Monthly Archives: September 2006

In defense of sluggish newbies: a rant about running

Posted on by

Here’s an article from MSN that really bugged me: How Sluggish Newbies Ruined the Marathon.  Written by Gabriel Sherman, it begins:

Among autumn’s sporting rituals there is one tradition that fills me with mounting dread: the return of marathon season. If you’ve been to the gym or attended a cocktail party recently, you know what I mean. Chances are you’ve bumped into a newly devoted runner who’s all too happy to tell you about his heart-rate monitor and split times and the looming, character-building challenge of running 26.2 miles. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a slovenly couch potato who abhors exercise. I’m an avid runner with six marathons under my New Balance trainers. But this growing army of giddy marathon rookies is so irksome that I’m about ready to retire my racing shoes and pick up bridge.

Well, I’ve got eleven marathons and two 50Ks under my feet, and I’m not irked. Here’s what Sherman finds so troubling:

Today, the great majority of marathon runners set out simply to finish. That sets the bar so low that everyone comes out a winner. Big-city marathons these days feel more like circuses than races, with runners of variable skill levels—some outfitted in wacky costumes—crawling toward the finish line. The marathon has transformed from an elite athletic contest to something closer to sky diving or visiting the Grand Canyon. When a newbie marathoner crosses the finish line, he’s less likely to check his time than to shout, "Only 33 more things to do before I die!"

Bold emphasis is mine.  Oh, the horror of having everyone feel good! Oh, the horror of people who took seven hours to finish feeling as if they have accomplished something!  What’s next?   Overweight people might find love and sexual fulfillment without feeling guilty about cellulite? 

Sherman continues with this incredibly annoying rant:

Running was once a purist’s sport—you needed only to lace up your shoes and hop out the door. No longer. During a recent run in Central Park, I dodged groups of marathon trainees festooned with heart-rate monitors and space-age breathable fabrics that looked like they’d emerged from some NASA lab. Along with this profusion of gear, a constellation of coaches, massage therapists, chiropractors, and other gurus now peddle services to the marathon masses. In New York, the Bliss Spa offers the "Cold Feet" treatment, a one-hour procedure that "uses alternating hot and cold therapies to help circulate and deflate aching, swollen feet and puffy ankles." Two groups that Bliss says deserves this kind of pampering: marathon runners and pregnant women.

Hey, he even worked in some misogyny!  Marathoners aren’t real athletes; they’re really just like pregnant women.  Is that crack supposed to make men doubt the wisdom of training for a marathon?

Gabriel Sherman doesn’t list his times, but I’ll happily list mine.  I’ve done nine road and two trail marathons.   On the road, I’ve never failed to break four hours.  My worst time was a 3:57; my best a 3:13:51.  (Here’s the proof, scroll down to the 30-34 age group, which is what I was in when I ran the time).  That time put me in the well within the top 10% of all finishers.  In my thirties, I’ve also run a 18:44 5K and a 38:49 10K.  Those times may not make me a prize-winner, but they’re certainly in the range of being solidly competitive.

I say this not to brag, but to make it clear that I’m not a "sluggish newbie."  And I am not in the least troubled by the slow trotters who make up the majority of marathoners these days.  I don’t see why Sherman ought to be troubled, either.  If we’re faster, then these folks are behind us.  It’s not as if they’re in the way, blocking our path to a water stop at mile 18!   If I run a 3:50 marathon (which is what I generally do these days, largely because I don’t do speed training any more), I can get home and shower and put my feet up while the slower folks are still out on the course.  And hell, my hat is off to them, as Sherman’s should be.  I only suffer for three hours and change — the newbies to whom he refers are out there hurting for twice that long.

I’ve spent years and years around very competitive and talented athletes.  I’ve worked with cross-country coaches and ultra-marathoners; I have friends who have qualified for the Olympic trials in distance events.  To a man and to a woman, I’ve never heard them sneer at the slower recreational athletes who only long to finish. Real runners don’t judge and condemn others.  Our reasons for running are myriad, and running to set a personal best time is never the only, or even the best, reason to run.   If some folks want to trot and sweat for six hours so that they can say "I ran a marathon because I’ve always wanted to", how does it diminish my accomplishment in running the same race significantly faster?  Heck, Sherman ought to love the slow ones — they make those of us who do run faster look better, as we finish in a noticeably higher percentile as a result.  I’ll likely never run 3:13 again, but even these days, I finish in the top quarter of all male finishers most of the time.  That’s due less to my own skills than to the plodders and the pounders who walk and jog for hour after hour.  I’m grateful for them.

Running has brought me tremendous joy and fulfillment.  It is a source of incredible pleasure in my life.  I judge myself not by my weight, or whether my six-pack is defined, or by my latest time, but by the amount of delight I take in my workouts.  I try and bring that peace and happiness home from the roads and the trails, and I try to make it manifest in my relationships with others.  Running is like that for many people, whether or not they ever run a marathon, or whether or not they ever break four, five, or even seven hours.  Gabriel Sherman ought to know that.  As a fellow runner, I’m deeply disappointed in his attitude.  He doesn’t speak for anyone I know.

