Christians and porn

According to this post, Christian men are more likely to watch porn than the average American male.

From Steve Farrar's Finishing Strong:


A number of years ago a national conference for church youth directors was held at a major hotel in a city in the mid-west. Youth pastors by the hundreds flooded into that hotel and took nearly every room. At the conclusion of the conference, the hotel manager told the conference administrator that the number of guests who tuned into the adult movie channel broke the previous record, far and away outdoing any other convention in the history of the hotel.

I have to ask myself what vice Christian women are more guilty of. Perhaps wearing more makeup, showing more belly, or cleavage? I wonder - do some forms of Christianity provide a more sexualized environment and therefore encourage the use of porn? I would be interested in your thoughts.

What some women bloggers are saying

There are now no blogs authored by women in the top 50 biblioblogs. There are a few that are co-authored by women, but none by a woman alone.

What are women blogging about? Some say children and home. Why not. But other women are blogging about what life was like under patriarchy.

A Wife's Submission

"The burden was so heavy, I could see no way out of it but my death. I wanted to die: my frame of mind was such that I would have embraced cancer or something as an escape hatch from God to bring me relief."

Submission Tyranny

"Even if the husband does not use physical abuse or overt emotional abuse on a daily or weekly basis, the fact that he requires his wife to continually and daily set aside her will, to live like a child without the freedom to choose what she thinks is best, so he can have things his way and feel in charge, is in itself domestic abuse."

No Longer Quivering

"I posit that the well-intentioned “Biblical patriarchy” adherents can’t help but support abuse, because the abuse is intrinsic to the teaching…which means that either God is abusive, or the patriarchy camp has got God figured out all wrong."

Woman Submit! Christians & Domestic Violence

"The false doctrine of female subordination to male authority lies at the very root of domestic abuse and domestic violence among professing Christians. The premise is despotic and abusive in and of itself. Domestic Violence among Christians will never be eradicated until gender equality is acknowledged and practically implemented."


bWe Baptist Women for Equality's Blog

"In the next few posts, I will get to basics and dethrone Male Headship."

Mayday

"One of the things that led to me parting company with the complementarian new church setting I was in was a realisation that I was married to my wife, not the church. " (Okay, this one is a guy.)

Julia O'Brien

Julia O'Brien has an excellent blog about the Hebrew Bible. She provides insightful thoughts on why Christians might not want to celebrate a Seder meal at Easter. Many Christians I know do this, but I shrink from practicing the traditions of others. She has recently written articles on Violence and the Bible and Who cares about the Prophets.

Michael Spencer

Michael Spencer of Internet Monk has died. I know many will remember his posts, his influence, the long threads and the wide-ranging topics.

Woman this is war

Jocelyn Andersen is releasing a new book this year called "Woman this is WAR! Gender, Slavery, & the Evangelical Caste System."

Her blog subtitle says,

The false doctrine of female subordination to male authority lies at the very root of domestic abuse and domestic violence among professing Christians. The premise is despotic and abusive in and of itself. Domestic Violence among Christians will never be eradicated until gender equality is acknowledged and practically implemented.

I have said things like this, and there are so many that argue that this cannot be true. It goes like this.

1. Non-Christian men abuse their wives.
2. Women, both Christian and non-Christian, abuse their husbands.
Therefore, there can be no connection between domestic abuse and Christian teaching.

To #1, I would say that this false Christian doctrine has its origins in the same sexism that drives the domination of women by non-Christian men. The teaching of male dominance within Christianity has its counterpart outside of Christianity.

To #2, I would say that there are many ways that women and men can be abusive to each other. (If this happens, it is better for the couple separate. However, the welfare of the children must be taken into consideration.) I do believe, however, that there are many unique ways that the teaching of male authority causes serious abuse and distress, and there are ways that it intensifies the naturally abusive nature of any relationship gone bad.

The testimony of many other women indicates to me that there is a deep and unique way that the teaching that God created women to be under the authority of their husband damages women. A woman who is being abused by her husband has the usual stress - increased vulnerability to ill health, both physical and mental. She also is taught that God has intended this for her. The church is a powerful community for women in this situation, and an abused woman may feel an increased need to belong, as well as an increased sense of alienation and isolation. By appealing to the authority of God, those who teach male authority, intensify the already miserable condition of someone who is being abused.

The teaching of male authority -

gives the abuser the notion that he is entitled to be obeyed and submitted to
gives the abuser the expectation that he has the right to get his way
gives the abuser justification for abusing someone who will not obey him
gives the abuser the sense that men and women are so different that a feeling of common humanity between them is eradicated and there is no empathy

The teaching of male authority -

gives the abused the sense that it is her fault if she is abused
gives the abused feelings of shame for being in this situation
gives the abused no hope since divorce is denied and separation with a view to reconciliation is dangerous
gives the abused the sense that this is God's best for women

To sum it up, let me quote from A wife's submission,

The burden was so heavy, I could see no way out of it but my death. I wanted to die: my frame of mind was such that I would have embraced cancer or something as an escape hatch from God to bring me relief.

My thoughts exactly. I often used to think of what a relief it would be to die of cancer. How many men sit in church and think of how much more pleasant it would be to die of cancer than be a Christian male? Share my thought of 30 years of church attendance just for a moment.

Thank goodness - tomorrow when I go to church, I will spend more time picking the lint (or white dog hairs) off my Easter jacket than I will wishing I would die of cancer. I will know the delightful freedom of being like a man, free to worry about my finances, my job, my children, etc. etc. but I won't have to sit and think that I would rather die of cancer than continue to live the kind of life God intended for me because I am a woman.

The Illiad

I was stung by a passing comment in the bibliosphere recently. It was this simple, "A girl’s actually interested in the Iliad? Very nice." He was surpised eh, that a female would 'actually' read the Illiad.

I guess I was in my early teens when I read through much of the Illiad in Greek. It doesn't provide strong female characters - but it does contain many female characters.

In my imagination, I was Briseis, torn from the tent of the heroic warrior Achilles, to provide sex for a king who was so callous as to sacrifice his own daughter to the gods. I was Andromache, mourning for both husband and son, dragged off to a end her life in slavery. I was Cassandra, always Cassandra and still Cassandra, doomed to know the future and doomed to never be believed.

It really ticks me off that some random biblioblog commenter would think that a woman would not read the Illiad.

Waltke on Evolution

There has been an expresssion of support for Bruce Waltke and concern that he has felt the need to take down a video which expresses his views on theistic evolution. I am happy to see many strong voices in the bibliosphere support the scientific foundation for beliefs about the origin of our physical world.

But I wonder how many bloggers would express concern about what else Bruce Waltke teaches from Genesis. He teaches that Gen. 3:16 suggests that divorce in our contemporary society is caused by women resisting their role in life, which is to be a helper to the male. He firmly places the blame for divorce on women. When questioned personally about this - that is, I asked him if this applied to divorced couples he knew - he admitted that it didn't. But nonetheless, he taught a lecture hall full of young adults that women are to blame for divorce.

When confronted with a woman who was seeking divorce for violence, his first concern was to establish whether that woman would want to remarry, and whether she know that the Bible would not condone this. She actually had never considered remarriage at that point in time.

Bruce Waltke is a personable and gentle man. However, I honestly believe that certain beliefs about women stunt the normal senses, and create callous disregard for women. I pray that Dr. Waltke will be released from his blindness regarding who is to blame for all the divorce in the world, and perhaps some day admit in public that there is no reason to take all the sin in the world and place it on the shoulders of women. We have enough of our own, thank you very much, without carrying the sins of men also.

Over and over again, I see in much of Christianity, a tendency to put women on the cross.