Why I Oppose Straight Marriage [by SerenaDante]

[I hope you enjoy this list as much as I do. Written by SerenaDante, the infamous Xanga sex blogger...]

These are the reasons why I oppose straight marriage:

-Marriage should be between two people of the same sex. Who says? Well, I do–duh. I’m an expert at defining words, and marriage means “an institution between two women or two men.” It has nothing to do with my religion either, it just has to do with my head…I have a mental dictionary, you know!

-Straight couples are awful at raising children. Look around. It’s obvious. You see straight couples raising children who end up being criminals ALL the time. And–this is the worst thing of all–straight couples even turn their children straight! *shudder*

-Straight relationships are so immoral. You know, I have this really old book that was written by a bunch of weirdo people, and it says that straight relationships are wrong. Obviously, I don’t need to think for myself–this book tells me everything I need to know about the world! It definitely has to be 100% right, so that’s why straight relationships, including marriage, are not appropriate in our society.

-Straight people overpopulate the planet. And that’s horrible. we shouldn’t have even more children being put into adoption centers, or being left out on the street, or being allowed to starve to death. Not anymore! Actions must be taken against this constant procreation and mindless encouragement of human reproduction by straights.

-If straight people are allowed to marry, then we’ll be seeing marriages between animals and humans soon enough too! It’s a fact, especially since animals are able to give their consent to marry, and they can even sign the piece of paper too. (Actually, this is why we should never have let white people get married–now the straights are using that as an excuse to be allowed to as well! So wrong…)

-Straight sex is disgusting. I would never have straight sex, and neither should you. We should stop all penis-in-vagina sex right now! It spreads so many STDs, every single day! Not to mention that penis-in-vagina sex can really hurt people if they’re not careful about it–one of my straight friends (yeah, I have straight friends) told me how he accidentally made a girl bleed because he wasn’t paying attention to where he was putting things, and he was going way too fast. So for their own good, we need to forbid it.

-Being straight is obviously unnatural. Oh wait…but animals in nature are straight pretty often. Oops…um…well…uh, you know what, we’re not animals! Definitely not, we have nothing in common with other mammals. So that means we should know better than to do the things that animals do.

-If I let people get a straight marriage, then my marriage won’t mean anything anymore. Because straights will try their hardest to break up my marriage once they have theirs, because they’re out to get me, not equal rights. And anyway, my spouse will want to divorce me and get a straight marriage too. After all, she doesn’t actually love me or anything like that, she’s just married to me because I was the only person available at the time.

So, ladies and gentlemen, this is why we shouldn’t allow straight marriage–it’s a vice!

P.S. by the way, I’m not a heterophobic bigot for opposing heterosexual marriage. It’s not like I hate straights–I even told you guys I have a straight friend. I just hate straightness! And I’m not doing anything wrong by trying to deny people equal rights on account of who they are either. Nope. So don’t call me anything mean, like intolerant or prejudiced or anything like that, because I’m not! It’s just my opinion.

“She began to dream with her eyes open, lifting her face to the wind.”

I’d like to introduce you to Chloe Malone. Aside from the obvious attraction, of course the decadently beautiful cover with golden lettering, Chloe’s a real darling. She comes from a family of past wealth, current “almost poverty”–which means pawning heirloom furniture and jewels for the sake of purchasing Chloe expensive new clothes. For the sake of catching her a millionaire husband, who would of course solve all their problems. She doesn’t mind, really, because she’s determined that at any cost she won’t love her husband. She doesn’t believe in love, certainly not as a foundation of marriage. If you don’t care so much, you won’t be so disappointed. And besides, she likes jewels. And silk. And fur. And feathers. So she dutifully goes hubby-hunting according to the wishes of her destitute mother and her rather intimidating godmother, and she finds the perfect fellow for the job.

But Chloe meets a man who tells her that women have no right to live on a husband’s money unless they’re contributing something useful to the world. Good looks count for nothing. She’s “pretty but useless.” Decorative, ornamental. What’s more, he likes to work. He challenges everything, every single ideal, that Chloe was raised on. Chloe starts to think, to read, to question. Her maternal figures express a desire to get her “safely married” before she starts thinking too much, but she continues to study entomology out of library books. Her fiance “laughs indulgently” at her when she’s “being cute” by trying to initiate intelligent conversation, but she holds herself apart and continues to seek knowledge.

