Girl, Abandoned: My Ongoing Story of Struggle & Healing

It’s a chestnut from the 90s, but it’s become a hymn for me. It never gets old. This Is to Mother You by Sinéad O’Connor is like the voice of God speaking to an emotionally abandoned child.

This is to mother you,
To comfort you and get you through,
Through when your nights are lonely,
Through when your dreams are only blue. This is to mother you.

Although I do change one word.
This is to be with you,
To hold you and to kiss you too.
For when you need me I will do
What your own mother ~~didn’t~~ couldn’t do,
Which is to mother you

God as Mother?
My mother died over 10 years ago, but she still looms large in my psyche. Our relationship had always been pretty complicated, moving through love, anger, compassion, disrespect, hate, forgiveness, love, anger, forgiveness again. It’s still a mixed bag. Years of therapy and spiritual direction have brought me to a much healthier place. I change ‘didn’t’ to ‘couldn’t’ because I’ve come to understand my mother’s own emotional turmoil in my growing up years. In the midst of not getting her own needs met, she wasn’t able to take care of mine. Ironically, my mother’s mother lived with us. You’d think there would have been all kinds of mothering going on. But then, my grandmother had her own story – and so it goes.

So, as much as I appreciate those who prefer to use feminine imagery for the Divine, I don’t like referring to God as Mother any more than Father. I’m much more of an apophatic mystic, resting in the unknowability of God:
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.

But, paradoxically, I also rest in the intimacy of God, the One who speaks to my heart and sends love to me through a YouTube music video. Also paradoxically, the song is about mothering. Maybe mother-ing is ok, but not an actual mother (I am nothing if not inconsistent).

Forgiveness and Emotional Scars
I forgave my mother long ago, but I’ve found that the emotional wound never goes away completely. Like the scar on my leg from a car accident almost 50 years ago that’s still surrounded by tender tissue painful to the touch, it flares up when something in my present life touches it.

I felt it begin to throb again last week when I read a blog post on the Feminism and Religion website entitled “Lessons Mothers Might Teach Their Daughters.” It wasn’t so much the content of the post (although it’s a very good article); it was the question raised in my mind of what lessons I wish my mother had taught me.

There are so many. I’ve had to navigate these 68 years, not only without her guidance, but often with deliberate rejection of the example she set of what it means to be a girl and then a woman. Sadly, in order to teach those lessons, she would have had to have learned them herself.

Girl, Abandoned
A major upheaval in our family occurred just as I stood on the cusp of puberty. My mother became pregnant. I absorbed a sense of shame about it from my mother and anger from my grandmother – not in any words that were spoken, but my 12-year-old self picked up on it. After my brother was born, my mother was depressed and my father was pretty much absent. When he wasn’t working or at the bar, he was sleeping or yelling at my mother. I was abandoned at just the time I needed my mother the most.

The messages that all this turmoil imprinted in me had a profound effect on how I understood sexuality (dirty), pregnancy (shameful), the role of women (subservient), and myself (unworthy). I entered junior high school and began a downward spiral from an A-student to suddenly failing several subjects. No one questioned why I was failing or why I started staying home sick as often as I could (I’ve often wondered: what is a guidance counselor for anyway?). No one took the time to wonder why my personal hygiene was slipping or why I spent so much time crying, alone in my bedroom.

When I entered senior high school, I remember clearly making a decision to turn my life around. I think that was the beginning of my self-sufficiency. The good part of that was that I started taking care of myself; the not-so-good part was that (as I see now) a 16-year-old doesn’t always make wise decisions. But I was all I had.

In my later teens, my relationship with my mother had deteriorated to the point that I had absolutely no respect for her. She betrayed my trust more than once. She shamed me about even the possibility of having sexual feelings for a boyfriend. She tried to control me by forbidding him to come to our house, which only succeeded in driving me out of the house.

Descent into Shame . . .
I found myself in some dangerous situations. I was sexually abused by someone I had met at work. I actually did tell my mother about this, but only because my brother heard me crying in my room and she came in to find out what was wrong. I told her what had happened. Incredibly to me now, I was more concerned about my father finding out; I felt a searing sense of shame. My mother listened, then assured me that she would talk to my father. Then she left. No hugs, no assurances of love, no nothing.

