Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

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When Quiet Means Work: A Reflection for Families, Caregivers, and Those Who Are Still Loving

by Ellen Perleberg in Christian Spirituality

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, I rather spontaneously—or perhaps, I’d like to think, by the work of the Holy Spirit—got on a night bus and went to church. I arrived at St. Mark’s Cathedral to a contemplative Eucharist in their beautiful chapel. It was soft and lovely and quiet.

I love the quiet. I sought it out when I came to college in Seattle, living in “the big city” for the first time this fall, more than a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of people everywhere. I looked for and found spaces where we pray in quiet to hear our own God answer. And now I have come to a season in which we encourage each other to come into the quiet and the rest and peace it brings.

But I noticed something else in the quiet that evening. Perhaps because I had just returned from a trip back home, I realized that my quiet does not belong to me. It belongs to my sister. My twelve-year-old sister has severe developmental delays and serious sensory processing issues. Anything and everything is liable to be too bright, too loud, too much for her, and so I grew up with the quiet. With subtitles on muted TV screens, with an empathetic dread of ceiling fans, with a constant, chiding shhh.

My quiet is active. My quiet encompasses all the work it takes to make the world safe for my sister. My quiet is an act of love. My quiet was enforced for years, and my quiet puts her needs first.

My quiet is heartbreaking. Quiet is unanswered questions and the words she can’t say.… [Read more…] about When Quiet Means Work: A Reflection for Families, Caregivers, and Those Who Are Still Loving

Breaking Free: A Survivor’s Anthem

by Lydia Joy in Poetry

Breaking Free
A Survivor’s Anthem

They say just to forget,
Pretend, get over it.
Move on, start over again.

But the memory, the pain,
Made to feel ashamed,
Still linger, still fight, a battle in my brain.

I’m not gonna cover up these scars.
I’m breaking away from these prison bars.
I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.
Won’t lock myself in that prison again.

I’m breaking free. I can finally breathe.
I’m trying to forgive, to finally live.
I’ve still got this memory that never will fade.
I’m letting go. I’m walking away.
I’m breaking free.

Sometimes they are scars.
Other times open wounds.
At moments, I question how I made it through.

And when it all comes back and I have to relive,
Somewhere deep in my soul, I beg God to help me forget.

All the scary nights. All the tears I cried.
All those people who said I lied…
I’m letting go.

I’m breaking free. I can finally breathe.
I’m trying to forgive, to finally live.
I’ve still got this memory that never will fade.
I’m letting go. I’m walking away.
I’m breaking free.

Don’t cover up your scars.
Go ahead, break away from those prison bars.
You’re stronger than you’ve ever been.
You’ll never need to lock yourself in that prison again.
You’re breaking free.

 

Photo via Unsplash.

About Lydia Joy
Lydia Joy is a childhood sexual abuse survivor and former member of Independent… [Read more…] about Breaking Free: A Survivor’s Anthem

Advent: Hopefully Waiting

by Janene Cates Putman in Christian Spirituality

“A thrill of HOPE, the weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

Do a quick Google search for “Advent Calendar” and you’ll find over 3 million results—for the gourmet chocolate lover, for the wine connoisseur, for the beauty trendsetter, for the traditional-at-heart, for the children in your life, for that boozy friend—an Advent calendar for everyone on your list.

Having grown up in a non-liturgical church tradition, this is what I knew about Advent: there was a Christmas tree calendar that had doors for each day, December 1 – 25, with candy inside. It was a countdown to Santa Claus and had little, if anything, to do with the biblical Christmas story. I was an adult with nearly-grown children before I began to learn about and celebrate Advent. This yearly celebration has changed the way I worship. “Let every heart prepare him room” has become my personal prayer for this season.

This is the first week of Advent. The definition of Advent is “the arrival of a notable person, thing or event.” Advent has to do with waiting, with being “pregnant with expectation.” This is waiting with purpose, waiting with action. It’s “nesting”—preparing my heart to be Christ’s home. Advent worship is a journey through the biblical narrative, the story of God putting his family back together. It’s a time to focus on what Christ’s coming brings to us: hope, peace, love, joy.

“Come, Lord Jesus” is the anthem of Advent. It’s waiting, between the now… [Read more…] about Advent: Hopefully Waiting

Advent One: To Watch Again Another Night

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

Advent One: Isaiah 64:1-9
Up there. In dusk’s dimming sky. What did the Isaiah poet see that long ago night? Stars wheeling out from their daytime hiding places? Cosmic spheres twirling across a vast celestial ballroom dance floor? Or did the poet see only a sky empty of light? What did that ancient wanderer wonder that stirred such heart-rending words: O that you would tear open the heavens…

Rip through the veils that shroud your light, O God.

