News with Nuance: Jan. 20, 2023
Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..
I got to spend some time with high school journalism students this week, at a school close to my home in Minneapolis.
We talked about their college plans, their school’s arts magazine and newspaper, both of which are in progress on print editions as well as online after a bit of a pause during COVID.
We talked about their interview techniques, why they wanted to study journalism, and we also talked about their favorite stories, writers, and news outlets.
I think one of our most important conversations, though, was when we started talking about what news they’d been reading that week. One student brought up the recent helicopter crash in Ukraine, the one that killed prominent politicians and kindergarten students and teachers alike.
We started talking about the war in Ukraine in the news, and the students mentioned how devastating it was and also how far away it seemed, and then we talked about the bombing of the apartment complex in Ukraine earlier this week, and how the stories could blend together to where a missile attack and a helicopter crash and all the chaos and terror of war became the fog of war, and sometimes that fog of war obscured the crimes and violence of government leaders and autocrats and brutal dictators and greedy businesspeople.
I talked to them about how we didn’t always have this thing called a “24-hour news cycle,” and about how the constant drumbeat of ever-available news had, maybe counterintuitively, made news less valuable to society and more vulnerable to abuse, manipulation and deception.
I told them that this was the critical responsibility of journalists and citizens in our time: to be able to see through the fog and pick out the narratives that were true amidst the onslaught of sensational or horrifying or unbelievable stories. Only in determining these central narratives can we take action toward change, toward more hope, peace, joy and love in the world.
And that’s really why I write this newsletter each week. To try and pick through the news threads and find the narratives that matter. To pay attention to the nuance. And help you feel informed and empowered.
Thanks for reading! Please do share with a friend.
The Headline: Jacinda Ardern resigns as prime minister of New Zealand
If there’s a theme to this week’s News with Nuance, it’s female courage in the face of a world that tries to paint women as weak, ill-prepared, and unserious.
I was struck by the seemingly banal story about New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern stepping down from her post at age 42. Ardern captivated the world in her election in 2017, followed two years later by the mosque bombings in Christchurch and then by a global pandemic.
Through it all, Ardern’s hand was steady and honest and gracious. She was firm and utterly self-possessed, remarkably so, even while giving birth to her first child a year into her premiership.
Still, in all these stories, the story of Ardern’s resignation might mean the most to me. And maybe it’s because I just recently left a pastoral job I loved in Minnesota, not to take a new or “higher” position, but because I knew as much as I loved my church and my ministry there, the rhythm of my life had become unsustainable for me and my family, and my church also needed a different pastoral leader to carry them into their next phase of ministry.
We’ve seen so many powerful men leave poorly. They overstay. They refuse to resign. They become incompetent or embroiled in scandal. Their ego is their alpha and omega, forever and ever Amen.
And I don’t want to be one of those people who holds women to impossible standards, and says that sometimes women aren’t also entitled to be intemperate or angry or incompetent or embroiled with scandal.
But I do love the example set for the world by Jacinda Ardern, whose story today reminds me also of the Olympics and Simone Biles, who sat out potential gold-winning gymnastics events in order to preserve her mental health.
Ardern and Biles say to me, a 37-year-old mother of two and career woman - that the right choice is to factor yourself into your decision-making. To prioritize your health and make decisions on your own terms, not only on fear of what others might say or what it might mean for your future and your reputation.
A screenshot from a Guardian video remembering Jacinda Ardern’s tenure as Prime Minister
Story by Tess McClure, the Guardian
The Headline: ‘I’m afraid for her life’: Riverside CC women’s coach harassed after Title IX suit
Title IX, the landmark legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sex in schools, was passed more than 50 years ago. The language has become colloquial-ized, even, to refer to things that actually have nothing to do with Title IX, or twisting it to support a fixed idea of gender that denies the existence of non-binary people.
What’s actually much more fear-provoking when it comes to Title IX is not the erasure of men’s gymnastics or wrestling programs but that in the 50 years since Title IX has passed, a great deal of discrimination based on sex is still rampant in American schools and especially, sports programs. Remember the viral TikTok revealing the paltry weight room at the women’s NCAA tournament in 2021, compared with the men’s tournament’s comparatively palatial quarters?