For years, I felt extreme shame and responsibility for what had happened to me. It took many years for me to come to the awareness that I had never learned crucial life lessons about relationships, healthy sexuality, and love. I was sent out unprotected into a world that was filled with danger for one so ignorant.

All the pain that you have known,
All the violence in your soul,
All the ‘wrong’ things you have done,
I will take from you when I come

I got married when I was 19. I can now see that I looked to my future husband as a protector, and was profoundly affected when betrayed by him as well. As a further blow, my mother took his side, without knowing all the facts. Her response, according to him was, “Well, Susan has never been a happy person.”

All mistakes made in distress
All your unhappiness
I will take away with my kiss, yes
I will give you tenderness.

Then Hatred . . .
I came to hate my mother. I think the tipping point was a phone conversation we had when I was in my late 20s. My brother, now in his teens, was experiencing depression and refusing to go to school. After she told me about this, she said, “I know what it’s like. I went through it, you went through it, Gary (my other brother) went through it.” I was stunned. She had known all about what I had been suffering – and had done nothing. I’m sure her mother had done nothing for her either, but still . . . even an acknowledgment of my situation, my feelings would have been helpful. I truly hated her.

Then Healing Begins
I was ordained in 1989 at age 38. At a continuing education event with Rabbi Edwin Friedman (1932-1996), I was immersed in family systems theory geared to clergy. A question asked by Rabbi Friedman knocked my proverbial socks off: which of your ancestors really ordained you? In other words, who in my family of origin had taught me how to be a pastoral leader? I was devastated to admit that, for me, that person was my mother. And those ways were extremely unhealthy.

Soon after, I entered an intense group program of psychological and spiritual healing. In a silent prayer time one day, as I sat cross-legged on the floor with my head bowed, I very clearly heard a voice say to me, “You don’t have to hang your head in shame anymore.” The voice came from inside of me, but it was not my voice. That hasn’t been my only mystical experience, but it was certainly the most profound and life-changing. One of the effects on my own spiritual practice has been a rejection of an unworthy, groveling kind of prayer posture to one of open heart and open hands. I owe my physical, emotional, and spiritual life to the therapists, spiritual directors, and the other misfit clergy in our little community of suffering. Certainly that program was not the end of the healing process, but it gave me a huge kick start on the way.

Forgiveness
In my 40s, I forgave my mother. We would never be close, but at least I was able to face buying a Mother’s Day card without having an emotional crisis.

I have come to realize that my courage, self-determination, and fierce independence come from my childhood experience. I am grateful for those gifts. On the downside, though, I’ve had difficulty letting others too far into my life; being vulnerable was just not safe. I also became a perfectionist, always seeking control over my environment. I’m doing much better with all that (thanks to those years of therapy and spiritual direction!), but the temptation to backslide is always there.

I’ve been able to convert the rage of my inner child into passion for social justice. 26805255_10213773990757284_71493849038125527_n I’m especially drawn to feminist issues; I want every girl to have the lessons, the opportunities, the care and protection I never had. There’s a pissed off 12-year-old inside of me – and she’s wearing a pussy hat!

The on-going struggle for me here, though, is to find ways to channel that anger appropriately in personal relationships.

So the life lessons I learned are a mixed bag. Somehow, acknowledging myself as “girl, abandoned” has given me permission to grieve and rage with my younger self, as well as to be compassionate towards her. They’ve allowed me to honor the woman I’ve become because of and in spite of the wounds of the past, even when they flare up in the present.

I am grateful to know that I am not only a “girl, abandoned,” but I am also a “girl, found.”

For child I am so glad I’ve found you
Although my arms have always been around you
Sweet bird although you did not see me
I saw you

And I’m here to mother you
To comfort you and get you through
Through when your nights are lonely
Through when your dreams are only blue
This is to mother you

Dismantling the Religious Roots of Patriarchy in Christianity

I’m working on this paper in advance of my participation on the panel at the 2018 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto next month. The workshop being presented by OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership is called “#MeToo, #Time’s Up and Women Rising against Patriarchy in Religion.” I’ll be (yikes!) representing Christianity on the panel.

