Olympic Outrage, Trans in a Christian Marriage, Trump's All Too Common Thoughts on Disability
Plus, a song to ground you
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Our highlights this week include:
- Trump’s alleged suggestion that some disabled people should die
- A story about femininity and a trans woman in evangelical purity culture
- Jonathan’s thoughts on Christian backlash to the opening ceremony of the Olympics
- And Sy keeps us Grounded with some powerful music
Sy’s Recommendations
Trump Allegedly Asked If Some Disabled People Should Just Die
Donald Trump’s Nephew, Fred Trump III, has just published a memoir. Among other allegations, Fred claims he heard Donald twice say that it would be better if disabled people with significant intellectual or neurological disabilities died. One of these two times was in reference to Fred’s own disabled child. Regardless of the truth of these allegations, it is common to believe that it would be better if “burdensome” disabled people were gone. People frequently come to find this belief in their heart of hearts when facing down the actuality of being responsible for a disabled person. This is why each year on March 1, disabled people around the country gather for the Disability Day of Mourning, commemorating the typically 100 or so disabled people killed in the previous year by their family or caregivers. The murderers often receive sympathetic treatment from the media and light sentences from the courts. The desire for disabled people to simply go away by whatever means is a powerful and evil force that has always lurked in our society. Let us pray and work every day against this outright denial of the image of God.
- Read about the Day of Mourning
What Counts as Feminine under Purity Culture?
While we were on our break from this newsletter, I read a long and poignant essay on the effect of Christian purity culture on our ideas about what counts as femininity. The author is a woman who grew up evangelical in the South. She tells the story of how her marriage to a person who eventually became a trans woman fell apart. But it’s also a story of how the strictures of church expectations for their lives as a woman and the person everyone perceived as her husband crushed both of their dreams. Until reality forced them to let those expectations go. The writing is fantastic. And the story provides us with a close-up look at what can happen when people completely lose their sense of self under patriarchal Christian social norms.
Jonathan’s Recommendations
The Misguided Outrage against the Olympics’ Opening Ceremony
The Olympic Games are the latest recipient of conservative American Christian rage. The opening ceremony included a scene modeled after the pagan feasts of the Greek god Dionysus staged in a way resembling Leonardo DaVinci’s The Last Supper. Most of the people in the scene though were drag queens. Prominent Wheaton University professor Ed Stetzer complained on Instagram about the “open mockery” of Christianity, adding “this kind of mockery would not happen to other religions.” Christian influencer Lisa Bevere said France had failed the Olympic athletes because of its display of “debauchery & distortion of the image of God expressed in male and female.” Aside from the many arguments one could raise against these ideas, pastor and writer Benjamin Cremer made the point in a post that this outrage reveals both the fragility and false idols of our faith. God or the church or Christian morality do not need our defense. But God has told us that vulnerable people do. Spending our time on issues like this is simply not following Jesus.
Megachurch pastor Andy Stanley, whose political theology I’ve criticized before, took a political angle on the ceremony. He said in a since-deleted post that France owed both Christians and the West an apology for mocking the God who American soldiers prayed to as they died on the beach at Normandy. He said those soldiers were demonstrating the highest form of love in laying down their lives for their friends, and France should honor that. But of course what Stanley meant was that our military intervention in Europe gives us the right to demand France not offend our religious sensibilities. Military power exercised to gain religious conformity. This is unfettered colonized faith. In his mind, Christianity is rightfully fused with military domination. The French must center it, elevate it, and bow down to it. And he is demanding repentance for France’s sins against us. Jesus did not come to defend and institution or spread cultural influence. He came to build a beloved community. We need to understand and join that work, and leave all of this White American Folk Religion behind.
Staying Grounded with Sy
There isn’t anything that keeps me as grounded and grateful as something that makes me feel small. Not “small” like demeaned or insignificant. But small relative to the enormity of creation and its creator. For about 15 years, a song that has never failed to put me in that place is “Of Dust and Nations” by the band Thrice. The version in the player below is the one that does it for me; the original is fun, but too raucous for the reverence of the lyrics. Speaking of the lyrics, you can read them here (and I really would suggest you do at least that) if you aren’t into the unrestrained SoCal of the singer’s voice.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Jonathan and Sy