[standing up for people being called what they want to be called...]

Here's an interesting clip from a TV show, which nicely shows the challenges of challenging other people when they use derogatory and disrespectful terms for others. Ironic though not surprising that the person doing the challenging is a QPOC (queer person of colour).

Watch how this discussion evolves, and some of the classic responses that those challenged pull out.

🚧 SPOILERS AHEAD 🚧 This was a very important scene in the latest installment of @TalesofTheCity. Watch the whole thing on @netflix. https://t.co/LkbYB9T0gh

— GLAAD (@glaad) June 21, 2019

If the tweet and embedded video do not show up above, click here.

Read CBC's article "We need to talk about the dinner party scene in the Tales of the City reboot"

[new language of gender]

Here is a well-presented slideshare on the new language of gender. From the introductory slide:

Language Matters

Gender used to be viewed through binary terms: male and female, masculine and feminine. The new language of gender breaks out of that binary system in favor of blurred, fluid identities across a gender spectrum. To be culturally literate now demands knowing how to speak the new language of gender and knowing the difference between terms like sex, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

Click here to watch the slideshare and learn more

[what colour are you?]

Brazilian photographer Angélica Dass is working on a large project which she calls "humanae". She takes portraits of people and then matches their skin tone to a Pantone colour, The portrait is then printed with that Pantone colour as the background. This challenges how we consider skin colour and ethnic identity,..

Watch her TED talk:


Alternate video link.

Check out Angélica Dass' website:
http://www.angelicadass.com/humanae-work-in-progress/

[photo session with a twist]

An interesting experiment done by Canon, showing the power of labels...




Link to video 

church of the illiterati

This church declares itself clearly as a place that welcomes and embraces those who can't read.

Well, maybe.  Their sign does raise several questions:

If this really is a church for people who cannot read, what does it matter what the sign says? Or would it be better to call it "the church of non-readers"? Now it is possible, of course, that this church has specifically used the name "Illiterati" to reclaim the name, perhaps similar to the way queer has been reclaimed by some lgbtq+ groups, or like the church which calls itself the Scum of the Earth Church.

And then one might ask, how would someone who doesn't read know this is the church for them? Would some kind of image be helpful? Or would people find out about it via word of mouth and radio ad campaigns?

And does the Church of the Illiterati embrace everyone? We don't know, as they haven't said. And this means that overall, they are still an uncertain space. Except to non-readers. Maybe.

homeless =

I was looking for alternative words for "homeless person" the other day, and one of the top Google results brought me directly to this:

How's that for bias and for perpetuating negative views of people who do not have permanent housing?

The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness / the Homeless Hub has a much more helpful typology of homelessness which understands the range of what homelessness can look like.


If you're interested, here's a link to the page at thesaurus.com.

[love has no labels]

Love Has No Labels, a new online campaign, says:

Before anything else, we are all human.

It's time to embrace diversity.

Let's put aside labels in the name of love.

I agree wholeheartedly!

Their site includes a great video (below), discussion of bias, a bias quiz, tips on fighting bias and prejudice, and stories giving examples of what bias looks like.





Video link

Love Has No Labels website

looking for love in all the wrong places

When it is said about someone that they are "looking for love in all the wrong places", the reference is usually to places like bars and clubs, or the arms of other people who are considered unsuitable. And implied by the phrase, is that there are "right places" to look for love. Yet I don't recall ever having heard discussions or presentations about the "right places", except perhaps in an ultra-spiritualized way.

The right places to look for love. Ironically, one both expects - and doesn't expect -  a church to be a place to find love. We expect it because we know it should be that way. We don't expect it because we know it often isn't that way.

And so, for Jonesy and others, the church might well be the wrong place to look for love. Pretty sad, I'd say.

---

Check out an earlier related post.

pop psycholojesus

Just some trite sayings from everyone's favourite pop psychologist, western jesus.

On a serious note, I've been thinking about two of these phrases recently: "looking for love in all the wrong places," and "attention-seeking." Here are two examples of how they might be used:

She's looking for love in all the wrong places.