Place your feet yet again upon our earth and tremble the mountains as you walk in our midst. Be here. Right here.

These texts for the first week in Advent—they are sublime, in an ethereal sort of way. And grim too. Not much warm Christmas nostalgia in Isaiah. Rip open. Quake. Boil. Tremble. These are words to begin our high holy season? Where is gentle Mary and her lullabying voice? What about the twinkling stars that lit the shepherds’ way to the manger? Where in these verses is our tasteful Advent aesthetic?

And yet, our ancient wondering wanderer offers up bittersweet Advent truth. Even if we had a substantive theology of lingering, even if we knew how to wait—we are tired of waiting. What we really want is for God to rip open the veil and let God’s cosmic light bear down on every place where injustice and its power brokers try to hide. We yearn for God—to boil, quake, tremble. Hopeful expectation and starry-eyed wakefulness don’t do it for us anymore. Not when justice has been delayed and denied. When streets… [Read more…] about Advent One: To Watch Again Another Night

Me Too: Finding My Voice Outside of Fundamentalism

by Lydia Joy in Fundamentalism

Trigger warning: childhood sexual abuse.

Me, too.

With two little words, I joined a campaign. Signed up and shouted, “No more silence! No more with the lack of accountability! No more with the victim shaming!” It’s a campaign that has been long overdue for many of us out there. Our experiences and our accounts fell on deaf ears for many years, regardless if the actual abuse had since ended, all because our stories were too uncomfortable for others to hear.

My story is typical of many other former Christian Fundamentalists: for at least seven years as a child, I was sexually and physically abused by two male family members. One perpetrator is serving twenty-seven years in prison for crimes he committed against me and other victims, the other has never spent one day locked away due to a “lack of convincing details” about that summer when I was twelve.

To my knowledge, the pastor of my Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) church knew about my abuse and decided not to intervene. No law enforcement involvement was ever sought out. No professional counseling was offered. The victim shaming, however, thrived within that environment.

For many years, it was like a roller-coaster of events and emotions. A series of ups and downs regarding my story were whispered within my childhood church and by others closely connected with it. To this day, twelve years later, the memories of the shaming remain. Sometimes, I wanted to become invisible, to shrink into… [Read more…] about Me Too: Finding My Voice Outside of Fundamentalism

Dining With the Devil

by Darrell Lackey in Christian Issues

In 1993, Os Guinness wrote a wonderful little book entitled Dining with the Devil. The subtitle was The Megachurch Movement Flirts with Modernity. Guinness pointed out how the megachurch movement was borrowing tools, insights, and strategies from the modern management, business, and marketing world to “reach” people. It was a sort of Babylonian captivity. What these churches often thought were the result of prayer, evangelism, or biblical preaching, were, perhaps, simply the result of good marketing, management, and business principles applied to growing one’s membership (clientele). Further, he likened this borrowing, this captivity, to dining with the prince of darkness himself. Yikes. The book, of course, was written with fundamentalist/evangelical churches in mind.

At the very beginning of the book, Guinness quotes sociologist Peter L. Berger, who in his book A Rumor of Angels writes:
He who sups with the devil had better have a long spoon. The devilry of modernity has its own magic: The [believer] who sups with it will find his spoon getting shorter and shorter—until that last supper in which he is left alone at the table, with no spoon at all and with an empty plate. The devil, one may guess, will by then have gone away to more interesting company.
This bit of wisdom and insight would also apply to our present moment in the political/cultural realm. Someone needs to write a new book, entitled Dining with the Devil: Part Two. And… [Read more…] about Dining With the Devil

Evangelicals: Belief and Politics Today

by Marcia Pally and David Gushee in Christian Issues

A conversation with David Gushee and Marcia Pally

Professor Marcia Pally and Christian ethicist David Gushee discuss the meaning of “evangelical” and how that identification intersects with other social, political, and religious ideologies.

MP: During the early rounds of my field research for The New Evangelicals, we spoke about the range of evangelical belief and activism, from right to centrist to progressive. In 2007, Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said, “I have cautioned our denomination to be very careful not to be seen as in lock step with any political party.”

