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.

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!

Last November, I presented a paper at the annual National Communication Association convention analyzing Bob Jones University’s recent statement on race based on my theory of romantic separation. I argued that rather than a standard apologia, theirs was more a code duello. My paper begins to round-out the dramatistic theory of romance. In fact, all the papers in that panel were a rounding-out of my theory of Burkean romance.

BJU’s rhetoric is more Lost Cause than we (especially Northern) 21st-century listeners might readily perceive. In their drama, God is not an active participant. He’s not even a goal that we might wish to reach someday. No, He’s he’s simply our pit bull — our vicious, Old-Testament force which will scare people back into shape for the sake of preserving that old patrician hierarchy. In sum, God god is not an actor, not an ultimate idealistic purpose, but simply the frightening and preservationist means for the socially successful.

And just this week, a new text plops into my inbox proving the same drama.

The BJU buzz this week swirled around two stories. One, Jim Berg is making a lateral move from the admin building to the seminary come July with Eric Newton taking his place as Dean of Students. Secondly, Bob Jones University finally sanctions its students to use Facebook — even on campus. The new liberty, however, comes with a set of regulations which I’ve cited below. Do you see the romantic drama that I see? Who’s the Actor in the text? What’s the Act? Where or under what conditions is s/he acting? And why? And how?

Another way of asking that is — where’s God in this? Notice that the reason for all the rules is to benefit Bob Jones University, not Christ or the Church. It all centers around BJU’s reputation and preserving that hierarchy.

Social Media Guidelines

Guidelines for Participating in Social Media

A Christian’s use of social media, like any other form of communication, can reflect positively or negatively on his Christian testimony. The guidelines below are common sense principles that will help a Christian maintain a consistent testimony when communicating with others.

• Social media are public forums; there are no private social media sites. Post only information that you are comfortable having many people, including potential future employers, read about you.
• Avoid posting personal information such as your address, phone number, etc., that could make you a target for identity theft.
• Post worthwhile information that adds value; avoid self-promotion and information of limited interest.
• Assume personal responsibility for what you post. Make sure it is accurate. Secure permission before citing another person. Respect copyright laws. Do not post proprietary information, including course syllabi, lecture notes or material on course pages. Cite references, and when you do so, acknowledge the source. Keep in mind that you are legally liable for what you post.
• Identify yourself by your real name and write in the first person. If you identify yourself as a student or faculty/staff member of BJU, be clear that you speak for yourself, not BJU. Keep in mind that what you post will reflect on BJU. As appropriate, add a disclaimer that indicates the content of your site represents your views and does not represent the opinions or positions of BJU.
• Respect your audience. Avoid abusive, slanderous, complaining, profane, irreligious, blasphemous or tale-bearing speech.
• Follow biblical principles when posting on your personal site: communications should be edifying.
• Do not post photos of children or students under 18 without prior parental permission in writing.
• Take the high ground and avoid picking fights. Do not respond to posts critical of you or the University if posting will prolong discussion. If you post information in error, be the first to correct your mistakes.
• Delay posting if you are angry or upset about an issue as this is the time when you are most likely to post information you later regret.
• If you alter a previous post, indicate that you made a modification.

Guidelines for Establishing/Maintaining a BJU Social Media Site

• BJU departments and pre-college schools wanting a social media site are to provide Internet Marketing with the goal(s) for the site, a brief three to six-month plan for how the site will be used and who will post and monitor information. Internet Marketing will launch the site, secure the handle and turn over the site to the existing department. This procedure will ensure there is a record of all “official” sites and that site names are appropriate and consistent. BJU Press departments should direct requests to Interactive Marketing.
• Official sites require time and people resources. In conjunction with setting goals, establish metrics for your site to continually measure its effectiveness. Keep in mind that effectiveness is not always measured by number of followers.
• Student groups such as the Collegian, UBA, etc., are free to establish sites as long as the faculty advisor monitors the site.
• Understand that a department site will bring negative and positive feedback; value the negative feedback and use it to improve as appropriate.
• Provide timely responses.
• In speaking on behalf of the University, be familiar with FERPA regulations and avoid disclosing personal information about a student.
• Avoid articulating positions contrary to the public position of BJU.
• Avoid using an official BJU site to endorse a cause, product or political candidate.
• Keep in mind that you may see student posts that reveal questionable activity or activity contrary to BJU student policies. Use this as an opportunity for dirtyhanded discipleship.
• Faculty and staff should limit access to personal sites during work hours to interactions with students.
• When posting photos, ensure people in the photos meet the dress code for the activity involved. Do not post photos of children or students under 18 without prior parental approval in writing.
• If a question arises you cannot answer, do not try to answer it. Find the appropriate person who can answer.
• Follow the University’s general guidelines for participating in social media.

I am presenting this paper at the annual National Communication Association Convention today. Check it out!

2009 NCA Standing Without And Within Apologia

My paper presents BJU’s apologia on race before and after November 2008 as well as the Please-Reconcile’s plea for BJU’s racial reconciliation. BJU’s statements are strange. To be quite blunt, they make no sense to a Yankee. But I’ve discovered that within the Old South ethic of the Lost Cause, the so-called apology makes perfect sense.

The best resource for understanding the Lost Cause rhetoric is an old friend to rhetoricians and a particularly familiar annoyance to Burkeans—Richard Weaver. In his 1943 LSU dissertation renamed Southern Tradition at Bay, Weaver surveys and appreciates Lost Cause literature post-Appomattox and includes a long discussion of Southern apologia.

Bob Jones University’s statements on race parallel Weaver’s Lost Cause apologia. The drama that Weaver both records and continues is a romance caught at a potentially tragic crisis point. The old rules of chivalry drive the action or rather reaction. Weaver’s hero, the southern Cavalier, moves more than acts. He is a man of leisure and good birth who simply is, until a moment of deadly crisis. When he is challenged, as if in a duel, his duty is to “serve the eternal verities” of the established order. Destruction, ruin, bankruptcy, injury are all irrelevant to preserving truth and maintaining “good form.” Guiding him is an unspoken code duello.

Even nearly one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the rhetorical drama of the Old South still persists in tiny provincial cultural pockets like Bob Jones University. Within the enduring rhetorical romance of sectarian religion, the code duello informs and contains conflict.  Intersecting Richard Weaver’s Old South drama with my previous description of rhetorical romance is a productive critical project. Each analysis rounds out the other and might provide a more organic explanation for the persisting romance in a micro-culture like southern fundamentalism.

Such an intersection also broadens BJU’s connection with the “segregationist ethos” of its founding family. Agrarianism, provincialism, populism, commerce, societal hierarchy, religion, nativism, and racism all goaded the Confederacy in their Romance-turned-tragedy. In our critical sweep, we, too, must avoid containing our cultural sin of racism in the South, in fundamentalism, or in Bob Jones University. The arcane mask these romantics don to distract their Other’s gaze from their own ugliness tempts us to our own form of tragedy. The Please-Reconcile effort was a comic attempt at removing their mask and correcting that sin without killing off the humanity underneath.

Further study intersecting southern fundamentalism with the Lost Cause drama would expose the salience and endurance possible (or not) in newer Lost Cause movements like Doug Wilson’s Federal Vision, southern secessionism, and identity Christianity. At the root of the problem within Southern romantic apologia is a juggling of the usual mystical purpose with the pragmatic agency. That is, by relegating the divine to the means of propping up a societal hierarchy, participants in the rhetorical drama are distracted from the essentially preservationist motive in their micro-culture. Further contrasting southern with northern fundamentalism, tracing how Weaver’s agrarianism found resonance in mid-century northern conservatism, and mapping the dramatistic similarities between the Civil War and current culture wars would productively assist scholars in deconstructing tragedy and creating a comic corrective.

A revealing moment in this interaction was the P-R’s admittance that they were shocked at their alma mater’s pervasively racist reputation. They offer one explanation that BJU is really not as racist as it seems, giving their alma mater a face-saving “out.” Another possible explanation is that the legal confrontation of BJU’s interracial dating prohibition sent the “segregationist ethos” far underground. The presumed inequality of the races remained in behind-closed-doors meetings. The students from both the North and the South who attended and graduated after 1983 Supreme Court case—which includes every member of the Please-Reconcile team—were witless about the racist foundation. They had been raised in the prevailing notion of “color-blindness” which made them deaf to the coded racism. They were literal-minded, morally earnest, personally outspoken, and driven to “do right.” Perhaps, by shedding the Old South rhetoric that was so prominent in BJU’s pre-1964 days and by generalizing for a larger audience, BJU was forging the tools for its own first homegrown public confrontation.

This intersection of the North with the Old South, of integrationist with separatist, of post-1983 students with pre-1964 administrators, of a second-generation Pollack with an Old South morality play — by putting together these two disparate “terms” we have our last place of freedom, Burke would say. In the end, such perspective by incongruity is our best source of comic correction keeping us from being too hopelessly ourselves.

When the Old South brushes up against this 2^nd-generation Pollack like that, I can’t ignore it. It’s what Burke would call Perspective by Incongruity — two dissimilar “terms” shoved together that each change the other simply by proximity. And that’s what happened a year ago when Bob Jones University produced a “Statement on Race” to say it was “profoundly sorry” for past racist policies.

I’m no stranger to Bob Jones University and so-called fundamentalism. Not only have I studied the rhetoric of American religious separatism formally, I’ve lived it. Having spent 20 years at BJU as a student, grad student, and faculty member, I am especially sensitive to their public discourse. Now that they fired me for being more scholarly than separatist, I’m looking anew at their public texts. While I was still inside the movement, I described their frame of acceptance as less tragic or comic and more romantic. My purpose then was descriptive as well as prescriptive—to explain to them, as an insider, how best to craft their message.

We all see how that turned out. So I am honing a new critical voice—one that’s still within a Burkean comic corrective, but without the apologist bent. I no longer need to prescribe to fundamentalists. And I’ve never sensed more strongly how incongruous it is to be a 2^nd-generation Pollack stuck in an Old South morality play.

The most recent example of a public text from Bob Jones University is this “Statement on Race.” BJU is infamous for its 1983 Supreme Court battle to maintain its policy forbidding “interracial dating.” The problems with their policy are so numerous and complex that we’d be here for weeks discussing them. Not only is their definition of “race” problematic—they limited their scope to only three races—but the definition of a “date” comes into play too. They lost that fight with the IRS, lost their tax-exemption status, but maintained this unseemly remnant of the Old South.

And not until Campaign 2000 did BJU’s racism rise again into public view. George W. Bush’s rather routine visit to an old Republican haunt in South Carolina didn’t seem too interesting until John McCain made it interesting. The media firestorm was so intense that BJU’s president went on Larry King Live to lift the interracial dating ban.

Alumni who had attended the school since 1983, however, didn’t think that was sufficient. One particular 1998 alum, Jon Henry, was so irritated by the continuing defense of racism among BJU constituency that he started, of all things, a Facebook group to force BJU to apologize for past racism. That on-a-whim action snowballed into a full-fledged alumni effort garnering 506 signatures attempting to move Bob Jones University one step closer to reconciliation and culminating in BJU’s 2008 “Statement on Race.”

Another distraction. . . .

I’m a Yankee living south of the Mason-Dixon line. A granddaughter of working class Polish immigrants. A Detroiter. Life’s different down here. I’ve adjusted to the fact that the peanuts are boiled, not roasted. And I actually like my BBQ as pulled pork and tangy instead of whole cuts of beef and sweet.

But when we visit Stone Mountain—that Mount Rushmore of the Confederacy—I honestly don’t know how to explain to my sons what happened there as we walk past the secessionist memorials alongside our African-American neighbors. We take our boys to living museums—something my family did every weekend at Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village. But these war re-enactments are almost always from the Civil War.

And when my sons ask during the battle, “Who are the good guys, Mommy?” I can only sigh. I saw all those confederate bumper stickers when we walked in. I hear the lilt in the accent around me. So, like the good Burkean, I whisper very quietly, “It’s complicated, honey. They are all Americans.”

Disclaimer: It’s not about you. Or me. I wrote this and published it in advance a week ago. So any resonance you might see is simply providential, and I’m leaving it as it stands.

This is a representative anecdote demonstrating the larger problem I’m still dancing around.

I’ve got Asperger’s Syndrome. There. I said it.

And before you proceed to pat me on the head and tell me how wrong and deluded and silly I am, just stop. I’ve heard it all even if it’s not directed at me exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I seem too “normal” to you. You know people who really have it, and they are really, really weird (like that makes me feel better!). No Aspie goes into the Humanities anyway; they are all in the hard sciences. Mm-kay. As long as you’ve got it all figured out.

The fact is that you’re not in my head. The fact is that it looks different for women than men, different for adults than children. The fact is that a lot of women don’t figure this out until their forties. The fact is that we all learn to cope in time.

What is it anyway? Well, it’s a kind of high-functioning Autism. Yeah, I know. The big-A is rather scary. But while Auties have a lot of language difficulties, Aspies do pretty well with verbal communication. It’s nonverbal communication — social cues — that Aspies completely miss. With early intervention and good teachers, an Autistic child will “grow” to be classified as Asperger’s in adulthood. Some define Aspergers as an extreme male brain, so when a woman has it, it seems like she’s just more masculine in her read on social conventions.

It’s a spectrum, you see. Part of the neurological diversity that has always existed in the human condition. You might even be “on the spectrum.” Most creative people are.

Glenn Gould was an Aspie. Some think Thomas Jefferson was. Frasier Crane. Bill Gates. Dan Akyroyd. Nearly every character on The Big Bang Theory has some variation on Aspergers. Some even call it the “Mr. Spock” syndrome. Some think that all cats have Aspergers.

What does it all mean?

It means that if I’m having a conversation with you, I can look at you intently while you’re talking but once the conversation ball is in my court, I can’t make eye contact if my life depended on it. I really can’t think when I’m looking at you — too much data.

It means that at a party, I’ll probably be playing with some stim toy while everyone’s talking. I used to have a set of stim toys on my desk to play with during long conversations.

It means that if I have to host a party and you ask me what you can bring, I will blink and stare and really have no idea what to tell you.

It means I bite my lip a lot when I’m tense.

It means that while you’re talking, I will stare at your sweater (especially a Fair Isle or an Aran) and think about those stitches. I’m listening. Really. But knitting is so fascinating. It’s like something has to occupy that part of my brain while my ears are working too.

It means that while we’re talking on the phone, I’m playing cyber-solitaire.

It means I really, really hate the phone. Hate it. I’ll answer it if I have to, but I’d rather talk face-to-face or write you a note. And the poor back-and-forth-response-time of the cell phone drives me insane because I have trouble with the nonverbal cues anyway that tell me when it’s my turn to talk. Mess with that and I practically have to take a nap after a cell phone call.

It means I’m not good with apologies. Not that I don’t want to apologize. I just don’t pick up on the cues that I’m supposed to apologize. So I either over-apologize or never apologize.

It means that I feel what you’re feeling very deeply — to an almost uncomfortable and cloying level. Conventional wisdom says that Aspies don’t feel empathy. That’s actually being proven untrue. It’s that we feel such intense empathy that we get sensory overload and we shut down.

It means that if you ask me where the pot holders are in my kitchen, it would be easier for me to show you than tell you. It’s like the task skips the verbal part of brain. It goes right from my fingers to my brain and never hits my mouth. So it’s not that I don’t want to tell you. It’s not that I’m being proprietary or selfish. I just have a really hard time spitting it out.

It means I have a hard time asking for help.

It means that if I have to buy toothpaste for Grant, I’ll never buy the right brand even though he just told me the exact description 30 minutes earlier. I don’t get verbal instructions well at all.

It means that I don’t really do well with handling the finances. I have poor executive function.

It means that I think certain colors have a smell. To the point that I plan what soap I use based on what color I’m wearing.

It means I learned to swim from a book.

It means that I really don’t like fiction. I don’t know why either. But . . . I just don’t.

It means that I am intensely interested in a few things. Really. Obsessed even. Deeply. And I’ll voraciously read everything on that topic. Nothing can stop that interest until it just dies down. It will dissipate eventually. But if you happen to ask me a question about that interest, I’ll only tentatively begin to answer because . . . well, I scare people with the obsession. I sound more like Cliff Clavin than I want to admit.

It means that I learned to read at age two.

It means that my “playing” in childhood looked more like sorting.

It means I have an inordinate attachment to things. My Barbies. My Fisher Price toys.

It means I intellectualize everything.

It means that I’m regularly exhausted from intellectualizing every interaction. That’s a lot of study! And it wears me out.

It means that I could easily live in-between my own ears.

It means I over-react or under-react. I talk too loudly or too quietly. I gesture too little or too much. I don’t read the appropriate quantity and quality of nonverbals well.

It means that I’m sensitive. Over-sensitive even. But I have a hard time expressing it, so I work very, very hard at it until I can spit it out.

It means I have really awful handwriting. My signature has degenerated into a mess. My last name looks like “Iwug.”

It means that this is exactly why I chose “public speaking” to study because learning the social cues on an intellectual level might help me cope on a personal level. That’s actually pretty typical since Aspies over-intellectualize everything. That’s also that part of the living-between-my-own-ears problem.

It means that I am bent toward solitude.

It means I like you. A lot. But sometimes you might think my nonverbals are communicating the opposite.

It means that God has neurologically wired me to be a whistle-blower. Yes, it’s true. The great-Aspie-guru Tony Attwood has surmised that all whistle-blowers are on the spectrum. We aspire to adhere to a set of values, and when those values are missed, we are genuinely disturbed. Most “neuro-typicals” are more concerned with social ties than values, and so they will ignore value-infraction in order to “be with” others. Aspies don’t. The values are more important. So we speak out. And uh . . . well, you know the rest of the story.

It means I write paragraphs like that one above to over-explain everything. I talk about myself like a textbook. That’s weird! It’s a coping mechanism. I might talk about you like that, too, and get you really annoyed.

It means I can be pretty clueless. It means that Grant has to say, “Honey! No!!” Or “Hey — stop flailing.” or “Yo! I don’t want to hear any more about that.” Oh! Okay. Didn’t realize that.

Steve Brown challenges us to ask God to show us ourselves — kiss that demon on the lips! When I picked up Tony Attwood’s “bible” on Asperger’s syndrome this summer, I was reading about that “demon.” It was all written right there. In clinical language.

And writing this all out here like this is kissing that “demon.”

I’m not alone at least. My grandmother was probably an Aspie. Others in the family too. To the point that watching an extended family dinner is kind of . . . well, comical. We Aspies sit there while the neuro-typicals carry the conversation. There’s a lot of quiet staring and stimming. Until an interest is mentioned — religion, politics, knitting, dog breeds, or (heaven forbid you unwittingly mention this) rhetoric — and BOOM! We talk! With all the passion and intensity you’d see in the House of Commons. We argue. We gesture. We speak too loudly. We scare the typicals. And then we relax. It’s like touch football for us. Aaaaaahhhhh . . . so nice. What fun.

It means also that I’ve already jabbered on too long, and I’ve bored you to tears. Aspies don’t read the social cues to quit either. So I’ll save my larger point for another post.

But for now, I’ll say this — it all means that I need you. I do. Even though solitude is natural to me, even though I may seem to be saying “I want to be alone!” I still need you.

But it also means that you need me. Even if you don’t like me very much. I’m like the heel spur on the right heel (wing) of the Body. I’m there. I’m bone of your bone. And I’m the reminder that you have been neglecting your shoes, that you need to buy a custom orthotic, and you need to put your feet up at the end of the day. And surgery to remove me will only hurt your entire foot worse. . . . No, you have to learn to live with me because ignoring me makes your cortisol level rise to uncomfortable levels. Change your habits ’cause they are killing you — stop the power walking and take up swimming.

Aren’t you glad?

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

I Corinthians 12: 21-26

Our Evangelical foremothers in New York state were so moved by the Second Great Awakening but so tied to their family obligations that they translated the push for global missions into home missions. In 1833, Abigail Goodrich Whittelsey started Mother’s Magazine to encourage mothers in that calling — to win their children to Christ. The magazine warned about the dangers of corsets and birthday parties. Even sugary snacks were interpreted to be a religious choice.

By the Civil War, however, men had “professionalized” the magazine’s focus entirely, and the topics were more . . . well, bland. The copy was little more than sappy poetry and heavy-handed stories. The magazine changed its name after the turn of the 20th-century — to Family Circle.

From the winning the lost to the teaching the kids to rhyming the couplets to . . . well, “toning up your trouble spots.”

When I was young, I was taught that really committed Christians were all missionaries. You know the bargains thrown out from the pulpit, “If you really loved Jesus, you wouldn’t be afraid to go to Africa! You would tell God that you’d go anywhere for Him. After all He did for you!”

I heard the missionary stories. You know, about Amy Carmichael and her providentially brown eyes. Ti-Fam, Witch Doctor’s Daughter. Hudson Taylor. Ringu. The missionary stories were always the best ones — tailored to elementary school attention-spans. Brief, action-packed, with cliff-hangers at the end of every telling. The missionaries were bigger-than-life heroes. Wow! So exciting.

And we kids loved it when missionaries came to speak. Slides! We all liked slides! It was TV for church.

And then I met them. The missionaries. I studied them. They were so . . . vanilla. They were so unlike all those stories I’d heard. Granted, they were probably exhausted from deputation, irritated by the American materialism, and just plain peeved at having another annoying kid messing with their display. But I didn’t know if I could be one. Did I really love Jesus enough to leave everything and go to the bowels of the rain forest and eat bugs? Could I be as passive as they were?

I was actually a “summer missionary” for two summers. It was hard, fulfilling work. But was it my “calling”? I didn’t feel like I fit.

Then they changed it on me. No longer were we told to go on the mission field. Around high school and college, the plea changed from “missions” to “full-time Christian work.” “If you really loved Jesus, you’d devote your life to His service. You’d be a minister, a pastor’s wife, or a Christian school teacher.”

Huh. Now this seemed do-able. I could stay here. No bugs on the menu here.  I could devote my life to service here. I loved my Christian school teachers. I could do that. At college, I thought, “I could do this college teaching thing. I can see that. That would fit.”

And so I did. I devoted my life to that particular second blessing — to becoming a local “religious professional.”

Did you notice what happened with that change in appeal though? From global missions to national work. From taking the Gospel out there to helping us here within our own segregated Christian world. From the Universe to the Province. From the Great Commission to . . . well, a lesser commission.

You don’t hear the “full-time Christian service” message anymore — and it’s not just because I am no longer in “full-time Christian service.” I felt the change before we left. I don’t know when it got dropped precisely. But it sounds kind of quaint when I remember it here. Now the appeal for the really-committed is narrower-still. Instead of going out to the world or going out to the church-school, we don’t go out at all. We stay home. Well, women stay home. Men, you can do what you want; it doesn’t really matter as long as the Little Woman is where she belongs.

So we’ve individuated the second blessing even further. From the world to the city to the home.

Is that really what we want? It might seem like we’ve so diversified the “call” (i.e. the “pitch”) to include everyone — not just the “vanilla” missionaries or the talkative teacher-sorts — but every household and every family. But at what cost? Do we realized how we’re being absorbed into the Hegemon where our message of Christ becomes well . . . just about “toning up”?

That’s the sticker they robotically glue on the inside flyleaf of every book you buy at the BJU Campus Store. Even the Bibles!

That’s their litigious-ish way of washing their hands of your presumed offense at their dangerously idea-laden books.

So this is mine.

I’ve had another project brewing for some time. A project whose research got me so blue last May that I had to stop reading. I’m ready to start up again. And this is my sticker:

Disclaimer: I’m not talking about you. No, really. I’m not.

I’m talking about us. Which does include you. And me. And millions of other people who fall under the umbrella of Evangelicalism — from fundies to Pentecostals, from Calvinists to Arminians, from soul-patch-wearing-and-coffee-drinking types to their culotte-donning opposites.

But if you think I have you and yours in mind, you’re incorrect. I don’t. So forget the nitty-gritty you and think about the more abstract-and-one-contemporary-sliver-of-the-invisible-Church us. Or stop reading. That’s always an option.

In fact, this whole project could fall under the heading of “It’s Not About You.” So that we Evangelicals get so easily offended at point-blank critique or that we can think of one exception to the general rule or that we can turn every critique into a tu quoque fallacy . . . well, that is really proof of the problem.

But I’ll save that more for a later post.

Consider yourself warned.