Monthly Archives: July 2006

A long post on 10Ks and grading: considering the objective and the comparative

Posted on by

After my brief post about grading on Monday, I received a number of questions and comments about my policy.  I’d like to expand a bit on my grading philosophy.

I grew up the son of two college professors.  My late father taught philosophy for forty years, first at the University of Alberta and then at UC Santa Barbara.  My mother taught the same subject, as well as religious studies and humanities, at Monterey Peninsula College from 1975-2003.   As a kid, I can remember my mom during exam times: she would retreat to her study with stacks of blue books and papers, emerging periodically for coffee.  There were frequent expressions of exasperation with what her students had failed to grasp. 

I had my first experience as a "grader" when I first began to work as a teaching assistant at UCLA.   The first course I TAed was a "Roman Studies" course offered in the Department of Classics in the spring quarter, 1991 (I took so many Latin courses, I might as well have been in that department).  The professor, bless his heart, was a stickler for what he called "grade norming".  Before we handed papers back to our students, we had "grade meetings."  In these meetings, each of his six TAs had to share an example of what we considered an "A" paper, a "B" paper, and a "C" paper.  We read the same papers, argued intensely, and were — not surprisingly — stunned by some of the discrepancies that appeared. 

We found that there were a small number of superb papers that we all agreed were of "A" quality.  But beneath that, subjective chaos!  What one TA considered a strong B, another considered a high C.  What I might consider a low C, another would consider absolutely hopeless and undeserving of a passing grade.  We were grading essays on a wide variety of criteria: content, style, the strength of a thesis, the grace of an argument.  The professor in charge of all of us was very patient, urging us to learn from one another and to pay attention to the insights and intuitions of our colleagues. He also told us that grading in the Humanities would always be an inexact operation, as much based on art and impulse as on science and certainty.  Interestingly, he never asked any of us to change the grades we had given after we had gone through the "norming" process, though he did ask the toughest and the most lenient of the TAs to consider changing their stances.

In my seven quarters as a TA at UCLA, I had only one other prof who made her TAs "norm".   Most of the rest simply gave us absolute control over the grading.  In theory, the professors were supposed to review each final grade the TAs assigned; in practice, most of the time the professors simply signed the grading sheets and went off to the south of France while their assistants made the final decisions unsupervised.

In my early years, both at UCLA and at PCC, I was a fairly easy grader.  I was always a "tough A", but a very easy "C".   There were some semesters where I failed absolutely no one — except for plagiarism or a failure to turn in a term paper and a final.  My old policy, born of a misplaced compassion and a need to be liked, was "if you show up, you pass."  Students who came to office hours and showed genuine (or feigned) interest in the subject were likely to get easy Bs.    It took me at least five years of full-time teaching at the community college to tighten my standards.

At Pasadena City College, we can’t modify final grades with pluses or minuses.  Several years ago, a proposal went before the faculty senate to allow us to do just that.  I strongly supported it, but for a variety of reasons, my colleagues shot it down.  Thus there are but five grades we can give, unmodified: A,B,C,D,F.  Even now, that causes its own share of frustrations!  Two students can both earn identical B grades, but one narrowly missed an A and the other barely scraped above a C.  The difference in the work the two students did is immense, and yet the final record from the course doesn’t reflect that.  I find that maddening, and long for the day when I can give "A-", "B+", and "B-" grades.

At PCC, no one monitors the grades tenured professors give to their students.  Tenured faculty get evaluated every third year.  I’ve had tenure since 1998, and since that time, I’ve never been questioned about my grading distribution.  Somewhere, someone collects data about which professors assign certain grades, but it is understood that we have absolute and final say over the marks we give.  The only limitations on our grading decisions are the legal ones: we can’t use grades to punish or reward, in exchange for money or sexual favors, we can’t give grades based on race or sex or religion.   On the rare occasions when a student does challenge a grade, the only way that they can get the grade overturned by the administration is to prove bias.  The professor, like a defendant in court, doesn’t have to prove anything.   In my years at PCC, the administration has never overturned a single grading decision made by a tenured faculty member.

Whew, enough background. 

