Emerging Women

By Jemila Kwon

“One, two three, say, “SEX!” Click. The photograph was snapped, semi-immortalizing me, along with the rest my coach-training cohort. The room, filled with women and one man from from places like Dubai, Greece, France, England, Germany and Jordan, as well as me, the token American student, reverberated with giggles, hardly distinguishable from the sound of twelve year-old girls. Some things are universal.

I love sex. It wasn’t always that way. Like when the first time I got married (I was a virgin) and it sucked. It was, well, degrading. In a legally tendered, pastor-sanctioned Christian marriage. It happens, more often than you’d think, that sex in marriage is unholy, in one way or another, yet the M word is like a tent that covers the sins of countless people against their own partners.

I love sex. I am divorced. I got married again to a wonderful man who had sex before marriage. He’s glad he did, only because he has absolutely no doubts that I am IT — the one and only one for him. The the occasional “ew” thoughts I have toward his previous partners pale in comparison with the incredible happiness I have in a partner totally sold out for yours truly. I would much rather a husband with experience who knows that what he wants is me than a husband without experience who secretly wonders, “What would it be like with someone else?”

I love sex. My husband and I assume that the partner who doesn’t feel up for doing has eternal veto. Let tell you, I want it a lot more than I would if I felt like it was my duty. In fact, I am the initiator over 50% of the time.

I love sex. I am not the only one making love when we do it. It’s a holy, intimate, loving, incredible, hot thing for him too.

Sexuality is a funny thing. It runs our culture and sometimes our lives like gasoline, and sometimes it lights up our sacred inner places…or even opens the way for a new soul to enter in.

As curious, spiritual beings, we wonder, “What’s love got to do with it?” What’s sex for?

Release, please? A song of creation? An intimate celebration?

For those of us who have had sex, or sex with love, or gotten pregnant (or gotten someone pregnant,) we understand all of these elements often present either as instigators or self-evident experiences during the sex-act. Pretty much everyone is okay with sex where all three elements occur each in balance with the others. — at least if you’ve gotten a legal license to fuck.

But what if you love your partner more than life itself and you offer each other your sacred vow to honor one another always…but you just don’t think your sex life is the government’s business? Now that’s a conservative Christian viewpoint that has been co-opted by the liberals, if you ask me.

Or what if you just want to get off and you couldn’t care less about intimacy or anything uniquely human about sex — the fact is, you’re up to your eyeballs with work and your horny and you think it’s your wife’s Christian duty is to let you spill your seed all over her on the grounds that it’ll help you keep your eyes on the prize — instead of on someone else’s prize, like take your secretary, for example?

Or what if you’ve dotted your legal “i”s and crossed your intimate “t”s and you lovingly bring each other orgasm in an act of complete, joyful surrender…but you don’t want to have kids. Ever. Like you’re not open to it.

On the other hand, what if you’re a teenager with an undeveloped frontal lobe, way too many hormones and cute, possibly charming boy or girlfriend and it happens, because unmarried sex has always happened,whether or not it’s condemned, accepted or ignored. I wonder what it means to protect our daughters at a time when there is something we can do to protect them from cervical cancer, even if we cannot always protect them from impulsive choices?

Or what if you weren’t scheming to ruin your Christian parents’ lives when you rode the rainbow down to earth and discovered early in life that you like people…like you.

Sex is a life force that catalyzes the start of a new person, invigorates us while you occupy this spinning planet and creates within us contradictory impulses that can either deepen our compassion and connection to all living beings, and especially our human brothers and sisters, or it can tear us apart, in our inner selves, in our families and perhaps most preventably, in our communities.

I think we appoint ourselves The Judge,when we see only two options: judging or condoning. In good faith, if find we cannot condone a sexual behavior, or a couple engaged in a non-condonable (from our viewpoint,) behavior — then we feel integrity-bound to judge. Which is ironic. Because we have only one judge. And he didn’t come to judge. Go figure that.

So what’s the alternative to condemning or condoning? A life-giving alternative is to employ different part of your brain and take “The Judge” off of payroll, or assign it a more suitable job, like separating out the rotten bananas from the regular ones in preparation for baking banana bread.

