The Preacher's Wife: the precarious power of evangelical women celebrities by Kate Bowler
In The Preacher's Wife Kate Bowler explores how women in evangelical churches and circles have managed to carve out their own place in the world of the evangelical celebrity. While most evangelical churches don't allow women to be in positions of authority, many of the women in this book have managed to circumvent that rule, at least on the surface. But, because their power hinges on the men in their lives, that power is precarious and the double-standards and rules for women are overwhelming. Bowler explores the various ways evangelical women's precarious power plays out - the preacher, the homemaker, the talent, the counselor, and the beauty, but almost never in the pulpit or leading an entire church. The Preacher's Wife is meticulously researched, yet very readable. It took me longer than it should have to get through this book because it was also a hard read in a lot of ways. In the evangelical church there are two views of women: egalitarian (men and women are equal in all ways) and complementarian (belief that God has ordained men as the head of the family and the church and women cannot lead men in any way). I am firmly in the egalitarian camp, but I'm also an evangelical Christian. Reading about how so many evangelical churches continue to treat women as second class Christians is just hard to read for me. I truly don't understand why Christian women would work so hard to keep themselves in a lesser position when I do NOT believe that is what God intends for us. But, Bowler does a great job with this topic and it is very eye-opening. I'm hopeful that in another few decades we'll look back and see how evangelical women have made more strides in equality within the Church.
Some quotes I liked:
"For women, this is an era of almost - almost feminist, almost patriarchal, almost progressive, and almost regressive - and in these pages we hold the prism of their experiences up to the light. The lives of public women invite us to ask again what Americans expect from women in the spotlight; and whether they will ever grow used to women's presence in the main seats of power, in the pulpit, in the corner office, or in the White House. The women of megaministry are exceptional, but they are not simply exceptions. They are religious reflections of almost-mythic American ideals of women as wives and mothers, pillars and martyrs, in a culture divided over whether women should lean in or opt out." (p. 16)
"The roles of wife and mother took on a decidedly populist tone in Christian circles with the campaign to stop the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). In 1970, the National Organization for Women (NOW), founded by Betty Friedan, stepped up public pressure to amend the American constitution to include a ban on sex discrimination. Within two years the House of Representatives and the Senate had adopted an amendment that then had to be ratified by thirty-eight states. But by the mid-1970s, a vocal and well-organized STOP ERA effort effectively made celebrities out of two women who professionalized their roles as politically savvy mothers. Phyllis Schlafly, a lawyer and Catholic mother of six, found the Eagle Forum, and Beverly LaHaye, mother of four and wife of famous pastor Tim LaHaye, launched the Concerned Women for America..." (p. 73)
"'It's part of why our church doesn't allow husbands and wives to be on staff together. I think it's been a great thing because it prevents too much power from being concentrated in one place. It's also our rule that only one person from every family can be on staff, so a son can't be on the same board as his father, for instance.' Many of the largest non-denominational churches, especially from prosperity gospel traditions, did not have strong governing institutions outside of the pastoral family, and, as Donna [of Westover Church in Greensboro, NC] observed, this policy asked a great deal from both husband and wife." (p. 108)
"A counseling degree offered women in evangelical contexts a large measure of freedom. These degrees, or corresponding degrees in social work, qualified them for work in a variety of roles, from religious schools, private practice, children and family services, hospitals, and funeral homes to homeless shelters. In a congregational setting, the work of counseling did not seem to trigger the same concerns around authority and oversight." (p. 171)
"As bearers of children, women's bodies are gatekeepers of life and death. In a culture largely reluctant to make news of miscarriage and stillbirth public, women's ministries became a sanctuary for the enormous range of emotions that arise when some lives begin and others end...The separate sphere of women's ministry was opened to reveal a place of holy sorrow." (p. 179-80)