Today, I grade using a mix of objective and comparative factors.  In order to get an A on a paper, a student must have a solid argument and clear prose.  I don’t negotiate on that.  On the other hand, I think that students do need to understand where they stand in regards to each other.  If "B" means "superior" achievement (which is how the state defines a B), it must be superior to something. How can something be "superior" in a vacuum?  If an A denotes excellence, it means the student has excelled — and to excel means to surpass, and you’ve got to surpass someone!  We can’t recognize the good, the true, and the beautiful without also knowing the bad, the false, and the ugly — that’s a truth that is aesthetic, theological, and intellectual.

How other people do does matter in academia.  Whether or not you get into grad school, or get a scholarship, depends not only on the work you do but on the work your competitors have done.  Financial aid and admissions are zero-sum games, whether we like it or not.  And refusing to recognize that reality in our marking of student papers does those students a tremendous disservice.

When people ask me about my comparative grading policies, I use a story from my running career.  In 1999, I ran a lot of 10Ks.  I was in the best shape of my life.  One bright and shining day out near Marina Del Rey, I ran my all-time personal best: a 38:49.  (Trust me, I couldn’t get within six minutes of that today.)  I was immensely proud of my effort!  Of course, it was a popular race with thousands of entrants.  Despite my "PR", I only finished 28th overall and 5th in my age group.  No medal or ribbon for me.

A few months later, I did a small community 10K at the Rose Bowl.  On the second lap of the race, to my own amazement, I took the lead.  Me, with a police motorcycle escort! I was ecstatic, feeling like a Khalid Khannouchi or a Paula Radcliffe.  I looked over my shoulder and saw I had 200 meters on everyone else, and I actually slowed my pace, checking to make sure I had enough in reserve if I needed to kick at the end.  Everyone else faded (it was a hot day), and for the one and surely only time in my life, I felt tape across my chest.  I won the race — in a very pedestrian time of 40:59, more than two minutes slower than my PR.  I got a medal and a ribbon (alas, no prize money). I was very proud, even if I had only defeated a grand total of fewer than fifty rivals.

The point?  In life — and real life is a lot like running — whether or not you win or place is as much about who you are competing against as it is about your own efforts.  (Good thing God doesn’t work that way!) That may sound positively Darwinian, and to compare road racing to grading will no doubt cause some of my readers to splutter in indignation.  But when it comes to grants, scholarships, jobs, prize money, and everything else, we work and study and compete in community.   Grades ought to do more than reflect an individual student’s mastery of the subject; grades should also reflect where that student ranks in relation to his or her peers.  Mind you, it’s not an either/or, but a both/and.  I would never use purely comparative grading, as that might encourage a conspiracy of mediocrity among my students ("Hey, guys, let’s all write equally sloppy papers").   Individual understanding of the material is vitally important, but that factor is only part of the final grade — the other part is designed to let the student know where it is that they stand relative to their friends, colleagues, and, in the final analysis, fellow competitors.

I’ve developed this policy over fifteen years of college teaching, and am accustomed to defending it.  But if you don’t like it, have at it in the comments section.

Note to Col Steve:  I’ll answer your question in an upcoming post.

Quote Meme

Posted on by

Here’s a blogging meme for you:  What quotation, from any source other than Shakespeare or the Bible, most resonates with you today?  What quotation most resonated with you in your teenage years?

When I was a teenager, my favorite quote (it was in my high school yearbook) was from Thoreau:

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Today, my favorite at age 39 is on my office wall:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

–Philo of Alexandria

Share in the comments or at your own blogs.

UPDATE:  I forgot my other contemporary favorite:

Christians have never dealt well with the inner darkness of the redeemed.

– Walter Wink

Ain’t that the truth.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged

One more on men, self-control, and common grace

Posted on by

The comments below July 7′s post on biology and male accountability continue to be impassioned.  I finished that post this way:

It would be absurd to deny that many young men are aroused by the sight of an attractive woman wearing revealing clothing.  What pro-feminists deny is that women are somehow responsible for male arousal.  A girl in a mini-skirt is no more responsible for her classmate’s lust than the barista at Starbucks is for my full bladder!  I have as much control over where my eyes linger as I do over what I choose to drink; whatever physiological reactions I experience as the result of either activity (drinking coffee, ogling) are my responsibility and mine alone. While in other fora we can have long and interesting discussions about dress codes and "appropriateness", pro-feminist men ought to be adamant that whatever the imperious demands of our flesh, the human will is stronger still.

My emphatic final sentence has generated some satisfying discussion both here and elsewhere.  It even ended up getting dragged into a discussion on same-sex marriage, not something I would have anticipated!