Oh, and he wears New Balance too.  The only thing worse would be Nike.  Asics or Saucony or Montrail, baby.

A long post about resurgent Calvinism and gender roles

Posted on by

The sublime Jenell Paris has a column up this week at Generous Orthodoxy, commenting on this recent piece in Christianity Today: Young, Restless, Reformed.  The CT article is about the resurgence of Calvinism in the American church, particularly its emergence in traditionally "Wesleyan-Arminian" churches. 

For those of you who forgot your Protestantism 101, Calvinists are great believers in unmerited grace and the absence of free will.  They generally promote the notion of God’s total sovereignty, and pre-destination (the idea that some, and only some, are "elected" for salvation); the "Wesleyan-Arminian" crowd (where I usually find myself), tends to be much more optimistic about our ability to make choices and exercise free will.  It’s an old debate, the sort that gets young seminary students all worked up.  I’ve taken part in those debates many a time, and I’m done with it.  No more arguing about TULIP for me.  My Jesus, He died for all. (No theological doctrine in the entire world makes me angrier than the one symbolized by the "L" in TULIP. If you don’t know what it refers to, don’t worry.)

Anyhoo, the article talks about why so many folks who grew up in Arminian traditions (like the Southern Baptists) have begun to embrace the colder and more cerebral world of Calvinism (also called the "Reformed" tradition with a capital "R").  It makes clear — something Jenell draws upon in her commentary — that at least some folks are attracted to what they see as Calvinism’s particular concern for the "right ordering" of gender roles.  The CT article quotes a young Laura Watkins, who was raised an evangelical who believed in free will, but who now embraces the Reformed understanding:

An enlarged view of God’s authority changed the way she viewed evangelism, worship, and relationships. Watkins articulated how complementary roles for men and women go hand in hand with this type of Calvinism. "I believe God is sovereign and has ordered things in a particular way," she explained. Just as "he’s chosen those who are going to know him before the foundations of the earth," she said, "I don’t want to be rebelling against the way God ordered men and women to relate to one another."

Jenell’s commentary is brilliant.  She writes:

It seems to me that this type of Reformed theology helps gird up denominations such as Southern Baptist that have been under fire for their subordination of women.  Reformed theology, broadly speaking, emphasizes God’s foreknowledge and predestination, the glory and power of God, and salvation by grace alone, and honors Calvin’s legacy.  But, in addition, this particular branch of Reformed thought also entrenches the subordination of women with doctrine and Bible study…

In this situation,  I think theology is masking a more insidious sociological practice – the sacrilizing and strengthening of the dehumanization of half the population.

Jenell’s spot on, though in order to assess that, you need some familiarity with theology and with contemporary divisions in American evangelical Protestantism.

I don’t think Calvinism is inherently hostile to egalitarianism.  Many Reformed churches do ordain women, such as the splendid CRC.  But the kind of Calvinism that I see ascendant today is not merely concerned with making a point about just how pickin’ amazin’ grace really is  It’s deeply concerned with the "right ordering" of society, and part of that right ordering is, as Jenell points out, a very strict understanding of gender roles as complementary.  It’s a "separate spheres" doctrine that limits expressions of overt power to men, and urges women to accept uncritically male "headship" of the family.

I’ve known many young men and women like Laura Watkins.  Some are "cradle Christians", others are converts.  They sometimes pass through the doors of places like All Saints and Pasadena Mennonite, two communities that are committed to the notion of egalitarianism and women’s full participation in the life of the church. But they are too hungry for certainty to linger long in a place where ambiguity is acknowledged.  They are too uncomfortable with flexible and shifting roles for men and women.  They feel safer belonging to a community where their biology will be seen as integral to their destiny. 

Too many young women today grow up with a conflicting set of messages. On the one hand, they are encouraged to be academically successful; they are encouraged to be interested in enduring careers; they are encouraged to prioritize personal ambition over developing domestic skills.  On the other hand, the old messages about a "woman’s place" are still with us; young women are still encouraged to prioritize their physical attractiveness, and still urged to marry and have kids "before it’s too late."  Even for the wise and the brave, it can be exhausting trying to please all of the competing constituencies that demand so much!

While egalitarian Christianity, informed by Scripture and secular feminism, asks us to rethink all of our sex roles in order to create new opportunities for both men and women, this resurgent Calvinism (with its tremendous emphasis on obedience and gratitude) urges both men and women to accept a traditional understanding of male-female relations.  And for many young women, that kind of unilateral submission is immensely comforting because it appears to resolve the dissonance created by society’s mixed messages.   If after years and years of pressure to "be all that you can be", you suddenly accept that your one great role is to be a wife and a mother, that may be perceived as tremendously liberating! The liberation doesn’t lie in gaining any actual freedom to, it comes in the form of a freedom from.  A strict understanding of what it means to be men and women grants us freedom from the difficult and often overwhelming task of constructing new, healthier models for male and female relationship.  It’s like suddenly being told you don’t have to write a long paper for a difficult class.  All you have to do is grasp one single concept, and you get an A.  The appeal is obvious.

