Crossing the T
Life at the intersection of Church and Trans with Rev. Allyson RobinsonArchive for Ethics
Can I Quote You? Rumi on transcending right and wrong
Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
13th century Persian poet and Islamic mystical theologian Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi-Rumi (thanks to Krista Tippett’s December “Speaking of Faith” interview with Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz)
Recent and Readworthy – Deafening Silence edition
In response to the recent spate of hate motivated killings of gender non-conforming youth, Michael Adee of More Light Presbyterians asks, “Where is the Church?” Where indeed. Preaching against LGBT “lifestyles” plus silence on hate crimes against LGBT people equals implicit permission to kill them. And, dare I say, complicity in their deaths. I hear echoes from Genesis: “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground…”
Where is the church? Oh, wait, there they are! They’re holding “prayer sieges” along Interstate 35! But Rabbi Rami Shapiro, writing at Ethics Daily, has some hard questions for this movement and the philosophy that undergirds it. (Rabbi Shapiro’s essay is a Crossing the T “must-read.” Really. Go read it right now.)
Wait. What’s that I hear? Could it be? Yes! There is the voice of the church! Tutu calls on Ugandans to protect LGBT community. Quote of note: “No one should have to live in fear simply because of who they are.” Amen.
Who would Jesus marginalize?
Who would Jesus marginalize? No one, of course.
But do we really believe that? More importantly, do we really practice it?
The most effective means of marginalization is genocide, death being the ultimate form of powerlessness. In societies where mass murder is prohibited or prohibitively costly, however, the powerful must resort to other methods to protect their power. History shows that the means to be limited only by human ingenuity. Justifications for marginalization, on the other hand, and particularly those that stand the test of time, are not so easy to come by.
To survey the means and methods by which human beings marginalize one another one doesn’t need to travel to Darfur or North Korea or Saudi Arabia, though. In fact, one needs travel no further than the local middle school. Middle schools may not be where we learn the art of oppression, but they are the place where we begin to practice it with the intelligence and organization of adults. Ask any middle schooler, and they’ll tell you who has the power in their world, who doesn’t, and what the powerful do to keep it that way.
One of the most powerful methods of marginalization in this or any context is silencing. The concept is simple. Those in power simply ignore those they want to marginalize. The “in crowd” refuses to relate in any way to the “outsiders,” as if they simply do not exist. The result, in essence, is a kind of “genocide of the imagination,” and the psychological effects on those who are silenced can be devistating.
What would Jesus legislate?
Writing this morning at Ethics Daily, Drew Smith reminds us that the political message of Jesus has more in common with that of the Hebrew prophets than with many American Christians today. He argues the prophetic political mandate was to “confront the leaders of Israel with their injustices.”
These leaders, who were to be the shepherds and caretakers of God’s people, were charged by God to govern people with justice, to strengthen the weak, to feed the hungry, and to shelter the displaced and homeless. These leaders were charged by God to be generous in their leadership, and they were judged by God when they kept their positions through political compromises with the rich and powerful.
For Smith, this mandate translates into the contemporary situation like this:
We have the power to change things, if we only will. Like Jesus, we need to have a sincere consciousness about the plight of people in our country, especially the poor. In developing such a consciousness, we must hold our leaders accountable until they make real progress in solving the poverty of this nation, and indeed, our world.
So in response to the WWJD? question, Smith says, “Elect leaders who will priortize the problem of poverty.”
This is a good word and a needful one. I wonder, though, if it misses the forest for a single tree. As I read the prophets and Jesus, I see them treating poverty as an important problem, but not the most important problem. Poverty is just one of many results of oppression, the abuse of power to deny some their basic human rights. Oppression in American society is so systemic and so protracted that the poverty it produces has proven all but intractible–a condition I suspect Jesus observed and lamented in his own society, noting, “The poor you will always have with you.”
