A Time to Laugh

When he was 38 years old, Ernie Willis (allegedly) raped 15 year old Tina Anderson, his family’s babysitter. I say “allegedly” to cross all my legal Ts and dot my technical Is. She was already at risk — her stepdad was in prison at that time for sexually molesting Tina. And she found herself pregnant, (allegedly) carrying Ernie’s child.

When she and her single mother told her pastor — Bob Jones University Board Member, Chuck Phelps — his response was to put her in front of the church for “discipline,” shuttle her out of state to Colorado away from the investigation where she birthed her child and put her up for adoption. Willis admitted his own paternity of the child on the adoption papers, but the courts will sort through the rest of the details in good time. You can read the linked articles to catch up on the specifics. Phelps gives his version of the events here and here.

While we wait for justice, we who are close to fundamentalism are reeling. One friend of mine had to speak. She cannot use her name (yet). She is a working-outside-the-home mom who sees the effects of fundamentalism’s “hard patriarchy” first hand.

As a recovering fundamentalist, the Tina Anderson/Trinity Baptist Church case has had a particularly profound impact on me. It has taken me some time to figure out just what I found so compelling, however. It isn’t as though I haven’t dealt with poorly-handled sexual abuse situations in Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) circles before; in my current line of work I stumble upon them more often than I care to think about. While I cannot adequately express my sadness at what happened to her, her ordeal has finally opened my eyes to a deeper issue.

There is much teaching on the submission of wives to their husbands in fundamentalist circles. In extreme cases, submission is taught as complete floormat-hood for every woman to every man; in less extreme circles, it’s taught in a manner that does not appear to go beyond the biblical teaching – or at least not very far beyond it. Yet sermons on the topic have always bothered me, no matter how progressive the take on the concept. I struggled to uncover the problem, and I honestly couldn’t identify it. All I knew is that my heart would scream over and over that Something. Is. Not. Right.

The Tina Anderson case has finally revealed the reason for the struggle. Despite their assurances that what they were teaching did not mean that women were inferior in any way just because they were required to submit, in reality, the vast majority of IFB leaders do not truly believe that men and women are “equal but with different roles”. They say they do. Many probably even believe they do. Yet their actions consistently prove otherwise.

Again and again, when a case of sexual abuse or rape occurs in IFB circles, it is minimized, covered over, or in some other way hushed up. The woman involved is told to forgive, forget, and move on – or, shamefully, even to confess “her role” in the crime. The man is rarely disciplined or brought to justice – and if he is, the woman is also punished. If the woman struggles with PTSD flashbacks from her attacks, she is told she is indulging in pornographic thoughts. If she struggles with anger over the injustice of what happened to her, she is bitter; if she wishes to pursue justice via legal means, she is unforgiving.

Why?

Because the woman is not truly seen as equal. It’s the only explanation that accounts for the consistently bad response in these circumstances – a response that is then justified by misapplication of scripture. If you still don’t belive me, I invite you to consider your reaction to the concept brilliantly illustrated at Stuff Fundies Like. It was a revelation for me as well.

The reason the Tina Anderson case was and continues to be handled in an appalling way? Tina is a woman, and the rapist and authority figures in the case are men. It’s that simple. And now that I’ve figured it out, I will never feel guilty for my heart’s cry again.

We’ve got trouble, folks. In Fundy City and beyond. Trouble with a Capital T.

That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute; but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up — the harsh tide of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend.

Why, then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity?

Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the (servants) of your sex; regard us then as being placed by Providence under your protection, and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.

Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams, 31 March 1776

So I’m a survivor who’s just now learning to make herself the subject of the sentence. A former ideological “battered wife” from a patriarchal Southern civil religion. A mom — the embodiment of all that is soft and nurturing and powerful and earthy and frightening. A writer-of-that-body who makes the myth-maker shake in his cuff links. A woman who’s taking an honest look at the facts.

The economic prospects for a mom in America aren’t great. But do you know where some researchers conclude she’s got a better chance of a loving life partner? You’ll never guess. . . .

Conservative Evangelicalism.

