Men's Issues

OK, Iguana readers—time to get to work! Get out there and harvest those thistles!

“Marc,” I can hear you saying, “Mondays are hard enough! Please—just cut to the chase and tell us what today’s nonsense is….”

Right—I came upon it by Nicholas Kristof, of The New York Times, who writes frequently about human and sexual trafficking. So today, he was writing about Becca Stevens, an Episcopal priest who over ten years ago started Magdalene, a program to help women get off the streets, get clean, get a job, and get on their feet. Here, taken from the program’s website, are highlights of the program:

▪                For two years, we offer housing, food, medical and dental needs, therapy, education and job training without charging the residents or receiving government funding.

▪                Our six homes function without 24-hour live-in staff, relying on residents to create a supportive community, maintain recovery, and share household tasks.

▪                Women come to Magdalene from prison, the streets and from across the Southeast and the country.

▪                The women of Magdalene/Thistle Farms range in age from 20-50, and many have been sexually abused between the ages of 7-11, began using alcohol or drugs by 13, have been arrested on average a hundred times, or have spent about 12 years on the street prostituting.

▪                72% percent of the women who join Magdalene are clean and sober 2 1/2 years after beginning the program.

 “OK,” you’re saying, “what’s this about thistles?”

Well, how many employers are going to give a job to a person with a hundred arrests? So Stevens hit on the idea of making a little business—it would give the women something to do, teach them skills, and give them a sense of purpose. And she chose the thistle because it grows everywhere—very often it was the only flower in the sites where the women plied their trade.

Which may be a misnomer, suggesting as it does that these women have any control in what they do, or that they do it willingly. The reality is that we have slaves on the streets of America. Consider, as Kristof wrote, the woman in the Magdalene program who came in with 14 tattoos with which her pimp had branded her.

And how did she get onto the streets? Very often, by being abused as a child. And then it’s the familiar story. Suffering, she leaves home, and meets a charming guy, who’s got money. Best of all, he loves her; he treats her like a queen. And then something happens, he becomes enraged, and then he puts her out on the street. Here’s what Kristof says about one woman:

When her pimp was shot dead, she was recruited by another, Kenny, who ran a “stable” of four women and assigned each of them a daily quota of $1,000. Anyone who didn’t earn that risked a beating.

This, of course, assumes that the pimp is operating in the traditional fashion. Increasingly, pimps are going electronic, and using websites to offer women for sale. I’m sitting in a café as I write this, but I have to just go online to view the most common of these sites—basically a “Craiglist” that has everything including humans for sale. I typed in “Madison, Wisconsin” and discovered that there are 25 entries for today alone. Oh, and it’s not even 1PM there.

Still wondering about those thistles? Well, you can support Becca Stevens and her work in a variety of ways. You can grow lavender in your garden (Becca doesn’t say it, but presumably she wants you to send it to her….). You can buy products like body oils, soaps, and candles. You can collect old white clothing for making paper; and yes, you can harvest thistles. Oh, and you can also, of course, just send money.

I can’t help thinking that if you’re a man—there are some other, very simple but very necessary things that you can do. You can stay off the streets, and refuse to hire these women. You can speak out and against those who do. You can stop making jokes about prostitutes, as well as stopping people who do.

I saw a YouTube clip of a trainer who does sensitivity awareness at institutions that have had situations of abuse. He made several—one of which is that as important as it is to empower women (or rather for them to empower themselves), we have to stop defining issues such as prostitution and domestic violence as “women’s issues.” Why? Because guys automatically tune out when they hear the term. And secondly, all of these women have brothers, fathers, uncles. In short, us—men.

So maybe it’s time for men to act. Look, everybody has a smart phone—there are cameras in everyone’s pocket or purse. Why not photograph those men who are out there soliciting sex, and put them on a website—perhaps called predators.com. That way, every mother, sister or wife could check it out every morning over coffee.

Oh, and for any pimp caught?

Time to bring back public stonings?

The World According to Spong

Well, here’s what the guy believes: 

Twelve points

1.     Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

2.     Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

3.     The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

4.     The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

5.     The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

6.     The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

7.     Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

8.     The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

9.     There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.

10.   Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

11.   The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

12.   All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

“The guy” is a former Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong, who has written a book called The Sins of Scripture, which argues that the Bible cannot and must not be taken literally. So how does one read the Bible, the interviewer asks in the clip below? Spong believes you should read it as a progression, from the tribal beliefs of the Old Testament through the teaching of the life of Christ.

Well, that was interesting enough for me to check out the Reverend Spong in Wikipedia, which is where I got the twelve theses above.

