy, similar studies have found increased somatic morbidity, suicide rate, and overall mortality for patients treated for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. This is important information, but it does not follow that mood stabilizing treatment or antipsychotic treatment is the culprit. (Monte’s emphasis)

Further links in the article cite differences in androgen receptors between transgender and cisgender men and a difference in brain anatomy between transgender women who haven’t yet undergone hormonal treatment (the article calls them “male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals”) and cisgender men.

What I take from this is that transgender persons need more access to mental health resources, but that a ban on SRS in itself would not “fix” them. With high suicide rates, abuse from families of origin, mistreatment by police and hospitals, and homelessness, exclusionary tactics like negative labels are not helpful. Labels more often than not serve to categorize a group as “Not us,” that can then serve as a shield of indifference to real complaints, issues, and needs.

So is Caitlyn Jenner mentally ill on account of being transgender? The DSM says no. I think the question might be missing an issue, though. My question is, do Jenner and people like her have access to mental health, relational, financial, occupational, housing, and other resources that I enjoy because no one is obstructing my access according to my appearance? I guess a person could say, “Stop trying to be something you’re not. Make your appearance more normal and you won’t have these problems.” To me that’s like saying, “Stop practicing Christianity, because it’s against your nature. You won’t have relational problems associated with being resisted because of your religious observance.”

My Weird Thoughts on “Religion”

Here I would like to share my views on “religion.” It got pretty long, so I am breaking it into parts. This first part will cover classic definitions of religion, the instability in terms, and the concept of “discourse.”

1. Classic Definitions of Religion and Instability in Terms

Religion has classically been defined as:

The feeling of absolute dependence (Friedrich Schleiermacher)
Belief in spiritual things (E. B. Tylor)
A systematic belief and practice system that unites a community (Emile Durkheim)
A way of placating higher beings which control the universe (James G. Frazer)
A feeling of awe in the presence of the holy (Rudolf Otto)
An illusion or neurosis (Sigmund Freud)
An agent (“opiate”) that deadens peoples’ minds to accept their station rather than improve it (Karl Marx)
A state of being grasped by an Ultimate Concern (Paul Tillich)

Bruce Lincoln Source: University of Chicago — Bruce Lincoln
Source: University of Chicago

Let’s test some of those definitions. I consider myself religious, but don’t feel particularly dependent on God during data entry (contra Schleiermacher); I’m not really aware of material things, much less spiritual things, before my coffee has kicked in (contra Tylor); my mind doesn’t feel particularly numb when I’m thinking about religion (Marx could be brilliant at times and at other times preposterous); Buddhists who rely on self-power (some rely on beings to help them, such as Amitabha) aren’t placating higher powers.

Furthermore, I strongly insist that religion is colored by your time, place, and other identity markers. If you learn about the Five Pillars of Islam, or the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Path of Buddhism, or the Shema Yisrael of Judaism, do you think you have really encountered those religions in all their varied splendor? Is Christianity reducible merely to the Sinner’s Prayer? Do the previous general beliefs account for the subdivisions within each tradition which sometimes go to war with each other (literally), even when outsiders see each party as part of the same tradition?

You probably haven’t encountered a tradition until you’ve experienced a living, breathing member of that tradition, and then, one person does not represent an entire tradition. In the end, I don’t find religion to be a stable category. Here are some social factors that interplay with religion, so that even within the same tradition religion is never the same: gender, race, class, ethnicity, nationality, politics, economics, culture, family, age, region, education, ability, dietary habits, athleticism, or customs. Just as with religion, I don’t see how these nodes of identity can be defined apart from these other factors.

2. Working, Constructed Definition of Religion

Russell T. McCutcheon Source: Twitter — Russell McCutcheon
Source: Twitter

But saying that religion is hard to define doesn’t really help much. So what do I mean by religion? I approach studying religion from a constructivist and social perspective. That’s not the only way to analyze religion (I analyze religion theologically, too, but that’s within another context), but that’s how I approach it academically. I will employ some help from history of religions scholar Bruce Lincoln. He has written extensively, particularly on how communities in general (not just religious ones) form and maintain their cohesion. What follows is his minimal definition on religion, riffing off of Durkheim (who I also like). While I won’t say religion is merely these four things, it is at least these four things (taken from Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion After September 11):

A. “Discourse”

By religious discourse, Lincoln means truth claims that do not appeal to experience, experimentation, or human thought but that appeal to sources outside the human political (and other) interests. Many times this goes by the name of “revelation,” “scriptures,” “holy writings,” “sacred sayings,” “prophecy,” “oracles,” etc. Elsewhere, Lincoln remarks that discourse consists at least of myth, ritual, and classification used to construct, maintain, replicate, deconstruct, and/or reconstruct society. I will discuss myth here, ritual in the section on “practice,” and classification in the next post under “community.”

