#she was racist too; said the people of that region and different faith are raised in/with hatred

[nullians]

.

[awed-frog]

in which caesar doesn’t do anything much and all the women are named julia

[Hi, this is me stanning Adrian Goldsworthy’s biography of Caesar. I studied Classics, but not this period, so all I can contribute here are squeals of delight, a few mistakes and the occasional witty comment. If you’d like to know more, please buy the book - it’s really good and a fun read.]

PART 2

The thing is - there’s a lot of boring relevant political stuff going on in this chapter, but I’m mostly fascinated by the glimpses we get into the world of Roman women. 

As I said, this is not really my area, so I know random, unconnected facts about how life was like for them; also it doesn’t make much sense to talk about ‘Roman women’, because, as a reminder, ‘Rome’ stretches from the 14th century BC to the 14th century AD, came to include dozens of very different regions, and obviously was home to an incredibly diverse population. And if we’re talking about the late Republican / imperial aristocracy, there’s a sharp divide anyway: on the one hand, the ‘ideal woman’ is the same old model we’re all used to and heard about (silent, obedient, virtuous, chaste, a perfect mother and so on), but on the other, Roman noblewomen had a lot more freedom than, say, their Greek counterparts, so there was usually some political scheming going on - something that in Greece was reserved to a handful of very well-placed courtesans. 

(In this sense, think about the contrast between Lucretia, the mythological wife of Collatinus, whose fridging created the Republic, and Agrippina, mother of Nero, empress and all-round badass bitch.)

Anyway, this chapter made me think about women because it starts with Caesar being born and getting his name - it’s sort of an urban legend, btw, that every single Roman had three names: that was just for the Moste Noblest - and how Goldsworthy casually mentions that, unlike men, women of noble birth would just take their family surname as first name. In Caesar’s family, for instance, all the women were named Julia.

(As a reminder: his given name was Caius, then ‘Julius’ identified the tribe, and finally ‘Caesar’ was a nickname that was possibly given to his grandfather for something elephant-related. 

People whose grandfathers did not do elephant-related stuff generally never enjoyed the prestige of a funny nickname passed down through the generations.)

So it’s bad enough that twins might be named ‘Peter and Not-Peter’ or ‘Peter and Twin’, but imagine going to the park with your buggy and meeting your old friend Oldest She-Jones (daughter of Ferdinand Jones), now married to George David Taylor, and her five kids - Louis David Taylor, She-Taylor, She-Taylor the Second, She-Taylor the Third and She-Taylor Born on Christmas. So damn cute, and also the reason why the Romans never developed smartphones or social media - how the hell are you supposed to find someone on Vultocodex when every single cousin and aunt has the exact same name?

Poor management, that is.

But anyway - as I said, there’s a dissonance here because women being treated like garbage (like, not given normal names and married off at fourteen) also led to the very peculiar phenomenon: generations of (male) politicians and VIPs being raised by very forceful, strong, and ambitious (widowed) mothers. Because if you count old age, wars, trampolining injuries (let’s be honest, men have always been obsessed with attempting dangerous stunts just for the fun of it) and the general risks of Roman politics, it was very usual for a noble kid to not even remember his father at all.

(Nero is a good example of how weird and all-consuming this boy-mother relationship could become - there’s entire books about it, but I’d point 16-and-over readers to Suetonius’ Life of Nero for details.

Keep in mind 95% of it is propaganda because Suetonius hated Nero, but still. HBO-worthy stuff in there.)

All this to say - we know that Caesar had a very close relationship with his mom (named ‘Aurelia’ because - you guessed it - she came from the Aurelii family), who was a near perfect figure of virtue, intelligence, beauty and common sense. Very powerful in her own right, Aurelia raised Caesar basically on her own, because her (much older) husband was either away at war or dead for most of their marriage.

Aside from drinking in Aurelia’s wisdom, Caesar’s education also included the normal lessons noble Roman boys were required to learn: self-worth, narcissism, delusional manias, rhetoric, martial arts, horse-riding, and writing really bad fanfiction based on Greek myths.

And now for the MEANWHILE part.

(I have no idea why this gif was tagged ‘meanwhile’, but I’m not enough of an idiot to let it go to waste, so.)

Meanwhile, all sort of messes were going on.