Well, I thought I knew the term “theism,” but did I? Is Spong using the term in some specialized way? Here’s the definition, also by way of Wikipedia:

Theism, in the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists.[1] In a more specific sense, theism is commonly a monotheistic doctrine concerning the nature of a deity, and that deity's relationship to the universe.[2][3][4][5] Theism, in this specific sense, conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe. As such theism describes the classical conception of God that is found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and some forms of Hinduism. 

Ummm—I’m a bear of very little brain, especially where religion is concerned, but I’d be curious to know: why is theism dead? And in what way are we to talk about God?

Could it be the ocean, the Goldberg Variations, the love of a mother holding her child moments after birth? Because if that’s God, I might have a shot, here.

Here’s what Spong has to say:

Right—so whatever God is (or are—which to me makes sense theologically, if not grammatically), Jesus is not the incarnation of her / him / it / them. Oh—and I looked up Christology, and yes, it means exactly what you think—the study of the nature and person of Christ. That said, how are we to look at Christ? As the most perfect representation of God?

All of the rest of the theses make perfect sense to me. But apparently, somebody with a better ear for theology didn’t think so; the Reverend Rowan Williams said they embodied “confusion and misinterpretation.”

Spong has various other contentions, some of which are contentious. He’s believed since before Dan Brown that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Christ. Why? Well, for one thing, Mary Magdalene in one gospel goes to claim the body of Christ—no woman of the time could have done that, were she not his wife.

Spong also decries the fact that “religion,” as it’s commonly seen, has become almost totally a negative thing—the priest abuse scandals, the exclusion of women in many faiths, the prohibition of homosexuality, the total focus on sex, about which he thinks the church knows nothing. Spong feels that two things are happening—the fundamentalist movement is hysterically reaching backward, and the mainstream churches have nothing to offer the rest of us. And so, we’re at a crucial moment when Christianity is going to have to change, to re-invent itself.

And about scripture? Well, first Spong points out that the first gospel of the New Testament was written 50 years after the death of Christ; in addition, it was written in Greek, whereas Christ spoke Aramaic. And he tears through a lot of stuff: nothing, he says, in the scripture paints Mary, the mother of Christ, as a particularly saintly, or even supportive mother, nor is she very prominent in the gospel. Oh, and by the way—the virgin birth stuff? Concocted in the ninth decade, by Matthew; none of the earlier writers ever made the claim. Oh, and he says that no respecting / respected theologian believes it. What’s the source of the confusion? Matthew didn’t know Hebrew, and had to read in Greek. So when he read in Isaiah 7:14 that a virgin shall conceive, he was reading a Greek translation of a Hebrew word that did not mean “virgin” but rather a young woman.

Oh, and another news flash—there weren’t twelve apostles but fifteen. Why? Because there are 15 guys in the New Testament who seem to be apostles, and so we have to assume that Thaddeus was Judas, and they got the names wrong. Poppycock, says Spong. And speaking of disciples—Jesus had both male and female disciples.

Spong says that he started out as a fundamentalist, and only changed when he discovered, at age fourteen, that his fundamentalism was impeding his growth and development. And what does he say now? “God is beyond my human capacity to ever know fully.”

Right—I can get that. In fact, I can buy into all of what Spong says. But I think he’s articulated all of what we shouldn’t be thinking or doing. That’s great, but…

…what is he proposing instead?

On Faith

I shudder to go here, because there’s no help for it—I am as unable to experience God in any of his / her various guises as a rock. And that means that I’m one of just 5% of the American population who are atheist.

Which is why I found myself watching Richard Dawkins yesterday, as I munched on a tuna fish sandwich in the café. Granted, Dawkins goes after the most extreme of the religious nuts—he tracks down Ted Haggard in Colorado, and yes, I can now tell you: it’s quite likely that the reverend was doing cocaine and call boys. Haggard, perhaps annoyed by Dawkins’s pristine Queen’s English, accuses Dawkins of intellectual arrogance.

Well, Dawkins gets around—from Colorado to the Middle East, where he interviews a Jew turned Muslim from New York. The Muslim angrily accuses Dawkins of dressing women as whores; Dawkins retorts hotly that he doesn’t dress women, they dress themselves. Not good enough for the Muslim—by allowing women to dress as whores, it’s as good as dressing them. Short version: women are chattel, to be dressed according to male dictates.