What I am saying is that by focusing on the people in front of us in the present tense, we can free ourselves from the compulsion to judge them. Let that be God’s job. Instead of imagining that we have to figure out which check box to click on Christ’s online survey of moral uprightness, give the whole checklist back to God, who has already ripped up the thing and put it out of his Mind, as far as the east is from the west. Instead of thinking about whether a couple is doing something wrong, help them with the lives in front of them. Get them water. Invite them over to play Cranium simply to be a friend. Let go of fixing them. God knows, it’s not in our power to fix people, nor has the task been assigned to us. Consider asking open-ended questions, by which I mean, open-ended questions to which the asker does not (think) she have the answer.

And whatever else you remember, do keep in the mind that the Master of the big bang holds you fully and loves you totally wherever, whenever, if ever and with whomever you have an orgasm.

Jemila Kwon is a life coach dedicated to helping leaders from all walks of life live at full potential. She lives, loves, laughs & learns with her husband and three kids. www.leapcoachinc.com

An interview with Kathryn Joyce, author of the new book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. “Quiverfull” refers to the notion that women should “receive children eagerly as blessings from God, eschewing all forms of birth control, including natural family planning and sterilization.” Essentially, a Quiverfull woman breeds and keeps breeding, knocking out babies until her uterus gives out or menopause kicks in.

This interview was originally posted by Hemant Mehta at the Friendly Atheist blog.

• What kind of education do Quiverfull children receive? Do a significant percentage of them go to college? Do females get the same opportunities for education as males?

  Almost all Quiverfull children are homeschooled, and while there’s no single curriculum to point to, a number of leaders within the movement have advocated tailoring boys’ and girls’ education to the future roles they will hold. In the case of daughters, homeschooling leader R.C. Sproul, Jr., a prominent face in Quiverfull circles, argues that their education should prepare them to be mothers and stay-at-home wives.

  In a particularly disturbing anecdote, he recounts the story of a 9-year old daughter of an acquaintance who couldn’t yet read, but was a very responsible and maternal older sister to her younger siblings: a situation that confirmed his view of the daughter as an “overachiever” well on her way to being a successful helpmeet and mother herself one day.

  As for college, it varies a bit. Many sons are allowed to attend, particularly if they’re taking distance courses. This path is open for some daughters, but Quiverfull leaders strongly argue against allowing daughters to attend college away from home, as the encounter with worldly outsiders could damage or destroy their faith. Instead, they suggest that daughters stay at home after they graduate from homeschool, and practice being a helpmeet to their father as they will one day help and serve their husbands.

• How many Quiverfull children marry and start their own families before the age of 25? Is this a movement that passes on from generation to generation?

  It’s hard to give real numbers for the movement, and particularly for where the younger generation is now. As Quiverfull began in earnest in the mid-80s, it’s only in the past few years that there has been a real wave of second generation Quiverfull children marrying and having children. The movement, which has a vibrant internet presence, makes a lot of these developments, celebrating the marriages and new children of young believers. The older generation also stresses the dire importance of passing on their beliefs to the next generation, and to this end are focusing massive attention on outreach to daughters as young as five, inculcating a sense of their destiny in embracing the Quiverfull lifestyle. And they certainly also encourage women and men to marry early. While a number of children will leave the movement when they come of age, the lifestyle is structured to make that difficult, often keeping children sheltered from too much outside influence that could turn them away from the conviction.

• Do female children in these families have much freedom regarding who they marry? Regarding anything, really?

  A qualified yes. When children of the movement marry, it’s not through arranged marriages, but it is often through a courtship process that has an unusual amount of paternal involvement. Courtship is promoted through homeschooling and conservative religious circles as a chaste alternative to dating, which with or without sex is disparaged as the casual “trying on” of different partners. Courtship, alternately, is explicitly marriage-minded, and only occurs after a young man proves himself to a woman’s father. Quite literally, the male suitor is actually courting the daughter’s father, long before she is supposed to know that someone is interested in her. This is discussed as a way to protect vulnerable girls’ hearts from becoming emotionally invested before there’s the safety of commitment.