As I’m sure you remember, at some point the consul was Marius - Caesar’s uncle and a military genius, but not much of a politician. His negotiation tactic of choice was secretly inviting groups of unconnected people to his house on the same night, serving them dinner in two separate rooms so they wouldn’t see one another and try to work out some kind of agreement between them. Whenever a new point came up, Marius would say he had diarrhoea, pretend to run to the bathroom and instead sit down with the second group and see what they thought about the first group’s proposal.

(Isn’t ancient Rome magnificent?)

A big problem Marius had to deal with was how to grant citizenship to the allied tribes in Italy without pissing off current citizens. Basically no one wanted these other guys to be given new rights, but since they supplied more than half the soldiers of the Roman army and got nothing in return, their patience was running a bit thin. At some point, Roman bureaucrats started to erase foreign-born citizens from their lists claiming they were not actual citizens (something so openly dishonest NO OTHER GOVERNMENT would EVER attempt it again), and next yet another tribune working on a citizenship reform was stabbed to death in the street. 

So the allies went to war. 

(This war, confusingly, is known as the Social War, because ‘socius’ means ‘ally’ in Latin.)

As you can imagine, it was a disaster. Most of the allied communities had been part of the Roman republic for I don’t want to check but let’s say decades, they lived side by side with Roman families and fought in the same wars, so it was more of a civil war than anything else. Some tribes chose to remain faithful to Rome, others didn’t. Lots of people died.

Caesar was too young to be a soldier, but this was Cicero’s first taste of war (bet you never thought of that weaselly weasel as a soldier, uh? appearances can be deceiving, folks!). Marius was also involved, but since he was old as shit and had famously weak and leaky guts (hahahhaha), he mostly stayed out of active combat, which wasn’t all that normal for a Roman general. In the end, the whole of Italy, down to defeated tribes, cows, dogs and random patches of mossy rocks, was granted citizenship and everyone went home. Their votes, however, were inserted in the system in such a way that they didn’t count much. 

On the whole, the one winner of this war was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, one of the military commanders, who became a consul soon after.

Another war, because this is Rome and Romans were dicks, but! this one was in the East, which means every single soldier would get super rich and also! wars in the East were considered easy because *insert racist trope here* and! Sulla had been promised that, as the big winner of the Social War, he could go there with his legions and basically enjoy this Disneyland of golden cups and ultraviolence but! at the last moment, Marius, who never liked Sulla much, managed to snatch the commandership from him, which! was completely legal but also *insert outraged emoji* and wait for it! instead of going gentle into the good night, Sulla made a fiery speech to his soldiers all like GUESS WHAT FOLKS WE’RE STUCK HERE SCRATCHING OUR TESTICULI AND THOSE IDIOTS FROM THE 25TH ARE TAKING YOUR GOLD AND YOUR UNWILLING WOMEN and! Sulla’s entire army marched! on! the! city! of! Rome!

It was the first time a Roman army had ever invaded Rome. Nobody was expecting it, and people panicked. Sulla’s men won easily, burned down some buildings, killed some people, generally had a great time; and then Sulla announced a bounty for anyone who’d disembowel his political enemies (including Marius) because he didn’t have time to go to Braavos and learn how to do it himself (remember, he still had his war waiting for him in the East).

(This turned out to be a success, btw. One guy was even killed by his slave - Sulla gave him the promised reward, then shoved him off a mountain because duh, slave and “When I said ‘anyone’, I meant people, not IKEA furniture” and “Honestly”.)

As nobody could have imagined and/or predicted, as soon as Sulla left for Greece Weak Guts Marius came back with an army and took back the city, beheading his way to the Senate and leaving a trail of blood wherever he passed. As soon as he got there, however, he dropped dead - heart attack, trampolining, diarrhoea, who can tell - and the city was taken over by his second-in-command, Lucius Cornelius Cinna.

(Man, what a ride.)

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know what Caesar was doing during this time.

Personally, I like to imagine him in Rome - a well-dressed, grey-eyed 15-year-old, freshly orphaned, horrified and exhilarated by the violence exploding all around him - I see him running down the streets, stopping to watch the corpses float in the dark waters of the Tiber, daring his friends to go and touch the severed heads nailed to the doors of the Senate; recognizing many of those heads as friends and colleagues of his father and uncle (passing a hesitant finger on the cold flesh, remembering how they’d once laughed and frowned and spoken about boring matters from the dais). 

The truth is, Caesar was just a kid. He was supposed to learn about the Republic, and his own role in making it great, by watching his elders. 

God knows what he actually learned, and what he thought, as he was passing through Rome’s paved streets, now shimmering with blood. 

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[livinginlandmarketing]

Two weeks after scores of people of all races flooded downtown San Bernardino to protest police brutality and systemic racism in the wake of George Floyd‘s death, local school board President Gwen Dowdy-Rodgers and her colleagues did something new.

Representing more than 47,000 students, as well as administrators, teachers, staffers and parents on June 16, 2020, San Bernardino City Unified board members took turns reading portions of a resolution into the record.

The declaration?

That the county’s largest school district was “unequivocally” anti-racist, and that it condemns all acts of racism.

Now days before the nation marks the 36th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Dowdy-Rodgers and other Southern California leaders and activists are reflecting on the connection between the late civil rights icon’s lasting call for social justice and the summer’s Black Lives Matter movement and subsequent efforts to change policy in the region.

From right, Gwen Dowdy-Rodgers, San Bernardino school board president, and board members Margaret Hill and Danny Tillman with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. statue at San Bernardino City Hall in San Bernardino on Thursday, January 14, 2021. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

A reath was placed at the base of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. statue at San Bernardino City Hall in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in San Bernardino on Thursday, January 14, 2021. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

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Gwen Dowdy-Rodgers, San Bernardino school board president, center with board members Danny Tillman, left and Margaret Hill with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. statue at San Bernardino City Hall in San Bernardino on Thursday, January 14, 2021. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

The statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has a hole in his hand over his heart at San Bernardino City Hall in San Bernardino on Thursday, January 14, 2021. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Gwen Dowdy-Rodgers, San Bernardino school board president, center with board members Margaret Hill, left and Danny Tillman with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. statue at San Bernardino City Hall in San Bernardino on Thursday, January 14, 2021. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

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‘Send a message’

Three days after she and her San Bernardino school board colleagues condemned all acts of racism, brutality, racial profiling and the excessive use of force by law enforcement, Dowdy-Rodgers was part of a contingent of community members to implore San Bernardino County leaders to take a similar stand.

“It was very important for us to send the message that we are very serious about raising social justice issues and equity issues,” Dowdy-Rodgers said, “because policy is something we can point to when things are not the way they should be.”

Having met twice previously with faith leaders, activists and members of the Black community, the Board of Supervisors on June 23 declared racism a public health crisis.

Soon after, cities across the region adopted similar resolutions acknowledging racism exists and condemning it outright, and educators began exploring expanded ethnic studies programs and measures to create inclusive learning environments.

Such actions are a direct result of the mass protests that spread nationally after the death of Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis police custody after an officer knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, said Darrin Johnson, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Inland Empire. But the 38-year-old said he will not be satisfied until concrete change – in schools, in government, in policing – is achieved.

“The protests showed that when pressure is put to government, (officials) will be forced to act,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, as fall went through, our momentum was lost and I feel politicians were less compelled to take those kinds of actions.

“I feel like the people we have now in positions of power, especially career politicians, are too used to playing political games,” Johnson added. “That’s how they stay in power and continue to do the things they do. They throw us a crumb and are convinced they’re doing stuff for us.

“We need to hold everyone’s feet to the fire to keep this momentum going.”

Linking generations

As Dowdy-Rodgers reflects on summer 2020, what makes her most proud of the Black Lives Matter movement and subsequent policy discussions and changes is the bond now established between those with first-hand memories of King and those who’ve come to admire him through textbooks, biographies and iconic video clips.

“We are connecting the generations that had been disconnected,” Dowdy-Rodgers said. “Those who were part of or close to that time when civil rights was just coming to the forefront and those marching and fighting got us to where we are today. Now, we’re handing the baton over to this generation, this young generation, and saying ‘We want to support you.’”

Activist Kayla Booker, 26, is a small business owner and founder of The B.L.A.C.K. Collective, supporting black businesses and creators in the Inland Empire. (Photo courtesy of Kayla Booker)

Kayla Booker, a college student activist in Riverside, said King’s work and legacy have emboldened younger generations, decades later, to stand up in today’s social and political climates.

The 26-year-old who participated in a number of demonstrations and rallies in Riverside and across the Inland Empire said more young people of color need to be involved in their local communities and in leadership roles.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” Booker said, paraphrasing King’s 1965 sermon in Selma, Alabama. “If we’re not sitting at the table, then who is hearing our voices and concerns?”

Resilience, Booker said, is something she learned from King. She is president and founder of The B.L.A.C.K. Collective, a group of young Black leaders in Riverside working to uplift the area through events, community involvement, mentorship and entrepreneurship.

“We’re tired of not being heard, of feeling alone,” Booker said. “We’re the only African American group (in this area), run by youth, and no one has reached out to us about our concerns. Not the mayor or sheriff. They want to go out and take pictures with us, but they don’t ask us how we can help, what we can do, to really make a difference.

“At some point, you’re going to hear us.”

With help from three friends, Sage Hill School graduate Jackie Ni built SupplyCrate.org, an online nexus for procuring and distributing PPE (more than 375,000 pieces). Then came BLMsupplycrate.org, to facilitate requests and donations to organizers and activists involved in social justice protests. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

With college campuses offering only virtual classes this fall due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Sage Hill High School graduate Jackie Ni decided to postpone his freshman year of college to spend his free time addressing economic and social justice issues.

At first, that meant organizing other teens to secure thousands of pieces of personal protective equipment, or PPE, for health care workers at the onset of the pandemic. But after Floyd’s death, Ni pivoted to supporting Black Lives Matter organizers.

As a result, the Irvine teen formed the nonprofit BLMsupplycrate.org.

By the end of September, the group had raised a few thousand dollars to help pay for such necessities as permit fees and supplies of water, along with shipping more than 3,000 protective masks to protesters in California, New York and parts of the Midwest.

Ni’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement segued into forming a youth-led political action committee, called MemePAC, with three Orange County friends his age — Theodore Horn, Jason Yu and Vera Kong. In school, the 18-year-old had learned of King and the civil rights movement; but his own research this past year led to a deeper understanding of the economic equality King sought the last years of his life.

Ni, who plans to study public policy or political science in college, and perhaps run for office someday, sees King’s legacy in the passion and dedication that he and other young people show for systemic change.

“It definitely carries on what Martin Luther King set out to do, tackling issues in a logical way, in a peaceful way.”

Miranda Sheffield, 35, is a cultural arts commissioner in Pomona. (Courtesy of Miranda Sheffield)

‘We have to work’

On the heels of a nationwide call for social change, King’s message echoes louder than ever before, said Miranda Sheffield, a cultural arts commissioner in Pomona who helped organize demonstrations there over the summer.

“With everything that happened at the protests and the (Jan. 6) riot at the (U.S.) Capitol,” Sheffield said, “we need to listen to King’s words and demand change.”

New 5th Ward San Bernardino City Councilman Ben Reynoso is sworn in at San Bernardino City Hall on Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

San Bernardino City Councilman Ben Reynoso, who was in Mississippi with family when protesters began marching in communities across the nation following Floyd’s death, said he understood why so many felt compelled to unite.

“There’d been multiple times in my life when I’ve seen Black and brown people killed at the hands of police, or die in police custody,” said Reynoso. “When I was with family, I was reaching for understanding as an individual. For me, I had to be out near my mother and surrounded by people who understood and could express their emotions.

“What you saw this summer,” he added, “was a collection of people who couldn’t express their emotions in silence. They needed to express it publicly.”

The summer’s activism has a direct link to the civil rights movement King spearheaded in the 1950s and ’60s, Reynoso said.

“Martin Luther King understood narrative,” he said. “That’s why he was willing, and the young organizers around him were willing, to do things like sit in diners where people of color weren’t allowed, to be beat up on live TV. Because they knew America and the world wouldn’t understand what they were going through without seeing it.

Naomi Rainey-Pierson, the longtime president of Long Beach’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said she applauds the work that younger people have been doing this past year, but added that protests alone won’t bring change.

“We have to not just stand up and scream, shout, holler and march when there is an outcry,” she said. “We have to continually march, we have to continually stand up, we have to continue using our voice. We have to stop pitting one group against the other.

“We have to work for equality and justice.”