"Likewise, Beverly LaHaye initially felt sorry for a woman being berated by her husband for looking tired on a date, but then sympathized with the husband for not having a wife with a little more pride in herself. 'What a pity to see a Christian woman who has developed her inner beauty but has done nothing to the frame she must house it in,' she fretted. The common argument given was that men were visual creatures, which made women's appearance a part of her wifely duties. Her beauty and sexuality were not her own...[and when male pastors cheated or pursued infidelity] There was always a woman to blame for a man who strayed." (p. 222-23)
"On a more basic level, these concerns about dangerous sexuality made it difficult for women to operate in ministry without fear of the 'appearance of evil,' a commonly used extra-biblical phrase to indict unsupervised male-female interaction. Though women were lauded as keepers of the home, they were often treated as temptresses. Take, for instance, the common practice of refusing to allow a man and a woman to be unchaperoned. Billy Graham famously made it a policy that he would never be alone with a woman other than his wife...However, in practice, it had two significant effects. First, the consequence of sex-segregated spaces was that women would find it very different to gain powerful mentors...Secondly, it sexualized interactions between the genders." (p. 227)
"As we have seen in each chapter, the heights to which Christian celebrity women could rise depended on their ability to master the rules of complementarianism and capitalism, finding financial stability without appearing to be theologically overreaching. Women found a public voice in credentialing themselves as wives, mothers, and homemakers. From Elisabeth Elliot to Joanna Gaines, audiences rewarded those who opened the door to let them into their famously Christian homes. The title of 'wife and mom' was so powerful that even the popular writer Rachel Held Evans was rejected by a Christian publisher on the grounds that, since she was not yet a mother, she could not write authoritatively about Christian womanhood." (p. 243)
[When Beth Moore responded to the Donald Trump audio tape of "grab 'em by the pussy."] "She [Tweeted]: 'Try to absorb how acceptable the disesteem and objectifying of women has been when some Christian leaders don't think it's that big a deal. I'm one among many women sexually abused, misused, stared down, heckled, talked naughty to. Like we liked it. We didn't. We're tired of it.'...For her boldness, she was asked by male evangelical leaders to repent, and she was deserted by some of her female supporters. Attendance at her events dropped, and some women swore they would never buy another of her bible studies again." (p. 245-46)
Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
Sylvie and Amy Lee are sisters, but grew up very differently. Sylvie spent the first 9 years of her life in the Netherlands being raised by her grandmother, aunt, and uncle while her parents got established in the United States. When Amy was 2 years old her parents brought Sylvie back to live with them in New York, but the time apart was hard on Sylvie who felt like a stranger to her parents. Fast forward 20+ years and Sylvie disappears while back in the Netherlands for her grandmother's funeral. Amy flies out there to try to find out what happened to Sylvie and uncovers a huge family secret that may explain Sylvia's disappearance.
I REALLY liked Jean Kwok's previous two books, but I did not like this one. The beginning with Sylvie's disappearance is interesting, but once you start finding out more about what happened during her visit to the Netherlands it was just a lot of really weird stuff that seemed very forced. The pseudo-sexual relationship between Lukas and Estelle is SUPER weird. In fact all the Netherlands characters are VERY VERY odd and just didn't make sense or help the story. The ending with what really happened to Sylvie is the WORST. Not to give anything away, but it's not a good ending. This was just a weird, weird book and I would not recommend it. I was interested enough in the story despite the weirdness to keep reading and find out what happened to Sylvie though.
The Old Farmer's Almanac Vegetable Gardner's Handbook by Old Farmer's Almanac
Even though I'm a semi-experienced gardener, this is a book that I might buy because it had so much helpful information. The first part of the book "Ground Rules" goes over different types of gardening (raised beds, container gardening, etc.), testing and building soil, composting, starting seeds and knowing when to plant. Part 2 covers Vegetables and Growing Concerns. In the Vegetables section each vegetable gets a few pages that covers planting, care, common diseases and pests, and harvest. In Growing Concerns dealing with disease and pests are covered in more detail and watering and fertilizing are also covered. There are also several journal pages throughout the book for keeping notes about your garden. There is a LOT of really good, helpful information in this book for a beginner or more experienced gardener as there is always more to learn with gardening.
