I sat across from a beautiful black female with a modern-day afro. She and I were having lunch and she was eager to speak with me about her personal experience as an African American female in a predominantly white church. She shared that the words I had written in a recent blog post on the topic were the exact thoughts about which she had been journaling. She commended my bravery and admitted she didn’t quite know how to articulate her pinned-up emotions until seeing it through the pen of another. Tears running down her face, she continued talking and pouring out her heart’s desire for a husband, something that seems elusive to her as she contemplates the rare chance of a fellow congregate of the opposite sex—and race—taking an interest in her. I reminded her of the good news of the gospel; that God delights in and loves her. At that moment I realized she and many others silently struggle and grapple with various unyielding questions and desires, making the topic of the black female experience in predominantly white reformed churches truly important.
But, where are the resources?
I am a firm believer that God has given us all we need for growth and godliness in His Word (2 Timothy 3:16-17); yet, books and publications are a gift from God. As I peruse the available resources for me, a black female reformed Christian, I find there are none written by reformed Christians that speak directly to my experience. There are plenty of resources for women, plenty about theology, and even a few wonderful books about the historical nature of the church and the African American experience, such as Anthony J. Carter’s On Being Black and Reformed. There is, however, an apparent lack of awareness that the black reformed female experience is indeed different from merely the male experience. It was God’s idea to create male and female and it was God’s idea to create the black female. The unique and specific needs of the black female have been unintentionally overlooked. It is clear to me, more than ever, that these needs are important and should be addressed.
Where do we go from here?
The conversation has begun and it would be a shame and a disservice to allow these issues to once again be buried. Here are topics that I’d like to explore further:
1. What does biblical femininity look like for the black female? And if it’s the same, which it will be, how then do we address it knowing that the black female experience in America has historically been different than the white female experience in America?
2. Some black females have an identity that is in crisis. There are many of us, living in white communities, attending white churches, even identifying with white people, yet, feeling and sensing the difference. Let’s talk about our identity in Christ and break down the identity in crisis.
3. How can church leaders address the desire for marriage and family among black women? These women have particular concerns, questions and potentially fears.
4. What should a church culture express to a fallen world? In other words, if you desire a diverse church, there must be a diverse culture. What does that look like? Are the black people being affected by this seen as intricate in determining what it looks like?
5. I recently watched a recording of Leonce Crump II, lead pastor at Renovation Church in downtown Atlanta, give a talk on race. He challenged us to embrace the idea of the “new ethnics.” His basic argument is that in Christ we are all the same. Yet, he also expresses he is not urging everyone to assimilate. We are the same in personhood; yet, we are different. If we are to worship together, we should speak about these differences. We should explore what churches should be teaching parishioners about race.
Even as I type out these topic ideas and suggestions, I get excited. From the countless emails, texts, and messages I received about a need for these to be discussed, I imagine there will be people eager to engage, eager to learn, eager to know how to serve one another more effectively. Making this a priority will only further lead to greater understanding and reconciliation among congregants.
But why is this important?
The Bible warns against partiality. James lays it out pretty clearly: “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (2:8-9, ESV). Let me reiterate that many people may be clearly unaware that partiality toward our own “kind” is a temptation. If this is the case, perhaps, God is revealing something now. We are to treat everyone with equal dignity and care.
Another simple reason why discussing this topic is important is because we are the body of Christ, and as such, each member plays an important role. If one member of the body (or an entire group) feels alienated or uncared for, we ought to be eager to know how to address it. We can’t know if we don’t explore, investigate and dig deeper into the hearts of those around us.
Maybe soon my next conversations with black women who are tempted or struggling will look differently. Maybe when I speak with the lady struggling with fear that she will never marry because she is unsure if her white brother in Christ could like her; or with the black woman who is fighting against selfish ambition, submitting to her new husband and a desire to please her parents; or perhaps, with the lady who has been called a “sell-out” or “a white girl”—of course I would say to my friend, “God has all you need in his Word, so run there, sit there, and soak in his Word for you.” But one day, just maybe, I’ll also be able to say, “Here are some resources to help you navigate your experience. You are not alone.”
Trillia Newbell is a freelance journalist and writer. She writes on faith and family for The Knoxville News-Sentinel, and serves as managing editor for Women of God Magazine. Her love and primary role is that of a wife and mother. She lives in Tennessee with her husband, Thern, and their two children, Weston and Sydney.
Campion also mentioned that she was not a fan of poetry before she read the biography of Keats that prompted the film. Yet this, too, surprisingly works to the film’s advantage. Brawne is presented as one who only gradually comes to understand and appreciate the poetry, and this allows her to serve as a surrogate for the audience. Not that the film is stingy with Keats’s words–it isn’t. But the work is always subordinated to the soul that produced it. In this, the film is like an anti-Shakespeare in Love, where it is clear that the woman loves the poetry first and the man only for producing it.
As a scholar of literature who has always found the Romantic poets to be more narcissistic and self-indulgent than deep, more about sensation than truth and beauty, I was deeply appreciative of the film’s ability to make me understand the greatness of Keats’s and Brawne’s spirits and not merely their accomplishments.
Jesus said, “When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” I’ve never really understood that verse before, and the film doesn’t mention it explicitly (nor honestly, any conventional religious ideas for that that matter), but I feel as though I might have caught a glimpse of the truth at the heart of that verse in a poetic sort of way.
Apologists have a reputation for being obnoxious know-it alls.
I should know. I am one.
An apologist is a person who defends something. I’ve sat next to apologists for veganism and rode horse-back with apologists for fashion. You might sleep next to someone who’s an apologist for a belief you’ve privately rejected. For example, my husband has been a faithful apologist for the beneficial pleasures of video gaming. Bless his heart.
We all have ideas, beliefs, and rituals we want to defend, ideas we think are better for all people, at all times, and in all places. And we can argue our beliefs with the innocence of doves or the brashness of WWF wrestlers.
Like women wrestlers, women apologists are curiosities.
I didn’t grow up wanting to be an apologist. I grew up longing to be a librarian (the thought of all those books still makes my heart skip). But I got sucked in at age 17, when I left my private high school of 500 to become a missionary to the big bad public high school of 2,000. I was crazy for Jesus. But I was not crazy about the confrontations I faced: with the atheist guy in my AP English class or the girl who partied all weekend while making God look outdated.
I remembered them mocking the Bible together.
What did Jesus have to do with them?
Then I met Frank Pastore and J. P. Moreland (they were teaching local classes) and learned that a whole branch of knowledge was devoted to understanding and defending Christianity on philosophical grounds. I learned of Dorothy L. Sayers and heard Eleanor Stump. I decided to get my Masters in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics. I learned that it was a religious philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe, who gave C. S. Lewis a run for his money. I also realized that biblical women defended the God of Israel and paved the way for women like me, the daughters of Zelophedad, reluctant apologists like Naomi in the Book of Ruth, Esther convincing the King of the Persian empire to spare the Jews, the Samaritan woman at the well convincing her entire village to come hear Jesus (John 4:39-42).
I also learned that my concerns were often different from my profs’ and colleagues’ at my seminary, where women composed less than 2 percent of the graduating class. Not only did I never wait in line for the bathroom, but when I brought up apologetic issues that interested me (e.g., Are women’s souls different from men’s souls?), I got raised eyebrows and no distinct guidance. I felt like no one else was studying gendered souls or comparing the way Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammad treated women.
There’s a pesky rumor circulating among religions folks that women are more spiritually sensitive than men and therefore don’t want or need intellectual reasons for the Christian faith. “Women are just naturally full of faith, they’ll naturally believe in God.”
But there’s evidence that suggests otherwise.
First, the majority of churchgoers, Bible study attendees, and church volunteers are women (Barna Group, 2010). But, as Jim Henderson pointed out in The Resignation of Eve: What if Adams’s Rib is No Longer Willing to be the Church’s Backbone?, if women do not hear compelling, culturally relevant, valid reasons to attend church, they will stop.
Second, there is a growing segment of women atheists now blogging about their dramatic turn from faith. For example, check out WhyiLeftChristianity‘s post “Female Atheist Bloggers Who Rock My World” or cruise through the female bloggers at the Religious Portals at Patheos. And since many female apologists for other religions were once Christians, I cannot overstate the need for women to consider Peter’s beckoning to defend the faith (1 Peter 3:15).
Take Vyckie Garrison, a one-time Quiverfull follower, now single mother of seven who runs No Longer Quivering. Garrison explained in a June 2011 interview with Politics USA:
My life as a devoted fundamentalist Believer had become a living hell of physical, mental and spiritual abuse. For all our efforts to know God, to love him, discern his will and live out his precepts for a godly home according to the Holy Bible, our family was going crazy. We hated ourselves and we hated each other and we all wanted to die … I have met dozens of women who have left, or are in the process of leaving, the Quiverfull lifestyle. Not all become atheists, but none escape without serious modification of their faith.
Garrison is an influential atheist who tweets to 13,000 followers @NoQuivering and writes extensively with a team of women at NoLongerQuivering.com (250,000 views per month). Her conclusions about the place of Christian teachings have found her more convinced that God does not exist than that he does and is good.
Thousands of intelligent females argue daily for everything from atheism to Islam without hearing an articulate reason to believe otherwise. Because of this, we need more women on the cultural laywoman level (check out the list of women in philosophy of religion) dedicating their minds to understanding the cultural persuasiveness of non-Christian arguments, so that we can “always be ready to give an answer (Greek apologia) for the hope that is in us.”
We need women who can understand and articulate what Jesus thinks about N.O.W., about Buddhist mums who seem to offer more compassion than Christians, about Fifty Shades of Gray. We need women to speak about a better way to educate youth groups about sexuality than, “Men are animals and women need to be modest.” We need women to weigh in on why and what to do about Christianity’s ability to both mend broken families and tear others apart.
As apologist Mary Jo Sharp explained in a recent interview, “We need philosophically and theologically sound women to debate and challenge organizations that seem to presuppose all women should naturally be in agreement with their philosophy and actions.”
In 2010, Sharp debated a Muslim woman in a Toronto mosque where both men and women were allowed to attend. This was a rare opportunity. Muslim women are often prohibited from dialogue with men outside their family or mosque. “Christian apologetics,” Sharp explained, “will need women skilled in Islamic apologetics to speak with Muslim women, to go where Christian men cannot.”
Where will you go boldly defending the faith in places that your brothers in Christ cannot?
Jonalyn Fincher is cofounder of Soulation, where she works as a speaker, writer, and philosopher. She has written for Her.meneutics about women’s sexuality. A graduate from Talbot School of Theology and the University of Virginia, Jonalyn loves writing about women and sexuality at RubySlippers.org, where you can read more on female apologists.
From a moral standpoint, one problem with the work might be that one always feels that Wilde is a bit more on the side of the tempter than the resister. Most of Colin Firth’s lines got big laughs, but by the time Gray (Ben Barnes) complains that he has only followed Wotton’s advice the audience is far enough removed from the instruction in debauchery to feel complicit for encouraging it.
The real problem is a structural one, though. Once the moral slide begins, there is a dreary monotony to each regression. A seduction. A suspicion. A murder. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Even the portrait is a bit of a MacGuffin; it is actually shown very little and used less as a poetic symbol (like the scarlet letter) and more as a geographical focal point to allow long, ominous tracking shots to closed doors.
The one place, oddly enough, where the film perks up is when Gray visits a confessional. When he insists that most of us could not stand a glimpse of our own souls, we understand that the painting is a symbol of the human condition and not just a supernatural talisman for one man. Ultimately, though, this scene also fizzles, one more example of a church unable to offer any substantive help or answers to those who see the world as it really is.
The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890, but the film is decidedly twentieth century in the way it channels the source material’s cynicism to the point of appearing almost nihilistic. “You possess the only two things worth having,” Wotton tells Dorian, “youth and beauty.”
I wonder if John Keats and Fannie Brawne would agree?
Tomorrow’s Screenings: A Solitary Man, The Road, Agora, Life During Wartime.
Guest blogger Kenneth R. Morefield, an English prof at Campbell University, is writing about the Toronto International Film Festival for CT Movies.