I’ve been thinking about why it is that so many folks, both men and women (see Jen’s comments below the post) are convinced that the male sexual drive is this extraordinary, uncontrollable force.  In my women’s studies classes, we call it the "myth of male weakness."  The "myth" part is the notion that men are less capable of self-control than women, and that the insatiable demands of the male libido will invariably trump the sound judgment of the average man.  It’s a myth that both sexes frequently buy into, albeit for different reasons.

A belief in the "myth of male weakness" benefits men in an obvious way: it allows us to avoid being fully accountable for our actions.  When we cheat, or when we get hooked on Internet porn, or when are distracted by an attractive woman during class or Mass, we construct a false victim narrative for ourselves. "I couldn’t help it", we say in the aftermath of still another exasperating or heartbreaking betrayal.  Men often claim, wrongly, that they are victims in one of two ways, or both at once: we are victims of biological impulses that overwhelm our judgment, and we are victims of "loose women" who deliberately tempt us beyond the point of no return.   Sadly, this is a satisfying narrative for many men — it allows us to avoid taking full responsibility,and forces women to be the "gatekeepers" who regulate our sexual activity.

Of course,some women are deeply attached to this false narrative as well. A woman who believes in the myth of male weakness may mistakenly believe that it offers her — and other women — a special kind of power.   If you genuinely believe men are weak, you may believe that women have a right to use that weakness in order to get what they want and need.   A woman who is an artful and manipulative gatekeeper may be able to get all sorts of things from men, and far too many young girls are raised and encouraged to be experts at taking advantage of the myth of male weakness.  It actually offers little for women, of course.  In a society where men are taught to see barely pubescent women as the most desirable, over the course of her lifetime a woman who relies on her sexual attractiveness for her status will see her power diminish with each passing year.

I note that for many of my women students, believing in the myth of male weakness is less about an opportunity to manipulate and more about self-protection.  So many of my female students have been raised to believe that "men only want one thing" and that "you can’t trust a man" and "men are guilty until proven innocent".  Many of them learned these lessons from both moms and dads, parents who were anxious to protect their daughters.  After all, many parents reason that a cynical and suspicious girl is less vulnerable than a starry-eyed romantic who believes that most men of any age are capable of regulating their impulses! 

If you’re raised to believe in the discourse of male weakness, it’s an enormous challenge to try and unlearn it.   The evidence that it isn’t a myth at all, but a verifiable biological reality, seems overwhelming! The number of men who seem genuinely capable of living lives of integrity often seems so small, and it’s easy to believe that they are exceptions to the norm.  (I run into this all the time: folks either assume I’m lying when I talk about my ability to exercise self-control, or that my libido must be unusually low.  No "real man", particularly no real young man, could have a will strong enough to trump his desires — every time.)  But the fact that it’s a challenge to unlearn this doesn’t mean it’s impossible.  At its best the feminist project has always been about challenging both men and women to move beyond the familiar and to consider the possibility that we can transcend culturally imposed limitations.

I do believe that the power to control my eyes, actions, and even thoughts is a gift of grace.  My story is clear: before I became a Christian, I didn’t exercise much in the way of self-restraint in any area of my life.  To paraphrase the famous lines from the James Dean film, if someone asked me what I was addicted to in my youth, I would reply "Whaddya got?"  When I was "born again" a number of years ago, I became aware for the first time that I had this God-given ability to make good choices.  My urges and impulses did not vanish overnight, but the power — the wonder-working power — to regulate and restrict and redirect — was within my grasp.

I’m also a believer in what Christians call "common grace", the notion that to one degree or another all humans are given the strength to resist sin, even if they don’t share a faith in Christ.  Heck, even Calvin (not known for his belief in the power of the unaided human will) acknowledged that "common grace" extended to all.  Most of the modern understanding of common grace comes from the marvelous Dutch Calvinist Abraham Kuyper, whose work is nicely summarized (and expanded) in a delightful little book by my friend Richard Mouw.   This is not a theology blog, of course.  My point is this: the ability that we have to regulate our sexual desires is, I believe, a gift of that "common grace" that is given to all, not merely the "saving grace" that comes to the believers in Christ.  Men in many cultures, of many religions or none at all, have shown the ability to control their sexual impulses.  Though I did not learn to do so until I became a Christian, I am convinced that becoming a believer in Jesus is not a prerequisite for a man to develop and use his will to trump the demands of his body.