Those of us who call ourselves both feminists and Christians must respond to the challenge posed by our brethren who preach the "separate spheres" teaching.   We live in a time where the heresy of "muscular Christianity" is re-emerging.  We’ve got to persist in offering the egalitarian alternative, one in which a relationship with Christ liberates both men and women to explore their full human potential, a potential unlimited by physiological differences.  But as we do so, and do so joyfully and loudly,we’ve got to acknowledge the hard truth that our way is more difficult and more challenging for many people.  Because we don’t prescribe roles for men and women, the young and the uncertain will often feel lost and confused.  They need mentoring and support, lest we lose them to other communities that promise the sweet certainties of headship and unilateral female submission.

We’ve got work to do, my sisters and my brothers!

Fraternal bragging

Posted on by

It is the right of older brothers to brag.   Oxford University Press recently announced that Philip Schwyzer’s second book,  Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature, is coming out in April 2007.

Should one wish to acquire a copy of his sensational debut text, Literature, Nationalism, and Memory, one may do so here.

The lad has quite surpassed his older brother: two books and two children are two more than I have in either category!  (And as this picture taken a few months ago makes clear, he’s 6’2" to my 6’0"). It is a tribute to our parents and to our own natures that he and I have never been jealous of the other’s accomplishments.  He comments periodically here, and I celebrate his triumphs — and urge folks to buy his books!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged

Home from Chicago

Posted on by

My wife and I have returned from a wonderful weekend in Chicago.  Though we had the excitement of hearing tornado sirens on Friday night (a first for both of us), the weather generally cooperated and we had a terrific visit. I got some good runs in along the lakeshore, and we took many walks merely for the sake of marveling at the architecture.  As someone who loves the Beaux Arts period, I was in bliss! I consider myself a fairly experienced traveler, but I’d never been to Chicago before, so I was glad to "add it to the list."

Of America’s twenty largest cities, I have now visited fifteen: Jacksonville, Columbus, Houston, Philadelphia and Indianapolis await my visit.  (That’s a nice 75% score, but as I run down the list, I realize I’ve got only 24 of the top 50.)  And am I the only person out there who is stunned to learn that Atlanta is not in the top twenty-five? How is it possible that it ranks below Long Beach?  I suppose I make the classic mistake of judging a city’s population by the size of its major airport; clearly an error!

It is turning into a long day.  We got up at 3:00AM Pacific Time to get ourselves to O’Hare, and though I napped a bit on the plane, I’m still pretty beat.  I’m home in time to make it to my night class, but not, alas, my academic senate meeting.  Priorities, priorities, priorities.

More thoughtful blogging returns tomorrow.

Taking a short break

Posted on by

As much as I’m enjoying the various comment threads below my three most recent posts, I’m afrad I’ll have to be away from the blog for the next few days.  I’ll be out of town from tonight until next Monday, and posting will resume on Tuesday the 26th.  I thank you all in advance for keeping the comments section civil.

Before I go, here’s a list of some of the search terms folks used to find this blog in the last 12 hours:

Glenn Sacks not insubtantial lunatic fringe
Saturday sperm donor
male professors dating female students
girls hazing guys
mail order brides for ugly losers
taking responsibility for ourselves not blaming others

Hmm.

A happy equinox and shanah tovah to all!

Sleeping together and sleeping together: a post about beds

Posted on by

First off, do check out the new Carnival of the Feminists at Lingual Tremors.  Let me also recommend Jeff Pack’s fine summary of the Althouse-Valenti-Breasts-Bill blow-up about which I blogged on Monday. And Lauren has a superb post on feminism and attractiveness, well worth a read.

There’s an interesting article in the New York Times about sleeping in the same bed with another person.  The piece notes:

There are thousands of studies on sleep and even more on marriage and relationships, but only a handful on couples sleeping together.

The National Sleep Foundation, a nonprofit group in Washington that supports education and research on sleep and sleep disorders, estimates that 61 percent of Americans share their bed with a significant other. And while the very presence of another person in bed increases the chance of sleep disruption, 62 percent of those polled in the foundation’s annual sleep study said they preferred to bed down with their partner.

I remember as a child being very confused by the euphemism "sleeping together" to refer to sexual intercourse.   Though I had my own room as a kid, there had been a few rare occasions where my brother and I had had to share a bed on family trips.  The idea that sleeping in the same bed could lead to babies — a concept I grasped before I knew much else about human reproduction — was a bit unnerving!   Despite the confusion it generated in my childhood, when talking about two people having sex, I still tend to use the phrase "sleep together" quite often.

