Finding Grace and Humanity in Total Depravity

I wrote this post in December of 2012, toward the end of my first semester at seminary, but never posted it. I might not write it the same way again, but it feels like most of the thoughts still hold true for me after a year and a half more of seminary, deeper friendships here, and an experience as a field education intern at Broadway Presbyterian church where I was shown more grace than I could have imagined. 

I have a confession to make.  I am a progressive who loves a lot of parts of liberal theology (that's not the confession; I think most of you all know that about me already).  My confession is that I kinda like Calvin's doctrine of total depravity.

This idea of total depravity comes from Augustine's doctrine of original sin, which I actually really really don't like, because it says that human beings are born sinful because our very existence is brought about by the "fall of humanity."  Many Christian thinkers through the centuries have also said original sin has a lot to do with sex--we're born sinful because we're the product of a less-than-holy act of sex.  I especially don't like the implications of this doctrine of original sin because Augustine and later thinkers have interpreted the Eden story in a way that sees women especially as lustful, sinful temptresses who are concerned mostly with the flesh and men with the spiritual (another wonderful view of humanity and the world we've inherited from our theological ancestors of the subordination of the body to the spirit as if the two could be separated).

But to get back to my original point, Calvin talks about humans as being totally depraved, an idea he bases on earlier doctrines of original sin.  While I think it's often harmful to see humans as basically sinful (and, more generally, to see humans in a way that ignores the complexity of each person and our relationships to each other and to our world), I like the way that understanding each person as imperfect makes us treat each other.

When we recognize that each person is limited and will "fall short" from time to time, it calls us to have grace with one another.  This was perhaps my biggest take-away from living in intentional community.  When I feel offended by what someone has said or even annoyed at someone for leaving their dishes in the sink, I have to stop and think a) about what their intent was (which is usually not to offend or annoy) and b) all the times that I have said something that came out differently than I intended or left hair in the shower drain or not wiped down the microwave after heating up lasagne.  I learned to have more grace with myself because others showed me how by having grace with me, which also helps me to have more grace with others.  It's not forgiveness, because forgiveness implies someone was wronged.  Having grace with one another, however, implies no wrong was intended and I don't expect others to be perfect, but I presume the best about them until I have a real reason not to.

I have been thinking about this a lot this week as many of my peers and I are feeling the pressure from all the work and studying still to do before finals week.  We have been perhaps a little more self-absorbed than normal, yet we still find time to spend together even if it's by quizzing each other on Hebrew vocabulary.  Although there is an air of tension around, so far people seem to manage to remember that we basically are grateful to be here in this place with these people at this moment, which helps us to have grace with one another when we might otherwise be annoyed.  Although I know this was not Calvin's intent when he wrote about total depravity, there is something freeing to me in its potential implications for how we are to treat one another as im-perfect beings who are yet still somehow made in the image of the Divine.

Singing the Resistance

I was struck this year during the School of the Americas protest at the power of music in a movement that calls for justice and peace like the one to close down the School of the Americas (SOA).  In the commissioning chapel service at Union on the Thursday before we left for the SOA, we shared stories and we broke bread together and we sang.  We sang "This is My Song" we walked into the space together calling for "peace for lands afar and mine," and to close the service and send all of us out into the world we clapped and danced and sang "I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside; ain't gonna study war no more."

With these songs in my heart and still on my lips we gathered with 2,000 others at the gates Ft. Benning, where we sang more songs together--songs of resistance and of sadness and of hope.  In minor and major keys we cried out for justice, we remembered those who have died, and we envisioned peace.

¡No más! No more! We must stop the dirty war
Compañeros, compañeras we cry out 'No más, no more'

Almost two weeks after the School of the Americas demonstration, I am still humming some of the songs we sang outside the gates of Ft. Benning, and the echoes of the chanted names of hundreds of victims still ring in my ears.  Neither the words nor the tunes are happy or light ones that I especially want to go around singing as I walk to class and go to the grocery store and share meals in my community.  But the somber tones of the songs and chants stay with me and remind me to remember the feeling of hope I felt at the protest and to resist violence and imperialism in small and big ways, and to hold in my heart those who are victims of the violence of the SOA and those who are jailed for standing against it.

