#Bringbackourgirls For Mother's Day

It’s been almost a month since more than 270 young women were kidnapped from their school in Nigeria, and only a week since the world’s news media, the United States, and the Nigerian President have starting speaking about this horrific assault.

I first learned about what was happening on May 1^st on social media, and tweeted, “If 200+ white girls were kidnapped in London, it would 24/7 headline news with governments sending troops in to help.” I kept thinking about how the U.S. media had been obsessed with covering the stories of one missing white young woman: how Jon Benet, Elizabeth Smart, and Natalie Holloway are household words but that these brilliant school girls in Nigeria weren’t making headlines at all. 

I’m glad they are now.  But, I have to ask, “What took so long?” And “if thousands of social media activists hadn’t responded, would they be headlines now?” I want someone in the media to acknowledge that they were wrong in not covering this as soon as it was known.  I want there to be searing analysis about how we are not in a post-racial era at all.  I want there to be coverage of how it is that there are men willing to enslave young women because they wanted an education and that there is a market of men who will buy them.  I want world leaders and media leaders to acknowledge that sexism and racism still permeate the world. I want the world to redouble its commitments to women's education and women's safety. 

As a survivor of sexual assault, my heart aches for these young women and the terror they must be experiencing.  As a mother of a young woman, my heart hurts for their mothers who don’t know where their daughters are but do have an idea about what they are going through.   As a minister, I cry out for us to remember our call to take care of the most vulnerable and the most marginalized. 

I fear that just like some of the individual kidnappings, too much time has passed for these young women to be found.  But, I will keep praying that they will. And, I will do my part to raise my voice to make sure that the search goes on.  On Mother’s Day, I will light candles for them and for their mothers.  I hope you will join me.   

Attacks on Family Planning and Abortion Are Attacks on Children: A Guest Editorial

The Religious Institute co-founder and current Advisory Committee member, Rev. Dr. Larry Greenfield, shared with me this piece he wrote for Protestants on the Common Good, on the current attacks on women's health services. I liked it so much that I asked him if I could share it with you:

“Re-introducing Corporal Punishment”

As I approach my seventieth birthday, I’m spending more time remembering how fortunate I was to have been raised in a loving family, where, as an only child, I was treated as something special.

For health reasons, my mother was explicitly told not to risk what would likely be another unsuccessful pregnancy. But throwing caution to the wind, and desperately wanting to have a child of their own, mom and dad gave it one more try.

My birth was treated, literally, as a gift from God.

Well, almost all the time. The exceptions, of course, had to do with those occasions in which I seriously misbehaved – that is, those times when I caused my parents to question whether the divine gift had a good bit of the devil’s contribution in the mix.

When that happened – and it had to be a very serious offense to cause this particular punishment – the razor strap came out (my dad was a barber at a time when facial shaves were a regular feature of his trade) and I was given a truly stinging whipping.

That corporal punishment I still see, all these years later, as an exception, a deviation from, my parents’ love. Even then I recognized that their anger against me caused them to draw on the worst parts of their otherwise compassionate and caring personalities. (And I can only hope that my own children recognize that when I inflicted corporal punishment on them, it was a similar departure from who I was as the father who loved them.)

I have the sense that my parents, at that time, weren’t exceptional in reverting to corporal punishment when angry with a child’s behavior. As far as I can tell, it was the norm.

But that started changing when more and more parents over time heard about, read, and took to heart what Dr. Benjamin Spock proposed in his book “Baby and Child Care” (1946) and other writings: be verbal not physical in disciplining the child, and all within the context of expressing love, even if it had to be tough love.

Now twenty-nine countries outlaw corporal punishment in the home, twenty-two of them in Europe. In the United States it remains legal, but here too there are limits to what is acceptable physical punishment.

I can see that transformation operating in the way my own grandchildren are being raised.

It has taken decades to achieve, but even here in the U.S. we’ve changed.

Or have we? Might it be that we’ve only changed the way we administer the corporal punishment?

Charles Blow, columnist for the New York Times, recently (8/27/11) made that case in a “striking” (but non-corporal) way.

He referred to a Guttmacher Institute report that indicated unintended pregnancies have increased 50% since 1994, yet politicians are passing laws to restrict abortion at a record pace: 80 this year, compared to 23 in 2010 – more than three times as many so far this year compared to all of last year.