Every bush has a nut hiding underneath it, and Dawkins beats every bush. There’s the Reverend Keenan Roberts, who hit on the wonderful idea of the Hell House—a dramatic working-out of the post-life experience throughout all time of those who don’t personally accept Christ. Here’s the clip:

Oh, and here’s the description, as provided in YouTube:

Check out this "movie trailer" promo for the upcoming 2013 FIRE & THE FLAME theatrical outreach, presented by New Destiny Christian Center of Thornton, CO. This heaven and hell drama wowed audiences last year, and the spiritual impact was incredible! This year's production will feature 4 new scenes. Performances will be: Saturday, March 23 at 6pm, Sunday March 24 at 6pm, Saturday March 30 at 6pm, and Easter Sunday March 31 at 8:30am and 11am. All performances are free. A love offering will be received. Nursery available for children through 3 years of age. For more info visit www.Godestiny.org or call 303.289.1547. Senior Pastor: Keenan Roberts.   

In fact, this clip is substantially tamer than what Dawkins filmed—and Dawkins got right into it with the pastor. How old, he asks, should a child be before he is allowed to see the play—which features leaping flames and gay people groaning in agony and the devil leaping around tormenting people? And the reverend has the answer—twelve would be a good age. Dawkins protests—wouldn’t that be somewhat searing for a child’s mind? Better that, says Roberts, than growing up godless and falling into perdition.

Well, Dawkins goes through every lunatic religion and denomination—though curiously, he missed the Mormons—until at the very end, he found himself a good English Anglican, whose moderate views fell like manna in the desert.

Today, I started out watching Dawkins on the third of his series on The Age of Reason; today’s topic being the growth of “alternative medicine.” And I had just gotten to the wonderful picture of Dawkins sitting bemused and very much open-eyed as all the others in the room visualized a pearl, into which they were invited to step, and there they would find…

…their real selves!

Well, Dawkins has to find out about that, so he goes off to interview the healer, who claims to be able to alter DNA and who also informs him that most people have a double strand of DNA.

Dawkins is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, in evolutionary biology.

He was, then, very much interested in the topic—were there people who had more or less than a double strand of DNA?

The healer doesn’t miss a beat.

“The people of Atlantis had 12 strands of DNA,” she explains.

Predictably, Dawkins goes nuts.

Dawkins thinks that reason and science are under attack, and is out to challenge all religions—on the grounds that they promote irrational thought as well as divisions.

I’m both more extreme and less extreme. Though I cannot feel God, there are people who can, and who struggle as hard as they can to live up to beliefs that are truly admirable. And these people, acting together as a community, can accomplish what I—a solitary atheist—cannot. And these people adopt a theology that is both liberating and challenging—one that could help the world, if it ever got adopted.

My friend Susan, in fact, is one such person, and sent me a clip of another such person: John Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop. Right—if I could hear God, I would hang with Spong, and his flock. Check out a clip of a remarkable man:



I said that I was both less and more extreme than Dawkins. Why? Because for every man like Spong, there are men like Scott Lively, the evangelical who has exported homophobia to Uganda and Russia. This is a level of hypocrisy and hatred that even Dawkins doesn’t contemplate. And according to Wikipedia, Evangelical Protestants make up 19% of the American population. The mainstream protestants? 15%.

So I’m on the fence. In general, I cannot enter churches, and the smell of burnt-out candles is particularly upsetting to me—I associate the smell with the end of services at Christ Presbyterian Church. I dislike seeing crosses anywhere, and especially around people’s necks. And nuns—of which we have a full convent in Old San Juan? Don’t ask….

But before I throw out the bathwater, I’d like to see if somehow, somewhere, there might be a baby….

The Missing Voice

It was my shrink who posed the question: where are the Imams? We can do things, he felt—install more video cameras, get better surveillance, collect intelligence better—but look, that’ll never be enough. These two kids—who everyone describes as polite, outgoing, typical young adults—couldn’t have been more Americanized. So why aren’t the Imams saying this: anyone who kills an innocent bystander is not Muslim, he has violated the religion, he is out of the church.

Well, that was something to think about, on the bus on the way home. And interesting to reflect on the people I had seen, since the tragedy unfolded. There were the family members: the mother fiercely defending her sons; the father, incredulous and also insisting on the innocence of his children; both uncles, one who voluntarily came forward, the other who had deferred to (presumably) the elder. There were the neighbors: the woman who heard Tamerlan’s angry wife shout at him late on summer nights; the car mechanic who asked how much Dzhokhar’s fancy shoes cost. There were former classmates and teachers, as well as boxing and wrestling coaches. In short, anybody who had passed one of these brothers on the street and said hello was getting up and telling the world about it.

So who didn’t phone in?

The Imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC).

Who is not, according to him, a coward. Instead, he’s a six-foot-five-inch guy named Suhaib Webb who started life out Christian, lost his faith and joined a gang, got tangled up in a drive-by shooting, and emerged Muslim from it all in 1992. So he gave up being a DJ, went to the University of Oklahoma, got a degree in Education. Then, from 2004-2010, he studied at Al-Azhar in Cairo. He has been the Imam of the ISBCC since 2011.

