Welcome to another edition of Web Explorations for Christian Feminists. I’m dividing this edition into two parts: textual material and audio/video resources available online. Please remember that the links in Web Explorations take you to sites outside eewc.com and thus EEWC can’t be responsible for their content. Nor does the inclusion of a link mean that it necessarily represents the views of EEWC. The links simply take you to some sites that I enjoyed discovering and want to tell you about.  I’m hoping you’ll find them as interesting, informative, inspiring -- and even disturbing in some cases -- as I have found them to be.

Interesting Articles to Read Online

How do you experience the Holy?
Here’s a spiritual quiz to help you find out.
(From Explore Faith.org).

“Blogging” the Bible (from the online magazine Slate)
“I have always been a proud Jew, but never a terribly observant one,” writes David Plotz, deputy editor of the online magazine Slate, in his introduction to a fascinating series on the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians call the Old Testament. While attending a synagogue for a cousin’s bat mitzvah, he became restless and picked up a copy of the Torah from the pew rack in front of him, opened it randomly, began reading, and was thoroughly intrigued. His “take” on the Scriptures over the next year, including stories he had never heard discussed by either Jews or Christians, became a fascinating series for Slate. Since the order of the books that make up the Hebrew Bible differs somewhat from the arrangement of the Old Testament in Christian Bibles, check out this outline for an overview of the complete “Blogging the Bible” series. Plotz says he hears from enthusiastic Christians as well as Jews, even though some of his comments may strike some people as irreverent and his interpretations open to discussion. Christianity Today has published an interesting and insightful interview with him that you might like to read as well.

Signs from God: The Curious History of Church Marquees
We’re all familiar with the signs in front of church buildings -- attention-grabbing statements like, “CH_ _CH. What’s missing?” In this article from Slate, Doree Shafrir introduces us to their history in America, beginning with the needlepoint samplers that 18th century women made to display biblically-based messages. Watch the slide show (pictures and text).

Women Under Attack: The Talibanization of Iraq
AlterNet.com capsulizes a report by Bay Fang in these words: “Throughout much of recent history, Iraq was one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East for women. Now women are under systematic attack.”
(Posted on AlterNet, originally published in Ms. Magazine)

Christian Reconstructionists Are Trying to Take Dominion in America
This alarming account of the May, 2007 “Worldview Super Conference” in North Carolina spotlights the extreme theocratic views of the Christian Reconstructionist form of fundamentalism.
(From AlterNet.org )

Is Heterosexual Marriage Trademarked?
Kenji Yoshino, Professor of Law at the Yale Law School, analyzes what may be the unconscious thinking of those who say same-sex marriage is an assault on the institution of marriage requiring “defense of marriage” legislation to prevent the alleged assault. He suggests that such reasoning -- which makes no sense to those of us who see opening marriage to gay men and lesbians as honoring the institution, rather than denigrating it -- may be better understood by looking at “an obscure bit of intellectual property law.”
(From Slate)

Call me Ms
The issue of what title to use for women is still around. Here are some current thoughts on the title “Ms.” Why it’s important, how it originated, and why “Miss” and “Mrs.” should be discarded.
(From The Guardian)

Changing His Name
Why is it so difficult in most states for a man to change his name upon marriage?
(from Ms magazine )

The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body
Courtney E. Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, shows how societal attitudes, advertising, and other media messages are driving girls and women to believe that happiness lies in thinness and perfectionism, with damaging results.
(From AlterNet.org)

Gloria Steinem: “In Defense of the ‘Chick Flick.’”
I enjoyed reading this article by Gloria Steinem on the July 7, 2007 edition of AlterNet.org and appreciate the points she makes so powerfully, as is true of all her writings. I realize she is using everyday parlance and common terms that communicate. Personally, I have never liked the terms “chick flick” and “chick lit.” First of all, I don’t really like to hear girls and women referred to as “chicks,” and second, I’m troubled to see these terms used to disparage films and books that display feelings and heart -- films that emphasize such human qualities as compassion and caring, earnest and honest conversation about problems in relationships, acceptance of both human frailties and human strengths and attempts to understand both, rather than glorifying violence and sexual exploitation. As one of my sons told me, the term, “chick flicks,” which is used almost as a warning label telling men to avoid a particular film, also insults those men who actually like stories that touch hearts and emphasize dialogue to help us better understand and reach out to each other, and who don’t consider such qualities “feminine” and off limits for males. Of course, there are great, good, mediocre, poor, and terrible films of any genre, but that’s not determined by assumed stereotypical gender appeal. Part of the labeling problem relates to power. As Steinem writes in her essay, “Just as there are ‘novelists’ and then ‘women novelists,’ there are ‘movies’ and then ‘chick flicks.’ Whoever is in power takes over the noun -- and the norm -- while the less powerful get an adjective.” Food for thought.