The story shared above is yet another story where a woman coach (or athlete) is forced to risk her own safety in continuing to raise alarms about the inequity faced by female athletes and coaches. Former basketball star turned coach Alicia Berber has been fighting Riverside (Calif.) City College for years. She finally won a suit in 2012, leading to even more harassment. In this case, Berber decided that what she was most called to do was to stay at the college and keep up the fight, because leaving/retiring well for her will mean a situation for the women’s coach who follows her that doesn’t involve the harassment and inequity faced by Berber.
You’ll have to read the article to get the full story - but one part I couldn’t miss was listening to all the ways some of Berber’s male colleagues tried to diminish her credibility and suggest she couldn’t see what was right in front of her own eyes. I’ve had this done to me, too, and it’s just maddening. The worst result of this kind of gaslighting is it silences women’s (and other disempowered groups’) voices.
That’s why you’ve gotta stand behind Berber. She’s hanging so tough. Even when they try to keep people from attending her events. Or make her players purchase tickets to go and support the men’s team, while the athletes attempt to stand in solidarity with one another. Or turn marginalized groups, like Black athletes and women athletes (many of whom share multiple marginalized identities) against one another.
The fight against the truth is often ugly. And those who tell the truth need protection most of all.
This Week in Christian Nationalism and Religious Extremism
While this newsletter won’t focus overall on Christian Nationalism, each Friday I will include a brief update from that week, as it’s both a continuing focus of my work and also, I think, a critical threat to both American democracy and the faithful witness of Jesus’ Gospel, which exists independently of the United States!
In one sentence: Christian Nationalism is a version of the idolatrous Theology of Glory, which replaces the genuine worship of God with worship of a particular vision of America, often rooted in a revisionist history of white people in the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement or the women’s movement. Christian Nationalism supports a violent takeover of government and the imposition of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on all people. Christian nationalism relies on a theological argument that equates American military sacrifice with Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. It suggests that Christians are entitled to wealth and power, in contrast to Jesus’ theology of the cross, which reminds Christians that they too have to carry their cross, just as our crucified savior did.
This Week: For a terrifying look at the ways white Christian Nationalism in America is literally killing our most vulnerable, even children, just follow this awful story out of Utah, where a father and husband killed seven members of his own family, including his wife, their five children, and his mother-in-law.
In Enoch, Utah, a stronghold of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as the LDS Church or the Mormon Church, most people thought this husband and father was a reputable man, the example of the kind of man the church taught boys to be.
Remarkably, this portrait of a father who killed his own children was held up even after the murders, in an obituary shared online and in print locally, and taken down only after a social media outcry. The original obit talked about an “Eagle Scout, businessman, and father” who was committed to his church and spent time individually with each of his kids.
That it took national media attention to reveal this murderer for who he was is sadly not surprising. I remember a megachurch who in 2018 gave a standing ovation to a pastor who admitted publicly to child abuse of a youth group student and sexual assault.
Not long after the social media outcry over the obituary in Utah, news broke that the killer had previously been accused of child abuse by his children and wife not long before the murders. But police had let him go, deciding not to file charges and merely warning him about “assaultive conduct.”
This reminds me of the course I took on advocacy against domestic violence while working in Las Vegas, which you may not know is also a stronghold of Evangelical megachurches and LDS churches. We were taught about the overwhelming odds facing victims of abuse, especially when it came to law enforcement trusting them or advocating for them. Over and over again, the police (often men) sided with the (usually male) abuser.
What does all this have to do with Christian Nationalism? Well, when churches and pastors teach that we must worship an all-powerful, angry, and exclusively masculine god — we glorify violence, power, and abuse. When churches excuse even what they think of as “locker room talk” or harmless misogyny, “boys will be boys,” — they normalize dehumanization of women and seemingly suggest that what God cares most about is power, control, and patriarchal hierarchy.
And we don’t even have time to delve into complementarianism, and theology that suggests that God Godself has actually ordained a “natural” order where men are placed above women.
All this theology and culture has a cost. And it’s not overstating this to say it’s killing American Christian kids.
Let’s normalize a feminine, loving, peaceful, humble God,
Angela
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