And there’s stuff to like about him. He joined, in 2010, a group of Imams who went to Auschwitz and then denounced those who refused to believe the existence of the Holocaust. He raised 20,000$ for widows and children of firefighters after September 11.

There’s something else. In a YouTube clip about “Yes, There can be an American Islam,” he seems to come out as a centrist, not an extremist. It should be about synthesis, he tells his kids, it should be about being in the center. And certainly he comes across that way on a “Face the Nation” clip that I watched, also on YouTube. There, he appears with three or four religious leaders, and he’s quick to establish his credentials—his love of the Celtics, his Oklahoma roots. Then he throws in a little nugget—his is the fastest growing faith in the US, with 2 million members, 65% of whom are young. That’s as big as the Episcopalians.

Right—so am I being fair to this guy, when I make the charge that every clerk who sold a pair of sneakers to one of the brothers was on TV last week: where was the (presumed) spiritual leader of at least the elder brother?

Well, I’m a son of a newspaper guy…I had to balance this out.

And today, in fact, I read his “No Room for Radicals” post on his website, SuhaibWebb.com. Originally published in the New York Times, it is not much, despite its title, of a condemnation of the Tsarnaev brothers actions. Webb’s point is that there is no need, as Peter T. King, the Republican Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence is asking for, for increased scrutiny of the Muslim community. Why? Because the younger Tsarnaev apparently never stepped foot in a mosque, and the older found the moderate views expressed there “unpalatable.” In short, the mosque didn’t “radicalize” the brothers; blame the Internet.

It’s a point of view.

And there’s more. You know, of course, that I had to check out the guest post entitled “Gay Muslims: The Elephants in the (Prayer) Room.”

Well, it’s painful to read—no, not because it’s hateful or even condemnatory. It is, in fact, a plea for tolerance by a man, still in the closet, who has clearly struggled with being gay and Muslim, and who (sorry to drop the news here) is not quite out of the woods. “The number of times I have wished I weren’t gay…” he writes, and I remembered a time when I myself would have written the sentence.

About 30 years ago….

So I applaud Webb for taking it on, for addressing the issue. The question does rise to the surface, though—has American Islam made the progress that the Episcopal Church has on the issue? Do we have gay Imams, as we have gay bishops? (By the way, I am capitalizing “Imam” following the style of Webb’s website—why am I not capitalizing “bishop” in the same sentence?)

And I also could applaud the Imam’s reluctance to give Tamerlan Tsarnaev a proper burial; check out this quote from an article in the Christian Science Monitor:

Adds Yusufi Vali, executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, in an interview with CNN: “I don't care who or what [the alleged] criminals claim to be, but I can never recognize [them] as part of my city or my faith community.”

In fact, at least one Boston cleric, Imam Talal Eid, has refused to bury the elder Tsarnaev according to Islamic rites. “I would not be willing to do a funeral for him," he told The Huffington Post. "This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim.”

Hey—good words! And to answer a question raised by my shrink, there is no excommunication in Islam; it is theologically impossible for a group of Imams to get together and decide when to kick out an errant member out of the faith.

Another point—it might not be possible for a group of Imams to get together and speak out. Here’s what one website had to say about Islam:

There is no formal clergy, no ordaining body, and no hierarchy. The relationship between the individual and God is a direct one. No one besides God can declare what is lawful and what is sinful. No created being can bless another. Each individual is directly accountable to his or her Lord and Creator.

Right—so where are we left?

Not, to me, in a particularly good place. Even if the Tsarnaev brothers had no or minimal contact with the ICBCC, Webb is still the preeminent Muslim in the city. He’s perfectly justified in distancing himself and his organization from the brothers—in fact, that’s exactly what I want him to do.

There’s something else, and I’m gonna say it. Readers of this blog know that I am a very bad Buddhist, and also that I am as tone deaf to spiritual matters as my brother was to the trombone. So what do I know?

Right—here goes.

Each day, I take my walk, in the middle of which I come to the end of the path. To my right, the centuries-old walls to the city of San Juan soar up, to my left the mouth of the harbor is receiving cruise and cargo ships. In front of me is the ocean, which is battering the rocks, hurling spumes of white, frothy water to splatter on the blue sky. Mozart or Monteverdi or Mahler is filling my ears and brain. I stop for several minutes, I ponder, I contemplate. Mostly, I just…am.

I turn around and walk home again.

That’s as close as I can get.

The problem?

I look at the videos below, and I feel nothing of the peace, the serenity, the awe, and the joy of water leaping against a sky, of a breeze whispering across my skin, or of a mind meeting and melting into a trumpet.