Backseat MDiv

As I'm finishing my first month of my first year of seminary, I find myself sleeping a LOT.  I'm normally an 8-hours-and-wake-up kind of person, but lately I find myself sleeping until 10:00 or later on the weekends if I let myself.  This happened to me in Guatemala as well, and someone helped me realize that it was because the combination of new place, new language, new everything was wearing my brain out which actually made me sleepy.  I was like a kindergartener who needs to sleep extra so her brain can have time to process all the new information.  It's hard to sleep now, though, because I have that feeling of "there's always something else I should be doing."

All this new information that's filling up my brain and making me sleepy, though, is so interesting and makes me want to keep reading (well, sometimes).  In sharing some pieces of what I've been learning thus far, my mom suggested that I share some of the things that are especially exciting or make me look at the world in a new way so that others who aren't in seminary but are still interested can come along for the ride, hence the name "backseat MDiv" (although really it's a side seat or something because I'm certainly not the driver here, but you get the idea).

I decided to fold some of this into my existing blog because it is all a part of the journey that I (and we all are) on to find home.  We find new homes and we re-define existing homes, and much of what I am learning is helping me to look at my home--at where I come from--with new eyes and envision what I want home to look like.  So I will label blog posts that are specifically "seminary-related" as Backseat MDiv so that if you want to you can just click on that label (over on the right) and see blogs I've written specifically to share some of what I'm learning in seminary--in the classroom, in worship, in conversations with others, and in New York City.

If you're on twitter, I've also just created a twitter account, @backseatmdiv, where I'll post quotes and other short thoughts throughout the week about what we're learning.

Finally, just so we're on the same page to start, you'll find below a list of the courses I'm taking this semester and a link to the Union course catalogue in case you're interested in reading a blurb about any of the classes

• Introduction to the Old Testament (taught by David Carr)
• Biblical Hebrew 1 (taught by Dan Pioske)
• Systematic Theology (taught by James Cone)
• Christianities in the City (taught by Samuel Cruz)
• Early Church History (taught by John McGuckin)

Finding and creating a new home in New York

When I chose the title for and began this blog over three years ago, I had just graduated from Maryville College and was preparing to go to Guatemala with the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program of the Presbyterian Church (USA). I was excited and nervous and had no idea how much that year and the subsequent two years I spent in Nashville would change the course of my life.  I also had no idea how much the concept and practice of "finding home" would consume me. 

Home for me has appeared in many forms and with many different people over the past several years.  I have found home in Guatemala, Nashville, in various churches and organizations, with new authors, roommates, with other YAV alums, and am now beginning to find home in New York City at Union Theological Seminary.  

I arrived at Union eleven days ago, excited to begin my new life and studies here, but also sad to leave behind the home in Nashville that I both found and helped create for myself there.  I have been reminded often during this week and a half of orientation of a line from a song by The Head and the Heart (who I've mentioned in an earlier post) that says "Mama once told me you're already home where you feel loved."  I have met many interesting and dynamic people here so far who I am sure will become life-long friends and colleagues, but I have realized how much I crave and need those intimate friendships with people who know me well (and like me anyway) and with whom I can simply be without need for explaining or introducing myself and how much that is the feeling of being "home" to me.

I think that one of the greatest benefits of the YAV program for me has been learning how to create, nurture, and sustain those friendships that help create community and home.  I have learned that creating home for myself and others takes work, conflict, and grace.  Work to put in the time and energy of creating meaningful relationships, conflict when we have different needs or ideas about how to be in community with each other, and grace with ourselves and each other when we mess up.

So I am sure that even though this new place does not yet feel like home to me that it will come and that it will shape me and I it in ways I cannot yet imagine.  

Notes on Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Before leaving for Colombia, we heard and read a lot about the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CFTA).  As you may know, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Presbyterian Church of Colombia both publicly and actively oppose the Colombia FTA.  President Obama signed the CFTA into law this past October, and it went into effect on May 15, about half-way through Craig’s and my time as accompaniers in Colombia.  

Not many people in the US talked about or even knew about the CFTA, so I was somewhat surprised at how many people knew and talked about it in Colombia.  We went to eat lunch at the house of one hermano who works at a banana finca and also harvests rice on the side who was very excited about the CFTA because he said it would make kitchen appliances much more affordable.  Others we talked to were excited about it because they said it will be easier to get a visa to go to the United States (which is somewhat true in that Colombian business investors and traders will be eligible for a special type of visa available to citizens of countries with trade agreements with the US, but most of the people we talked to would not be eligible for that type of visa).