In his helpful primer, Studying Religion: An Introduction, Russell McCutcheon also offers a helpful definition, building off of Michel Foucault: discourse involves “the series of material as well as intellectual conditions, practices, institutions, architecture and conventions that make specific types of thought and action possible.” In other words, discourse is all about the background noise that influences your thought and action.

While Lincoln sees discourse employing myth, ritual, and classification to achieve its ends more overtly, it can covertly (or just less overtly) achieve its ends by means of “spectacle, gesture, costume, edifice, icon, [or] musical performance.”

So what are some examples of these subtle methods of discourse? If you think of a church setting, a costume can consist anywhere from a dress suit to clerical robes. Gestures can include raising one’s hands in Christian worship or bowing down on a prayer rug facing Mecca (which would also involve the icon of the prayer rug).

A word on “myth”

Roland Barthes Source: magnumphotos.com — Roland Barthes
Source: magnumphotos.com

Myth is typically used in a disparaging way toward beliefs you consider legend, fable, or something that just isn’t historical. Lincoln first explains myth by referencing Roland Barthes’ concept of myth: it involves ideas divorced from their original contexts/settings/histories and projected into a timeless story, or given “mystificatory” (that which obscures its origins) content. However, Lincoln develops a unique model of myth, by comparing it to the concepts of fable, legend, and history before plotting them on the axes of truth claim, credibility, and authority:

Fable	Makes no truth claims, holds no credibility, and commands no authority
Legend	Makes truth claims, holds no credibility, and commands no authority
History	Makes truth claims, has credibility, and commands no authority
Myth	Makes truth claims, has credibility, and commands authority

Adapted from Lincoln, Discourse, 23.

When Lincoln speaks of credibility and authority, he doesn’t measure it on the story/narrative itself, but on how it is received by a community. This means that the history of one group can be the myth or legend of another group (compare how typical American and British histories treat the American Revolution). In his book, Authority: Construction and Corrosion, Lincoln defines authority in the following way:

When these crucial givens [“right” speaker, speech, and setting] of the discursive situation combine in such a way as to produce attitudes of trust, respect, docility, acceptance, even reverence, in the audience, or – viewing things from the opposite perspective – when the preexistent values, orientations, and expectations of an audience predispose it to respond to a given speech, speaker, and setting with these reverent and submissive attitudes, “authority” is the result

Lincoln’s work can apply to religion as traditionally conceived or to social phenomena in general.

That’s it for now on my thoughts on religion. As you can see, I owe a lot of gratitude to Lincoln. It is also painfully theoretical. I apologize, but felt I needed to establish this before I start getting concrete. If you have questions of where I fall on something concrete, email me at ilostmyprayerhanky at gmail.

I will post tomorrow or Monday on the second part. I may include how I think my initial thoughts on gender and sexuality relate to religion in that second part, or I might make a third part.

Link Wednesday #1- Feminisms, Same-Sex Marriage, and Caitlyn Jenner

1. Rita Alfonso Surveying Feminisms

Dr. Rita Alfonso thinkphilosophy.org — Dr. Rita Alfonso
thinkphilosophy.org

ThinkPhilosophy is a philosophy website run by “Dr. A” (Rita Alfonso), who taught philosophy and gender studies at Grinnell College and U.C. Berkeley before retiring. She is now an independent scholar and professional photographer.

Alfonso’s first few podcasts seem aimed at making a general audience clearer thinkers through reading and writing practices. Her blog is a text-accompaniment to her podcast. (Also neat: if you subscribe to her site, you can get Feminism: A Very Short Introduction as a free download. Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series gives a quick survey of a topic by experts in the field. They run ~100-150pp and ~$10).