There's that attention-seeking behaviour again!

I've been wondering whether these phrases actually function as ways of dismissing someone. If someone is looking for love in all the wrong places, well then, poor guy, he just needs to learn to look in the right places. Or the attention-seeking woman needs to stop focusing on herself, and focus on others for a change.

The phrases seem to ignore the underlying need or reality: the reality that he is looking for love and having difficulty finding it; the reality that for some reason or other, she is drawing attention to herself.

How do we move beyond labeling and instead see the person behind the behaviour?

[slurs]

Slurs are not oppressive because they are offensive, they are oppressive because slurs by nature of being slurs draw upon certain power dynamics to remind their target of his/her/their vulnerability in a certain relation to power and as an extension of that, to threaten violence and exploitation of that vulnerability.

(from cisyphus / tumblr)

[you don't say... campaign by duke university]

"You Don’t Say? is a campaign founded by senior Daniel Kort and juniors Anuj Chhabra, Christie Lawrence and Jay Sullivan that aims to raise student awareness about the offensive nature of phrases and slurs used in everyday conversation through photographs shared using an online campaign." (source)

The latest part of this campaign features 41 student-athletes, who were each asked to choose a phrase that mattered to them.

What is it that #YouDontSay? pic.twitter.com/hykbOrfc2r
— You Don't Say (@youdontsayduke) January 15, 2015

Check out a lot more photos.
Additional photos of Cornell University students doing a series of similar ads.

Read more background info.

Follow on twitter.

dots and stars

We spend much of our time giving gold stars to people of whom we approve, who are doing the right thing and wearing the right clothes and believing the right beliefs. And we give grey dots to people who don't fit in, who are different, who make mistakes, who aren't as talented as everyone else.

God, on the other hand, is occupied with better things:

For a cool story book related to this, check out Max Lucado's book You are Special. (pics and summary).

HIV=

This weekend is the official launch of HIV Equal, "a national multimedia campaign that aims to end HIV stigma and promote HIV testing by creating a social art movement that changes the way people think about HIV and which reopens the national dialogue about HIV."

After hearing about the campaign, I realized I had never thought about the stigma that accompanies being HIV+. Not that it isn't obvious when mentioned, but sometimes it takes mentioning for people to think about it.

And I asked myself, would Jesus have stigmatized people who are HIV+? With his record as a stigmatoclast, the answer is clear: "not a chance."

Would he have taken part in an HIV= campaign? Who knows. But there's no doubt that he embraced those at the margins, the outsiders, the least of these. He looked past the labels and past all the things we use to reject and exclude, and loved the men and women whom his Father had created.

Find out more about the HIV Equal campaign.


My apologies for not having a more middle eastern jesus. A search of Google images finds very few results of a non-white jesus, and then mostly he is wearing robes and such. To match the photos in the HIV= campaign at least somewhat, I needed to be able to place the "HIV=" sticker on his skin in a way that looked semi-realistic, and this is the best picture I found for that purpose. If anyone has a picture of a non-white jesus with a suitable area of skin showing to place the HIV=, please let me know.

key terms related to exclusion and embrace

This is an ongoing collection of key terms and concepts that people should know and understand, to assist with understanding exclusion and embrace, diversity, and more. Most items are a brief introduction to the concept, with links to more detailed information or discussion.

concept: generous spaciousness*

This is an absolutely key concept, related to the "environment, climate, ethos within expressions of the Christian community as it pertains to engaging with gender and sexual minority persons."

Rather than providing a really brief explanation on this page, read more about generous spaciousness on its own post and then follow up by clicking some of the links on that page.

concept: privilege*

Google offers the following definition of privilege:
"A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to one person or group of people."

KJ Ward, writing at Black Girl Dangerous, defines privilege this way:
"unearned access to a bunch of good stuff and an arbitrarily granted protection from a bunch of bad stuff".