The battle against the "myth of male weakness" is perhaps the most important one that pro-feminist men can fight.  We must lead by example, matching our public rhetoric and our private behavior.  In ways big and small, we need to challenge other men to rethink their own accountability, and to take responsibility for what they do with their penises, their hands, their eyes, and even their thoughts.  The goal is not to instill guilt or shame; the goal is to empower men to realize that they have a power and a control that they may never have realized that they had.  And though taking responsibility is sometimes hard and painful, it can also be immensely liberating.

As and As — short note on blood types and grades

Posted on by

So, I’ve been experimenting with the "blood type" diet.  I’m not trying to lose a significant amount of weight, mind you.  But I am tired of feeling tired so much of the time.  Part of the answer lies in getting more sleep, but part of it surely lies in eating better!  According to this book, peanut butter and coffee are both good for me (I’m an A+ blood type).  Given that those two items are my two staples, I’m very pleased.

My summer classes are going well, though I regret not having office hours in which to meet with my students.  In my women’s history class, I passed back a batch of papers today, and included my explanation of my grading ideas.  It’s attached here: students_often_ask_me_about_the_criteria_i_use_in_grading.doc   Yes, I give more Cs than Bs, more Bs than As.

Invariably, students who get lower than an A ask me "what’s wrong with my paper?"  I always reply that a grade lower than an A is not evidence of wrong-doing.  Students think a teacher should start out with a presumption of an A, and deduct points for errors. But I start out my grading with a presumption of a C, of averageness, and then look for signs that this paper is more distinguished than the others to which it is compared. Bs and As are only given to papers that exceed the expectations.  The C is not a punishment, but an acknowledgement of requirements fulfilled.

I always ask my students "In a class of 40, would you rather be one of five As or one of forty, or does it matter?"  Some students say it doesn’t matter, but most tend to have that pleasantly competitive streak that would strongly prefer the former.  That’s how I always felt as well.  Grades ought to mean something, and in that — if nothing else — I am decidedly old school.

The real meaning of modesty: “coveting” and “kosmios”

Posted on by

Looks like another hot and humid day in Southern California.  I have the same classroom for all three of my summer courses, and it is exceedingly well air-conditioned.  Many of my poor students who dress for the heat end up shivering in the freon blast.  I’ve always suggested that they layer a down jacket over swimwear — the only way to be truly prepared for the unpredictable nature of our college’s ancient heating and cooling system.

I’m thinking more about modesty this morning.  I wrote about the topic last Thursday, primarily in response to the pastoral letter from the Catholic Bishop of Amarillo on women, dress, and attending mass.

I never finished the koine Greek classes I started, but I do know enough to know that the word the New Testament uses  that is usually translated as "modesty" is kosmios.  Kosmios generally means "orderly" or "proper", neither of which are helpful words in clarifying skirt length!  Given the subjectivity of what it is that different cultures and different individuals regard as "proper", it’s hard to find evidence anywhere in the New Testament that suggests a clear standard for how much skin women were to reveal.

But one aspect of modesty is well-covered (pun intended) in the New Testament: the importance of avoiding displays of wealth. In fact, the New Testament only explicitly defines immodesty not in terms of revealing flesh but in terms of ostentatious displays of property.

1 Timothy 2:9: I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes…

Gold, pearls, and expensive clothes are set up as the opposite of kosmios; the decency and propriety here is economic rather than sexual. 

1 Peter 3:3-4:  Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.

These are the two most explicit references to how women ought to dress in the entire New Testament.  In neither instance is there any evidence of concern with dress as a symbol of sexual impropriety.  In both cases, the emphasis is on avoiding crass displays of wealth — particularly gold and expensive outfits.

But Bishop Yanta didn’t preach a sermon based on the New Testament understanding of modesty. Had he done so, he would have found no support for his position in the use of the Greek kosmios.  What he did is what so many folks across the theological spectrum regularly do: he took a word that had one meaning in the first century A.D. and reconfigured it to fit his own contemporary political agenda.  I’ll be the first to admit that many of us on the religious left do this; we are as sure that we know what the bible means when it speaks of "justice" as the right is when the bible speaks of "modesty."  In many cases, we’re likely flat-out wrong.