Dismantling the Religious Roots of Patriarchy in Christianity

“We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this.”
So begins the report of the grand jury in Pennsylvania detailing the sexual abuse committed against children by over three hundred Roman Catholic priests. It would be impossible for me to write about violence brought about by patriarchy without beginning with this news just published in August. The details of the abuse in the 1356 page report are horrific in themselves, but they are compounded by the fact that the institutional Church has consistently responded with indifference to victims in favor of protecting individual priests and the Church itself. This is patriarchy at work.

Patriarchy is all about power. Therefore it is not limited to issues specifically related to women. In the absence of shared power among all groups of people, one group is able to exert control over the others. Under the umbrella of patriarchy, we can find the intersection of racism, poverty, homophobia, and sexual assault against men, women, and children. The Catholic Church is not alone in exhibiting the effects of its patriarchal roots; there is evidence throughout Christianity of misogynistic thinking and behavior. Some of this is so engrained that church members often do not even recognize it. It is so pervasive that even those without a religious background are unaware that many of our cultural norms are based on patriarchal assumptions.

The Biblical Roots of Patriarchy
To get at the roots of patriarchy within Christianity, we have to go all the way back to “in CLc6EPOWUAA4I3E the beginning . . .” In a blog post entitled “Eve Was Framed,” I point to the story in Genesis 3: 8-15 where Adam and Eve are caught eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In this version of creation (the other very different one is in Genesis 1), a talking serpent tempts the woman, who eats the forbidden fruit, then turns around and offers it to the man, who also partakes. God eventually confronts the man (ha-‘adam: ‘earth creature’) who immediately points the finger at the woman ( ezer kenegdo: a ‘power’ or ‘strength’).

Not only is Eve traditionally relegated to the status of a helper, she is also blamed by Adam for succumbing to the wiles of the serpent and then tempting him. In other words, Eve is responsible for the fall of humanity into sin. The book of Sirach (2nd century BCE) states it plainly:
From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die.

Some of the early Christian church fathers then picked up the theme.

Tertullian (2nd century) claimed that all women carried the blame for Eve’s sin:
You are the Devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that tree; you are the first foresaker of the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the Devil was not brave enough to approach; you so lightly crushed the image of God, the man Adam.
Ambrosiaster (4th century):
Women must cover their heads because they are not the image of God. They must do this as a sign of their subjection to authority and because sin came into the world through them . . . Because of original sin they must show themselves submissive.
Jerome (4th century) also blamed women for The Fall. Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression: but she shall be saved through the child-bearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.

This negativity – and even fear – created by the Christian church so long ago about women being innately evil is one of the foundations of the religious and cultural misogyny expressed throughout history. Consider, for example, the witch hunts in medieval Europe in which tens of thousands of people, about three-quarters of whom were women, were subjected to trial, torture, and execution. In The Holocaust in Historical Context, Steven Katz quotes from the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), published by Catholic inquisition authorities in 1485-86:

All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. … What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil nature, painted with fair colours. … Women are by nature instruments of Satan — they are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation. [1]

Katz then compares this misogyny with anti-Semitism:

The medieval conception of women shares much with the corresponding medieval conception of Jews. In both cases, a perennial attribution of secret, bountiful, malicious ‘power,’ is made. Women are anathematized and cast as witches because of the enduring grotesque fears they generate in respect of their putative abilities to control men and thereby coerce, for their own ends, male-dominated Christian society. Linked to theological traditions of Eve and Lilith, women are perceived as embodiments of inexhaustible negativity. [2]

Now, lest you think this is dusty old history and of no significance any longer, think again. The underlying theology is still present in our churches. For example, several years ago, on the Sunday after Christmas, I attended a Service of Lessons and Carols. The traditional Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, begun way back in 1880, tells the story of the birth of Jesus. And how does the story begin? With Genesis 3: 1-15: the fall of humanity. In the theology put forth in this service, the reason Jesus was born clearly was to undo the effects of original sin. And reading this passage reinforces the notion – held by many of early Christian theologians – that Eve was the cause of it all.

