Why Kavanaugh Should Withdraw

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

I believe her

The #MeToo movement marks a distinctive cultural difference between 1991 and 2018. This is obvious in how the public (and the Senate) have responded to Anita Hill vs. Christine Blasey Ford.

I remember the Anita Hill hearings vividly. They were televised live and were on every TV in sight. This was a remarkable feat in 1991 before the era of cable news. Or the phenomenon of “breaking news.”

In an era of blame the victim, Hill’s accusations were definitely breaking news. And, oh boy, was she ever bombarded with victim blaming. Forced to relive some of the most humiliating experiences of her professional life, Anita Hill became a hero.  A generation of women were struck by her willingness to call a public figure to account for his abusive behavior.

Women across the country took to wearing pins that said, “I believe Anita Hill” and simply, “I believe her.”

Unfortunately, Hill was treated to shameful and shaming abuse in front of the entire American public and Clarence Thomas was still confirmed. That is the history of justice (or lack of it) for women who are victims of sexual harassment and sexual violence and assault.

#MeToo movement

Fast forward to 2018 and the newly emerging allegations of sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

In the wake of Ford’s accusations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a teenager, fewer people are questioning whether she was assaulted. While this is a cultural step forward, his defenders are also not saying, “Let’s find out if these allegations are true because we wouldn’t want an unrepentant sex offender on the nation’s highest court.”

As we have heard in other #MeToo cases, some people are asking if people’s lives should be ruined by actions they took when they were teenagers. Clearly preparing a line of defense for his nomination if the allegations prove to be true. What his defenders are really asking is whether men’s lives should be ruined by the behavior of their younger selves. No one is asking about the lives of the women who were deeply marked by the violence of these boys.

Michelle Goldberg pointed out in a NYTimes column that we are not really asking if boys and men should be accountable for their sexual violence, but rather, which boys and men should be accountable. As she notes, sex offender registries regularly mark men for life for their crimes in an effort to protect vulnerable populations.

But prep school boys and other boys of privilege are rarely held accountable in the same way for their abuse of power and physical strength in perpetrating violent actions against their dates or even just women at parties. And Kavanaugh is on record promoting a storied secrecy of the boys club world.

Sexual violence and restorative justice

The problem with confirming Kavanaugh “even if he did it” on the premise that men shouldn’t have their lives and careers ruined by the actions of their youth is that if he did it – he has clearly shown no remorse, no recognition of the harm that he caused, nor any understanding of the restorative justice that is required before forgiveness is possible.

Restorative justice is the principal that injustices need to be remedied. When people are victims of injustice, their experience can rarely be undone. Such crimes often include violations of a person’s body, mind, and soul. The body’s memory of rape or sexual assault can never be undone. Just as degrading and demeaning verbal abuse cannot be unheard. The fear and terror associated with these crimes or with a mugging or physical attack cannot be erased or forgotten.

Our culture routinely accepts sexual violence against women as normal. Or at the very least, as a woman’s fault for putting herself in a vulnerable situation. In such a culture, it would not be particularly surprising that the boy who grew up to become Judge Kavanaugh didn’t remember the encounter.

Violent, terrifying, and abusive encounters with boys and men mark the histories and psyches of countless women. Across this country and across the world. The normalization of this violence and the refusal to hold boys and men accountable for violent, sexually aggressive behavior is a symptom of a culture that cares more for protecting male privilege than defending women’s human rights.

Compromising the Court’s moral authority

read conclusion here

Does it matter if my ancestors owned slaves?

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

This week marks the 124th anniversary of the slave uprising in Haiti, which played an important role in the abolition of chattel slavery. Sunday, August 23rdis the UNESCO International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition. It is a day where the world is asked to pause and consider the legacy of slavery and the power of social movements like abolitionism.

Growing up in the US American South as a white child, I learned about slavery in particular ways. Living in the midst of battlefields, patriotic statues of Civil War generals, and family stories of burying silver as Sherman’s troops approached, shaped me in unknown ways. The cotton fields of my childhood were a visual reminder of the back-breaking labor that had fueled the economy, not just of the southern states but the whole country in its early years. Slavery was an embarrassing history lesson in which my ancestors had fought on the losing side of the American Civil War.

As I got older, I read slave narratives and histories of slavery, watched documentaries and movies and visited museums where I saw the instruments used to torture people on a regular basis. As I learned more about the brutal reality of slavery, I realized that my understanding of it had been deeply shaped by my experience of being white.

As a white woman, I wondered how my ancestors answered the questions of racial justice in their time and in what ways my life has been affected and even enriched by the hardships and injustice that were suffered by enslaved Africans. I wondered if anyone in my family had owned slaves.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter if my ancestors owned slaves. After all, my privilege as a white woman in the U.S. in the 21st century is real, whether my ancestors owned slaves or not. The horror of slavery transcends race and nationality in much the same way that genocide anywhere is a stain on the human community.

I vividly remember the palpable feeling of the moral evil that emanates through the slave castle of Elmina in Ghana and the slave chambers near the Zanzibar slave market. As I walked through the “Door of No Return” that leads down to the tiny holding room in Elmina where hundreds of people were forced to wait for the boats that took them to the Caribbean and North America; I became a living witness to the horror of what human beings are capable of doing to one another.

Looking around that damp, dark, and death-filled space where unspeakable evil occurred for over 300 years, I thought about the fact that it was white Christians who built castles like Elmina and who perpetrated and profited from the slave trade for centuries. White Christians, who were quite possibly my ancestors, sold and traded their brothers and sisters while worshiping together in churches that often sanctioned and blessed the trafficking in human flesh. Their wealth and prosperity and the wealth of their countries was built up through the sin of human exploitation and oppression.

Acknowledging the moral depravity that was complicit in the existence and promotion of slavery as well as the Christian justification for slavery is an essential foundation for thinking about the contemporary problems of racial injustice that shape life in many countries around the world. Whether or not my ancestors owned slaves, I am accountable for my complicity in the racial injustice in the world today. Knowing and teaching about the slave trade is important in a world that is still rife with racial disparity. The crippling poverty of contemporary Haiti can only be understood in the context of the political history of the Haitian people. Likewise, the “Black Lives Matter” movement in the United States must be read against the historical backdrop of slavery and its legacy in which black lives have not mattered nearly enough.

When my father died fifteen years ago, I came across a faded newspaper clipping that mentioned that a distant ancestor of mine had owned a slave. While this fact was only a passing reference in the article, it’s the only thing I remember.

I do not know the ways in which slave-owning benefited my ancestors or what ways it may have contributed to my own class privilege. Certainly, the fact that one of my distant ancestors owned a slave does not make me culpable for his actions. What does matter is that, as a white woman, I develop a racial consciousness that recognizes the relationship between historical oppression and contemporary injustice; a racial consciousness that can identify the ways in which my Christian faith has been used to oppress black people and to justify slavery; a racial consciousness that propels me to fight against the contemporary racial injustices in our world.

Remembering the slave trade and the abolitionist movement is particularly important for historically white churches in countries that were part of the slave trade during the WCC Pilgrimage for Justice and Peace. We must remember and lament our complicity in the slave trade because our memory and our grief honor the countless victims who suffered and lost their lives. This lamentation is particularly important in contexts, like the Southern United States, where a glorification of the “Old South” seeks to gloss over the atrocities of our history under the guise of “celebrating our heritage.” The horrific murders at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC this summer can only be understood in the context of racial hatred that simmers beneath support for the Confederate flag.

Remembering the abolition movement is equally important because it offers us hope and a model for widespread social transformation even where that social change will disrupt the entire economic order. If ever we needed hope that that sort of social transformation is possible, it would be now – in the midst of a neoliberal economy that is causing widespread immiseration around the world.

During this week of remembrance, we would do well to ask ourselves why it is important to remember the slave trade and the abolition movement in our own contexts.

This was first posted on the WCC Pilgrimage for Justice and Peace website.

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Misogyny is Exhausting

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

Misogyny is exhausting.

Today I have been working on explaining and documenting the history of misogyny and patriarchy in the church as backdrop for understanding the contemporary debate about abortion in the US.

Not only is navigating the history of misogyny exhausting, it’s given me a headache too!

I think it is easy for many Christians to forget how misogynist our tradition has been. Particularly if we worship in communities that accept women pastors and lay leaders.

Misogyny is defined as the “hatred of women.” It’s a pretty bold claim to say that there are elements of our history and our culture that actively express a “hatred” of women. Many people find that language too extreme and would prefer “softer” language – discrimination, prejudice, condescension, disregard, perhaps even objectification (seeing women as sexual objects rather than as fully human equals).

The thing is, throughout history many historians, philosophers, political leaders, and prominent theologians have treated women is demeaning and abusive ways. There is nothing “soft” about the sentiments expressed by many male philosophers and theologians. Nor is there anything “soft” about the social control of women that often accompanies misogynist and patriarchal attitudes.

Here are some of the texts I’ve been working with today:

Tertullian (early 3rd c. CE) – You are the Devil’s gateway. It is you who plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree. You are the first who deserted the divine law. You are the one who persuaded him whom even the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your desert, that is death, even the Son of God had to die. . .

Augustine (late 4th – early 5th c. CE) – The woman does not possess the image of god in herself, but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned as a helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, then she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God, just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one.

Barth (early 20th c. CE) – The covenant creation dictates a certain order, a relation of priority and posteriority, of A and B. Just as God rules over creation in the covenant of creation, so man rules over woman. He must be A; he must be first. She is B; she must be second. He must stay in his place. She must stay in hers. She must accept this order as the right nature of things through which she is saved, even if she is abused and wronged by the man.

I use these quotes when I teach my students about the misogyny that is embedded in the development, history, and theology of Christianity. These quotes unambiguously establish women as not only inferior to men and removed from God but as the very “Devil’s Gateway.” It seems pretty clear that these men did not think much of women. These statements even seem to be a little “hatey,” don’t you think?

These kinds of ideas – that women are the root of sin and evil, that women must be subservient to their husbands, that women must accept our inferior status in life – all of these ideas are rightly understood as part of a misogynist tradition in Christianity, a tradition that has contributed to larger social attitudes and behaviors in society that collectively express a fairly serious “hatred” of women.

Unfortunately, these misogynist attitudes are not just a part of Christian history, they continue to function in influential ways in contemporary Christianity.

I recently wrote about the offensive ideas about women that some Orthodox Christians hold in the ecumenical movement. But misogynist ideas about women, women’s social roles, and women’s leadership in the church are also alive and well in conservative and some evangelical circles too.

Controversial pastor Mark Driscoll who started the mega church Mars Hill in Seattle said this about women, “Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up it is because you are fighting your role in the scripture.”

And, of course, who can forget the Pat Robertson gem from 1992, “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

WOW! He really has no idea what feminism is about does he?

While misogyny is deeply embedded in the development, history, and theology of Christianity, this does not mean that Christianity is inherently misogynist or patriarchal. It is human beings who shape attitudes and beliefs about human nature, the sacred, and our religions through our teachings and our practices. And it is human beings who have created patriarchal church structures and misogynist theologies. The real danger of these misogynist theologies lies in the way that they shape attitudes about women and the way that women can (and even should) be treated.

Another way in which this hatred of women has manifested in our society is in the double-standard that exists between expectations about men and women’s sexual behavior. While some churches may preach against sex before marriage, it is only women who are truly expected to comply. Women who have sex outside of marriage are labeled in many ways – whore, promiscuous, slut, tramp, harlot, strumpet, bimbo, floozy, hussy, tart, trollop, jezebel, and referred to as “loose” or “fallen.” We do not have parallel words for men.

Because Christianity has played an important role in shaping cultural attitudes about pregnancy, abortion, and the sacredness of life (among other things), it is important to recognize the ways in which the Christian tradition and its theological ideals have been influenced by misogyny and patriarchy so that we can reshape our beliefs and practices to recognize women’s full humanity, women’s moral agency, and the fact that women are equally loved by God.

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Why My Heart Breaks When Churches “Leave” the PCUSA

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

My regular bike ride takes me past a small rural Presbyterian church that has been struggling with a decreasing congregation over the last ten or twenty years. It is the nearest Presbyterian church to our old house and so I have attended worship there several times over the years.

I’ve even preached there once or twice when a friend of mine pastored the church for a number of years and asked me to fill the pulpit when she was on vacation. Like many small churches, they worried about their declining numbers. My friend tried to help them focus on reimagining their role in the local community and how they might be a faithful church rather than to obsess too much over church growth (or lack thereof).

So, I have a connection to this small church and its congregation and always think fondly of them and my friend as I cycle past the church several times a week.

I also know that this church has been struggling with the issue of homosexuality in recent years.

Several years ago I was on an Presbytery panel that focused on “Amendment One” in NC, which sought to define marriage as “between one man and one woman.” I presented an overview of the PCUSA’s support of civil rights over the years alongside a summary of the divergent expressions of marriage in the Bible. I argued that regardless of how Christians felt theologically about the issue of homosexuality, legal discrimination against any group of people is unjust and contradictory to the witness of the PC(USA).

The interim pastor of Memorial Presbyterian was on the panel supporting Amendment One and its proposed discrimination of gays and lesbians.

I can only imagine how members of this church received the recent news that the denomination had voted to allow pastors and churches to celebrate gay and lesbian marriages. I knew that they had been having conversations about leaving the denomination over these changes.

A couple of months ago, the sign in front of the church read “Welcome EPC.” In the world of Christian acronyms, this stands for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church – a denomination created in the early 80s for Presbyterians who felt that the denomination was too “liberal.” I wasn’t entirely sure what the sign meant – were they welcoming members from the EPC to worship? were they welcoming community members to a new EPC congregation? were they testing the waters of transition with their weekly message? Who knew?

Yesterday, when I rode past the church I noticed with great sadness that they had covered over the iconic PCUSA crosses on that very sign. The sign still reads “Memorial Presbyterian Church” but with the erasure of the denominational symbol of the PCUSA, this small church has joined many other churches across the country in leaving behind the mainline Protestant tradition to embrace an evangelical tradition representing conservative values and rigid, intolerant interpretations of scripture.

pcusa cross

My heart broke a little as I rode my bike past that church. It broke for that congregation whose prejudices against gays and lesbians pushed them to leave a community of churches that they have been a part of since their formation. It broke a little for my Presbytery that has now lost another church from our community of faith. It broke a little for the knowledge that it was likely the prejudiced teachings of earlier traditions of Christianity that helped to shape the prejudice and bias that continues to mark this community’s reading of scripture.

I believe that the Christian faith is full of wisdom that can help lead people to live strong, faithful, justice-filled lives rooted in community and compassion for the created world. It is not the only source of wisdom for a meaningful life, but it is an important source that motivates, inspires and helps to heal and guide billions of people around the world.

Christianity can also be used to hurt, exclude, shame, and harm other people. Often by people whose interpretation of Christianity is rigid, intolerant, and exclusive.

As a living faith, Christianity grows, changes, and responds to the world in which it lives. Christians learn from science, from history, from experience, and from people witnessing to their knowledge of the sacred – even when it is different from our own.

In recent years, many Christians have had to unlearn many hateful and inaccurate things that the Christian church and tradition has taught about homosexuality in the past. Many of us have learned from our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters new ways of understanding what it means to be created in the image of God and this has helped us to see and understand scripture in new ways.

These shifts in interpreting scripture are an example of how Christianity continues to live and grow and have meaning for people of faith in our world. Over the centuries we have reinterpreted our understanding of many things that were once thought fixed due to our “interpretation” of scripture – slavery, divorce, the role and status of women, and sexuality are just a few of these.

My heart breaks for Memorial Presbyterian Church and the many other churches who have left the PCUSA and other mainline denominations over the issue of homosexuality. Not because of the continued fracturing of the body of Christ, although that makes me sad too. Not because I think my denomination is best and the churches who leave can’t be faithful Christians somewhere else. Not because they have taken their property and walked away from Salem Presbytery.

What I see is fear and intolerance winning out over justice. And it breaks my heart.

Biblical Marriage is Not What You Think

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

This week’s Supreme Court debates about the definition of marriage echo the same debates that have been dominant in communities and states across the country for the past several years. Justice Kennedy, who appears conflicted about where he stands on this issue, expressed his concern about changing a conception of marriage that “has persisted for thousands of years.”

In truth, like most social institutions, the institution of marriage has shifted and changed over the years in ways that have strengthened it and made it both more accessible and more just.

Two hundred years ago we debated whether or not slaves should be allowed to marry. One-hundred and fifty years ago we debated whether married women should remain their husband’s property under the principle of coverture (the principle of two-becoming-one-flesh), or whether women should be regarded as their own persons, with full rights and responsibilities. Forty-seven years ago we debated whether or not interracial marriages should be legal.

In 1967, the Loving v. Virginia ruling eradicated states law prohibiting interracial marriage and thus transformed the institution of marriage yet again, in ways that struck down discriminatory state laws in much the same way that a ruling in the current case might do.

That ruling read, in part, “Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man [sic],” fundamental to our very existence and survival . . .To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes . . . is surely to deprive the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

Even more recently, we have debated no-fault divorce, marital rape laws, and now marriage equality. In each of these cases where we have debated about the nature of the institution of marriage, we have shifted and expanded our understanding in ways that moved us a little closer toward justice in our society.

But, so often in this debate it is Christianity and the Bible that is brought up as the ultimate weapon in defense of a marriage between one man and one woman. The Genesis text that states that man shall leave his parents and join with wife to become one flesh is trotted out as “proof” that God has defined marriage as between one man and one woman.

Unfortunately, these folks must have stopped reading their Bibles at the end of Genesis, chapter two. Even a cursory read of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament demonstrates that marriage was not understood or practiced this way at all.

Marriage in the Bible was much more about property rights, ensuring paternity of offspring, succession, political alliances and tribal stability than it was about companionship, mutual support and affection as we think of marriage today. The patriarchs of the Jewish and Christian tradition often had sex with multiple women, usually, but not always, for the purpose of procreation. Many of the women in the Bible who were slaves, or servants, or handmaids were reportedly “given” by the legal or primary wife to her husband for the purposes of securing children. The notion of consent, particularly for women, in matters of sexual intercourse is not a relevant moral norm in most of scripture.

continue to Huffington Post to finish reading this article.

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How Honoring Self Makes One a Better Mother

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

Jesus said that there is no greater commandment than to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. (Mk 12:31) Sometimes, the hardest part of this lesson is to love ourselves. Particularly for people who have been taught to put others needs before our own. For mothers, in a culture that demands self-sacrifice and putting the needs of our children before our own, this can be even more difficult. Sometimes, loving ourselves requires deeper self-knowledge and self-care than our culture recommends or even understands.

Continue reading How Honoring Self Makes One a Better Mother

Connecting the Dots Between Wild Violets, Fracking, and Homelessness

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

It’s springtime in North Carolina. Between the redbuds, dogwoods, azaleas, wisteria, lily of the valley, and the wild violets – my yard is a riot of color. This is the time of year when my girls and I gather wild violets and make violet jelly to enjoy with our tea and scones and when we turn the compost into our raised bed to begin to prepare the soil for our modest annual attempt at tomatoes, basil, and the odd pepper or melon. A robin has built her nest just in view of the kitchen window and last weekend we bought a hand-carved wooden nest box that we hung in hopes that a hummingbird will lay her eggs alongside our robin.

Continue reading Connecting the Dots Between Wild Violets, Fracking, and Homelessness

Are Scholar-Activists Welcome in the Academy?

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

People enter the academy for a variety of reasons. Some of us love books and learning and see the academy as an avenue for life-long learning; others are passionate about a particular area of knowledge and inquiry and desire nothing more than to talk about it with others who share their passion; some colleagues of mine are gifted teachers who seek to open the minds of young people or to help them develop their intellectual curiosity; one colleague even told me years ago that he wanted to “be famous.”

My route to the academy came via the church and advocacy work that I did on behalf of women at the national office of the Presbyterian Church (USA) prior to entering seminary. I had read some feminist theory in college and discovered Rosemary Radford Ruether’s work on my own. After college I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life until I came across a job ad in a mission volunteer newsletter that read, “One person to work for the eradication of sexism at all levels of the church.” Wow, I said to myself, I want to do THAT!

Click here to read the rest of this post on the Feminist in Religion site

You Can Hang ‘Em From a Tree . . .

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

When I first watched the videos of young, white fraternity brothers casually singing their song of racism and lynching, I was transported back to my own college days in the mid-80s. I can’t be absolutely sure I heard that song but it was painfully familiar in a sickening and repulsive sort of way. I sort of knew what was coming before they sang the next words, which makes me think it was buried in the deep recesses of my conscious.

Continue reading You Can Hang ‘Em From a Tree . . .

Fighting Poverty and Politics in North Carolina

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

North Carolina has the dubious honor of leading the nation in the increase of people living in high-poverty areas. We are one of the most food insecure states in the country with over 650,000 people (17%) struggling to find enough food to eat and more than 1 in 4 our of children at risk of persistent hunger.

Ten years ago, John Edwards returned to North Carolina to start a new center at the UNC School of Law to address the persistent problems of poverty in our state. Working with Gene Nichol, then dean of the law school, they started the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, whose stated mission is to “advocate for proposals, policies and services to mitigate poverty in North Carolina.” Shortly after Nichol assumed leadership of the center in 2008, the state legislature cut public funding for its work. The center carried on its work supported by private funding sources.

Continue reading Fighting Poverty and Politics in North Carolina