Critic Cal

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” ( John 12 :1-8) CONVENTION Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, And Mary with about a pint of nard At dinnertime, and all the peopl...

“Biblical Womanhood” is a pulse-raising phrase that typically describes a set of prescriptive (and subordinating) gender norms based on particular interpretations of selected portions of scripture. Funnily, those selected portions don’t typically include the accounts of actual Biblical women – many of which make for fascinating / inspiring / disturbing / all-round-complicating reading. When they get read at all, that is.  One of my favourites is that of Tamar, through whose initiative God extends the tribe of Judah , establishes the house of King David and, according to the Christian testament, selects the human ancestry of the Messiah. Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus actually goes out of its (patrilinear) way to honour her by name – and yet, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard her mentioned in church. Perhaps because we’re stumped for a Sunday School moral-of-the-story (though we have disturbingly little difficulty deriving neat takeaways from the lives of male biblical “heroes” whose ac...

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...

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...

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...

Unusually for a Christian book, William P. Young's  The Shack   (Now A Major Motion Picture ) caused quite a stir in the wider publishing world. For those unfamiliar, it is a story about a man in the wake of life-wrecking tragedy, who finds himself the invited guest of the triune God in a shape-shifting cabin in the middle of a forest. All sorts of healing and self-understanding and provocative conversational exchanges ensue, as you might imagine. The book was unexpectedly popular (topping the New York Times Best Seller list for fiction between 2008 and 2010) and predictably controversial. Among the several charges laid against it by 'concerned evangelicals' was the 'idolatrous' depiction of the first and third Persons of the Trinity – as an African-American woman, in the case of God the Father, and as an Asian woman, in the case of God the Holy Spirit. Now, actually, old habits die hard and I am still 'concerned evangelical' enough to be rather uncom...

Mr. W and I had the privilege of reading bedtime stories to the children of some friends the other day. The three books we were presented with were quite charming – beautiful illustrations, gently wholesome messaging (friendship, courage, the joy of reading, and the importance of keeping libraries open) and, best of all, one of them rhymed. Only, no joke, of the twelve or so characters across the books none were female, with the passing exception of somebody's unnamed mother. *Sigh*. In conversation about the new Star Wars (which I haven't seen yet), I heard it suggested that there were 'too many women'. So, I went and, with the help of IMDB and key stage 3 level maths, I found out that, of the entire cast, 25% were female, while of the top 12 characters, 40% were. Granted, headcount may or may not be a good proxy for screentime, but still: 'too many', as too often (see, e.g., research about perceived and actual speaker ratios), meant 'a larger mino...

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly. ( Matthew 15:21-28 ; see also  Mark 7:24-30 )                   THE FLOOR         ...

His poetic mastery may have finally won me round to blank verse but Milton's  notion of ' Paradise ' was lost on me considerably before that first fateful forbidden bite. Then again, perhaps that's not surprising, as he seems convinced it was designed for Man (and no, I don't mean in the 'masculine generic' sense). As were women, naturally. A utopia of male entitlement and supremacy is no very entrancing abode for a woman who believes that she was made first and foremost for relationship with God, not for servitude to her husband. I reined in my desire to throw things – a lucky escape for my Kindle – and instead settled down to providing some constructive feedback. Maybe, with a bit of help (I'm sure he'd definitely thank me for it, *ahem*), he could salvage some of that lovely poetry after all... Researching the above I stumbled on an illustrative, wryly amusing example of why Milton's poetic take on God's paradisal gender norms s...

A poem that I wrote for the Sophia Network blog around this time last year... REHEARD The witnesses were inadmissible: Gossips; pedlars of idle tales; Adam's deceivers ever since the Fall; The first found weighed and wanting in the scales. It's true they'd been around, had followed close Upon the tear-stained heels that later bled; They'd even put up funds and played as hosts, As students, too, and filled each little head. But his appearing to them? — deeming they Should greet the new dawn first, and first be sent! And yet, this was — had always been — his way. The case submits it was no accident That, at the crux where all things re-began, Believing women brought good news to man.  Carolyn Whitnall, 2016. Variously culturally stereotyped as hysterical, manipulative, ignorant and/or irrational, women at many times and in many places have faced a disproportionate  struggle to be taken seriously . Female experts experience greater scrutiny of...