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Posts from the ‘Gender/Sexuality’ Category

Nov 19

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Wednesday Miscellany: On Sex and Transcendence

Whenever a topic or cluster of topics keep showing up in different areas of my life and ministry, I eventually decide it’s worth paying attention to and, if possible, try to write something about it. When I can’t quite seem to come up with a solid piece of unified writing, I default to a “Miscellany” post. So, what follows is not necessarily a coherent argument, just a few short reflections and observations picked up over the last little while. Read more

Jul 12

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On Doing Our Duty

I attended the funeral of my childhood pastor yesterday. He was well into his nineties, had lived a good, long life whose shape was defined by faith and family. I didn’t know him well. I’m not sure that knowing the pastor well would have even been on my childhood radar as something desirable or even possible. The pastor was kind of like the librarian or the Zamboni driver at the ice rink—someone who was just always there. His sermons were not particularly riveting, nor did he exude charisma from the pulpit. He was just this stable given in my life. Actually, I should check that pernicious word “just.” In a world where so many lives are characterized by instability, chaos and confusion, where so much communication is reduced to marketing and manipulation, where so many relationships are temporary and self-serving, we could probably all use a few more stable unspectacular givens in our lives. Read more

May 22

31 Comments

Did You Hear the Thing That Guy Said?!

“Did you hear about that speech that the player from some football team gave? I don’t know his name, the quarterback, maybe? The team was called the Chiefs or something.” So began a conversation over dinner with my daughter the other day. She was of course referring to the by now (in)famous commencement address given by Kansas City Chiefs placekicker (not quarterback) Harrison Butker at Benedictine College in Atchison, KS. My daughter has never watched an NFL football game in her life. But she knew about this football player’s speech (and she had a few opinions). Which I found interesting. Read more

Oct 4

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“The Data Present Some Uncomfortable Realities”

My wife and I recently found ourselves at a function where we were seated with a young couple from Zimbabwe. They had met in Canada where they both came to study. They had completed their studies and were now young professionals in a large Canadian city. My wife is relentlessly curious and a good asker of questions. And she asked plenty throughout the dinner. This young couple’s story was a fascinating one in many ways, not least because it was told with such evident joy. Read more

Aug 31

4 Comments

On Bad Behaviour

Last week, I sat through my first diversity training session. My part time chaplaincy role at the provincial jail locates me under the purview of the Government of Alberta, evidently, and the government wanted to ensure that I was diversity certified. My expectations were, well, low (see here). I was expecting ninety-minutes of condescending lectures combined with contrived vignettes, simplistic question-and-answers, and sombre warnings of the importance of morally policing the behaviour of others, all informed by a woefully naïve anthropology. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Just kidding. It was pretty much exactly what I expected. Read more

Aug 17

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On Moral Inarticulacy

A brief follow-up to Tuesday’s post about how we are living in “morally inarticulate” times. In today’s New York Times, Pamela Paul compellingly and persuasively argues that we should not abandon the term “prostitution” for the supposedly more dignified and dignifying term “sex worker.” Calling a whole toxic ecosystem that feeds on poverty, addiction, violence, lust, and predation “sex work,” Paul argues, does not change the reality. This is not a job like any other and we shouldn’t describe it as such. Read more

Jun 20

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Our Sense of Self

I recently received an email from someone who had concerns about various SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) initiatives being implemented in the school system where they worked. This person had strong convictions on the matter but expressed something bordering on helplessness when it comes to how to wade into an arena where it seems like there are landmines all around, where it seems virtually impossible to have a sane and respectful conversation that does not immediately descend into polarized tribalism and overheated rhetoric. “Well, join the club” I felt like saying. Read more

Jun 15

5 Comments

On (Actual) Diversity and the Changing Face of Christianity

To live in the post-Christian, postmodern West is to live amidst a rather bewildering confluence of competing identities and pieties. We hear endless talk of the importance of honouring and respecting diversity in the context of pluralism, but we often seem to have no idea how to actually do this well. We’re pretty cool with diversity when it comes to race and sexuality and gender, but not so much when it comes to diversity of thought. This leads to a great deal of confusion and no small amount of incoherence in our public discourse. Read more

Mar 28

37 Comments

On the Banishing of Shadows

I have had a number of conversations recently about the deep sadness that seems to have settled over many in the West, particularly the young. These conversations have been with people who would represent the full breadth of the racial, socioeconomic, political and ideological spectrum. Often, they are parents of teenagers and/or young adults. It’s a familiar litany by now. Anxiety, depression, addiction, mental illness, suicidal ideation and self-harm, deaths of despair. A general rootlessness and purposeless drifting. Listless scrolling and binging on junk entertainment rather than engaging with the world. It’s a well-worn road by now. Read more

Jul 26

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What Do We Declare?

This week, Mennonites from across Canada will gather in Edmonton for our biennial nationwide Gathering. This year, the theme is taken from the opening words of 1 John: “We Declare: What We Have Seen and Heard.” What does it mean to speak of the good news and bear witness to the gospel of peace? A good and timely question, on the face of it, particularly in our disenchanted, polarized, guilt-ridden, merciless age. Do we still believe that we have any good news, for ourselves or for the world? Have we seen or heard anything worth bearing witness to? Is Jesus still worth gathering around? Read more

Apr 28

2 Comments

Thursday Miscellany (On “Lived Experience”)

Well, the half-written posts and fragments and links and barely formed loosely connected ideas are piling up in my drafts folder. I need to do some digital (and mental) housecleaning, as it were. So, I guess today shall be a miscellany day. Here’s some of what I’ve been thinking about over the past few weeks. Read more

Jul 22

16 Comments

Conversion Therapy

No, not that kind of conversion therapy. Just to disappoint (or assuage) you at the outset. I have no desire to wade into the fraught and stormy waters of sexual identity and public policy on such a lovely summer morning. Also, just in case you were tempted to think too highly of me (an unlikely prospect, I grant), I have just ably demonstrated that I am not above the occasional click-baity headline. Sorry, again, to disappoint. Read more

Mar 5

4 Comments

On Ambient Violence

Two women recently came to our church looking for help. Both were victims of domestic violence, both had children in the picture, both were indigenous, both desperately poor, both out of options. Both stories were soaked in their own unique varieties of heartache and pain. And yet, both stories were sadly, predictably, damnably ordinary. Read more

May 4

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Pornland and Purity Culture: A Tale of Two Impossible Demands

A friend and I have been having a very interesting discussion this morning about a New Yorker article published yesterday called “A Sociologist of Religion on Protestants, Porn, and the “Purity Industrial Complex.” It’s a clunky title for what is a fascinating examination of how internet porn is affecting conservative Christians (who tend to have strong moral convictions in this area). In short, it’s leading to depression and unhappiness, it’s disrupting marriages, and it’s destabilizing communities. But is all of this because of the nature of porn itself, and the way it has been thoroughly normalized and made easily accessible in our culture? Or is it the impossible moral demands that these Christian communities make on their adherents? Read more

Oct 3

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She Thinks My Toyota’s…. Inadequate?

Having devoted two posts in the past week or so to the Jordan Peterson phenomenon and what might account for it, and having expressed qualified affirmation for some of the concerns that seem to animate him, I want to add one final post about 12 Rules for Life, this one addressing what I take to be among the least admirable of Peterson’s ideas. I am aware that some readers might be weary of the topic. I’m sorry. I have to take the book back to the library today, so this is all the Peterson you’ll have to endure around here for a while. Read more

Sep 12

3 Comments

On Mixed-Race Adoption, the US Open, and How We Play the Game

I spent my morning commute listening to the first few minutes of an interview with David French on the Ezra Klein show. I know next to nothing about Mr. French, but Klein made a passing reference to a recent article about mixed-race adoption he had penned for the Atlantic called “America Soured on My Multiracial Family.” For obvious reasons, the topic piqued my curiosity. Aside from our family’s own adoption story, I have several friends who are walking this road as well. It’s a road whose contours have changed over the years, at least so it seems to me. I was curious to hear French’s take on things. Read more

Feb 28

5 Comments

Wednesday Miscellany (On Self-Control)

A quick consultation of my recent posting history has yielded the discovery that it’s been half a year since my last “Miscellany” post. Because I know that there are few things better on a mid-week morning than reading a bunch of rambling, loosely-connected thoughts from yours truly, I decided to rectify this situation today.

A quote from Richard Beck’s recent short post on self-control set me off on a bit of a tangent:

One of the reasons we have trouble connecting love to holiness is that we associate holiness with self-discipline, self-mastery, self-denial, self-control, and even self-mortification.

Love, by contrast, tends to be other-focused and affectional in nature, a matter of the heart.

And by and large, we’re more attracted to being kind and affectionate people than we are interested in the rigors of self-denial and self-discipline. The grim asceticism we associate with holiness seems far removed from the joy and spontaneity of love.

And yet, can we really love others without a foundation of self-control and self-denial?

If you can’t say no to yourself, how are you ever going to say yes to others?

A good question, that last one…  Read more

Oct 19

God Probably Isn’t Watching (But Occasionally it Would Be Useful if He Was)

“My parents always told me, ‘We might not see everything you do but God does.’” This statement made an appearance during a recent conversation with an older friend about whether or not God as “judge” is something that Christians ought to celebrate, fear, or loathe. I’m not sure what your reaction to this particular parenting strategy is. Perhaps you think it is yet another diseased expression of what is by now a mercifully outmoded attempt at social control—the equivalent of God as a kind of gleefully punitive cosmic Santa Claus, who knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness’ (or bribery’s) sake. Maybe you think this is the kind of thing we need to get back to—“Kids these days gotta be whipped into moral shape somehow!” Read more

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