What has this got to do with corporal punishment, when supposedly it is the mother (almost never the father) that is being punished for her sexual behavior? Mr. Blow answers: “Even if you follow a primitive religious concept of punishment for sex, as many on the right seem to do, you must at some point acknowledge that it is the child, not the parent, who will be punished most by our current policies that increasingly advocate for “unborn children” but fall silent for those outside the womb.”

(While Mr. Blow doesn’t mention it, there is an irony that some of the anti-choice legislation includes the de-funding of Planned Parenthood, which often provides the contraceptive education and resources that reduces the number unplanned pregnancies, and thereby ultimately diminishes the likelihood of neglect and abuse of unintended children.)

But it isn’t just in the area of sexuality where we’ve found new ways of inflicting physical harm on children. Mr. Blow also quotes from a new report of the Annie E. Casey Foundation: “the official child poverty rate, which is a conservative measure of economic hardship, increased 18 percent between 2000 – 2009.” (Remember that many years in that decade were considered periods of abundance.)

And if that weren’t enough, Mr. Blow draws from a U.S. Department of Agriculture study that “the number of children facing food insecurity in 2009 soared to nearly one in four.” Then there is also an ABC News report that “49 percent of all children born in this [United States] country are born to families who receive food supplements from the federal Women, Infants and Children assistance program.”

What is the consequence of that kind of malnutrition brought on by child poverty and child hunger? What is the corporal punishment that is being inflicted?

Delayed growth and motor development. Lower I.Q.’s. Severe behavior problems. Attention deficit hyperactivity. Deficient learning capacities. Lower educational achievement. The list goes on and on.

All that punishment inflicted against children for the sin of being born into families guilty of being poor.

Members of the Republican party, as well as many Democrats and Independents, express what seems to be genuine concern about the national debt that today’s children will have to bear as adults. But in their 2012 budget proposal the Republicans, in particular, want to reduce spending for nutritional programs. Mr. Blow comments: “They want to hold the line on tax breaks for the wealthy, not paying attention to the fact that our growing income inequality, which could be reversed, continues to foster developmental inequality [among children], which is almost impossible to reverse.”

Since in this country we don’t have laws condemning the old forms of parental corporal punishment, there’s probably no chance of passing legislation that would assign some form of appropriate punishment to politicians and members of society-at-large who engage in this kind of neglect and abuse of our nation’s children.

But couldn’t those of us in the Christian community at least take guidance from the procedure Jesus recommended to his church when one member sinned against another? He instructed (see Matthew 18: 15-17) that if one fails to get the attention and confession of the offender in a face-to-face meeting, the circle of witnesses ought to be widened, and, failing that, the offense ought to be brought to the whole community for judgment and then, finally, punishment.

That punishment apparently was exclusion from the community of faith. Maybe that’s what the church today needs to do with its child neglectors and abusers in public office.

And, of course, the electorate could do something similar when it’s time again to choose its leaders.

Denominations Support Sexual Justice

I thought you’d enjoy this report from Juliana Mecera, the Religious Institute’s 2010 summer intern.

This summer I researched seventeen different Jewish and Christian denominations, exploring their policies and programs on sexuality education, reproductive rights, women’s programs, and the full-inclusion of LGBT persons—and was pleased to find that denominations are active and even vibrant in engaging and responding to sexuality concerns. As I met—over the phone and in person—with many church and synagogue leaders, I appreciated their familiarity with sexuality issues and was encouraged to learn that many had worked with the extensive resources of the Religious Institute to improve the quality of sexual information and care they provide to their congregants.

Impressively, all of these denominations (see list below) are active in at least one of these areas pertaining to sexuality! As children begin school and religious education courses start-up again, I was especially attuned to educational issues. A large majority—14 of these 17 denominations—have either developed their own sexuality education curricula or promote another denomination’s resources. Furthermore, 11 of these denominations support sexual education being taught in public schools.

Support for the full-inclusion of LGBT persons is fairly strong among this group as a whole. Ten have an official policy for full-inclusion, and of the 7 that do not, 3 have unofficial organizations that work for the full-inclusion of their LGBT members and offer them support. Unfortunately, even those denominations which formally support LGBT persons often lack an official denominational office to help congregations become welcoming and affirming. Even more striking is that 14 denominations—all but 3—have a national women’s program, and 11 denominations have an official statement that advocates for reproductive rights.

It’s truly heartening to see this amount of engagement by religious communities in sexuality-related issues. The numbers of these prominent denominations, however, indicate that there is still work to be done, particularly in advocating for LGBT inclusion. I am thankful that I’ve had the opportunity to further this work at the Religious Institute this summer.