Like many of my peers, I became sexually active when I was in high school.  My girlfriend and I were able to find times to be sexual after school or while out on dates, but we both had strict curfews.  We were "sleeping together" in the euphemistic sense without ever having the chance to actually fall asleep side by side in the same bed.  I can remember how excited we both were when she was finally able to come to my family’s ranch in Northern California for a weekend.  Though according to family protocol, the "luggage stays in separate rooms", I was able to sneak into her room and we could fall asleep together.  We’d been a sexually active couple for months before we got to have that experience; frankly, we anticipated sleeping the whole night through in the same bed almost as much as we anticipated having sex!  I’ve heard this from other folks who were sexually active long before they were allowed to spend the night with a partner – the literal "sleeping together" becomes almost as big a deal as the figurative "sleeping together"!

In an odd way, reading this article this morning made me envious of some of my Christian conservative friends who lost their virginity on their wedding nights. After making love for the first time ("making love" is another questionable euphemism), they didn’t have to tear themselves apart and go home.  They "got to sleep with the person they first slept with", and given how rare that experience was in my social circle, it’s one perhaps to be envied!

Having been married four times and having lived with several other partners whom I didn’t marry, I certainly have my opinions on sleeping with someone else in the same bed.  In college, away from parents and their curfews, I spent a lot of time sleeping with others in tiny, narrow, twin beds.   I can remember waking up in someone else’s dorm room on many an occasion, cramped and uncomfortable, usually with one arm and one leg dangling over the side of my temporary partner’s little bed.  We called it the "one night stand dangle", and my friends of both sexes and I often swapped funny horror stories about the contorted positions we had had to get into in order to sleep the night through with another person in a bed designed for one.

In my first two marriages, I had a full-size bed, which seemed terribly luxurious after my spartan college experiences.  In my third marriage, I upgraded to a queen size. Sleeping with one’s lovers in progressively larger beds is part of the narrative of ageing, as far as I can tell!  Besides, at thirty-nine, I recover more slowly today from a "bed cramp" than I did when I was nineteen.

My wife and I today have a lovely big sleigh bed.  And I am very used to having her next to me.   When we spend a night apart, particularly when she is traveling and I am staying home, I miss her presence next to me.  Our bed is large enough so that we don’t have to lie draped around each other like drunken college frosh, but it’s not so big that we can’t instantly sense the other’s presence.  During the week, I tend to be "early to bed, early to rise", which doesn’t fit my wife’s schedule.  She often comes to bed a couple of hours after I’ve turned in.  I’ll admit that I sleep more soundly once she’s beside me.  Even though I can be out cold without her, it’s as if a small part of my unconscious mind is waiting for her; when she (finally!) comes in well after midnight, my body moves to a deeper state of relaxation.  All is right in the world.

My sweet father, who died not quite three months ago, died at home.  He was under hospice care the last few weeks of his life, but he was able to sleep in the same bed as my stepmother all the way to the end.  The last night of his life on earth, he was able to be in the same bed as the woman he loved most.  For his sake and hers, I am so damned grateful that they were able to share that together.  May it be so for all of us.

Place cards and dinner parties

Posted on by

On a completely different topic than what’s been up here lately: seating arrangements at dinner parties.

Growing up, my family regularly had large dinner parties, particularly around holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Fourth of July.  From the time I was a small child, I can remember my mother, aunt, and grandmother carefully discussing who should sit next to whom.  At larger gatherings — which could involve up to 50 guests — charts were sketched on notepads.  It was not uncommon to have long discussions about the best way to arrange everyone, and the seating charts would often go through several drafts.

There were some basic ground rules, the most sacred of which was this: couples were never to be seated together.  Husbands and wives were usually put at separate tables, or at least at opposite ends of the same table.  This was also true for long-time boyfriends and girlfriends; the one exception to the rule was when a member of the family brought a new date to a big gathering.  So as not to overwhelm the newcomer, that person was allowed to sit next to his or her lover.

My mother and grandmother explained to me that one of the functions of dinner parties was to get to know people one didn’t always get a chance to chat with.  "It’s not about you being comfortable, dear", my grandmother said when I complained; "It’s about interacting with new people and making them feel comfortable."  Of course, as in every family, there were a few relatives who were considered especially taxing.  So one of us might volunteer to sit next to Cousin Albert and listen cheerfully to his boring stories and endure his halitosis without comment or complaint.  In return for this heroism, he or she who sat with the difficult one might be encouraged to relax while others handled the usually considerable cleaning-up.  The task of sitting next to the dull and the challenging was always rotated, mind you, and I got my share plenty of times.

This emphasis on "being social" was enormously important.  As a child, my grandmother told me something that left a profound impression on me.  She said that when two couples are riding in an automobile, one could always tell their social class by how they arranged themselves.  "Working class" people, I was told, have the men ride in front and the women in back.  "Middle class" people (the term was one of opprobrium) ride as couples, with husbands and wives sitting together.  The "right way" (the OKOP way) was to divide the couples.  I was told that the reason was to ensure that "people got a chance to know each other", and that it was "ever so much more fun" that way!

In college, I read an old sociology book — I think it might have been the (hilarious but discomfiting) Status Seekers — and was horrified to discover that my grandmother’s bit of motoring wisdom  had a slightly different interpretation.  The author of the text suggested that working class couples put men in front to emphasize male dominance, middle class couples sit with their spouses to emphasize the importance of bourgeois marriage, and the aspiring upper class divide up the spouses in order to emphasize illicit sexuality.  I was scandalized on behalf of my very proper grandmother!

So this past weekend, my wife and I arranged a party at a local restaurant to honor her best friend, who has just entered the fourth decade of life. We invited 28 people for a very nice Spanish tapas meal.  My wife, who shares my family conviction about dividing couples at parties, carefully made out the seating chart.  in the original draft, we weren’t sitting near each other.  Indeed, I was to be seated next to strangers, an opportunity I relished.  Meeting new people rather than conversing with familiar ones is one of the obligations of social gatherings, at least according to how I was raised.  But my wife and I made the mistake of leaking word of our seating arrangement, and we were soon besieged with calls and emails from people frantic not to be separated from their near and dear, if only for a couple of hours.  "I won’t come if I can’t sit with my boyfriend", one woman wailed; "Please don’t put me next to strangers", someone else begged.

In the end, we tried to accommodate an avalanche of requests.  But as often happens in these ill-mannered days, our guests arrived at the restaurant, took one look at my wife’s beautifully lettered place cards, and promptly rearranged them to suit themselves.  And of course, the entire dinner party dissolved into little cliques, as the guest of honor’s friends from work, from her school days, and her family members stayed among themselves without showing the slightest willingness to mingle and mix. Worst of all, most of the couples seemed positively joined at the hip, utterly unwilling to move away from the safety net represented by their husband, wife, or lover. 

It was a very NOKOP event.  The vegetarian paella, on the other hand, was really good.

Folks, what do you think?  Is compulsory separation of married couples at social events an antiquated relic of the WASPy upper-middle class? Or is it an important nicety that encourages people to step out of their "safety zones" and expand their horizons?

Jessica’s breasts and Bill Clinton: a lengthy reflection

Posted on by

Towards the end of last week, there was a considerable amount of discussion in the feminist blogosphere about Bill Clinton and breasts.  Specifically, the breasts of Jessica Valenti, executive editor of Feministing and one of the most highly regarded voices in the online feminist community.

For those who haven’t followed the kerfuffle, here’s what happened.  Ann Althouse,a  feminist law professor, wrote a scathing attack last Wednesday on the progressive bloggers who lunched with Bill Clinton last Tuesday.  Althouse focused in on a photo of the group with the former president, a picture in which Jessica of Feministing is standing right in front of the former president.Bloggers_with_bill

Click to enlarge.

Last Wednesday, Althouse implied that the arrangement of the bloggers with Clinton was not random, an unmistakable reference to Jessica’s appearance and posture.  When called on her crass sexism by Jessica herself, Althouse responded:

I’m not judging you by your looks. (Don’t flatter yourself.) I’m judging you by your apparent behavior. It’s not about the smiling, but the three-quarter pose and related posturing, the sort of thing people razz Katherine Harris about. I really don’t know why people who care about feminism don’t have any edge against Clinton for the harm he did to the cause of taking sexual harassment seriously, and posing in front of him like that irks me, as a feminist. So don’t assume you’re the one representing feminist values here.

(Three-quarter pose and "related posturing"?  Althouse is perhaps interested in auditioning to be a judge on America’s Next Top Model.)  In any event, it was a truly nasty thing to say.  As someone who has great admiration for Jessica Valenti (Feministing is perhaps the most essential read in the entire "femosphere"), I’m furious. And as someone whose poses are regularly misinterpreted (tell me, do I look like a "leering pedophile" in this picture, as an MRA suggested in a now-deleted comment?  Or how about this one?), I think it’s asinine to insinuate something fundamentally unprofessional about someone’s posture in an awkwardly posed candid photo.

Jessica has defended herself admirably, and more good commentary on the Althouse incident can be found at Feministe by Zuzu and Jill.  But I am not blogging today in defense of Jessica, though I stand (or do I pose provocatively?) in solidarity with her.  I’m interested in blogging about Althouse’s other comment:

I really don’t know why people who care about feminism don’t have any edge against Clinton for the harm he did to the cause of taking sexual harrassment seriously, and posing in front of him like that irks me, as a feminist.

What ought to be the feminist response to Bill Clinton?  It’s a good question, and one often asked by conservatives who sense (inaccurately, I think) a certain level of hypocrisy.  Why didn’t feminists as a group support impeachment?  Why don’t feminists shun Clinton as a pariah given his personal behavior? 

From the standpoint of this progressive feminist, Bill Clinton fascinates and exasperates me.  He has infuriated and disappointed me many times, and he’s also won my enduring admiration.  As has often been pointed out, Clinton was very "lucky in his enemies."  Like most liberals, I always figured that any man who could create apopletic rage in so many right-wingers must be a godsend to the left.  Of course, that was part of Clinton’s masterful skill — he could always point out to feminists and progressives that he was hated by the same right-wing that hated our causes.  We assumed that meant that he would support our agendas.  Most of the time, he didn’t –or at least, he offered only tepid support for real progressive justice.  But we always hoped that his enemies hated him so much because they saw something we couldn’t see, which we fantasized was his "inner lefty."