Yet today, roughly 80% of evangelicals declare themselves on the right of Christian belief and the right of the Republican party. On key issues, the breakdown looks like this:

61% of white evangelicals say there is not substantial discrimination against African-Americas; there is no other religious group (except Mormons) where that is the majority view.
61% of white evangelical Protestants oppose same-sex marriage; while 63% of white mainline Protestants, 62% of Catholics, 59% of Orthodox Christians, and 73% of Jews support same-sex marriage.
50% of white evangelicals support religiously-based service refusal to gays and lesbians; there is no other religious group where that is the majority view.
28% of white evangelicals say the earth is warming because of human activity; among all other religious groups and the religiously… [Read more…] about Evangelicals: Belief and Politics Today

God’s Will for My Family

by Bette Moore in Christian Issues

In March, 1971, I had a second trimester saline solution injection abortion. I was a Christian, married, and 24 years old.

Four months earlier, on Thanksgiving Day, my husband and I had celebrated my pregnancy with friends and, although it was a bit of a surprise, we were delighted to be expecting a child.

I was teaching fifth grade at the time and will never forget the moment when a student walked up to my desk and said he didn’t feel very well. When I saw the rash on his face, I flashed back to a terrible photograph I had seen in a magazine in my obstetrician’s office the week before. It was of a “Rubella baby,” and the caption said, “Bobby’s mother recovered from German measles in 3 days. Bobby wasn’t so lucky.”

I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I later found out. I learned that the reason they finally connected Rubella with birth defects was that delivery room personnel were coming down with German measles two to three weeks after the birth of a baby with severe birth defects. Although the mother recovers in three days, sadly, the baby stays sick throughout the remaining time of gestation and is still contagious at birth.

I had almost forgotten about that student and the magazine picture, when, a couple of weeks later, I saw a very slight rash on my own face. I covered it up with make-up as best I could and drove thirty miles to school, feeling worse and worse the whole way. Halfway through the morning, I couldn’t deny what was happening to me and I… [Read more…] about God’s Will for My Family

Being A Daughter of Zion

by Jordan Blaylock in Christian Spirituality

That moment you begin living as though you are a daughter of Zion, that you stand tall, and proudly proclaim that you are following God’s will by taking your pain and your sorrow, using it for His good and to glorify God, oh! does your enemy, the devil, attack.

First, it will be with trauma, and old wounds that had scarred being ripped open. Then, well-meaning people, who truly want the best for you, and who are aiding in your healing as best they can, will rip your innards out, unintentionally and without malice.

Resentment comes. Anger. Sorrow. And loss. Heartbreaking, soul-shattering loss.

Your teeth will be kicked in, your ribs and limbs broken over and over, before they can even set, never mind putting the cast on. This is all done because, as it has been so eloquently said, “The devil is after you, girl!” And he is, when you claim your status and you embrace that sanctification and justification that follows that embrace.

God has not left you. Jesus is still there. The Holy Spirit is within you. Even when you cry out for no more, when you beg for it to stop.

It was said that resiliency is more heavily within my genetic make up than that of a normal person. Resiliency is a gift from God, a fruit of the Spirit. And I am not normal. You never are, once you embrace this status and become sanctified and justified. We are not normal.

We are strong and courageous, answering as Mary did, as Isaiah. We stand and fight, then we sing. We kneel and submit, we fast… [Read more…] about Being A Daughter of Zion

It’s Time for Women to Stop Protecting Wicked Men

by Geneva Gurrusquieta in Current Events

Trigger Warning: this article describes sexual assault and may be triggering to survivors.

The story about the accusations against Roy Moore that he sexually assaulted a young teenage girl has really hit me. I’ve been melancholy, nauseated, stressed, unable to sleep. I even bought a pack of cigarettes after having kicked the habit long ago. Even with all the high profile sexual assault stories in the news, this one really pushed my buttons. Now, her story is the first thing I think about every morning, and the last thing I think about at night. Her story is always in the back of my mind. Tears flow and I have no control over when or where, because I am so grieved for her. It’s not her story, but the response to her story that compels me to speak out.

In my life, I’ve listened to dozens of stories of sexual abuse and assault from women (and men) from all walks of life; no one is immune. I’ve gotten pretty good at seeing the truth of a story and filtering out falsehoods and exaggerations. Leigh Corfman’s story rings true. I believe her.

“Why did she wait forty years to say something? Why is she telling this now?” Many women confide in no one until they are much older. Other than one friend and my therapist, I’ve never named my abuser either. But people knew. I tried to tell, but I was shamed and shunned. I don’t know where he is, or even if he’s alive or dead, but you can be sure of one thing: if that man ever decided to run for US Senate, yes, you bet your… [Read more…] about It’s Time for Women to Stop Protecting Wicked Men