Online Video and Audio

Videos

Interviews with Anne Lamott: Video and Text
Many EEWC members have enjoyed Anne Lamott’s writings on Salon.com and her books: Bird by Bird, Traveling Mercies, Plan B, Grace (Eventually):Thoughts on Faith, and more. Here’s a chance to see an interview with her (or read the text) as presented on the PBS program, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. She is also featured in a longer interview as part of the “University of California at San Diego Video On-Demand: Humanities” library. See “A Conversation with Anne Lamott,” originally presented as part of the 2007 Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University.

Video of Joy Carroll Wallis and Jim Wallis
If you enjoyed watching the BBC program, The Vicar of Dibley (broadcast in the United States by PBS), you’ll enjoy meeting Joy Carroll Wallis who provided much of the inspiration for the series as well as serving as adviser for the project. Joy was one of the first women ordained in the Church of England. You can read more about her life and her connection with “The Vicar of Dibley” in her memoir, The Woman behind the Collar: The Pioneering Journey of an Episcopal Priest. But you can also meet Joy, along with her husband Jim, a social justice writer and activist and founder of Sojourners, in a half hour presentation, “An Evening with Jim and Joy Carroll Wallis.”
(From the April 2005 Writer’s Symposium by the Sea)

Video: The Anatomy of Reconciliation: From Violence to Healing
“If you Google me up on Google and put ‘death penalty nun.’ That’s me!” says Sister Helen Prejean, in this film about the author of the book Dead Man Walking and the movie of the same title, where she was portrayed by Susan Sarandon. In this challenging and heartmoving video, Sr. Helen Prejean tells how she, who once opposed a social justice application of Christ’s message, came to understand the gospel in a whole new way and was radically transformed into the activist against the death penalty she has become today. The webcast comes from Trinity Church St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City.

Video: Profile of Sarah Miles
I was profoundly moved one Sunday in May, 2007 as I watched this segment on the PBS television program, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, and was glad to find it archived on the program’s website so that I could share the link with Web Exploration viewers. Sarah Miles was raised as an atheist and over the years worked in various careers ranging from a restaurant cook, to a writer for such publications as the New Yorker, New York Times, and Salon. She was a journalist who covered war and revolutions and served as an editor for Mother Jones Magazine. Sarah held Christians in disdain and would have considered herself a most unlikely candidate for conversion if she had thought about it at all. In addition to all the other factors, she was lesbian (now married to her female partner), and knew how gay people are regarded among many Christians, especially those who talk about homosexuality the loudest and most often. But then one day, out of curiosity, she walked into an Episcopal church and was offered the bread and wine of holy communion. And in that moment God suddenly moved in and satisfied a heart hunger she had not even realized was there. She speaks of that happening with great joy and radiance. Having experienced Jesus as the Bread of Life, she now offers physical bread to the poor and hungry through a food pantry ministry that empowers as well as feeds those who come. She has written about her life and ministry in her book, Take This Bread. You might also enjoy reading the interview with her that was published in The San Francisco Chronicle , Feb. 26, 2007. You can also visit her website.

BBC filmmaker makes a video on the Fred Phelps family
Introduction: I’ve never before put a warning label on anything I’ve posted on Web Explorations, but I think one is necessary this time so that you can decide whether or not you want to watch the video titled, “The Most Hated Family in America.” First, here is some background: In 2007, an award-winning documentary film maker, Louis Theroux, went to Topeka, KS to produce a documentary for broadcast on the BBC. It would focus on the Westboro Baptist Church in a suburb of Topeka, and especially on the large three-generation Phelps family. Members of the Phelps family make up the greater part of the church membership and spread the group’s notorious hate-filled messages, while claiming they are doing God’s work. The unspeakably ugly words on their picketing signs were originally aimed directly and primarily against gay people and anyone they perceived to be GLBT supporters, but the family is now directing its venom toward America as a whole (including picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan), claiming that by serving in the U.S. military, soldiers are serving a nation that tolerates homosexuality and that those who died were the subjects of God’s assumed wrath (in which the Phelps family gleefully delights). They have also directed vile rhetoric toward Jews and Black people.

