The Femonite: Musings from a Mennonite Feminist

May 22, 2013

On Reproductive Rights: Gosnell, Plan B and My Uterus

I have sort of been biding my time and sitting on my words for awhile. When the story about Dr. Kermit Gosnell, and his illegal late-term abortion clinic in Philadelphia broke, I watched intently, horrified as news of one bureaucractic oversight after another came to light and read the words from the grand jury reflecting on the multiple breakdowns in communication and accountability that occurred. They outline clearly multiple opportunities when federal and state organizations could have, should have and even DID become aware of the egregious practices in Gosnell’s clinic, but failed to act. In conclusion, the grand jury writes, “Bureaucratic inertia is not exactly news. We understand that. But we think this was something more. We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion.”

Here was a devastating case that eclipsed any of the clear boundaries that both so-called pro-choice and pro-life activists have tried to so clearly demarcate, and it exposed all of the ways that our current legislation and legal environment are causing undue harm in unequal ways, leaving poor women especially exposed.

But still I wrote nothing.

I watched as President Obama’s administration, on May 13, the same day that Kermit Gosnell’s verdict was decided, launched a last-second appeal to stop the sale of Plan B to girls and women of any age without a prescription. Plan B, also sometimes referred to as the “morning after pill,”, is an emergency contraceptive that, when taken within 3 days of unprotected sex, can prevent conception from occurring. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration found that Plan B was safe for use by women of all ages, and that it should be made available without age restrictions or prescription. However, in what one US Judge Edward Korman calls a “politically motivated move,” the Obama administration appealed to stay this decision by suggesting that the age for access be lowered to 15 and available only with presentation of a valid ID.

Proponents on both sides of this debate are, again, fired up. For pro-life individuals, Plan B represents yet another foray into the tricky and morally unacceptable area of abortion. For those who consider themselves pro-choice, this was making access to a safe drug, that can prevent pregnancy before it even starts, needlessly difficult. Carol Christ, at Feminism and Religion, wrote,

“Let us be clear. Allowing 15 year olds to buy Plan B with a legal ID begs the question of how a 15 year old who is too young to drive is going to have a valid ID with her age on it. Or how a 17 or even 21 year old girl without access to her own or a family car is going to prove her age…Some girls who need the morning after pill have been raped by their own fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, or boyfriends of their mothers… Some know they would be punished or beaten or even thrown out of the house if they admitted to having sex. Some simply don’t want to disappoint their parents and are afraid to speak to them. Does Obama really want young girls like these to be denied access to the morning after pill and then to find themselves pregnant at age 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, or 17? Would he rather these girls have abortions, or would he prefer they become mothers? Does he expect them to put their children up for adoption without regret? Or does he want them to have to struggle to complete their education so they can support children?”

And still, I wrote nothing.

But last week, an e-mail from Ethan Bodnaruk, who writes and reflects over at www.ethanbodnaruk.com, prompted me to begin moving towards writing. And honestly, as a blog that wants to take feminist thought and concerns seriously, it’s hard to ignore two such public and visible conversations that involve reproductive rights and women’s bodies. Ethan had a proposal for a post, but because so much of the debate about reproductive rights (which obviously intimately involve women in a way that they cannot, by nature, involve men) has ironically been carried forward by men, it seemed unfortunate that the only statement on this site about these issues would come from a man, too. Not that men can’t say good things. Ethan’s post will run tomorrow, and I think you will find it helpful and thought provoking. But women also need to continue to dig into these conversations and to begin owning the discourses that are out there about our bodies, collectively and particularly.

There are no easy answers. I agree with blogger Rachel Held Evans when she reflects on her dis-ease with both the pro choice and pro life “camps,” who either seem to privilege the child or the woman exclusively, but my own sentiments would certainly fall much more closely along pro choice lines. I think that legislation restricting abortion too often leads to an increase in the number or abortions performed and a proliferation of “underground” and unaccountable operations like Gosnell’s. I think that having a baby and pregnancy should not be a punishment for having unprotected sex or being raped. I believe that the government should not demand or legislate whether a woman carries a child within her or not. I believe that if we did a better job of providing social services, education, contraception and support to women, then we would naturally reduce the number of abortions that are necessary. And I honestly believe that Plan B is not that far a cry from a condom or from the birth control pill, which prevent fertilization and conception from occurring.

Some of the current debate surrounding Plan B may come from the fact that we hate picturing a 12-year-old girl being in need of emergency contraception. It’s an unsettling thought. But shouldn’t we be examining the root causes that might lead this girl to need Plan B in the first place, rather than punishing her once she is in a situation where she is at risk of becoming pregnant?

However, having just been pregnant, I also want us to do a better job of respecting life. I know that, from the moment I learned that I was pregnant, I felt different. My body began to change and respond quite quickly. The debate about when and where exactly life begins, and the difference between early and late term abortions, can quickly become sticky. It is hard to truly sort out when a “change” occurs, and when a group of cells becomes a baby that is worthy of our legislative protection. It should not be a discussion about which we are flippant or celebratory.

I also know that I was lucky. I was pregnant with a baby that I wanted, conceived out of a consensual and loving relationship. I had a wide-ranging support system, so this baby was not going to be born into my home alone, but would be cared for my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so many friends. I was financially stable. When these conditions aren’t met, pregnancy certainly does not and will not always feel like a blessing.

I think that both sides have room to learn from each other on this controversial issue. There is value in both respecting a woman’s right to have a say over what happens to her body. It is harmful to wield pregnancy as a threat or a punishment that must be born. But it is also good to respect the sacredness of life and the seriousness of sex.

I haven’t offered anything radical here, I know that. But in cases like these, it sometimes feels like it’s just important to enter the conversational fray and to hope for grace.

This conversation will continue later this week with two more posts: one from Ethan Broadnaruk and another where Justin, my husband, and I discuss our thoughts on reproductive rights.

2 Comments

Filed under Feminism, womanhood

Tagged as Abortion, Carol Christ, Feminism, Kermit Gosnell, Plan B, Reproductive Rights

May 15, 2013

Job Success for Women: Does it really have to look like this?!

There has been much debate swirling around in the media of late about whether a woman can “have it all” – whatever that might mean. In response to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s admonition to women to “lean into” their careers, Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote a widely publicized Op-Ed piece for The Atlantic in which she explored her own decision to leave a high profile career in the state department in order to be home with her family.