It’s telling that most churches in America are so attentive to issues of sexual propriety and deliberately unconcerned with economic display.  Imagine if Bishop Yanta had had the courage to preach a truly biblical homily about modesty!  Building on 1 Timothy and 1 Peter, he could have asked his congregants not to wear gold, platinum, or diamond jewelry to Mass!  He could have preached against the sin of wearing designer labels, or of pulling into the church parking lot in a 7-series BMW.   Such a sermon would have been far more closely based on the original use of kosmios!

In the comments below last Thursday’s post, we’ve been debating back and forth as to whether or not women have a responsibility to dress themselves in a way that will "protect" men from lusting.  For both biblical and psychological reasons, I’ve argued "no".  But for the sake of discussion, let’s suppose I grant the conservative case that women are at least partially responsible for the lust their bodies arouse.  If that’s true, is not the well-dressed rich man equally responsible for the envy he arouses with his Rolex?

Bishop Yanta quoted the Commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife". If you read his sermon, that’s the only kind of coveting he refers to.  But Exodus 20:17 reads:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Bishop Yanta is engaged in the classic modern conservative mistake: elevating sexual sin to a level of greater concern than economic injustice.  The Commandment makes it clear that coveting one’s neighbor’s wealth (symbolized by house and donkey) is as great an offense to God as coveting his spouse.   In modern terms, there is no theological difference between staring longingly at someone’s jewelry or brand-new car and staring longingly at the exposed body of the woman in front of you at the altar rail.  Both are acts of coveting — but the good bishop, like most theological conservatives in this country, comes close to giving a free pass to those of us who want to indulge our materialist fantasies.   The longing for someone else’s body is labeled the sin of lust, while the longing for someone else’s car is refashioned (in the modern American heresy) into praiseworthy ambition!  That’s just rotten exegesis, Bishop Yanta.   If you’re going to preach on kosmios, know what the word means!  And if you’re going to preach on coveting, preach the entire commandment, my brother!

As some unknown wag put it, the great conservative American mistake is to suggest that "the sins of the pelvis are greater than the sins of the pocketbook."  But a close reading of either testament of Scripture suggests that our forefathers and foremothers in faith considered the display of wealth to be at least as egregious as the display of the body, if not more so.  And they considered the longing for material possessions to be as sinful as the longing for one’s neighbor’s partner.  Though a few churches (like the Mennonites) generally preach a holistic understanding of modesty, one that embraces both the sexual and the economic, too many leaders are like the bishop of Amarillo: obsessed with the thongs that creep up over the backsides and out of the low-rise jeans of young female parishioners, and blind to the watches and rings that adorn the fingers of their parents.

Power of Kabbalah video finished

Posted on by

Some eight months ago, I posted about a one-day trip out to Boston to take part in the shooting of a video about the Kabbalah Centre.  I’ve been a student of Kabbalah for a couple of years now, and I have found it has enhanced and enriched my faith life as a Christian.  I don’t blog much about the intersection of Kabbalah and Christianity because, rather obviously, my blogging interests revolve largely around Christianity and feminism.  I’m also aware that the "media hype" around the Kabbalah Centre (and the celebrities who study there) makes it difficult for people to avoid being dismissive of the valuable work that is done within that community.

Anyhow, the video is finally done.  Here’s the link.  It runs about 24 minutes, and you can stream it or download a higher quality version.  I appear a couple of times in the program, as do many folks who are close and dear to my wife and to me.  Though it may raise as many questions as it answers, if you’re curious about Kabbalah, taking less than half an hour to watch this video may be well worth your while.

And because this is a blog that quite a few folks read (for which I am grateful) let me say the obvious: my opinions on this blog, in all of my posts, are my own.  I’m fairly certain that my words only very occasionally represent the views of my family, Pasadena City College, All Saints Episcopal Church, the Kabbalah Centre, the Team Blarney running club, The Matilde Mission, the Cal Alumni Association, or any other organization with which I am affiliated.  If you don’t like what I’ve got to say, blame me — not the communities in which I work, worship, study, volunteer and exercise.

And in some rare Saturday night linkage, check out what Amanda’s got to say about the Ukrainian bride trip I posted about earlier this week.  Also, read what Lynn has to say about men, modesty and self-control: topics I’ve been on a lot lately — and will be addressing yet again soon.

Friday Random Ten: Bastille Day edition, and not a French song to be found

Posted on by

This will be the only post today, though I’ll be checking in from time to time.

Can you figure out which two of these songs are my wife’s? 

Three of these tracks are very, very special to me.  #1 is my favorite "using" song from my final years "out there" in the mid-1990s.  #7 came out just as I came home to Christ, and it was the theme song for my first year as a new Christian. #8 was written about the Spanish Civil War, but it’s as fine a Brit Pop anthem about personal transformation as I know.  I blast it in the car often.

1.  "Don’t Follow", Alice in Chains
2.  "This is the Sea", The Waterboys
3.  "Secret Lovers", Atlantic Starr
4.  "The Letter", Macy Gray
5.  "Don’t Tear Me Up", Nelson Norwood
6.  "Nightswimming", REM
7.  "Martyrs and Thieves", Jennifer Knapp
8.  "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next", Manic Street Preachers
9.  "If You Let Me Stay", Terrence Trent D’Arby
10.  "Road Rage", Catatonia

A good bishop gets it dead wrong: more on women’s clothing, male desire, and God’s gift of self-control

Posted on by

Continuing our theme of modesty, male weakness, and women’s clothing, Jill at Feministe links to this unfortunate letter by Bishop John Yanta of the Catholic Diocese of Amarillo, Texas: Modesty Starts with Purification of the Heart.  Here goes:

This time of the year, I (and am sure many of you also) hear complaints about a lack of respect and reverence for the house of God, the sacredness of the Lord’s presence in the liturgy, and lack of respect for others and the lack of consciousness of the battle for purity in which the opposite sex finds itself even while attending Sunday Mass.

Immodesty in dress is governed by two citations from God’s Law:

1) The Ninth Commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Exodus 20:17);

2) Jesus said: “Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28).

To live our daily Faith as children of God (baptism), disciples of Jesus, and temples of the Holy Spirit, we are faced with moral choices constantly, many times a day. Conscience can either make a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law, or on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them (CCC: Catechism of the Catholic Church #1799).

Dressing or putting on one’s clothes is a moral act and wearing them is a moral act. There are different appropriate modes of dress for different occasions, e.g. in the privacy of our home, with our spouse only or with our children in our home, at work or school, in mixed company, at the lake or swimming pool, grocery shopping, at church, etc.

I don’t know where the good bishop got his theology degree.  But his choices from Scripture do not support his thesis! Both the Commandment and the passage from Matthew 5 address coveting and lust; both place the onus for avoiding lust solely on the one who is lusting, not on the object of the desire! 

Where, oh where in Scripture does Jesus say: "Women, attend to your dress that you may keep your bodies concealed and not distract your brothers"?  Did I miss that verse?  Is it perhaps in one of the Gnostic Gospels?

Jill, writing from a secular perspective, does a decent job of fisking Bishop Yanta’s letter.  But it’s vital that Christian men reject the bishop’s shoddy exegesis.  (I’m still enough of a Catholic to feel awkward about criticizing someone who carries the crosier).  What I find so compelling about the issue of lust in both the Old and the New Testaments is that women are not held accountable for male distraction and desire.  While secular culture does expect the male flesh to be weak, Christ Himself calls us to personal holiness — and that holiness is in no way, shape, or form contingent upon the behavior of even the most scantily clad of our fellow congregants.   The bishop quotes a homily given by Father Dominic Mary; that priest opined:

“To knowingly and intentionally dress like this (scantily) is sinful, and can be even seriously sinful, because one can become a temptation to sin for other people. We are all weak and can easily fall into many sins of impurity by someone else’s immodesty."

Let’s hear the Scripture to go with that assertion, Father Dominic!  I know, it’s dreadfully Protestant to demand Bible verses, but for heaven’s sake, the good father’s inverting the whole Gospel!  Bishop Yanta reaches with a reference to Galatians 5:26, which refers to "provoking another" (the only two words from the passage Yanta quotes).  But read in context, it’s particularly inappropriate to pull from Paul.   Let’s add in the four previous verses:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

The warning against "provoking" refers to being "conceited", while the previous verses (the bold is obviously my own) better capture the Christian case that to live in the Spirit is to have conquered one’s passions and to have the capacity for self-control.   Paul ought not be misused to hold women accountable for a male refusal to embrace this vital gift of the Spirit.

Sometimes, I hear my fellow Christians quoting Christ’s warning against "causing another to stumble."  I’ve often heard that verse used to justify insisting upon public modesty; many a woman in conservative churches has been explicitly warned that her breasts or legs, if not adequately covered, might lead a man to stumble.  But we’re off course if we use that famous line in this regard; Jesus uses the phrase only in regards to small children — not to adults:

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.

