Smart people saying smart things (6.17)

Dr. Jen Gunter, “An OB/GYN writes to George Will about college rape”

There is no woman who I have ever met personally or as an OB/GYN who thinks that surviving a rape confers some sort of privilege. I am genuinely curious if you interviewed a few young women hoping to earn their college rape badge or is that just a conclusion you reached looking at the issue of sexual assault through the myopic lens of misogyny?

Come spend a day in my clinic Mr. Will. Come see how the scars of rape linger even decades later.

There is no survivor privilege, just survivors.

Marika Rose, “Where are all the women?”

I don’t have the numbers, but I’m happy to go out on a limb and suggest that systematic theology tends to be where theology and religious studies is at its most kyriarchal – in part because of its deep links to the church, and in part because of the pernicious distinction we have somehow started making between ‘systematic’ and ‘contextual’ theology. This means that systematic theologians find it all too easy to dismiss questions of gender (not to mention race, class, sexuality, colonialism, and so on and so on) as somebody else’s problem.

And there is another problem with Christian academic culture: its tendency to value niceness and getting along, which in turn tends to privilege people who are happy with the way things are. It’s easy to be nice if the existing order of things is designed to make life easy for you. It’s easy to be polite and gentle in conversation when it is not your survival or your sense of self that is at stake.

The Rev. Dr. Richard A. Burridge, “Being Biblical? Slavery, Sexuality, and the Inclusive Community” (via)

The ‘biblical’ case for slavery is clear: early in Genesis, Noah decrees that, as punishment for seeing him naked, Ham’s descendants will be slaves for Shem and Japheth (Gen. 9.22-27); Abraham is blessed by God with ‘male and female slaves’ as a wealthy slaveowner (Gen. 24.35; for Abraham’s slaves, see also Gen. 12.5; 14.14; 20.14). Slaves were part of his estate, property he passed on to his son Isaac (Gen. 26.12-14). There is provision in the Mosaic legislation for Israelites to buy and sell slaves, and how to treat them (see for example, Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25). Slavery was equally accepted in the New Testament, where slaves are told to “obey their masters … with enthusiasm” as though obeying Christ (Eph. 6.5-9; Col.3.22-25; Titus 2.9-10; 1 Peter 2.18-19). Paul returns the runaway slave Onesimus to his master Philemon, and tells slaves who hear his epistles to “remain in the condition in which you were called” (Phm. 12; 1 Cor. 7.20-24). Particular attention was drawn to 1 Tim 6.1-6, where Paul’s instructions, “let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor” are given the additional dominical authority as “the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ.” All of these texts were common in the biblical justification for slavery in the early nineteenth-century.

…  As Albert Taylor Bledsoe, LLD thundered, “The history of interpretation furnishes no examples of more willful and violent perversions of the sacred text than are to be found in the writings of the abolitionists. They seem to consider themselves above the scriptures: and when they put themselves above the law of God, it is not wonderful that they should disregard the laws of men.”

The Rev. Danny Cortez, “Southern Baptist pastor accepts his gay son, changes his church”

I am now in conversation with other pastors who are now wondering what in the world we are doing. I’m thankful for these opportunities. I pray that the church will no longer be segregated. I pray that those who have been marginalized would feel safe in our churches. I pray that we as the church would set aside our difference and learn what it means to be the body of Christ. So please keep us in your prayers as the road ahead promises to be filled with difficulty.

Joyce Arthur, “The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion”

“I’ve had several cases over the years in which the anti-abortion patient had rationalized in one way or another that her case was the only exception, but the one that really made an impression was the college senior who was the president of her campus Right-to-Life organization, meaning that she had worked very hard in that organization for several years. As I was completing her procedure, I asked what she planned to do about her high office in the RTL organization. Her response was a wide-eyed, ‘You’re not going to tell them, are you!?’ When assured that I was not, she breathed a sigh of relief, explaining how important that position was to her and how she wouldn’t want this to interfere with it.” (Physician, Texas)