Studies of Christian women who actively embraced this ideal suggest that the ‘submission’ required of them was a minor concession for a divinely sanctioned domestication of their husbands. During its heyday in the early 1990s, the evangelical men’s organization Promise Keepers struck a bargain that may well have been the best offer for many women. By submitting, they were rewarded with ‘husbands and fathers who forswear drinking, drugs, smoking, and gambling, who lovingly support their families by steady work, and who even choose to go shopping with them as a form of Christian service.’

This was particularly attractive accord since ‘submission’ in practice boiled down to little more than a rhetorical gesture at the husband’s final say in major decisions. When asked how it played out in marriage, few conservative Christians seemed able to recall an example where husbands actually pulled rank in decision-making. Instead, the couples coded expressiveness — emotional labor — and family responsibilities — reproductive labor — as ‘leadership’ to make them newly palatable to men (113).

Abigail Adams said as much.

It’s sometimes called “soft patriarchy.” And it’s not just the ideology that offers a more mutual environment for mothers. It’s the devotion to the ideology. The men that attend such churches most regularly are the most attentive, the most appreciative, the most domesticated.

Through servant leadership, evangelical men made a measurable contribution to the ‘economy of gratitude.’ In this schema, the best predictor of domestic harmony was not an equal division of labor — that option has virtually never been on the table in American families — but rather husbands’ consistent expression of gratititude for the gift of domestic labor women made to them. Unlike their supposedly egalitarian male counterparts, conservative Christian men had at hand an ideology that allowed them to praise and acknowledge women’s work at home without thereby running the risk of being required to share it equally. In contrast, nonreligious men who paid lip service to formal sex-neutral rights had no alibi for their demonstrated failure to split the labor at home, and may have found it safer to ignore the work altogether. Between the two, many wives preferred the former — especially since they seemed to have little hope of achieving actual parity (115).

But if these “soft patriarchs” attend church sporadically, they are more likely to be abusive. In other words, if they are unlikely to submit themselves to a religious community, they are unlikely to (mutually) submit to their familial obligations.

That’s at least what the sociologists conclude from the statistics. Mind you, I’m not saying there’s not room for improvement or that this is perfection. But these are the facts.

Evangelical scholars offer a few more caveats. Soft patriarchy might domesticate muscular Christianity, but hard patriarchy is dangerous for women and children. And the lines between the two are too easily muddled.

Nearly all evangelical and fundamentalist leaders preach a hard patriarchy, but the nitty-gritty of daily life has permeated the evangelical culture and softened that hard edge. In other words, the evangelical marriage advice is often simply out of touch. But when fundamentalists emphasize separation and tout a life hermetically sealed from the culture at large, their patriarchy hardens and calcifies.

The scholars describe three family structures: 1) the wife/mother is on the same level with the children and the father is above all of them (hard patriarchy).

2) The children are below the wife/mother and the father is above her (soft patriarchy).

3) The woman is on an equal plane with her husband over the children (egalitarian).

The last option, researchers conclude, is the best because abuse is the least likely, and the second one is tolerable if the father does have regular external oversight.

But the first one is disastrous. It creates the greatest risk for incest since the wife/mother and the child are equals, so that either can be defined as a sexual “being” to the entitled patriarch.

The perpetrator of incest has been described as a man ‘who is devout, materialistic, and fundamentalist in his religious beliefs, coming from a background in which morality was preached in public and breached in private. In a large research study done on incarcerated sex offenders, more than half of all incest offenders were found to be devout in their religious practice (83).

In other words, while soft patriarchy might domesticate Evangelical men, hard patriarchy does nothing of the sort. Religion fixes nothing when there are no consequences for criminal behavior and when the woman and the children are not autonomous Image-Bearers.

And this isn’t just a theory. This is all too frequent and prevalent. And it’s happening right now.

Write. Let no one hold you back. Let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which the publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; not yourself. Smug-faced readers, managing editors, and big bosses don’t like the true texts of women — female-sexed texts. That kind scares them.

Helene Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa”

I’ve rediscovered Hélène Cixous this week — that Jewish French feminist who encourages women to “write the body.” Since men have been writing their body into the logocentric language for millennia, the most assertive and powerful thing we women can do is write our own selves. The most assertive and powerful thing I can do is write my own self.

I read Cixous for the first time at IU and laughed out loud along with the rest of my female classmates. While the men just looked confused.

It’s nothing personal, gentlemen. While we adore you individually, we agree that as a group . . . well, there are some issues.

I always said that I would teach Cixous at BJU someday. With a class of all women — no men allowed. They have Preacher Boys class, right? Surely they’d let us do that, right?

Well, I never got that far, of course. Teaching Malcolm X as an exemplar rhetor at BJU still does give me some street cred, yes?

To write. An act which will not only “realize” the decensored relation of woman to her sexuality, to her womanly being, giving her access to her native strength; it will give her back her goods, her pleasures, her organs, her immense bodily territories which have been kept under seal; it will tear her away from the superegoized structure in which she has always occupied the place reserved for the guilty (guilty of everything, guilty at every turn: for having desires, for not having any; for being frigid, for being “too hot”; for not being both at once; for being too motherly and not enough; for having children and for not having any; for nursing and for not nursing . . . ) — tear her away by means of this research, this job of analysis and illumination, this emancipation of the marvelous text of her self that she must urgently learn to speak. A woman without a body, dumb, blind, can’t possibly be a good fighter. She is reduced to being the servant of the militant male, his shadow. We must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing. Inscribe the breath of the whole woman.

It’s taken me this long to read the entirety of the documents leading to and following our forced resignations from our former employer. The three-year-old emails and letters from our pastor especially. I just read them for the first time.

And now I get it. The best explanation for my boot from our church comes from Cixous.

An act that will also be marked by woman’s seizing the occasion to speak, hence her shattering entry into history, which has always been based on her suppression. To write and thus to forge for herself the antilogos weapon. To become at will the taker and initiator, for her own right, in every symbolic system, in every political process. It is time for women to start scoring their feats in written and oral language.

Every woman has known the torment of getting up to speak. Her heart racing, at times entirely lost for words, ground and language slipping away — that’s how daring a feat, how great a transgression it is for a woman to speak — even just open her mouth — in public. A double distress, for even if she transgresses, her words fall almost always upon the deaf male ear, which hears in language only that which speaks in the masculine.

I’ll never forget that final meeting with our pastor. I insisted that I join them. Grant, of course, didn’t mind. He’s a thorough egalitarian. He respects me. Like my dad and brother too. And here lies one of my blindspots. Because I’ve been surrounded by strong, intelligent, respectful men my whole life, I assume the same about other men. But my men are rare. Very rare. I know that now.

We were in Starbucks, and during the discussion, Grant sat on his car’s key fob and his trunk popped open. So he went to fix it, and Danny and I sat there waiting.

And there it was. That face. That same face that the glad-handing politician had at my front door. That same face that the man had who stole my parking place when he saw my belly swollen with life. He was scared. Terrified. Of me.

That look has haunted me for three years. I took it personally. No more. Now I understand what he was afraid of and why he tried so desperately and so illogically to get me to stop writing. Cixous explained it.

She must write her self, because this is the invention of a new insurgent writing which, when the moment of her liberation has come will allow her to carry out the indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history, first two levels that cannot be separated.

God gives grace for the truth, not for myths

That thought has prompted me to take a good, hard look at myself.

Did you know that the gender gap in wages (21 cents) is not really a gender gap? It’s a gap between mothers and everyone else (Moreton 114).

Think about that for a second. Working mothers, not women, are paid the worst in the country.

Something happens when you become a mom. You vacillate between a soft body of squishiness holding a paper plate of Ants-on-a-Log and a powerful life-giver. You are the Every Snuggler and Every Protector. Chief Bottom-Wiper and She-Bear.

In your body, you are wholly both. You make milk. You speak out. You cook dumplins. You raise hell. You buy bandaids. You scratch predators. You read Suess. You pray for protection.

Shortly after Gavin was born, we were having one of those days. I hadn’t showered. The kids weren’t dressed. The house was a wreck. And the front door was open probably to welcome home the Love of my Life. As I was walking past the open storm door, who should walk up but some local politician glad-handing the working class neighborhood? His tie was loosened so he looked rugged and hard-working, but he was as neat as a pin otherwise. Not even a sweat stain. And he walked up my sidewalk to woo me – the worst paid, but his most-coveted voter.

I glared through the glass door. I think I might have actually growled. And shook my head as if to say, “Don’t you dare knock on my door.” And he actually raised both hands in surrender and backed his way down my sidewalk.

Heehee. “I’m so powerful.” I thought. “Scared him.”

I had that feeling, too, when some loser stole my parking place right in front of me at the local supermarket. He knew he had done it because he watched me get out of my car several spaces away — me in my 7-month-pregnant state. I saw the color drain from his face when he saw me. I saw him cower. And I saw him run scared from me too.

People don’t want to talk about that power. It makes ‘em sweat. And I’m actually wondering if that’s why we’re paid so badly. Because if we’re paid anywhere near the power we wield, we’d take over.

A certain expression of Christianity loves to talk about the squishy side of motherhood. If you heard Bob Jones, Sr. talk, his mom’s powder biscuits and gravy were the bread and wine of Reconstruction Alabama. And any one of the recent and profitable evangelical books “for women” are quick to place the articulation of women’s power in the “ungodly” column — the domain of those ugly “libbers.”

That’s a lie, you know. Or a myth. There’s no grace for lies. The truth is God made us to be wholly both. The God-fearing woman births humanity. She also judges a country. She dolls herself up to woo a pagan king. She is the first to tell the Good News. She warms milk.

And she nails the enemy’s temple to the ground.

As I try on this new identity of “survivor,” I search for a vocabulary to make sense of my experience. Why did they do this? How did it happen? How can I make sure it doesn’t happen again — to me or to anyone I love?

And the best vocabulary — the one that nails it every time — is domestic. Lundy Bancroft dispels the myths of domestic abuse, fraught with empathizing with the bully and avoiding responsibility. We often say, with pity in our voice, that an abuser abuses because:

And research just doesn’t bear that out. That’s not why abuse happens. Bancroft gives ten proven reasons why abusers abuse:

• He is controlling.
• He feels entitled.
• He twists things into their opposites.
• He disrespects you and thinks he’s superior.
• He confuses love and abuse.
• He is manipulative.
• He wants to have a good public image.
• He feels justified.
• He denies and minimizes the abuse.
• He’s possessive.

How does the abuser do this? He:

• Changes his moods abruptly and frequently, so that you find it difficult to tell who he is or how he feels, keeping you constantly off balance. His feelings toward you are especially changeable.
• Denying the obvious about what he is doing or feeling. He’ll speak to you with his voice trembling in anger, or he’ll blame a difficulty on you, or he’ll sulk for two hours, and then deny it to your face. You know what he did — and so does he — but he refuses to admit it, which can drive you crazy with frustration. Then he may call you irrational for getting so upset by his denial.
• Convincing you that what he wants you to do is what is best for you. This way the abuser can make his selfishness look like generosity, which is a neat trick. A long time may pass before you realize what his real motives were.
• Getting you to feel sorry for him, so that you will be reluctant too push forward with your complaints about what he does.
• Using confusion tactics in arguments, subtly or overtly changing the subject, insisting that you are thinking and feeling things that you aren’t, twisting your words, and many other tactics that serve as glue to pour into your brain. You may leave arguments with him feeling like you are losing your mind.
• Lying or misleading you about his actions, his desires, or his reasons for doing certain things, in order to guide you into doing what he wants you to do. One of the most frequent complaints I get from abused women is that their partners lie repeatedly, a form of psychological abuse that in itself can be highly destructive over time.
• Getting you and the people you care about turned against each other by betraying confidences, being rude to your friends, telling people lies about what you supposedly said about them, charming your friends and then telling them bad things about you, and many other divisive tactics.

Being held hostage to his feelings, gaslighting, creating pseudo-good will, demanding pity for the powerful, outright lying, and shunning — that’s the tactical list. Plain as day. We all recognize it.

Bancroft summarizes research on abuse to further knock those myths out of the conversation (75):

• Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.
• Abuse and respect are opposites. Abusers cannot change unless they overcome their core of disrespect toward their partners.
• Abusers are far more conscious of what they are doing than they appear to be. However, even their less-conscious behaviors are driven by core attitudes.
• Abusers are unwilling to be nonabusive, not unable. They do not want to give up power and control.
• You are not crazy. Trust your perceptions of how your abusive partner treats you and thinks about you.

I re-read that last one over and over. Because time and documentation have proven that my perceptions were right. Even while it was happening, I knew.

Finally, to those of us who have survived abuse, he advises:

When I work with an abused woman, my first goal is to help her to regain trust in herself; to get her to rely on her own perceptions, to listen to her own internal voices. You don’t really need an ‘expert’ on abuse to explain your life to you; what you do need above all is some support and encouragement to hold on to your own truth. Your abusive partner wants to deny your experience. He wants to pluck your view of reality out of your head and replace it with his. When someone has invaded your identity in this way enough times, you naturally start to lose your balance.

That fits. Replace “partner” with “employer” and/or “pastor” and that really fits. That scarily fits with my theory of sectarian romance. That fits with my other theory of fundamentalism as patriarchy.

So now what? If my role in my previous life was a kind of ideological “battered wife” to an masculine administration hell-bent on preserving the hierarchy, where do I go from here?

Healing from intense and pervasive trauma — whether from cancer or rape or earthquake or war — comes as you learn to call yourself a “survivor.” It’s a rhetorical move away from “victim.” When a victim can describe herself as a “survivor,” she:

no longer feels possessed by her traumatic past; she is in possession of herself. She has some understanding of the person she used to be and of the damage done to that person by the traumatic event. Her task now is to become the person she used to be and of the damage done to that person she wants to be. In the process she draws upon those aspects of herself that she most values from the time before the trauma, from the experience of the trauma itself, and from the period of recovery. Integrating all of those elements, she creates a new self, both ideally and in actuality (202).

Judith Herman

“Survivor” identifies autonomy. Personhood. It fully acknowledges the past trauma as trauma. It highlights strength. Rather than things happening to you (scene/victim), you are an agent. You act. You have power. You do stuff.

And fundamentalists hate it. They would say that using “survivor” is a petulant, ungrateful response to the lousy things God has done to/for you. They would say that you shouldn’t just “survive” but “rejoice.” Which means, as usual, “shut up and get back to work.” In fundamentalism, you should only “move” in deference to the whole. You can only “be” in the group. That’s how the ideology becomes god.

Fundamentalists don’t like autonomy. When they say we must “deny the self,” they mean it. But not like Jesus meant it. They mean that we must erase the individual in lieu of the whole. There are no boundaries between persons, just recalcitrant boundaries between sects. We must deny that the self even exists. We can never put ourselves as the agent. “I” should never be the subject of the sentence.

Don’t get mixed up and think that’s the appropriate “grammar” of all Calvinism. I think that’s where this new breed of “Young, Restless, and Reformed” are just finding new duds for an old, mean fundamentalism. A hipster Kesiedispiecostalism. Even Jonathan Edwards in his “Resolutions” talks about what he does. How he acts. How we join God’s ongoing work. We work because He works.

I work because He works.

How does Steve Brown put it? “I’m a Calvinist, so I know it’s all about God. But it’s about me too.”

That’s salvation. God doesn’t save us to be nothing. We weren’t once alive and now we’re dead. We were dead in our trespasses and sins, and He lifted us up and made us His children. The Church Universal isn’t a Borg ship. It’s a city! A Kingdom. A bustling, colorful, dappled, productive, noisy community.

And for now, until the Bridegroom arrives, we persevere. We “keep on keeping on.” It’s a race. We’re running!

I’m running. So let me try this. . . . I have earned a Ph.D. from a Research 1 university with two unaccredited degrees putting a permanent black smudge on my record. I have buried four children — one I carried past term — and have birthed two screamers. I have breastfed those two children — one until he was nearly four and one until he was well past two — and yes, that means I did tandem-nursing. I co-slept, nursed, and wore my babies right through their toddlerhood. Despite ongoing disciplinary action from my employer, I chose gentle discipline for my sons. I am a published author and scholar. I have endured shunning, betrayal, threats, job loss, and emotional, mental, and spiritual abuse from people I considered my dearest friends. And I persevered. God has begun this work in me, and He will perform it until He calls me home. And I join Him.

And if you want to take out your cyber-red-pen and correct the “grammar” on the above paragraph, you’re probably a fundamentalist.

I bought myself that necklace several months ago — right around the time I took my blog “sabbath.” I am wearing it until I believe it. Until I believe that I’m a survivor.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

John Milton

I have recently published on Scribd many of the official documents that led to our exodus from fundamentalism, including our resignation and other correspondence from the aftermath. If I mentioned them in my Ebenezer account, I linked to them there. I haven’t even had the guts to read one of them in its entirely yet — that’s just how painful this all is.

Be sure to read my valiant knight‘s theological tomes: specifically here to Stephen Jones and here to Gary Weier. It will do you good — for your heart, mind, and soul. John Milton would be very proud!

Today Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz will appear in court for beating to death their 7-year-old adopted daughter Lydia. Autopsy reports indicate that she died of rhabdomylosis — a rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle due to injury to muscle tissue. All of this is consistent with the parenting practices the Schatzes followed from Amish-ish fundamentalist preacher and author, Michael Pearl.

Quite simply, Michael Pearl is not just a nut or a monster or a narcissist. He is a heretic. When in 2006 his advice pushed 4-year-old Sean Paddock’s foster parents to smother him to death, I vowed to God that I would not keep silent any longer. In a small way, I thought, I would speak out in my own little slice of the world. Not about Pearl’s parenting advice per se, but about his theology. Because, as I said then, “If there’s anyone in Christendom who’s good at sniffing out heresy, it’s the fundamentalist.”

I was incorrect about that. Not about the heresy, but about the fundamentalist. But that’s another discussion.

I spoke out on an attention-getting fundamentalist forum, Sharper Iron, in 2006. I tell more of the story here, but that, too, is another discussion.

Today, however, I want to highlight what I said back then because in viewing it this morning — especially in light of Lydia’s death — I realize how right I was about the dangers of Pearl’s heresy.

I strategically attempted to soften my argumentative blow by settling for “soft heresy” or “semi-Pelagianism.” But Pearl’s ideas are full-blown Pelagianism. He’s worse than Charles Finney. Way, way worse.

My former fellow fundamentalists concluded I was cherry-picking. They worked hard to discredit me. “Appeal to motive” is the fallacy. C.S. Lewis would call it Bulverism. But I can admit it to myself now that I’m proud of what I said. And I’ll say it again. Only louder now.

Semi-Pelagianism is often the problem we fundies have with Charles Finney. Our criticism of him runs pretty deep and has always surprised me until I studied it further. And Pearl doesn’t get a pass, I would contend, ’cause he’s quaint.

It means, among many things, that we are good enough to achieve salvation alone. And it denies Original Sin. And it makes Augustine spin in his grave.

As for Pearl, I’ll quote him.

From his statement of faith:

In the eating of the tree, the willful and direct disobedience to God resulted in legal estrangement from God and precipitated the curse of death on Adam and all his descendants. All men are born under the curse and totally estranged from God. When a descendant of Adam reaches a level of moral understanding (sometime in his youth) he becomes fully, personally accountable to God and has sin imputed to him, resulting in the peril of eternal damnation. No man is capable of rectifying this state of estrangement from God. Apart from the free gift of God through the substitutionary work of Christ there is no hope of salvation.
SALVATION
When man reaches his state of moral accountability, and, by virtue of his personal transgression, becomes blameworthy, his only hope is a work of grace by God alone.

Sounds like Original Sin. But one of his recordings on Romans 1 and again on Romans 5, he expands on that and claims that the “death” that Adam gave to all of us was physical death alone. “Death passed upon all men, and that’s talking about one thing and one thing only – physical death. It says nothing about sinfulness passing upon all men.”

Okay. That’s kinda vague. Let’s move on. . . .

To Pearl, we are born like blank slates — neither good nor bad, neither with God or against Him:

When a baby comes into the world the baby is separated from God, without the presence of God, without the Spirit of God, without the divine life of God inside the baby. It is disadvantaged in that it does not have the resources of spirit that comes from God to overcome these bodily drives.

Need more? Okay. . . . From Pearl again:

When a descendant of Adam reaches a level of moral understanding (sometime in his youth) he becomes fully, personally accountable to God and has sin imputed to him, resulting in the peril of eternal damnation. No man is capable of rectifying this state of estrangement from God. Apart from the free gift of God through the substitutionary work of Christ there is no hope of salvation.

On Romans 7, Pearl explains Paul’s would-not-could-not passage:

In his experience historically, at one point he was alive, he was not dead in trespasses and sins. He was probably 3 years old, maybe 4.

Putting it all together, he believes that we aren’t born dead in sin, but that we’re in a neutral state. And that sometime in our “youth” we become sinful. From the statement of faith, he states that sin doesn’t come to an unbeliever until a certain age and, thus, he needs no justification until that age.

Still too arcane? Okay — try this on for size. From his article “Living Parallel Lives in the Same Space” (No Greater Joy, Jan-Feb 2005) he says:

These messages are not motivational teachings or principles for you to apply. They are the wonderful good news that Christ has done everything to free you from all sin, all the time, from this day forward, to sin no more.
… We should and can sin no more!
… I have been preaching and living this gospel of sanctification for many years. It is not a theory.”[emphasis mine]

That’s exactly what raises our fur about Finney — and it should! This is classic Semi-Pelagianism or so-called “soft” heresy.

Michael Pearl will appear on CBS’s The Early Show on Friday, March 19. Watch and pray.

UPDATE at 7:47pm, Thursday, March 18, 2010 — According to Michael’s Pearl’s Facebook group, “the interview is canceled.” The saga continues.

In such a situation, the amateur–the lover, the man who thinks heedlessness a sin and boredom a heresy–is just the man you need. More than that, whether you think you need him or not, he is a man who is bound by his love, to speak. If he loves Wisdom or the Arts, so much the better for him and for all of us. But if he loves only the way meat browns or onions peel, if he delights simply in the curds of his cheese or the color of his wine, he is, by every one of those enthusiasms, commanded to speak. A silent lover is one who doesn’t know his job.

Ah, Capon. This paragraph speaks for itself, doesn’t it? You speak not because it’s right or is a right. His admonition is much stronger than that. You speak because you love.

Love is. And the speaking comes next. It’s not some Erasmusian, highly attenuated and stylized, Praise of Folly kind of speaking. It’s not covert. It’s full-throated and known. Otherwise, it’s not love. Or it’s at least incomplete.

So like Luther to the overly sagacious Melancthon, Capon to us is saying “love loudly.”

I’m tired. My pointing out the Greenville Syndrome — which was as much a test to see if it would fit and a plea for more discussion as anything else — has resulted in the largest onslaught of vitriol since we left our former life. The irony is palpable since people are revealing the Greenville Syndrome while railing against my description of it. The syndrome or trope or habit is all a kind of bait-and-switch. The bait of approval dangles in front of your nose, and when you say, “No thanks!” you get slugged upside the head. You have a choice then — either take the bait or feel the pain. Either join the dance or get kicked in the teeth. And when you walk away — out of reach of their right hook — they call you back, screeching louder and louder, telling you that you’re ruining their whole performance, that you’re nothing without them, that if you leave now you’ll never be able to come back. . . . until you let the door quietly shut behind you. They don’t miss you. They really don’t. They hardly notice you’re gone. The bluster has blinded them.

I’m shutting the door. For now. I’m going to take that fight to a different place, with a different audience. My teachers told me that the best scholarship speaks to the public at large. That was a big part of my goal — to see if I could explain theoretical stuff in a common voice. I did that. And I was successful. This is a good blog with good stuff on it that will continue to help the hurting. But it’s time to turn my research into a more academic conversation behind closed doors. It’s just that important.

In sum, I need to let these wounds heal instead of getting eaten alive. I’ve been blogging for six years. So I’m ready for a little Sabbath rest. A little feasting.

::deep breath::

I picked up a book a few weeks back that I have to put down. Funny way to put that, I know. But each paragraph was like a Godiva chocolate, and if I consumed too many, I’d miss out on the joy. It’s a savory book. About God and cooking. And I want to relish each paragraph. Out here. In the open. Because good books — like a good meal and a good God — are meant to be shared.

Would you like a bite? . . . of the book, mind you. Not me. I’m not on the menu.