Three things need to be said immediately about Rod Dreher’s recent article in The American Conservative on “The Feminization (and Decline) of Religion.” One, it is half-plagiarized. Two, it is stupidly sexist. Three, it is wrong. After a brief summary of the article, I will address each point in turn. Continue reading “Going to Girly Church: A Brief Response to Rod Dreher’s Asinine (Half-Plagiarized) Article”
Category: Public Theology
Jim Carrey Releases Incredibly Lifelike Portrait of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s Soul
Comic-turned-political satirist Jim Carrey has ticked off Mike Huckabee, former governor, minister, and current spokes-drone for Fox News. It all started when Carrey released a photo of a painting of Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
In response, Papa Huck called Carrey a “Christophobe.”
Wait a minute! Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a Christian? I seriously had no idea.
Continue reading “Jim Carrey Releases Incredibly Lifelike Portrait of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s Soul”
There’s No Sex in Your Violence
The pleasure that satisfies lust, qua lust, is not the enjoyment, physical or otherwise, of the awesome beauty of another person as the creation of God, because lust is based on pride, and pleasure in someone else’s being as God’s gift to them is rather pleasure in humility.
I have been thinking a great deal about Augustine’s theology of sex in light of all the various scandals involving powerful men and their abuse and intimidation of women. I worry that we may be focusing on all the bad apples to the neglect of the bigger problem of how we think about human sexuality as a society.
Augustine basically said that sex is sinful. Actually, it is more complicated and nuanced than that (check it). The problem, he said, is not sex itself but the way sexual pleasure “activates” pride. The Augustine scholar John Cavadini put it well when he wrote:
To fault Augustine in this context for not realizing that “sexual pleasure” can enrich a couple’s relationship, or to assess Augustine’s views against our own more “positive” view, may be, with all due respect, to beg the question. For Augustine, the question would not be whether sexual pleasure can enrich a couple’s relationship, but whether there is any sexual pleasure possible without a taint of violence or complacency (“self-pleasing”) in it. The question would be, what are we taking pleasure from? Pleasure, as Augustine is at pains to point out, is an affair of the soul, not the body. The pleasure that satisfies lust, qua lust, is not the enjoyment, physical or otherwise, of the awesome beauty of another person as the creation of God, because lust is based on pride, and pleasure in someone else’s being as God’s gift to them is rather pleasure in humility. For example, can we say that any act of sexual delight is completely free from smugness, from self-admiration, from the slightest hint of “self-pleasing” in the mastery of the “skill sets” of popular magazines, in the thought that one is an accomplished, or at least halfway decent, lover? Violence includes the admiration of power or ability as power or ability. [Emphasis mine.]
Liberals Should Stop Mocking Martyrdom
Far be it from me not to point out when “my people” do or say something stupid or evil. But just as irritating are liberals who would rather make fun of conservative Christians than try to understand them.
In the wake of the Texas mass shooting, RawStory posted an article with the subtle, and not-at-all mocking title, “Conservative writer: God was ‘answering prayers’ of Texas victims by letting them get shot.” Yes, “Step right up folks! And witness another ridiculous Christian saying something ridiculous!”
Of course, the original column was pretty ridiculous. It was naive and insensitive. Far be it from me not to point out when “my people” do or say something stupid or evil. But just as irritating are liberals who would rather make fun of conservative Christians than try to understand them. Continue reading “Liberals Should Stop Mocking Martyrdom”
Why Write About Gay Marriage
A few days ago, George Demacopoulos, co-director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham and co-editor of the Public Orthodoxy blog tweeted the following:
It is telling that the 6-7 essays (out of 150 total) Public Orthodoxy has posted about marriage and sexuality have an outsized readership.
— George Demacopoulos (@GDemacopoulos) September 2, 2017
Inclusive Language in the Liturgy
Public Orthodoxy is making waves again, this time by daring to talk about…women.
Actually they aren’t even talking about women. They’re talking about Greek. The GOA (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America) made it about women when they opted to approve a revision of the creed from “for us and for our salvation” to “for us men and for our salvation.” The problem with this revision, the authors (Aristotle Papanikolaou and John Fotopoulos) is that it makes gender exclusive language that was originally gender inclusive. Greek, like many other languages, has gendered nouns. Anthropos is a masculine noun. But that does not mean that anthropos is male anymore than German a German girl is an “it” (das Mädchen is a neuter noun). Anthropos refers to humanity in general. Anér means “man.” Continue reading “Inclusive Language in the Liturgy”