  However, as advocates explicitly acknowledge, it’s also the best way of making sure that the daughter marries a man suitably in tune with the father’s ideology. For men concerned with keeping the movement going in the next generation, it’s important to make sure they marry their daughter to a man who will be similarly faithful to patriarchy and Quiverfull convictions.

• Are any of the members of this movement actually adopting, or are they simply reproducing?
  
  Yes, there is a good deal of adoption among Quiverfull families as well as in the broader conservative Christian community. Adoption usually supplements a biological family though, rather than replace the necessity of a woman leaving her fertility in God’s hands, so they may have six biological children and then adopt four more.
• You mentioned in your Salon article that the Quiverfull movement “… likely numbers in the tens of thousands but… is growing exponentially.” Are there numbers/studies to back that up?
  
  No. I don’t know of any real research on the Quiverfull movement yet. Hopefully there will be more in the future. My estimate is based on speaking with dozens of movement leaders, looking at the membership numbers for online communities, and considering that the conviction of having as many children as God gives you is considerably broader than the people who claim the Quiverfull name or participate in its forums.
• What toll do all these births have on the mother — Emotionally and physically? You mentioned in your article one mother suffered a partial uterine rupture. Has it ever been worse?
  
  Emotionally and physically, many women — particularly those who have left the movement — say the lifestyle is one of relentless work and exhaustion. Quiverfull mothers perform a staggering amount of labor in terms of pregnancy and childbearing, childcare, homeschooling, cooking and cleaning and being a submissive wife. There does seem to be a high incidence of reproductive problems among some mothers, though of course this could be due to the fact that the mothers are having far more children, and far later into life, than many other women.

  Nonetheless, many women have spoken of extremely difficult pregnancies — a number of whom are put on strict bed rest — and labors. Additionally, there is often a focus on natural and even unassisted home births among Quiverfull moms. This isn’t a requirement of the Quiverfull conviction, but like many related facets of the movement (such as home churching or other, agrarian-minded efforts towards family self-sufficiency), it’s an idea many women are exposed to through movement literature. In a very extreme case in Australia, a Quiverfull mother died following the teachings of one fringe home-birth advocate. Though that seems to have been an anomalous case, home births, and continuing conceptions despite poor health do make for some serious health risks for some mothers.

• What can we do for women who want to leave this movement? How can we ensure that the daughters and sons of these women and men get assistance out?
  
  That’s a hard question. There are not many vocal exited women, though Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff and Vyckie Garrison are notable exceptions. Exited women face substantial difficulties as single mothers to large families, often including a number of young children, often limited financial resources, and a lack of outside work experience. Additionally, they’re often without references from a community that they left and which will often shun them. Understanding and respect — particularly that they came to their convictions not through ignorance but through devout belief — would likely be a relief to these moms. For both mothers and children, there are serious and very substantial psychological, emotional, spiritual and financial barriers to leaving the movement. Still, Quiverfull is not a cult, but a conviction that many women do choose willingly — however constrained their choices later become.
• Are these people (women and children) on some sort of public assistance? If so, what’s being done about it?
  
  Generally speaking no, they’re not. Most Quiverfull believers tend to have very strong beliefs about living debt-free and not accepting government assistance. They believe that churches are the proper custodians of public charity and welfare. However, if they did need public assistance, helping families feed and clothe their children is what public assistance programs are in place to do, so I don’t believe anything would need to be done about the proper functioning of a social safety net.
• Are there allies within the religious congregations that perceive this movement as a threat? Or at least a bad idea?
  
  There is abundant and lively opposition to patriarchy and Quiverfull ideologies within more liberal and moderate churches. Much of the momentum of Quiverfull began — like fundamentalism itself — as a backlash against liberalized theology in Protestant denominations. In this case, it was a reaction against the influence of feminism in Christian churches. Though Quiverfull is at the vanguard of a much broader resurgence of complementarianism, or “biblical” gender roles, across conservative denominations, there are many other mainstream and liberal denominations that are passionate advocates for women’s and reproductive rights.
• What happens if it turns out that either one of the couple is infertile? If they are willing to accept 17 kids as “God’s plan” are they willing to accept zero, or do they go in for medical intervention? And what is their standing in the community if they can’t have kids?
  