Slaughter writes,

Suddenly, finally, the penny dropped. All my life, I’d been on the other side of this exchange. I’d been the woman smiling the faintly superior smile while another woman told me she had decided to take some time out or pursue a less competitive career track so that she could spend more time with her family. I’d been the woman congratulating herself on her unswerving commitment to the feminist cause, chatting smugly with her dwindling number of college or law-school friends who had reached and maintained their place on the highest rungs of their profession. I’d been the one telling young women at my lectures that youcan have it all and do it all, regardless of what field you are in. Which means I’d been part, albeit unwittingly, of making millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot).

Slaughter goes on to explain the ways that juggling these things seamlessly is nearly impossible, especially for women who cannot afford to pay for extra childcare, etc.

In a similar vein, new celebrity mom Drew Barrymore also recently spoke out about “having it all.” She says, “I was raised in that generation of ‘women can have it all,’ and I don’t think you can. I think some things fall off the table. The good news is, what does stay on the table becomes much more in focus and much more important. I feel guilty all the time — but you combat it by being a superhero. When you go out there in the world you have to remember, ‘I’m doing the best I can, I’m doing it for them, and I’m going to be there for them too. I’m just going to figure out the balance.’”

I know something of this guilt. I’m by no means in a high profile role like Slaughter or Barrymore, but given my families realities and my own interests, I’ve made the choice to continue working full-time in a job where I sometimes travel. Although Ellie has traveled with me at times, and my job and boss have made it possible to have a very flexible schedule, this does mean that I often leave her: I have to walk away from her when she wants to play to take a phone call; I’ve left her for 4 days at a time; and I’m not always able to be as attentive to her as I would like. And I feel guilty about that!

In contrast, Justin, my husband, would encourage me to let go of this guilt and to just enjoy Ellie when I’m with her. We’ve chosen to split parenting equally, but it seems like I unfortunately take more than my fair share of “guilt” upon myself.

When watching a recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy, of all shows, I was struck by an exchange between two of the main characters. Meredith Grey, one of the surgeon’s on the show, is feeling conflicted and guilty because she is dropping her toddler daugther off at a fellow surgeon’s house to be cared for overnight while she is at the hospital. When her friend, Callie, observes that Meredith is feeling guilty, she says, “No, don’t do that. No guilt. It’s good for her to see you achieve.” And she’s right: there’s enough guilt to go around for women. As a wise professor just told me, ” Enjoy your daughter when you’re with her, enjoy your work when you are there, and don’t give in to guilt.”

As I understand it, Sheryl Sandberg would say that women need to stop limiting themselves in these ways and “leaving their jobs before they’re gone.” In a similar vein, author Hanna Rosin, who just published a book called The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, which chronicles the rise of women in professional spheres the 21st century, has offered a recent series of tips to women for succeeding in the workplace. The overall tone of these suggestions sounds “pessimistically pragmatic” to me.

Rosin’s suggestions are as follows:

1. Don’t Gush with Gratitude – “So don’t just gush with gratitude when you get a job offer. Do some research on the average salary range for that job. Think about what other perks you might want. And put on your game face.”

2. Avoid the “pushy” trap – “It turns out that it really matters exactly how women ask for what they want. In a series of lab experiments at NYU and the Harvard Kennedy School, researchers showed subjects separate videos of male and female actors asking for something at work — say, a better starting salary. A typical script goes something like this: “I think I should be paid at the top of the salary range. And I would also like to be eligible for an end-of-the-year bonus.” When the male actor read the script, research subjects judged him to be strong, dominant and a decent colleague. When an actress read the exact same script, subjects tended to think she was pushy, unpleasant and, worse, they voted not to give her a raise. This is deeply annoying and infuriating and very unfair. But it’s also true.”

3. Channel Your Big Sister - “What triggered people’s suspicions, they [researchers] realized, was the idea of women negotiating for themselves. They ran a few scripts until they landed on one that did not turn people off. The solution was not for women to back off or apologize or bake brownies for everyone at the office — that would only make them look weak and unworthy of power. It was for women to portray their own needs as aligned with the needs of the company’s.”

4. Wear a Turtleneck - “If there are parts of your body that will betray you — a twitch, a tapping foot, a nervous laugh — learn to disguise or deal with them. You need to appear communal and big sisterly, yes, but also utterly confident and in command.”

5. Get the sock out of your pants – “Our understanding of what makes a good leader is shifting to incorporate more traditionally feminine traits. The new model of effective leader is less army general and more soccer coach, someone who can inspire a team, collaborate and “walk in someone else’s shoes with emotional intelligence and empathy,” in the words of Julie Gerberding, who is now the President of Merck’s vaccine division. Don’t think of your girlish side as a handicap in the office, because nobody else does anymore.”

Reading through this list, much of it makes sense, but it also makes me feel a subtle sense of dismay. All of Rosin’s keys to success seem to undermine her final assertion that “women’s forms” of leadership are now accorded equal respect. Rather than trying to subvert these problematic systems, Rosin is suggesting that we just play by their rules to our advantage (hello, liberal second-wave feminism). And, as many of us know, the feminine and the masculine are fluid concepts that also aren’t always attributable to members of either gender in clear cut ways. It is sad to think that success for women in a professional sphere must always be so calculated.

So what’s the moral of this rambling blog post? Perhaps it’s just that we still have a long way to go, and that I sort of begrudgingly agree that “having it all” isn’t necessarily possible or even desirable, unless we’re willing to have it all with a side of guilt or a new public persona thrown in. Have we really come no further than this? What do you all think?

For other reflections on what it means to be a woman in leadership, you can check out the new Women in Leadership Project blog over at Mennonite Church USA.

7 Comments

Filed under Feminism, Gender, Leadership, womanhood

Tagged as Anne-Marie Slaugther, Drew Barrymore, Hanna Rosin, Leadership, Motherhood, Sheryl Sandberg, working moms

May 13, 2013

Wherefore art thou, female superheroes?

If the weather in SoCal is any indication (the temps blazed to over 100 degrees yesterday, with promises for more of the same today), summer is here with a vengeance. And Hollywood seems to agree. This summer’s stream of big budget action flicks has already begun, with Iron Man 3 leading the way and blasting and charging its way to the second best opening weekend ever. And yet to come this summer, we can expect a whole host of other geek-i-fied sequels and action films, including Star Trek Into Darkness, The Wolverine, and Man of Steel (the new reboot of the Superman franchise).