Granted, it may be that the main attraction of Lessons and Carols is the music – favorite carols and the opportunity for choirs and church musicians to strut their stuff. But the theological underpinnings are rotten. I did find an alternative service,which “is based on the traditional set of readings with some changes. It retains lessons 3-9, but shifts the message of lessons 1 and 2 away from original sin toward original blessing. But I wonder how many churches will seek out and use this alternative. How many will read this passage with no commentary or corrective?

“Wives, Be Subject to Your Husbands”
While I was serving in my first congregation, one of the women came forward and accused her husband of domestic violence. When she came to my office a few days later, I could see the bruises on her face where he had punched her. After telling me what had happened, she also confided that her sister, who had flown in from out of town to give her support, had warned her not to speak to me. I wasn’t surprised. Since the sister and I had never met and she knew nothing about me, she had every right to be wary of what advice a Christian pastor might give her sister.

The awful truth is that too many times, a woman is counseled by her pastor to go back to her abuser, to forgive him, and to submit to him – ostensibly because it says so in the Bible. Passages used to support this are:

Ephesians 5: 22-24
Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.

Colossians 3.18 Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

1 Peter 2.21-3.5
For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps . . .
When he was abused, he did not return abuse . . .
Wives, in the same way, accept the authority of your husbands . . .

Of course, not all men are abusers However, patriarchy is baked into the Judeo-Christian tradition. Many Christian couples still adhere to a hierarchical understanding of marriage, in which the husband is the head. Many women also still struggle to overcome restrictions placed on them by biblical writers.

1 Corinthians 14.34
Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

1 Timothy 2.11-15
Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

If we do not understand the historical, cultural, theological context of the biblical authors and early Church leaders, we will be doomed to perpetuate a way of thinking and being that is unacceptable today.

Texts of Terror
In 1984, Professor Phyllis Triblewrote a groundbreaking book, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives.[3] In it she tells the stories of four biblical women: Hagar, the slave, exploited, abused, and rejected; Tamar, the princess raped by her brother and discarded; an unnamed concubine, gang-raped, murdered, and dismembered; and the daughter of Jephthah, who was sacrificed because a foolhardy vow made by of her father and then blamed by him for his violence against her.

Trible cautions that we cannot consign these stories to a “distant, primitive, and inferior past.” She tells of some of the people who inspired her to tell these particular stories: a black women who described herself as a daughter of Hagar outside the covenant; an abused woman on a New York street with a sign “My name is Tamar”; a news report of the dismembered body of a woman found in a trash can; worship services in memory of nameless women.

In 2016, Susan M. Shaw, Professor of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Director of the School of Language, Culture, & Society at Oregon State University, recalled Trible’s work in an article entitled Sandra Bland and Texts of Terror. Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman was found dead in her jail cell in Waller County, Texas. She had been stopped for a minor traffic violation and arrested when she allegedly became combative. Shaw wrote:
We can also read Sandra Bland’s story as a text of terror, illuminated by these biblical stories, leaving people of faith with difficult questions. Like the women in these stories, Sandra Bland was the victim of terror, of the power of patriarchal systems to confine and enact violence, of the intersection of racism and misogyny. Her dehumanization by police is evident in the video that shows police restraining her on the ground, even as she complains of injury. Like many of these women who disappear from their own stories and who do not speak for themselves, Sandra Bland, who had been an outspoken activist for racial justice, was silenced, first in a jail cell and then by death. The question for us now is how do we hear Sandra Bland’s text of terror? How do we interpret her story and the stories of those biblical women against the systems of power that abuse, terrorize, and kill?