The Presbyterian Churches of the USA and Colombia oppose it for several reasons, one being that small-scale farmers will no longer be able to earn a living from their crops because prices of crops, especially staple crops like rice and corn, will be driven down by the FTA.  I saw this while I lived in Guatemala (part of the Central America Free Trade Agreement)--US corn sold in Guatemala was cheaper than local corn grown in Guatemala because subsidies in the US make corn grown in the US so cheap.  Basically, as has happened in other countries, the Presbyterian Churches of the USA and Colombia predict and fear that the CFTA will serve to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.  Several individual pastors, church members, and community leaders we spoke with also expressed the same concerns.

We will have to wait and see exactly what the effects will be in Colombia, but I might predict that if we visited that same hermano in a year or two that, while he will probably still have his job at the banana finca (since it is a larger operation and already exporting almost all of its product to the US) that it will no longer be profitable for him to harvest, dry, and sell the rice that helps supplement his income and support his family of six.  For others who do not have jobs at the larger banana or pineapple fincas and depend almost entirely on their earnings from the crops they are able to harvest from a few acres of land the situation will probably be even more difficult so that even if some products are cheaper, they will not be able to afford them.

Roles and Expectations

This was the report my accompaniment partner, Craig, wrote about our first week in Urabà (The prayer is a Nicaraguan prayer):

Before lunch we prayed these words together: "May those who hunger have food, and may those who have food hunger for justice".

After lunch we were taken on a tour around town to see the neighborhood and its inhabitants.  It was not striking to me that some of the houses had dirt floors and were hand built out of scrap wood.  It was not striking that most of the plumbing was "outdoors."  It was not striking that many of the inhabitants were displaced and had lost family members in the violence.  My training had taught me to expect many of these things.  What was striking was how normal it all seemed.

Coming from a middle class U.S neighborhood with every convenience and security imaginable, I had somehow believed that this would be a sad, shattered place.  How could people go through so much and be any other way?  And yet this was not the case.  Children were playing or going to school, adults went to church and work, and life more or less went on.  I listened to stories of horrible tragedy and loss, while in the background unsuspecting neighbors laughed and played music.  The experience contradicted my every conception of the situation.  Having watched many of my peers and role models in the United States fly into a rage over congested traffic, I couldn't understand how a community could take such hardship in stride.  Perhaps, I began to believe, that things were not really so bad.  Maybe all the stuff I had read about displacement was exaggerated or just spoke of isolated incidents…

But then I looked around myself.  I listened to the stories of displacement and witnessed with my own eyes and ears what was going on.  Things were not exaggerated, we had not heard only of isolated incidents; the displacement was bad and it was all around us.  And yet everyone and everything still seemed so normal in context.  How could this be?  

Suddenly the lunchtime prayer came back to me, but reformulated to fit the reality of this community: "May those who have been displaced from their comforts find peace, and may those who have peace be displaced from their comforts".  It was all so clear to me.  The Colombian people had overcome incredible adversity in order to carry on with life.  Each day they grapple with the trauma they had experienced, but, true to our prayer, they were finding peace in their hearts amidst the violence around them.  Now the onus fell on me.  As a person who had always taken peace as a given, I wondered if my words at lunch were a real prayer for change, or mere flippancy?  At the end of my trip here I will have to decide whether to go back and sit on my comfortable couch, or to displace myself into action.  Now the only question that remains is 'Have I, as a U.S. citizen, finally found a problem greater than my own apathy?'

Craig and me with the youth group on our last night in the first town we stayed in.

Our Soul is Divided

This is the report I wrote for our second week here. If you receive the Accompanier reports this will be a repeat.

Craig and I spent the second week of our month in Urabà as accompaniers in the least urban place we’ve been so far with the pastor and his family in their house behind the church.  It was a hot week.  Often, as we were lying in the hammocks in the heat of the day, digesting the huge lunch we had just eaten and trying to stay cool, an hermano from the iglesia would come to the house to bring some fruit or a chicken to the family and would stay and talk a while with us.  

One afternoon, a man rode up on his bike bringing some mangoes for the family and sat down beside me in a plastic chair in front of the fan on the porch.  We exchanged the usual “Hello, how did you wake up this morning?” “Very well, and you?” “Very well, thanks to God.”  I asked him if he had been born there in that town, and he began to tell me part of his story of how he came to live in that town.  

