HippieMommy

posted by amanda on Feb 19

I just finished Monique El-Faizy’s God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America’s New Mainstream, and it contained a lot of different points that I’d like to discuss. It is really interesting to read an athiest’s view of the Evangelical world. She was a Christian until she went away to college and stepped away from the faith. Its kind of nice to be able to hear from someone who was both an insider and now an outsider to Christianity. It makes for an interesting perspective.

I was going to write about her chapter on church history, but I just changed my mind. I want to talk about her discussion of megachurches and their future So let’s jump on in:

Despite the continuing success of megachurches, as they get bigger and blander some people are starting to look for a new kind of experience, one more immediate or transcendent. They’re finding it in some unlikely places, in the podcasts of sermons they download from the Internet, in cyberchurches, and in Bible studies at their workplaces, what Barna calls “marketplace ministries.” Many have left the church building and are meeting in parks and houses. In fact, the house church movement, in which several families meet on a regular basis in someone’s home, often to be led by the same person each week, is growing by great leaps.

Even before I read this section, my mom and I were discussing this idea of alternate ways of attending church. I had told my mom that the Bible study group that we led last year in our house was the truest church I’ve ever attended. We were living lives where we could be accountable to each other, learn together, really probe into scripture with debate, and pray for one another. It wasn’t just a matter of showing up on Sunday and checking “church” off of our list. It was non-hierarchical and met in our home, and yet it fulfilled more of the ideas of church than any “church” (what we now consider to be a church) that I’ve attended ever has. Still we feel this pull that it was “only a Bible study” and that if we didn’t attend Sunday services in a big building then we wouldn’t really be in church.

This is a seminal time for the church, a moment of reflection and self-assessment such as hasn’t been seen in decades. Its attempts to germane to society have been so successful that the church is in the midst of an identity crisis sparked by its own achievement. Long accustomed to being on the fringes, evangelical Christianity has become so big, so powerful, and so mainstream that many on the inside are wondering if they’ve lost their flavor and have abandoned what made them distinctive.

I can definitely see this feeling spreading in the church. We are losing a lot of our flavor. We are giving many of our churches over to the pop culture of Christianity and the world. If you don’t attend a mega-church, then the far likelihood is that you attend a church that uses a curriculum from a mega-church. There is no local flavor. It is bland.

The response to these concerns has taken several different forms. Many Christians are looking to put the sanctity back in church and are returning to the traditions that the megachurches abandoned. Where churches such as Willow Creek and Saddleback desanctified the physical church, others are looking to resanctify it, placing new value on incense, stained glass, candles, and other high-church trappings. They are reintroducing liturgy to their services, or moving into denominations that never abandoned it, such as the Episcopalian church (although there they opt for conservative congregations that are on the restrictive side of the split over gay clergy).

I find this to be very true in my own life. I have started searching out more traditional ways of worship. We light candles for the Sabbath like my father’s family did, we recite the same prayers that were recited when I was young (and since the times of the early Jews), I am longing for more liturgy in service. I have even looked at denominations that still use liturgy, although I have generally been more drawn to Messianic Jewish congregations instead of Episcopalian, but the root desire is the same. The desire is to be a part of something deeper… something that isn’t just the flavor-of-the-day. I want a faith and a practice that stands the test of time, not just what gets people in the door today.

Megachurches were invented by baby boomers and designed to appeal to that generation. They rely on the notion of choice and individualization and on the tools of marketing to hone and promote their product. This comes, though, at the cost of the idea that the church is a body, the needs of which supersede those of the individual. Along with defecting boomers, younger generations, which are remarkably religious, are beginning to rebel against the church of their parents’ generation and are looking for more direct encounters with the divine. They don’t need the pat answers megachurches provide but are willing to embark on their own personal spiritual journeys.

The fact is that my parents and my husband’s parents were fundamentalists who switched to a more evangelical route when the tide started to change. They followed what was going on around them. In our attempt to return to a “deeper” spiritual experience, we are doing the same thing. We are doing what our generation feels prone to do. We’re not any different, the trends are just changing.

I have a lot more to say, but my fingers are getting tired, lol. Next time I want to write about what El-Faizy sees as the different options in the post-modern and emergent church. I think you’ll find it interesting to read from the perspective of a woman who is no longer in the church (El-Faizy, not me, lol).

My morning sickness seems to be coming at night, and I am starting to feel a little yucky. I’m relieved to feel a little sick though, because it gives some reassurance that this is a “sticky” baby. I’ve really been trying to put this in God’s hands, but it is so hard. I know I have no control over this little life growing in me, but at the same time I get a sense of control if I am thinking or worrying about it. I am trying so hard to give that up. I really appreciate everyone’s prayers for me, for the baby, and for the rest of our family. You’re the best!

posted by amanda on Jan 8

The Complete Woman: Being a Whole Person
By: Patricia Gundry

I would love to blog about this book a million times! It is great! Unfortunately my time is limited with it (it is a library book), so I guess I’ll just have to hit the main points that I enjoyed and that I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere.