Bill Clinton’s presidency also comes sandwiched in between the two Bush presidencies.  Whatever his failures as a progressive, we on the left are still kind to Clinton because we compare him to the only other presidents we’ve ever known.  For most of us under 40, we’ve only really been politically aware for three or four presidents: Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, and for those of us over 30, Reagan.  Of that trio or that quartet, Clinton was by far the best on women’s issues in terms of his appointments and policies.  If we compare Clinton’s actual accomplishments to an authentic feminist agenda, he was a bit of a disappointment.  If we compare him to his predecessors and to his immediate successor, he’s the lion of Judah!

But what of Monica Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and the other women whom Clinton (at best) treated shabbily?  Are feminists wrong not to hold a track record of sexual misbehavior against him?  I don’t want to rehash the events of the impeachment era, and what was and wasn’t said in 1998 and ’99.  But I do want to make clear that most feminists I know were deeply appalled by Clinton’s misconduct.  His relationship with Lewinsky was profoundly unethical,and his treatment of his wife tremendously disappointing.  To put it in the terms I use often on this blog, in Bill Clinton’s case, there was a profound disconnect between his language and his life.

But we don’t judge our leaders merely on their private behavior!  There’s more to male feminism, too, than sexual fidelity and propriety.  Whatever his youthful indiscretions, no one suggests that George W. Bush has been unfaithful to Laura.  His professional relationships  with the likes of Karen Hughes and Condi Rice suggest that he is quite comfortable with women in positions of power.  But his overall track record on feminist issues has been fairly weak, particularly from the standpoint of the pro-choice/reproductive rights movement. In Bush’s case, his faithfulness to his wife doesn’t earn him "brownie points"; it doesn’t mitigate his woeful record on public issues that matter deeply to feminists.  By the same token, Clinton’s execrable behavior in private towards women is objectionable and offensive.  But his private sins don’t vitiate the public good he accomplished and is continuing to acoomplish.

It’s possible to condemn someone’s private behavior and laud someone’s public actions.  The reverse is equally true.  Though our goal ought always to be harmony between how we live in the limelight and how we live behind closed doors, all of us — including feminists — must be pragmatic.  In this case, pragmatism can mean rebuking Clinton’s bad private behavior while honoring his commitment to many of the causes and issues that are of value to us.  Human beings are complex, multi-faceted creatures; of few is this more true than of Bill Clinton.  Is he a man who has repeatedly abused his power in sexual relationships with subordinates?  Yes. Is this a man who has been an important ally on other issues? Yes.   He’s not either a good or a bad man –he’s manifestly both.  And we can honor the good in him and lament the bad at the same time without contradicting ourselves.  We can work with him when he’s right, and excoriate him when he’s wrong.  And we sure as hell can take a picture with him.

For the record, I will happily pose for a picture with anyone.  If the local leader of the Klan came by, I’d stand for a photo with my arm around him and grin for the camera, and then promptly give him a good earful.  If the camera only captures my smile, and not my rebuke, that’s not my responsibility.  Bill Clinton is not in the Klan. * Clinton’s private failings are better known than the failings of any other human being alive.  But compared to the other living men who have held the office of president, he  has clearly been the one most committed to the overall goals of the feminist agenda.  And for that, he deserves our — qualified — gratitude.

*Sometimes I post things I ought not to have.  Once they’ve been commented on, though, I don’t delete them — just strike them as evidence of my foolishness.

All Saints and the IRS: the battle escalates

Posted on by

I’m in the adjunct faculty computer room on this Monday morning.  For the second time this year, some wretch has tried to pick the lock on my office door.  They have failed, but they have successfully jammed the lock.  Eloy, my office mate, and I now are waiting patiently for the one locksmith on the entire campus to arrive.

The big local news, of course, is that the IRS has elevated its campaign to revoke my church’s tax-exempt status. The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that All Saints Pasadena was hit with a summons late last week, demanding an extraordinary host of documents relating to one particular 2004 sermon preached by our rector emeritus, George Regas.  The Times reported:

(All Saints must surrender) all the documents and e-mails it produced during the 2004 election year with references to political candidates.

All Saints Episcopal Church and its rector, the Rev. Ed Bacon, have until Sept. 29 to present the sermons, newsletters and electronic communications.

Though I was not at church yesterday to hear our rector’s sermon on the subject, I’ve spoken to a few friends who were. The Times also had a reporter in the pews,(heck, several Times reporters are long-time parishioners), and a lengthy article about our collective response to the IRS appears in today’s paper.

George Regas, the former rector of All Saints (from 1967-1995) comes back to preach at the church a few times a year.  The sermon that launched the IRS investigation was one he preached on October 31, 2004 — two days before the election.  To my knowledge, I am the only blogger who blogged about the sermon at the time it was given, and probably one of the few regular bloggers in the ‘sphere who actually was present that day.   Here’s my November 1, 2004 post: God, Voting, and Election Eve.

Rereading my post, I wince.  I don’t help the All Saints case much!  Though I voted for John Kerry in that election, I was upset with George Regas for taking what I thought was an exceptionally partisan tone.  His sermon, entitled "How Would Jesus Vote?", left little doubt that Jesus would not vote for the incumbent.  I wrote the day after:

Regas proceeded to tell the jammed sanctuary (high attendance at church yesterday) exactly how Jesus would feel about the Iraq war, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and abortion rights. Jesus, we learned, would consider this war an abomination, the failure to disarm the gravest of contemporary sins, the latest round of tax cuts as an assault on the poor, and the right to abortion necessary in order to save lives. Except for fleeting references to Micah 6:8 (we liberals do love that text), no Scripture was cited to support these positions, but that didn’t seem to matter. George Regas was certain of how Jesus would stand on all of these complex modern issues, and by the time he was done, there was little doubt how Regas thought Jesus wanted us to vote.

I didn’t put it in bold in the original post.  I am quite confident (or am I?) that no one from the IRS read this post; the LA Times ran an article on the Regas sermon, and that is surely the source of the inquiry.  I wrote at the time that since Regas didn’t explicitly endorse Kerry, I didn’t think he had violated federal regulatory guidelines.  But I am not a lawyer, and am unfamiliar with the subtleties of the tax code and what non-profits are permitted to say and do.

(For what it’s worth, I’m enough of an Anabaptist that before listening to a sermon on how Jesus would vote, I’d want to hear a sermon on whether or not he would participate in the electoral process at all!  It may not be a sin to vote, but it’s not a sin not to vote either — the Kingdom of the Lamb is not of this world, and the transforming of hearts and minds will happen through inner conversions, not elections.  I wrote as much after listening to the Regas sermon. From my November 1, 2004 post:

Ultimately, Bush and Kerry are competing to be the most powerful prince in the contemporary world’s greatest principality. And while Christians can and should take an active interest in the affairs of this world, there is no question that real justice, real transformation, and real hope cannot come from the princes of this world.)

All Saints is now trying to decide whether or not to comply with the IRS summons.  The general sense at this early point in the process is that most folks associated with the church do not want to comply.  I was on the Vestry, the governing body of the church, from 2002-2003 (I resigned for many, many reasons not worth going into here).  I know most of the folks on the Vestry now, and I know Ed Bacon, our rector, quite well.  I can’t predict the future, but I will be very surprised if our church doesn’t end up fighting the IRS in court over this summons.  If I were on the Vestry still, I would certainly be among those who would vote to take on the government.

Again, I am not a lawyer.  Again, I disagreed with most of George Regas’ original sermon.  But there’s an enormous difference between an explicit endorsement of a candidate ("Vote for Kerry!") and an implicit endorsement of a candidate ("Jesus wouldn’t have supported the invasion of Iraq").  The IRS code does not demand quietism and passivity from churches.  Our friends on the religious right regularly fulminate about "anti-family" politicians from the pulpit; they usually stop just short of telling their congregants how to vote.  They don’t get investigated.  But if this IRS investigation proceeds, and a Democrat wins the presidency in 2008 — it may not be long before a flurry of summonses are falling into the laps of conservative preachers who are deemed to have "crossed the line."

I predict that despite a deep animus towards the theological and political orientation of the All Saints community, we are about to see a major outpouring of support from evangelicals and religious conservatives well to our right.   If the IRS can go after All Saints Pasadena during a Republican Administration, they can easily go after Jerry Falwell’s megachurch when the political tides turn again, as they inevitably will sooner or later.  And though I was annoyed with Regas’ sermon, I think it’s absolutely vital that churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious and spiritual institutions feel free to preach on the relationship of faith and politics.  It’s one thing to say you can’t endorse a specific candidate.  But it’s another to say you can no longer proclaim "Jesus is against war."  (Or, for my right-wing friends, "Jesus is against homosexuality.")  If these statements are construed by the IRS as political speech that can cost a church its tax-exempt status, then all people of faith, regardless of where they fall on the conservative-liberal spectrum, are under attack.

I may no longer be on the All Saints Vestry.  But I am very active with the youth group.  I am sure we’ll be talking with our teenagers about this, and asking them to consider the cost of defying the government.  Believe it or not, even in this liberal bastion we do regularly talk with our kids about the cost of discipleship.  I suspect that all of us in the All Saints Pasadena family are about to learn a tough lesson about that cost.  I am hopeful that we will prevail in the courts should this case progress.  But I am absolutely confident that whatever the outcome of this investigation, All Saints will continue to be a powerful, prophetic community.  Though I am often at odds with those who lead my church, I stand with them today, and ask those who belong to other faith communities to offer support to us.

Another note on trust, parents, blogging, and youth ministry: a response to Rob

Posted on by

In a comment below yesterday’s post on sex in marriage, Rob at Unspace provides a link to a post of his: Sex, Christians, Blogs, and Youth Group.