I came across Alfonso’s site when looking up gender studies blogs. Her first podcast that I heard was her explanation of three prominent feminist theorists: Simone de Beauvoir (existentialism/Marxism), Luce Irigaray (psychoanalysis), and Judith Butler (post-structuralism/queer theory). De Beauvoir pretty much kicked off Second-Wave Feminism with her The Second Sex. One of her most famous lines is “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.” In other words, sex is not identical with gender, but gender has a cultural history. According to Alfonso, Irigaray takes de Beauvoir in an egalitarian direction while Butler takes her in a radical direction.

The audio runs ~38 minutes.

What do you make of de Beauvoir’s quote? Are women reducible to wombs or to what is called “feminine”? Is femininity something that is stable in a person or something that must be constantly maintained? How much is femininity a performance or projected image and how much of it is innate to a woman? Is woman simply the Other of man? How does liberal feminism differ from radical feminism?

How does Irigaray critique de Beauvoir’s “othering” (abbr- where you set up an opposite of yourself or your group to say “I’m not that” and use it as identity reinforcement) of women? Is Irigaray saying de Beauvoir sees women as simply non-actualized men in need of full (male) agency? How different does Irigaray find women and men as subjects?

Butler argues that if we take de Beauvoir’s sex/gender distinction seriously, we have no guarantee that a sex results in a given gender; if you always exists in a culturally expressed gender, do you ever exist solely as your sex? In other words, are bodies and biological sex ever interpreted free of cultural bias? In Alfonso’s questioning, does gender occur as naturally as a falling rock demonstrates gravity (every time)? Alfonso interrogates sex as a natural category: should it not result in a particular gender expression? Is the nature/nurture distinction itself a cultural product?

2. Albert Mohler on Attending Same-Sex Weddings

Albert Mohler is extremely influential in the Southern Baptist Convention and president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His output is prolific. He has an almost daily podcast called “The Briefing” where he analyzes current events from an evangelical perspective.

I started listening to him because I wanted to gauge where real evangelical leaders are coming from and rather than being filtered through various outlets like Salon or other media which focus more on sensational figures (thinking Pat Robertson here) rather than on what broader evangelicals accept.

Albert Mohler albertmohler.com — Albert Mohler
albertmohler.com

If you are unaware, sometimes religious leaders play with a supposed (from an outside perspective) or real party line (again, this is why I think essentialism is unhelpful). While holding to a traditional view of marriage, Mohler also claimed that the church was guilty of homophobia and aggression (rather than redemption) against homosexuals.

The podcast I listened to on Monday was dated. He analyzed Sen. Marco Rubio’s statement on attending a same-sex wedding. Rubio would attend one if he loved the people, even though he doesn’t support same-sex marriage. Mohler argued that based on the phrasing from the Book of Common Prayer (“If any of you can show just cause why they may not lawfully be married…”) one’s attendance of a wedding is silent consent to the marriage, and that therefore, Rubio’s statement doesn’t make sense.

The segment on Rubio is the first ~7 min of ~18 min.

What do you make of this? Does Mohler’s assessment work for you? Can one not attend a same-sex wedding, love the people involved, and still disagree with what they are doing? Does attendance or presence equal consent? Does Rubio’s statement conflate loving people regardless of their sin and what people affirm? If a mother-in-law doesn’t like the spouse her child has chosen, and she still attends the wedding, is she affirming their marriage or her child? How does Mohler employ the term “category”? What does Mohler mean by love? Does he define it?

3. “Bruce Jenner Is Not a Hero”

Yesterday was a mixed bag on my Facebook feed. There didn’t seem to be much middle ground surrounding Caitlyn Jenner’s reveal on the cover of Vanity Fair. This post was a negative assessment of her coming out. When I tried to find out about the author, she didn’t have an “About” section. Scrolling through her posts, I gathered that she is a mother seeking to explain a Christian worldview in light of cultural (generally sinful) trends. What caught my attention in her post was the following quote: “I never want to shy away from speaking something that needs to be said even if I know it is not something people want to hear.”

What prompts someone to speak to an issue to the point of saying that their words “needs to be said”? I can think of some possibilities: everyone is doing it, your position hasn’t been heard, your position has been maligned, your position has been misunderstood, you like to hear yourself talk, imminent danger, etc. I think in this case she sees a societal danger, but you tell me what you think.