Patricia Gundry writes this book so well, and does an amazing job at balancing femininity with strength. She provides a wonderful example for how this can be done, despite what many other books on this passage try to say. She tackles important issues for all women, including being a hard worker, trustworthy, strong, beautiful, not manipulative, a bargain hunter, a planner, an investor, a provider, and praiseworthy. I have read many other books on Proverbs 31, and none of them capture the context and the relevance of what is being said to King Lemuel the way that Gundry does in this book.
Here are some of my highlights from a few chapters.

On women who manipulate (re: Proverbs 31:12 “She does him good and not harm all the days of her life”)

Women manipulate men… I always wondered why women are so tempted to do it… Why would women like Marabel Morgan or Helen Andelin justify it with Bible verses, case histories, and personal examples of their own approach to pragmatism in marriage?

I think they do it because they live in a double bind. Women are the underdogs in the family and society. So they gravitate toward survival methods common to underdogs, methods that are as old as the Fall.

Here’s how it works: the underdog is afraid to approach her superior directly. Though direct approach is effective some of the time, too often it is not. When dealing with a superior power that is also unscrupulous and unfair, being direct is often dangerous. Underdogs learn to manipulate in order to get along–or survive.

Manipulation is demeaning both to the one doing it and to the unsuspecting victim. If you’re a woman, your actions say to the man you victimize, “You aren’t very bright, or honorable. If you were smart, you would see through my tricks. If you were honorable, they wouldn’t be necessary.”

This kind of scheming has further disadvantage. It makes close, honest relationships between people impossible.

Amen. I have read so many books for Christian women that only teach women how to be manipulative. They tell you how to get your way: How to convince your husband to do what you want without him knowing it. Its sick, and it makes me so sad that Christian women stoop to that level.
On the Proverbs 31 woman and when she opens her mouth compared to other women

I think inborn nature has nothing to do with the incidence of shrewish or razor-tongued women. It’s as simple as this: those who can’t fight with their fists learn to fight with words. We develop skill with the weapons we have. We also pick up the skill by observing the skilled practicioners who precede us. It is often passed from mother to daughter with success.

Women tend to practice and gain skill on men who are vulnerable. Sometimes this involves practicing on male children who are extremely defenseless. They grow up to be easy targets for other female verbal assaults.

I found this section really interesting. I have quite the razor tongue. As a matter of fact, even long after dh and I were married, I had never “lost” a fight. My quick wit and tongue allowed me to be a more skilled arguer than any boyfriends had ever been. I ended up thinking I was always right. It was a humbling blow to find out that not only was I often wrong, but I also manipulated situations because I could argue better.

She goes on to address an interesting cycle she has noticed. I have seen this for myself, especially in church, which is so sad.

We women are too easily tempted to vent our anger on male children. I have seen it happen so often. A family who lived near us years ago went through a weekly cycle. Over the weekend the husband harassed his wife. On Monday she terrorized their oldest child, a boy (who looked like his father and had the same name) about a year older than my daughter. On Tuesday the boy was out for blood and my kids got it from him…

It is the old pecking-order sequence: we can’t hit back at those who are stronger, so we find excuses to take out our anger on those who are weaker. I firmly believe that much male hostility to women is a result of this vicious circle. Women are repressed and put down by men or by a male-dominated system. Mothers sometimes take out their resentment on their young sons; and teachers and others over children, on little boys in their charge. Those little boys grow up with an accumulated load of unconscious resentment toward women that has been years in the making. They then pass it on to the women who become vulnerable to them.

I’ve never seen this addressed in writing before, but it makes me think of a family whose son was in the Sunday School class that I taught. I would see the end of the cycle, as the mother would take her aggression out on her son as they would walk through the church. He would then come into the class and take his aggression out on the other children. He would often make the other 2 and 3 year olds so upset that they would physically shake. I would have to remove him from the classroom to protect the other children. It was heartbreaking because he was only acting out on what he knew. He was only 3.

I don’t want to make this too long, so I’ll just give one last quote from the end where she is talking about the translation of “helpmeet.”

This verse has been traditionally understood to mean that God created woman as a kind of glorified girl Friday for Adam. A nice girl, but slightly substandard and needing a man to supervise her work. The words help and meet have been condensed by common usage into helpmeet. We have been taught that this means woman should be a helper to man, not his equal.

But in Hebrew, the original language, the words ezer and neged do not have the connotations we have given them. Ezer means “help” all right, but not secondary help or assistant, as in assistant to the president. It means help in the way God helped Israel. The word is used in the Old Testament to refer to help by a superior force, such as help by God, as in Psalm 121:1,2

I raise my eyes towards the hills.
Whence shall my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

The word ezer is never used elsewhere in the Old Testament to refer to subordinate or inferior help.

Neged (”meet”) is a preposition in Hebrew and cannot be translated as a preposition in English and still retain the sense. It means “corresponding to,” “fit for,” “meet for.” In other words, God created woman as a real help to Adam, someone who was like him, suitable in every way. There is no hint of inferiority for woman in the original account.

Good stuff.

This book also has a ton of practical advice. She talks about keeping your home, ways to find your passion for a cottage / work-at-home industry, time management strategies, and ways to enjoy your work and bless your family. I really highly recommend it