Critic Cal

One of my favourite stories in the gospels is that of the “bleeding woman” who reaches out for healing amidst the bustle of the crowds around Jesus. I love how it’s juxtaposed with that of Jairus – a prominent community leader also seeking Jesus’ compassionate intervention – and how Jesus goes out of his way to ensure that she is seen, heard, honoured and remembered (as well as healed) no less than the man of high status.

I got a bit upset, recently, on hearing the harmlessly-meant suggestion that her faith had somehow been "smaller" than that of Jairus, because she acted in secret and with "less to lose". This analysis, I felt, failed to do justice to the gap in privilege, opportunity and sense of entitlement between the two supplicants, and to her courage in overcoming that gap. (Note, in particular, that when she does actually reveal herself it is an act of brave obedience with nothing to gain and everything to lose, as she has already been healed). For me, it …

In Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, the protagonist is repeatedly approached with proposals to adapt her novel into a screenplay, all of which eschew the challenging societal critique at the heart of the book in preference for comfortable, familiar-story-arc reductions likely to please and appease a wide audience. It got me thinking about how we frequently and instinctively do that with the Bible – and about how much we risk missing or diminishing when we default to readings that conform to our prior expectations, rather than allowing scripture to conflict with and challenge those expectations.

No doubt I’m desensitised to this when it suits me. But I’ve grown quick to notice when the Bible’s accounts of female characters, already fewer in number than its stories of men, are read through a filter of familiarity and a priori gender assumptions. The book of Ruth is a prime candidate – partly because we do love a good love story, and partly because it is hard for us in the here and …

The other day I enthusiastically embarked on a book by a male theologian popular with some people whose opinions I rate considerably. It took me to the end of the preface to start wondering whether it was too late to cancel the Kindle purchase. Of the 30+ luminaries, mentors, colleagues and assistants mentioned by name as having helped make the book happen, precisely one was female. [1] Now, such cases are hardly rare: I've read plenty of similarly-prefaced books without batting an eyelid, and probably many more where the data would have been on a par had they been available. But for some reason – perhaps because I'd had such high hopes for the author – I just couldn't let this one go. Here was a book which purported to instruct the church, and yet it seemed as though the author was quite content to disregard half the church in the writing of it. Was it even worth my reading? How relevant could it be to me, if I was irrelevant to it?

Meanwhile, Christian feminist Twitterl…

In an effort to pre-empt all the "yeah, but"s that this sonnet invites, I invented the foot-sonnet...


LEAN IN Are you sitting comfortably? Then lean in.
Once upon a time there was a table
Where it happens. All the seats were taken
While we women were off menstruating,
So we waited, brought the drinks and snacks
And hovered in our heels and push-up bras
Pretending to a winsome cluelessness,
While they made laws and wars and wrote out cheques.
But we took notes. And when the moment came,
We’d take it: nothing beyond sacrifice
To prove ourselves as fully man as them:
We’d fight, pollute, exclude and brandish choice
With laughter, all to gain a seat or two –
And after, who knows what we might not do.†  † Sure, many men have led with wisdom and
The best of motives; many women feel
Empowered in a push-up bra and heels;
Our bodies do not warrant being scorned,
And nor do acts of service for the sake
Of others. Free market economies
Have made the poorest richer, militaries
Can help …

A decade ago, give or take – feeling at crisis point in my mental health and desperately socially disconnected – I "went up for prayer" at a church I was visiting. (I find it hard to do this at my own church when I feel desperately socially disconnected. It's hard enough even to be at my own church at such times). And the gentle, kindly woman who placed her hand on my shoulder and prayed some simple, general, healing words to suit my simple, general, hurting plea looked thoughtfully at me afterwards and said "just, if and when you can, keep taking each next step towards Jesus, whatever that looks like," or words to that effect. It seemed as good a plan as any, so I did. (Not instead of getting medical and professional help, I hasten to add; seeking out and receiving whatever support is available has always felt more like an action of faith than a compromise of it).

Since then, stepping towards Jesus has taken me (slowly, often painfully, and usually the long w…

Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also. (Genesis 38:6-10) According to Google's answer to what (let's face it) must be right up there among the most-asked questions since the invention of the search engine, this story is the closest the Bible comes to saying anything directly about masturbation.

And it isn't a story about masturbation. It's not even a story, not really, about birth control methods – although they feature. It's a story about the denial of ju…