In this file photo, Naomi Rainey-Pierson receives her honorary doctoral degree at Cal Sate Long Beach at the commencement for College of Liberal Arts on Wednesday, May 22, 2019. (Photo courtesy of Sean DuFrene, photographer for Cal State Long Beach)

Rainey-Pierson, a Black woman who grew up going to segregated schools in Mississippi, said injustice and inequality is nothing new, but that in order to follow King’s visions and goals, people must come together.

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“I commend all of the young people, of all colors and hues, marching, speaking, fighting and reaching out,” she said. “But we have to speak collectively for all: not just one race, not just one gender, but it has to be for all mankind because there’s an old saying, ‘For whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.’

That, Rainey-Pierson said, is what Martin Luther King stood for.

-on January 15, 2021 at 01:35PM by Brian Whitehead, Allyson Escobar, Emily Rasmussen, Javier Rojas, Theresa Walker

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

The Canaanite Woman

Jesus gets schooled about his own prejudice -- How do we apply this story today?

I thank God that the lectionary’s Gospel reading for this Sunday -- in the midst of many white people in the US finally waking up and realizing that white supremacy is still very much A Thing thanks to the nazis in Charlottesville -- is the uncomfortable Matthew 15:10-28.

It’s one of Jesus’s most humbling moments. He makes an exclusivist sort of statement about who “deserves” his ministry and salvation, is challenged by someone more oppressed than him, and changes his mind. This is the humanity of our divine-and-human Jesus -- at the start, it’s the ugliest part of that humanity; but thanks to his willingness to learn it becomes one of the most beautiful parts of that humanity. 

So what’s the story? In verses 10-20, Jesus teaches about what is unclean, making the claim that eating practices do not defile but rather one’s thoughts and actions from the heart. Then, in verses 21-28, a woman whom his society deems unclean comes to challenge him to practice what he preaches! As one webpage puts it, “This is not a miracle story. This is a rhetorical battle story, and here’s the shocking thing: Jesus loses.”

Verses 21-28: Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

This is an uncomfortable, unpleasant passage. Jesus ignores a woman in need because she’s not the “right kind” of person, and then calls her and her people “dogs”! We are all too familiar in our own day with the racist applications of this term.

We can puzzle out why Jesus behaved this way. Many argue that he was simply testing his disciples by mirroring their own behavior and then changing it; but the text does not seem to lean towards this interpretation. It really sounds like he genuinely thought of Canaanites in this way -- that being raised in a culture that views them as unclean and unworthy all his life has rubbed off on him, regardless of his theoretical theology against those views. 

We may interpret Jesus’s behavior in different ways. But what we do know is that this woman had the respect and the courage to speak out, to refuse to go away until her need was met. She has faith in him, even when he’s at his lowest point -- she trusts she can change his mind so that he’ll help her if she persists. And Jesus responds by commending her faith and answering her need -- he corrects his behavior and helps her. 

I wish I could have sat in the pews of every lectionary-following church today. I would love to hear every response to this passage. I wish I could shout “amen!” with those who applied it to our own current struggle with white supremacy. To hang around after the service to challenge pastors and priests who didn’t. 

Some commentaries on this reading:

-here is some background on the history between Jesus’s people and this woman’s people along with some contemporary application of this story

-an important thing we need to recognize is that in the first half of this Matthew reading, there’s content that too often leads to anti-Semitism among Christians. I’m going to make a post shortly about this specific instance of anti-Semitism (update: at long last, here’s that post!)

-here is a podcast with textual notes on all of today’s readings -- I love this quotation they include from David Lose:

“Can Jesus learn? I know that may sound odd. On the one hand, we may quickly answer, ‘Sure, why not?’ Until we worry about the theological implications of that answer. If Jesus learns, a voice inside us may ask, does that means he’s not perfect, or complete, or sinless, or…. And suddenly a cadre of theological police seem to be patrolling the long corridors of our imagination. What does it mean to have a flawed savior? Can Jesus be a reformed racist? If so -- then can’t we too be reformed? If Jesus can go from being unclean (the words of his mouth being hurtful) to clean (being an agent of blessing) then we too are invited into such transformation. And how did Jesus experience this transition? By listening to the needs of others. Are we opening our eyes to have our theology and lives informed and transformed by the most unlikely of people? Who aren’t we listening to/dismissing? Most of our churches and leaders could do well to listen to the needs actual people, and not just what “church growth experts” tell us.”

-and you can read David Lose’s full commentary on this reading here.

Question: If you went to church today, how did your preacher respond to this text? Did they address racism and white supremacy, and the church’s complicity and need to stand up now? Did anyone point out how the “curse of Ham,” more aptly called the “curse of Canaan,” has been used throughout American history to justify the enslavement of Black people and other manifestations of racism -- so that we would do well to follow Jesus’s example here, to acknowledge our horrifically harmful mistakes and make amends? ...Or did they say nothing about Charlottesville or white supremacy, racism and nazism?

The oppressed are listening. What are those in privileged positions saying to them, with words or with silence? 

[she-shall-conquer]

The Controversialism of Inequality

I dream of a day when the church will no longer piggy back on the latest trends. I dream of a time when the church prides itself at being better at Human Resource Management and Leadership than at Marketing. What’s new right? John Donne has been saying this for (literally) centuries! The Bible has been pretty constant about it’s messages regarding the treatment of people, and yet only now is the church getting “woke”? Excuse me if I doubt your intentions… (however necessary and faux-noble). But also, how can you raise the race issue without bringing up the topic of gender? To be clear: Racial Inequality is a REAL issue and should be discussed and I’m glad that the topic is coming up, but why did it take BLM to make it happen? I’m pretty sure (absolutely certain) that the biggest contention of prejudice addressed in the New Testament was, you guessed it, racism… Now if we do the math: The Bible is one of the best selling books of all time, one of the most translated books of all time, and the fact that a vast majority of the colonized world was colonized by “Christian” nations. Therefore, this colonization should prides itself in establishing the least racist places, with the most selfless and loving cultures and have a great deal of generosity with perhaps a slightly lower poverty gap.

Oh, wait…

That’s right, folks, we stuffed up real good on this one… And how I wish we could all return to the genuine authenticity that I read about constantly. It pains me so greatly. Its like reading Narnia and knowing that Narnia exists, so you go to Narnia and it’s Game of Thrones. Man, oh man, the disappointment. This being said, there are a lot of missionaries and missionary schools that have done a world of good, people with pure hearts and altruistic intentions — these have been besmirched and thrown out with the dirty, grimy bathwater of exploitation, greed, and contempt. Furthermore, there are countless arguments, sides to the story, and this is a very real discussion with personal implications that needs to be had amongst brothers and sisters (in Christ) in practice and in community. Just a note — if you want to effectively teach people anything, psychologically, just talking at people is possibly the worst way to do it (just saying); it’s an organizational problem that requires change and development of an entire culture. This is a debate for another day and a more researched perspective/argument.

I believe it’s important to note that Christianity was never meant to be a social revolution, there are no colour codes or banners or marches or slogans. I don’t believe that Christianity supports slavery, I mean William Wilberforce was motivated to end the slave-trade because of his faith, but it speaks about slavery and how to treat your slaves/masters. This might be confusing at first approach. From my understanding what I see is that respect, love, and one’s heart were far more important than moral absolutes, which completely does in my need for justice.

Y'all got any more of that… Captain America?

But the New Testament is also excruciatingly clear about how people in the church should treat each other. If the Body of Christ (the Church) is family, it should be the safest place, it should b the place where you can be most yourself, and where people can be most honest with you about which parts of yourself are good and bad. It’s all part of the constructive learning process. In the New Testament, the bad parts of people were confronted when they were, in no uncertain terms, told to stop being so prejudiced. They were told to stop treating rich people better than poor people, told to stop treating Jews better than non-Jews, even Jesus treated the sinner and saint with the same love and dignity — a little less dignity, but still love, towards the proud and the hypocritical. From these values arose the declaration that in Christ there is no longer man nor woman, slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile. These are arguably the three ‘-isms’ that have wrought the greatest havoc on our current world and society and have been proponents of the greatest evils: racism, sexism, and classism (I see you there, Mr. Marx). Abolished and condemned along with the sins of the world are our prejudices and our shortcomings. But as a Western Charismatic church, I do not believe we have established a church culture that is free of these things, but maybe in our attempt to address the racism in our church culture, these other two will also surface.

Please understand that this piece of writing is not so much about what the practical outworking of it is as much as it is the value structure that influences how we treat people, built into our cognition. If we can work towards addressing that, I believe the practical outworking will follow, or be addressed at a later stage, perhaps by someone else. Inequality, and subsequent abuse, on a broad scale is often the result of an inherent cultural cognition that places features on a value hierarchy: rich are more valuable than poor, white are more valuable than non, men are more valuable than women (as per history’s norm). This is what I would like to address.

Gender inequality is not the “burn your bra” brigade or anything that God-fearing Christians should be afraid of, it’s a commitment to seeing the restoration and empowerment of women — she that gave birth to you. And apparently, I’m not the only one that uses this point — in fact, it wasn’t my point to begin with, it’s the Apostle Paul’s. After the section in 1 Corinthians where he’s done talking about not letting women speak and disrupting everything by asking questions about things they don't know (you know that part where he says they should rather ask the questions at home instead of disrupting the prayer meeting, which really has a lot to do with a lack of education) he speaks about God’s view of women, where there is no hierarchical difference. Woman was made of man, but man is born of a woman. This is gender inequality, where we refuse to see the perspective and heart of God, where God uses people equally, and views people equally — what we ask is that the hierarchy of value be eliminated from, at least, our church culture so that we can start to put an end to the ghastly horrors of violence against women.

Is violence against men a reality? Yes, undoubtedly, yes! But statistics show that a vast majority of victims are female, and of those females, it is more than likely perpetrated by a male. So instead of doing the dumb pretense of guilt thing that we do so often when we finally realize we have been wrong, let us be motivated by guilt (which focuses on others and their suffering) and not shame (which focuses on ourselves). These errors in judgement and culture are pointed out to help us all grow.

The South African news has been rife with stories of rape, murder, abduction, and abuse of women, and these are only a few of the stories. Women in Sub-Saharan African have a 1 in 3 (36.6%) chance of experiencing gender-based violence in their life time, a region with the third highest prevalence in the world. Something has got to give. How can we idly stand by and just send condolences, Facebook-React with a teary face, share, re-tweet, like, or change our profile picture? It’s deeper, friends, far deeper. When will we stop and re-evaluate our culture, our societal norms? How many more of our children, our aunties, our nieces, our students, our girlfriends, our best friends, our dear loved ones must bear the burden of abuse before we start to relook at our culture? If you like me, have stumbled upon the disillusionment of discord, between what you believe, what you read about, compared to what you see in practice, here are a few considerations I humbly ask you to think about, to look into, and to build upon:

Step 1: A Product of Your Society

Research says the relationship between culture and language and cognition is reciprocal, you influence your culture and your culture influences you, and your language shapes your culture and cognition just as your culture shapes your language and your way of thinking. To understand that our value system is a much deeper social construct than our individual upbringing and our own choices and beliefs is a necessity in bringing change. Culture is so very nuanced and so very fundamental to our entire being that we cannot just make a decision to separate it from our way of life, we cannot learn information or even practices that might entirely change the way we think. Even the way we talk influences how we think and therefore what we do, this is why “locker room talk” is a problem, because language shapes culture and cognition and cognition shapes language and culture. I’m not suggesting that we just keep our mouths shut for fear of saying the wrong thing or go on a witch hunt for bad statements, but rather let’s be open to having a brother or sister give helpful, loving feedback on our comments. This can in turn help us to recognize underlying prejudices in our cognition that we were perhaps unaware of. This is not to say that you are not to be held responsible for your prejudices, but let’s all remember that dehumanizing people solves nothing at all. We should all recognise that along with our culture and our upbringing, there are certain values that come along and form apart of our cognitions and processing mechanisms — ones we need to be open to addressing and mending. This is not easy, but if we’re all on the same team of Love, Kindness, and Respect, it makes it a lot easier. This of course, on top of the fact that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds?

Step 2: Right/Wrong are Contextual Variables

A team can be a lot more effective when half the team doesn’t have to run with a limp (or a pair of heels/a dress, ya know). It may be crudely comparable to a soccer game where half the team keeps getting carded for using too much of their hips while running, or flicking their hair too inappropriately, or their shorts being too short, or their laces not being long enough, or whatever ridiculous reason is being used for why the other team keeps scoring. The team would (or should) no doubt be up in arms, because of how it hinders their effectiveness to play the game, which is of course the main point. It may also be like saying that certain demographic categories of players may only be in the team as subs, none of them are ever allowed to be in the starting line-up, but they’ll be used if there’s no one else left. This is not a good strategic move to enable the goal to be achieved. And for some real talk, if we had to put all the highest earning players in the starting line up, it might be that we have selected the best players, but why would we make that a rule and sell ourselves short of employing the best strategy of players and placement based on their strengths and ability according to the context? I’ll not insult your intelligence by explaining just how we do exactly this in the church/societal norms. We forget that there is a great deal of contextualization apparent int he Bible. God remains the same, his heart and values remain unchanged, but in certain situations an action is wrong and in other situations it is right. If we look at the Bible purely as a book of moral absolutes of course there will be irreconcilable contradictions.

One of the reasons I dislike personality test is because they always ask for absolutes, of which I have none in my life. There is no one action that I will always take regardless of circumstance. We all have circumstantial decisions and choices we have made dependent on our values and beliefs. Often our values remain unchanged, be it principle based or outcomes based, even though our decisions differ. What am I getting at? We need to mine the various accounts of the God we serve, as well as personally invest time and devotion, to know His heart, and His values (if serving and following Him is something we want to do), and then, with His mercy and guidance, start to evaluate our current practices and see if they really are as Gospel-oriented as we think they are, and if they are in line with His values. In the culture of the time, I understand, let the educated people teach the other people. So in that case, women don’t teach, right? But if the church is family and family is where you should be most yourself, if women can’t lead or teach, how can you substantiate women studying management, or women being CEOs or presidents, or women being lecturers? It’s a cognitive dissonance that needs to be re-evaluated. Perhaps you don't agree with women being in these “secular positions”. Why? Is it possible that where the church has failed to press on with the agenda and has been crippled and sidetracked by secondary issues that the world has caught up? Let us examine our context in light of His Heart.

Step 3: The Talking Listening Cure

I referenced Freud in this step, but it really has nothing to do with him, except for his novel idea of talking through situations and circumstances in order to understand and reach a conclusion. What he really did, was listen. So should we. Of course I don’t know everything and I never will, not even about this particular issue. I do however know that it’s not so much about the philosophy as much as it is about having and acting upon values that will shape my relationships with those around me. We are focused on the goal of love, but how do we love? This is the question we need to be continually asking. To love is to pay attention, to listen, to hear, to move towards understanding and to value (love your neighbor as you love yourself). May we not only learn to listen, but may a deep yearning and desire to listen be born within our hearts and minds, may we be malleable and teachable. Let’s start the conversations in the closets of our homes, leaning in to hear the heart of the Almighty, and looking at the Bible more holistically and in context, never losing sight of the main point: Love, Truth, Light, Hope — Jesus. And then, take it one step at a time, speaking to those closest to you, then slowly broadening the topic to your community. This may help in emphasizing that is not a “Femi-Nazi rampage” but rather an honest questioning of how to love and value others better, from the very core of our hearts and minds, which will then change how we act, what we say, and how we treat those that are ‘different’ to us.

Final Thoughts

We don’t choose these things when we are born, I didn’t decide to be born a woman, or be born with my skin colour, or be born into the social class that I was, but yet, these are things people use to attribute value to me, each with their own measurement sticks (or pencils)… We all do it to a degree, and we all have it done to us to a degree. This is not my plight to be valued or recognized, this is my questioning of our culture and values that ultimately shape how we treat others and how we mistreat others.

You want to know why #MenAreTrash? Not because you as a man are trash, but because societal values and norms more often than not establish a value hierarchy that enables men to abuse women. The concept of a man that is often taught and learned is trash. Yes, it is a generalisation, but that’s kind of how statistics work. For all the things men are allowed to say or do, even with harmless intentions, that shapes culture and in turn shapes other men, that spirals to rape, murder, abuse, that concept of a man is trash. This is a desperate plea for men and women alike to relook at what you do, why you do it, and what your underlying cognitions are — this is a call to re-examination of values, particularly in the church.

I’m not asking us to revolt, I’m asking us to structure our organization, the church, differently, where we remain true to his heart and the call He has placed upon us. I ask that we move towards a church that exemplifies the heart of God, where everyone has equal value and equal ability to contribute, regardless of race, gender, or socio-economic status/class.

I hold no sway in formal church structures, mostly because I’m young, and a woman, and not married to an elder, (give or take) so in the spirit of using what I have to do the best I can, I aim to start exploring this topic in greater detail, through research, through art, and through engagement/conversation.