One of the most refreshing parts of my summer was a little book called “A Simple Way to Pray” by Martin Luther. He wrote it for his barber of many years when he asked Luther how he ought to pray. I learned from this book the (obvious?) lesson that I can’t pray well from a cold start. I need to prepare my heart to pray well. Luther would begin by turning to the Gospels and reading a saying of our Lord or some other such passage to warm his heart to pray. When his heart was warmed to pray he would begin. I’ve found that preparing my heart before praying helps me pray much better.

Read Luther’s book. It’s only a letter actually, just a few pages long.

This one reads well online.

This one prints to a booklet if you print it doublesided.

This one is fullsize if the others are hard to read and you don’t mind waiting a moment for the download.

He played a good game. He eventually blundered a bishop as he tried to win a pawn and a rook for a rook. I then forced the trade of both queens and he chose to trade the remaining rooks to lead us into the endgame with me a bishop and pawn ahead. I think the position was essentially won at that point. It dragged on for another 20 moves before he resigned. I came close to blundering it myself by moving to centralize my king in the endgame when I should have gone straight for his passed pawn. I caught the error in time to capture the passed pawn before it was too late.

Me and a couple buddies were in an aquatics class during my Junior year. We thought it would be a pretty easy A because we were swimmers and polo players. We lived in the water already. How hard could it be? We were right, except for one unit of the class, synchronized swimming. How could we maintain our adolescent sense of masculinity and compose a synchronized swimming routine? Here’s the result.

I think we took at least one of the shirts out of the lost & found in the locker rooms. If I remember we composed the whole routine the night before and it was nothing but each of the required movements one after the other. We added in a Hungarian drill from polo and then we did a throw to show off the treading water skills. The fellas threw me completely out of the water without touching bottom. The camerawork really falters at that point, but it was a pretty sweet little maneuver. Click on the image to see the full video.

There’s Kittleson over on the right.

1. You could denounce feminism and argue feminists disagree with the Bible. Of course that approach actually supports feminist arguments so it might very well have the opposite effect in terms of convincing people.
2. You could try and nit pick at the facts feminist arguments are based on. This might work but you don’t have a congregation full of conservatives. Most of them could do the same thing with the Bible, so in that fight feminism probably wins.
3. You could say that metaphor is a type of fashion and every believer can construct there own metaphorical language. There is no real Tiamet to worship, however it’s possible to relate to the God of the Bible in a female way. Christianity never asserts that God has actual gender. You could use female pronouns for “God the Father.” Jesus represents the dying Corn God. You could start using that sort of language, “he died so that all life could be renewed.” Try and create a syncretic faith and then pull that syncretic faith closer to orthodoxy and thus win the people’s hearts for Christ.

I disagree. I think a good starting point for a Christian response to feminist thought is to look at what feminists are actually saying. Many feminist theorists express their theory in terms of vision and strategy. Vision refers to envisioning a world that deos not yet exist; one that is better than the one that does exist. Strategy refers to practical means for creating the envisioned world. Visions and strategies vary among feminist theorists, but many feminisms can be seen in terms of their vision and their strategy.

There are a number of reasons why it’s ineffective for the Church to respond to feminism simply by taking issue with the facts asserted by feminists, or to simply point out the ways that the Bible is at odds with their theory. Feminist theory is prepared for both these approaches. Feminist epistemology undercuts the truth claims made by the Church with regard to the facts and demonstrates that they are indeed a part of the very oppression that feminism set out to redress in the first place. Feminist theory also demonstrates that the claim Christians make about the Bible’s authority only perpetuates this oppression.

It’s also ineffective to syncretize in the hope of captivating those compelled by feminism and draw them somewhat nearer to orthodoxy. This does not address the real issue. The real issue is not that feminists hold an unorthodox view. The issue is that they are more compelled by a vision of the world as it could be than they are by Christ and the kingdom He is bringing about. We want feminists to be captivated by Christ and the righteousness of His kingdom, not to agree with us about certain propositions that constitute what we define as orthodoxy. If they come to agree with us about propositions because we have engaged them with a theological bait and switch, but they are not captivated by Christ, then we have not made progress. To put it another way, the problem is not what they believe but what they find compelling. If we change what they believe by making our arguments sound more like what they find compelling, then what they find compelling has not changed, and changing that is the very thing we must do.