  The philosophy of Quiverfull, of leaving fertility in God’s hands, is ideally supposed to mean that parents accept whatever God gives them: 17 children or none. And I have met a few infertile women who still called themselves Quiverfull — though they spoke of feeling stung by some in the movement who focused predominantly on the number of children one has as a measure of spirituality.

  Also, in some of the literature of the movement, Quiverfull mothers who had borne large families spoke of their sadness and loss of identity when they began menopause and began to lose their fertility. One even described herself as feeling dried out and withered when her childbearing years ended. This, significantly, is the same language that is used to describe the side-effects of using birth control, or even women who don’t have children. For me, it was a powerful illustration of what a no-win situation this ideology can be, even for women who followed the conviction diligently their entire reproductive lives.

By Adele Sakler

Remember how much of the world outside the U.S. laughed during the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky debacle of the 1990′s? They weren’t laughing with us. At times, this Western, naval-gazing, self-centered American culture seems quite laughable. Add to that, a prudish sub-culture of Evangelical Christianity wholly obsessed with sex, sexuality, and purity codes (perhaps a stubborn remnant of our Puritan heritage). All this singular fixation, over and above so many more pressing social and ethical issues.

Why does the Evangelical community seem so preoccupied with pointing out what they perceive to be the sins of others? Why this commitment to the role of morality police, lambasting everyone with their narrow interpretations of Scripture? It seems their selective view of holiness is far more important than how we actually treat our fellow human beings. Maybe if we worked harder on our own lives, focused on how we are treating others, a more holistic holiness could finally exude from our lives.

Sadly, this is my thesis: Evangelicals are nothing less than sex-crazed.

To the neglect of most other vices, Evangelicals are hyper-concerned with pointing out how being queer is a sin, and that the Bible explicitly denounces homosexual acts. Trust me, I get it all firsthand. But I’m not buying the rhetoric. I disagree with what I have come to consider outmoded and out-of-context religious interpretations. Of course, I do believe they have the right to their views, as I do to my own. Yet, I do not go around talking about their sex lives all of the time. Call me prudish. I think that what happens in the bedroom is between the two consenting adults who are in that bedroom.

Look, I’m trying to be a healthy, holistic person. I don’t find my identity in any one thing. I hope your sex life doesn’t define you, either. Being queer does not make up the entirety of my being, any more than being a photographer, a traveler, a blogger, etc… Sex is a normal part of a relationship, but it’s NOT all there is to that relationship.

My wife and I have all the same ups and downs of everyday life. Just like the straight couple next door. We deal with paying bills, learning better communication skills, taking care of one-another when we’re sick or down. We do household chores, go grocery shopping, and ALL those other little relationship accoutrements nobody writes poetry about, or makes picket signs over. Sex is just one aspect of the many facets in our relationship.

Every day, I am learning how to love, cherish, appreciate and care for Katryna, as she does for me. Do we have days where we fail and screw up? Of course! As I’m certain other couples struggle, as well. We pray together and alone, for one-another and for others. We are like most couples, except that we are two women who happened to fall in love. We are not constantly focused on sex, nor are we dead or indifferent to it. Sex is simply a natural and integral component of our relationship, where we deepen our bonds of intimacy with one-another, and with the Divine Creator.

It really does not matter to me where people fall on the issue of homosexuality: sin or not sin. My belief is that the Scriptures have been carelessly ripped out of their cultural and historical contexts, but when properly understood, they are not so cut-and-dry. We are human beings. We use ten percent of our brain capacity. How can we claim certainty in knowing what G-D intended for all avenues of life? The Bible is not an encyclopedia. It is not a FAQ sheet. In my view, G-D’s two greatest commandments are to love G-D, and to love others as we love ourselves. I think those were Jesus’ favorites, too. But the fruit of these commands are seen very little on this earth. When people aren’t dealing with planks in their own eyes, and are pointing out the specks in the eyes of others, they aren’t really learning to love themselves because they don’t make time to nurture and nourish themselves. They are obsessively focused on policing the morality or purity of others. Without the love of self, we can’t begin to love G-D or each other. Maybe it’s time to change focus.