Well, unless a woman can be convinced that the grown man staring down her blouse counts as one  of the "little ones" to which the Lord refers, Mark 9:42 ain’t much use in making a case for women covering up.

Am I suggesting that we ought not have any standards for churchgoing attire?   Well, I’m a shorts and t-shirt guy myself.  I know better than to confuse corporate attire with genuine reverence, though I have no problem with those whose sense of worshipfulness is heightened by putting on their "Sunday best."   (On matters like this, I think Paul’s word in Romans 14:2 is applicable — to each his own.)  But whether the woman across the aisle from me is young and comely or wizened by age, whether she is in a miniskirt or wearing hijab, my eyes and my thoughts are still under my control — a control that is one of the promised gifts of grace.   I will not be tempted beyond what I can bear, and if it seems I am, the fault is mine — and mine alone. 

I’m in an ornery mood today.  Perhaps it’s the heat.  Perhaps it’s lack of sleep.  (Perhaps it’s  as my Kabbalist friends say, and starting today we’ve entered the three most negative weeks of the year, culminating on Tisha B’Av.  But that’s another topic.)   But honestly, I’m angry when my fellow Christians, men in positions of great leadership, seriously distort the radical message of our faith.   If our faith is so shallow that it can be rocked to its core by a bra-strap or a bikini, then we need to reconsider our receptiveness to grace itself.

“They had lied to me so many times”: reflecting on writing about the intersection of faith and sex

Posted on by

So that whole post I had up yesterday about racism and Zinedine Zidane?  Gone.  Typepad had their wonkiest day yesterday since I joined them in January 2004, and I’m immensely annoyed.  Fortunately, nothing else seems to have been lost, though I know that this blog was inaccessible much of yesterday afternoon and evening. (UPDATE: A kind reader, Amber, recovered the post for me via Bloglines; it is up again below.  The comments, however, were lost).

This morning’s poem, immediately below, has me reflecting on the intersection of faith and sexuality.   I wrote below that since my college days (where I alternated between bouts of promiscuity and a fairly serious exploration of the celibate life of the priesthood), I’ve always considered two subjects to be of paramount interest: sex and God.  The rest, indeed, is just commentary.

But I’ve been dissatisfied,  sometimes deeply so, with the state of contemporary Christian literature on the subject of sex.  I’ve been disappointed in my own writing as well.  And that disappointment was crystallized for me in a conversation I had a few months ago with a young male Christian student.  We were talking about sexuality and ethics; he is (like so many young unmarried Christians) intensely interested in discovering what activities and behaviors are ultimately acceptable for someone in his condition, and what aren’t.  He was asking me about my own adult conversion experience (he’s a "cradle Christian") and he said something that made me very uncomfortable, even as I recognized it was true:

"Dr. Schwyzer, I know you’re a believer.  But I get the sense from you that you had more fun when you weren’t."

Ouch, ouch, and triple ouch!  It’s been a long time since I’ve been so completely nailed by someone half my age!  Of course, this young man was only pointing out what some of my blog readers have pointed out: that I spend a lot of time writing impassioned mini-sermons on the virtues of restriction, restraint, and self-control.   Those are indeed noble virtues, mind, but they are only virtues I’ve embraced recently.  And it does seem a bit, well, hypocritical to be encouraging those of high school and college age to live up to a standard I was only able to meet after hitting my thirties.

When this young man made the comment to me, it was not in response to some ribald tale about my past.  I don’t share names and numbers and details; I don’t "tell stories".  Indeed, I’m conscious not to spend too much time reflecting even privately  on the specifics of my past.  All of that energy needs to flow towards she who is my present and my future!  And yes, that present is happy and exciting.

But the stark truth is that even after my conversion experience, I sometimes have a hard time summoning up regret for the decisions and actions of my youth.  Yes, I regret the pain I caused — three divorces being only a small part of it — but I would be lying if I said that I didn’t also have a whole bunch of fun too.  And somehow, even when I don’t get into details, even when I choose my words with exceptional care, the sense that I thoroughly enjoyed my "years of sin" comes across loud and clear to those with whom I work.  That’s humbling and frustrating.