He used to have some land and some cattle in the mountains until one Friday at lunch the guerilla came and stayed in his house for several days.  On Sunday morning, before he went to church, he got up the courage to ask them how long they would be there, because iif it was much longer he would leave and they could have the house since he was afraid what would happen if the paramilitaries found out the guerilla were there.  When he got back from church they had gone.  

He stayed there with his family for a few more months, hardly sleeping at night, worrying every minute of the day, praying to God to protect his family.  Finally, he and his wife felt that the violence was all around them and they left one night, carrying the two youngest children through the forest.  He has never been back.  

Now, his daughters are around my age, in their 20’s and 30’s, and he has several grandchildren, thanks to God.  Even after leaving their home to escape la violencia, though, one of his sons-in-law was killed about two years ago, leaving his grandchildren without a father and his youngest daughter a widow.  

When we arrived in Colombia, our hosts told us that there is hardly anyone who hasn’t been affected by the violence, even if they haven’t been displaced.  I sometimes forget, though, because when we go to church, the services are much more joyful than an average Sunday morning in a Presbyterian Church in the States, and the hospitality and welcoming with which Craig and I have been received is overwhelming.

During Communion that Sunday, several of the women led a hymn with a line that has stuck with me: “Està divida, nuestra alma, entre gozo y dolor”--It is divided, our soul, between joy and pain.  It seemed to speak not only to the sentiment surrounding the sacrament of Communion around the world, but also and especially of the small piece we have seen of the lives of a few Presbyterian herman@s here in Urabà.  Whether it was recently or many years ago, no one has been left untouched by la violencia.  Yet everyone who has shared stories of pain and loss with us has ended by saying they are grateful to God for the church or their family or their home.  The pain is deep and tangible, but so is the joy and the hope.

Quick Update

Just a quick update - We're now halfway through our month here in Colombia.  We haven't had as much internet access as I had expected, but I'm hoping to be able to do a more detailed blog post later this week.

For now though, I'll just say that everything has been going really well.  We have been well-taken care of and very well-fed. Lots of plantains and delicious tropical fruit, and last night we ate armadillo for dinner, which is a very expensive and rare treat here.  The hospitality we have been shown is overwhelming and humbling, as are many of the stories we have heard.

Thanks to all of you for your prayers and support - and I hope you know that every time we go to church (which is about 5 times a week) the hermanos and hermanas here are praying for you all as well and send their "saludos."

We made it!

Just a quick update that my partner and I met yesterday at the airport in Miami and we made it today to our final destination. We are meeting with some more church folks this afternoon to talk about our time here but it looks like we'll be traveling most of he month I will try to do updates whenever possible.

It is really hot here but I've liked the food (so far), we have been well taken care of, and there is all kinds of delicious fruit to try. This region is especially known for its banana industry. As we were flying in there were just acres of banana trees as far as we could see with the bananas themselves all covered in plastic bags to protect them from insects and make them prettier for exporting, which is what most of these bananas are for according to our hosts.

Thank you all for the prayers and thoughts and support. Will keep you as updated as possible! The picture is of a part of our apartment here but we'll be traveling so much it doesn't sound like we'll spend much time here.

¡Vamos a Colombia!

I'm going to Colombia in May.  Here's why and how:

Here's the link for more information about the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship's Colombia Accompaniment Program.

If you're interested in making a donation on-line click here (just be sure to specify whether you want it to help my fund-raising specifically if possible).  Or e-mail me if you want instructions on how to donate by check.  ¡Gracias!

A Good Friday kind of Easter

I don't feel like Easter came this year.  It still feels like Good Friday for my family.

We lost my Uncle Don, my dad's brother, in February of this year the week before Lent began.  Even though Lent is often a time of disciplines or renewed commitments, it also feels like a season of slowing down, of self-reflection and contemplation.  It has been a good time in the liturgical year to grieve.  The Ash Wednesday service that came just 4 days after Uncle Don's funeral was especially poignant--"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  And throughout the 40 days of Lent I felt permission to grieve and to contemplate the significance of those words--ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

The number 40 is significant in other parts of the Christian story as well--the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness and the 40 years that the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness.  This year the 40 days of Lent definitely felt like a wilderness.  I have never lost anyone close to me until now.  Many people my age have already experienced the death of a grandparent, but I am lucky to have four living and healthy grandparents who are very much a part of my life.  I also know too many friends who have lost siblings or parents or significant others, and while my heart broke, I was hurting for them--it wasn't really my pain.  And even in the loss of my uncle, I miss and am grieving for him, but my heart breaks even more for my grandparents, my aunt, my cousins, and my dad and his other brother.  Don was a part of their daily lives at different points, in so many of their memories and experiences and plans for the future, and his absence is profound.

I know that the Easter story tells us that death is not the end, and although I don't know what happens after death, it certainly feels final from this side of things, like the last words of the Good Friday service-- "It is finished."  I love Good Friday services, because even though we know what happens a few days later, in this service we don't say "oh this is so sad, but at least we know it'll all be over in a couple of days."  Jesus dies and it is finished.  There are no radiant beams of light, no Easter bunnies, no resurrection.  The grief just hangs there.  We are given permission to grieve without looking forward, without trying to "move on," because you never get over the death of a loved one.  You keep on, but I don't think you ever move on.

So when we gathered two days ago for Easter dinner at my aunt's house it still felt like Good Friday.  I felt like Easter was trying to rush through the grief, and we're not done grieving yet. How could we be joyful and celebrate the hope and new life that Easter represents when it was our first family holiday without Don?

But even in the tangible absence of Uncle Don on Sunday, two of my cousin's children who were there--Uncle Don's grandchildren--reminded me of the joy of new life.  The sadness of death and the joy of new life exist together, in the same moment even, without canceling each other out.  The joy of new life does not make the grief of death less, but neither does the grief of death make the joy of new life any less.  So while we grieved during this first Easter without Don, we celebrated Hayden's first Easter with our family and gave thanks for the life of the youngest members of our family as well as Don's life.

Don't Follow Your Head, Follow Your Heart

The title of this blog is lyrics from a song called "Heaven Go Easy on Me" by the Head and the Heart.  I went to their concert last Monday with some friends hoping to escape for a while the decision that felt like it was pressing down on me--which seminary to attend in the fall?  I didn't have an epiphany moment when I heard these lyrics (actually, I think the song isn't really about making a decision, but about growing up and how life is constantly changing and we can't really hold on to or control any of it) or any others, but it did make me realize how much I love being in Nashville and what a wonderful community I have here... and how much I would miss it when I move at the end of the summer.

This process of discernment about which seminary to go to actually started several years ago.  In college I visited lots of seminaries and thought about what I would like--Presbyterian or not, seminary or divinity school, East or West coast.  But all those years of discernment have come to a head as I have spent the last four months applying to, interviewing with, visiting, and thinking about seminaries.  In the end I applied to Vanderbilt, Yale, Union in NYC (not the Presbyterian school in VA), and McCormick, a Presbyterian seminary in Chicago.

It's funny sometimes when I try to remember what my life was like before YAV.  I considered myself smart, an academic.  I still do consider myself those things, but I have also discovered a lot more about myself and my gifts and what is important to me.  Three and a half years ago, when I was a senior in college thinking about going to graduate school immediately after college (before I had decided to do the YAV program) I wanted to go to University of Chicago or Harvard Divinity School.  And they are great schools, don't get me wrong, but with a few years of a little more real world experience, I know that it is important to me to go to a school that will not only be academically challenging, but that is also engaged with the world and has a strong community within the school.

All the schools I applied to are great schools and the admissions staff and others were wonderful to me throughout this process, but I have ultimately settled on Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.  It is the place that I feel has all of the qualities I am looking for, and because it is so diverse and has a history and a culture of being leaders in theological movements (i.e. Black liberation theology, womanist and feminist theology, Queer theology) I feel it can challenge me in ways that I have not yet been challenged in my theological education and faith formation thus far.  And, for me, perhaps what was most important in choosing it over the other schools I applied to was that something just "clicked" when I visited.

These last four plus months have felt stressful at times, but I do realize it is a huge privilege to be able to go to graduate school and to be able to go where I feel most strongly pulled.  I am very excited now to know where I will be for the next three years of my life and to begin at Union in the fall. I am so grateful to everyone who helped me in this process of discernment, and who helped all along the way to get me to this point in my life.  Gracias!

A Dairy Fast for Lent

I don't always, or even usually, do anything to recognize the season of Lent.  However, since returning from a YAV year in Guatemala in August of 2010 I have tried to use the season of Lent to re-focus and center myself and my spiritual life.  I sometimes felt almost like my whole year as a YAV in Guatemala was a fast--a fast from technology, familiar food, a comfortable bed, temperature-controlled living space, indoor plumbing, control over my own schedule, easy access to medical care.  But overall I loved it.  Before sounding too idealistic, though, I must admit I didn't always love having sore hips or unpredictable gastro-intestinal happenings or sleeping in 50 degrees.  But during my year of "fasting" I also felt more connected to other people around me and to God and to the natural world than ever before or since.

In Guatemala, many times I would have liked to go watch TV or get on the internet (especially when my brain was "Spanish-ed out," but since I didn't have a computer I stayed in the kitchen and talked to my host mom or helped my siblings with their homework.  Even though it was tiring at times, these moments are ones that I cherish and ones that might not have happened as frequently if I had a computer to use as an escape.  So last year, as a YAV in Nashville, I gave up using technology after 8 p.m. during Lent so that I could focus more on the people actually physically around me--my fellow YAVs in Nashville.  Many evenings we did end up talking or hanging out, but usually what this looked like was all four of us who lived together sitting in the living room, everyone on their computers but me.  I would sit there and try to talk to my roommates, but really just end up annoying them as they were trying to work or unwind from a day full of interacting with people. Often I did use that time that I would have been on the computer or watching TV to interact with and talk to my roommates, but I also learned how to be quiet when others need quiet (and not feel like they are just rejecting me or my company).

Another part of my "fast" in Guatemala was from familiar food.  It wasn't all unfamiliar, but I almost never got to choose what I ate, and I never ever got to cook even familiar food in the way that I would normally prepare it at home.  My host family almost never ate out at a restaurant (only once that I can remember), and cooking took forever.  There were no shredded carrots or already cooked and cut chicken breasts, no minute-rice or canned black beans.  We shopped at the market, bargaining with the people who had brought their crops in for a pound of carrots from the mountains or a dozen bananas from the coast.  Almost everything that was there was from within a two-hour drive of where we lived.  The corn we ate every day as tortillas was sown, grown, and harvested by my host family (with a little help from some hired workers during the harvest).

While I missed some familiar foods--especially desserts and sandwiches--I loved how "real" my food was; no processed foods or frozen veggies, fresh milk every morning, fava beans from behind the house.  When I came back to the US as a YAV in Nashville I tried really hard to shop at farmer's markets, cook my food, not eat out of cans, and I stopped buying lettuce or other veggies in a bag to cut down on extra plastic waste.

I felt good about my choices for a while, and even though it took extra work (and occasionally a little extra money), I enjoyed it.  Shopping for, preparing, and eating my food with more intentionality became almost a spiritual discipline.  As the months have gone on, I have become less intentional about my food.  Part of it is a time constraint, but mostly I'm just lazy.  So for Lent this year, I decided to become vegan, partly to try it out (I've been reading and watching documentaries on Net-Flix that convinced me it's good for my health) but also just to get back to where I think more about what I'm eating.

It has done that for me, and it's also made me try new foods, which is fun.  I hadn't realized how much cheese I eat.  I've tried to stay away from imitation dairy products, although I do use soy milk for cereal and in my coffee.  I'll post some of my favorite recipes later, but some of the new foods I've been eating a lot more of are kale, chick peas, and lentils.  I had eaten all these foods before, but trying to cook without cheese has made me have to turn to other foods to get satisfying flavors.  My roommates are also really great, and for my birthday last weekend they made a vegan chocolate cake, which was delicious.  I've cheated a few times since Ash Wednesday, but all-in-all it's been a fun adventure and has made me think more about what I eat and where it comes from and what's in it.

Act Locally, Think Globally: Prostitution and Sexism

There has been so much in the media these last few years about prostitution and human trafficking. In Nashville next month begins a trial of almost 25 people charged with running a prostitution ring in Nashville and nearby cities with some girls as young as 12 (Tennessean article).  But Nashville news has also been focused recently on prostitution and the legal ramifications of participating in prostitution after a local private school coach and administrator and a local city council member were arrested this month for trying to solicit a prostitute who was actually an undercover cop.  These cases have lent more publicity to a program here in Nashville for men who are arrested for soliciting a prostitute for the first time (at least in Davidson County). Through this program, the johns take a course, pay a fine, and get the arrest erased from their criminal records.

While I do believe that our criminal justice system should be more rehabilitative and less retributive than it is in many cases, the fact that this program exists I have had a strong aversion to it and I couldn't quite articulate why.  I am still thinking on it, but I think it is because the existence of this program seems to be based on the assumption that prostitution is a victim-less crime, a position which Becca Stevens, founder of Magdalene House and Thistle Farms in Nashville movingly disputes in an opinion article in the Tennessean.

I think less-stringent punishments for those who are first-time offenders with the intention of rehabilitation is a good thing.  However, in Tennessee soliciting prostitution is a class B misdemeanor, meaning jail time on a conviction cannot exceed 6 months.  And actually, in Tennessee, there is no jail time requirement for soliciting prostitution unless it is within 1.5 miles of a school (in which case there is a minimum requirement of 7 days in jail and a $1000 fine).  The charge of promoting prostitution, however, is a class E felony (vs the class B misdemeanor for soliciting).  In Tennessee, the punishment for a conviction in a class E felony is "Not less than one (1) year nor more than six (6) years in prison. In addition, the jury may assess a fine not to exceed three thousand dollars ($3,000), unless otherwise provided by statute" (citation).

There is already an inherent sexism in the differing consequences of convictions for those involved in prostitution (which usually fall along gender lines), and to my knowledge there is no equivalent program for those promoting prostitution like the one for the first-time offenders of soliciting prostitution.   It seems to me that letting these men off with a minuscule fine and a clean record and no equivalent for those (usually women) convicted of promoting prostitution could only seem reasonable in a culture that devalues women, a culture in which the system is meant to benefit those already in power--in this case, men.

Sometimes the stories of human trafficking of young women and girls in places like Indonesia, India, and Mexico seem far away--horrible and moving, but far away.  Recent local events in Nashville, though, have reminded of how close the stories and statistics in articles and books like Half the Sky really are to me.  Not only were Somali girls as young as 12 being trafficked through the city where I live, but this same attitude of women as less-than-human that permits and approves of the atrocities of human trafficking is alive and well in our own local legal system.  When we talk about prostitution as a victim-less crime and punish those promoting prostitution much more harshly than those soliciting--those who keep this dirty and exploitative business going--we promote the same ideas and values as those who participate in the human trafficking business--valuing money over people, pleasure over human rights, brokenness over wholeness.  We don't have to publish books or visit brothels in Asia or start non-profits to make a difference in the lives of women and girls.  We are certainly grateful to those who do and recognize the immeasurable value of their work, but acting locally in our own families and communities to combat sexism is also noble and a key piece to eradicating the sexism that continues to plague our world.

Blest Be the Bind that Ties

Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love:
The Fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.

These were the words that the congregation sang yesterday as I joined Trinity Presbyterian Church as an affiliate member with two others joining in full membership.  I am keeping my membership at New Providence Presbyterian Church in Maryville, but I also feel a strong affection and affinity for Trinity Presbyterian where I have been attending since I moved to Nashville eighteen months ago, and I wanted to more formally acknowledge that tie that binds.

I began thinking about joining Trinity in the fall when I began filling out and writing essays for seminary applications.  I also decided to begin the ordination process.  The first step to ordination in the PC(USA) is becoming an inquirer, which is done through your church of membership and presbytery.  I grew up in New Providence--I was baptized and confirmed there, and there are people there who have changed my diapers, rocked me in the nursery, taught me VBS, loved me when I was an awkward middle-schooler with braces, took me on youth trips, sent me care packages in college, and supported me prayerfully and financially during both of my YAV years.  It is at New Providence that I learned how to love and how to ask questions and where I was first encouraged to think about ministry as a vocation.  Belst be these ties that bind.  When I go to New Providence I feel as if I am going home.

But I also feel as if I am at home on Sunday mornings at Trinity.  My faith changed in dramatic and subtle ways while I was in Guatemala, and when I came to Trinity just a month after returning to the US from Guatemala I was welcomed with enthusiasm and invited to participate in the life of the church  but never felt obligated to do so.  Trinity is openly and unapologetically progressive on issues that are important to me, but does so with love and joyful hospitality.  And while New Providence has continued to support in many ways since I returned from Guatemala, Trinity is where I have been living out and processing some of these changes in my faith and values since returning from Guatemala, and they have helped carry me through a time of major transition and change in my life.  It is strange sometimes to be in a church where no one knew me before I was 23, but they have loved me for who I am now, and it is at Trinity that I am learning how to live a faith that is not only intellectual but joyful.  Blest also be these ties that bind.

So this is why I joined Trinity as an affiliate member at the same time as I begin the ordination process through New Providence.  I have found a home in both places and am grateful for the ties that bind me to the churches and the individuals in them.