Both the feminist movement (“What is the feminist movement?” inquired Mrs. Malone, after a polite semblance of mirth. Chloe blew her mother a kiss. “I may be in it, someday, darlingest. Ask me, then.”) and socialism (“What is this,” he inquired lightly, “a socialist meeting?”) are mentioned by name, and both concepts are threaded throughout the story even when left unnamed. Chloe eventually makes her decision, rejecting the “nets,” the “chains” thrown around her by society and the people who love her: the trap of luxury, the exchange of herself for a comfortable life, the ridiculous gender roles too often reinforced even today. The futility and depression that inevitably accompanies a relationship based on hierarchy. The love of money. (That was the core of living. Not money, not position, not ease, not love-in-idleness, but the man and the woman working together, the utter, unspoken comradeship of the fight, fought shoulder to shoulder…) Basically, I’m just very, very excited to own this little gem. It’s like a subversive piece of important information, disguised as a romance novel for girls, whispering to them that they have choices in life and they shouldn’t let others decide their lives for them. I love to imagine girls reading this, and novels like this, under the nose of their unsuspecting fathers, preparing themselves for their own big jump. It was published in 1916, right in the middle of the suffrage movement. A not-so-subtle story of a woman’s empowerment by way of education and independence. Subversive, subversive! I love subverting culture. :) Look at that deceptively innocent cover! And what’s more, the way it looks inside the cover is this: Fannie Heaslip Lea was actually Fannie Heaslip Agee. The book is dedicated to James J. Lea, presumably her husband, but it’s copyrighted under her own name, Agee. Sounds to me like the publishing company felt they needed to change her name on the cover to her husband’s name so it would sell. Rather like the whole “Hey, you wrote this book but I’m a man and you’re a woman so let’s put my name on the cover in front of yours and say we cowrote it, otherwise it will never sell” concept, rather like the culture of women writers (George Eliot, anyone?) forced to work under cover as a man in order to be published, or even to remain completely anonymous. So the cover says Lea. But she was actually Agee. Hmmm, sounds like a Lucy Stoner to me! :)

Anyway, you can read the whole thing here, if you like!

EDIT: Merci, Michael, for the info. :) I’ve been meaning to look her up, haven’t gotten around to it yet. Haha, I like it even better this way, with her own personal name stamped right on the cover..

chloe malone

We just got our Monday paper today, so this is slightly late:

“What’s So Bad About Empathy?” by Ellen Goodman, May 22, 2009. 

I’ve never been sure why Lady Justice wore a blindfold as part of her permanent wardrobe. Yes, it’s supposed to be a symbol of impartiality. But it does limit her vision a little.

So it is that I am watching the run-up to the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice with eyes wide open. We’ve already had preemptive strikes against three women on the media short list. Elena Kagan, Diane Wood, and Sonia Sotomayor are getting the scary radical treatment without even getting picked.

Most bizarrely, we have a full-throated campaign targeted against any candidate who might have a deep, dark secret buried in her resume. She may have, gasp, empathy.

The president has long talked about “that quality of empathy…as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.” In describing the qualifications for his first pick, he said, “I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory….It is also about how our laws affect the daily reality of people’s lives.”

Who knew that he was waving a red flag before the red-staters? Now, a phalanx of horrified conservatives has trotted out, insisting that empathy is just a code word for the sentimental liberal bias in favor of underdogs over the Constitution.

The ever-combative Karl Rove dismissed empathy as the secret handshake connoting liberal activism. John Yoo, the man who justified torture for the Bush administration, sneered at the idea of a “Great Empathizer.” Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network insisted that “Mr. Obama’s gold standard is the very opposite of impartiality.” It would usher in justices who decided the law by their mere “feelings.”

You might say that they had an overly emotional response about emotion. Indeed, you might describe the passionate assault as an advance strike on any expected female nominee. Lady Justice notwithstanding, tradition sees the law as hard, rational, and male, while empathy is soft, emotional, female, and generally weepy.

But let us remember that empathy is not sympathy. It doesn’t require that we take sides. Nor is it an emotional shortcut that upends all legal reasoning to declare a winner.

Empathy is rather the ability to imaginatively enter into the experience of others. As Harvard law professor Carol Steiker says, “We think of this as central to moral reasoning of any kind.” How else to understand such moral basics as the Golden Rule?

The capacity to recognize another person’s reality is not just liberal. The conservative jurist Richard Posner has described empathy as an important instrument in a judge’s tool kit. It doesn’t trump reason, it informs reason.

It may be easier to have empathy for someone like you, whether CEO or schoolgirl. After the recent and unsympathetic hearing of a case revolving around a girl who was strip-searched in pursuit of ibuprofen, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remarked that she was the only one on the bench who knew what it was like to be a 13-year-old girl. But biography is no guarantee of empathy. Or its absence.

The irony in the attack on empathy is that the most dramatic flameout of a nominee was Robert Bork. The public as well as the Senate turned against Bork precisely because he seemed to regard the Supreme Court as nothing more than an intellectual chess game played with pawns, not people. Since then, conservatives have gone out of their way to describe their picks as people who understand the little guy as well as the Constitution.

Much was made of John Roberts’s summer stint in a steel mill as if that gave him solidarity with workers. Samuel Alito was described as the son of working-class immigrants. And Clarence Thomas’s boosters assured us that his experience with racial discrimination meant that he would understand others in the same boat. Circle false on your answer sheet.

The truth is that we want judges who “get it.” The myth of justice as a matter of pure objective reasoning that could be meted out by a computer is just that, a myth. Check all those 5-4 decisions. Part of “getting it,” says Susan Bandes, author of “Passions of the Law,” is “the capacity to know what’s at stake for all the litigants.” In short, empathy.

Finally, as this debate goes on, it’s worth asking what exactly would a judge without empathy look like? Bandes offers a name straight out of Star Trek: “Spock.”

Justice Spock? Science Fiction v. The Law? Remove your blindfolds.

[Oh, Ellen, dear, you've done it again. Bravo! You can email Ellen Goodman at ellengoodman@globe.com.]

Or, why I’m not a Southern Baptist.

“Palin a challege to Southern Baptist view of women“, Raleigh, N.C., AP

Within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, a woman may not lead a church or a home. But prominent Southern Baptists see nothing wrong with Sarah Palin serving as vice president–or perhaps even commander-in-chief someday.

In other words: A woman can run the White House, just not her own house.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s selection of the Alaska governor as his running mate–the first female on the party’s ticket in history–has thrilled conservative Christians. It also has led Southern Baptist congregations and seminary students to confront their beliefs about the role of women in leadership.

Interpreted from Scripture, the teachings on women are held close in thousands of Southern Baptist Convention churches where millions worship. Among them: “The office of pastor is limited to men,” and a wife should “submit herself graciously” to her husband. Earlier this month, more than 100 Lifeway Christian Bookstores – a retail chain affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention – pulled from the shelves a magazine featuring five female pastors on the cover.

Yet many in the denomination say the nation’s second-highest leadership post is an apple to the pulpit’s orange. Palin’s potential work in a McCain administration – or even as president in the event of McCain’s death – would be separate from her family life with her husband, Todd, and their children.

“There’s no disconnect or inconsistency whatsoever,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “We don’t go beyond where the New Testament goes. Public office is neither a church nor a marriage.”

It’s a question that’s more than theological. The Southern Baptist Convention, with 42,000 churches and 16 million members, is reliably Republican. President Bush has addressed the denomination’s annual meeting several times. And during the 2004 race, the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign hosted a reception for Southern Baptist pastors at a hotel across the street from the assembly.

The denomination is guided by The Baptist Faith and Message, a set of beliefs that includes restrictions on the roles of women. No Baptist is required to follow the statement, but it is a central theological document for Southern Baptists, their seminaries and clergy.

A prohibition on pastoral leadership by women, affirmed within the last several years, is based on the Bible verse 1 Timothy 2:12 in which the Apostle Paul says, “I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man.” Regarding family life, Southern Baptists cite Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.”

Land said the Southern Baptists’ position allows for a wife to work outside the home, so long as her husband agrees – and Todd Palin has long backed his wife’s career in public service.

Yet, Land’s view is far from universal in the denomination. Many Southern Baptists believe women and mothers should stay home.

A year ago, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, which has its main campus in Fort Worth, Texas, introduced an academic program in homemaking, where women – and only women – are taught how to cook and sew. In a 2004 sermon, the Rev. Daniel L. Akin, president of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Wake Forest, N.C., cited the biblical book of Titus to argue that one of God’s assignments to young women is to “be a homemaker.”

“She is not lazy or a busybody, nor is she distracted by outside pursuits and responsibilities that eat up her precious time and attention,” he said. “This woman is not seduced by the sirens of modernity who tell her she is wasting her time and talent as a homemaker, and that it is the career woman who has purpose and is truly satisfied.”

Yet, in a recent interview, Akin said he supports Palin’s candidacy, arguing that while the Bible speaks about the role of women in church and the home, it speaks nothing about women in government. Still, he said he would sound warnings to a wife and mother of five children who wanted to take on such a difficult job.

“Would that then disqualify her? No,” Akin said. “Do I think it’s a big challenge for her husband and for she and their family? Absolutely.”

Bill Leonard, a Baptist historian and dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity, called the acceptance by Southern Baptist leaders of a woman in high-level government leadership “something of a retraction of their old view.” That opens the doors for rank-and-file members of the convention to vote for a GOP ticket that includes a woman, according to Leonard.

“The SBC is so rooted now in the Republican Party that their theological judgment on this becomes an issue,” said Leonard, a critic of the Southern Baptists’ conservative leadership.

Palin’s personal roots are in Pentecostal churches, which strictly interpret the Bible, but also teach that the Holy Spirit can work equally through men and women, so women can preach and take leadership roles.

Jim Sansom, 87, who worships at Temple Baptist Church in Raleigh, said he doesn’t think fellow members of his Southern Baptist congregation would accept a woman pastor, and he would prefer to see a male serving in the role. But he still questioned limits on women in the church and wonders why it remains such an issue.

“That’s not the first priority,” Sansom said. “The first priority is a relationship with the Lord.”

But in the Southern Baptist Convention, hundreds of congregations have distanced themselves from the denomination in recent years, partly over its views on women. Several departed as they adopted female pastors.

The Rev. Carolyn Hale Cubbedge at First Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga., said the Southern Baptist Convention fails to consider the New Testament’s entire story, including the social context of the patriarchal society when it was written.

“I shed a lot of tears over this,” said Cubbedge, whose church is now part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group of Southern Baptists who have separated or distanced themselves from the denomination. “I felt like this convention that had nurtured me had really abandoned me. That was painful.”

[UGHHHH. I get, I get, I get that the church on the whole seems to be behind Palin about 300%. To each her own. I am not okay with the fact that the church on the whole holds to "traditional" gender roles. Just because something's been passed down through the ages doesn't make it right. A major reason indeed for my post-denominationalism.]

GRRR. Hall of Shame x 1 mil.

Khaleej Times, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on gender bias study:

“Men who love the fact that they wear the pants are probably going to love this: a new American study, to be published in the September issues of the Journal of Applied Psychology, debunks the ‘ideal world’ notion of gender equality at the workplace.

“The bottom line of the study is that ‘Men with traditional attitudes about gender roles earned $11,930 more a year than men with egalitarian views.’ Which means men who endorse ‘distinct roles in society for men and women’ are likely to have more successful careers than those who advocate ‘equal roles for men and women at home and in the workplace.’

“The empirical evidence in the study showed a connection between people’s attitudes about gender roles and their salaries, reported the Washington Post. This is quite a bizarre twist to the wage disparities debate doing the rounds all over the world, not just in the United States and it is bound to open up the ‘Should women just stay back at home and let the men be the breadwinners?’ stream of consciousness.

“Not a nice thought as more and more women get out of the house and get to work.

“The most worrying aspect about the study is it tends to brand egalitarian men almost as wimps.

“There are already fears that families may start inculcating ‘traditional gender views’ in their sons so that they can watch the boys go up the corporate ladder faster.

“That is a rather distressing thought.

“But what really bothers us is the fact that it pays you $1,000 more per month if you possess a mindset that reinforces the man-woman stereotypes.”

*throws large, heavy objects*

This is your pilot speaking. How ’bout we just dock these pants-wearing traditional men’s pay to, say, WHAT THEIR FEMALE COUNTERPARTS EARN. That oughta clear things up really quick. Some people make me want to vomit.

Sarah, Sarah, storms are brewing in your eyes.

My mama went to the McCain rally the day he revealed his veep pick to the world. [I was invited but for reasons of my own I declined.] She came home spilling over with love. Love for Sarah Palin. Her official opinion is that Palin is “hot”. Yes.

Me? I think it’s about darn time we had a woman on a major ticket. On either side. However.

I want to know where the Religious Right gets off selling Hillary nutcrackers one day and the next holding Palin up like a trophy? You can see the thoughts spinning in their heads. It’s pretty transparent, and this is how it goes: “See, we’re not sexist! We’re the only platform with a woman on the ticket! You’re a woman, she’s a woman, so you identify with her!” And if anyone dares to look cross-eyed at Palin, they’re all up in arms. Because, as everyone knows, if you don’t support Palin or if you think maybe she wasn’t the best choice or if you just plain old don’t like her or whatever else is wrong with you, it means you’re sexist, plain and simple. And as everyone knows, if for whatever reason you don’t like Hillary Rodham Clinton, congratulations, your brain is functioning properly today.

Of course there’s sexism aimed at Palin. It’s coming from the media, it’s coming from people who don’t support her and even some who do. Because yes, it’s sexist to pick her for the sake of appeasing angry women voters. It’s ignorant and offensive and it writes us off. It’s demeaning to Palin’s own career, since she’ll never be a “real” politician–she’s a woman politician. It’s demeaning to all women, Hillary supporters or not, to expect them to rally around Palin because of her gender. We have brains, we have opinions, and we prefer to vote for what we believe in and what we hope to accomplish rather than voting with a woman because, hello, we’re women.

And “women’s issues”, anyone? When American politics are debated and discussed, are there ever any topics labeled “men’s issues”? No. But women voters, oh gosh, all they care about is Women’s Issues, capitalized. Yes. Women’s issues exist and are important to us. In no way does that limit our opinions/interest in the rest of the political sphere. Because the issues not prefixed with a gender are human issues. Not male or female issues. Human issues, and just in case you’ve forgotten, that includes women just as much as men.

And while we’re on the topic of “women’s issues”, how ’bout that daughter’s teen pregnancy? So the kid got pregnant, and she’s courageous enough to carry the baby. Good for her. It takes guts to make a decision like that, particularly when you’re on the “wrong” side of the political dial and you’re in the public eye whether you like it or not. And Republicans champion her decision as a win for the pro-life “side”. But. Imagine this drama playing out on the left. Had Palin been a Democrat, I’m pretty sure the Rs wouldn’t have been nearly so kind to Bristol and her family. Her mother’s parenting abilities would have been questioned, criticized, sneered at. If she had chosen not to carry the baby, she would have been criticized. If she had chosen to carry the baby, she would have been criticized.

And the Sarah vs. Michelle news coverage. I’m sick of the media outlets who openly present one or other of these women–smart, confident, opinionated women–as smart, confident, and opinionated, and the other one as sadly misguided, blinded, inadequate. And I’m sick of the people who take offense at the partiality–unless their favorite’s the one coming out on top, in which case said partiality seems to be a-okay with them.

It makes me angry, I’m not gonna lie. I’m sick of people who think they’re always right, especially of the ones who won’t even admit it.

And since I’m also sick of thinking about all this garbage, I shall leave you with some valuable words from Jim Wallis, from his response to Chuck Colson’s on-air criticism:

“I believe deeply that Christians must seriously be concerned about everything that threatens the lives of people created in the image of God. Abortion is important; war and economic justice are also important. You…ask your listeners, ‘Why help the poor if we don’t believe all lives are equal in God’s sight? If you support ending the life of a child because it will be born into poverty, how can you logically call yourself an advocate for the poor?’ The reverse is also true. If you support protecting an unborn life but don’t provide the necessary support to the mother and child in poverty after birth, how can you logically call yourself pro-life? As I told Christianity Today: ‘Christians can’t say, “All we care about is someone’s stance on abortion. I don’t care what they do to the economy, to the poor, I don’t care what wars they fight, I don’t care what they do on human rights.” It’s almost like we care about children until they’re born and then after that, they’re on their own. We’re cutting child health care, cutting child care for moms moving out of welfare. No, you can’t just care about a child until they’re born.”‘

Stay tuned for more gems from Jim Wallis. Because I like him.

Father, mother, sister, brother.

I just ran across an interview of the feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson in US Catholic magazine about the use of gender-specific words ["Father", "King", "Lord"..] referring to God. Again, I’m not Catholic, but most of this article applies to other kinds of Christ-followers as well. She explains to the editors why she believes viewing God as a male personality is damaging, among other things:

Honor Your Father and Mother: Stale images of God aren’t working for today’s seekers, says feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J. New ones are emerging from the experiences of all God’s people–male and female.

When you whispered a prayer this morning while sipping your coffee and eating your toast, to whom exactly did you pray? An old man with a beard somewhere beyond the clouds? Sophia, otherwise known as Holy Wisdom? The Holy Spirit? Jesus?

Elizabeth Johnson wants to know. In her new book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God (Continuum, 2007), she examines how Christians the world over have experienced the presence of God in new ways since the last half of the 20th century. Theologians agree, she says, that we’re in a “golden age of discovery.”

Even before her groundbreaking 1992 book, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (Crossroad), Johnson has been fascinated by how believers view God. “This might sound a little archaic,” she told Fordham Online, “but I take my cue from Thomas Acquinas–the study of God and all things in the light of God. That articulates for me what theology is about.”

A sister in the Congregation of St. Joseph who hails from Brooklyn, Johnson has been president of both the Catholic Theological Society of America and the American Theological Society. Winner of the U.S. Catholic Award in 1994, she served as a member of the national Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue, a consultant to the Catholic biships’ Committee on Women in Church and Society, a theologian on the Vatican-sponsored dialogue between science and religion, and on the Vatican-sponsored study of Christ and the world religions.

Q. We’re hearing a lot from atheists today who want to persuade us that God doesn’t exist. What do you as a theologian think about that?
A. Atheists are rejecting the old images of God that don’t really work that well even for Christians anymore. Just who is the God in whom Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin), doesn’t believe? I found a great quote from a review of his book, in which the reviewer said that Dawkins envisions God “if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized.” This is not the Christian God.

Also a lot of the atheists writing today are scientists who just want to clear the deck of God so they can do their science. They’re primarily opposed to the fundamentalist approach.