There’s very little honest Christian writing about sex, even now.  The growing body of "pro-chastity, pro-abstinence" literature is impressive.  It’s often eloquent and winsome.  I have great respect for the life and work of folks like, say, Bethany Torode and Lauren Winner.  Both women, in different ways, make faithful and compelling cases for traditional sexual morality and for the central importance of family life.  But when it comes to the actual details of sex (or the details of how an unmarried person is supposed to refrain) Torode and Winner, like their less eloquent counterparts in Christian publishing, are silent.

My dear fellow evangelicals: we’ve done a great job of publishing 64,898 articles and books on why folks should wait until marriage.  We’ve made the case for saying "No" six ways to Sunday, and we’ve poured time and money and effort into doing so.  The Christian publishing world does not need a single new book on abstinence or purity (I may regret having said that).   And we don’t need vague paeans to how wonderful married sex is when we all do a nice job of following "God’s plan" for our bodies.  It’s all been written and it’s all been said, and in the end, 90% of it is pretty thin stuff indeed.

Sometimes, I am an annoying blogger: I write these pat little posts where I present a problem and solve it with a short and impassioned homily, usually on the virtues of kindness, self-restraint, or greater acceptance.  Some folks seem to like that sort of writing, but honestly, at times I think I’m about as deep as a thimble.  What I want to do is find a way to write more honestly about the intersection of faith and sexuality. I don’t want to find still another way to make a case for "waiting", nor do I want to make merely another case from the progressive side that pre-marital sex and devout Christian faith are comfortably compatible.  I know how to do apologetics, and I could write a post from either perspective easily, but it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter.  And this morning, what the heart of the matter seems to be is this: how is human sexuality, both in its transcendent joys and its glorious messy physicalities, a reflection of our relationship with God?  And how can we begin to talk and share more honestly about how our faith is lived out in our fantasies and in our actions, in backseats and bedrooms? 

We Christians do a great job of making the case for "NO!"  But what, exactly, is the true nature of the "YES?"  What does it look like, taste like, feel like? 

This morning’s short poem from Sharon Olds describes (presumably) her own first adolescent sexual experience.  And as a teacher and a youth leader,her opening lines haunt me:

I knew little, and what I knew
I did not believe – they had lied to me
so many times…

We who teach and parent and lead would do well to reflect on our own words, and whether or not we too are in complicit in spreading and reinforcing those lies.

Thursday Short Poem: Olds’ “First Sex”

Posted on by

Regular readers ought to know that I was raised with broad tastes in poetry.  Throughout my childhood — and even now — my mother read aloud to my brother and me.  I grew up on everything from Millay to Jeffers to  Milosz to Tennyson to Adrienne Rich to W.H. Auden; I later developed my own passions for modern poets as diverse as W.S. Merwin, Nikki Giovanni and Ana Castillo.  My mother and I discovered poets together (like Szymborska and Kooser), and she still suggests occasional Thursday Short Poems.

In college I remember deciding that in the end, there were only two fundamentally interesting subjects to me: sex and God.  Two decades on, I suppose I still feel that way; it certainly explains my academic background in medieval ecclesiastical history and contemporary gender studies.  And as a lover of poetry too shy to display his own work, it’s not surprising that the Divine and the Erotic are two regular themes in the poems I select.  Today’s poem, by the well-known Berkeley poet Sharon Olds, falls into this latter category.

Some of my poetry choices are rare and obscure, some are commonly known — today’s poem likely falls into the latter category.  No living American writer "writes the body" in all of its gorgeous, hot, messy, fragile gloriousness than does Olds.  Though love and experience teach one a great deal about Eros, and prayer and Scripture teach one a great deal about God, sometimes only poetry can lead me to a basic, fundamental truth about either.   

The first time I read this poem, I said "Uh huh, that’s right.  That’s so very right." I won’t say more than that.  (Yes, it’s from a woman’s perspective, and I’m a heterosexual man, but no male writer I’ve ever read captures sexuality as well as Olds does.)

First Sex

(for J.)

I knew little, and what I knew
I did not believe – they had lied to me
so many times, so I just took it as it
came, his naked body on the sheet,
the tiny hairs curling on his legs like
fine, gold shells, his sex
harder and harder under my palm
and yet not hard as a rock his face cocked
back as if in terror, the sweat
jumping out of his pores like sudden
trails from the tiny snails when his knees
locked with little clicks and under my
hand he gathered and shook and the actual
flood like milk came out of his body, I
saw it glow on his belly, all they had
said and more, I rubbed it into my
hands like lotion, I signed on for the duration.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged