i left my heart in pittsburgh

When we discovered a third floor walk-up in a brick Bloomfield row house, we knew our little family of two had come home to the East End at last. Boasting a sunny kitchen outfitted in fifties-era fixtures and compact appliances, Hobbit ceilings, and actual sleeping quarters, the apartment felt palatial at $325 a month. So what if it was accessible only by fire escape and lacked a bedroom door? The Shire was ours, and God bless the youth group parents who dropped off teenagers in the back alley for dinners and movie nights.

You Are Here is a multi-contributor storytelling site organized around ideas of place. I've got a guest piece up there today, and hope you'll come by and have a look.

what kind of leadership blocks dissent & privileges predators, christianity today?

Last night, after a flurry of attention in social media, there were dozens of dissenting comments on the youth pastor abuser narrative at Leadership Journal. The comment count was around eighty, but today there are just eighteen.

My comment was the first on the piece, and it's gone now, too, so I decided to post it here:

this is disgusting. you were not involved in an "extramarital relationship." "extramarital relationships" don't land people in prison. you are a child predator, an abuser, and possibly a rapist. you say that "we gave the devil a foothold", but that was all you, bro. you abused your power and a young person whose care you were charged with. no minor can consent to sex with a adult. have you learned nothing in prison? five pages of this junk? really, CT?

Oddly, the following response comment to me still stands on the piece, and without my own comment, it shapes another sort of imaginary narrative about the behavior of people who are sickened by a leadership publication allowing a predator to cast his teenage victim as an adulteress:

Hey Pastor Tim and Suzannah...you're both SO full of grace...unbelievable...it's not a wonder people don't want to stop sin habits in life (no matter WHAT they are) when the response is so grace-filled as the ones above...you both are missing the point - he is admitting that he will be labeled (and rightfully so) a sex offender for the rest of his life - but what he IS doing with his story is warning ANY of us about ANY sin pattern that will destroy ANY one who ignores God's plans and ways. instead of calling him names (which may be true or not) we should be confessing, forsaking, and finding mercy for the sin that can so easily entangle ANY ONE of us...we should be saying 'Thank you for sharing your story' and then 'Father, keep working on him (and me) to be more like Your Son.' This isn't five pages of junk...this is the story of the beginning of a restored heart - the kind of story that Jesus began regularly with "Go, and sin no more." Thanks, Name Withheld and CT

I didn't engage in any "name-calling." Adults who prey on minors are very much abusers and predators. If he was convicted of statutory rape--and the piece asserts plainly (and problematically) that he had a "physical relationship" with a minor--he is a rapist. Obscuring those truths--and calling it Christian leadership--is deeply troubling and dangerous.

We're gonna keep dragging this into the light. Downgrading rape to "a sin that can so easily entangle ANY ONE of us" is not grace; it's a manipulative sleight of hand favoring abusers and re-victimizing the people whose trust, bodies, and childhood they violated. Deleting comments and blocking critics on twitter (as editor Drew Dyck has done) will not make this important conversation go away.

People don't abuse kids--or fail to "stop sin habits"--because "ungracious" Christians won't let them paint young victims with their shame. I rebuke any abuse-enabling, oppressive grace-talk that lays the fault for abuse on anyone but abusers and the cultures and systems favoring them. 

Grace and good leadership protect the vulnerable, not power and predation. Take down the post, Leadership Journal and Christianity Today.

PREVIOUSLY: because purity culture harbors rape & abusers
UPDATE: They Took Down the Post

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because purity culture harbors rape & abusers

Content note: child sexual abuse, victim blaming, Christians behaving abominably

Last week I got the chance to talk to our summer staff about sexuality, challenging them to rethink some of the ways we traditionally frame the discussion for young people. We talked about how "sexual purity" marries the language of dirt and shame to sex and bodies in ways that misrepresent God and cause a great deal of harm, and we talked a lot about consent, which most purity teachings erase from the equation altogether.

According to the purity script, any sex and even attraction apart from heterosexual marriage falls under the category of sexual sin: consensual pre-marital or extra-marital sex are indistinguishable morally from sexual abuse and rape, and victims are rendered "impure" and at fault alongside their abusers.

In the purity culture framework, fooling around with one's girlfriend is the same as a youth pastor sexually abusing a minor: just erase consent, harm, and exploitative power differentials, and file together under sexual sin and selfishness.

I wish I were exaggerating, but this specific example played out at Christianity Today's Leadership Journal this week, when they offered up their platform to a convicted child predator, giving him five pages to convince readers that what he was involved in, what got him sent to jail, was an "extra-marital relationship." Nevermind that this "relationship" was with a teenager that he was in a position of spiritual authority over, whom he groomed for sex.

In this abuser narrative, the victim and crime are wholly erased. Instead, the youth pastor and his teenage "friend" are presented as being mutually seduced by the "allure of sin." They both are to blame for "giving the devil a foothold" and "quenching the Holy Spirit", and this is held up as worthy lesson for Christian leaders to learn from:

The "friendship" continued to develop. Talking and texting turned flirtatious. Flirting led to a physical relationship. It was all very slow and gradual, but it was constantly escalating. We were both riddled with guilt and tried to end things, but the allure of sin was strong. We had given the devil far more than a foothold and had quenched the Holy Spirit's prodding so many times, there was little-to-no willpower left.
We tried to end our involvement with each other many times, but it never lasted. How many smokers have quit smoking only to cave in at the next opportunity for a cigarette? We quit so many times, but the temptation of "one more time" proved too strong.
Like David, my selfishness led to infidelity.

Leadership Journal allows a convicted child abuser a platform to manipulatively frame this as a story of personal selfishness and infidelity without one word about molestation, statutory rape, sexual grooming, or the abuse of power and children entrusted to the care of adults at a church. [A "clarifying" author's footnote hardly cancels out five still-standing pages suggesting and flat-out asserting the polar opposite.] Also alarmingly, the article is tagged for these "related topics": accountability, adultery, character, failure, mistakes, self-examination, sex, and temptation.

This is not leadership. This is rape culture, abuse apology, and re-victimization under the guise of education and grace. It's not even a bad redemption narrative, as the youth pastor, publication, and many of its commenters fail to demonstrate a most basic understanding of the fact that what transpired was the rape of a minor, not an adulterous affair. Repentance requires actually accounting for--not glossing over--the actual harm one commits.

An affair is a mistake, but sexual abuse and rape are crimes, and good leadership recognizes the difference, particularly for survivors. Good leadership understands that there is no preventing sexual abuse without also dismantling the systems obscuring and favoring coercive abuse of authority. Good leadership doesn't privilege the stories and presence of abusers over the humanity, recovery, and safety of children and victims and then have the audacity to call that "grace."

Abusers aren't "monsters," and they aren't "just like us," either. The former leads to disbelieving victims and prevents us from seeing abusive dynamics close to home. The latter actively obscures exploitative power differentials, encouraging sympathy for abusers at the expense of those they continue to harm.