Like me, Rob works with a high school youth group in his church.   In both his church and mine, the youth programs got underway this week, replete with introductions.  Rob wrote:

Last night, we handed out contact information to the kids in our chatroom. Mine used my gmail address, which is a mess and happens to include my paramedic con-ed number. Like I said, a mess. Not something easy to remember. I realized I dare not mention my blog to my 7th and 8th graders.

I’m not hiding it because of the copious amounts of profanity on this blog, or all the photos of sexual organs (some of those insect shots had to include sexual organs). For crying out loud, kids in this age group have seen harder pornography than I have. Given that I regularly do medical searches, that frightens me. But that’s not why I dare not mention this blog.

I am afraid a parent or someone at the church will find this blog. See, I say what I believe. Ok, so maybe I’ll soften it a bit and put some spin on it or explain it in subtle ways to get past watchful dragons. But I say things that are the truth, even if they will get me in trouble. 3

The church I go to is mostly conservative. In the 2004 election, the whole "Christians vote for Bush, because we’re selling our soul to the Republican Party" schtick got on my nerves. I’m actually not the most liberal person in the church. But can you imagine what happens to the head of the youth group if someone goes screaming to the head minister with the URL for this blog?

In his comment below my post yesterday, Rob asks if I ever get grief from parents because of my blog.

Most of "my kids" know about my blog.  Some have found it on their own, or been told about it.  Some came only for pictures of my chinchilla, others to read more about their youth leader.  Most don’t read regularly.  "Your blog is boring", I’ve been told by more than one of the kids in my youth group.  They tell me this apologetically, and usually urge me to go back on Myspace.  (A topic I dealt with here.)

A number of parents do read my blog.  One of our pastors at All Saints, Susan Russell, blogs; she’s linked here for quite some time.  I only occasionally blog about issues in the Anglican Communion, but I blog regularly about sexuality, adolescents, and my experiences as a professor and veteran youth group leader.  I’m fortunate that no parents have, to my knowledge, complained to church authorities about the sexual content of this blog.   They have, however, complained about some of my views; when I wrote words of praise about conservative Anglican Kendall Harmon, I apparently ticked off some liberal parent.  It says something about All Saints Pasadena that my cordial relationship with Christian traditionalists is more worrisome to some parents than my frank blogging about human sexuality!

I walk a fine line at church.  On the one hand, as a youth leader, I feel a tremendous responsibility to be a good shepherd to "my kids", knowing that they belong to their parents and to our God more than to me.  I am humbled by this opportunity to work so closely with these teens, to share with them so much of their lives.   With many, I see them every week of their high school years (save for vacation times); I watch them grow and change.  I’ve been with them through a lot: coming to terms with their own homosexuality; going through their parents’ divorce;  losing their virginity; unwanted pregnancies; the suicide of close friends; heartbreak; bad prom dates; abortions; drug addiction; legal troubles; anorexia; the anxiety of college applications.    And I’ve been with them through a lot of joy as well — I’ve gone to concerts and plays and basketball games and graduations. 

I always try to get to know the parents of my teens.  They need to see me, have a relationship with me, and they need to know they can approach me with their concerns.  They need to trust me, because, like any youth leader, I’m going to hear things from my kids that I can’t repeat to their parents.   My teens share a lot with me.  I meet with them in groups, but also one-on-one.  (Always on church grounds in a place where we can be seen but not heard.)  Frequently, kids tell me things that they don’t want their parents to know.  Sometimes, I encourage them to bring the issues they are struggling with to their mother or father. Other times, I acknowledge that that kind of disclosure is not for the best.  I keep confidences well, knowing that only in a few very specific instances (like an admission of suicidal thoughts) am I obligated to disclose what I have been told. 

Obviously, parents need to trust that I have their kids’ best interests at heart.  If they discover this blog, I would hope that they would gather that I am, at my core, fundamentally safe.  Yes, I’ve had a colorful background with a lot of pre-conversion chaos.  But my transformation is real, and enough years have passed that there need be no fear of Hugo relapsing into old, irresponsible behavior.  My past is now a resource for me to tap into to use with troubled teens.  I know what it’s like to get someone pregnant in high school.  I can roll up my sleeves and show the scars from years of serious self-mutilation.  Those are tools for me to use to connect with frightened, overwhelmed, and alienated teenagers. 

I could probably be a youth minister at very few places besides All Saints Church Pasadena.   At many places, my past and my persona would be obstacles to putting me in a position of trust with so many teenagers.  But at All Saints, I have earned that trust with seven years of transparency, seven years of accountability, seven years of retreats, lock-ins, dances and intimate discussions.  I’ve earned it by hearing, hugging, and holding hundreds and hundreds of kids in a way that is both respectful and exuberant.    My boundaries are excellent, but I won’t let fear hold me back from loving the kids the way Christ calls me to love them.  And I won’t let worry about what parents might think hold me back from blogging about my past, my present, and my myriad, contradictory views about the world.  Because though I change my politics like I change my socks, my commitment to feeding His lambs is unrelenting.  And if you’ve spent time with me, you know that.

I hope that all youth ministers can be as fortunate as I have been and continue to be.