The Unlikely Disciple

The Unlikely Disciple (Kevin Roose, 2009) is yet another entry in that currently popular memoir subgenre, Person X Does Uncharacteristic Activity Y for Z Time Period. This one is even a direct descendant of a previous work: Roose got interested in his topic while working as a research assistant for A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically. But it's also the best outsider view of the evangelical subculture I've read yet.

As a 19-year-old Brown undergraduate, Roose decided to study abroad without leaving the country by spending a semester at Liberty University, having discovered he knew so little about evangelical Christians that he didn't even know how to talk to them. After a crash course in the lingo from a high school friend, he plunges into the Liberty life, taking 6 credits in the core curriculum and joining the Thomas Road Baptist Church choir. (At Brown he sang in an a capella group.) He goes undercover, posing as a relatively new Christian so he doesn't seem too suspicious for such errors as pronouncing Paul's Epistle to the Philippians as "fil-ip-PYE-ans." (It's "fil-IP-ee-ans.")

Though he never stops being appalled by his classmates' homophobia or the political and creationist indoctrination in his classes, he also can't help seeing his classmates and the faculty as human beings, many of whom he forms lasting friendships with. It's a useful reminder for me. As someone who's either evangelical left or slightly on the conservative side of mainline Protestantism, I don't like being lumped in with the Falwell brand of Christianity. I kept getting annoyed when Roose mentioned songs he sang at Thomas Road that we also sing at my church because how dare they sing what we sing when we have so little in common? But if Roose can befriend them, I can at least admit we're co-religionists.

Inspiration and Incarnation

Inspiration and Incarnation (Peter Enns, 2005) attempts, I think successfully, to balance the traditional Christian view of scripture as inspired by God while looking honestly at internal contradictions, parallels with other ancient literature, and the way New Testament writers cite the Old Testament (by modern standards, wildly out of context at times). Enns takes an incarnational approach, treating the Bible as a way God comes among people, meeting them where they are--which means it's unfair and inappropriate to evaluate its approach to history by modern standards of science and historicity. He also views the contradictions and complexities of scripture as a feature, not a bug--life is complex and contradictory, so why should God's message to humanity be any different?

I wish I'd had a book like this when I was first wrestling with serious doubts 10-15 years ago. I think it would've spared me a lot of angst.

Quiverfull

Fourteen or fifteen years ago, some friends of mine dragged me to a Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood seminar, where the speaker--I think it was John Piper--delineated what he thought was a woman's proper way of relating to men. He wasn't necessarily opposed to women working as such--just insisting that they avoid any kind of directive authority over men. E.g. a woman could be a nurse, but probably not a head nurse who'd be directing male nurses and hospital support staff. And women should be careful how they handle even the most innocuous communications that could be considered authoritative. The example he used was a man asking for driving directions. While the biblical woman is allowed to tell a lost traveler how to get back to the freeway, she's supposed to do so in a feminine, gentle manner. Which insofar as I could tell meant a soft voice and not sounding too authoritative. Seemed silly to me, as I assume the lost driver would rather the person guiding him sound confident and certain!

Looking back, that conference, and how appalled I was by it, was a first step for me in my journey from the Religious Right to the religious center-left. (I'm still a Presbyterian, but I'm now in the mainline branch of the tradition.) But for awhile there I tried very hard to believe God had designed women for a different and subservient role because that was the worldview surrounding me, and I wanted to be a good Christian woman. Perhaps because of that, I've developed a fascination for the Christian patriarchy movement that's grown out of teachings like I heard at that seminar back in the 90's. I've watched the Duggars' show once or twice. I lurk on blogs related to the movement, both pro and con. I write alternative history, and I guess patriarchy is my alternative history. If I'd made a few different choices in the mid-90's, I might be a submissive wife with twelve children instead of a partner in an egalitarian marriage with just one. There but for the grace of God go I...though doubtless they'd say I'd turned my back on that grace!

So naturally I made a point of reading Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (Kathryn Joyce, 2009) as soon as I heard about it. Joyce, a journalist who isn't religious herself but has often written on religious topics, investigated the movement, meeting leaders, dissidents, and ordinary families. Mostly she just stands back and lets her subjects speak for themselves. She focuses on women as wives, mothers, and daughters, and I thought the last, shortest section on daughters was especially powerful--daughters who don't go to college or work before marriage, who consider themselves as helpmeets of their fathers, under their fathers' authority until they're transferred to their husband's keeping upon marriage. In some cases they even refer to themselves as owned by their fathers. I read that chapter, I look at my daughter, who at not-quite-five is already so full of spirit and dreams (lately she wants to be a painter and have her work in a museum, but some days she says astronaut or veterinarian instead), and I'm glad I'm not living that alternate reality.

The Myth of Certainty

I wish I'd read The Myth of Certainty (Daniel Taylor, 1986) fifteen or twenty years ago. On the other hand, back then I would've taken one look at the title and said, "Certainty isn't a myth! What is Intervarsity Press thinking to publish something like that?" It's not that I didn't have doubts about my faith back then, I just kept them buried deep and beat them down whenever they tried to well up with uncomfortable questions. That's not a sustainable way to live and think, and I eventually admitted that the kind of faith I'd been taught to believe didn't have all the answers--and contained some out-and-out falsehoods. Ever since I've been trying to figure out whether I can sustain some kind of faith without the certainties I used to cling to. For Narnia fans, I often say I have the faith of Puddleglum--I want to live as like a Narnian I can even if there is no Narnia, and I'm on Aslan's side even if there is no Aslan to lead it. I think it would've saved me a lot of angst along the way if I'd realized years and years ago there was no such thing as certainty and that maybe that's OK.

My Jesus Year

One of these days I'm going to think of a good topic for a year memoir--you know, that subgenre that seems so popular of late where the writer makes some lifestyle change or other for a year and writes about it with some blend of comedy and insight. So far my muse hasn't complied, though.

I can't stop reading the things, though, and I enjoyed My Jesus Year (Benyamin Cohen, 2008). Cohen, an Orthodox rabbi's son, had been going through the motions of his own faith, so he wondered if satisfying his lifelong curiosity about Christianity will give him new insight into his own beliefs. And since he live in Atlanta, he's well-placed for such a project. He spends a year visiting assorted churches and Christian events (all while maintaining faithful Jewish observance) and comes out feeling reinvigorated by the variety of faith he sees.

Cohen's outsider view doesn't always mesh with my insider perspective. He's a lot more tolerant of megachurches and stadium worship than I tend to be, and he's harsh on a church that sounds exactly like a larger version of my mom's church in Alabama--very informal, with no trappings of tradition or liturgy, and maybe not the most theologically sophisticated in the world--because he's put off by the youth of the prayer leader and the pastor's interpretation of Moses and the burning bush. Still, it's funny and engaging, and I'm feeling inspired to open my eyes a little more to the possibility of God's presence, both in the places I expect it and where I don't.

The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus

Peter Gomes made an entertaining appearance on the Colbert Report a little while back, so I decided to check out his new book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus (2008). I found it thought-provoking and challenging, though not new enough to be scandalous--most of what Gomes says would fit in at my church. But I like his approach, and I'll look for his other books.

Allies for Armageddon (Book #11)

Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism (Victoria Clark, 2007) explores the Religious Right's role in Middle Eastern politics. Half of the book studies the history of the movement from roughly 1600 to 1948, while the other half, IMHO the more interesting one, focuses on the belief common in conservative Christian circles that Israel has absolute, divinely ordained title to a big swath of the Middle East, including Israel, the Occupied Territories, and then some. You'll occasionally see bumper stickers in the Bible Belt that say "My country--right or wrong." You don't see "Israel--God's country, right or wrong," but that belief goes even deeper. Basically, the Palestinians don't matter, and conflict in the Middle East is a good thing, because it brings the apocalypse and Jesus' return that much closer.

It's crazy. And I used to believe it myself, 15 years or so ago. It appealed to me then because, if you accept the worldview behind it, it has a certain internal logic. Also, at that age, I loved the idea that I might be living at the CLIMAX OF HISTORY! Now? I've had enough interesting times. I'd like a few boring, uneventful decades to live my life and raise my kid and write some books. Anyway, Clark's book is a decent summary of the movement, which she seems to understand better than most outsiders.

(For the record, I'm still a Zionist in the sense that I support Israel's right to exist within safe and secure borders and to defend itself on the same terms that any other nation might. It's just that I now believe there should be a Palestinian state as well, that if something is wrong for America, the UK, Japan, etc. to do it's also wrong for Israel, and I no longer believe that 1948 triggered some kind of prophetic countdown to the Second Coming.)

God's Harvard (Book #8)

Patrick Henry College, the subject of God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America (Hanna Rosin, 2007) is no ordinary Christian college. It's designed specifically for kids from a conservative homeschool background, and its goal isn't to educate students for the pulpit and/or the wide vocational spectrum of modern life: instead, they're training culture warriors for the front lines of the religious right. The founder's stated dream is that in 30 years, the director of the Best Picture Oscar winner will receive a call from his former Patrick Henry roommate--the president of the United States. The only majors are government, history, literature, journalism, and classic liberal arts.

Rosin, a Washington Post reporter, followed a tumultuous year in the life of the still new and experimental college (it's less than a decade old). I wanted to weep for some of the students who were so bright and so ambitious being forced through a system that's ultimately so restrictive, like the brilliant girl who was groomed to be First Lady rather than President, though I also wanted to wring the kids' narrow-minded young necks for seeing the 2006 elections as a case of "evil winning." PHC is emphatically a Republican endeavor. They'd see someone like me, a Christian who votes Democrat and is supporting Barack Obama, as at best deluded and at worst willfully rebellious and evil. And...like it or not, they're here to stay. What remains to be seen is whether they'll remain influential.