I must confess, though I am no comic book buff, there’s always something fun about these semi-mindless summer movie events, where you can expect to go to the theater knowing that, despite plot twists and turns, your superhero will likely prevail, good will win out over evil, and, even in respectably postmodern series like The Dark Knight trilogy, the ending will be satisfying. You can expect that in typical rom-com fashion – sans all the meet cutes and drawn out awkwardness – the hero (almost always a man) will overcome great odds to win the affections of a good-lookin’ lady. In recent years, this lady might spend a lot of her screen time asserting her independence and intelligence, only to have this all undermined in the last 15 minutes of the film when she gets to play the damsel in distress, scream and cry and hope to be rescued by the hero-man.

But hey, it’s all ridiculously enjoyable, the effects are good, and usually the acting is good: in fact, these new franchises have been pulling on strong actors of both the male and female persuasion. Which is why it was so shocking when Entertainment Weekly posted an infographic illustrating the amount of screen time that A-list actresses receive in superhero movies. Check it out for yourself:

Wow. Does this make you squirm or what? Why would such talented actresses agree to such backseat roles? As I’ve thought it through, perhaps there are a few exceptions: the new reincarnation of Cat Woman, a Robin Hood-esque cat burglar played by Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises, exhibited more agency than most superhero love interests, and Scarlett Johannssen’s Black Widow was technically part of the fighting force in last summer’s The Avengers (although, if we’re being honest, sometimes it did feel like the camera was more preoccupied with her black spandex suit than her fighting skills).

Remember when I said that I sometimes want the feminist out of my head? This is one of those times. I don’t like having this knowledge. It’s going to color my summer brain candy.

But in all seriousness, where are the female heroines? Do action movies with women at the helm just tank? Is video game spinoff Lara Croft going to be the closest we get to action packed dominance? And when will we see a female love interest who’s an equal partner to her super suitor? I mean, c’mon Hollywood. It’s 2013. It’s time for less distress and more female finesse.

Disclaimer: I am NOT a comic book buff, so for those of you who are and do know way more about this stuff, fill me in. Are there strong female figures out there who are just not represented at the movies?

14 Comments

Filed under Feminism, Pop Culture

Tagged as Entertainment Weekly, Feminism, Iron Man, pop culture, Superheros, Superman, The Dark Knight

May 12, 2013

On Motherhood

Last year at this time, “Baby H” was in utero, and we were anxiously awaiting her exodus from the womb, so that our first foray into parenthood could begin in earnest. Last year at this time, I was a mixed bag of emotions: excitement, anticipation, fear, confusion, happiness, and the list could go on…

This year, I’m sitting propped up in bed, listening to the sounds of my husband and my now almost 9-month-old daughter (seriously, where has the time gone?) preparing breakfast in bed for me. Who knew that the gift of sleeping in and lounging in bed on a Sunday morning (also made possible by our awesome house church group that meets in the afternoon) would be the best possible gift someone could give?

If I could reach back in time, and talk to that pregnant mama that I was a year ago, I’m not sure how I would or could prepare her for what motherhood is. As with any labor of love, where we care so deeply and invest ourselves in the process of giving, nurturing and shaping life – whether through parenthood, mentoring, creative writing, etc. (I don’t think “mothering” needs to be a limited concept!) – I think it’s impossible to know the ramifications of what’s coming until you’ve embarked on the journey itself.

And as I’ve embarked on this new journey of parenthood, I have found myself blessed again and again to be surrounded by other women (and men!) who have held me up, encouraged me, laughed with me, cried with me and just, in general, been along for the ride.

I think of my own mom, who made it to California just as I was having my first “new mama freakout,” and helped talk me through it. Who answers my “worrywart” questions with calm assurances and never forgets to tell me that I am doing a good job. And who loves my daughter in perhaps the way only a grandma can.

I am grateful for my dad, who journeyed out to California and spent a whole 24-hours alone with Ellie, when she was still in her mysterious just-meeting-the-world-newness, and who is saving a soccer scholarship for Ellie, so that when she grows up, she’ll know that her body is good and is meant for so much more than just looking good and having babies.

Ellie with Great-Grandparents
I am grateful for my grandmothers, who treat Ellie with such love and tenderness, and who take such joy in her life. I am grateful for the stories that they have shared with me about their own identities as mothers, and their love for each of my parents.

I am grateful for my mother and sister-in-law, who were both mothers before me, and who have joyously welcomed Ellie into the fold, and cared for her during a recent episode when I was sure that my spleen was about to bust out of my belly (as it turns out, it did end up having to be removed, but that’s a tale for another time).

I am grateful for my siblings, who, although far away, always keep me laughing and on my toes. I am grateful to Elias for mesmerizing Ellie and keeping her happy with his crazy hair, eclectic music and dance moves. I am grateful to Maya for always taking delight in Ellie, and for traveling to be with us in Indiana and San Antonio, even when it wasn’t convenient.

I am grateful to so many who have brought us meals, stopped by our house, traveled across the country, babysat, listened to my (sometimes neurotic and worried) rants, played with Ellie, brought me coffee, gone on walks with us, planned playdates, let me take a nap, and the list could go on and on.

I am grateful to my husband, Justin, for being one half of an awesome parenting team, and for fully investing himself in the work of caring for our spunky daughter. For loving me and telling me that I’m a good mom. For reminding me that I’m still attractive, even when I feel like I don’t recognize the body staring back at me in the mirror. And just in general for being my partner on this journey.

And today especially, I’m so grateful that my daughter, Elena “Ellie” Irene Heinzekehr is out of the belly and here with us in the world. I am grateful for the ways she has surprised me: by teaching me how much it is possible to love someone after only a few short hours; in the surprising ways that she is sensitive to and aware of the world around her; with her crazy antics and dance moves whenever Justin Timberlake comes on the radio; with her mini-monologues in a language I can’t yet understand and her gurgling, boisterous giggles; with her love of food (and especially all things carbohydrate-based); with her strong-willed nature and so much more. I am grateful to be her mom.

Motherhood is hard, this is true. It’s not just all smiles and frolicking through the park and cuddling. It’s poopy diapers and interrupted sleep and self-doubt and guilt and worry. But it is also full of moments of such indescribable joy and fulfillment, too. A friend told me early on that I should never doubt that Ellie was a gift from God, and that we were the best parents for her. So I am grateful for this day, which does not need to be about buying lots of stuff, but when we get to remember and name all of those people who have been a part of the communal effort that is mothering. I am truly grateful.

3 Comments

Filed under Motherhood, Parenthood

Tagged as Community, mother, Mother's Day, Motherhood, Parenthood, parenting

May 11, 2013

Femonite Bites: May 11, 2013

Saturday’s here, which means it’s time for another roundup of things worth noting around the web world this week. Take heed, fair readers, take heed.