Digital Minimalism: choosing a focused life in a noisy world by Cal Newport
Digital minimalists aren't Luddites who refuse to use technology. Instead they are people who are intentional about how they use technology, instead of letting technology use them. Newport's book is a call to Digital Minimalism in our tech-saturated world. Newport feels like we need to go beyond recent calls for "digital sabbaticals" and instead examine what digital tools we want to use, for what purposes, and when to use them. The book is divided into two parts - Foundations and Practices. Foundations describes our current tech-obsessed culture, digital minimalism, and Newport's "digital declutter" plan. Practices explores 4 lifestyle practices of digital minimalists - spend time alone, don't click "like," reclaim leisure, and join the attention resistance. This is a really interesting book. While I do use my smartphone and also have a tablet and laptop at home, I absolutely HATE seeing people just glued to their phones ALL THE TIME. I'm a big reader and I've had several people comment to me things like, "You're the only person who ever brings a book [to a waiting room]." But, I am still sucked in to mindlessly scrolling through Facebook or Instagram on my phone - habits I'd like to change and hence reading this book. I'm probably not too far away from being a digital minimalist, but this book has definitely inspired me to think about how I use technology and how I can be more selective with what I choose to use.
Some quotes I liked:
"Because digital minimalists spend so much less time connected than their peers, it's easy to think of their lifestyle as extreme, but the minimalists would argue that this perception is backward: what's extreme is how much time everyone else spends staring at their screens." (p. xv)
"Here, for example, is how Kate described [her digital declutter] experience to me: 'The day the declutter was over, I raced back to Facebook, to my old blogs, to Discord, gleeful and ready to dive back in - and then, after about thirty minutes of aimless browsing, I kind of looked up and thought...why am I doing this? This is...boring? This isn't bringing me any kind of happiness. It took a declutter for me to notice that these technologies aren't actually adding anything to my life.'" (p. 80)
"To put this in context, previous technologies that threatened solitude, from Thoreau's telegraph to Storr's car phone, introduced new ways to occasionally interrupt time alone with your thoughts, whereas the iPod provided for the first time the ability to be continuously distracted from your own mind." (p. 100)
"The smartphone provided a new technique to banish these remaining slivers of solitude: the quick glance. At the slightest hint of boredom, you can now surreptitiously glance at any number of apps or mobile-adapted websites that have been optimized to provide you an immediate and satisfying dose of input from other minds." (p. 101)
"Young people born between 1995 and 2012, a group Twenge calls 'iGen,' exhibited remarkable differences as compared to the Millennials that preceded them. One of the biggest and most troubling changes was iGen's psychological health. 'Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed,' Twenge writes, with much of this seemingly due to a massive increase in anxiety disorders. 'It's not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades.'" (p. 106)
"'[Thoreau's] intention was not to inhabit a wilderness,' he writes, 'but to find wildness in a suburban setting." (p. 110)
"In recent years, as the boundary between work and life blends, jobs become more demanding, and community traditions degrade, more and more people are failing to cultivate the high-quality leisure lives that Aristotle identifies as crucial for human happiness. This leaves a void that would be near unbearable if confronted, but that can be ignored with the help of digital noise. It's now easy to fill the gaps between work and caring for your family and sleep by pulling out a smartphone or tablet, and numbing yourself with mindless swiping and tapping...The most successful digital minimalists, therefore, tend to start their conversion by renovating what they do with their free time - cultivating high-quality leisure before culling the worst of their digital habits." (p. 168-69)
"We might tell ourselves there's no greater reward after a hard day at the office than to have an evening entirely devoid of plans or commitments. But we then find ourselves, several hours of idle watching and screen tapping later, somehow more fatigued than when we began...if you instead rouse the motivation to spend that same time actually doing something - even if it's hard - you'll likely end the night feeling better." (p. 176-77)
The Complete Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem
This is a very cute collection of the Brambly Hedge stories. I was familiar with Brambly Hedge, but I didn't realize how old the stories were - the first four books were published in 1980! I LOVE the detailed illustrations, especially the ones that show a larger overview of the whole tree stump/home with all the little rooms and passageways. It reminds me of the Redwall series (but for younger kids). My favorite two stories were The High Hills and The Sea Story - I wouldn't mind if Barklem did a few stories from the Saltapple mice family's perspective. Overall, a cute collection of stories with wonderful illustrations!
Adorning the Dark: thoughts on community, calling, and the mystery of making by Andrew Peterson
I love Andrew Peterson and think he is one of the most creative people out there right now. He's a talented singer/songwriter, has written both fiction and non-fiction books, draws visual art, and has created a community for other like-minded Christian artists in the Rabbit Room and the Hutchmoot conferences. Adorning the Dark isn't a manual for how to be a creative success, but more about how as a Christian we are all (artist/creative or not) called to try to reveal God's love in the current darkness of our day. His way of doing that is mostly through music, but also through writing. His advice for aspiring songwriters/authors/artists - just keep doing something. Because something is always better than nothing and that something might turn into the thing that reaches someone or connects you to the right person at the right time. Reading this book feels like you're just having a long conversation with Andrew and like I always do after seeing Andrew perform I feel inspired. So, whatever your talents are do something to glorify God today.
Some quotes I liked:
"I began to understand the peril of asking God to let you write songs that would comfort the lonely and brokenhearted - peril, because the only way to do that is to walk through the dark forest of loneliness and heartbreak." (p. 90)
"I decided early on that I would rather my children listen to a great song by someone who wasn't a Christian than a bad song by someone who was, so my kids grew up on not just Switchfoot and Rich Mullins but also Paul Simon and Counting Crows and James Taylor...Some well-meaning soul gave Skye a CD one day and I recoiled with horror when I saw the hot-pink cover. It was a CD of 'tween' praise and worship songs and the covered featured four well-meaning teenybopper girls with flying-V electric guitars...I planned to sneak the CD away before Skye had a chance to listen to it. But, as if in slow motion, she grabbed the CD and tore off the cellophane, then jammed it into the minivan's player...Sure enough, the music was terrible, and I drove sulkily, hands at ten and two, trying to figure out a way to repair the damage. Before twenty seconds had passed, little eight-year-old Skye ejected the CD with a wince of distaste and said, 'I don't like it. Can we just listen to Alison Krauss instead?' That, dear reader, was one of my greatest parenting victories." (p. 133-34)
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
In the 1960's in Tallahassee, FL Elwood Curtis takes Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words to heart. He truly believes that any day now Jim Crow laws will disappear and he will be seen "as good as anyone else." But, being in the wrong place at the wrong time puts Elwood in the Nickel Academy, a "reform school" that is more torture chamber than school or even prison. In Nickel, Elwood meets Turner who's there for the second time. Elwood struggles to align his deeply held beliefs in equality and justice with the reality of Nickel, while Turner has learned how to carve out a safer spot for himself at Nickel by flying somewhat under the radar of the staff. When Elwood decides to seek justice during a state inspection he ends up putting himself and Turner at great risk - and only one of them will survive their time at Nickel.
As much as I loved The Underground Railroad it was a hard read. Nickel Boys is also a hard read, but in a different way. It's not nearly as graphic as The Underground Railroad, but it's almost worse in that it's over a hundred years later and white people are still working overtime to try to keep blacks "in their place" and kill them when they try to fight back or stand up. I think a lot of white people want to act like after slavery ended things were better and just want to ignore the whole Jim Crow history of our country. In order for things to truly change we have to acknowledge our history - even the hard parts - and Whitehead does an amazing job of shining a light on something many people would like to ignore or forget.
It's Okay Not to Be Okay: moving forward one day at a time by Sheila Walsh
Everyone has experienced a moment when you wish you could start over or suffered a major loss. Whatever decisions or circumstances led to that moment, Sheila Walsh wants to encourage you to face the pain head on and start again. For many Christians it's hard to admit that you are not okay and are struggling, but throughout the Bible God tells us that He is there for us and will never let us down. In It's Okay Not to Be Okay Walsh walks the reader through practical steps to deal with whatever pain or loss you're going through and find better ways to connect with God.
I picked this book up because I really loved her previous book In the Middle of the Mess, but this one didn't resonate with me as much. While her message is good, it felt somewhat repetitive to me. But, maybe for the right reader that is exactly what they need to hear/read right now. I did like that each chapter ends with some questions for journaling/reflecting and also Bible verses to remind ourselves of who God says we are.
A quote I liked:
"'Look at where you spend most of your time and that will tell you what matters to you.' I thought about that for a while. Some seasons of life are more demanding than others...But if you're like me, we find time for what we think we need to relax. You might love to bury your face in a good book with the bathroom door closed! Or if you have an allegiance to a particular television show, you'll make time for it. I've had to ask myself, Does what I'm doing with my spare time refresh me or am I simply zoning out? Now, don't get me wrong: I think at times zoning out is just what we need, but it doesn't work toward the renewing of our mind. That's where the choices we make determine whether we're working with the Holy Spirit or not." (p. 68-9)