If we care about ending abuse, we must expose the systems that prop it up everywhere. Abuse isn't just an isolated or interpersonal problem: it is supported by theologies, policies, editorial guidelines, language, assumptions, and even biblical interpretations.

In the piece, the youth pastor likens his own moral failings to King David's adultery with Bathsheba. He uses the Bible to frame his own sin as adultery instead of abuse, but the stories are similar in more ways than he lets on. A "yes" is only a "yes" if a "no" or a "yes" is possible. A minor cannot consent to "sex" with her youth pastor, and in David's time, what woman had the right to say "no" to a king (or at all, for that matter)?

It matters tremendously how we tell and interpret stories. Abusers are masterful at sweet talk and spinning webs. They manipulate, coerce, shift blame, lie, erase their victims, and then collect congratulations for being so brave while those who object are chastised with myriad bible verses for their lack of grace and "unresolved victim issues".

That's not grace. Abusers aren't entitled to platforms, mics, or teaching positions, and actual grace exists alongside justice, accountability, and consequence. Grace protects the vulnerable. Using grace to favor the powerful over the hurting isn't grace at all: it's oppression-as-usual and the way of empire rather than the upside-down Kingdom of God.

Take down the post, Leadership Journal and Christianity Today. Host a conversation--that does not center abusers--about the need for working Child Protection Policies in every Christian church and organization. Talk about consent, and then talk about it again. Don't let anyone on your watch--particularly convicted abusers!--frame rape as a personal moral failing or sexual sin, neglecting the ongoing impact sexualized violence has on survivors and communities.

Care about survivors, never assuming that your audience of leaders doesn't also include survivors of abuse. Moderate your comment sections (and not like THIS). Give a platform to those in recovery. Don't imagine that you can fight sexual abuse without actually calling it abuse or interrogating the assumptions and exploitative power dynamics that enable it to thrive.

And please don't publish another judgey article about why entitled Millenials are leaving the church until you can show your work on what you and other Christian organizations are doing to combat abuses of power and people in the the name of Christ.

We've got to dismantle the frameworks that enable, hide, and baptize harm in our midst.

NEXT: What Kind of Leadership Blocks Dissent & Privileges Predators, Christianity Today?

FINALLY: They Took Down the Post

Related:
On How the Church Discusses Abuse: Denying the Endorsement (Dianna Anderson)
Leadership Journal, Christianity Today, and #TakeDownThatPost (Samantha Field)
Because It's Time to Take Down That Post (Tamara Rice)
Why Did a Journal for Christian Pastors Give a Platform to a Sexual Predator? (Hannah Ettinger & Becca Rose)
It’s not an “extramarital relationship.” It’s rape. (Elizabeth Esther)

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my confidence since my youth

When we rounded up camp’s driveway that first summer when I was ten, my stomach fluttered, and I thought my heart would burst. Two whole weeks! I never felt more grown than there with my own suitcase, shower caddy, and roll of 25 cent stamps to relay my imminent adventures across state.

The years blend together, a mosaic of the some of the best memories of my childhood. Singing “Blessed Be” around a campfire and making copper enamel pendants in the craft hall, not unlike my mom and aunt had in generations past. High and low ropes courses, rowdy games, silly skits, great friends–camp was the highlight of every summer.

The counselors were impossibly cool with their whistles and oversized clothes (it was the 90s), but more than that, they were kind. They wanted to spend time with us, playing cards at the pool or braiding hair on the deck. They gave up a good bit of freedom and certainly better pay to sleep in dank cabins and tell unwashed kids about Jesus, sunrise ’til taps everyday.

My parents and others told me about Jesus, too, of course, but they were old, and there’s no denying it was more appealing coming from Lori with the mall bangs or the really cute guy who played guitar at Club. And somehow, the way they told it, this Jesus thing mattered, not just at church but everywhere: on the playing field, in the cave, and back at home, too.

It was camp where I learned about the Kingdom of God and a Jesus who bowed low to serve. In quiet circles on the hillside and in rows dancing at the dining hall, I learned more of humility, joy, and a God who cares and can be trusted. A God who loves, forgives, and desires good for us.

Camp shaped me. It softened some of my edges and made me more confident. It strengthened my roots, inviting me deeper into faith, community, and my own gifts.

Camp wasn’t like school, with its caste systems. It was a community where it was okay to try new things, mess up, and not be the best. It was okay to ask questions, let down my guard, and fully be myself. It was a place where Love trumped competition, condemnation, or cool.

It was pretty much exactly like how Church is meant to be.

***

This summer camp celebrates one hundred years of ministry under the towering pines. It’ll be our family’s tenth summer serving year-round and our daughter’s first as a registered, bona fide overnight camper. She’s the fourth generation in my family to worship on these hills, and it’s a legacy for which I am indelibly grateful.

As Christians, we’ve lived so many stories of heartbreak and failure. There’s betrayal and hypocrisy in our midst and our hearts, and the Church isn’t always a safe harbor or shelter from the storm.

But every now and again She truly is: bearing good fruit, excelling in the ministry of reconciliation, known by Her love, resembling our good and gracious God.

Blessed be.

because white supremacy & misogyny are violence

Writing off what happened in Isla Vista as the work of a madman so unlike ourselves serves only to obscure the misogyny and white supremacy that undergirded Rodger's crimes, conveniently letting us off the hook for the ways those violences are rooted, too, in our own hearts and communities, on our watch. 

Unless we see and name the misogyny and white supremacy in our midst, we baptize a status quo that is inherently violent, hierarchical, and unjust.

Hold it up to the light. Make it visible. Make it change.

I've got a profile up at Micah Murray's site today on Elliot Rodger's racism, hatred of women, and related "aggrieved entitlement" as indicators of violence. Let's not lose this moment further (and needlessly) stigmatizing mental illness. Let's interrogate instead our cultures of violence and light a better way.

on fearless friendship & mentoring well

All too often, friendship is a consolation prize, a means to an end, or a perceived way station on the way to the bedroom or altar. We hear that men and women can't be friends; women inevitably compete and back-stab each other; and men don't even need friends, since emotional intimacy is for girls, useful to men only as currency to buy sex. 

We're largely missing a good, practical theology of friendship as a Church. We need to live a better story as the Body of Christ.

I'm over at Dan Brennan's site today writing about mentoring and friendship between men and women, with a challenge to ministry leaders. Come say hi.

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rockets and waterfalls

It was the last song of the night, and the house was on its feet, abuzz. We flung long tresses wildly, and bespectacled hipsters imperceptibly bobbed their heads. The band requested attendees dress in costume or finery, and the earnest crowd complied. Skeletons whirled like dervishes beside masked, feathered birds and adults clad in footie pajamas. Daniel Tiger drank pale ale, and girls in bright sequins nestled under the arms of lanky boys in pinstripes, rapt and content.

The entire affair could have been a case study in whiteness or youth culture, but something transcendent was palpable, too: that strange, larger-than-life connection when the music soars and thousands of perfect strangers share one enchanted moment.

I've felt it at concerts and experienced it in worship, and sometimes I've sworn the two were one and the same: the keen awareness of being united and alive and the near-audible whisper that something exists beyond all we see, something like home.