Accordingly, one might think of diplomatic immunity or the privileges that come with membership in an exclusive golf club or with first class plane tickets. But privilege as we are talking about it here is a more complex term, and one which is often difficult for those who are in privileged places to grasp. Let's use an example to illustrate it:

A white person goes into the store to get a birthday gift for their niece. Generally speaking, they never have to think about the following:
Will I be able to find a doll of the same race as my niece?
Will the store staff be worried that I'm going to steal things?
Will store security follow me around?

A black person or an aboriginal person goes into a store for the same purpose, and for them, these are often relevant questions!

Privilege is being able to live your life without ever having to think about such questions.

There are many kinds of privilege: white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, cis privilege, Christian privilege, and others.

Read more about white privilege (including 50 daily effects of white privilege).
Read more about straight privilege (with parallels to the white privilege article).
Watch some amazing videos by Australian performance poet Joel McKerrow, as he says sorry for the white part in him, the rich part in him, the Christian part of him, and the masculine part of him.
Read Christena Cleveland about Killing Me Softly: On Privilege and Voice.
See also white fragility further down on this page.

[just hospitality: God's welcome in a world of difference, by letty m russell]

"In this, her last book, theologian Letty Russell redefines the commonly held notion of hospitality as she challenges her readers to consider what it means to welcome the stranger. In doing so, she implores persons of faith to join the struggles for justice.

Rather than an act of limited, charitable welcome, Russell maintains that true hospitality is a process that requires partnership with the “other” in our divided world. The goal is “just hospitality,” that is, hospitality with justice.

Russell draws on feminist and postcolonial thinking to show how we are colonized and colonizing, each of us bearing the marks of the history that formed us. With an insightful analysis of the power dynamics that stem from our differences and a constructive theological theory of difference itself, Russell proposes concrete strategies to create a more just practice of hospitality.

With careful attention, she writes, we can build a network of hospitality that is truthful about our mistakes and inequities, yet determined to resist the contradictions that drive us apart. This kind of genuine solidarity requires us to cast off oppression and domination in order to truly welcome the stranger. Russell’s lasting message is a highly practical theology for both the academy and the church. The book contains questions for study and reflection."

(description from amazon)

A sample quote:

My experience as an outsider within has led me question the rigid clergy line that divides our church communities and increases hierarchy and competition for power in our denomination. At the same time, it has led me to focus in a theology of hospitality that emphasizes the calling of the church as a witness to God's intention to mend the creation by bringing about a world of justice, peace, and integrity of the natural world. There are a lot of "missing persons" in our world today whose situation of poverty, injustice, and suffering makes God weep. These missing persons are not strangers to God, for God already has reached out to care for them. Yet they are strangers in the world who need to know God cares through the witness of a church that practices a ministry of hospitality and justice on their behalf.       (p. 18-19)

Read an excerpt at Spirituality & Practice.

cartoons about serial killers

How do you decide when a cartoon or joke is harmless, or when it hurts people? Of course, the same cartoon can amuse one person, offend another person and confuse yet another. But overall, are there principles or ways of determining where a cartoon stands?

Take this cartoon from Matta as an example:

Should a serial killer be offended by this? Does it make fun of him or her? Or it is simply a funny idea which happens to be about serial killers and their weapons? After all, it's not like one of those jokes that starts with a line like "Serial killers are so disgusting that ...."

closets

standard reply

This is the standard reply that many Christians use to apply to those who are—in their eyes—"sinners."

I saw this just the other day on a friend's blog. She had posted about generous spaciousness and the invitation to rest, and one of the comments from a reader went as follows:

Steven said...

"Jesus, it is well known, had dinner with the wrong kind of people, touched the wrong kind of people, had conversation with the wrong kind of people, went to the wrong places, triggered and exposed social taboos, broke dividing walls, and announced a new kind of level playing field."

And then He told them to "go and sin no more".

July 15, 2012 9:10 PM source

Perhaps someone should have told Jesus to "go and sin no more," considering he was associating with the wrong people....

Let's unpack this a bit.