How is Emily Suzanne using gender? Does she buy a distinction between sex and gender, or are these two items even distinct? How is she characterizing arguments in favor of Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out? What sources of authority does she use? How and why does she use them? What does she mean by “common sense” when coupled with a Christian worldview? How does Caitlyn coming out as a woman constitute being “lost, sinful, and desperately in need of Jesus” in itself? According to her definition of a hero, has Caitlyn not sacrificed and risked? When Emily Suzanne uses “we,” who is included and who is excluded?

I plan on using Jenner’s case as a launch pad to talk about the biology and politics of sex in an upcoming post, possibly before Saturday. Again, in Saturday’s post I am going to discuss how I relate religion and gender in my studies.

What I Learned This Year

Here are some things I’ve learned this year in school:

I am capable of a lot of work when I put my mind to it, but I also recognize my finitude. I have sometimes taken on too much to the detriment of my family. This will require that I plan my time better in adopting a consistent sleep schedule and study plan. My family deserves better than I gave them this year.
I had an inkling of this, but it got fleshed more out in my research of Gordon Kaufman’s theological method: all theology is constructed, from beginning to end. It does not exist “out there” to be discovered and exegeted but emerges out of a thinker’s use of sources. This means that one is responsible for what one says; one cannot just blame something on God.
Because of what I discovered with Kaufman, I am giving Christianity not another try, but a different try. I will be actively engaged in the process, not just uncritically accepting certain things. In a sense, Christianity exists “outside” the person because it is a social phenomenon. However, Christianity does not exist above and beyond the individual, because it is always embodied and expressed by individual persons. It shows up socially, too, social or political movements. I’m still working out what this even means.
I’ve come to realize more and more that I cannot universalize my personal experience and call myself a responsible person. I don’t call what I do “common sense,” “the way things are,” etc. I own what I do, say, and believe to the point that I recognize I have to demonstrate to others how I’ve come to some of my conclusions. I can’t take for granted that people share certain elements of experience with me to come to the same conclusions. And so this gives me room to hear other people’s stories and how they’ve constructed meaning on their journeys and not dismiss them out of hand; those are their experiences, as important to them as mine are to me. True dialogue can occur after each person recognizes this in the other, once we accept that we are not the same, and then attempt to find shared spaces or possibly create them.
There’s a world full of religions (one could just as easily say cultures since “religion” and “culture” intersect so seamlessly sometimes) that have worked for peoples to organize their societies. It’s interesting to learn how diverse understandings of religion arbitrate the relationship between church and state, individual and group, secular and sacred, what actually constitutes “religion,” male and female, or beyond binaries in more recent thought.
The word “religion” means something obvious to everyone else besides religious studies scholars. Ninian Smart outlined seven elements that most religions of the world have at least some of: doctrine, ethics, narratives/myths, ritual, experience, material culture, and institutions (here is a picture showing the interrelations of six of those dimensions, minus material culture). Some religions will denigrate others for not emphasizing what they emphasize. Some emphasize ritual and minimize ethics and doctrine, while others do the complete opposite. Both wonder at each other as a foreign, exotic “Other,” which is nonetheless wrong. Religion can also be defined in other ways: functionally, essentially, descriptively, and normatively.
There are lots of smart people in the world. I no longer feel the impulse to be the smartest in the class or see myself in competition with others to do better. I’ve adopted a more cooperative attitude that feels better. When I treat my classmates as fellow scholars or collaborators rather than as competition, we all benefit. I don’t glean nearly as much as when I share with others and they with me in a dynamic relationship. I just do my best and hope for the best.
Facebook and other internet activities waste a lot of my time. So does Netflix. Not to say these aren’t wonderful things in limited quantities, but they kind of contribute to me being a more passive than active person, making my brain feel kind of mushy after indulging for too long.
After reading an article by Richard Godbeer (his writing is as cool as his last name sounds), I encountered the idea that discourses of sex are always present in every sex act. One never “just has sex”; one is playing a script, like it fulfills a biological need or emotional desire, acts as a means to bond with a lover, a duty to fulfill, a peak experience with another involved, etc. He was drawing his ideas from Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality in three volumes, some of which I’d like to read this summer. The class I was in, Sexuality and American Religion, has actually given me some ideas of possible minors I’d like to pursue alongside the major of religious studies, like gender or sexuality studies and their presence in religions.

