I can't believe it's taken me this long to post this story. This is the story. Practically everybody I've ever spoken to knows this story.
In high school, I sang in a church choir that goes on a trip every June to sing at other churches around the country. My junior year one of the places we went to was Victoria, Canada. We got there on a ferry and we came back on a ferry.
On the ferry coming back a friend and I went into the little snack bar where I bought a coffee and a bagel. I assumed the cream cheese would be at the end of the line with the cream and sugar and ketchup and mustard and stuff like that. It wasn't. So my friend and I went to look around the rest of the ferry for the cream cheese. You know, just in case they kept it somewhere else. We ran into our choir director, who is Canadian.
"Oh, hi," I said. "We're just looking for the cream cheese."
With a completely straight face and without even so much as blinking he said, "We don't have cream cheese in Canada."
I believed him. For about five seconds.
But it gets better. The three of us then went back to the snack bar and found the cream cheese, which cost a dollar for about a tablespoon. I gave up and my friend and I went and sat down. I took one bite of my bagel, decided it was no good without cream cheese, and threw it away.
About five seconds later our director appeared again and said, "Here, I got you a cream cheese."
Cream cheese in Canada has since become an inside joke between me and virtually everyone I spend any amount of time with. The other day I was with a group of people, one of whom had never heard the story. When someone made a reference to the "fact" that they don't have cream cheese in Canada she said, "They don't?" and I nearly died laughing.
I thought I was the only one.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
The Historical Era That Never Existed
The whole time I was reading Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull, I kept asking myself, do I like this, do I agree with that? Sometimes the answer was yes and sometimes it was no.
As the title suggests, the book is about the Quiverfull religious movement. It’s not a very centralized or uniform movement and it comes in many different flavors, but most followers believe in women being submissive to their husbands (the book calls it patriarchy), homeschooling, and having as many children as God gives them.
The book is a little like the movie “Religulous” in that it’s about the unusual cases more than the everyday people of the movement. It’s also about the leaders, the people who write books and blogs and publish magazines and hold conferences and start their own churches, even their own denominations.
The book is divided into two parts. The first is about patriarchy and the second is about the large families Quiverfullers aspire to have.
The patriarchy movement seems to be a reaction to the feminist revolution of the ‘70’s, which makes sense. After all, isn’t there some law of physics that states: for ever action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I think that might have been one of Newton’s laws. Or maybe Einstein. Anyway, the patriarchy movement, according to Joyce, is not a throwback to the ‘50’s, but something far older. That’s why I like it. But. There is a but.
All of the people in this book, all of their theology, their beliefs, their reasoning, their rhetoric, sounds like a 20th and 21st Century version of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century. Some of them even cite laws from Calvin’s Geneva in their books or speeches or whatever. And the appeal to the past has a Reformation-era ring to it as well.
Before the Reformation, groups of revolting peasants commonly appealed to a time in the past when things weren’t so rough and the lords treated them well. During the Reformation, it became common for them to describe not how things used to be, but how they should be. That’s what the patriarchy people are doing, although not in as many words. When the movement began, in the early ‘80’s, it was about going back to the way things used to be before the feminist ‘70’s. Now the rhetoric is about creating a new world, a Christian population who will rise up and take over. Unsurprisingly, these people find most mainstream Protestant denominations to be too worldly and too feminist. They also criticize evangelical megachurches for essentially being too feel-good and not having enough rules.
The part of the movement that is still talking about going back to the past doesn’t seem to have been paying attention in history class, because they aren’t talking about any past I’ve ever heard of. Some of the patriarchy advocates suggest that a woman give her husband a list of her daily activities and ask him how she might better prioritize her time. When I read this, I tried and tried to come up with a historical period to compare it to. I couldn’t. That’s because there isn’t one. Not even the Biblical role models of the patriarchy movement would have done this.
Then there is the argument against birth control. The anti-birth controllers seem to have one of three main reasons. First are the Bible literalists who believe God will plan their family. Then there are the people who are trying to out-reproduce liberals, atheists, gays, etc, so that fundamentalist Christians will eventually be the majority. Finally there are radical pro-lifers who seem to have come to the somewhat incongruous conclusion that birth control made it okay to not want a baby, which in turn led to cultural acceptance of abortion. They also claim that birth control pills cause abortions by stopping fertilized eggs from implanting. And some of them take on an attitude hilariously reminiscent of the Monty Python song, “Every Sperm is Sacred.”
In the manner of “Religulous,” the book also talks about Orthodox Jews in Israel who are expected to have large families, and Polish radicals worried about underpopulated European countries being taken over by Muslim immigrants. Joyce does a good job of not letting her own opinions take over the book, although in the introduction she describes herself as a secular feminist and occasionally her narrative comes across as snarky or sarcastic.
The movement does have some universally good qualities. Buried under the more controversial goals of patriarchy is a crusade to get fathers to take responsibility for their families and not become deadbeats who don’t pay the child support. Quiverfull families aim to live debt free, a goal many Americans could benefit from. And, like the normal churchgoers you don’t seen in “Religulous,” there are probably hundreds of Quiverfull families who might stand out because of their size but are otherwise relatively normal people.
I started reading about Quiverfull after I stumbled upon an internet message bored about the Duggars, the 18-child family from Arizona with a TLC reality show. Probably the majority of the posters on the message bored were critical of the Quiverfull lifestyle although a sizable minority were part of it themselves or mind-your-own-business types. The critics fell into two camps (and plenty landed in both): environmentalists worried about overpopulation, and people who criticized the lifestyle, claiming that it oppresses women, that the children aren’t being raised properly, that it’s a cult, etc.
Quiverfull really is not a bunch of fat old men trying to control women’s bodies. Many of them aren’t Republicans, but instead support inconsequential third parties. There are also plenty of female “leaders,” most of them writers or speakers at conferences. After I started trying to find out more about Quiverfull I found a website called Ladies Against Feminism, which I read eagerly for awhile until one of the articles rubbed me the wrong way. The site itself is along the lines of the ask your husband how to prioritize your day crowd, but a lot of the articles are links to other sites, which tend to be more moderate. One of the linked articles summed up my frustration with feminism perfectly: feminists don’t just want equal opportunity, they want equal outcome. They don’t just want women to be able to pursue any career they choose, they want there to actually be equal numbers of men and women in all professions.
Truly, anti-feminism, at least my brand of anti-feminism, is not about taking away women’s hard won rights and sending them back to the kitchen. It’s not about some God-ordained plan. I think God understands that times change. It’s not even about my desire to return to a semi-fictional past. It is partly about the fact that men and women are different and no amount of “equality” is ever going to change that. But mostly, it’s about the hypocrisy that I see in feminism. Feminists claim to want women to have choice and opportunity, until a woman wants to get married, stay home, and have lots of babies. When feminists finally decide that’s an acceptable choice for women to make, maybe then I’ll be a feminist.
As I finished reading Quiverfull, I came to the conclusion that they lifestyle appeals to me but the reasons do not. Maybe I don’t quite believe wives should submit to their husbands. But I do believe husbands and wives should have different roles within the marriage. I don’t think I need to give birth to the future Christian majority. But I do want a big family and I want to stay at home and take care of them. I don’t think we need to interpret every word of the Bible literally, especially not when there are so many different versions of the Bible. I think, as they say in the Pirate movies, “they’re more actual guidelines.” Quiverfull also emphasizes self-sufficiency, and many families run their own businesses, which appeals to me. I like the simple, somewhat old fashioned lifestyle. But perhaps most especially, I like the emphasis on close-knit families who are always there for each other. And surely anyone, even the most feminist, liberal, atheist can understand that.
As the title suggests, the book is about the Quiverfull religious movement. It’s not a very centralized or uniform movement and it comes in many different flavors, but most followers believe in women being submissive to their husbands (the book calls it patriarchy), homeschooling, and having as many children as God gives them.
The book is a little like the movie “Religulous” in that it’s about the unusual cases more than the everyday people of the movement. It’s also about the leaders, the people who write books and blogs and publish magazines and hold conferences and start their own churches, even their own denominations.
The book is divided into two parts. The first is about patriarchy and the second is about the large families Quiverfullers aspire to have.
The patriarchy movement seems to be a reaction to the feminist revolution of the ‘70’s, which makes sense. After all, isn’t there some law of physics that states: for ever action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I think that might have been one of Newton’s laws. Or maybe Einstein. Anyway, the patriarchy movement, according to Joyce, is not a throwback to the ‘50’s, but something far older. That’s why I like it. But. There is a but.
All of the people in this book, all of their theology, their beliefs, their reasoning, their rhetoric, sounds like a 20th and 21st Century version of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century. Some of them even cite laws from Calvin’s Geneva in their books or speeches or whatever. And the appeal to the past has a Reformation-era ring to it as well.
Before the Reformation, groups of revolting peasants commonly appealed to a time in the past when things weren’t so rough and the lords treated them well. During the Reformation, it became common for them to describe not how things used to be, but how they should be. That’s what the patriarchy people are doing, although not in as many words. When the movement began, in the early ‘80’s, it was about going back to the way things used to be before the feminist ‘70’s. Now the rhetoric is about creating a new world, a Christian population who will rise up and take over. Unsurprisingly, these people find most mainstream Protestant denominations to be too worldly and too feminist. They also criticize evangelical megachurches for essentially being too feel-good and not having enough rules.
The part of the movement that is still talking about going back to the past doesn’t seem to have been paying attention in history class, because they aren’t talking about any past I’ve ever heard of. Some of the patriarchy advocates suggest that a woman give her husband a list of her daily activities and ask him how she might better prioritize her time. When I read this, I tried and tried to come up with a historical period to compare it to. I couldn’t. That’s because there isn’t one. Not even the Biblical role models of the patriarchy movement would have done this.
Then there is the argument against birth control. The anti-birth controllers seem to have one of three main reasons. First are the Bible literalists who believe God will plan their family. Then there are the people who are trying to out-reproduce liberals, atheists, gays, etc, so that fundamentalist Christians will eventually be the majority. Finally there are radical pro-lifers who seem to have come to the somewhat incongruous conclusion that birth control made it okay to not want a baby, which in turn led to cultural acceptance of abortion. They also claim that birth control pills cause abortions by stopping fertilized eggs from implanting. And some of them take on an attitude hilariously reminiscent of the Monty Python song, “Every Sperm is Sacred.”
In the manner of “Religulous,” the book also talks about Orthodox Jews in Israel who are expected to have large families, and Polish radicals worried about underpopulated European countries being taken over by Muslim immigrants. Joyce does a good job of not letting her own opinions take over the book, although in the introduction she describes herself as a secular feminist and occasionally her narrative comes across as snarky or sarcastic.
The movement does have some universally good qualities. Buried under the more controversial goals of patriarchy is a crusade to get fathers to take responsibility for their families and not become deadbeats who don’t pay the child support. Quiverfull families aim to live debt free, a goal many Americans could benefit from. And, like the normal churchgoers you don’t seen in “Religulous,” there are probably hundreds of Quiverfull families who might stand out because of their size but are otherwise relatively normal people.
I started reading about Quiverfull after I stumbled upon an internet message bored about the Duggars, the 18-child family from Arizona with a TLC reality show. Probably the majority of the posters on the message bored were critical of the Quiverfull lifestyle although a sizable minority were part of it themselves or mind-your-own-business types. The critics fell into two camps (and plenty landed in both): environmentalists worried about overpopulation, and people who criticized the lifestyle, claiming that it oppresses women, that the children aren’t being raised properly, that it’s a cult, etc.
Quiverfull really is not a bunch of fat old men trying to control women’s bodies. Many of them aren’t Republicans, but instead support inconsequential third parties. There are also plenty of female “leaders,” most of them writers or speakers at conferences. After I started trying to find out more about Quiverfull I found a website called Ladies Against Feminism, which I read eagerly for awhile until one of the articles rubbed me the wrong way. The site itself is along the lines of the ask your husband how to prioritize your day crowd, but a lot of the articles are links to other sites, which tend to be more moderate. One of the linked articles summed up my frustration with feminism perfectly: feminists don’t just want equal opportunity, they want equal outcome. They don’t just want women to be able to pursue any career they choose, they want there to actually be equal numbers of men and women in all professions.
Truly, anti-feminism, at least my brand of anti-feminism, is not about taking away women’s hard won rights and sending them back to the kitchen. It’s not about some God-ordained plan. I think God understands that times change. It’s not even about my desire to return to a semi-fictional past. It is partly about the fact that men and women are different and no amount of “equality” is ever going to change that. But mostly, it’s about the hypocrisy that I see in feminism. Feminists claim to want women to have choice and opportunity, until a woman wants to get married, stay home, and have lots of babies. When feminists finally decide that’s an acceptable choice for women to make, maybe then I’ll be a feminist.
As I finished reading Quiverfull, I came to the conclusion that they lifestyle appeals to me but the reasons do not. Maybe I don’t quite believe wives should submit to their husbands. But I do believe husbands and wives should have different roles within the marriage. I don’t think I need to give birth to the future Christian majority. But I do want a big family and I want to stay at home and take care of them. I don’t think we need to interpret every word of the Bible literally, especially not when there are so many different versions of the Bible. I think, as they say in the Pirate movies, “they’re more actual guidelines.” Quiverfull also emphasizes self-sufficiency, and many families run their own businesses, which appeals to me. I like the simple, somewhat old fashioned lifestyle. But perhaps most especially, I like the emphasis on close-knit families who are always there for each other. And surely anyone, even the most feminist, liberal, atheist can understand that.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Boogers
Boogers: Part of speech up to you
A lovely all encompassing word that can be used in virtually any context.
Used in a few sentences:
What the booger was that?
That movie was completely boogers.
Where the booger did I leave my coat?
Holy boogers! That was loud.
Booger! I spilled it all over myself.
That new book is a complete load of boogers.
You get the idea.
A lovely all encompassing word that can be used in virtually any context.
Used in a few sentences:
What the booger was that?
That movie was completely boogers.
Where the booger did I leave my coat?
Holy boogers! That was loud.
Booger! I spilled it all over myself.
That new book is a complete load of boogers.
You get the idea.
No Logic, Faith
My sister is an atheist and has been for awhile now. Today she said she doesn't even understand how anyone could believe in any religion.
Atheists bother me, I have to say. They bother me the same way right-wing evangelicals bother atheists (I am not a right-wing evangelical, by the way). But this is America. If you don't believe in anything, then you don't believe in anything. Nobody can make you. And while there might be some who would try, I am not one of them.
Specifically what bothers me is when people say that religion has become (or is becoming) irrelevant because a greater percentage of Americans call themselves non-believers, because science has taken the place of religion, or whatever other reason(s). I could offer my own personal beliefs as a rebuttal, but I don't think I need to. I'm not trying to convince anyone to believe the way I do. I'm just expressing my opinion and my opinion is that such reasoning is a load of boogers.
My sister says she doesn't understand the logic of religious people. All I can say to that is that there is no logic. That's why it's called faith.
I imagine this will soon become a well covered topic on this blog, so I'm going to leave it at that for now.
Atheists bother me, I have to say. They bother me the same way right-wing evangelicals bother atheists (I am not a right-wing evangelical, by the way). But this is America. If you don't believe in anything, then you don't believe in anything. Nobody can make you. And while there might be some who would try, I am not one of them.
Specifically what bothers me is when people say that religion has become (or is becoming) irrelevant because a greater percentage of Americans call themselves non-believers, because science has taken the place of religion, or whatever other reason(s). I could offer my own personal beliefs as a rebuttal, but I don't think I need to. I'm not trying to convince anyone to believe the way I do. I'm just expressing my opinion and my opinion is that such reasoning is a load of boogers.
My sister says she doesn't understand the logic of religious people. All I can say to that is that there is no logic. That's why it's called faith.
I imagine this will soon become a well covered topic on this blog, so I'm going to leave it at that for now.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Adventure
Adventure: noun
A journey away from the house via car, bike, feet, or a combination of all three, with a somewhat vague destination or purpose.
Used in a sentence: I went on an adventure to Target last Tuesday.
A journey away from the house via car, bike, feet, or a combination of all three, with a somewhat vague destination or purpose.
Used in a sentence: I went on an adventure to Target last Tuesday.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
The American Pastime
Earlier today I went to one of my younger brother's baseball games. To be honest, he's not very good, but that doesn't really matter. My brother spends a lot of time at baseball and my parents spend a lot of time watching him. Today's game lasted nearly three hours and went into overtime, or whatever they call it in baseball, because the score was tied when the game should have ended. These are elementary school aged children and they played baseball for three hours (actually more, considering they got there an hour before the game started), while their parents sat on the sidelines and shouted cheers the players probably couldn't even hear.
This, in a nutshell, is why I don't approve of organized/competitive sports, especially for kids. You can spout all the statistics you want about how sports help prevent obesity, help kids make friends, help kids stay away from drugs, I don't buy it. They can get just as much exercise and make just as many friends playing a pickup game all by themselves without subjecting themselves (and their parents, who probably have much better things they could be doing) to long hours of scheduled practices and games, sometimes in bad weather.
But because I know it will never happen, I'm not going to suggest we get rid of organized sports entirely. It could probably be quite an enjoyable experience if games and practices lasted no more than an hour and were not held if it was extremely cold, extremely hot, or raining (today's weather was actually quite nice). I think sports teams for little kids usually do quite a good job of this, keeping the emphasis on enjoying the sport.
I'm not even going to get into all the things I think are wrong with professional, televised sports. I'll save that for another post.
Finally, I think kids should also be encouraged to pursue activities such as jogging/walking, biking, swimming, rock climbing, tennis, golf, etc. as these are activities they can do on their own time, when they have time. They will also be able to continue with these types of activities well into adulthood and even old age, which cannot be said for baseball.
This, in a nutshell, is why I don't approve of organized/competitive sports, especially for kids. You can spout all the statistics you want about how sports help prevent obesity, help kids make friends, help kids stay away from drugs, I don't buy it. They can get just as much exercise and make just as many friends playing a pickup game all by themselves without subjecting themselves (and their parents, who probably have much better things they could be doing) to long hours of scheduled practices and games, sometimes in bad weather.
But because I know it will never happen, I'm not going to suggest we get rid of organized sports entirely. It could probably be quite an enjoyable experience if games and practices lasted no more than an hour and were not held if it was extremely cold, extremely hot, or raining (today's weather was actually quite nice). I think sports teams for little kids usually do quite a good job of this, keeping the emphasis on enjoying the sport.
I'm not even going to get into all the things I think are wrong with professional, televised sports. I'll save that for another post.
Finally, I think kids should also be encouraged to pursue activities such as jogging/walking, biking, swimming, rock climbing, tennis, golf, etc. as these are activities they can do on their own time, when they have time. They will also be able to continue with these types of activities well into adulthood and even old age, which cannot be said for baseball.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Welcome To My World
Have you ever heard the saying, “The past is like a foreign country, they do things differently there?” Well, my world is a little like the past (and on occasion, I like to imagine that it is the past). I do things differently here. And now I’m inviting you (yes, YOU) to watch. I’d like to share my strange musical tastes, my historically influenced moral values, my educational story, and my love of a dead language, among other things. And if you don’t agree with me, say so. I love an argument!
I live in Boise, Idaho. For those of you who are geographically challenged, Idaho (you know, potatoes) is just east of Oregon, which is just north of California. I’m 19 years old, and a proud college dropout (actually, I hope to be a student again this fall). I hang out at church and the library. I write novels. I love to cook “comfort food.” And I am possibly the world’s biggest NCIS fan.
Just so we’re clear, I am Christian, pro-life, and anti-feminist (which means I oppose feminism, not women) and I am not going to pretend to be otherwise. My political views and moral values are heavily influenced by my historical knowledge. I think that a lot of problems with today’s world were caused by people trying to fix things that weren’t broken. It is difficult (even impossible) for me to assume that the most modern way of thinking is right simply because it is the most modern.
So, I’m off to do things differently, take the road less traveled, all those good things. I hope you’ll join me.
I live in Boise, Idaho. For those of you who are geographically challenged, Idaho (you know, potatoes) is just east of Oregon, which is just north of California. I’m 19 years old, and a proud college dropout (actually, I hope to be a student again this fall). I hang out at church and the library. I write novels. I love to cook “comfort food.” And I am possibly the world’s biggest NCIS fan.
Just so we’re clear, I am Christian, pro-life, and anti-feminist (which means I oppose feminism, not women) and I am not going to pretend to be otherwise. My political views and moral values are heavily influenced by my historical knowledge. I think that a lot of problems with today’s world were caused by people trying to fix things that weren’t broken. It is difficult (even impossible) for me to assume that the most modern way of thinking is right simply because it is the most modern.
So, I’m off to do things differently, take the road less traveled, all those good things. I hope you’ll join me.
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