Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

Janene Cates Putman

Lovingly Waiting

by Janene Cates Putman in Christian Spirituality

Truly he taught us to LOVE one another; his law is LOVE and his gospel is peace.
Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease.
Have you ever had your plans changed right in the middle of carrying out your original plan? Take, for instance, this week’s blog. I had it almost ready to go with all my research done on LOVE—I had my dictionary definitions (y’all know how I adore Mr. Webster), “Love is…” quotes (“Love is giving up the last bite”) and even a song from the 80s (Huey Lewis “Power of Love”).

And then I read this quote:
“Ask yourself what is really important. Have the wisdom and the courage to build your life around your answer.”
—Lee Jampolsky, psychologist and author
Mary, the mother of Jesus, had her life planned. She was to marry Joseph, a local carpenter who would care for her and their future children. Her life was scripted by society and religion. And this is the part that gives me chills: BUT THEN GOD!

God showed up to a peasant girl in a small town whose future was set. God showed up and asked her to be the means by which God was showing up in our world. God showed up and Mary said yes. To the most important question, she said yes. From a certain future to risk, uncertainty, and fear, this young woman said yes. Yes to God’s disrupting her plan. Yes to playing her part in changing the world. Yes to making the impossible possible, to making the invisible visible.

We often see her portrayed as… [Read more…] about Lovingly Waiting

Advent: Joyfully Waiting

by Janene Cates Putman in Christian Spirituality

Joy to the world—the Lord is come!

Joy to the world—all the boys and girls now! Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me!

OK, I admit it—this week’s blog has been the most difficult of this series for me to write. The good news is I’ve been singing

Jeremiah was a bullfrog
Was a good friend of mine
I never understood a single word he said
But I helped him a-drink his wine
And he always had some mighty fine wine

for days (I know you’re humming along now—you’re welcome)! Look, I’m a joyful person—my Hot Husband, our children and grands, our extended family and friends, a lovely glass of wine with Jeremiah the Bullfrog all bring me great joy! So it’s not that I don’t like JOY or I don’t have JOY or that I need to find JOY in the journey. It’s just that JOY is so dadgum hard to explain, right? It’s one of those nebulous things that we know it when we feel it and we profoundly feel its absence when we lack it—but what is the actual definition of JOY?

The dictionary gives these meanings: a profound feeling of happiness; a feeling of great pleasure and happiness; the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune; delight, exuberance, elation, bliss; to rejoice; to delight. These definitions seem to me to be vague, hazy and even transitive. Can’t JOY be abiding; can’t it come to stay?

Celebrating Advent trains us in waiting. JOY comes, many times, as a… [Read more…] about Advent: Joyfully Waiting

Advent: Peacefully Waiting

by Janene Cates Putman in Christian Spirituality

Let there be PEACE on earth and let it begin with me
The first snowfall of winter is happening right now at our home. What is it about falling snow that is so peaceful that there’s even a Peaceful Snowfall app? As I sit gazing out the window beyond our Christmas tree, a sense of peace and goodwill envelops me. I wish that feeling could stay with me always. But wait a minute—why can’t it? This is the season to celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace—doesn’t that mean something today, here and now?

A prophecy in the Hebrew scriptures promised a Messiah to come who would be the leader of PEACE. “For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder. These will be his royal titles: Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). This was a promise to the Jews and, I believe, a promise to us today. “The Prince of Wholeness” has come and we celebrate his arrival during Advent.

Advent worship is a journey toward the Christmas story—the story of God putting his family back together. Advent is the story of shalom—peace; wholeness; completeness; the way God meant it to be all along. PEACE—particularly, the PEACE we celebrate at Advent—is not merely the absence of conflict; it’s a sense of wholeness, a sense that all is well within you.

So there I was, looking up the dictionary definition of PEACE, like a good little researcher, and I came across this gem at… [Read more…] about Advent: Peacefully Waiting

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

The Painful Truth About Charlottesville 

by Janene Cates Putman in Current Events

The events in Charlottesville, VA last weekend have saddened, angered, and activated me. But as we met together in our faith community on Sunday morning, our pastor encouraged us: We were made for so much more than this! He went on to quote an author who said, “It’s as if we’re walking around in shoes a size too small.”

I’m a born and bred Southerner, y’all, and can “Bless Your Heart” in a hot minute. I was raised in the deep South where segregation was still a reality, even though integration was the law. In my hometown, into the 70s and 80s, there were two sides of the tracks, each side based on skin color. In a neighboring town was an active KKK chapter.

Fortunately, my family was not and is not racist, which is a minor miracle for that time and place. Maybe that’s why I’m so disheartened by last weekend’s events. I grew up singing, “Jesus loves the little children … Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.”

If this is true of Jesus — and it is — it most certainly can be true of his followers. Have you ever worn a pair of shoes that were too small for your feet? Maybe that cute pair you’d been eying all season was drastically marked down and they only had the size smaller than you normally wear.

We make all kinds of excuses: they’ll stretch out when I wear them, beauty is pain, it’s more important to look good than to feel good. Those shoes might work for a time or two, but eventually you’ll either stop wearing them because of the… [Read more…] about The Painful Truth About Charlottesville 

A Mother’s Day Without Proverbs 31

by Janene Cates Putman in Christian Issues

In my fundamentalist life, by now I would have been dreading Mother’s Day — not because I didn’t want to honor my Sweet Little Mother (who is clearly a saint) or because my children didn’t honor me (ah, the days of the noodle necklaces and handprint art). I dreaded it because of the ubiquitous Mother’s Day Sermon. Y’all know the one I’m talking about: the text is Proverbs 31 and the subject is “Biblical Womanhood.” This prospect filled me with dread because I knew I couldn’t — and wouldn’t — be the model of a “Proverbs 31 woman.”

May I point out that Proverbs 31 was most likely written by a mother (the queen) who was advising her son (the prince) on choosing a wife? Now come on, boy moms, what would you include in that list? What kind of woman would be the dream wife for your son? May I propose that fundamentalist Christians might be reading and teaching this poem inaccurately? May I further propose a better way?

The “Proverbs 31 woman” was a wife, mother, businesswoman, and community activist. She was never meant to be held up to all women everywhere as the example of who we should be and how we should behave. And, by the way, “she” wasn’t a real woman. She was a literary device, one written to honor and value women’s many roles, not to assign a single, limiting way of being a “virtuous woman.”

Thanks to Rachel Held Evans, we all know that Proverbs 31 wasn’t written to be a guide for devout women. It was written to celebrate the “woman of valor” in all her varied roles.… [Read more…] about A Mother’s Day Without Proverbs 31

Your Permission Is Not Required

by Janene Cates Putman in Christian Issues

“It’s not who’s going to let me; it’s who’s going to stop me.”
“It’s better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.”
Dear Men of the Church:

I’m finished asking permission and I won’t beg for forgiveness. I don’t need your authorization to be who God created me to be.

Many of the positive male responses to the Twitter hashtag #ThingsOnlyChristianWomenHear have been along the lines of granting permission, of allowing women to serve in roles outside the church kitchen and nursery. While I do appreciate your support, this assumes that male church leaders have the authority and that women require their assent. The arrogance of this astounds me. Instead of using patriarchal terms like “allowing” and “letting,” why don’t we make room for and create environments in which all of God’s children can flourish?

Stop saying it’s time to “let” women walk in their God-given gifts or that women should be “allowed” to serve in church leadership roles. This assumes that someone else (almost always a male) is in control of our purposes in life, that someone else dictates the calling of God on our lives. Do we “let” a man be the lead pastor? Do we “allow” a male to serve as an elder? No, those are assumed roles for men. For women to ask permission is beneath us all—men and women alike.

It’s not only women who suffer under this misogynistic view, men do as well. What about the man who wants to serve in kids ministry? How about the man who is a fantastic cook? Both the man who… [Read more…] about Your Permission Is Not Required