That is all I can think of for now. If I think of other things, I’ll edit this post and add them. Ask questions or comment if you want.

What’s Faith For?

In conversations with some close family and a close friend, I have heard mentioned the necessity and importance of faith in approaching god. When I have proposed that god is utterly absent from my experience, and then stated that it’s rather hard to base my life off of something or live in submission to someone for which there is not more than dubious evidence (in my experience and studies), they assert that faith is required. Why is it required? What makes god special in this instance that faith is required and not direct relationship?

When my car is broken, I don’t take it to someone who doesn’t for sure know how to work on cars, or has faith to fix it but no credentials; I take it to ASE certified mechanics. When I make a decision to attend a school, I consult counsel: career counselors, professors, friends, students. I do have inner monologue, but I attribute that to self-talk, not prayer/consultation with some entity who at best communicates to me through my own thoughts. Faith just seems an utterly weak position when there are more concrete options to consider. In every decision I come to, no, I do not make it with bird’s eye objectivity. But neither does the person who consults his or her god. They are just as embedded in their context as I am. I fail to understand how the element of faith adds to or diminishes vitality, wisdom, or direction in my life. Yes there are times where I make decisions without all the evidence at my disposal. Who doesn’t? I don’t call that faith. I call that life. We walk about in the dark, because that’s what life is. We don’t have all the information at hand. We don’t always make the best choices. We are human beings. If god spoke through much less convoluted means, I would grant faith more credence. However, as the word is presented to me, it is used as something differentiated from the faculties of reason and experience, a move I feel very uncomfortable with.

Here’s something of my experience with faith. There was a used van for sale. I asked the seller what was wrong with it besides the mileage. He said there was nothing wrong with the vehicle except its mileage. So I trusted him on that, not knowing the man, and foolishly, not taking it for a test drive. I trusted this man whom I did not know. What I got was a faulty electrical system, a right-at-the-end-of-its-life transmission, a near dead battery. That’s what I got for faith.

I’ve learned my lesson. A wiser person would have asked more questions than I did, ran it for a test drive, and taken it to a mechanic to check it out because we don’t take peoples’ word for things. We have to confirm things. We don’t accept colleges’ and universities’ claims to being reliable institutions; we run them through the gauntlet of accreditation. Continually. Where’s god’s accreditation process? Where’s his test drive? Why do people accept what the bible says with sometimes the level of trust that I had in the sleezy van salesman? Why does that seem to be the only area where we don’t bring our intellectual muscle to bear?

Another, more personal example. Growing up in a time and place where the distance between puberty and marriage continues to widen, I shared the experience of many Christian men in trying to maintain sexual purity in the modern age. The same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead was available to me to give life to my mortal body. In Christ’s absence, he left his Spirit to guide me into all truth and righteousness. So when there was temptation to look at pornography or do anything else, God would not let me be tempted beyond what I could bear. Sometimes I would/could resist. The temptation’d be there, but I’d be abstinent for months. Other times no. I guess I thought the power of god would show up more powerfully than it did, calming the raging sea of my hormones. I expected the grandeur of what is present in the biblical account. Where was this power? Was there more to this thing than words on a page?

I think the way in which the word “faith” is used today is far different than how it was used in the bible. Faith was used in places like Hebrews 11 as “trust” based on the past acts of god in history. The Israelites had their Exodus. The earliest Christians had Jesus’ direct life to appeal to. What happens, though, when I’m a Westerner, gentile, around 1900 years removed from the latest supposed revelation, and have no experience of this god whatsoever? Do I trust the murky historical and literary evidence at hand, ignoring or playing gymnastics with all the critical issues that exist? Do I downplay my own reason and experience in light of Christian tradition? I don’t see how that makes sense. I hold out hope for some reason, that if god exists, god will reveal something to me that would excite me to exhibit trust. Otherwise, the god of the bible is just another salesman with a used van, a degree mill with no accreditation.

