Christianity, Culture, Vocation
Let’s stipulate that women can engage in combat, that they are just as brave and patriotic as men and they they can kill our nation’s enemies when they need to. The question is not can they, but should they? Let me put forth two arguments and then put you onto several more from a column by Kathleen Parker. [Read more...]
Actor Mehcad Brooks made this ad for the Center for Reproductive Rights, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and legalized abortion. What do we learn from this video?
I don’t think this is good. Not for women, not for our military, not for our culture. What do you think?
Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta plans to announce Thursday a lifting of the ban on female service members in combat roles, a watershed policy change that was informed by women’s valor in Iraq and Afghanistan and that removes the remaining barrier to a fully inclusive military, defense officials said. [Read more...]
Journalist Asra Q. Nomani, writing in USA Today, is calling for the government to enforce anti-discrimination laws against religious organizations, denying them tax-exempt status if they discriminate against women. She is thinking of her fellow Muslims, but the proposal also would apply to Christians. Her article specifically mentions the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church Missouri-Synod:
As much of the world cheers the rise of democracy in the public square of the Middle East, it’s time that we see the Arab Spring bloom somewhere equally important: mosques. We should start with mosques in the U.S., and the government should help promote democracy in places of worship by denying non-profit tax-exempt status — called 501(c)3 designation — to places of worship that practice gender inequity, just as they can deny tax-exempt status to places of worship that engage in political activity. . . .
The IRS has ruled that “tax exempt organizations may jeopardize their exempt status if they engage in illegal activity.” Political activity is covered in the “illegal activity” doctrine. Applying this doctrine in 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that the IRS could deny Bob Jones University tax exemption because of racial policies at the evangelical Christian university (kicking students out for interracial dating). Tax attorneys say the ruling established public policy that tax-exempt organizations can’t racially discriminate in educational institutions.Meanwhile, in 1984, in a case against the Jaycees civic organization, the Supreme Court held that a private organization cannot discriminate based on gender.
So far, though, gender rights aren’t protected at places of worship. . . .
Who would stand in the way of reform? Catholic churches, for one, and other places that get exemptions in employment law so they can practice gender inequity (think priest jobs). Alan Goldberger, a non-profit attorney in Millburn, N.J., is a former member of a conservative synagogue that integrates women, but he has attended orthodox Jewish synagogues that segregate women and says that it could be “more prudent with public policy” to enforce non-discrimination in places of worship, but the courts “like to stay away from intervening in the affairs of a private organization.”
Daniel Dalton, 46, a non-profit attorney in Farmington Hills, Mich., says the IRS has taken the position “it’s not going to look at ecclesiastical, doctrinal issues.” He grew up in the Missouri Lutheran Church, which limits women’s roles in leadership positions. “I don’t understand it. I don’t agree with it,” says Dalton. “But that’s a doctrinal issue.”
I understand the difficulties in having the state intervene in worship issues. I believe in a separation of church and state, but I’ve come to the difficult decision that women must use the legal system to restore rights in places of worship, particularly when intimidation is used to enforce unfair rules.
via End gender apartheid in U.S. mosques – USATODAY.com.
We need to realize that if religious freedom is taken away, it will begin with unpopular religions.
You’ve doubtless heard of the young man in Iowa who refused to wrestle a girl who was also competing in a championship wrestling tournament. Here are two takes on the matter.
The first from Caryn Rivadeneira, writing at a Christianity Today site:
When Joel refused to wrestle Cassy, he took an opportunity away from her. An opportunity for her to shine using her own God-given strength and ability. An opportunity to win or lose, fair and square.
I don’t mean to harp on Joel. I’m sure he’s a good kid who clearly meant well. These thoughts aren’t so much for him as they are for the rest of us as we wrestle with these sorts of issues all the time.
As Christians, when faced with less-than-best-case scenarios, we need to be in the business of affording others equal opportunities. Usually this means expanding our view of other people beyond how our culture would have us see them or how we think they are and getting it more in line with how Jesus sees them. Doing this usually means things get awkward. Doing this means we’re stretched way beyond our comfort zone.
Doing this means we might need to step onto a mat and wrestle, not despite our faith but because of it.
The second from my colleague Mark Mitchell, writing at the Front Porch Republic:
The gentleman is a social role that implies a recognition of forms and limits that constrain action even as those very forms and limits elevate the meaning and nobility of actions they enjoin.
Forms and limits are not welcomed in a culture that sees freedom as the highest good, a culture that fairly worships at the altar of individual choice. The history of the liberal project has been a steady and determined attempt to defy limits, to destroy forms, to expand the idea and practice of liberation to all spheres of existence. How can the idea of the gentleman, the essence of which necessarily depends on the propriety of limits, co-exist with the goals of liberalism? One admits of limits and finds nobility in respect for them; the other finds limits offensive and seeks to break down any hint of limitation, form, or residue of difference. When seen in this light, the gentlemen appears to be a throwback to an older age, an era that progress has left behind, an ideal embraced only by romantics and the hopelessly and helplessly nostalgic.. . .
It seems to me that Joel Northrup was raised to be a gentleman, and when he drew his first opponent at the state tournament, this ideal ran hard into the leveling impulse of the age. Or to put it in old-fashioned terms, gentlemen don’t wrestle with ladies. Reversing the sentence provides another truism: ladies wouldn’t dream of wrestling with gentlemen or of wrestling with anyone for that matter. Now I am on thin ice here, for if I embrace the idea of a gentleman, I am simultaneously embracing the idea of a lady. Doing so must appear, through the caustic lens of liberation, to be suggesting that ladies and gentlemen are substantially different and that a gentleman treats other gentleman in ways markedly different from the way he treats ladies. Precisely.
Richard Weaver once wrote that when the gentleman disappears so too goes the lady. Both ideals depend on each other and a society that provides the space for each will be far different from a society where both are seen as quaint relics from another time. Still it is heartening to see a young man attempt to uphold the ideals of the gentleman. Perhaps that singular ideal can be sustained during our long sojourn through the wilderness of liberalism. If and when we emerge on the other side, it may provide a hopeful reminder of what is possible and how a decent society might be constructed around ideals that foster acts of nobility, deference, propriety, and kindness.
Notice not just what side both arguments come down on but the assumptions and the implicit philosophies that lie behind their arguments. Notice too that both writers are “conservatives” of one stripe or the other. Both are Christians of one stripe or the other.
Which one makes the better case? What can we conclude from these two arguments beyond the specific issue of boy-girl wrestling?
Please notice that I am not saying this. A feminist is saying this. I myself don’t believe it and am personally offended on behalf of women everywhere. But this is what Anne Kornblut says in her book Notes from the Cracked Ceiling, an account of the political campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin and why women have a hard time in politics:
<blockquote>”Female candidates also have to remember that women can be deeply suspicious and critical of one another. . . . [A] group of female advisers could have gently reminded the McCain men that women are not always thrilled to see a young, attractive woman step into the limelight, and they might need to prepare for the long knives.” </blockquote>
Is there anything to this? If so, where else does this phenomenon manifest itself?
via Book review: ‘Notes from the Cracked Ceiling’ by Anne Kornblut – washingtonpost.com.
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