Adventures in Christian Retail: Finale

By Charity R. Carney

This is the last installment of my extended commentary on my experiences working for a large Christian-run retail chain. Part I of that commentary is here. Part II is of this series is up here. Extended responses informed from Darren Grem's own academic work on capitalism and American Christianity are here and here.

The one good and seemingly Christian thing about CC (“Christian Chain”) is that it is closed on Sunday. Until it’s not. One of the aspects that many shoppers find appealing about CC (in addition to the P&W muzak like “Awesome God”—that’s for you, Paul Harvey) is that it openly states that it treats its employees well. It’s right there on the door as soon as you walk in: “Closed on Sunday for Worship and Family.” The store is technically closed on Sunday, but it must be for customers’ worship and families because oftentimes employees are called in on Sundays to stock shelves, clean the store, hurriedly ready it for an upcoming visit from management. So what is at the heart of the work ethic of CC? Is it a Christian calling or is it corporate pressure, or both?

A striking element of CC’s character is it does have many long-term employees—individuals who have been working there for several years, some almost a decade on and off. Why do they stay and why do they agree to work Sundays? Why do they keep working until 1 AM on some nights to get the stock on the shelves when their shift was over at 5 PM? Why do they maintain 14 hour days when they are making part-time pay with promises of full-time benefits eventually (oftentimes promises that go unfulfilled)?

I’ve considered many options and overanalyzed the answers to these questions, I’m sure. If one took a Weberian approach, the answer may be that the employees see some greater meaning to their work. They see their employment with the company as part of their larger role as members of God’s Kingdom and doers of his will. And some of the workers at CC may very well view themselves this way. Case study: an older woman, well beyond the age of retirement, comes to work every day and puts her all into her job. She sees the work as necessary for her family and also productive in and of itself. She keeps a Bible at her station and often shares passages with coworkers and customers. Mrs. Mary (as she is affectionately called by everyone, including the manager) is not content in her employment (she often talks about how she wishes that she could go home early or how her feet hurt), but she does engage in it as a result of a compulsion to work for a higher good. God wants her to work and she sees God’s hand in her work.

What undermines this Weberian perspective are the other employees. Sexual harassment is rampant at CC as well as a general desire to goof off. In other words, Mrs. Mary is not the norm. The sexual harassment is particularly distressing considering the said mission statement of the company. There is, however, internal arbitration for any complaints. (Sorry, but a “yeah, right” is due here as anyone who has dealt with “internal arbitration” before can probably attest.) I witnessed male employees taking pictures of female employees rear-ends and bragging about it, female employees grabbing each other’s crotches as a joke, and constant back-and-forth sexual teasing. I was once asked by a male coworker if I would ever cheat on my husband. All this being said, the sexual harassment and general malaise of CC employees completely detracts from whatever Weber would say about the company and the employees’ drive to work with a godly ethic. That ain’t happening.

In the middle of the two extremes is the “false idol” worship that is incorporated into every day dealings with employees behind closed doors. At every staff meeting the manager insists upon a prayer before getting down to business and the prayer always begins by thanking God for the owner of CC and asking God to bless the owner as the owner has blessed each of us. Creepy? Yes. Christian? Uh, no. I welcome analysis of this feature of CC as it was one of the more baffling. Perhaps it is a derivative of the Prosperity Gospel—the idea that the owner is making millions because of his commitment to God and that through trickle-down Prosperity Gospel we were somehow benefiting from it? Again, I welcome ideas here, especially from you, Deg.

Ultimately, I’ll lean on Marx (as usual) for an explanation of why employees remain in this environment (and don’t flee and file complaints with OSHA as I did). Opiate of the masses. Class. Take your pick. Religion serves as the opiate of the customers more so than the employees. Consumers come into CC with an understanding that it is a Christian company, that it is run on Christian values, that they will get soothing Christian muzak (sort of) once they enter the doors. Employees are force-fed an odd Christian message at staff meetings and through the general material culture of the place while not experiencing it in their interactions with other workers and managers. It is simply class status that keeps them there. They cannot find other employment because they have neither the skills or the education to do so. And if they do have skills/education there are other barriers: the market is terrible, one guy had a felony under his belt for domestic abuse, etc. It is mostly the ones who need the job who stay—they simply don’t have a way out. Another case study: I ran into a former CC coworker the other day. (She hardly recognized me out of uniform.) She has been at CC for over 2 years now and I never got close enough to her to tell if she was content or merely smiling because her job depended on it. Well, away from CC I found out. As soon as she saw me she ran up to tell me how much she and other coworkers wished they could do what I had done and quit. She wants to find something else but there just isn’t anything else out there. She is Pentecostal, lives by Christian virtues, and does not buy into CC’s message of Christian retail. Not after the way that she’s been treated as one of its employees. Her final message to me before we parted ways was “You go, girl. You did the right thing and stood up for yourself. I just wish I was in the position where I could do the same thing.”

Ultimately, it’s class that keeps CC’s employees there. Not some religious work ethic or “time for worship and family” on Sundays. They are there because they need the money and their families could not survive without the extra income.

My final thoughts on my experience working for CC are this: not all Christian-run retailers are the same, but the social expectations for them are. American consumers who purchase items because they believe that the corporation is working for some higher cause should question the company’s motives (key word: company) and should research what they are really selling. I think they may be surprised. I sure was.

Editor's note: You can follow Darren Grem's responses to Charity's posts "Adventures in Christian REtail" here and here

Sex Talks

by Elesha Coffman

As noted in Carol Faulkner’s post on American History Now, John McGreevy named “religion and sexuality” as a neglected research topic. I don’t have a broad enough knowledge of scholarly trends to affirm or question this judgment, but sexuality certainly hasn’t been a neglected topic at Princeton University this week. By coincidence, two scholars visited campus to discuss new work on religion and sexuality, and while the presentations were quite different, they both reflected a combination of concerns that have become pervasive in the field—the linguistic turn and attention to religious practice.

On Monday Christy Gardner, associate professor of communication at Wheaton College, gave a public lecture (sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion) on her new book Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric of Evangelical Abstinence Campaigns. Her central argument was that evangelicals gained traction for their abstinence message, which is preached at flashy events sponsored by parachurch organizations including True Love Waits, Silver Ring Thing, and Pure Freedom, by shifting from negative to positive rhetoric. Out: The “just say no” approach, accompanied by nit-picky lists of what the abstinent may not do. In: A creative appropriation of feminist ideas, promoting chastity as an empowering choice for young men and women, a way to reclaim control over their bodies in defiance of an MTV culture that insists teens are helpless slaves to hormones. Alongside this analysis of why abstinence rhetoric works (though the programs don’t always work, delaying sexual debut for some teens some of the time), Gardner provided comparisons with evangelical abstinence programs in Africa. In that context there is less emphasis on personal empowerment, largely because Africans do not experience their lives as a succession of free choices.

On Thursday Bruce Dorsey, chair of the history department at Swarthmore College, visited the religion department’s weekly American Religion workshop to share insights from his works in progress on two sex scandals in the 1830s, both involving evangelical clergymen. In 1833, in what was at that point the longest trial in American history, an itinerant Methodist minister named Ephraim K. Avery stood accused of impregnating and then murdering mill worker and fellow Methodist Maria Cornell. He was eventually acquitted, but this verdict, like so many others in high-profile cases, stirred rather than settled debate. In 1835 a Christian Connection revivalist named Eleazer Sherman was tried in an ecclesial court for making sexual advances to young men. Sherman was unapologetic, casting his actions as examples of Christian brotherhood, but the other ministers involved hastened to discredit his ministry and distance themselves from him as much as possible. Dorsey interpreted these scandals as evidence of shifting cultures of work, gossip, gender, and sexuality in the new republic. At a time of so much mobility, with so much in flux, scandals marked the collision of different sets of expectations. The fallout from those collisions radiated in all directions as people newly connected by print and popular culture attempted to make sense of what happened.

Though both presentations attended to religious leaders—albeit entrepreneurial ones whose success owed little to credentials or formal, institutional support—Gardner and Dorsey followed the “lived religion” track in focusing on ways religious ideas play out in the everyday. What’s it like to sit in a strobe-lighted room full of teenagers yelling, “Sex is great”? How does this make sense to them? Or, what sorts of behaviors occurred when nineteenth-century revival preachers shared close quarters on the road? If different men perceived the same behaviors very differently, as in the Sherman case, why?

The more striking commonality between the presentations, to me, was their concentration on rhetoric and narrative. (Granted, Gardner is a rhetorician, not a historian, but I didn’t find her presentation that different from something I might hear at AAR or ASCH, so for the purposes of this discussion I’ll count her as one of us. I hope she doesn’t mind.) In response to expected questions from the audience, Gardner was able to give statistics on the abstinence programs, but her real interest was how people talked about sexuality—at rallies, in testimonies, in small groups, in Africa. Similarly, while Dorsey has spent enough time with the literature of the Avery case to form definite conclusions regarding who did what to whom, he was more interested in storytelling, especially the blurry line between Christian confession and gossip. When was a tale of sexual misbehavior evidence of contrition to nineteenth-century evangelicals, and when was it grounds for ostracism, even prosecution? Misreading that distinction could be extremely dangerous.

Perhaps now that attention to practice (including, often, deviant practice) and language has become widespread in the field, a surge of scholarship on religion and sexuality is on its way. I might get to test that hypothesis next week, when the CSR, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Center of Theological Inquiry sponsor a conference on the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible. Goodness knows there’s plenty of racy stuff in there.

End-of-Summer Beach Read for Religious Historians

by Carol Faulkner

Heaven’s Bride: An End-of-Summer Beach Read for Religious Historians (and everyone else) -- except during the hurricane please don't read it at the beach per se.

I just finished Leigh Eric Schmidt’s thoroughly enjoyable Heaven’s Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr and Madwoman. For more about the book Randall posted about the work last year, including an interview with the author here.

In addition to being a great read, Schmidt offers a useful reminder that evangelicalism is only one part of the religious history of America. Though Anthony Comstock, the inspiration behind federal and state laws suppressing vice, and his evangelical allies presented an almost unstoppable force in the late 19^th-century, Craddock associated with a loosely organized group of transatlantic secularists, religious liberals, Quakers, spiritualists, occultists, and yogis, who rejected evangelical domination of American life."

A brief synopsis: Schmidt views Craddock as a leading example of a time when sexual expression and American religion did not necessarily clash. Craddock and her associates advocated more liberated, pleasurable sex in monogamous heterosexual relationships, preferably marriage. Despite little or no direct experience with intercourse, Craddock set up shop as a pre-marital and marriage counselor, advising husbands how to please their wives (like Oneida Community founder John Humphrey Noyes, she separated sex and procreation, advocating a longer sex act with no male ejaculation) and instructing wives how to please their husbands (move their hips during intercourse). Craddock viewed the sex act as a form of worship, an experience of the divine on earth. In her physical and emotional marriage to a spirit husband, she practiced what she preached. Unsurprisingly, Craddock’s mother placed her in an institution. Comstock charged her with obscenity.

Contextualizing Craddock’s personal religious journey “from Methodist holiness to Unitarian individuality right on through spiritualist séances and South Asian traditions,” Schmidt examines the notices for religious services in the Chicago Tribune. In the 1870s, the announcements were predictably Protestant, calling Chicagoans to services at Episcopal, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, and Methodist churches. By 1900, as Schmidt observes, “all hell was breaking loose,” with announcements for Jewish, Spiritualist, Christian Scientist, Ethical Culture, and Hindu services. Craddock advertised her own combination of spiritual and sexual education at her Church of Yoga with a Bible talk titled “Man and Woman as They Were, as They Are, as They ought to Be.”

One aspect of Ida Craddock’s thought naturally caught my attention: she viewed Quaker minister and pioneering feminist Lucretia Mott as a foremother, quoting her famous line “Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth” in her death match with Anthony Comstock. This intellectual connection is not as farfetched as it seems. Craddock attended Friends Central School in Philadelphia, founded in part by Mott’s Cherry Street Meeting. Craddock also served as secretary for the American Secular Union, an offshoot of the Free Religious Association, an organization established in 1867. Before her death, Mott traveled to Boston regularly to attend meetings. In 1900, the Free Religious Association memorialized Mott, along with Roger Williams, Hindu reformers Ram Mohun Roy and Keshub Chunder Sen, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, and Octavius Brooks Frothingham , as “Prophets of Liberalism.”

Schmidt expands our understanding of this heady religious period through the life of the fascinating Ida Craddock. In her work with the American Secular Union, Craddock urged members to ally with “Free religionists, Quakers, Progressive Jews and Liberal Christians” against religious intolerance. Though she failed in her efforts to rally these groups, it is important to note that Comstock also viewed them as linked in their committed defense of the rights of accused pornographers, sexologists, and free lovers. Under the guise of religion, he argued, liberal Protestants were “champions of obscenity.”

Mormons, Pagans and ‘Post-Modern Polygamy’

By John L. Crow

One may ask what do Mormons and modern Pagans have in common in today’s religious marketplace? A recent post by a prominent Pagan blogger tells us: multiple-partner marriages. Last Tuesday, Jason Pitzl-Waters, who writes The Wild Hunt blog, posted about a recent Mormon polygamy case in Canada and the impact that they might have on Pagans in Canada and potentially the U.S. While paganism is not known for polygamy, it has a widely known association with polyamory. (As one example, see Raven Kaldera's book, Pagan Polyamory: Becoming a Tribe of Hearts.) For those not familiar with the term, polyamory is defined by Maura I. Strassberg, Associate Professor of Drake University Law
School, as:

a form of commitment which is flexible and responsive to the needs and interests of the individuals involved, rather than a rigid institution imposed in cookie cutter fashion on everyone, this new polygamy reflects postmodern critiques of patriarchy, gender, heterosexuality and genetic parenthood.

Strassberg calls polyamory a kind of ‘post-modern polygamy.’ This is not the only term used. She points to the web site/magazine, Loving More, a polyamory advocacy site, as a place where the numerous polyamory-related terms are defined. Other terms Loving More adds include: Poly-Family, “a group polyamorous people all the people living in or sharing life experiences in the same home or household”; Poly activist, “a person interested in taking action intended to counteract the political, social and religious enforcement of monogamy”; and One True Way Polyamorist, “a person who believes there is only one right way to be polyamorous often based on their own moral judgments (most believe there are many ways to be poly).”

This kind of diversity and specificity is not always appreciated by others. As Pitzl-Waters points out in his blog post, legal authorities have rarely cared to make a difference between polygamy and polyamory. He quotes Craig Jones, lead attorney for the British Columbia Attorney General’s office as saying, “When multi-partner, conjugal relationships are like ‘duplicative marriages,’ they are criminal regardless of whether the individuals are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.” It is this legal status that is causing the concern in pagan communities.

At a time when many celebrate the recent legalization of same-sex marriages in New York state, some question if the celebration is premature or what same-sex marriage legalization means for other types of marriage. This issue is certainly the one discussed by Strassberg in her 2003 essay in The Capital University Law Review where she notes,

The emergence of polyamory suggests that continuing efforts to legitimize same-sex marriage may raise questions about whether legalizing the marriage of same-sex partners would force the future legalization of polyamorous group marriages. (31.3, 443).

It is these concerns over future restrictions/prosecution that emerged within the pagan blogosphere. Within two-days, Pitzl-Waters’ post has received over 100 comments and other pagans have continued the conversation on their blogs and forums. (For examples see here and here.) Pitzl-Waters also mentioned the possibility of pagans working in tandem with Mormons to legally challenge marriage restrictions, and some think there is common ground to be found. However others, as quoted by Pitzl-Waters, have their doubts.

I can conceive of legal efforts which serve both groups’ interests, but I have difficulty imagining it politically. The movements have different cultural aims and have different relationships with the society at large. People in each movement tend to find the practices of the other distasteful, making any alliance fraught. Both groups would hesitate to focus only on tactics which support both groups. Both groups may fear that it will compromise their efforts if the public foresees benefits to the other group.

In June 2007 Salon.com published an essay discussing a retreat in central Florida for people practicing polyamory. The essay quotes a 2002 survey conducted by Loving More which claims that while 87% of those who took the survey where raised as Christian, approximately 30% of the respondents converted to paganism. It also stated that one retreat workshop was entitled “Poly and Christianity.” (This certainly would be an interesting topic for someone’s dissertation!)

The issues regarding sexual relationships, marriage and religion are not new to scholars of American religious history. We can point to Oneida, The People’s Temple, and many other groups who encouraged or demanded various sexual and marital practices. Yet there is a tendency today to think that polygamy is primarily a Mormon issue. If Pitzl-Water’s blog post and the ensuing discussions are any indication, polygamy, polyamory and multiple-partner marriage are clearly issues that concern American paganism too.

Religious Leaders and Gay Marriage

Randall Stephens

Several days ago NPR featured a story on "Pastor Debates Moral Issues Of Gay Marriage." In the wake of the legal decision in New York, news outlets across the country have been interviewing and polling pastors and congregants on the subject.

"The campaign for same-sex marriage and civil unions have already scored some significant legal victories recently," comments Michel Martin. "As we just heard a few minutes ago, Rhode Island just accepted a measure to allow civil unions for same-sex couples. Later this month, same-sex couples in New York will be legally allowed to marry. . . .

Bishop HARRY JACKSON, JR. [senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Maryland just outside Washington, D.C.]: Well, I still believe that spiritually we're dealing with whether we're going to inculcate a pro-gay lifestyle culture. Nobody wants anybody to be discriminated against or hurt, in terms of employment or any of those kinds of things. I think in many places, the legal issues are settled. The moral issues still remain."

Jimmy Carter and Conservatism

Blake Renfro

J. Brooks Flippen’s Jimmy Carter, The Politics of the Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right (University of Georgia Press, 2011) provides another interpretation of how conservative Christians became a vocal part of the body politic. Flippen contends that Jimmy Carter’s presidency inadvertently laid the foundation for the rise of the Religious Right under Ronald Reagan. The book focuses on Carter’s 1976 coalition between southern white evangelicals and traditional Democrats. Such an alliance might seem impossible in today’s political environment, and at the time it was a weak partnership. Historians familiar with the era will not be surprised by the contentious issues, including abortion, debates over secular education, feminism, and gay rights. Some studies of modern American conservatism have stressed the role of grassroots organizations in developing a sophisticated and politically charged rebuttal of liberalism, but Flippen focuses on a more powerful force-the American presidency. He demonstrates how the president’s language on social issues influenced broader political and cultural attitudes. Ultimately, Carter’s political balancing “set the stage for its [the Religious Right] movers and shakers.” It was, Flippen suggest, “a top-down movement” led by Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and an accompanying cast of familiar characters.

Race is an important issue when examining this dramatic change in American politics, and it seems like a new version is published every week. An emerging group of scholars has broadened the story by addressing gender and economics. State and local histories, including those by Joseph Crespino, Darren Dochuck, and Allen Tullos, use place and region as a metaphor for the nation’s political terrain. Flippen’s appraisal of race is not particularly new. Similar to Billy Graham’s efforts to sooth racial animosity, Carter catered to southern white Democrats with Biblical language and a call to cleanse one’s heart of hatred. But, Flippen subtly traces how evolving language about race eventually led to the Reagan Revolution’s “post racial” tropes. We can only expect more dissertations will continue to dissect the topic.

Flippin is particularly helpful in understanding the battle over gay rights. Historians of conservatism have paid little attention to the conversation between gay rights activists and conservative evangelicals. Prior to the 1969 Stonewall Riots, gay activism was almost unheard of in American politics, but Flippen illustrates how it emerged as a national issue during Carter’s bid for the presidency. For the time Carter was surprisingly progressive on the issue. Though he did not support the so-called “homosexual lifestyle,” Carter clearly abhorred the kind of rhetoric voiced by Jerry Falwell and Anita Bryant. When he denounced the Briggs Initiative, which proposed to ban homosexual teachers from California’s public schools, evangelical leaders called him a traitor. The administration was not pioneering on gay rights, but Flippen has done more than any other scholar to illuminate the origins of this ongoing culture war.

Jimmy Carter, The Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right reminds us how powerful the American Presidency has shaped our political and cultural conversation. As we enter another round of political campaigns, historians will undoubtedly find more ways to demonstrate how the past informs our contemporary political temper.

Jim Wallis, Sojourners, the LGBT Ad, and the Trials of Progressive Christianity

Hey, it's a good week here at the blog. Please welcome our new contributor Brantley Gasaway! Brantley is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Bucknell University. His book on the history of the progressive evangelical movement since 1965 is under contract with UNC Press and should appear in 2012. Brantley's post below concerns the recent controversy over a progressive Christian stalwart and the LGBT community. Welcome to Brantley! We look forward to many more posts from him.

Why Jim Wallis and Sojourners Rejected the LGBT Ad

Jim Wallis is no stranger to controversy. As head of

the progressive Christian organization Sojourners, Wallis has been the leading representative of evangelical progressivism over the past four decades. Throughout his career, Wallis has insisted that his "biblical" and "prophetic" political engagement is neither conservative nor liberal--a position captured in the title of his 2005 best-selling God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. Nevertheless, his more liberal politics and refusal to prioritize culture war issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage have long drawn the ire of the Religious Right. Because Wallis has attempted to promote an evangelical alternative to their movement, his most sustained and strident opposition has come from Christian conservatives.

But not this week.

Wallis and Sojourners are facing a hailstorm of criticism from religious and secular liberals for refusing to run a video ad from Believe Out Loud, a group describing itself as "a trans-denominational movement that promotes LGBT-inclusion in the Christian church." In the video, a lesbian couple and their son enter a church but face silent hostility from the congregation as they search for a seat. Yet the minister at the front of the sanctuary greets them with a warm "Welcome--everyone" and helps seat the family. The ad concludes with the words: "Open Your Heart. Break the silence." In a written statement explaining their rejection, Sojourners stated: “I’m afraid we’ll have to decline. Sojourners position is to avoid taking sides on this issue. In that care [sic], the decision to accept advertising may give the appearance of taking sides.” Religious and political progressives are responding with incredulity, disillusionment, and outrage (see the coverage here and here at Religion Dispatches). Many have charged Wallis and Sojourners with hypocrisy for claiming to represent progressive causes and to promote justice but refusing to take a stand for LGBT rights.

Yet even prior to this present controversy, Sojourners' responses to homosexuality (and abortion--but that requires separate treatment) have made them uncomfortable and on occasion unwelcome partners with more liberal Christians who otherwise share their vision for social justice. Sojourners magazine did not address homosexuality as a matter of either Christian ethics or public policy until 1982, over a decade after its inception as the Post-American. In an editorial entitled “A Matter of Justice,” publisher Joe Roos outlined the magazine’s interpretation of homosexuality as a civil right but religious wrong. “While we do not believe that Scripture condones a homosexual lifestyle,” Roos explained, “we do believe that homosexuals, like anyone else, deserve full human rights” that are not “conditional upon agreement over sexual morality.” Churches can privilege heterosexuality within their own communities, he argued, and thus Sojourners welcomed but did not affirm gay and lesbian Christians. But within “the public arena,” Roos insisted that “the first Christian duty is to love”—an act that need not entail approval but “must always include justice.” And justice, he concluded, required Christians to defend the full civil rights of gays and lesbians.

In 1985, Sojourners reiterated this position. Despite confusion that stemmed from empathetic relationships with gays and lesbians, the editors remained convinced that “a clear biblical word” did “not condone homosexual practice.” Yet they rejected any "attempt to deny them their God-given humanity and their civil rights.” The editors endorsed an accompanying article by popular evangelical author Richard Foster in which he wrote that the Bible clearly "views heterosexual union as God’s intention for sexuality and sees homosexuality as a distortion of this God-given pattern.” While Foster acknowledged the reality of a homosexual orientation, he compared such orientation to “clubfootedness”—a “distortion of God’s intention” that deserved empathy rather than condemnation from Christians.

A backlash, similar to the current one, immediately ensued. In addition to self-identified gays and lesbians who felt “betrayed,” a significant protest came from a group more liberal Christian leaders who not only supported Sojourners' comprehensive commitment to justice but also regularly contributed to the magazine. Among those jointly signing a critical response were prominent Catholic peace activist Daniel Berrigan; celebrated social justice advocate William Sloane Coffin, Jr.; theologian Walter Wink; and leading evangelical feminist Virginia Mollenkott. In a lengthy letter, the group challenged the relevance of biblical condemnations of homosexuality; argued for left-handedness rather than clubfootedness as an analogy for homosexual orientation; and appealed to “the reality of deep and abiding love between two gay persons” as evidence that God also intended homosexuals to express their particular “gift of sexuality.” To these authors, affirmation of homosexuality represented a basic “question of justice.”

While Sojourners responded to these criticisms by reiterating a commitment to defending the civil rights of gays and lesbians but regarding homosexual practice as unacceptable for Christians, Wallis and other editors seemed chastened. The intensity of this criticism from ecumenical Christian supporters clearly shaped the magazine’s subsequent coverage. Rather than promoting its controversial welcoming but not affirming position for Christians, Sojourners declared itself committed to a "dialogue" on the issue while unequivocally supporting LGBT civil rights. Thus, for example, the July 1991 issue of Sojourners carried a forum dedicated to "The Need for a Better Dialogue in the Churches on Gay and Lesbian Sexuality" but only included authors who "share a commitment to justice and human rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation." Likewise, in 1999 Sojourners published " a dialogue on the church and homosexuality" between Tony Campolo (who believes "that the Bible does not allow for same-gender sexual intercourse or marriage") and his wife Peggy Campolo (who "believes that within the framework of evangelical Christianity, monogamous gay marriages are permissible"). Most important, Sojourners muted its coverage of LGBT issues in comparison to the urgency or frequency with which it addressed issues of poverty, peace, racial and gender justice, or environmental stewardship.

The current controversy reflects this background. While the video ad itself seems only to advocate a welcoming position, Believe Out Loud promotes "LGBT equality in the church and in broader society" that includes both ordination and marriage equality for LBGT individuals. Sojourners likely believed that accepting this ad without any "dialogue" around these issues would imply endorsement--a concern that Wallis expressed in a 2008 interview with Christianity Today after feeling remorse for accepting ads from Human Rights Campaign, another organization promoting LGBT rights. Indeed, both the blog post from Sojourners' communication director and Wallis's own statement on "Sojourners' Mission and LGBTQ Issues" emphasize Sojourners' history of supporting LGBT civil rights and their commitment to promoting dialogue among Christians who disagree theologically on affirming same-sex practice. Wallis admitted that Sojourners' "core mission concerns" are focused on "matters of poverty, racial justice, stewardship of the creation, and the defense of life and peace" and not debates about justice for LGBT individuals.

Thus, the disillusionment of religious and political liberals among Sojourners' supporters is understandable. Many who define full equality for LGBT individuals as vital to social justice are angered. Few find credible Wallis's and Sojourners' desire to promote social justice but allow for different standards within the church. And many would even question Wallis's ostensible commitment to LGBT civil rights since he supports civil unions rather than same-sex marriage.

Ultimately, this controversy illustrates why the progressive evangelical movement has remained small over the past four decades. Leaders like Wallis, Ron Sider, and Tony Campolo have been too politically progressive for most evangelicals but too theologically conservative for most political liberals. Wallis may consider his political positions "prophetic," but he no doubt wishes they would remain more popular.

A Cheerful and Comfortable Study of Colonial Material Religion

Paul Harvey

Since yesterday I mentioned Lauren Winner's essay in the Sunday Times book review, which reflected on Rob Bell and American conceptions of hell (and heaven), seems like a good time to showcase this review of her new book A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith, recently published by Yale -- the review is from Choice.

Winner, Lauren F. A cheerful and comfortable faith: Anglican religious practice in the elite households of eighteenth-century Virginia. Yale, 2010. 272p bibl index afp ISBN 0-300-12469-4, $45.00; ISBN 9780300124699, $45.00. Reviewed in 2011may CHOICE.

This study by Winner (Duke Divinity School) of the domestic religious life of elite families in Colonial Virginia both builds upon and modifies earlier work, including Dell Upton's Holy Things and Profane (1986). As Upton did, Winner focuses primarily on material objects as evidence; however, she deals not with public, male-dominated church buildings but rather with articles found in and around the home: needlework, baptismal bowls, prayer books, articles related to food preparation and consumption, and garments and rings worn in times of mourning. Winner's argues that although their roles were circumscribed, Anglican women nevertheless carved out a sphere in which they subtly contested the authority over religious matters claimed by clergy and male relatives and that their religious life, though not as dramatic as that of their Puritan counterparts, was an authentic appropriation of Anglican tradition in a Colonial setting. Winner's work is thoroughly and imaginatively researched, informed but not overwhelmed by theory, adequately illustrated, and accessibly written. This book is an important contribution to Anglican, elite, Colonial, material, and gendered dimensions of American religious life. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty. -- P. W. Williams, Miami University

Nancy Hardesty (1941-2011) and Biblical Feminism

Paul Harvey

Julie Ingersoll has posted a very warm tribute to Nancy Hardesty (1941-2011), Founding Mother of Biblical Feminist Movement, at Religion Dispatches. Thank you, Julie; and thank you, Nancy, for a life of scholarship and activism. I did not know Nancy personally except for a few brief exchanges, but I'll always remember Nancy's wry look during an encounter I had at a conference years ago with Dorothy Patterson, the famously flamboyant Southern Baptist conservative and author of the statement about family roles and gracious submission in the Baptist Faith and Message Statement, who spent a few minutes at the Women and Twentieth-Century Protestantism conference in Chicago in 199? (can't remember the year now) berating my scholarly research and credentials to write about Southern Baptists (some of you regular blog readers were there, not to name any names Judith). Nancy got to spend a lot of time being berated by biblical anti-feminists, and she countered them both with her scholarship and with her everyday work. You may find a bibliography of her work here.

Please Come to LA, She Said Yes; Or, Looking for Love in Some of the Wrong Places

Paul Harvey

Via Ralph Luker, I forward a little fun and interesting reading for Sunday evening: Maggie Flynn, "An Agnostic Looking for Love in the Bible Belt," about one doubting skeptic's dating experiences in Nashville, and how after moving to LA "I feel like I've been saved, even if I haven't." I can't say it squares with my very long-ago dating experiences in Nashville, but then my general impoverishment and appalling disregard for personal appearance/hygiene probably explained a lot about my social life, or lack thereof, during the Reagan era.

An unbeliever's country song seems the right tune for this piece; where are the Dixie Chicks nowadays anyway? Their songs needed more cowbell, but otherwise seem apt here.

Pole Dancing for Jesus?

Art Remillard

"Pole dancing for Jesus." Seriously? OK, there's something wrong here. I mean, "Jesus Didn't Tap" is one thing. But this? It must be an April Fools joke. After all, it's posted on April 1. And Mr. "Wisenheimer" himself, Mark Oppenheimer, authored the story.

Alas, a quick Google search shows that, indeed, the former-stripper-turned-born-again-Christian Crystal Deans has in fact Christianized her pole dancing classes. And predictably enough, there are plenty of critics. "Pole dancing has transcended from strip clubs," blasts one blogger, who admits that it has become a more mainstream form of exercise, but objects to the lingering "sexual aspect."

Ah sex. Oppenheimer theorizes that this is the story's initial draw. "People are reliably called to attention by the promise of a little skin. And there is something extra naughty when the skin belongs to a Christian, presumed to be a good girl gone bad--the kind of girl who, to quote the old blues song, goes to church on Sunday, then cabaret all day Monday." Yet, in talking with Deans, Oppenheimer discovers someone who simply wants to redefine herself and others. "This has helped a lot of people," Deans explains. "It’s helped people with weight. It’s helped people spice up their marriages. It’s done a lot of good things."

As for the stigma of pole dancing? "I go to church every Sunday and I pray," says Deans . "I talk to God things like that I think there’s nothing wrong with what I do. I teach women to feel good about themselves, to feel empowered and we get in really good shape. God is the only person that judges so anybody who wants to judge me, feel free to but I'm good with God, so that’s what’s important to me and I really don’t care what people think."

So this curious case becomes an example of one person's effort to empower bodies and souls. No joke.

Gender Matters: My Lesson for Women's History Month

By Kelly Baker

Okay, so I am a little late to the party. It is already March 14th, and I am just getting around to my own reflections on National Women's History Month (NWHM). I even missed International Women's Day, but I think President Obama had it covered. (Historiann, the better blogger, already commented on the sausage fest that is the National Endowment Humanities Medal winners.) Timely, I am not.

The theme for NWHM this year is "Our History is Our Strength." As a historian and as a woman (I wonder why I feel the need to say both?), this theme resonates. History, we know, functions as a legitimator to claims about men and women in our public culture as well as scholarly cultures See Bonnie Smith’s The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice (1998) for a rousing discussion of how history as praxis is gendered. Moreover, the reclamation of women in history, the analysis of the fluidity of gender in different historical spaces and places, and the ability to analyze how gender functions as code for power relations are all crucial to understanding not only the place of women in American culture but also the constructions of womanhood/manhood and the consequences of these constructions. History becomes a possible tool of empowerment and agency because of its weight, its veracity, and its power to present our pasts to us. Women’s history month as a concept bothers me, though. Much like the critiques of Black History Month as separate space/history, I fear the limiting scope of one month as women’s month. The tagline in my head proclaims, “Women’s History, just a month every year!” My criticism is not original or new, but the concept of one month as the stand-in for the whole of women’s history is problematic. And it encourages the popular belief about history as “his-story,” a tired joke that still matters. One month a year cannot possibly d0 justice to the lives of American women and women globally, but I will take one month if the other possibility is no inscription of women’s history on our calendar year. I want celebrations of women’s history as history, unavoidable and required, rather temporary, demarcated and different. Women’s history is American history, and it is clearly American religious history.

Recently, I find myself describing my work as not just American religious history but also gender history. The mantle of gender historian is not new for me, but there is a new stridency. Yet, I find myself reading recent historical works and asking, "Where's gender? Where are women in religious institutions, movements and practice? Why don’t we discuss masculinity more?" When I feel really sassy, I ponder, "How can one do work in the twenty-first century without at least gesturing to gender?" I am not asking for much, an awareness of the social constellation attached to sexed bodies would be a good start. Perhaps, a glance at Judith Butler's Gender Trouble or Bodies That Matter, an occasional use of Michel Foucault on power, or hell, a nice lengthy description of how men and women in a variety of religious movements practice, believe, embody or “live” religion in relation to their gender. Gesturing to gender is better than ignoring the centrality of social and religious value attached to sexed bodies. Religious folk are not just what they believe or do. They have bodies. Bodies matter. Sexed bodies matter.

My teaching has forced this issue, like so many others. There is new pressing urgency to the import, and likely centrality, of gender to religious studies. Since I am teaching a gender and religion course, I feel like my whole semester is a women's history celebration while simultaneously a desperate mission to emphasize the centrality of women's history and gender history to religious history. Much like Catherine Brekus in her introduction to The Religious History of American Women, I wonder why American religious history still seems impenetrable to women's history, gender theory, and my current pet peeve, discussions of masculinity and men constructed as men. Gender matters, but convincing one's peers can be a zero-sum game. (To see my take on the problem of women and leadership, click here.) Why, I wonder, is it possible to ignore Ann Braude's salient and punchy statement, "Women's history is American religious history"? She's right. Almost fifteen years after her essay appeared in Retelling U.S. Religious History (1997), what gives? Braude eloquently showcases the sheer presence of women in American religious spaces. Women were the “people in the pews” for the majority of American history. By dismantling the popular thesis of feminization, Braude showcases that women did not “feminize” churches because their presence was the constant, not the presence of men. Braude’s insight should be foundational to explorations of American religious life alongside critical theories of race, class, and market. Perhaps, my stridency rears its ugly head here or not. What I want, if I could convince the historiographies of American religious history to bend to my will, is honest engagement of the impact of gender on the religiosity of American men and women as well as increasing attention to fluidity of gender identity in the historical past and the contemporary period.