In this light, the Church’s response cannot be to argue with feminist theory or to make orthodoxy sound more like it. Feminist epistemology sets it beyond the reach of argumentation and syncretism fails to come to the core of the issue. On the contrary, if the Church is to respond to feminism, it must do so by becoming better than feminists at telling stories. A theory will not carry the day. A vision is necessary. We must present a vision of the Glory of God and the beauty and perfection of His kingdom that is more compelling than the vision which inspires feminist theorizing. We must also pray the Holy Spirit to regenerate the lost and make them into a people who are compelled by Christ and his Gospel. This can be our only aim because if the Holy Spirit does not regenerate, does not make folks into lovers of the Gospel, then no appearance of headway will suffice.

Partly, this was because of one of my classes last semester. I took Feminist Theory and Practice. A large part of the class was dedicated to questions of knowledge and epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge. I think the first chapter of 1 Corinthians lays out Paul’s epistemology.
In theological circles these days, there is a lot of talk about knowledge and epistemology. Likewise in the academy. Everyone is arguing about epistemology. There are camps. Words like Modernity and Postmodernism are flying around like crazy. Feminists are taking issue with both camps and staking out strategic epistemologies in order to empower a rigorous feminist activism. These issues of knowledge are incredibly hotly debated territory these days.

In this first chapter of First Corinthians, Paul mounts an epistemological attack against both the Greek thinking of his day and also against his fellow Jews who are critical of the message God has entrusted to him. If we understand the epistemological claims Paul is making, then we will see that his argument takes all the power out of many of the unsettling doubts that face many Christians in our contemporary culture.

Postmodernists position themselves in opposition to a number of ideas that were almost universally accepted and nearly unquestioned in the modern era. Be this as it may, there are ideas which are almost universally accepted and nearly unquestioned by both philosophical camps. These ideas were equally unquestioned by Greek philosophers in Paul’s time and this is where Paul takes aim in the opening chapter of this book If we understand the power of what he’s saying, we’ll have a means not only to confidently believe, but to proclaim his Gospel effectively and powerfully.

It’s interesting that he doesn’t begin his letter by explaining the reasons or rationale which led him to believe in the message he’s proclaiming. For him, reasons and rationale don’t seem to be the basis for his knowledge at all. He claims, quite on the contrary that his message is foolishness. It isn’t the sort of thing for which rationale and reasons are easily mustered. It doesn’t lend itself to philosophical argumentation, and on the face of it it isn’t terribly plausible.

Paul’s argument is that he doesn’t believe the Gospel because it’s plausible; it isn’t. On the contrary, he believes it because God laid hold of him and called him. Because of this calling, the Gospel impacted his life with power when he encountered it. It’s foolishness to the Greeks and a cause of stumbling to the Jews, but to those who are called it is the power and wisdom of God.

If we believe the gospel because of its plausibility, then we’re in the position of explaining why everyone else in the world believes all sorts of other things that are plausible to them. If we were raised in India, Hinduism would likely seem very plausible. If we were raised in a Saudi Arabian family, Islam would likely seem very plausible to us. How is it that every religion claims to be right? Is it plausible that they are all simply wrong? What do we do in our proclamation of the Gospel when folks simply don’t find it plausible? Are we smarter than they are? Are we just better acquainted with the relevant facts? What of those folks who are unquestionably smarter than us and better acquainted with the facts? Certainly this is a situation not uncommon for many college students who follow Jesus.

Paul’s answer to all of this is that if we think the Gospel is about relevant facts, rationales, arguments and plausibility then we have misunderstood it. It is about the power of God. He doesn’t believe the Gospel, and neither should we, because it’s plausible or because of arguments and rationales. We should believe it because we can do nothing else. When Paul was running from the Gospel, fighting it with every power at his disposal, God laid hold of him. When he was running from God, God chased him down, caught him, called Paul his own and began changing Paul’s heart and mind. Paul believes because he can do no other, and for him the Gospel is the power to effect this change. It is the power to make him into a believer, follower, worshipper of God. It is the power of salvation. It is the power and wisdom of God. Paul couldn’t escape it if he wanted to.

Likewise we, when we were enemies to God were reconciled to Him by the power of His Gospel, if indeed we are His. We can’t escape God or His Gospel even if we wanted to. He has the power to make us wanters of Him. He is at work in us both to will and to work according to His good pleasure. Where we were slaves to sin we are now slaves to Him, and He will have obedience. “I will put my Spirit within them and cause them to obey my statutes.”

If we see belief in this way, then not only is the power removed from the sense that in our contemporary pluralist society any truth claim is arbitrary, but also we are empowered to proclaim the Gospel authoritatively without being taken aback or shamed by its implausibility. We are proclaiming it not because it is plausible, but because it is God’s power of salvation to those whom He has called. We can be unsurprised that some find in foolish or offensive, and also courageous in proclaiming it for the sake of those who God has called and who will experience God’s power through its proclamation.

Our message then is not that a Hindu, a Muslim, an agnostic, or our college professor, has believed fallacious arguments, or has not been smart enough, or has not been well enough acquainted with the facts. Our message is that God is calling people to Himself, and will reveal Himself to those whom He has called. Our message is that He accomplishes this practically through the proclamation of this implausible message itself. Christ died under Pontius Pilate, was buried, rose on the third day, and those who are made believers will also be made partakers of the power of His resurrection. Let those hear who have ears to hear, and let those see who have eyes to see.

In the antebellum US, race was a tremendously potent issue in the minds of American people. Shortly after Jefferson wrote the famous words “all men are created equal,” he wrote another document called “Notes on the State of Virginia.” In this book he “advanced it as a suspicion” that Black people were inferior to Whites “in the faculties of both body and mind.” The video suggests that it was this suspicion that eased the tension for Jefferson between his words “all men are created equal” and his holding of more than a hundred Black people as slaves.

During the nineteenth century people began to look to science for answers to their questions about race. Where Jefferson had only a suspicion, folks now wanted objective answers. Science responded in force by applying all of the faculties at its disposal to the question of what made Black people inferior. Since the question being asked was “What made Blacks inferior,” that was the question that got answered. Hypotheses were crafted, data was collected and hypotheses were tested. Those hypotheses that fared best were reckoned to be true and entirely objective. The president of Harvard University even published research describing American Whites as biologically superior and ordering all other racial groups in descending categories with Black people at the bottom. Separate sub-species were defined to account for the differences such as Homo Sapiens Africanus and Homo Sapiens Europus. One thing that this episode in the history of science shows is how science can be mustered not just to discover truth, but also to reinforce the stories that a society tells about itself. These stories in turn, are presented as true and objective and serve to justify the ways the society behaves.

In the American history, these stories about race were deployed to justify not only the enslavement of Black people, but also the invasion of the Philippines, the dislocation and conquest of Native American tribes and the disenfranchisement of many nonwhite peoples. In addition to telling and scientifically reinforcing stories about race, this phenomenon also affected gender. Studies that demonstrated the mental and physical inferiority of Blacks also demonstrated the inferiority of women. This work was used to defend inferior treatment of women, commensurate with their “scientifically demonstrable mental and physical inferiority.”

One aspect of all of this that interested me, is the connection between the role of race and science in mid-nineteenth century America and evolutionary biology. I’m not a hard-sciences person. I haven’t taken a class in the hard sciences since I was a junior in high school. The social sciences is what I know, so I’ll approach the issue from the social sciences direction.

First, Darwin’s theory of adaptation by natural selection as an explanation of the origin of species was not in any way separate from the white supremacist discourses of biological science at the time. Quite the contrary, Darwin’s seminal book “On the Origin of Species” was part and parcel of this discourse. What isn’t usually mentioned in modern biology classes is that the full title of the book is “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.” In 1859, when this was published, it didn’t take much imagination to figure out what this concept implied in the context of the discussion in the scientific community about Homo Sapiens Europus and the way it related to Homo Sapiens Africanus. It provided a convenient intellectual justification for the subjugation and even the extermination of those races that were not “favoured.”