• African Methodist Episcopal Church
• Alliance of Baptists
• American Baptist Church
• Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
• Church of the Brethren
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of America
• The Episcopal Church (USA)
• The Fellowship
• Jewish Reconstructionist Federation
• Metropolitan Community Churches
• Presbyterian Church (USA)
• Reformed Church in America
• United Church of Christ
• The United Methodist Church
• Union for Reform Judaism
• United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
• Unitarian Universalist Association

Juliana M. Mecera

Sotomayor, sexism, social location, and social justice

I've been thinking a lot about the status of women in the U.S., religion and the world this week.

I just looked for and couldn't find an image of the good old boys -- er, Senate Judiciary Committee, who grilled Sonya Sotomayor this week. But, with the exception of Senator Feinstein, the images I saw were predominately older, white men. I couldn't help but think that they looked pretty much the same as the panel that held hearings on Clarence Thomas almost twenty years ago. I was both infuriated and amused as I listened to these white men lecture Sotomayor on equality and the need to not have her face and gender affect her decision-making. Do they really not understand at any level that THEIR race, class, and gender affect the way they make decisions? (Uh, no.)

That led me to thinking about feminist and liberation theology that taught us that we must always begin by acknowledging our unique social location and how it affects how we think, live, and act. Guess those aren't on the Senators' required reading lists.

But maybe they'll listen to former President Jimmy Carter, who earlier this week published this letter on behalf of a group of retired statesmen from around the world called "The Elders." Read it here http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/12/jimmy-carter-womens-rights-equality Carter eloquently speaks out against discrimination and violence against women in all of the world's religions and calls us to understand that recognizing and supporting women's equality is part of God's call to us.

I hope the predominately white men who control the Congress and the world's religious bodies are listening.

Obama, an anti-abortion poster child?

Since I'm out of town, I've asked Dr. Kate Ott, associate director of the Religious Institute, to post about this disturbing new ad that came out on the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision:

*********************
During the President’s Inauguration, Catholic Vote ran an advertisement on BET (Black Entertainment Television) that used Barack Obama’s story as an anti-abortion tale.

My first reaction to this ad was, “How disrespectful to Barack Obama! . . . to use him, a historical anomaly, to vilify women and men struggling to make a decision about an unwanted pregnancy; to use a man who clearly has stood up time and again for abortion access and women’s reproductive healthcare and choice; to use, and worse to distort, the circumstances of his birth, all for an advertisement!"

Here are my second, third and fourth reactions.

We do not know the potential fame or folly for which our children are destined. To base decisions solely on the unknown possibility of a pregnancy is flagrantly dismissive of the other lives involved in that decision and sets up our children for unrealistic, unattainable futures. We do not know who our children will become; we only know how well we can support them, provide for them, and give of ourselves to them. In the Religious Institute's Open Letter on Abortion as a Moral Decision, we say, “The sanctity of human life is best upheld when we assure that it is not created carelessly. It is precisely because life and parenthood are so precious that no woman should be coerced to carry a pregnancy to term. We support responsible procreation, the widespread availability of contraception, prenatal care and intentional parenting.”

There is no other visually identified person in this advertisement except a floating fetus. That’s a medical impossibility. Removing a woman’s body from the visual message does more than make us focus on the fetus; it forces us to create a false separation between a pregnant woman and the fetus in her uterus. They are inextricably intertwined, as are their lives and decisions about their futures. Abortion is not an abstract act; why must we continue to erase the physical presence of the moral agents in these decisions – women? This separation diminishes our ability to grasp the true moral complexity of an abortion decision. The advertisement stresses “broken, abandoned and struggle” as the descriptive circumstances into which Obama was born. Barack Obama’s mother and father were well educated and had family support systems that allowed them to make a choice about this pregnancy, which is not the case in all unwanted pregnancies. I don’t even think we can surmise (without hearing from his mother, which is no longer possible) if this was an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy.

My fourth reaction is that the advertisement is a new version of the old ethical argument that “absolute respect for human life” is the only moral principle upon which to judge abortion, and its only application is to prioritize the life of the fetus. In almost no other moral deliberations do we actively deny other moral principles, such as justice or love of neighbor. The advertisement coercively limits the scope of our moral imagination and denies how context influences moral choice. “The ability to choose an abortion should not be compromised by economic, educational, class or marital status, age, race, geographic location or inadequate information” (our Open Letter again), but in reality it is. The choice to have an abortion is always a moral choice; women are always capable moral agents; moral decision-making requires deliberation of multiple principles.

I haven’t even touched on the racial implications of airing this advertisement on BET during the inauguration of the first black President of the United States. This, I think, has more to do with the racist and sexist moral character of the group supporting and contributing to the ad, not the moral decision of women to have an abortion.

Our moral struggle should be one that sees racism, poverty, and heterosexism as factors that destroy communities and place women and men in uncompromisingly difficult moral decisions – not one that uses historical events as an opportunity for moral exploitation.

A Woman For Vice President, But Not As Your Pastor

I wrote last year about being in the audience at Renaissance Weekend and hearing Rev. Richard Land, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention, talk about why women can't be ministers. Although there were women ministers on the panel with him, he without any hesitation or even apology, said in no uncertain terms that he would never support women as senior clergy nor did he think rites performed by women could be considered valid. To say I was offended is an understatement.

At least according to an interview in Christianity Today, he has no such hesitation about a woman as Vice President, reporting indeed that he had recommended Sarah Palin as a candidate.

But, let's not think that this means that the Southern Baptists think that women can lead churches. According to a report by Religious News Service, the current issue of Gospel Today is being kept off the shelves at the SBC's Lifeway Christian Bookstores. Why? Because there are five women ministers on the cover. Read more at:

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/female-vp-okay-female-pastors-magazine-not-okay

So, what am I not getting? Apparently Mr. Land has said that the Bible only speaks out against women ministers not women Vice Presidents. But, I'm not sure what verses he could be referring to. Of course, there are those very few verses in Ephesians that say that women must be submissive to their husbands, and by inference, that no man should be submissive to a woman. But, correct me if I am wrong, I don't think there is any verse that says we can't be pastors. And then there are those Genesis and Galatian texts that say that we are all equally created in God's image.

So, a few questions are in order here. If Ms. Palin wins, might the Southern Baptists finally change their minds on women senior ministers? Or do they know if Ms. Palin has her husband's permission to run for office? And what happens if she becomes the Commander in Chief of all of the armed services, and all those military men have to report to her?

Can you really support a woman for the second highest office in the land and yet not want another woman to baptise, marry, or bury you?

I don't get it.

Prayers for Virginia Mollenkott, Eve Ensler, and the Women in the Congo

One of the greatest blessings of my move to ministry are the people I get to know and with whom I share my ministry. There are the people I work with every day -- Kate Ott, Tim Palmer, Katey Zeh, and Rev. Steve Clapp who enrich my life and work beyond words.

And then there the people I get to meet and know in the course of my ministry.

On Friday night, I attended a celebration of the life and work of Dr. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, the author of such groundbreaking books as "Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?" and more recently "Omnigender". Virginia has spoken out for the LGBT community and God's love of diversity for decades. Virginia self identifies as a transgender, lesbian, evangelical Christian (and some of you thought sexologist minister was an oxymoron!) In addition to her amazing decades of scholarship and activism, she has a huge generous heart. I wrote her how inspired I was by her work -- she wrote me back her admiration for our's, and told me to just keep doing it, one project at a time, just like she has.

And then Sunday morning, I received an email from Eve Ensler, who is currently on her third trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Along with the UN and UNICEF, she has created a project to stop the rape of women and girls in the Congo and to support a hospital and city to repair the tens of thousand of women who have been victims of unrelenting brutal violence. This past week, the Panzi Hospital, where women are repaired daily, was attacked by bandits. You can read more in Eve's own words at http://v10.vday.org/news-alerts/ensler-update-from-goma

The Religious Institute is launching a project in the coming weeks to engage faith communities in this Congo initiative. I'll be posting more here, but we will be asking congregations of all types to hold Congo Sabbaths during the coming year, to educate themselves and to help raise money to help women rebuild their lives after rape and torture. As people of faith, we must stand up against this violence against women's very beings.

Virginia and Eve, you inspire me by your courage, your commitment, your outrageousness, your fearlessness. I hope they'll inspire you too.

More on Sarah Palin

The Sarah Palin story is a national Rorschach test.

Let me be clear about my other posts -- I was not saying that I know ANYTHING about why Bristol Palin became pregnant. I was saying that based on Governor Palin's policies, I was pretty sure that she hadn't had discussions about pregnancy prevention in her home. I've also learned through news reports that she didn't have that type of education in her school or her church either. Yes, to some of those who have commented here and on my posts at Huffington and RH RealityCheck, teens who have comprehensive sexuality education get pregnant too. But, again, the research is pretty compelling that when parents talk to their teens about their values about sexual intercourse AND talk to them about contraception and/or condoms, they are more likely to protect themselves.

I am also not saying that Governor Palin is a bad mother for her choice to run. What's so interesting to me is that at least the conservative women I've seen interviewed aren't questioning the ability to take care of five children, two with pressing needs, and run for the second highest office in the country. Could it be that progressive mothers are because we are more likely to be working at executive level jobs and thus more likely to know, to have lived how hard it is to balance the needs of our children and our positions?

I can only speak for myself. I am, as my regular readers know, the proud mother of a now 15 year old son and 23 year old daughter. I have had a career (and indeed a vocation) through their lives. But, I took six months of maternity leave and eased back into work both times with weekly days at home. I have turned down offers to apply for jobs as presidents of much larger organizations because my children were too small for me to have a job that required 24/7. When my daughter became an adolescent, I made the decision to primarily work from home during her high school years. I have worked hard and made choices so that my children would always know and feel that they were my first priority.

I don't think progressive women reacting to Palin are re-igniting the Mommy Wars as the press has said. I don't think progressive women are saying that a working mother can't be President or Vice President. It's more that we can't imagine what it would take to do it -- especially given the Palin family's challenges at this time.

One last word from yesterday's comments -- if the Palin's want to keep Bristol's situation private, then why in heaven would they fly Levi Johnson to the convention?? Will he join them on the stage tonight? Will he be held up as the teenage boy who did right by his girlfriend? Again, I just don't think you can have it both ways.

Take a Moment To Celebrate Women's Equality Day

Today is Women's Equality Day, the anniversary of the day that women first got the vote.

Last night, watching Michelle Obama, I couldn't help but think about how far we've come from the vision of the suffragettes who won the vote. Could they have imagined her?

Ten years younger than I am, I thought, "she is the woman that the second wave of feminism created" -- a woman with a full time brilliant career serving others, a working mom devoted to her school age children, a partner in a peer marriage -- a woman who was basically unknown to me when I was growing up in the sixties, but the woman I hope today's girls will know they can become. And tonight the convention will feature the first woman candidate for President and many female Senators , Congresspersons, and Governors.

Change is happening, has happened.

The evening would have been perfect except for the benediction, offered from this UU minister's perspective, without regard for the diversity of religious belief in the convention hall or across America. Note to the others offering invocations and benedictions: your remarks not only have to be non-partisan, they need to speak to all of us. Your language of the divine and what is most sacred needs to include all of us -- even nonbelievers, no less those who don't call Jesus Lord. Let's hope the rest of the clergy involve don't make the same mistake.

We Are Still So Far From Equality

I've been thinking a lot about the status of women in the United States this week.

After my raising the issue of the lack of women religious leaders selected as questioners at the Compassion Forum, a colleague emailed me that half of the Presidential Candidates were women, half of the CNN questioners were women, and the CEO and the Chair of the Board of Faith in Public Life were women. And he has a point -- although it still doesn't address why only one of the pre-selected religious leaders recognized to ask questions were women.

But, yes, there is change, and we can celebrate that.

Yet, the two largest religious denominations in the United States (the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Association) do not ordain women clergy. As the Pope's visit is celebrated this week, there has been little analysis in the national press about the role of women in the Catholic church. Two of my colleagues, Catholic feminister author Angela Bonavoglia and Catholic theologian Mary Hunt do a far better job than I can about what's so wrong with these positions.

I also happened to watch a horrifying interviewing yesterday morning on the Today Show. Meredith Viera interviewed three identically dressed women in their twenties from the FDLS compound in Texas. It was like watching a scene from The Handmaiden's Tale or the Stepford Wives. They either looked drugged or brainwashed, as without expression, they struggled to respond to Viera's questions. I'm still trying to figure out what I think about all of their children being taken by the state, but I am certain that the safety and well being of girls who have reached puberty and are then forced to become second or third or fourth wives to older men is being compromised at a fundamental level. I also keep thinking that someone should be pointing out that the FLDS compound is as close to the actual Biblical depiction of marriage as we are likely to see.

And I've also just read the report from the Katrina Warriers Network on the disproportionate impact of Katrina on "Women and Girls in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast", released at the V-Day event. The needs to assure the safety and health of women and girls during such disasters -- and the failure to do so during Katrina -- are horrifying to read.

So to my correspondent, yes, there are indicators that on some levels, women are making strides. But, oh, do we still have a long way to go to attain women's equality.