Oppressive acts by the powerful against the weak take many forms, but can be understood collectively as marginalization, the relegation or confinement of a group to a social position of powerlessness. By marginalizing the poor, the wealthy keep their disproportionate influence–they keep themselves in power. (As evidence, note that the four remaining Presidential candidates spent a combined total of over $198 million on their campains in 2007, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. Our system of choosing a Chief Executive favors the rich and marginalizes the poor.) But the poor are not the only victims of marginalization. As commentator “PW” noted in response to Christianity Today’s recent article on transgender people,
When conservative Christians, particularly Evangelicals appeal to “moral authority” and “the Christian sexual ethic,” it is important to understand that they are actually appealing to the patriarchical heterosexism that they think God has given his divine seal of approval. The focus and teaching of many Evangelical churches (with which I am very familiar) is completely slanted in favor of straight married people, particularly those with children. People who don’t fit into this box might as well be invisible as their experiences are not acknowledged as part of reality as Evangelicals understand it. So it’s not surprising that many of them ignore the obvious [gender] variations in the Bible, nor is it surprising that gays, lesbians and the transgendered (and others for that matter) find themselves being discriminated against by people of Evangelical belief. Their devotion to patriarchal heterosexism is very strong; so strong that I suspect that the response the article mentions, the appeal to ‘biblical compassion’ is really about making sure that Evangelicals are armed with the “right” rhetoric, the “appropriate” support groups and the “biblically correct” agendas to make sure that the rest of us conform to their view of reality.
Those who would seek to practice politics in a way that is faithful to the political ethic of Jesus and the prophets should address the problem of poverty, to be sure. But the only effective way to do that is by dismantling oppressive systems and institutions and enacting legislation that protects the basic human rights of all people. To do anything less is to treat a symptom rather than the syndrome.
The feminine mistake?
My good friend Joyce, who is navigating a gender transition, writes about her annoyance at having the word “effeminate” applied to her by those who do not yet know she is transgendered:
I guess I had thought of myself as feminine (or at least androgynous) because of my obvious shift in sex and gender, and for some reason the word effeminate grated on me. Although it shouldn’t bother me, it did, and I’m wondering why. Maybe it was my old self sitting up, taking notice, and arguing with whatever macho pride he could muster. That’s plausible and is almost certainly a component of my annoyance, but I think there’s something else going on, if you’ll permit me to explain.
What follows is a wonderful double deconstruction of our culture’s gender norms and Joyce’s own emotional response to them. To make her point, she asks us to consider the significance of two statements:
While Joyce plays on the dichotomy between what is “natural” and “unnatural” inherent in these observations, a different distinction came to my mind. The first statement is value-neutral. In and of itself it does not assign any moral value, positive or negative, to being or becoming feminine. The second, however, clearly assigns a negative moral value to femininity. It implies that taking on feminine traits is ethically questionable, culturally undesirable, or personally unsuitable.
The first statement affirms the value of femininity and of women. The second is patently misogynistic.
I’m with Joyce–when I was still presenting myself to the world as a man, I would have been mortified to be thought of as effeminate. I think, though, that the offense in that kind of statement is not really against the person to whom it is directed. It is against women and womanhood.
Recent and readworthy, “Rhetoric Matters” edition
Mark Casey guest-blogs at Bilerico on why “one man, one woman” political rhetoric makes no sense in a world where one in 4,000 people is born intersex.
Christopher at Betwixt and Between goes on a bit of a rant over the false dichotomy between academia and activism.
At EthicsDaily.com, author John Grisham offers Baptists three suggestions for restoring their good name–a Crossing the T “must-read!”
My Trans Soundtrack – All You Need Is Love
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It’s easy.
All you need is love.
In 1967, the BBC was preparing for a program called Our World, the first ever live global television link. They asked the Beatles to come up with a song that would serve as the U.K.’s contribution to the program, one that had a simple and straightforward message that could be grasped by the diverse global audience. John Lennon, with help from Paul McCartney, wrote this song. A few years later, when asked if his songs were “propaganda,” John pointed to “Love” specifically and said, “Sure…I’m a revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change.”
As a theologian and ethicist, I’m very sympathetic toward a Niebuhrian view of our situation. In a fallen world, love, that is, the true love we see exemplified in Christ, is a practical impossibility. There are too many variables and too much subjectivity to bring it about. The best we can do is justice, which approximates love and approaches it progressively but asymptotically. There is, in other words, always more to be done.
But it’s that example of real love that drives us, and I believe draws us toward itself. When we lose sight of love and merely seek justice for its own sake, we cross the line from Christian activism into plain old human egoism. And this is where I part company with Dr. Neibuhr. We must strive for love, for if love is our goal, justice will come about naturally, even as we fail to achieve our ultimate objective.
“All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles, on Magical Mystery Tour, 1967 (Lyrics)
Crossing the T 