Adele Sakler currently resides in Richmond, Virginia and blogs as Existential Punk is the creator and site administrator of Queermergent. She is currently going through long-term treatment for Chronic Lyme Disease, other tick-borne diseases, and heavy metal toxicity.

Adele has been a Christ-follower for 20 years and an “out” queer woman for two and-a-half years. Her involvement with the emerging church and Emergent Village has filled the better part of 10 years.

I recently had the opportunity to read through Find Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart. This short book is a collection of reflections by the women of Magdalene. Magdalene is a two-year residential community for women who have survived lives of prostitution, violence, and abuse. The community exists not just to help these women, but to change our culture that not only buys and sells women, but often rejects them as too broken to be redeemed. To this end the women of Magdalene live by a disciplined order – a rule for living in community. The twenty-four principles of this rule are what the women of Magdalene reflected on as they contributed their stories and meditations.

The pervasive theme in the book is the power of love to bring about healing. Over and over the women confess that they had never felt loved or accepted by anyone until they came to the Magdalene community. This love is demonstrated in the principles of their order. One rule is that of proclaiming original grace – to look at each person’s journey beginning not with original sin but with original grace. The community uses the thistle as a symbol of this love. Generally seen as an unwanted weed, it is the one flower that grows on the streets where these women walk. As one woman wrote – “there were no weeds in Eden. Even the thistle was loved by God. I can see life in a thistle and how God created life in me.” (p.68)

Too often in the church we despise women who have lived lives like the women at Magdalene. Our fascination with sexual sin forces us to otherize even those who have been abused sexually. Our rejection and inability to offer unconditionally healing love though objectifies these women just as much as those who buy and sell her. I was touched to read how the simple acts of the Magdalene community connected with the hurt and broken women. For some it was the offer of a meal or a bag of toiletries, for others a living room with soft chairs or a kitchen with pots and pans, for others it was someone being willing to brush the knots out of their hair. It took some of these women years and multiple attempts to accept the healing offered to them, but they were never given up on or forced to heal on a timeline. They were loved and offered the benefits of community as they were – and it was that acceptance that made the difference in the long run.

The book is a quick read, but it has lasting impact as the stories of these women challenge the standard reaction of the church to “wayward women.” Just hearing their stories forces us to change our perspective. To move past our preoccupation with sin and respond instead with abundant grace.

Many of these women have been able to re-enter the world and develop job skills through the non-profit business Thistle Farms which makes natural bath and body products. You can follow their stories at their blog The Voices of Thistle Farms.

By Adele Hebert

There are numerous occasions recorded in the Gospels where women are treated as second class citizens, even as sex objects, and it was expected that Jesus would do the same. One such occasion occurred when Jesus was invited to dinner at the house of a skeptical Pharisee (Lk 7:36ff.) and a woman of ill repute (harmatolos, a sinner) entered and washed Jesus’s feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair and anointed them. The Pharisee saw her solely as an evil sexual creature: “The Pharisee …said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who this woman is who is touching him and what a bad name she has.’” But Jesus deliberately rejected that way of thinking. He rebuked the Pharisee and spoke solely of the woman’s human, spiritual actions; he spoke of her love, her unlove, i.e., her sins, her being forgiven, and her faith. Jesus then addressed her (it was not “proper” to speak to women in public, especially “improper” women) as a human person: “Your sins are forgiven…. Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

A similar situation occurred when the scribes and Pharisees used a woman reduced entirely to a sex object to set a legal trap for Jesus (Jn 8:2 11). It is difficult to imagine a more callous use of a human person than what the “adulterous” woman was put through, by the enemies of Jesus. First, she was “taken” in the act, then dragged before the scribes and Pharisees, finally brought before an even larger crowd that Jesus was instructing, “making her stand in full view of everybody.” They told Jesus that she had been caught in the very act of committing adultery and that Moses had commanded that such women be stoned to death (Dt 22:22ff.). “What have you to say?” The trap was partly that if Jesus said Yes to the stoning he would be violating the Roman law, which limited capital punish¬ment, and if he said No, he would contravene Mosaic law. It could have been to expose Jesus’s reputation for kindness toward, and championing the cause of, women in opposition to the law and the condemnation of sin.

Jesus, of course, eluded their snares by refusing to become entangled in legalisms and plots. Rather, he dealt with both the accusers and the accused directly as spiritual, ethical, human persons. He spoke directly to the accusers in the con¬text of their own personal ethical conduct: “If there is one of you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” To the accused woman he spoke with compassion, but without approving her conduct: “‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.’”

Regarding the status of women, the woman being caught in the act of adultery, according to the Law of Moses must to be stoned to death. But since the type of execution mentioned was stoning, the woman must have been a “virgin betrothed,” as referred to in Dt 22:23f. It states both the man and the woman must be stoned, although in the Gospel story only the woman is brought forward. However, the reason given for why the man ought to be stoned was not because he had violated the woman, or God’s law, but “because he had violated the wife (property) of his neighbor.” It was the injury to the man (not the wife or betrothed) that was the great evil. Jesus defended her; he did not condemn her; he declared her a person, definitely not the property of a man.

Adapted from Leonard Swidler, Biblical Affirmations of Women

Adele Hebert is an independent scholar, who lives in northern Alberta, Canada. Adele has been writing articles, bible studies and editing Christian books, all about how Jesus loves women. Adele has helped God’s Word to Women website, Christians for Biblical Equality, and recently worked with Leonard Swidler on his latest book, Jesus Was A Feminist. Currently Adele is writing a series of bible studies on how Jesus gave women a voice.

Let’s talk about sex. No, we’re not just trying to drive up the blog hits. Just the fact that we are a group of women here discussing faith and real life lands us all sorts of interesting Google search hits. No, we just simply want to explore our diverse perspectives on sex.

Over the next week or two (starting this afternoon) most of the posts here at Emerging Women will focus on some aspect of sex. We will explore, among other topics, the freedoms women can find when we aren’t viewed as sex objects, the healing that can come to those who suffer from sexual abuse, the messages that modern American Christianity sends about sex, and our celebration of our sexuality. These posts have been submitted by a diverse group of women – each with her own unique perspective. They might disagree with each other – and that’s okay, that’s kinda the point of exploring perspectives.

So I invite you to respectfully engage in this dialogue. Join us on this exploration of sexuality as we learn from each other.

Christianity 21: Faith in the 21st Century

21 Voices
21 Ideas
21 Minutes Each

We live in a time of epochal change.

Many find this change exciting; for others, it’s a challenge. Call it globalization, pluralization, or postmodernism, this change affects our economy, politics, government, and education—all of society. And, of course, our faith and our churches are not immune to change.

So we have gathered 21 of the most important voices for the future of Christianity—21 voices for the 21st century—to speak into our future as people of faith in this age. They represent a diverse array of backgrounds, interests, and passions, and they will provide a wide range of innovative and challenging presentations.

Christianity21 is less a conference and more a happening, an event—a gathering of voices and ideas that will shape the future of our faith. And to the 21 voices, we want you to add your voice, whether you’re a seeker or skeptic, leader or layperson, disciple or doubter.

We hope you consider joining your voice to ours at Christianity21.

Friday, October 9 – Sunday, October 11
Colonial Church of Edina
6200 Colonial Way
Minneapolis, MN 55436
$195

I am really excited about this event. I’ll can’t wait to hear from these presenters, and I get to join them as I will be speaking on “seeking justice in the everyday.” A number of emerging women leaders will be speaking at this event – many who have been part of the community of this blog. For a full list of presenters click here.

I think this will be a gathering where we can really dig deep and explore where faith is headed in the 21st century. We can’t ignore that changes are happening around us, and I appreciate the opportunity to think out loud with others about what this all means. So stick it on your calenders and plan on join us in October!