Story-Making as Shalom-Making

(On October 24, 2015, I delivered this keynote address at the Christian Courier Story-maker’s Symposium, celebrating that Christian newspaper’s 70th anniversary. Give and take some spur of the moment revisions and minus introductory remarks and the power point slides, this is the presentation I gave.)

I am going to show a music video as part of my talk today. But before I do that, I am going to read three passages from the Bible. There are well known Bible passages. And then, I will give some background info so that you can appreciate the video better, then show the video. And after that, I will try and tie them all together in my talk, somehow.

Read Genesis 11:1-9; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Proverbs 14:12.

I am going to show you a music video by Sinead O’Connor. Sinead O’Connor, if you don’t know, is an Irish singer, raised Roman Catholic.

Sinead O’Connor
By Pymouss (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

There are a couple of things you need to know about her in order to fully appreciate the music video I am about to show you. First is that Sinead became an international music star in 1990 when her hit song Nothing Compares to You hit No. 1 in several countries including the UK and the USA. Nothing Compares to You, which I think is still the song that most people remember Sinead for, is basically a song about a woman lamenting the departure of her lover, as nothing is the same without him in her life because, well, nothing compares to him. Its accompanying music video also became iconic, where the video comprised almost entirely of a close up of Sinead’s face as she sings the song. Remember this iconic close up shot (for the video).

A note about Sinead’s shaven head – she originally shaved it as a protest against traditional views of women, it became her trademark but also became part of her identity. She once said, “I don’t feel like me unless I have my hair shaved. So even when I’m an old lady, I’m going to have it.” [Barkham, Patrick (20 February 2007). “The Bald Truth”.The Guardian (London).]

One other thing that Sinead O’Connor is (in)famous for is her appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1992, where during her performance, she presented a photo of Pope John Paul II to the camera and ripped the photo to pieces and said, “Fight the real enemy.” Sinead, throughout her career, has, shall we say, a testy relationship with the church? She has often criticized organised religion although she has said before in interviews that she still considers herself a Christian. She is an outspoken feminist and had spoken against child abuse in the church.

That’s what you need to know to more fully appreciate the music video (embedded below).

Biblical Maternal Images for God

Mother’s_day_udit1 from Wikimedia Commons

Mother’s Day makes me think about God’s maternal side. Christianity has been guilty of a patriarchal history that has been oppressive of women. Our conception of God as masculine, e.g. God as Father or King, certainly contributes to our slide into patriarchy. Although written in patriarchal contexts, the Bible itself does not refer to God exclusively in masculine metaphors. There are, albeit few, feminine metaphors used to describe God in the Bible. In this post, I want to highlight the maternal or motherly metaphors used.

How Traditional Are Traditional Gender Roles?

Image via Wikipedia

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) once had a reality-based show called, “The Week the Women Went”. Apparently, all of a town’s women left their men to fend for themselves for a week. I didn`t see an episode but the ads suggested that its entertainment value was in seeing how the poor men struggle in their housekeeping, cooking, cleaning and child caring duties normally done by the women. The show assumes traditional gender roles of the stay-at-home woman and the out-to-work man.

Are Paul’s Writings Anti-Women?

(This post is an update of an article originally published in The Banner, March 2004, pp. 34-36. )

“The Bible is a sexist book and oppressive to women.” That is a message Christian students often hear repeated in the classrooms of secular universities. I once had a non-Christian female student ask me why the Bible is so patriarchal and even misogynist. Almost inevitably, such accusations point to the apostle Paul’s writings in the New Testament about women’s roles in marriage and the church as evidence of the Bible’s anti-woman stance.

I often counter by suggesting that the Bible is not anti-woman but is rather affirmative of women (and of men!). The idea that Scripture is misogynist often stems from readings that fail to take into account historical contexts. For instance, there’s a big difference between claiming that the Old Testament sanctions patriarchy (male dominated society) from that it reveals God’s workings within a patriarchal society.

For this article, I will narrow my focus on the apostle Paul. Are Paul’s writings anti-women? I believe Paul’s writings affirm women as spiritual and social equals with men before God. But what about some of Paul’s statements that sound so offensive to our modern ears? We need to understand these statements in their proper historical context. Due to space limitations, we can look at only a few of Paul’s controversial statements.