Q. You’ve said that Christians today have many “stale, worn-out images of God that no longer satisfy.” What are they?
A. We might be a bit beyond Michelangelo’s image from the Sistine Chapel of the old man with the beard, but nonetheless, God is too often still a “chap.” It’s just assumed that God is this single individual with more power than anyone else, who intervenes now and then to get certain things done, and whom you need to satisfy on a number of levels. Again, this isn’t the God of Christian revelation. When you hear talk radio or people in the press, this is the God they’re talking about. This image is so unworthy of us.

My daily bread is teaching college students and graduate students, and I find among them that this image just doesn’t work. Especially as they rebel against their parents, which one tends to do at that stage, it’s even less attractive to have the super-parent idea of God. Both in this and other countries, I see a terrific hunger for a mature faith, but that’s not being fed by much of the preaching that people hear, most of which also uses this stale idea of God.

Q. Where did this image come from?
A. In the Middle Ages, or even at the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, ideas about God were drawn mainly from scripture and sacramental practice and from people’s spirituality. Once the Enlightenment started in the 17th century, as Western philosophers began to throw off authority and to sort out ideas on their own, theologians adapted that method as well. They began to reason toward the fact of God’s existence on the basis of natural phenomena, and they came up with the idea of a superior being at the apex of the pyramid of being. We call it the God of theism.

What is forgotten in this image is that this God became incarnate, that God is everywhere present in the Spirit, that God is filled with compassion. It became a much more distant God, while at the same time ironically not distant enough because God became just a more powerful player than we are.

This theistic God is also in competition with the world. It’s a zero-sum game: more of God, less of me; more of God, less of the natural world; more of God, less of my own freedom. That is an aberration from the Christian understanding of God, which is that God set the world up in its own integrity and gives us our own freedom. The more we have of God, the freer we are. All of this got lost after the Enlightenment.

Q. Before the Enlightenment, were biblical images more alive in the church?
A. I don’t want to paint any age as the golden era, including our own, although I think we’re in a renaissance right now. If you look at the Middle Ages, You see God spoken of as “The fountain fullness overflowing.” Richard of St. Victor speaks of the deep relationality that is at the heart of God.

Theologians in the Middle Ages wrote tomes on these ideas. We didn’t have anyone doing that during the Enlightenment, with the exception of Cardinal John Henry Newman in England, but he went back and read the Fathers of the church, which caused the whole God question to open up for him again.

The Enlightenment didn’t touch the East in the same way. Even today if you read Christian Orthodox theologians, you get a much different sense of the fullness of God’s trinitarian life, inviting the world into communion. It’s so different from this monarchical, solitary ruler God that we have, the God about who we ask questions like, “Why is God letting this illness happen to me? What did I do that’s wrong?”

Q. What is attractive about this idea of God?
A. This all-powerful God can bless you or curse you; therefore you better please him to get the blessing and not the curse. That’s a pattern of relationship that people have with their parents. It’s familiar. It brings a certain measure of familiarity. Also many people don’t know any other God. They haven’t been exposed to any other understandings.

There are some exceptions: You see some wonderful renewed parishes, for example, where people are living a more biblical approach to God. And this image of God is not widespread in the Hispanic community, where people have the sense of God walking with them. Their home altars and other expressions of their popular religion all indicate the closeness of God, a whole different sort of relationship.

Hispanic theologians today say that their community did not go through the Enlightenment. Conquistadors brought with them to the Americas late midieval Catholicism, which blended with indigenous religion. While Europe went through the Enlightenment, the believers in the Americas did not.

But in general I think the image of the theistic God is very widespread in our country. You hear it in sermonds. And it’s not just me saying this: The U.S. bishops have said that preaching in our country is in a very bad way in terms of the Catholic tradition. The late German theologian Karl Rahner, S.J. was saying the same thing back in the 1950s and ’60s. He said that the words of the preacher fall powerlessly from the pulpit “like birds frozen to death and falling from a winter sky.” I sit and listen to some sermons and I think, “Come on, think of all the wonderful things you could say with this text.”

Q. What does God look like in the U.S. Hispanic community? Is it different from God as envisioned by the people of Latin America?
A. The difference is in the local setting. In this country we don’t have civil wars, we don’t have the extreme difference between the wealthy and the poor that gave rise to liberation theology (although we’re getting there). We also have democratic processes, and Hispanic people have made it into the upper echelons of government.

The history of the Hispanic people in the U.S. is that they encountered and then became swallowed up in a Protestant, European culture, where even their language was under pressure.

Hispanic theologians in this country will say: “We’re not doing liberation theology.” They think liberation theology did not give enough credence to popular religion, that it neglected daily life in the family that shows itself in fiesta, and in what Hispanics call flor y canto, flower and song, a metaphor for beauty.

At a fiesta, the clergy and nuns are welcome, but they are not necessary. The people will have the fiesta anyway, which has a deep religious component. God accompanies the people, sustaining and strengthening them. Their love for Our Lady of Guadalupe, Good Friday processions, Posadas before Christmas, all speak of a God who understands the struggles and joys of human existance.