There are other opportunities to address misinformation in the Bible, for instance, the unfounded identification of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. Another corrective would be to call the story of King David and Bathsheba what it really is: a story of rape. In another blog post entitled “Redeeming Bathsheba,”I cite examples of commentators who declare that Bathsheba is equally at fault as the king, bringing on the attack by her seductive wiles, or (and this by even progressive writers) that she willingly participated in adultery. Thankfully, many women scholars are coming writing more truthful versions, but these versions have not yet become mainstream.

If we’re serious about dismantling patriarchy, we have to get at its biblical, cultural, and theological roots. The framing of Eve and all her biblical sisters is at the root of our cultural misogyny, too. Genesis 3 lies in our collective subconscious. It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe the story; it doesn’t matter if you’re not religious at all. Misogyny is baked into our national psyche.

#MeToo Goes to Church
And now the #MeToo movement has hit the Church. Hundreds of women have come forward to tell stories of how male pastors have used positions of power to spiritually manipulate and sexually coerce them. It’s not unsurprising that most of these incidents have occurred within denominations with “authoritarian, patriarchal leadership and by cultures that routinely silence the voices of women.”For example, William W. Gothard, Jr., minister and founder of the conservative Institute in Basic Life Principles, was forced to step down amid multiple allegations of sexually harassing women who worked at his ministry and failing to report child abuse cases. As one woman reported, “Bill had sworn me to silence with both guilt and fear. I was the one who was at fault because I was tempting him (italics mine). If I told anyone, the future of the entire ministry could be compromised. Why would I want to hinder God’s work? He told me that this was our little secret, just between us.”

As we continue to reel at the extent of Catholic priest sexual abuse of children, we should look beyond the rationale that these incidents are the result of a few “bad apples” to recognize the effects of patriarchal leadership and culture. The Church must confess that its very system is the breeding ground for abuse. According to the conclusions of Jane Anderson in “Socialization Processes and Clergy Offenders,” “the socialization processes that operate to maintain the perfect celibate clerical masculinity and patriarchy have ongoing implications for endeavors to protect children from violence . . . concrete measures must be taken to ensure that power is more evenly distributed across church membership. This requires a rescinding of PDV (“Pastores Dabo Vobis,” which provides a theological basis to clergy formation) which works to maintain a hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy that prevents reform of the clergy community.”[5]

Conclusions
Dismantling the religious roots of patriarchy in the Church will take a concerted effort to face our past and present sins. It will also take a recognition that patriarchy intersects with racism, classism, ageism, xenophobia, and other issues of unshared power. To begin, these are steps that we can take in order to begin to heal humanity:

Use inclusive language for humanity and expansive languagefor the Divine in Church publications and worship materials
Encourage the reading of sacred texts with a “hermeneutic of suspicion” which questions traditional interpretations
Recognize the misogyny of many of the early Church leaders and their ongoing legacy
Recognize the “texts of terror” in our sacred texts and the violence that continues to be justified because of them
Recognize the spiritual, emotional, and physical violence perpetrated by an entrenched patriarchal system, both within the Church and society in general
Commit to the revision of theologies, teachings, liturgies, and practices to reflect the goodness of all people especially those who have been most impacted by patriarchy
Develop systems of real, shared power, with representation by all groups

Self-awareness is the first step in the process of transformation. The history of misogyny and the sins of patriarchy are there for us to see. It is only with repentance and a change of direction that Christianity can truly by “good news.” We can only hope that the Church will heed the call.

26805265_10213773989517253_952116539923756464_n

[1]Katz, Steven The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol. I, pp. 438-39.

[2]Steven Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol. I, p. 435.

[3]Trible, Phyllis, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives.Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1984.

[4]“Journal of Child Sexual Abuse,” 2016, Vol. 25, No. 8, 846–865.

Sr. Simone: “We’ve Got to Begin the Dismantling Now”

nunbus.1_0_0 I was already excited to hear that the Nuns on the Bus were getting ready to go out on the road again – this time to collect stories from people who have been affected by the GOP tax law. But then today I saw this headline from Democracy Now!

Catholic Sex Abuse Stems from
“Monarchy” & Exclusion of Women from Power
(click here for full article)

This interview with Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, an advocacy group for Catholic social justice, is mostly about recent developments in the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.

August 14 – the report from the grand jury investigation into clergy sexual abuse in Pennsylvania was released.
August 17 – a letter began circulating calling “on the Catholic Bishops of the United States to prayerfully and genuinely consider submitting to Pope Francis their collective resignation as a public act of repentance and lamentation before God and God’s People.” To date, more than 1,000 Catholic theologians, educators and parishioners have signed.
August 20 – Pope Francis addressed a letter on the subject to all 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, confessing, “We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.”

But what Sister Simone Campbell has to say here is a really, really important perspective on the subject (the bold italics are mine).
“. . . in allegations of abuse, it’s critical—critical—to have a comprehensive view. By eliminating women, by eliminating laymen in the decision-making process, they focused on the wrong piece. They focused on the institution, not on the children who were suffering. So we need a huge change in the church. But I’ll tell you, it’s going to take time to change the culture, change the orientation. I mean, our church is old. It’s like 2,000 years old. And it’s spent a long time building this, as the letter said. So we’ve got to begin the dismantling now.

I hope the Catholic Church pays attention.
As the mantra has become: listen to the women!

Redeeming Bathsheba

Here we go again! Another “bad girl of the Bible” in need of our voice in telling her true story. This Sunday’s reading from the Hebrew Bible is the story of David and Bathsheba (if you’re not familiar with the story, see below). Even many progressive commentators continue to describe what happened between a powerful king and a powerless subject adultery. Thankfully, some recent commentaries (mainly by women) have called the incident what it really was: rape.

WHOSE FAULT WAS IT?
It will take many more of us to raise our voices in order to restore Bathsheba’s good name. Consider the recent book (and Facebook page) Really Bad Girls of the Bible: eight more shady ladies from Scripture (argghh, it’s a series). The chapter on Bathsheba tells us that “Bathsheba captured the wandering eye of a king.” Notice who is the subject of the action here: the powerless woman.

Another example, a Bible study outline, is entitled “Bathsheba: The Woman Whose Beauty Resulted in Adultery and Murder.” The author goes on: “Her beauty made her victim to a king’s desire” and “co-responsible in David’s sin.”

And this gem: “Caught in the Tempter’s Trap—The Story of David and Bathsheba”
(italics mine)
“Bathsheba is not guiltless either. She may not have purposely enticed David, but she was immodest and indiscreet. To disrobe and bathe in an open courtyard in full view of any number of rooftop patios in the neighborhood was asking for trouble. She could easily have bathed indoors. Even so in our day, some women do not seem to realize what the sight of their flesh can do to a man. They allow themselves to be pushed into the fashion mold of the world and wear revealing clothes, or nearly nothing; then they wonder why the men they meet cannot think of anything but sex. We must not fail to instruct our younger girls in these matters, particularly as they enter their teen years. Christian parents should teach their daughters facts about the nature of man and the meaning of modesty, then agree on standards for their dress.

“David found out who the beautiful bather was, sent for her, and the thought became the deed. There is no evidence that this was a forcible rape. Bathsheba seems to have been a willing partner. Her husband was off to war and she was lonely. The glamour of being desired by the attractive king meant more to her than her commitment to her husband and her dedication to God. They probably cherished those moments together; maybe they even assured themselves that it was a tender and beautiful experience. Most do! But in God’s sight, it was hideous and ugly. Satan had baited his trap and they were now in his clutches.”

BEAUTY WAS TO BLAME?
The insidious rule of patriarchy declares that men must be protected from the beauty of women’s bodies. They simply cannot help themselves. And when they succumb to temptation and take what they deem to be rightfully theirs, they place the blame on their victims: “her beauty captured the wandering eye of a king; her beauty made her victim to a king’s desire; she was asking for trouble.”

Bathsheba may indeed have been gorgeous. I love the sensuality of Benjamin Victor’s sculpture pictured here. Her body is beautiful. But that does not mean that it’s an object to be used, abused, and then blamed for another’s actions. And that’s true for all bodies – whether “beautiful” in a classic sense or not.

DISMANTLE PATRIARCHY!
It may seem a small thing, this insistence on recognizing this story for what it is: Bathsheba’s #MeToo moment. But it’s not a small thing. The patriarchal religion that originally told the tale is still too much in operation. And the writers and commentators (both male and female) who perpetuate the abuse by blaming the victim need to be called out. And writers, commentators, preachers, and teachers who soften it by calling it adultery need to be called in.

I get it. These stories are so ingrained in us; we don’t always see what’s right in front of us. But if we’re going to dismantle the religious foundations of patriarchy, we must bring to light all the #MeToo moments of biblical women like Bathsheba.

And listen to them!

2 Samuel 11:1-15 (from The Inclusive Bible)
In the spring, that time of the year when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out along with his officers and troops. They massacred the Ammonites and laid siege to Rabbah. David, however, stayed in Jerusalem. As evening approached, David rose from his couch and strolled about on the flat roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman –a very beautiful woman – bathing. David made inquiries about her and learned that her name was Bathsheba, and that she was the daughter of Eliamand the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Then David sent messengers to fetch her. She came to him, and he slept with her, at a time when she had been declared ritually clean after her monthly period. Then she returned to her house. But she conceived, and sent this message to David: “I am pregnant.”

Then David sent a message to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent him to David. When Uriah came, David asked how the campaign was going. Then he said to Uriah, “Go home and wash your feet after your journey.” As he left the palace, attend-ants followed him with a gift from the king’s table. Uriah, however, did not go home that evening. Instead, he lay down at the palace gate with all the king’s officers. Learning that Uriah had not gone home, David said, “Uriah, you have had a long journey; why did you not go home?” Uriah answered, “Israel and Judah are under attack. So is the Ark. Joab and your officers are camping in the open. How can I go home to eat and drink and to sleep with my wife? YHWH lives, and as you yourself live, I will not do such a thing.”

Then David said to Uriah, “Stay here another day, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem another day. On the following day, David invited him to eat and drink with him and got him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to lie down on his blanket among the officers, and did not go home. In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it with Uriah. The letter said, “Put Uriah opposite the enemy where the fighting is fiercest, and then back off, leaving Uriah exposed so that he will meet his death.”

“Bathsheba” image used with permission
https://benjaminvictor.com/2013/01/gallery/bathsheba/

The Bible’s #MeToo Problem

I’m reposting this excellent op-ed piece from the NY Times a few days ago by a colleague in Baltimore.

The Bible’s #MeToo Problem
By Emily M.D. Scott 06scott-jumbo “The Rape of Dinah,” a painting left unfinished by Fra Bartolomeo and completed by Giuliano Bugiardini in 1531. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

ONE recent morning I happened across a scene of biblical violence. Flipping through Genesis, tracking down a quotation for a sermon, my eye caught on a chapter heading, “The Rape of Dinah.” I paused and turned the phrase in my mind. My heart began to ache. I took a breath, sat back in my chair, and read the story of Dinah.

The Bible tells us that Dinah was the daughter of Leah, and devotes a single sentence to her rape: A prince of the region “saw her, seized her, and lay with her by force.”

The rest of the chapter is devoted to the revenge carried out by Dinah’s brothers, who barter her off to the prince as part of a strategy to attack his people. They succeed, and kill all the men of his nation. One can only imagine what happened to the women.

In the study bible I’ve dog-eared and underlined since seminary, I searched the book’s notes for some mention of Dinah in all of this, and found one. Among historical references and exegesis, it simply read, “Dinah’s reactions go unrecorded.”

The myriad writers of our sacred stories, presumably all men, devote little time to women’s perspectives. When women appear, we are often mute or nameless, pawns in men’s games of war or violence, our reactions “unrecorded.” But read between the lines of the Bible and you can detect the narratives of women deleted by uninterested editors, or left untold. Not all of these stories are of sexual assault or abuse, but many are.

There is Tamar, whose half brother meticulously plans her rape, calling in a crony to assist in the scheming. Her father, King David, is angry, but, “would not punish him, because he loved him.” Sounds like a story I’ve heard before — especially considering David has some issues of his own, placing Bathsheba’s husband on the front lines of war so that he could marry her himself.

Bathsheba’s response to all of this? Unrecorded. She sleeps with the king with no reference to her consent, or lack of it.

There’s also the almost unreadable story in Judges 19 of the Levite who pushes his concubine outside the walls of the house to be gang-raped by a lawless mob. By the morning she is dead; the Levite later mutilates her body.

The women of the Bible would be just as unsurprised as I am by the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, Eric Schneiderman or any of their compatriots. They would know, as I have come to realize, that the more vulnerable you are — a child, a woman of color, a foreigner, a slave or a concubine, a transgender man or woman — the more you are singled out to be used and discarded.

Christians owe a debt to scholars like Delores S. Williams and Phyllis Trible who have approached these texts from the victims’ perspectives. Dr. Trible labels such stories “texts of terror.” But rarely are these stories told in our churches. When we remember that a third or more of the women sitting in our pews have been sexually assaulted and the majority of them have been sexually harassed, the absence of biblical women’s stories is telling.

People of all genders in our pews have been subjected to a range of abuses including childhood sexual abuse, while almost half of transgender individuals report being sexually assaulted. I would not wish to have these stories read from the lectern as a simple matter of course (and they certainly should not be held up as Gospel). But of all the Bible’s stories, tragically, these “texts of terror” may be more resonant than any others when it comes to the heartbreaking, quotidian violence of the lives of women and gender and sexual minorities.

The muting of the #MeToos of the Bible is a direct reflection of the culture of silence at work in our congregations. An assumption is woven into our sacred texts: that the experiences of women don’t matter. If religious communities fail to tell stories that reflect the experience of the women of our past, we will inevitably fail to address the sense of entitlement, assumption of superiority and lust for punishment carried through those stories and inherited by men of the present.

Recently, I attended sexual boundaries training for pastors. The workshop was largely focused on avoiding certain behaviors. “Leave the door to your office open during counseling sessions,” we were told. “Don’t visit congregants’ homes alone.” While these are all good and necessary practices that protect congregants and clergy members from harm, I await the day when we will robustly address the roots of abuse.

Statistically, perpetrators do not lurk in shadowy corners, waiting to pounce. They are men who have a hint of power, or wish they did, who understand women in much the same way so many of the stories of the Bible do — as objects to be penetrated, traded, bought or sold. They are sitting in our pews, or, sometimes, standing in our pulpits.

Abuse takes place when one person fails to see the humanity of another, taking what he wants in order to experience control, disordered intimacy or power. It is the symptom of an illness that is fundamentally spiritual: a kind of narcissism that allows him to focus only on sating his need, blind to the pain of the victim. This same narcissism caused the editors of our sacred stories to limit the rape of Dinah to only nine words in a book of thousands.

Refraining from troubling behaviors is not enough; abusive narcissism must be unraveled through a transformation of heart and mind. A shift in the larger culture depends on putting the stories of women front and center. We must create space for them to be heard, not only by women but also by men, who are steeped in a culture that valorizes those behaviors. Seeing women as the rightful owners of their own bodies depends, first, on encountering women as fellow humans.

If I were preaching the story of Dinah, I might simply ask, “How do you think she felt?” It’s a question that some men have never considered. Though some abusers are beyond the reach of compassion, I have in my work as a pastor witnessed the ways hearts can open when someone tells a story. It is empathy, not regulations, that will create a different vision for masculinity in our nation, rooted in love instead of dominance. But transformation happens only in the hard light of truth. When we silence the stories of Dinah and her sisters, perpetrators continue to violate. And those who are victimized? Their reactions go unrecorded.

Emily M.D. Scott is a Lutheran pastor and the founder of St. Lydia’s Dinner Church in Brooklyn, who is starting new faith community in Baltimore.

Dismantling the Religious Roots of Patriarchy in Christianity

Catholic Sex Abuse Stems from “Monarchy” & Exclusion of Women from Power (click here for full article)

Catholic Sex Abuse Stems from
“Monarchy” & Exclusion of Women from Power
(click here for full article)