Moreover, I want to pass out Joan Scott's famous essay, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" (1986) to anyone who doesn't attempt to describe and analyze (or please theorize) gender. Scott's masterful article articulates how gender had evolved as an analytical tool from studies of women to an idea that the study of women was the study of men to how gender was viewed as a cultural construction. For Scott, descriptive analysis was not sufficient to affect historical paradigms. Descriptive analysis cannot cut it, so Scott critiqued previous models that centered on origins of patriarchy, which relied on physical differences between men and women and perpetuated essentialism, Marxian analyses, which explained gender as only the by-product of changing economic structures, and the prevalence of psychoanalysis, which was influenced by French post-structuralists and object relations theory. Scott called for a historicization and deconstruction of the binary opposition of gender rather than relying upon an assumption that exists. Scott proposed a new definition of gender, which was an element of social relationships based on perceived sex differences as well as a “primary” way of articulating power relationships. Thus, Scott threw down the gauntlet rather than assume gender in our analyses, we must question the opposition between male and female and to see what is at stake when gender is used to legitimate a position. What Scott is proposing is to see how gender is constructed and how it is deployed. She urges historians to examine what happens when someone invokes gendered language. What's at stake? What’s gained by invoking gender? The better question might be: What is at stake in avoidance?

Thus, to celebrate women’s history, I will be posting blurbs about my favorite women’s and gender historians in American religious history for the rest of March at my website. Please feel free to send your suggestions to me.

[Cross posted at kellyjbaker.com]

Random Notes from the Religion Merry-Go-Round

Paul Harvey

The merry-go-round, or the tilt-a-whirl, of American religion keeps going. Just a little taste of it, from today's Times:

An entrepreneur follows in the model of JDate, the Jewish speed dating service, with his version of Muslim Speed-Dating:

At intermission, about half of the participants went to a back room to offer their prayers. A 29-year-old woman named Maria, who works as an art director for a major television channel, went to her parents to complain that some of her “dates” did not know what an art director was. “Some of the men are very removed from this culture, even though they live here,” she said. “I need a drink,” said one exhausted bachelor. He did not mean Kool-Aid.

Every college town (in this one it's Gainesville) is heaven for believers in The Gospel of Anarchy:

Taylor’s noble goal in “The Gospel of Anarchy” is to remind those of us long past our own difficult youths of the grace and beauty to be found even in a “bunch of drunkpunks in the armpit of Florida.

In House of Prayer No. 2, the southern writer Mark Richard goes all Apostle on us:

But maybe darkness is what Richard is after, the necessary prologue to the spiritual awakening that occupies the end of his book. Again, he is laconic about the epiphany; we learn simply that while he is walking alone in the Tennessee woods, he gets “the call to ministry.” After a few thwarted attempts to enroll in a seminary, he stumbles on an unexpected outlet for “this thing that has been placed on” his

heart: his Cajun, lapsed-Catholic mother has joined a black Pentecostal church in his hometown, and they need a new building. Richard finds himself deeply involved in making this a reality, holding regular consultations with the pastor, buying bricks and shingles and tools, ordering food for the convicts doing the construction. His story of how the House of Prayer No. 2 gets built — despite financial obstacles and legal setbacks, and with the help of multiple small miracles along the way — becomes his means of testifying, and it’s a powerful one. When the church is close to completion and the pastor’s elderly mother “lays her hand on your shoulder, and you, at last, are slain in the spirit,” I felt a shiver pass through my body, and suddenly the memoir’s reticence, its desultory movement, its use of second person, revealed their purpose to me. To understand the mystery of faith, you cannot be told it; you must experience it yourself.

And finally, there's a girl in New York City who calls herself a human trampoline, and of course there's a church specializing in the BOD4GOD:

New York may lag behind the rest of the country in the language of evangelical self-help, but when it comes to fitness obsession, surely few cities can touch us. Work out more rigorously, work out more gently; be proud of your body, be ashamed of your body. Whatever the message, New Yorkers have peddled it, consumed it, metabolized it and excreted it a thousand times over.

It’s surprising, then, that so few have thought to merge the discourse of God and the discourse of bod. Linking the two has a number of strategic advantages over the standard “look better in a bikini” sales pitch — most notably the chance for followers to outsource their motivation to a higher power.

It’s also an opportunity for the church to prove its value in something concrete — ounces and pounds — rather than the more intangible calculus of spiritual progress.

Ya'll be careful out there.

A Wanton Woman

Paul Harvey

We've blogged here before about Leigh Schmidt's new biography of Ida Craddock; yesterday's All Things Considered on NPR features the book, and an interview with Schmidt -- and there's a review of it featured here. Here's a little excerpt from the written material accompanying the story:

Schmidt deals sentences just as lapidary as his subtitle (The Unpredictable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman) leads us to expect. "Since the end of the eighteenth century," he writes, "a good number of freethinkers had seen such fertility symbolism as a rich lode to mine for anticlerical nuggets, but no woman had ever joined this particular fraternity of gentlemanly dilettantes and antiquarians." And later: "The pile of unpublished manuscripts that [Craddock] produced (on everything from lunar mythology to heavenly bridegrooms to animal rites) left little doubt about the extent of her egghead dedication."

You can read an excerpt from the book here, and our previous blogging on the book here. Also, Religion Dispatches has an interview with Schmidt here, in which the author talks about his scholarly "superegoes" that hovered over him as he was writing about this unconventional and somewhat scandalous topic.