First, the reader repeatedly refers to "the wrong kind of people" without explanation or quotation marks. Consider the difference between the following two sentences:

1. Jesus had dinner with the wrong kind of people. Generally speaking, unless someone says more to qualify this, it means that they believe that these were indeed the wrong kind of people and perhaps even that Jesus should not have been having dinner with them at all. Think of Simon the Pharisee seeing the woman who was wiping Jesus' feet with her hair and perfume, who then said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.” (Luke 7:36-50 NIV).
2. Jesus had dinner with the "wrong kind" of people. The quotation marks indicate that while some think of these people as the wrong kind of people, the writer himself does not think so.

Not only does the reader not have quotation marks, but he makes no statements to indicate that he is in disagreement with these people being the wrong kind of people. Nothing is said about Jesus loving everyone regardless of what the general society thought of them, nor anything contrasting Jesus' treatment of them with how the religious people treated them.

And then we have the reader's statement that Jesus "told them to 'go and sin no more'." Biblically, we have only the account of the woman caught in adultery where Jesus says "go and sin no more." So to say "He told them" (emphasis added) is simply not correct. It takes personal bias and applies it to Jesus.

While I do not know the Steven who posted the comment, I would guess that most likely, he himself feels that these were the wrong kind of people for Jesus to be spending time with, and that perhaps exposing social taboos and breaking down dividing walls is not such a great idea.

A standard phrase like "go and sin no more" is pretty handy. I simply label someone as a sinner (based on the simple evaluation: are they like me, or not?) and then I tell them to go and sin no more. Black and white. No nuances. No consideration that perhaps we have different ways of understanding something, or different approaches.

But labelling someone and giving them a pat answer is not grace, it's not love, it's not compassion, and it's not what Jesus did.

Perhaps "go and sin no more" is one of those phrases that we should give up... forever.

unbaptized enemies

Can we agree to major on the majors? Can we focus on what really matters to the kingdom, and agree to disagree on the secondary things?

How easily we get distracted from what matters to the Kingdom of God. And surely quantity of water cannot be one of them. In this cartoon, pastor lumps the church down the street in with "enemies of God" because they baptize by sprinkling instead of immersion.

Growing up, I attended a Baptist church in Manitoba. It was part of a Baptist association which believed in baptism by immersion as an adult, and where one had to be baptized to be a member. They were completely against infant baptism. And they didn't just believe in immersion, they insisted on it.

Here's where the problem came up: when a person who had been baptized as an adult by sprinkling (in another denomination, obviously) came to the church (perhaps having gotten married to one of its members), they could not become a member unless they were baptized by immersion. Which meant that they had to be baptized again (from their perspective; from the church's perspective, it was for the first time). So really, it wasn't a matter of the person's ability to understand, or their conscious desire to be baptized, it was the quantity of water that was the problem.

One of the other churches in the denomination finally left due to such things.

If a person or a denomination feels so strongly about something, how many steps are they away from seeing the other person or church as misguided? heretical? the enemy?

How will people see the love of God for them when the churches they see are in conflict about things that are really not that important?


Note: this cartoon  was originally published on June 29, 2012, but that puts it out of sequence, in that chronologically it should have taken place before pastor inadvertantly outed himself on Sunday, June 17th . So I republished it to have it appear before.

man's best friend

Once in a while, Pastor Stickman's resistance to wearing his reading glasses does him good.

And further to dog's love for us, the Archbishop of Canterbury has asked,

What difference would it make if I believed I am held in a wholly loving gaze which saw all my surface accidents and arrangements, all my inner habits and inheritances, all my anxieties and arrogances, all my history, and yet loved me wholly with an utterly free, utterly selfless love? And what difference would it make if I let myself believe that each person around me is loved and held in the same overwhelming, loving gaze, and that this love made no distinctions of race, religion, age, innocence, strength or beauty?

(as quoted in a sermon by Bishop Jane on March 4, 2012).

And that is what dog is like, loving us with an utterly free, utterly selfless love, no matter what, and wanting us to do the same for others.