Years ago, in his book Sex God, Rob Bell argued that such moments were sexual in their essence because sexuality is broadly about connection, not just climax. Many thought he was reaching, but his thesis always struck a chord with me. I do believe that our sexuality encompasses more than desire (or desirability) and what we do with our genitals (although it's those, too, of course).

Whenever a teen starlet comes of age, it's almost inevitable that she'll announce her entree into adulthood with a racy photo shoot, music video, or movie role. While embracing sexual agency is a hallmark of adulthood, I do wonder how performing that particular cultural cliché demonstrates sexual autonomy as a rule. Teen queens are sexual people, of course, no matter how provocative or chaste their stage persona is.

We're sexual whether or not we're partnered or perceived as sexy by the crowd. Sexual agency may be expressed in the act of sex or abstention from it, in projected sex appeal, a passionate kiss, or the practice of personal boundaries.

What might it look like to express our sexuality in ways that honor God, self, and neighbor? Consent and respect play critical roles (with one's partner and in community), but a believer's sexual ethic can't start and end there. What honors God must factor centrally, too, even if Christians disagree on all that entails.

It's no secret that as Christians, we often lack a compelling and holistic vision for healthy sexuality and do perhaps the worst disservice to those who are single and/or celibate. "Purity culture" teachings inherently link sexuality with dirt and defilement, requiring something akin to asexuality from unmarried adherents (and inviting residual shame into a significant number of Christian marriages). While the absence of sexual desire is completely normal for those who identify as asexual (and others), expecting single Christians who do not ID that way to repress their sexuality is another thing entirely, and it’s as unrealistic as it is harmful and dishonoring. Our bodies and sexuality are at the core of our humanity regardless of marital status, drive, or experience.

So what then? How can we express desire in ways that honor the image of God in one another? What might it look to fully inhabit our bodies in faithfulness and without shame, whether we’re partnered or single? Is Bell right that sexuality is linked to points of connection in the bedroom and beyond?

For Christians, can sexuality be understood as the pursuit and expression of wholeness, encompassing acts of physical love as well as other manners of platonic union or spiritual transcendence? Is it possible to express our sexuality whenever we serve or create? When we love our friends and community well? Could our sexuality be tied to other ways we inhabit our bodies, perform masculinity or femininity, or glimpse the sublime in nature, worship, or art?

If we accept Jesus' incarnate humanity, then he was a sexual person, too. Could Jesus have expressed his sexuality when he fed the five thousand, upending expectations and satisfying needs? When he healed broken hearts and bodies? When he esteemed the woman who anointed his feet with perfume and tears, drying them with her hair?

What does it mean to be sexual when we aren't having sex? Ecstatic moments when breath catches or feet tread holy ground, are these touchpoints to shalom and sexuality, both? Am I a weirdo for thinking this might be true (even if spiritually more than literally)?

Maybe I am. But I can't help being drawn to the idea that sexuality is something greater, simpler, and more inclusive than either the Church or Hollywood currently projects.

It's reaching for each other in the dark and dancing with friends, at home in our skin. It's a longing, an embrace, and a killer pair of heels, and it's liturgy and Eucharist on a Sunday morning. It's an arena rock show and a climbing trip in the mountains, with a verdant view four states wide. It's that flicker of recognition or belonging,the feeling of being seen and known. It's two hands clasped in passion or support or prayer, not unlike the rest of this everyday, ordinary, sleeping, eating, going-to-work, walking-around life that we live together and offer unto God.

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wherever i'm with you

I practically lived at the neighbors’ blue house growing up. I’d get there early enough on Saturdays to watch PeeWee’s Playhouse (unless, of course, I’d woken up there) and can’t begin to count the hours we spent in costume, lost to our imaginings. She was an only child and their home a charming oasis where classical music soared at the piano, and her mom served hot, homemade Chex mix, fantastical movies, and creativity in every hue. We accompanied her do-it-yourself parents on dozens of trips to Hechinger Hardware, played cards with her Nana, and celebrated Thanksgivings, because that’s what you do when you’re family, even if not by blood.

In high school I joined a Baptist youth group. My Presbyterian self rolled a bit differently, but I barely realized it till years later (when I told my youth pastor, “I followed in your footsteps!” and his eyes widened, confused). Back then we all just loved Jesus and U2 and each other. They were my skiing, singing, shelter from the adolescent storms.

In college, I joined sundry Christian groups full of earnest-hearted girls and irresistible boys with guitars, but when I found My People, they didn’t believe or look all that much like me. They were smaller and darker and laughed even louder, and it never seemed to matter that we weren’t The Same when the dance floor heated up or someone needed a listening ear.

Other times in my life I’ve experienced—or at least suspected—that I’m Too Religious to be accepted by those who aren’t, but finding a home among Christians is tricky too, if you’re deemed Too Free-Spirited or Progressive (or if you’ve been hurt too much or ask too many questions). Alternately, I’ve found myself feeling Too Serious, Too Silly, Too Smart, Too Inexperienced, and altogether Too Much. If only I could somehow make myself less—or more—surely I’d find my place.

But looking back, I have found my heart’s home at way stations along the way, just rarely, if ever, among people exactly like me. When my husband and I left the city for the life bucolic, it took me long and wandering years to find my footing, but eventually we did: at the evangelical camp where we live and work; at our Episcopal country church, among the elderly and empty-nesters; and with friends our age with whom we share secrets and meals and vacations down the shore but not our faith.

I’m increasingly convinced that belonging is more about nurturing creative space together than finding a “tribe” of people Just Like Us. Belonging is cultivated in the fertile soil of hospitality, kindness, and grace, not doctrinal, political, or cultural conformity.

(Anyone who tells you differently is probably selling something, and it’s not the gospel, which is surely not for sale.)

The honest-to-God, Truth-in-Love Good News is that our differences are gifts not liabilities. We need and complement each other precisely because our strengths, perspectives, and experiences are unique. We’re not meant to squeeze diverse passions, personalities, or people into tiny molds.

Folks are disenchanted with Evangelicalism. I get it. Sometimes you gotta get out, start over, and not look back. There’s just one holy catholic and apostolic church, and like the phoenix She’ll outlast every smoldering ruin.

But if there are no standard molds, there are few one-sized-fits-all answers, either. Sometimes we’re just running away, and we can’t outrun our ghosts. Loneliness catches up, and depression descends anew the moment we stop to catch our breath.

At some point, rootedness and growth require staying put, mucking shit, faithful watering, and more patience than we think we can muster.

There is always a death. “Pain is our mother; she makes us recognize each other.”

But we are an Easter people. Joy comes in the mourning. Seasons and families and hearts change. The Spirit whispers, and new life stirs.

Shadows lift at Sunday’s dawn, and the strangers and aliens are found at home at last.

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in defense of evangelicalism

Labels are a strange beast. As a word-lover, I appreciate their precision, but plenty of people eschew them altogether, perhaps not wanting to be categorized, pinned down, or boxed in.

There is power in naming, which I suspect relates on both counts. Label lovers use them to demonstrate certain understandings of the world or to proclaim integral components of personal identity. Label haters, on the other hand, refuse to allow themselves to be controlled by something so limiting and inadequate.

"Evangelical" is something of a contentious badge these days. The media made it synonymous with the Religious Right of the 1980s onward, and plenty of Christian culture warriors were (and remain) happy to play along, but Evangelicalism's hallmarks are not conservative politics but belief in the authority of Scripture, the Lordship of Christ, his saving work on the cross, and a commitment to conversion and evangelism.

I grew up evangelical, asking Jesus into my heart when I was five. I am well-acquainted with flannel board Bible lessons and Psalty praise tapes. Every summer at camp, I re-dedicated my life to Jesus with my back against pine and tears in my eyes. I signed a True Love Waits pledge and fasted for the 30-Hour Famine with my Baptist youth group. I kept quiet times, prayer journals, and well-marked Bibles. I skanked to the beat with the Supertones and camped the Creation Music Festival. I dragged my longsuffering Jewish friend to a volleyball tournament that included a gospel presentation. To this day, I can't hear "Total Eclipse of the Heart" without flashbacks of mimes falling prey to addiction and gossip. I know my way around Young Life, InterVarsity, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and non-denominational worship. I crushed on Mac Powell of Third Day and sat through dozens of iterations of a that "I Am a Thief" skit where Jesus is crucified, and you're supposed to feel sad, but it's also confusing because camp's cutest counselor is playing Jesus, and he's not wearing a shirt.

I also technically grew up in the Mainline, but my twenty-odd years in the Presbyterian PC(USA) church were thoroughly evangelical. (I didn't actually meet a bona fide Mainline liberal until I got involved in anti-poverty and peace organizing as an adult.) I didn't feel stifled there as a woman. My gifts for ministry were nurtured and largely affirmed, and I worked as a youth minister my first job out of college.

I still believe in the authority of Scripture and the Lordship of Jesus, but I believe that Jesus is the Word of God to a greater degree than the Bible is, and I have a few more questions than I used to. I seek to understand the Bible in community through the witness of Jesus, historical context, and the arc of the biblical narrative as a whole. My esteem for Scripture is just as strong, but when Truth is understood as a Person, the Bible becomes something more than a textbook. There's more room for mystery, tension, and beauty.

I still believe in Christ's saving work on the cross, but I believe his birth, ministry, and resurrection were significant, too. Jesus wasn't "born to die"--he lived to reveal God's shalom and set right the ill sin wrought. Put to death by religious and political authorities, Christ's resurrection disarmed their violent power, revealing a better kind that makes all things new in humility and love, without coercion.

I still believe in conversion, but less as a once-and-done event. Repentance is an ongoing work, and salvation is not merely for individual hearts or heaven: it's also the liberating, reconciling inauguration of God's reign here, "on earth as it is in heaven."

I still believe in evangelism, but not like I used to when I alienated more than one friend trying to get them to come to Christian events. The gospel of come-to-church-stuff (or go-to-heaven-when-you-die for that matter) isn't the most compelling good news we've got, and honestly, it betrays a certain heresy about where God works and dwells. These days, evangelism looks more like attempting to reveal what Jesus is like and acknowledging the ordinary sorts of places where I see God at work. It's a lot more like regular life.

When we moved here nine years ago (for Jim to work at the evangelical camp where we met and I grew up), we found ourselves most at home at the little country Episcopal church full of elderly folks and empty-nesters. I suppose that means I'm not properly an evangelical anymore, but not because I outgrew it or was pushed away. Evangelicalism was good to me. It showed me Jesus. It still does.

I know a lot of people's stories are different. Many stories involve great pain and loss, feeling chased out or condemned, and those stories need our hearing. They are valid, 100%.

Mine is, too.

***

Some fundamentalists are evangelical, but all evangelicals are not fundamentalist by any stretch of the imagination. Fundamentalism has a unique history and identity, and its emphases on separatism, authority and control, literalism, doctrinal purity, and rigidly enforced boundaries delineating In from Out set it apart from its far less inhibited cousin.

Having grown up and ministered in bigger tents with a considerably more generous orthodoxy, that's not the Evangelicalism--or honestly, the Jesus--I recognize. Since their faith doesn't particularly read like Good News, I'm not sure why the fundamentalists should be allowed to renegotiate the bounds of Evangelicalism.

"Fundamentalist" was originally a self-chosen label, but as it's taken on a pejorative connotation culturally, there is a vested interest in re-branding fundamentalism as evangelical, but any dogged policing of the gates betrays the tell-tale mark of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists are free to assume the evangelical label, but when self-appointed emperors aren't wearing any clothes, we don't have to pretend otherwise or acquiesce to their determination of who's Out.

I don't presume to know if God would have you stay or go. Since denominations, local congregations, personal experiences, and tipping points vary tremendously, there will be few universal answers for the faithful navigating the minefield that is Evangelical Christianity in this post-modern age. The Spirit may make it clear to you, or She may feel a million miles away, but I trust you'll know your next steps better than any random blogger on the interwebs. But if the gatekeepers can't kick us out, the leavers can't drag us out either. Go or stay; there are a million ways to be faithful.

Here's what I do know: Christ has but one Church, and for better or worse, we're family. Fundamentalist, Evangelical, liberal, Catholic, missional, Mainline, conservative, charismatic, Anabaptist, Orthodox, Reformed: we're sisters and brothers. We can disagree, drop, and pick up new labels and traditions, but as long as we're following Jesus, there's no escaping the fact that we're keeper and kindred, meant to live and bear the Good News together. We belong to one another.

At the end of the day, these labels matter little. It is by love we're called to be known, and we've got a world of work to do.

Post-script: After the 2016 election, I no longer believe the evangelical label to be worth salvaging. Christ exists outside that bedded-to-empire mess, beloved.

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on parenting honey badgers

I’m a natural with babies. One of those earth mama types with babes slung close to my heart, I rarely met an early parenting problem that couldn’t be fixed or at least ameliorated by proximity to my breasts. Put a boob on it! It was like having a superpower.

But even as a kid, I was good with babies. I had a booming babysitting business watching the neighbors’ infants and toddlers for three bucks an hour. The 90s were different, man. Back then, no one thought twice about leaving tiny children in the charge of an eleven year old Girl Scout with a child care badge.

Connecting with teens comes pretty easily to me, too. I’ve got over a decade of youth ministry under my belt and know more ice breakers and group facilitation tricks than a lifetime of team-building retreats could exhaust. Nerdy, popular, troubled, loud–I enjoy all sorts of teenagers, even the stinkiest, silliest middle schoolers.

Babies are my jam. Awkward adolescents are my cup of tea. But little kids are tough. Little kids are honey badgers. I have two whom I love fiercely, and parenting them is the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.

–

Remember My So-Called Life? “I cannot bring myself to eat a well-balanced meal in front of my mother. It just means too much to her.”

Grungy, melancholic Angela Chase captured my fifteen year old heart, and she’s still among my most beloved fictional characters. But these days, I feel a peculiar affinity for her mom Patty, because Kyrie eleison, being on the other end of that fork might just be the death of me. My fiercely independent children never met a hill they weren’t willing to die on, and our dinner table is their perennially favorite last stand. At just four and six, their sighing, eye-rolling, and angst-y tears could give Emmy-winning Claire Danes a run for her money.

If they aren’t battling each other, it seems like they’re double-teaming me. Some days feel acutely like a losing battle I never signed on for. Aren’t we supposed to be on the same side?

**

They came by their stubbornness honestly. Truth be told, their mama can be something of a honey badger herself. Parenting is nothing if not a mirror into our own flaws and inadequacies.

But slowly, we’re learning–the whole Team Paul. To control our emotions and manage our tempers. To listen with our ears and move our feet. Speaking kind words or holding our tongues, we’re helping with our hands (or keeping them to ourselves). We’re turning and walking another way into repentance, forgiveness, new mercies, and resurrection.

Learning to love with our whole selves, we honor God with all that we are. Honey badger ferocity included.

fold your hands {on teaching consent to pre-schoolers}

“The boys kiss me on the bus every day even though I tell them not to.”

WHAT.

I’ve never been what you might call a helicopter parent. Last month after yoga, when a stranger asked me how I was handling my daughter’s transition to kindergarten, I made the mistake of not being appropriately mournful. She looked horrified, and I was forced to backtrack: “I mean, I get to spend more time with my other kid. Which is great!”

After a long summer, we were all ready for the rhythms of autumn and school. Dylan was practically born school-ready; the only thing I was remotely concerned about was the bus. See, I remember the bus. I remember a particularly nasty fifth grader who called me an asshole and made fun of the knock-off pink Chucks I wore in first grade. I remember an inexplicable corn fight, brawls in the aisle, and setting my backpack down in a pool of loogie. We won’t even talk about P.D.A. on the high school bus.

A public school bus can be something of a study in anarchy, and recent news stories and bullying exposés hardly engender renewed confidence in the wheeled, yellow free-for-all. But Dylan was so excited to ride it, counting down the days ever since she started pre-school. I figured we’d give it a shot, and see what happened.

What happened is that boys kissed my five-year-old.

–

When they get rowdy or grabby, we tell our kids, “Fold your hands.” It applies when we’re headed into a store, but more often than not it’s about how we don’t touch people without their permission. We use our hands to help, or we keep them to ourselves. Consent to touch is not implied.

Conversations about personal boundaries and “No means no” don’t start in middle school; we have them now, every day. My kids aren’t tiny extensions of my husband and me. They are their own people who bear the Imago Dei, and their bodily autonomy ought to be honored.

–

I contact her teacher. She tells the boys to refrain, but the unwanted kissing continues. My husband informs the bus driver, but they persist, and we learn it’s been happening on the playground, too. Are consent and touch part of school policy, classroom conversations, and discipline? I ask in follow-up email. Could a teacher please end this right now?

I don’t hear anything right away, but the next afternoon Dylan bounds off the bus grinning.

“There was NO kissing today. I saw the principal talk to the boys at school.”

I was pleasantly surprised and grateful with how decisively the school finally handled it. There haven’t been any incidents since.

–

We don’t make our children kiss relatives or tickle anyone after “Stop.” We talk a lot about being gentle with our hands and heeding other people’s “No.” We talk about respecting privacy, honoring boundaries, and not touching people without their permission. Love is more than words or feelings; it encompasses what we do with our bodies–and how we refrain.

We don’t get it right all the time. The kids still push and fight. I don’t leave enough time exiting a play date and have to wrangle an unwilling three year into his car seat. We’re not perfect, but we’re trying.

We help with our hands. Or we fold them together, a symbol of self-restraint. And possibly prayer.

let's lay down arms, love

I was on-fire all right, and I've got a stack of earnest prayer journals to prove it. Christian concerts, youth groups, Jesus camp, the whole nine yards. I was all in and got the tee-shirt--or rather the tank top, signed by one of the razor-haired blonds from DC Talk.

But I've been thinking a lot lately of how I landed on this side of evangelicalism without the catastrophic crash-and-burn that turned so many of my peers into spiritual refugees. I keep wondering, What was different for me? and I think there was a light and a darkness that cut a different path.

I grew up in a Christian home and an angry home. I was a "good kid" who followed the rules, but my mother and I fought to the teeth, and I couldn't wait to graduate and get the hell out of Dodge.

I knew there was more peace in the homes of my friends who did not follow Jesus, and it killed me that my family loved Jesus so much and treated each other so terribly. It killed me that I loved Jesus so much and treated my family so terribly. I tried and I prayed and I cried and I wrestled, but I could not curb my anger or control my tongue.

I never was the perfect Christian kid, and my house never was the perfect Christian home. I knew I needed grace as much as anyone, and I never had any illusions that being a Christian meant having your shit together. I knew for a fact it didn't.

The lighter side was that the Christian communities to which I belonged (including my family) loved me fiercely, and faith never was tied to legalism or shame. They introduced me to a Jesus who loved and forgave and not a set of rules to follow, and today I can trace a path from there to here that reveals God's faithfulness all along.

the Church {a love letter}


You never were cool, but I liked your style:
flannel graphs, butter cookie tins, and junior choir
solos less about perfection than presence.
Gifts offered a King (enthusiasm counted)
Love served warm and strange as potluck,
rhythms generous, comfortable, and
radical in their simplicity

Deep and wide, Deep and wide, There's a fountain flowing deep and wiiiiiiiiide

Wasn't there, though?
A grace-well as big as our Lord

We're many kinds of people With many kinds of faces
All colors and all ages too From all times and places

That truth (along with the joy! joy! joy! joy!)
burrowed heart-deep and took root

The church is not a building The church is not a steeple
The church is not a resting place The church is a people 

presbyterian, baptist, non-denominational, emergent, episcopal,
In barn or basement, chapel or church
at summer camp in the woods or atop the city,
we worshiped with the Body beautiful.
Your raiment varied and vibrant,
colorful as the members who shared our first Love

I am the Church You are the Church We are the Church together
All who follow Jesus All around the world
Yes we're the Church together

I'm not naïve: you are as damaged as you are lovely
Your sharp accusations stung, left me
gasping for breath. Conditional
love at times stained my cheeks
But I'm no innocent, I know that.
My words wielded like daggers and
I've withheld grace, too
Unforgiveness is an ugly mistress
God, we're a wretched lot

But our imperfect love is velveteen real
surpassing what-if, should-have, and didn't-you every day of the week

Community is hard. Love is harder
--and easier, too, somehow. Half is showing up

At our best, you pointed me to the One who
holds us together, reconciling to
a Father who loves, the
creation that groans, and
one another, that we may be healed

You knew my heart,
the hard and wounded places, too,
and loved me all the more

Our Love lights the darkness
never so hot or bright as when our gaze turns outward
Let's lay down arms, love
Take my hand and remember
the Hope to which we are called

My friend Addie Zierman's book is out today: When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over. It is resonating with and healing so many, and if you grew up "on-fire"--or know someone who burned out along the way or is longing to start over--you're gonna want to get your hands on her lovely first effort, which is honest about the hard stuff and ultimately hopeful.

Spend some time on her site, How To Talk Evangelical, read the rest of the synchroblog, and get her book. Proud of you, Addie!

prayers of the body

Another summer we'd studied parables, but camp's new women's director was an artist and possibly something of an iconoclast, so she'd chosen "embodied prayer" as the theme for her staff's bible studies.

Most of us didn't even come from churches where raising hands was a thing, the "frozen chosen" being somewhat suspicious of emotional displays in worship (and in general). We liked our faith predictable as road maps and infused with intellectual vigor, thankyouverymuch.

And yet here we were, a handful of camp counselors sprawled out on the hillside, creating poses to represent the Lord's Prayer, conveying our spiritual journeys through something resembling liturgical dance, and praying with our bodies.

I was twenty years old. This did not resemble any bible study I'd ever been to (and I'd been to plenty), and I wondered if it might actually be possible to die of embarrassment.

---

Being nothing of an athlete, something of a school nerd, and everything of a virgin, I wasn't particularly connected to my body. The church culture in which I was raised, with its emphasis on the spirit's willingness and the weakness/(inferiority) of flesh, hadn't exactly led me believe that I was missing out on anything.

But when my friends danced on stage at their culture nights, I suspected that I was, sitting in the audience clapping, while they spun breathlessly, a whirlwind of brightly hued costumes and powerful choreography, their practiced footwork connecting them to each other, a shared history, and a physicality that was beautiful and good.

At the after parties, I learned to salsa, fumbling at first and slowly learning to keep pace. When the beat blared, in the low light, surrounded by friends, even an inelegant white girl might begin to feel confident in her own skin.

---

There was a tongue-talking church I visited once, with mime and prophesy, the whole nine yards. The congregation was as kind as a can be, and a young family even treated me to brunch afterward, but one of their nearly three hour services was enough.

But they jointly sponsored all-campus worship events (of a noticeably freer nature than the ministry meetings to which I was accustomed), and I loved their warm and unencumbered faith expression, so I went, every month. And I rarely had to go alone, like I often did to my own weekly fellowship.

There was something magnetic about the way they worshiped with their whole selves, and it drew us all in together, including my friends of flickering faith in Jesus and sold-out faith in dance.

We raised our hands and felt the Spirit move from the tips of our fingers to the swing of our hips.

---

That bible study on the hill was before its time, or at least, before my own. A few years later, I would join one of those ancient-future emerging churches and devour a book called Prayer of Heart and Body for a yoga course on meditation, but that summer embodied prayer still seemed silly, even frivolous.

What good was moving our bodies when we could pack our heads full of more knowledge?  (I was a platonist and something of a gnostic back then, though I didn't know it at the time.)

But seeds were planted.

I still remember discussing the posture of prayer, and something about that didn't seem quite as out there as the rest. I could see how kneeling was clearly a posture of deference and humility. Maybe there was something to embodying one's worship after all?

Cross-legged on that hill under the hot July sun, resting my hands on my knees, I closed my eyes and opened my palms, offering prayers and myself to a God who seemed almost close enough to touch.

{image source}

christians, stop shooting our wounded

[This post explores the landscape of recovery and the fallout from abuse.]

We talked about sex in the summer camp dining hall. It was staff orientation, and we unpacked consent, abuse, and how virginity is a lousy measure of the purity of one’s heart before God. We deconstructed bad metaphors, exploring the significance of the incarnation and the imago Dei.

She found me later, a young woman who’d been through hell and back. Her courage blew me away.

“Thank you for seeing me,” she said, eyes shining. “Sometimes I feel so invisible.”

WE LOVE TO TALK ON THINGS WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT

Our sisters’ and brothers’ blood cries out from the ground. Others bear unfading scars from sexual, psychological, physical, emotional, and spiritual abuses, suffered even at the hands of those claiming Christ’s name.

We may not have hearts to understand, but we serve up solutions all the same. Do you want to be well? we ask. Take your mat and walk!

Our faith is strong! We believe in miracles, authority, and happily-ever-after. We are full of advice.

Ain’t it like most people? I’m no different
We love to talk on things we don’t know about

We want to be like Christ, desperately. But our Great Physician has scars of his own, and too frequently, we are the ones with blood on our hands.

IT TEACHES YOU SHAME

“Abuse teaches a lot of terrifying lessons. It teaches you that your body is not your own. That your hopes and feelings are irrelevant. It teaches you shame. It teaches you to be bullied under the guise of protection. It teaches you to blame yourself for the harmful actions of others. It teaches you that some people are allowed to hurt those less powerful than them. It teaches you to be afraid of sex, anything that might lead to sex, and even being alone with certain people…
All I really needed to hear but never once heard in my church growing up was that nobody is allowed to hurt me; that I have value and worth that is distinct from what anyone did to me and distinct from anything I do or don’t do; that I had agency and autonomy; that I had the right to say ‘no’; that my ‘no’ should be respected; that I also have the right to say ‘yes’ or actually make decisions for myself; that if somebody tries to pressure or guilt me into doing what they want me to do, whether that somebody is a jerk I’m dating or the leader of my youth group, then I should walk away and never look back.” (Laura Gaines)

“Spiritual abuse survivors are like any other abuse survivors. You have to meet them where they are comfortable. Some have serious PTSD issues and can’t deal with anything that might be related to their old church, including any talk of Jesus, God, church, or Sunday Services. You also have to realize that for a lot of these people, they will never go back to church, just like alcoholics don’t go into bars or drug addicts don’t hang around their old druggie friends any more.
We had faith. Things didn’t work. We were told that we didn’t have enough faith, and we got into a horrible downward spiral of self-hate and loathing because we just weren’t good enough. Because if we were good enough, things would have turned out differently.” (Deb Fuller)

Our churches have, at times, been toxic places for survivors of abuse. We have not been safe people, and we’ve squandered the trust of far too many.

BUT MY CHURCH ISN’T LIKE THAT

“If we want our churches and Christian spheres to be safe, we need to stop self-justifying and defending… We are so determined to prove ourselves right or righteous that we steam roll over people’s experiences and stories, indeed their lives, in order to be the right ones. Allow yourself to be seen as wrong; take the blame, the responsibility. Sit with the pain, the being, the story of another without trying to prove that ‘We aren’t / I’m not like that.’ That is the only way people will feel safe, heard, or stop feeling like ‘Things aren’t ever going to change. I don’t belong here. I’m too broken.’” (Aaron Smith)

As members of one Body commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves, we are each other’s keepers (in a non-coercive, I-got-your-back sort of way). Dysfunction and abuse cannot merely be contained locally; they must be dismantled and repented of systemically. We are one Church.

But instead of walking each other through the valleys, we assume authority and are not always worthy of it. We weaponize scripture, wielding it against each other. Sometimes even our helping hurts, and our good intentions bear rotten fruit. Meaning well matters little in the wake of the pain we’ve caused, made light of, or turned our backs on.

“Forgiveness is a process in many cases; it didn’t just happen overnight for me or at the urging of others telling me to forgive. .. And a person isn’t flawed because they are working through it still. ‘You’re only hurting yourself by not forgiving.’ As if the person who has been abused doesn’t understand the weight of what they carry. I think most know. The comment is insensitive to someone’s healing process.” (Anonymous)

SURELY HE TOOK UP OUR PAIN

The Man of Sorrows, familiar with suffering, knows what it is to be forsaken and abused. Jesus was killed by oppressive religious and political authorities, and he taught his followers to set aside power and weep with those who weep.

Can we put away false gospels, easy answers, and defensiveness and grieve together for a while?

“Do you think a survivor is too angry about her abuse? Unless she’s personally threatening you, it’s time once again to get over yourself and listen. Discern the source of that anger. I cannot emphasize this enough: at no point do you ever possess the right to tell a marginalized person how to react to her marginalization…When you dismiss our anger at abuse, you dismiss the validity of our experiences, and that is itself an abusive deed. This isn’t about you.” (Sarah E. Jones)

“People need to understand that emotional manipulation and abuse are very painful, and it’s not something you just fix with a few ‘open and honest’ conversations. It’s something that takes a lot of time to heal before reconciliation is even on the table, because every attempt at reconciliation makes you vulnerable, and restoring the trust and the strength necessary to do that is not a mere act of will.” (Chris Attaway)

RADICALLY, SUBVERSIVELY SAFE

As Christians, we like to talk about cultivating a radical, dangerous faith that sets the world ablaze, but are we getting ahead of ourselves? What if the most radical thing we could do was to create safe communities?

What if we practiced radical hospitality and radical humility, allowing the messy, uncomfortable work of healing to play out in our midst?

What if among us the last really were first? What if Christians actively subverted the power structures that favor some perspectives and people over others? What if the Church harbored and honored those who are hurting, doubting, struggling, or oppressed over those most frequently seated at the head of our tables: the sure, strong, educated, beautiful, male, married, straight, white, wealthy, healthy, or righteous?

What if we repented of the ways we were complicit or unseeing to abuses of people and power among us? Could loving people well in the midst of their pain be the radical way of Jesus?

SHUT UP. LISTEN. RESPOND WELL.

“It’s actually pretty simple. Don’t use your position of authority to manipulate people for personal self-aggrandizement. Don’t turn honest personal questioning, confession, [or] seeking into a petty power play. When someone seeks succor or absolution or clarity, refrain from blame, shame and humiliation. You know, Christian stuff.” (Pat S.)

“Really LISTEN to their stories. Validate. Show compassion. Whatever you do, don’t act like you have all the answers, and surely if they’ll ‘just’ do x, y, and z everything will be all sunshine and roses again, forever and ever, amen. LISTEN to their stories. Don’t judge. Don’t minimize. Don’t fix. Just listen. Be patient with them. Just like any other type of healing, it’s a process, not an overnight thing.” (Anna Caltagirone)

“I can attest to the war wounds of spiritual abuse. The best that a Christian can do to relate to me is to remember that my relationship with God is a highly personal, fragile, and private thing. Respect my process. Don’t push your agenda. Trust me in the hands of the God you follow.” (Liv Weston)

“I keep drifting back in my mind to the time that was all happening, it would have been so validating if someone had listened. And in the next step stood up and said, ‘This isn’t right. What you’re doing is wrong.’ Not one person did.” (Elizabeth Bennet)

“I want someone to look at me and listen to the horrors I have endured, and instead of telling me that all would be well if I just forgave my abuser – instead of telling me to pray…to seek healing, as if I haven’t spent years doing just that – instead of telling me that maybe what I suffered wasn’t actually abuse -just listen, hear me, and say, ‘What happened to you should not happen to anyone. Come inside and sit with us for a while.’” (Becca Rose)

BIRTH SOMETHING BETTER

We can’t be faithful as a Church and continue to side with the powerful, shoot our wounded, or paint all of our critics as haters. We who believe in grace, humility, and resurrection are called to birth something better than what we have right now.

So raise a glass to turnings of the season And watch it as it arcs towards the sun And you must bear your neighbor’s burden within reason And your labors will be born when all is done

The Truth is rarely shiny, but he shows up in the midst of our darkness, blessing the merciful and the mourning. Repenting and walking the way of the Wounded Healer who breaks bread, washes feet, and binds up the broken hearted, we’ll choose love and liberation over coercion, callousness, and business-as-usual. We’ll bear each other’s burdens, asking the privileged—not the abused—to offer the first fruits of repentance.

We want to be well together.

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on objectification {or, how people aren't objects no matter what they wear}

As hemlines and the heat index rise, so do temperatures of the modesty debates among Christians. 'Tis the season, and nothing says summer quite like barbecue, swimsuits, and a good, old fashioned slut-shame.

What interests me especially is how the language of objectification creeps into these conversations about modesty. Feminists have long rallied against objectification of women in pornography and culture, and in an unexpected plot twist, conservative Christians seem to be jumping aboard the anti-objectification train, too. At first glance, this appears to be a step in the right direction. Yay for diverse coalitions against the idol patriarchy!

But somehow that train always seems to derail somewhere in Gnostic Territory, a grim and fearsome wasteland. Wallala leialala. Do. Not. Want.

I want to talk about what objectification is and isn't, how the premises of these debates are flawed, and how we can reframe this conversation to reflect what we believe about the incarnation. Feminism and Christianity may be strange bedfellows, but together they really can shape a positive counter-narrative to the stifling, demeaning, and heretical ones casting men as feral beasts and women as objects of lust (or scorn) instead of all of us embodied, fully human people bearing the image of God.

We are {created for} so much more than this.

---

Recently, a Christian website put up a much shared video called The Evolution of the Swimsuit: Can Modesty Make a Comeback? In it, Jessica Rey, owner of a one-piece swimwear line, blames the bikini for cultural decline and the dehumanization of women. So scandalous was the first modern bikini, it was modeled by a French stripper! She cites Modern Girl Magazine in 1957 opining that "no girl with tact or decency would ever wear such a thing"--that is, until the sexual revolution and women's movement seemingly sent both out the window. For Rey, women exercising power over their wardrobe, body, or sexuality by donning a two-piece cannot be construed in any sort of positive light. Citing a Princeton study and an article about it, Rey makes this bold claim:

Analysts at the National Geographic concluded that bikinis really do inspire men to see women as objects, as something to be used rather than someone to connect with. So, it seems that wearing a bikini does give a woman power, the power to shut down a man’s ability to see her as a person, but rather as an object.

Firstly, weird use of "inspire" there, but secondly, this power women allegedly have to cause men to dehumanize us is pretty much the worst superpower ever conceived, huh? Rey imbues certain types of clothing with the ability to override men's capacity to see women as fully human. The bikini transforms a woman from a person whose body, sexuality, and autonomy are integrated parts of her humanity into some sort of sex kitten patronus existing for male service and fantasy--and it's her own damn fault. The weak-willed man (and they're all weak according to this narrative) is helpless against this overwhelming swimsuit-induced urge to define a woman entirely by her body parts and his own projected desire.

WHAT. This is an astoundingly low view of masculinity, and it's also the same sexist woman-as-vixen/Jezebel/temptress trope that folks have been peddling ever since Eve tasted the fruit in the Garden of Eden.

I couldn't find the original studies to read, but that National Geographic article mentions a few details Rey left out: the sample group included just twenty-one men, some of the photos the students reacted to were of headless torsos and breasts (not women with faces), and the men who seemed to objectify those disembodied images also "scored higher as 'hostile sexists'—those who view women as controlling and invaders of male space."

It doesn't exactly read like the moral mandate to ban the bikini like Rey seems to suggest. The Daily Princetonian, interviewing the study authors, reported:

Study participants were also asked to fill out a survey designed to measure how sexist they are. The researchers found that when the men whose surveys indicated that they were the most sexist saw the pictures of women in bikinis, they were least likely to activate a part of the brain associated with thinking about people’s minds and thoughts, Fiske said.

“I think [the study] does relate to the effects of having pornography and sexualized images of women around and in the media because they spill over into how people treat women in general,” Fiske said, adding that these images may dehumanize women and encourage men to see them as objects. “You have to be aware of the effect of these images on people,” Fiske explained. “They’re not neutral. They do have an effect on how people think about other women.” 

Cikara said she agreed that the reactions observed in the study might be a consequence of society’s emphasis on sexualized female imagery. 

“This research can certainly help to further our understanding of the effect of sexualized women, whether in advertising or in the office,” Cikara said, adding that “men can totally override this response.” She noted that men do not look at their wives or sisters in the same way that they look at a sexualized image of a woman on an advertising billboard.

Now we're getting somewhere. While Rey argues that the bikini causes men to objectify women, implying both feminine blame and a female onus to change men's minds and their dehumanizing behavior (assumptions that are a quick jump to disturbing "she asked for it" rape apology), the Princeton study's authors suggest instead that objectification is rooted in pornography and sexism, and that men are in fact empowered to control their own gaze and action, a remarkably different conclusion than Rey's.

From The Princetonian again: "Fiske said the results indicated that some men may objectify or dehumanize partially clothed women, though further research is needed to confirm these findings." 

*Some men* may objectify partially clothed women. *Further research is needed.* to confirm these findings.

I won't jump on the "Bikinis Are Bad" bandwagon just because researchers flashed images of boobs to a few Princeton co-eds whose brains activated "regions associated with objects or 'things you manipulate with your hands.'" As Jonalyn Fincher argues, that can certainly be seen as a natural response! Sexual attraction is hardly indicative of viewing people as objects, and desire is something distinct from objectification. 

Desire says, I want you. Objectification says, I want that. 

Sexualized and pornographic images can cast women as objects in a way that an actual woman in a bikini on the beach does not replicate AT ALL. Objectification treats people as tools existing for the pleasure or utility of others. It reduces people to their body parts and appearance, denying their agency, autonomy, and personhood. Christians mistakenly conflate sexual desire with objectification in these discussions, but that betrays a gnostic suspicion of bodies and a lack of understanding that objectification is rooted not in attraction (or sexiness) but the commodification of women's bodies and sexuality.

[Edited to add: Attraction and a temptation to objectify fall along a spectrum that these heteronormative modesty debates fail to acknowledge. As I unpack harmful assumptions implicit in these discussions, I want to recognize that LGBTQ people and attractions (and female desire in general) are generally rendered invisible in these conversations, and that's not okay either. Objectification denies the imago Dei intrinsic to all of us: male, female, queer, gay, straight, and otherwise.]

Sexuality is an integrated part of our humanity even if we are celibate and no matter how we're dressed. It's pornography that can divorce sexuality from humanity, but strangely, so does much evangelical Christian teaching, especially aimed at single people and teens. We've falsely elevated spirit over flesh, misunderstood attraction as lust, and expected something akin to asexuality from unmarried Christians instead of wrestling honestly with what it looks like as individuals and communities to honor God and one another with our sexuality (even if we aren't having sex).

We might disagree on the appropriateness of certain outfits in certain settings, but the choice to wear sexy clothes (something that will always be culturally and personally relative) is never an invitation to view a person as an object. Can we maybe also stop projecting our preferences and prejudices onto people who don't share our faith? A million factors play into how we present ourselves, but dressing to receive sexual attention is still not asking to be seen or treated as a thing instead of a person. A sexual person (and we're all sexual people) is still and always a person.

Clothing and people do not send "Objectify me!" messages, and presenting oneself as female, attractive, or even sexy does not compromise anyone's humanity. Gnosticism, not Christian orthodoxy, casts suspicion and shame on bodies and sexuality, and it was struck down as heresy by the Church long ago. The God who made our bodies called them good and the Incarnation, in which God became flesh, further affirm the value of embodied life.

Women are people; we don't use our "powers" to cause anyone to dehumanize us. Men are people, too, capable of taking "every thought captive" and refusing to let pornography be the lens through which they relate to others. None of us is defined by desire, appearance, sin, or anyone's approval; our intrinsic, unchangeable worth stems from being made in the imago Dei.

Some will objectify a woman no matter what she wears; a cute one-piece, like those in Rey's swimwear line, is unlikely to make a difference to anyone who is predisposed to disrespect women (like the "hostile sexists" in the study). It's sad that Rey's video serves to normalize rather than challenge objectification and shame, but it's deeply troubling that she blames women for men's sexual brokenness. Upholding dignity (as Rey argues for) is a worthy goal, but if we're arguing and living like men are animals and women are objects, we're practicing the sort of terrible theology that can't get us there. There's not a thing a woman can wear to change a culture that treats her as subhuman.

Christians call this Sin. Feminists call it Rape Culture. Either way, it's the sort of brokenness for which Christ died. Resurrection sets brokenness aright, and as Christians, we too are called to be people who push back the effects of the Fall. We can't shrug our shoulders about the inevitability of sin and objectification when we worship a God who raises the dead and breathes new life from ash. When the world is not as it should be, we kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight and commit to growing something better.

But we can't create a faithful alternative to an oversexed, objectifying culture by pathologizing sexuality and imposing modesty rules rooted in bad theology, misogyny, or dysfunction. I believe in seeking to honor God, others, and self, but modesty is something best wrestled with privately and locally and has considerably more to do with humility than swimwear anyway. Universalized rules weigh like chains, and we're not called to bind others to to the specific ways we discern God leading us.

What if instead of reacting against an increasingly sexualized culture with shame, fear, and legalism, we demonstrated what a whole and holy sexuality might look like? What if Christians were known less by our self-righteous spiritualizing and more for being people who understand what it is to be fully human? What if we countered objectification by treating every person we meet with dignity, as one who bears the very the image of God?

Because we do, in swimwear and anything else. We're beloved and fully human, no matter what.

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