About the video. In an article for The Guardian, (March 31, 2007), Louis Theroux wrote, “For three weeks, I lived with the Phelps, attempting to get to know the people responsible for such a poisonous ministry.” He found some surprises— for example, the high level of education in the large extended family, including a number of attorneys. The seeming ordinariness of family life and the closeness of the family across generations also impressed Theroux, while at the same time he was shaking his head trying to understand how these people could hate so intensely. He learned that a few members of the family have left the group, and the patriarch refused to talk about them with Theroux (toward whom Fred Phelps expressed disdain and antipathy). Theroux had remarkable rapport with some of the teenagers and college age young women, who were surprisingly open with him about what it was like to be a Phelps family member and still have contact with others in their high school. They said other students hated them. My heart went out in sadness for the very youngest Phelps children who were drafted to carry picket signs displaying incredibly invective slogans while having no idea of their meaning, but sensing they were supposed to hate gay and lesbian people. Also amazing was the revelation of the vast sums of money the family spends annually flying across the country to picket funerals and other events.

It would be easy and perhaps wise to simply ignore this family, and I think most of us do that most of the time. Why give them more of the attention they crave? But as I read about the making of this BBC documentary, I wanted to view it, because I believe that -- if one can bear to listen to or read certain material --it’s important to know something about the background and workings of those who espouse bigotry so that we can combat it more effectively. We need to be prepared to challenge the teachings of those who contradict Christ’s message of love and peace and respond to those who are influenced or confused by their teachings, as well as reach out to those who are the victims of such hate The Phelpses are totally close-minded, to be sure, and are not likely to listen to counter arguments to their judgmental theology of hate and condemnation. They thrive on rudeness, foul language, and verbal abuse. But it’s still important to know something about them -- if for no other reason than to correct the news media.. For example, local TV or newspapers will sometimes report a protest at some discussion of gay marriage or related topic. But behind that sensational headline and news photo will be nothing more than several members of the Phelps group showing up with their signs. Yet the headlines or TV news teasers proclaim, “Christians [or Churches] Protest Gay Rally [or speaker for gay rights]. . .” The Phelps family is at the extreme end of the religious spectrum; probably falling off the edge would be more accurate! It’s inaccurate and unfair to equate what this extremist group stands for as being representative of the views of other Christians -- even the most conservative or fundamentalist forms of Christianity (with perhaps a few exceptions). After all, the Phelps group has even picketed events associated with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, as well as picketing Jerry Falwell’s funeral. Neither Dobson or Falwell have ever been celebrated for being anything resembling gay-friendly, but their negative rhetoric about homosexuality hasn’t gone far enough to satisfy the Phelpses. They claim that both men will burn in hell for being false prophets (in Falwell’s case, because he said that God loves everybody). Fred Phelps built his “theology” on a twisted, extreme form of Calvinism, with his own fanatical obsessions thrown into the mix, and one of the picket signs shown in the documentary actually displays the acronym for the “Five Points of Calvinism,” T.U.L.I.P.

Viewing the video. Through a Web search, I found I could watch the entire video of the BBC documentary of “The Most Hated Family in America” online through Google video. If, being forewarned, you also decide to watch it, you might at some point also want to read this informational article from the Anti-Defamation League about all the groups the Phelps family and Westboro Baptist Church target.

Audio Programs

Audio: Calvary Lenten Preaching Series
Each year, the Calvary Episcopal Church in downtown Memphis, TN, hosts a “Lenten Preaching Series.” The 2007 speakers included Phyllis Tickle, Diana Butler Bass, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and many others. You can choose any you wish to hear from 2007 or from the archives, going back to 2001.

Audio: Diana Butler Bass, “Mainline Churches Engage the Emerging Conversation”
In this audio, Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity and the Rest of Us and who is featured in the spring 2007 issue of our EEWC publication, Christian Feminism Today, addresses a seminar on the emergent church, held at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA, January 30-Feb.1, 2007.

That’s all for this time. I hope you’ll enjoy exploring some (or all) of the links on this edition of Web Explorations. And check out the archived editions, too. As always, thanks for stopping by.

Your Web Explorations Guide
Letha Dawson Scanzoni

© 2007 Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus