Politics of Esther: Mental Health

I have a dear friend with whom I like to discus the "mental health" of the old testament prophets. Where they around today I'm sure many of them would have received a diagnosis and been put on medication. (Please hear me right I am not saying there is not a time and a place for these things)

As it was they were written of by most of their contemporaries. When you read their stories however you have to ask - who were the mentally unhealthy? I mean if you look round the world and see vast amounts of injustice and oppression and don't get horribly miserable can you really claim to be mentally healthy.

With all this precedent in our holy scripture, with God so clearly using people who think differently how come the church gets it so wrong on mental health all the time? 

My experience is that Christians while quiet happy to go to a secular doctor and get prescribed antibiotics often break into cold sweats at suggestions of seeking medical advice and support in relation to mental well-being. Only Christian counselors will do all of a sudden. And because we are Christian's with a direct line to heaven we are also convinced that we are better able to diagnosis a fellow believers problems and suggest appropriate remedies than most trained professionals.

In all our discussions about the prophets my friend and I never got on to Haman. MD did:

"When his idol is fed he is so happy, when his idol is threatened he is so violent, someone in our culture would be diagnosed bipolar - sometimes they're idolatrous"

This is not OK on so many levels. Equating being bipolar with violence feeds an inaccurate and damaging prejudice. Equating being bipolar with idolatry essentially blames individuals for their own suffering.

Let's rather speak up about the violence and prejudice those with mental health concerns face, show Christ like compassion and empathy in our speaking and praying and lets give space to learn from them how to change our practice.

Useful resource: http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/churches

Ladies (yuk, cringe)

I can't believe I forgot this one on my post about words I don't like maybe because I get told I'm ridiculous every time I gently question its usage. I got an email today informing me that an event I was enquiring about was for ladies only. I cringed. 


So I'm really sorry if this offends anyone (actually I know it will so I want you to know that I do this because I believe it brings greater liberation to women - and transformation is painful) but I have to spell some things out because I am offended by the word Ladies and so are many other's and if the church wants to be an inclusive and welcoming place it needs to drop this language. 


I have no empirical data for this but I feel that there is sometimes an extra over-usage of this word in Christian literature/ events that are about women's equal ability to lead in church. I wonder if its one of the manifestations of our insecurities? We have to continually refer to ourselves as ladies just to make sure everyone's clear that we're still all floral and feminine as we step up into the full humanity Christ offers us. 


I'm assuming this use of the word Ladies is in ignorance of it's history and the passionate advocacy of that great Christian Feminists like Josephine Butler who fought to expose double standards in morality. 


So a brief summary of why we shouldn't use it:


1.) It's used to police women's behaviours
If your a woman can you remember being told to be ladylike when you where little? Or told not to do something because it wasn't ladylike? I think I've proved my point.


2.) It's used to remind women they are the property of men. 


3.) It is something other people assign to you and can strip from you. It is not about your own sense of personhood. This point was most powerfully driven home to me when I was at a women's group and heard a woman respond with much pain at being called a lady. She had clearly been told by others that she had not met the mark and was not a lady.


4.) I guess linked to the above but it's classist. 


5.) It is and has been used to divide women against each other


6.) Much like princess, ladies don't do anything.


7.) It holds us to a demanding moral code not the freedom of grace


8.) God never calls us lady


Someone sent me the link it's fab (http://www.vfa.us/Feminist%20Language.htm) but my two favourite quotes:


"Girls do what their mothers tell them. Ladies do what society tells them. Women make up their own minds" (Karen Kijewski, 1989).


And most importantly for the church:


"There is a difference between women and ladies. The modern parasites made ladies, but God Almighty made women" (Mother Jones, 1912)


Please do not refer to me as a lady.

Feminised Church?

So I know this is kinda been and gone already but it is 2 a.m. and I cannot sleep (why my insomnia is timed for the nights my child does sleep is beyond me. Work tomorrow hey-ho), but I've been thinking again about accusations that the Church has become too 'feminised' and that that is the problem with it.

Leaving aside how hugely insulting this discourse generally is to women, men and the mission Jesus gave us I have been thinking about another problem with it. In what follows there is likely to be a lot of assumptions and guess work but I am not putting it forward as fact but as a thought that's perhaps worth investigating. I am also not referencing one church but the collective experience of people I've been talking to from a number of churches as well as my own observations about various churches I've observed through friends and family.

If you took a survey of those churches that believe women can be in positions of leadership I reckon about 70 to 80% of the leadership would be male. However in terms of directional influence I am theorising that this translates into a greater percentage and here's why.

It is the practice of most churches for the catch up coffees, the deep pastoral stuff, the how are you finding church and what would you like doing differently conversations, to happen mostly along single gender lines. So because there are more men on the leadership teams and less men in the congregations generally then every individual man in the congregation gets substantially more leadership ear time than the average woman. All these opinions and thoughts are then processed and brought to leadership team meetings and because there are more male leaders they also get a heavier weight of airing at meetings. So both individually and collectively men's thoughts and feelings hold greater sway.

Women also in general are probably less able to engage in discussion about what they thought about the sermon, give feedback etc. because they miss a greater proportion due to there over-representation on the kids church rota.

And this is in churches where women are officially allowed to lead. The churches in question which are bemoaning the 'feminisation' of their beloved institutions are and have been entirely run by men. It is a very odd thing for a male run organisation to look at itself and proclaim itself feminised. If you don't like where you've got to sort yourselves out but it can't be a product of women if you haven't let them make any decisions. It must be because the church is masculinised?!

Much of the complaint is that Church needs to become more missional, less passive and more proactive. Basically it needs to get on with the job is what these people are trying to say. Thing is when you look around their are lots of people getting on with it, many of them that you are blaming as the rout course of passivity.

I guess the best way to see what a feminised or masculinised organisation looks like is to leave it to be run by one gender and see how it turns out. So as contenders for the men we have a lot to pick from but if we are going to be v. strict and say organisations with no female leadership then that leaves us with um... sections of the church.

So what movement has been entirely led and run by women? Well the women's sector's renowned for its passivity, conflict avoiding, non-adventurous, submissive compliance. No women ever tock punches, went to prison, defied the law, changed the world for this movement did they?

If they want more missional churches then they need, for goodness sake, to give permission for all people to be, to be more fully human and to grow up into Him who is the Head.

If their churches have become 'feminised' then they only have themselves and their male only leadership to blame.