Though some of my writing may come off as if I am static in my position or unwilling to change, it’s just a place I’m in at the moment. I desire fellowship and counsel in this lonely place. What has the God of the Bible done in your life that prompts you to trust him? What feeds your daily faith in him? If you have dealt with the critical difficulties surrounding using the Bible as a source of faith and theology, what are some ways you have done so? I’m at a place where I don’t trust Jesus, the Bible, or the God handed down. I’d like to, but I don’t. If you have help to offer, I’m all ears. Mind you, I will ask a lot of questions, but not because I’m combative. It’s just, after certain experiences, I can “never see with virgin eyes again” (Missy Higgins lyric; and, no, I’m not calling people who haven’t had my experiences “virgins”; never mind what I mean because now I don’t know what I mean lol).

Why Do You Attend Church Services?

This poll is simple. I want to see what reasons people have for attending church services. There are no right or wrong answers. You can select as many answers as you wish. Eventually (after taking some research and stats courses) I’d like to do a massive survey on why people attend church in America. It could be eventually become a longitudinal study. Who knows?

O Father, Where Art Thou?

One of the biggest experiences I’ve had in Christianity is God’s absence. “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” While one can do this for a very long time, it puts the work on our shoulders for God to show up. It says that I have to do all the work. Reasons for him not showing up might be me not seeking hard enough, failing to have the right motives, having sin in my life, etc. These are all our responsibility. Why not a little reciprocation in this relationship? Maybe that’s too human an expectation in a divine-human relationship, but come on. Why doesn’t he “draw near” as in actually keep appearing in history, rather than consigning himself to occasional appearances a VERY long time ago, knowing full well that history gets muddied so easily?

Using an example from I forget where, if I hear my young child crying in the woods for 19 days and don’t reveal myself, I’d probably be considered a terrible parent. I mean, granted that it’s not a Vulcan rite of passage, I’d let my son know where he could find his family so he’d have security. No birthday cards, no letters, no phone calls, no tweets from the guy. Just words written back yonder. Even a violent revelation would at least show his person. I guess, to me, relationships take work, and there doesn’t seem to be much work going on on the other end. I’m finally asking him to go to counseling with me and he won’t give an answer. Even a “no” would be better than silence. Maybe I make too much out of these biblical metaphors- God’s people being God’s bride, sons, children. I cry out with Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Many people of God whisper, “How long, O, Lord, until your coming?” Sure, I guess God is considered sovereign, and so he gets to do what he wants. Why doesn’t he show up every once in awhile, though? He’s the king, right? He just feels like a deadbeat dad to me.

How about every 10 years, no every generation, he gives a state of the cosmos address like the American president does every year? This would let us all know how far we’ve deviated from him and clear up unnecessary diversity of opinion. Maybe rather than let his kids do all his talking for him, he could talk for himself. What are his purposes in staying hidden? Does it simply indicate his non-existence? Is he afraid of rejection? Would he get too annoyed with the questions?

Jesus told his disciples that it was good he went away so that his Spirit would be with everyone, that he would guide them into all truth. If this is so, why do we have so many voices for God which conflict with one another? No one can with full finality say, “Yah that guy or gal is speaking for God,” because we simply don’t know. We can say God’s revealed himself fully in Jesus Christ or the Bible or some revelation, but when it gets down to it, that makes things very sticky. Interpretation is involved in all things. A little time has elapsed since Jesus’ first came to the block. Much history has occurred, many languages have come and gone, many new and quite workable ideas have come since then. I mean, he’s been gone at sea so long, is it just time to say he’s dead and move on? It’s not like he has a captain sending him off to various parts of the universe against his will, so where is he? He’s omnipotent and omnipresent, right?

I don’t want to have to wrestle crumbs from the dogs (have my experience of God be mediated through history, literature, people, psychological experience, contrived worship settings). I want to eat at the table (unmediated experience, like Abraham, Jacob, Moses). Except he’s not at the table, in the room, in the house, on the block. He went to prepare a place for his people. How long does that take? The universe took six days. Does that just mean this will finally be the best of all possible worlds? Could he at least be a good carpenter and give us updates on our mansions? I don’t want the mansion, though. I just want to hear his voice, to know that he gives a rip. I’m like the kid with rich parents: I don’t want all the stuff they give just so they won’t have to hang out with me.

If anyone has any thoughts related to this, or you’d just like to say “hello,” leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.