Heaven's Bride and the Sexologist's Secret

Paul Harvey

Randall posted earlier about Leigh Schmidt's new book Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr and Madwoman. The Wall Street Journal's Saturday book review section features of nice review of the book, which concludes:

Ida Craddock was a dreamy, driven autodidact who was in her own strange way more American than the persecuting agent of the state, Anthony Comstock. Heavenly bride, free-speech martyr, full-blown American eccentric, Craddock is reanimated by Mr. Schmidt's biography.

Arthur Goldwag has an even more interesting reflection on the book over at Killing the Buddha, where he concludes:

Heaven’s Bride is a brilliant work of intellectual reclamation. Schmidt calls Craddock “an escape artist of the imagination,” who ”tried to lift herself free on the paired wings of Eros and divine love.” If her story skews perilously close to the ridiculous at times, he never for a moment allows us to forget that it is fundamentally a tale of thwarted genius, of boundless courage, and, ultimately, of visionary splendor.

Evangelical Chaplains and Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Randall Stephens

I heard an interesting story on NPR this morning: "Chaplains Worry About Careers If 'Don't Ask' Is Lifted" by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. It seems that the end of the Don't Ask, Don't tell policy has been making some evangelical chaplains nervous. But should it? The military's change in policy centers on a civil rights matter. How will that alter the careers of conservative chaplains?

While most military personnel see no problem serving with openly gay comrades, some military chaplains are bristling. Many of the 3,000 chaplains are evangelical and believe repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy may affect how they do their jobs.

Ronald Crews, a retired Army colonel and chaplain, works with active chaplains from his evangelical denomination. A few months ago, he began asking military chaplains what they thought about repealing don't ask, don't tell. One response in particular bothered him. The chaplain had just returned from a briefing by a general about the impact of changing the policy and asked if the military would protect him if he asserted that homosexuality is a sin.>>>

Anyone out there know how Truman's 1948 decision to desegregate the military was received by chaplains?

The Religious Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage: New Book from Columbia

Paul Harvey

I have yet to take a look at this new volume, but it will surely be of interest to many of you, so I"m pasting in below information from this new book's website:

Between a Man and a Woman?
Why Conservatives Oppose Same-Sex Marriage

Ludiger H. Viefhues-Bailey

Read the Table of Contents.

Ludger Viefhues-Bailey alights on a profound theological conundrum: in today's conservative Christian movement, both sexes are called upon to be at once assertive and submissive, masculine and feminine, not only within the home but also within the church, society, and the state. Therefore the arguments of conservative Christians against same-sex marriage involve more than literal readings of the Bible or nostalgia for simple gender roles.

Focusing primarily on texts produced by Focus on the Family, a leading media and ministry organization informing conservative Christian culture, Viefhues-Bailey identifies two distinct ideas of male homosexuality: gender-disturbed and passive; and oversexed, strongly masculine, and aggressive. These homosexualities enable a complex ideal of Christian masculinity in which men are encouraged to be assertive toward the world while also being submissive toward God and family. This web of sexual contradiction influences the flow of power between the sexes and within the state. It joins notions of sexual equality to claims of "natural" difference, establishing a fraught basis for respectable romantic marriage. Heterosexual union is then treated as emblematic of, if not essential to, the success of American political life-yet far from creating gender stability, these tensions produce an endless striving for balance. Viefhues-Bailey's final, brilliant move is to connect the desire for stability to the conservative Christian movement's strategies of political power.

"To understand Christian rhetoric around sexuality, you have to listen through the clanging speeches without falling under their compulsions to repeat. Ludger Viefhues-Bailey can do this and then some." - Mark D. Jordan, Harvard Divinity School

Leigh Eric Schmidt on Ida C. Craddock and Late-Victorian America

Randall Stephens

On October 18, 1902, the New York Times ran this curious obituary. Readers must have done a morning coffee spit-take:

"Chose Death Before Prison. Ida C. Craddock 'High Priestess,' Was to Have Been Sentenced for Circulating Improper Books"

Ida C. Craddock, 'High Priestess of the

Church of Yoga' in Chicago, and an exponent also of Spiritualism, Theosophy, and other creeds, committed suicide in her room, on the top floor of 134 West Twenty-third Street, yesterday, by inhaling illuminating gas and slashing her wrist. It was the day upon which she was to be sentenced again, as she had been several times before, for circulating books and pamphlets explaining her peculiar beliefs, built up from a conglomeration of Oriental religions. . . . Miss or Mrs. Craddock was forty-five years old. She was rather handsome, and was usually well gowned. She was born in Philadelphia, her parents being Quakers.

Leigh Eric Schmidt takes up Craddock's strange, fascinating story in his forthcoming Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman (Basic Books). Much of it is startling, to say the least. In an era of buttoned down formality and Protestant prudery Craddock broke more rules than one could shake a ruler at. She dabbled in all manner of fringe-ish religion. The one-time Methodist moved with some ease into Quaker circles, Spiritualism, Free Thought, Eastern Mysticism, amateur biblical studies, Sexology . . . .

For some time she lectured as a self-proclaimed expert on phallic cults. Not a typical Chautauqua circuit subject.

Schmidt, with narrative skill and analytical insight, draws on Craddock's life to tell a broader tale of American religion in this age as well. (It's made me wonder about what we can learn about the whole from unusual subjects.) Says Schmidt: "The retrieval of Craddock's life from the vaults of vice suppression offers an entryway into major social and political issues of her day--and, often enough, of our own as well" (xi). She tested the country's Christian identity and it's moral certainty. In small ways, her exotic religious and secular outlook foreshadowed later developments: religious seeking, experimentation, new age dabbling, secular crusading. ". . . Craddoock floats only occasionally into view as a feminist," precursor, Schmidt observes, "a tragic free-speech martyr, a steamy occultist, or a sexologist ahead of her time. The diaphanous quality of those memories should not dissolve the grainy roughness of her life, the audacity and disrepute of it" (273-74).

In the interviews embedded here, I ask Schmidt about Craddock's career and her higgledy-piggledy path from Methodist to sexologist. Schmidt reflects on the larger meaning of religious dissent in these years and discusses the shape of American religion in the late-Victorian age. In part two of the interview he also comments on a couple of his current projects.