The sense of God’s closeness can be such a benefit to non-Hispanics like myself who don’t have that religious ambiance around us in our daily lives. All these new theologies can teach us something, especially this one.

Q. How does one’s theology of God affect one’s everyday life and faith?
A. If you’re a believing person, you draw your deepest values from that. How you make moral decisions and vocational decisions, how you treat other people–it all flows from how you see God working.

None of the newer theologies of God are innocent in terms of politics. Every one of the ideas I explore in my book has political implications. They are concerned with power and who uses it and the powerless and how they are affected. So if you let any one of those theologies get into your understanding, you’re going to vote differently, you’re going to volunteer differently, you’re going to use your money differently. Theology, I think, can be very powerful as a tool. It’s my conviction that we all have a theology, so how it shapes your life depends on what it is.

Q. What are some of the theologies of God that you’ve been investigating?
A. They include images from feminist theology, from Latin America and from Latinos in the United States, as well as the God who emerges from encounters with religious pluralism. Also God as envisioned in Europe after the Holocaust, God as seen through the African American experience, and several others.

Each of the new images of God I studied has biblical grounding, each refers in some way to the Trinity, each of them is oriented in some way to religious practice. All of them support the idea that God is deeply involved, deeply concerned with what happens in the world. If you love God, then your heart needs to be conformed and configured to God’s heart. You have to feel that way toward the world. There will certainly be differences of opinion about how to do that.

Q. You mentioned the Trinity. This solo God of the Enlightenment doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Trinity.
A. The Trinity has been just about lost forever in the West. Cardinal Walter Kasper, who heads the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in the Vatican, says the Holy Spirit is the Cinderella of theology in the West, in the kitchen doing all the work while the other two get to go to the ball.

The view of God in classical theism also does not see God through the lens of Jesus Christ, which is basic to the Christian understanding of God. Therefore it leaves out everything that is beautiful and attractive and that makes people want to be Christian. Jesus and his life, death, and Resurrection just don’t factor in.

The new theologies from Africa and Latin America, on the other hand, are examples of a new kind of trinitarian theology. They don’t let Christ and the Spirit drop away. They’re rooted in an understanding of God related to the world. These understandings are so basic to Christian faith and tradition, I call them a gift to all the rest of us.

Q. You frequently use the term “the living God.” What does that mean?
A. It’s a term found all through the Bible. I love it. The living God is always ahead of us, always surprising, always calling us to come ahead. Wherever “the living God” is used, it indicates a life of fullness, of flowing water, new reality, new justice, new peace. The different theologies I studied use different words for it: getting back to the God of the Bible, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of life.

Q. These new theologies of God start with human experience. What’s the significance of that?
A. When I was writing She Who Is, it dawned on me that our original approach to God, where God first reaches us, is through our experience–and that’s the Spirit. The Spirit is present in nature, in our human interactions, in the depths of our own soul, at the end of our reaching out in love.

Take the Catholics of Latin America. Where did they get the idea of God as liberator? They didn’t just say one day, “Let’s have a new idea of God.” It started in the struggle for justice, for a well that had clean water so babies wouldn’t die before their first birthday. In that work, and in their prayer and reflection over that work, people said, “This is what God wants us to do.” Then when they read the Book of Exodus, they read it with new eyes because of their new experience.

In every single one of these theologies, it is experience that opens the door, that leads the way in. Then theologians come along and think about it, but they couldn’t do that without the experience of the Christian people first. We believe, as St. Anselm said a thousand years ago, that theology is faith seeking understanding. You have the church–the community–and theologians reflect on what the community’s faith means. The experience is there as a primary source.

Q. What is revelation then?
A. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, revelation became highly intellectualized. It came down to doctrine: We knew certain truths, certain beliefs. You’re a Christian if you believe this. I would say Vatican II’s Dei Verbu, the Constitution on Divine Revelation, changed all that. Its opening sentence says, “In his goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of his will.” In the gift of God’s own self comes understanding something of who God is, so revelation becomes much more experiential right from the start. That experience is then articulated in words and finally it is written down. We call it revelation.

I always regret that word, revelation. It sounds like an object, but it’s a relational dynamic that has brought to birth wisdom in the Christian community about God and fidelity in the way people live.

What we are called to believe is actually a mystery, God’s own giving self. Rahner uses the image of the horizon: You see it, but you never get there. You can’t control it or comprehend it, because then it wouldn’t be God.

Q. How can different images of God all work together and still be Catholic?
A. There can be many theologies among people who still believe in one Creed.

Theology is simply an articulation of what faith means in this time and place for this people, so that will change over time. The Creed is a point of unity. We come together over the heart of the confession of faith and the reception of the Eucharist that unites the community.

Q. Isn’t there the potential for so many different theologies to get out of control?
A. Yes, but whose control, exactly? Certain theologians who wrote in every one of these theologies have been criticized by Rome. This approach can be threatening to a hierarchical power structure, because it says that truth also resides among the baptized, that those who are filled with the Spirit have a wisdom.

I don’t mean to knock the institutional church. Rahner wrote that the church has its charisms and its offices, and that often there’s tension between the two. Theology is a charism, and the office is often in tension with that. The good function of the church office is unity; it keeps everybody from losing the heart and soul of what we believe, from falling into fads and trends and that sort of thing. I would never not want to have a central authority that functions as a uniting factor.

Q. Let’s talk about “God acting womanish,” as you call it. Where does this theology stand today?
A. There are many major images of God in a female form in scripture and in our mystical tradition especially. Maternity is the main one, but the wisdom texts about Sophia are another. Some theologians make the case, too, that the Spirit has a female name in Hebrew and acts in feminine ways.

Then come the questions of why aren’t we using those images of God in our liturgies, why aren’t we teaching young people that this is an approach to God that can be used as well? The three major words for God are still Father, King, and Lord in Christian hymns, prayer, and liturgy. What that sets up unconsciously, whether you want it to or not, is the assumption that men have more in common with divinity than women do. Those three particular images also are very patriarchal because they refer not just to a male but to a ruling male, somebody who is dominating or being father in a patriarchal sense. Now that isn’t of course, what scripture means or what Jesus meant when he called God Abba.

If you combine Father, Lord, and King with the God of theism, then you’ve got a problem. That’s one of those static ideas that does not feed the souls of a lot of people, men as well as women.

Q. Why?
A. It’s very simple. Women are no longer relating to men in their lives as lord and king, and father no longer has that sense of control and domination that it had in a previous era. Women are no longer relating to their own fathers that way, let alone marrying men who act as fathers that way. Look at the partnership concept in marriage. Fathering is much more nurturing than it used to be.

There’s little that women then can bring into a relationship with God who is going to be their lord and king or their father. It goes blank, and not only that, but women are very uncomfortable with it. It’s not just neutral, it’s negative. Women think, “I don’t want a dominating man: Go away until you grow up and learn how to treat me like a human being.” When that comes into the religious life of women, it becomes the heart of this crisis. You can have all the dictums in the world, but the old images just don’t work anymore.

Q. What does it mean that we call God by male terms?
A. I have this sentence that I quote over and over again: The symbol of God functions. The male symbol of God functions to privilege a certain way of male rule in the world and to undercut women’s spiritual power, women’s own sense of themselves as made in the image of God.

We women have to abstract ourselves from our bodies to see ourselves in the image of God if God is always depicted as male. It has serious ramifications for spirituality and for the identity of believers and for the community.

Q. Why is there so much resistance to using feminine images of God?
A. I think the rejection of the inclusive language lectionary, which the U.S. bishops applied for in 1992 and which was rejected by the Vatican, was a clear recognition that once you start making room for even nonsexist language about humanity, let alone feminine images of God, there’s a fear that women will want to move in socially and politically, and then you’ve got a challenge to church structure as we know it. I think there’s a great deal of fear of women’s power.

Q. Can you imagine a church that took female images of God to heart?
A. Let me say, I think women and men are equal in sin and grace. I don’t think women are going to be the salvation of the church or of this country. I think we can all get on power trips. I’m convinced of it, maybe because I’ve been in a women’s religious community, and I have six sisters. I am disabused of this romantic notion of women’s greatness as compared to men.

At this moment in history, women have figured out what’s wrong with the current pattern and how their experiences have led to different ways of relating, organizing, and running things. Given the chance, they would bring that pattern into the church and let it play off and see what develops.

Q. How do you imagine God when you pray?
A. Writing She Who Is was a deeply spiritual experience for me. By the time I had finished, I had migrated out of the patriarchal church and the patriarchal notion of God. I have never been able to pray that way again. The notion of God as the one who embraces us, in whom we live and move and have our being, is so much more my sense of God than the grand old man in the sky. Even when I’m at liturgy and I hear male language in prayers, I experience it differently.

Q. You don’t revert back?
A. I had a very good friend who died five years ago of a brain hemorrhage, and I was the health care proxy for him. During the days in the hospital when he was unconscious and we faced a decision about removing the breathing tube, I was absolutely conscious of Sophia embracing him and me in this crisis. He was moving toward death, and I was guarding his death like a lion against the doctors who wanted to do a million procedures.

That to me was the moment I realized I could never go back. In a moment of crisis, you often revert to your childhood image of God. What I reverted to was this cosmic sense of the Spirit of God in even our dying, summoning us, walking with us.