On Mothers:

Mother’s day is this Sunday, and it stirs up a whole host of emotions, thoughts, etc. Depending on how inspired I’m feeling, I may be sharing some of my own reflections on mothering on Sunday, but until then, you should check out these three pieces which examine this day, each in their own special way.

Why I Hate Mother’s Day – By Anne Lamott

“But Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path. Ha! Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.”

Amy Young with “An Open Letter to Pastors: A non-mother speaks about Mother’s Day”

“Fast forward several years to Mother’s Day. A pastor asked all mothers to stand. On my immediate right, my mother stood and on my immediate left, a dear friend stood. I, a woman in her late 30s, sat. I don’t know how others saw me, but I felt dehumanized, gutted as a woman. Real women stood, empty shells sat. I do not normally feel this way. I do not like feeling this way. I want no woman to ever feel this way in church again.”

And a lighter open letter to moms, from Kid President

Most Fascinating Thought Experiment of the Week:

Coverflip: Maureen Johnson Calls for an End to Gendered Book Covers

“Which is why yesterday, I proposed a little experiment on Twitter. I asked people to take a well-known book, then to imagine the author of that book was of the opposite gender, or was genderqueer, and imagine what that cover might look like. There were hundreds of replies within 24 hours. Here are just a few of them.”

The Tracks I’m Chilling/Jamming to this Week:

Patty Griffin has finally released a new album of original songs. Be sure to check out American Kid, and you can hear this fantastic little number that features Robert Plant.

A cool jam for summer.

Creative Quilting (These are not your grandma’s quilts):

“Modern quilting” is the label that has stuck to this aesthetic, which often recalls the work of such modern-art pioneers as Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers. Geometric shapes abound, mostly in solid colors, often against a white background. Sometimes, the new moderns get edgy and put social commentary in the quilts.

Many new-generation quilters consider themselves rebels, rejecting over-embellished styles in favor of radical simplicity. Their teachers tend to be blogs and YouTube videos, and they’re sharing every quilt on Pinterest and Instagram.

If you want to geek out…

“Star Wars: Vader’s Little Princess” imagines how the Sith Lord would have parented a young Princess Leia

The 50 Best Websites of 2013 as determined by Time Magazine

And some inspiration from around the blog-o-sphere…

Assorted Thoughts on Being Pretty by Emily Joy Allison

“But the thing that my ex-boyfriend and Stasi Eldredge and the purity culture movement in general all have in common is that they accept the same underlying assumption that is required to believe the things they do—namely, that women can control the behavior, choices, and sins of men based on what they look like, what they wear, and how they present themselves.

And this, my friends, is a bold-faced lie. And it’s killing me. It’s killing us. It’s killing our relationships, it’s killing our interactions between men and women, and it’s killing our view of ourselves as image bearers of God.”

Seasons by Rachel Held Evans

“We need the sounds of laughter and the sounds of crying. We need baptisms and funerals, confirmations and AA meetings. We need both the systems and the reforms. We need the theses, the hammer, the nail. And we need the door. Let’s not forget that we need one another, if only to acknowledge that within every season a new season awaits, swelling and splitting like a seed in the soil, about to break through.”

What did you read, see, write or create this week that struck a chord with you?

Laughing at the Images: Reflections on Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

This is the third in a series of posts reflecting on the short legacy and meaning of the 2009 memoir, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Melodie Davis is a writer and editor for MennoMedia in Harrisonburg, Va. She is the longtime writer of the Another Way column and blogs at www.FindingHarmonyblog.com.

Like many others, I loved, laughed and outright howled at some passages in Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, but felt uncomfortable with the impression it left regarding ongoing stereotyping of Mennonites and Amish in the media. At Mennonite Media (which is now combined with the former Mennonite Publishing Network into MennoMedia) we kept tabs for years (including using professional research firms) of images of Mennonites in the public media and the images were always, at best, very confused.

The last formal research that I’m aware of, conducted in 1999 (telephone survey of 1,016 random adults by Caravan Opinion Research Corporation) still demonstrated significant confusion about Mennonites and Amish.

When asked, “What things come to mind when I mention Mennonites?” more than one-third, 39 percent, answered “Amish, strict religion, plain people, women wear white lace caps, horse and buggy, no modern utilities, people that keep to themselves, dress different, people dress in black …” At that time, 71 percent of U.S. adults said they had heard of Mennonites, a small increase over a previous study in 1989 when 64 percent reported being aware of the Mennonite church. (From a Dec. 1, 1999, Mennonite Board of Missions news release. Not online.)

The above gets pretty thick with statistics, but it is the basis of my discomfort with the original cover on Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, which had a flirtatious skirt flipped up, an Amish covering complete with strings, and “black dress” in the title. (I should add that the second cover does NOT include the skirt flipped up, interestingly, and knowing a bit about how covers at mainstream publishers often get decided by sales and marketing, with little or no weigh-in from the author, let’s give the benefit of the doubt in Ms. Janzen’s favor. Covers are, after all, not about what the author “likes,” but about what will help sell the book.) In the end, it is a well-written, fun-to-read book, especially if you grew up Mennonite. But it doesn’t all go down well.

A new study regarding images of Mennonites would be interesting now that we’ve lived with the fingertip accessibility of image-correcting websites for a good 10-15 years. I wonder if images have changed. My prediction: I’m sure there is less confusion, but there is likely still significant stereotyping. Books like Mennonite in a Little Black Dress did not help, and Janzen’s sequel, Does this Church Make Me Look Fat? A Mennonite Finds Faith, Meets Mr. Right, and Solves Her Lady Problems really moves on from the Mennonite aspect since she is now Pentecostal. And speaking of covers/titles, I wonder how much input Janzen had on the “fat” cover and title with the Barbie-doll-like artificial woman on the front? And by the way, ever notice that it is still okay to crack Amish/Mennonite jokes on sit-coms?

Third Way Café website has worked at interpreting Mennonites to the general public since 1998. The most popular section perennially is Who are the Mennonites?, including the FAQ section. There are many other subsections that deal with Anabaptist theology, a history written for children, or the more comprehensive glossary, which tackles specific questions asked by visitors, some of them quite obscure. (Calvinism and Arminianism seems like an issue for some people.) The almost annual news release summarizing the most off beat or profound questions of the year is always picked up and used by the Mennonite press and also resulted in a book, Ask Third Way Cafe: 50 Common and Quirky Questions about Mennonites. The interest has not seemed to abate.

Over the last 15 years, we have received about 500-800 hits a day at Third Way Cafe, which spikes to 2,000-5,000 every time there is a news event involving Amish (tragedies, accidents, the school shooting at Nickel Mines). About 84 percent are new (rather than returning) visitors. With the advent of “Amish” reality TV shows, the visits also spike after every episode, and the queries seem to be along the lines of “differences between Mennonites and Amish.”

We have been pleased to produce air-clearing DVDs like “Who are the Mennonites” (long and short versions, short version available free). We’ve also produced, over the last 12 years, a string of 11 documentaries on various social issues (one in cooperation with EMU students) airing on national TV (most have their own websites listed here), and eight campaigns of radio public service announcements all bearing the Mennonite church name (at least tiny in the credits or endtags). These can correct stereotypes and offer many different images and associations with the word Mennonite. “Mennonite: Oh yeah, don’t they do those spots on addictions and mental illness? Hmmm.”

How does this relate also to the books Herald Press prints and promotes? For instance, not everyone across the church is happy that the bestselling book right now for Herald Press is Mennonite Girls Can Cook and now a sequel, Mennonite Girls Can Cook Celebrations. Doesn’t that reek of old fashioned stereotypes we’re trying to avoid? Kitchen … Girls, where are the men? Mennonites were enamored about the wide acclaim for classics like More with Less Cookbook and Simply in Season, for instance, which bore immediately laudable Mennonite/Anabaptist values such as simple living and stewardship of the earth.

Most of the projects of MennoMedia are published on the basis (or hope) of them paying for themselves. But a denominational publisher charged with writing, designing, illustrating and publishing the faith formation materials for tens of thousands of our children and youth, not to mention the ongoing educational, theological, missional, and worship materials for adults, are helped by a structure that includes publishing cookbooks that uphold the values of faith, family, God’s good gift of food, local eating, sustainability, and all that good jazz. This is why Herald Press is publishing the Mennonite Girls books, happily.

As Paul Schrag wrote in Mennonite World Review last December, “A denomination needs to publish, even if publishing doesn’t pay for itself. Publishing is essential to maintaining our Anabaptist identity, vision and mission. Without books and curricula by our own writers, our Anabaptist theology and peace witness will erode.”

And ultimately, the Mennonite church(es) probably won’t suffer too greatly from a book like Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. In fact, some of us wish we could have written such a memoir with such success, but without the cuss words and broad, confusing strokes. Yes?

6 Comments

Filed under Feminism, Literature, Mennonite Identity

Tagged as Melodie Davis, MennoMedia, Mennonite Girls Can Cook, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Rhoda Janzen, Third Way Cafe

May 8, 2013

On Martyr Complexes, Memoir and Misunderstanding: My Reading of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

This is the second of three posts exploring the short legacy and meaning behind Rhoda Janzen’s 2009 memoir, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. The final post will arrive on Friday May 10.

Four years ago, Rhoda Janzen’s (then new) memoir was getting major buzz. Everywhere I turned, it seemed like I was met with the ubiquitous cover for Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, with the bare legs and LBD (little black dress, for those of you not up with the lingo) blowing in the wind, and an old Mennonite (or Amish-esque even) covering jauntily draped off to the side. If I introduced myself as Mennonite to someone with no prior experience with Mennonites (which was many people, given our recent move to southern California in 2009), it wasn’t too unlikely that they might ask if I was related to Rhoda Janzen or if I had read her book. And then another barrage of questions might follow: Did my mother also think I should marry my first cousin? Were my school lunches also “embarrassing” parades of strange European foods with names no one could pronounce? Why was I wearing clothes from the Gap – had I left the Mennonite fold and stopped sewing my own clothes? Didn’t Mennonites frown on higher education? Why were we here at a graduate school?

OK, so these questions are exaggerations, to be sure. But the buzz and questions that I received were frequent and palpable enough that it wasn’t long before I felt compelled to find a copy of Janzen’s book and give it a read. And there were definitely some funny parts. As Shirley Showalter mentioned in her excellent, and very balanced, review on Janzen’s book, is a humorist in a club with few women, and her writing is crisp, clean and weaves together a broad range of stories and topics quite deftly. She keeps the pace of the story moving, and it’s certainly an engaging and never dull read.

But to be honest: I. HATED. This. Book.

There, I said it. It’s out there. No taking it back. It’s rare that I have such a visceral reaction to books. My usual reaction to books, even if I don’t like them, is much more balanced. I may dislike a book, but it’s rare that I would come away feeling like I’d like to actively campaign for people to stop reading a book and to find something more edifying. But that’s how I felt after reading Janzen’s memoir.

Now I’m all for memoirs, and I know that, by its very nature, this genre comes along with some self-indulgence, hyperbole and spin. Heck, we all do these things all the time: in social media outlets, on blogs (no, my life does not always fit quite as cleanly into little “story nuggets” as my writing may make it appear), in conversation with others, etc. Adaptation is a natural part of how we craft our own narratives.

But Janzen is not just skewering her own family, or the Mennonites in her corner of the world: the broad-ranging and all-inclusive way she talks about Mennonites seemed to also somehow imply that the way I grew up Mennonite – and the experience of growing up Mennonite for any other young women – must be similarly backwards and antiquated. Her indictments range from Mennonite women being plain and unattractive (“Besides being born Mennonite, which is usually its own beauty strike”); to uneducated and inept (“Curiously, although I married an atheist, and although I had spent sixteen years pursuing the very secular path of higher education, I had not rejected the idea of God.”); to stuck in the kitchen (“And cooking is one thing a Mennonite girl knows how to do.”); to judgmental (“I hope it’s clear by now that the Mennonites wouldn’t want me. The only reason they’re nice to me is that my dad is famous, my mom makes great pie, and I babysat their kids when I was twelve.”); and finally, sectarian and closed off (“Somewhere, somehow, the Mennonite culture had taught us that all non-Mennonite men were would-be rapists. That whenever we stepped outside the protective shield of our Mennonite community, we moved in a terrifyingly unfamiliar world.”).

Maybe it’s that I’m a generation removed from Janzen, so some of the strict guidelines of the old Mennonite church had worn off by the time I arrived. Or maybe it’s because I grew up as a part of Mennonite Church USA, not the Mennonite Brethren church that Janzen was a part of (a distinction that, as Shirley Showalter noted, Janzen happily glosses over, presumably for reader ease). But whatever the reason, I didn’t see much of myself – or much of the parts of being an Anabaptist-Mennonite that I love – represented in Janzen’s pages. Rather, I read confirmation after confirmation of every stereoptype that people might hold about Mennonites lined out again and again for consumption by the general public. In contrast to helping people to better understand what it means to be Mennonite, this book probably just confirmed their suspicions and reinforced their ideas. It’s like an anti-missional effort. At least it was clear that we weren’t just Amish, I guess. And I guess that no publicity can be all bad, if it raises people’s curiosity and opens up opportunities for dialogue (you can check out my earlier post on other places where Anabaptists are in the limelight for more on this).

And maybe I, and other Mennonites who were offended by this book, just need to get better at laughing at ourselves. It’s well known that many of us European Mennonites (read white) can often be bound by a “martyr complex.” Stemming back from the days when we were persecuted and remained faithful in Europe – you know, back in the 16^th century – we can sometimes feel like our culture and our religion is under threat from the outside culture. In a recent and fascinating reflection on Amish fiction and Anabaptist identity for The Paris Review, Rachel Yoder reflects on the Anabaptist preoccupation with the Martyrs Mirror, a book containing hundreds of stories of Anabaptists who were persecuted and killed by the state because of their faith. Yoder writes, “If the Mennonite and Amish have anything to offer about romance, it’s this: a heavy book of death and torture, a love letter to all their pursuers, their captors and executioners. Consider the love language of these people something similar to a moaning, choking agony addressed at the universe. Call it holy desperation. Call it devotion. Call it belief in inherent dignity. This is real Amish romance, as real as it gets, a three-hundred-year love affair with life, with the sacredness of life.”

But perhaps our new love affair with life – and specifically Anabaptist life and faith – has left us out of touch with the broader world. As Janzen rightly notes, we Mennonites can sometimes close ourselves off from the outside world in an attempt to stay safe. And this self-imposed victim mentality can be really problematic. When we white Mennonites get fixated on our own “outsider status,” we can fail to see the ways that the broader culture actually privileges us. Feeling like victims can block us from being able to really unpack and acknowledge the ways we are perpetuating other forms of oppression in our church, like racism, sexism, heterosexism and classism, to name a few. In fact, Janzen’s book also “white washes” Mennonite identity, by failing to even note that the growing edge in the Mennonite church is among people of color, and that the global, non-European Mennonite church now eclipses the numbers of European Mennonites who are still sipping borscht and tearing into Zwiebach.

So maybe the answer is to just get over it. To laugh at ourselves and to thank Janzen for at least getting us on the radar through her bestselling book. And no memoir should have to lay out the contours and all of the in-group specifics or identities that exist: frankly, while those of us “inside” might care about these distinctions, they don’t necessarily make for interesting reading.

I think that I would just wish that, rather than trying to universalize her own experience as what being Mennonite is about, that Janzen would have spoken more to her own particular location. Because for me, growing up, being Mennonite was about:

Being taught to love social justice
Receiving a first-class education at Mennonite institutions
Learning the story of Jesus, first and foremost, as the lens through which I interpreted the world and faith
Being able to wear what I wanted, when I wanted to (For the most part)
Being part of a community that loved and cared for me: that brought food to our home when we were sick, that celebrated my achievements as I grew older, that let me ask questions about faith, God and the world, and that was there to walk alongside me even in times of despair and doubt

Now certainly, it hasn’t all been rosy. There have certainly been theological underpinnings that I’ve had to unpack, so many “isms” are still woven into the fabric of our church, and, depending on where in the Mennonite church you grew up, many of the assumptions that Janzen describes might well have been true. But they are not true for everyone, and that’s what I missed hearing in the pages of Janzen’s book.

I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post that Janzen’s book was getting lots of buzz…four years ago. Now, oddly enough, it seems like the interest in this book has largely died down. When Janzen’s follow-up memoir, Does this church make me look fat?, was released in 2012, I didn’t hear much about it, and it appears that sales for this second book were much lower. So why is this book still worth exploring today on The Femonite? Because, as Valerie Weaver-Zercher noted in her book, Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels, books about Anabaptists are becoming more and more popular. Although Mennonite romance novels aren’t flying off the shelves like those about the Amish, books about Mennonites ARE becoming more common. It’s not unthinkable that we who call ourselves Mennonite will have to continue to face caricatures of ourselves in the public media. So I guess the question that remains is: How will we handle this with grace? Can we laugh? Can we dialogue? We shall see.

17 Comments

Filed under Church, Gender, Literature

Tagged as Martyr's Mirror, Memoir, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Mennonites, Rachel Yoder, Rhoda Janzen

May 6, 2013

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: An “Old Mennonite” Review

This week we’ll be reviewing one of the most recent popular accounts of Mennonite womanhood: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. In a series of three posts, we’ll explore the legacy and impact that this book has had so far.

Today’s post is a guest post from Shirley Hershey Showalter, and it originally ran in 2009, soon after Mennonite in a Little Black Dress was published. This post is her most popular and widely read blog thus far, and elicited a wide range of comments and reactions. Shirley blogs regularly at her site: www.ShirleyShowalter.com. Shirley is writing her memoir, exploring her Mennonite childhood in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, under contract to Herald Press and living in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The book is due to be published sometime in 2013. In her wide-ranging career, Shirley has served as a college professor, president of Goshen (Ind.) College, and foundation executive. She has also written extensively and been published in periodicals such as USA Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education and more. Thanks, Shirley, for sharing your reflections with The Femonite.

When I read Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress late at night, the bed posts shook. I had to choke back gargantuan guffaws in order not to wake my Mennonite husband. The last time that happened, I was reading Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Before that, David Sedaris, Michael Perry, and sections of Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven also left me shaking soundlessly. I hate when this happens, since I have to stay under the covers while I read. Sleeping in the nude has its disadvantages.

If that is “TMI”–too much information–for you, gentle reader, beware of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. You will blush often. Right away, on page two, the word “tit” appears in a discussion of breast cancer, and Janzen tells you that she and her women kin have none. Tits, that is. After that, more intimate details follow: discussions of menstrual flow, pee, whangs, thangs, the Big Job, pubes, and farts, just for a few examples. I admit that I laughed often about subjects that, in the hands of a less gifted writer, could have been not only unfunny but a total waste of time. More than anything else, this book reminded me of dorm-room conversations in (a Mennonite) college in the late 1960s where we exercised our growing vocabulary and vented our sexual curiosity. We cut through both piety and naivete–our own and others– with boatloads of sarcasm.

But this is a mid-life memoir, not a late-night, 60s-era bull session. Our memoir heroine is a college professor, not a college student. She’s written a version of the coming-of-age story as a middle-aged woman, and she pulls it off with great verve and style.

Janzen earns the right to hilarious descriptions of body parts and functions because her own body is central to her story. First, she has an operation to remove her uterus which resulted in a punctured bladder, requiring her to wear a “pee bag.” Though she makes a complete recovery, she endures months of convalescence, including an improvised trip to Nordstrom Rack with the pee bag disguised inside a colorful tote so she can wear it like a purse. About a year later, Janzen hears from Nick, her husband of 15 years, that he has met a man named Bob on gay.com and wants a divorce. A week after that bombshell hits, a young drunk driver nearly kills her as she drove on snow-covered roads in Michigan. She crawls back home to California at Christmas and returns to an ethnic/religious culture –the Mennonites–she had gladly left behind years ago. Odd juxtapositions, bizarre memories, and witty critiques ensue. There you have it–the plot gets no thicker.

I’ve always admired humorists, from Twain to Keillor to Sedaris. And I have noticed that there are few women on that list, just like there are few women late night or Comedy Central talk show hosts–a fact that ought to change. I think Rhoda Janzen could break the literary humor glass ceiling. As a woman, Mennonite, and writer, I can only say, “You go, girl!!!”

Now for the other side of the story. As much as I laughed while reading the book and as much as I celebrate the word “Mennonite conjoined” with “funny” in other reviews of this book, I cringed while reading more than once. No one laughs harder at a Mennonite joke than a Mennonite–unless it is cruel or inaccurate.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, calls this memoir “wincingly funny.” I didn’t wince hard at the obvious candidates–the racy or sometimes too-cute language, the author’s physical and emotional pain, or her critique of the small worldview of her own family. The portrait of her mother Mary is utterly brilliant. Janzen takes huge risks revealing highly personal information that most daughters would die to write and most mothers would die to read–or would commit daughter-cide after reading. But she also convinces us that her mother is so ego-free and so unconcerned about normal barriers between public and private life that we, too, can relax and enjoy the kind of earth-mother love that has the power of creation and re-creation in it.

It’s also clear that her mother’s healing love made this book possible. I thought of Julia Kasdorf’s frequently anthologized What I Learned from My Mother as I read about Mary. I also thought of my own mother, and I gave thanks for the indomitable, oblivious, fashion-challenged caregivers of the world whose faith is in their eyes, and hands, and hearts.

What I Learned From My Mother

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

Janzen’s mother has all the healing qualities of Kasdorf’s mother persona–without the sexual hang-ups. We love her for her healing and for her freedom.

I winced less for the treatment of the Mennonite characters in this book, ironically, than I did for those who were grafted into the story either through marriage or friendship. One of the major controversies in memoir writing is how much we owe to other people in our stories. Annie Dillard sets the memoir high bar: “I don’t believe in a writer’s kicking around people who don’t have access to a printing press. They can’t defend themselves.”

Janzen does not appear to hold such scruples and will go far for a joke (or even for revenge?). One wonders what future Thanksgiving dinners will be like in the Janzen household. Sisters-in-law Staci and Deena come across as vastly inferior in sensitivity and taste than Rhoda and her sister Hannah. Janzen mentions the fact that she has seen Staci only a few times in the last five years. She damns with faint praise, approving of Staci’s honesty in not pretending to closeness she does not feel and then quotes the thoughtless things Staci said to her. Staci could certainly not enjoy seeing these words in print, even if she said every word between the quotation marks, which could only be the case if Janzen has perfect recall.

Finally, there is the issue of marketing and commodification of culture. Like James Frey, who made his addictions stronger and jail time longer in his book than they really were, Janzen sometimes makes her own upbringing sound more sectarian or perhaps more exotic than it may have been. She conflates two denominations and two different ethnicities, picking and choosing ones which will serve the purpose of entertaining her primary audience (the literary and academic elite whose haute cuisine and haute couture fascinate the author as much as the pale blue embroidered silk envelope she clutched as a child). Such readers won’t care if her ethnography is accurate in every detail.

The first U.S. Mennonite writer (Rudy Wiebe preceded her in Canada) to break into the literary high culture was poet Julia Kasdorf, cited above, with four poems in The New Yorker in the early 1990s and the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize in 1991. These poems turned the liability of being a Mennonite from the provinces into a fascinating counter-cultural phenomenon and helped to create a flourishing sub-genre of American literature unapologetically called Mennonite writing.

The problem of being a Mennonite writer is that you cannot be one completely un-self-consciously anymore, and too much self-consciousness has ruined many a writer. Self-consciousness is to writers what the sin of pride is to Mennonites. Try to be humble and a minute later you will be proud of it. Try to erase self, and you are soon looking in the mirror. Perhaps awareness of the paradox itself is the only answer to this dilemma. Mennonite poet Jeff Gundy uses humor as a gentle prod to himself as well as to other poets Julia Kasdorf and Jean Janzen (Rhoda is not the first published Mennonite writer with this name). Here is a fragment from the beginning stanza of his “How to Write the New Mennonite Poem” anthologized by editor and poet Ann Hostetler in a cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry:

Get the word “Mennonite” in at least
twice, once in the title, along with zwiebach
vareniki, borscht, and the farm,
which if possible should be lost by now.

No longer Die Stille im Lande (the silent in the land), Mennonites now have the responsibilities of telling their many stories as honestly as possible. How do commerce, marketing, branding affect this agenda? Actually, much in the same way that the word “Amish” affects sales of furniture, cheese, space heaters, and chicken–very positively!

Did you know that Amish “bonnet rippers”–romance novels–are among the best selling books in America right now? That one author alone–Beverly Lewis–has sold more than 13.5 million copies of her chaste love stories? The field is exploding, and The Wall Street Journal and Time have taken notice, along with bloggers and, of course, book publishers. (For more on Amish romance novels, check out last week’s review of Valerie Weaver-Zercher’s book Thrill of the Chaste.)

Every writer struggles with marketing issues as a necessity of 21^st-century publication, and every publisher wants an angle. But what is the responsibility for accuracy, especially since people buy memoirs because they want the real thing, true stories? Take the cover of this book as a case in point. I would love to have eavesdropped in the office of Henry Holt publishers as editors and designers chose the book cover. Did the conversation go something like this? –”Let’s show some leg, skirt blowing up like Marilyn Monroe’s– and then let’s dangle one of those funny hats the Amish wear right under the word “mennonite”! Never mind that neither Janzen nor her family ever wore distinctively religious garb of the Amish or “old Mennonites.” The author can explain all that after the book is published. In the meantime, book browsers in Barnes & Noble will be attracted to something we know sells well–sexual and Amish imagery combined.

Janzen tells us that her father was like the “pope” at one time of the “North American Mennonite Conference for Canada and the United States.” If you Google this denominational name, you will find that it does not exist. What did exist (before the separation between the U.S. and Canadian members) was a group called the North American Conference of Mennonite Brethren. Like the casual browsers in the bookstore who see an Amish image on the cover, most readers will never know, or care, that Janzen’s branch of the Mennonite family is called Mennonite Brethren, a smaller denomination than the Mennonite Church-USA. Janzen tries to preempt criticism of such fine points by making fun of factual accuracy in her savagely funny Mennonite History Primer appendix. I enjoyed her romp through the past and recognize poetic license when I see it, but I also think I recognize licensing of the Mennonite “brand.” That kind of license is a whole other kettle of fish . . . or borscht. . . or shoofly pie.

How much do these two issues of compassion and integrity matter in memoir? They matter a lot; the genre will only continue to prosper if readers can trust the author. Fortunately, the lapses cited above are just that, lapses. They do not permanently mar the integrity of this fine coming home story. The author may not have chosen the cover, Staci may well be proud of her portrait in this book, and Janzen might be so removed from her former Mennonite Brethren community that she has forgotten its name. If any or all of these things are true, I retract my critique.

Mary Karr recently said that if the antagonist of your memoir is not you, you have not gone far enough. Rhoda Janzen has already gone further into the comedy and memoir worlds than any American writer born of Mennonite (or Mennonite Brethren) parents.

Here is my wish for her future: may she borrow more of her mother’s kindness and a tad more of her father’s integrity– without losing an ounce of her own wonderful chutzpah. And may she turn a forgiving but clear-eyed focus on her true antagonist, herself.

So, Femonite readers, what do you think? Leave your thoughts below, but also be sure to visit Shirley’s site to view the original post and to read the fascinating conversation that ensued, including comments from Janzen’s sister-in-law “Staci.”

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Filed under Church, Mennonite Identity

Tagged as Amish, Mennonite, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Rhoda Janzen, Shirley Hershey Showalter

May 5, 2013

Podcast Review: Unfolded

Confession: I’m relatively new to the world of podcasts. Sure, for the past few years I’ve subscribed to a few choice NPR programs to listen to in the car, but that’s about as far as my experience extended. It’s only been in the past year that I’ve really discovered the realm of independent podcasting – often carried out by bloggers or other independent technophiles who are interested in producing thoughtful, creative content in an audio platform.

The most recent podcast to cross my path is Unfolded, a program promising to share with you “stories that reveal.” Listening to an episode of Unfolded is like entering a sort of dreamlike state. The stories are told gently and meander through fantastical worlds where mice talk, supermarkets are spaces for encountering the Divine and a group known as the “desecrators” threaten to unravel society in a land known as “Hatuskar.” Each episode features a dreamlike soundtrack (apparently mixed each time by Matthew Barlow, one of the podcast producers), that accompanies a tale that often, if not always, ends with you scratching your head and sitting down to ponder what it was you just listened to.

Like dreams, the meaning behind the stories is often a bit elusive. And that seems to be the way that Barlow and co-producer Jesse Turri like it. In the podcast description, they suggest that Unfolded’s goal is to “reveal great meaning without, necessarily, committing the error of defining it.”

Unfolded is the latest in the Homebrewed Christianity “podcast stable,” which includes at least three other podcast programs exploring the intersections of theology, pop culture, etc. Begun 5-years-ago by Tripp Fuller, a PhD student at Claremont Graduate University in California, Homebrewed Christianity has grown to be one of the largest emergent (or perhaps progressive evangelical) Christian podcasting outfits around. Its audience has grown to include hundreds – admittedly most of them male – “deacons” who have joined the fold and begun podcasting, blogging, etc. alongside Fuller and his posse. Unfolded is the first of these podcasts to plant itself in the genre of creative fiction, each week highlighting a new 15-minute piece written specifically for the show.

Only three episodes in, each featuring a new land and characters, it’s hard to predict where Unfolded might travel, but a few trends have emerged. Two of the episodes have referenced scripture, which, if the listener is curious enough to research it, can offer the listener clues as to the direction and symbolism embedded in the plot. In addition, the friendly and understated narration, provided by Turri in the first 3 episodes, helps to set a sort of mystical vibe which jives with the exploratory nature of the stories.

In the most recent episode – entitled “The Desecration” – we follow a hero (of sorts), named Theonym the Impudent, who was so named because he had the – well – impudence – to “piss in the face” of his doctor upon being born. As Theonym’s monologue introduces the history of his native land – Hatuskar – one can find bits of theology embedded throughout. In discussions about the Elders of the land, who represent a new era of religion antithetical to the “ancient ways” and abhor anything that “resembled or brought to mind fleshly existence,” we can see traces of modern day church discomfort with anything sex and/or body related. And in the descriptions of Lord Ellesmir, “the Immortal,” we can see traces of something resembling a more progressive idea of spirituality, which emphasizes “the ways of truth, beauty and love” (and for those of you who read Alfred North Whitehead, maybe you are seeing parallels to Whitehead’s integral components or directions for the world). But as the story winds on, these categories of simply conservative and liberal, good and bad religion, etc. are troubled, which makes the story all the better. Although a certain type of academic training – or the conventions of most storytelling these days – might push us to try to define or categorize what it is that we are hearing about, it’s clear that Turri and Barlow want to make such clear-cut distinctions hard to come by.

It’s still early on in its existence, but I’m interested to see where Unfolded will go from here. As the title itself suggests, this podcast experience is inviting us to sit down, listen and be willing to unpack – or unfold- some of our own understandings of how we make meaning in the world.

To listen to Unfolded, you can subscribe via iTunes or visit Homebrewed Christianity.

2 Comments

Filed under Church, Theology

Tagged as Alfred North Whitehead, Homebrewed Christianity, Jesse Turri, Matthew Barlow, podcasts, Theology, Unfolded: Stories that Reveal

May 4, 2013

Femonite Bites: May 4, 2013

I realize that sometimes I can get a little “Femonite-centric” when focusing on this blog. So, each Saturday, I’m going to start to try to be better about highlighting many of the other good things that I read/watch/see around the interwebs each week. They’re like tasty little bites for your mind. And with no further ado…

The next movie I’m planning to see: