Whole Lotta Talk About Love

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but it's way past time that the Christian church had a conversation about love.

What prompted my latest outburst? Well, I watched the movie Juno, which is about a teen who gets pregnant, and decides to give the baby up for adoption. At the end of the movie, Juno's child is adopted by a loving and infertile woman who is convinced she was born to be a mother, and Juno ends up happily in a relationship with the child's father. There's no guilt, no unhappiness, and surprisingly few negative consequences to her pregnancy.

The surprising thing about the movie (to me at least) has been the astonishingly mixed reaction from the church (where by 'church' I mean the SBC). There have been some reactions of 'good, she didn't get an abortion', but just as many reactions of 'That slut!' or 'That film is unrealistic for not portraying the many negative consequences of pregnancy!". In mainstream culture, the movie has been embraced, and has been nominated for four Oscars. Many review have noted that, contrary to the Evangelical 'it's unrealistic!' meme, the film is fairly unflinching at the undesirable aspects of pregnancy (physical changes, concerns about the worthiness of potential adoptive families, etc).

Which brings me to the topic of this post. I recently ran across an article on Girl With Pen from a noted sex researcher, who talks about Juno. She's not interested in the sex, though, or in the portrayal of pregnancy. She's interested in the portrayal of love, and specifically teenage love. She points out that a lot of objections to the film came from an interesting source: the belief that it's not realistic for a teenager to find real romantic love. The fact is, our (American) culture doesn't talk that much about the possibility of love for teens. Subtly, there's a pervasive message that teenagers can't really fall in love, that somehow one needs more life experience or something in order to be validated in one's emotions, or capable of commitment. Parents tell their daughters not to sleep with their boyfriends, because regardless of the way that the girl feels, she can't really be in love.

And to some degree that's true. More life experience does in some ways deepen emotions or emotional commitment. But I think that it's true to a far lesser degree than many people suppose. Greater life experience also omplicates emotions and emotional commitments, and often those complications can make it more difficult for a couple to remain committed, not less. How quickly we forget that the great love stories of all time took place between teenagers. Romeo and Juliet (however ill-fated) were probably eighteen and fifteen respectively. Mary and Joseph were likewise probably in their teens. History is filled with the stories of teens who fell in love, got married, and lived happily ever after.

Our era, however, looks in askance on a twenty-year old who gets married. 'She's too young', people say, 'She doesn't know her own mind'. There's a certain element of patronization to this statement, especially since many parents were in their late teens or early twenties themselves when they were married. But there's also an assumption, which I don't think that many people realize that they're making: teens aren't capable of valid emotions, because of their age. I think that teens are capable of a lot more than society gives them credit for, personally.

But my personal opinions aside, what implications does this have for the church? Well, for one thing, it makes the whole 'abstinence until marriage' thing more difficult than it ever was before. Even fifty years ago, many couples were married before the age of twenty. Is it so surprising that many place the average age of first sexual experience now at nineteen? The average age of first sex hasn't changed, it's just that the average age of marriage has risen sharply.

Abstinence isn't the only thing that gets complicated when we implicitly tell teenagers that their emotions aren't valid, though. Many people make commitments to religion based on an emotional state, on the feeling of experiencing God. Over the past five or so years, it's been a growing concern among SBC churches that youth ministries are shrinking, and that it's harder to draw teens and youth to church. Most of the literature within the denomination that I've seen attributes this to the supposed evils of secular culture, but I think that's got far less to do with the problem than a more organic cause: it's difficult to keep teens involved in church when the church constantly sends an implicit message that their emotions and feelings aren't valid. From stories of 'summer camp romance', which are winked at patronizingly by adults in the youth group to bombardments of 'wait for marriage, and wait to marry until you're old enough' messaging in literature, teens are assailed by the idea that their judgment isn't good enough when it comes to their own emotions. And I think that this may be the single largest, and single least-acknowledged, factor in the attrition that most churches experience once their devout children become teenagers.

I think that it is time for the church to have a talk about love. And this time, amybe it will include all its members.

Women are hungry for more (Oh yeah, give it to me baby)

I'd like to take this opportunity to highlight the Women's Ministry of the South Carolina Baptist convention, and laugh at the misogyny and double entendres to be found on their website.

Let's start with the current evangelism theme for the state. To clarify, this 'evangelism theme' is the platform around which all women's bible studies are designed, and all women's literature is written. This is the primary thing that the state's Southern Baptist women will focus on for the next twelve or so months. What's the theme? "Request! Rejoice! Reproduce!" That's right, reproduce, in case you had any doubts that it is the official Convention stance that women belong in the house making babies.

The expanded phrases for each tagline do nothing to dispel the idea that the Convention is encouraging women to get back in the bedroom and be baby-machines: "Request by prayer, Rejoice in praise, Reproduce by producing fruit." In case you didn't catch that, "producing fruit" is a euphemism for having children. It comes from the Bible verse "Be fruitful and multiply", which is non-coincidentally the verse that comes up whenever contraception is mentioned in church. The argument is that women aren't supposed to use contraception or get abortions because that's interfering with God's command to be fruitful.

I couldn't believe it when I saw this theme, and to be fair, a number of female Convention employees also had problems with the campaign. But their objections to the (entirely male) leadership of the Convention produced responses of "it's too late to change". Heaven forbid that female employees get the idea their sensibilities matter to the Convention leadership.

Let's talk about some other slogans for the Women's Ministry. Under the auspices of the "Reproduce!" as a theme, the main conference for women statewide is being called "Women are hungry for more!" That's a double entendre if I ever heard one, maybe even a triple entendre. Could the convention actually be exhorting women to have more sex? Or is it just to have more kids? It's as though all the sublimated sexuality (sublimated because women having sex is bad, of course) in the Southern Baptist doctrine is suddenly being expressed through a series of (unfortunately) inspired tagline choices from this Women's Ministry department.

What part of 'planned' do they not understand?

Lawmakers are to be congratulated for defeating an amendment that would have blocked Federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Blame Indiana Republican Mike Pence for the amendment, which specifically targeted Planned Parenthood by name, and tried to forbid the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services from giving them funds. Luckily, the Democratic majority shut the amendment down easily.

Sometimes I think some fundamentalist Christians have a translation device in their brains. Someone may say "family planning", but they hear "abortion". The two words get magically conflated. Just to clarify: the two are not the same. Family planning includes information about birth control, sexual health, and (believe it or not) pregnancy care as well as abortions. Planned Parenthood does worlds of good for teens and poor couples that can't afford birth control otherwise. They help with the sexual safety education that the government has been remiss in providing of late. They provide cheap pregnancy monitoring and advice about how to have a healthy pregnancy. When I was in college, I volunteered in a counseling agency for teens, and we regularly referred teens in need to Planned Parenthood. Often parents in denial are reluctant to buy birth control for a teen, or teens are afraid to confess that they may have an STD to an adult. Planned Parenthood is a resource for both of these problems, and teens are often almost ridiculously grateful for a place where they're sure that they won't be condemned for their sexual choices. Planned Parenthood prevents and treats more STDs than any other group I know of. I'd hate to see the country's sexual health situation without it. From my acquaintance with the group, abortion advising is only a minuscule part of the good work that they do.

Culture of silence, culture of scared

Big news in the Catholic world the last few days: the LA diocese agreed to pay $660 million in abuse lawsuit settlements. Today, the Vatican released a statement that the

"problem of the abuse of childhood and its adequate protection certainly does not regard only the (Catholic) Church, but also many other institutions".

I personally thought that this was a little tasteless, since it smacks of blame-sharing at a time when the Church should be sucking it up to take responsibility. But it's also sadly true. The majority of Catholic and Protestant congregations don't have policies in place designed to protect children from abusers. This makes the church a haven for paedophiles and molestors.

Part of the problem with church sexual abuse scandals is that the church itself unintentionally creates an atmosphere that is hostile to abuse victims, and therefore friendly to abusers. Churches everywhere preach the 'wickedness' of sex in many forms, whether through pronouncements about abstinence, vilification of church members who are percieved as promiscuous, emphasis on modesty and covering up the (implicitly shameful) body, or crusades against gay people and types of sex outside the missionary position. By contrast, not many sermons are preached about the evils of child molestation. It's such an obvious sin that pastors and priests (rightly) don't feel compelled to mention it. Because of this, though, what children hear on a continuous basis is a message of 'sex is bad, and people who have sex are bad people'.

In a culture that stifles mentions of sex as shameful and ungodly, is it any surprise that victims are reluctant to tell a Christian parent or church leader that they're being abused? A child who's being told weekly that being gay is evil is far less likely to report his male priest's advances than one who knows that he himself won't be looked down upon for the revelation. A church that reliably preaches that non-virgins are sinful may have a lot of trouble convincing young girls to tell a pastor that they are no longer a virgin because their teacher has been abusing them. Despite the Church's good intentions, the messages it's giving about sex and sexual abuse are decidedly mixed, particularly to children whose reasoning capacities aren't developed enough to tell the difference between 'he's sinful for making me do this', and 'I'm sinful for having participated, however unwillingly'.

It's for this reason that every denomination, and every individual congregation, needs to formulate and enforce policies designed to protect children. In an ideal world, the Church would drop its unreasonable sex-phobia (nowhere in the Bible does it directly say anything about many of the stances that the Church has adopted over the years on sex). The optimist in me hopes that one day even churches will come to a more progressive understanding of human sexuality. But in the meantime, steps must be taken to protect children:

• Adults should never be alone in a room with a single child.
  
• Parents should provide teachers and caretakers with a means of identifying them as the parents of their particular child when the child is dropped off into church care, and children should not be released from care to anyone but parents, after the parents provide appropriate identification.
  
• All teachers should submit to criminal background checks, and known molestors should not be allowed to teach or supervise children (many states have programs that allow businesses to check whether a person is a sexual criminal for free). This may seem like an obvious step, but most churches have no idea whether the people who teach and watch over their children are criminals or not.
  

All of these are common-sense tactics to reduce the likelihood of abuse. In a culture where sex is a taboo subject, churches should be obligated to take proactive steps to protect potential victims. Too bad most of them, like the Catholic Church in the LA case, will only issue tepid apologies when it's already decades too late.