Category: Faith

Yesterday, after church (my final Sunday at my field site until the fall), K and I saw Leap of Faith on Broadway. Now, before you judge us, please know that we got in for free. The show has yet to receive any good reviews and the only reason why it is still on Broadway is because it received a Tony nomination for Best Musical (the rumor is that the producers are trying to raise $2 million dollars to keep the show open till June 10 since it’s losing $250k a week right now). The story is predictable, the wigs questionable, and the lyrics are forgettable (except for one). The dancing is good and it is an awesomely racially diverse cast (which, come to think about it, why are all the religious themed shows the most diverse?) It isn’t a good show but since my expectations were really low, I kinda enjoyed it. It had that dumb summer fun feel to it. And I would wear Raul’s mirror jacket in a heartbeat. Heck, I’d preach in it and blind everyone for Jesus. You think Paul saw a light? Just wait until I put on that jacket!

Anyways, I wish I could comment on the religious elements of the show but, well, it was pretty light. Jesus showed up in the lyrics but there was very little theology in the show. It’s only God moments are pretty weak, predictable, and boring. All you have to do is believe? Sheesh. Been there, done that, paid too much for the t-shirt. For a musical (based on a movie) that steals its title from Kirkegaard, I would like a little more substance. But where the musical fails to provide the depth that might make it interesting, reality goes ahead and fills the void. It seems one of the producers for the show is a Catholic Religious Order that is trying to think creative ways to survive. It’s numbers are dwindling as its average age creeps up (currently at 78). The order, the Passionists of the Province of St. Paul of the Cross, is selling property, closing retreat centers, and experimenting with how to reach out into a different world. Like the article says, the only way they are going to make their money back is through a miracle, but they are getting some press for their different kind of financial investment. The creators of the show find it funny that the Fathers invested in a show written by an atheist and three Jews. But, well, the Fathers are undergoing the same struggle that a lot of churches are and are asking the same kinds of questions. When the financial support starts to dry up, soul searching begins. In reality, a musical about the Passionists might be a more enjoyable thing. Like Jonas in “Leap of Faith,” they’re finding themselves in a tough spot. But unlike Jonas, I think the Passionists have a much more telling, rich, and interesting story.

Living Lutheran shared a little thing written about Catherine of Siena whose feast my field site commemorated (very briefly) yesterday. I really don’t know much about the women mystics of the middle ages (even though I have read some of their work) but, what follows, struck me.

Unlike many of the other female mystics of the medieval period, like Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena didn’t live a cloistered life. She was part of a monastic tradition, but she returned to live with her family so that she could live among them and continue to reject them, a much tougher spiritual task. While doing that, she gave away food and clothing, to the detriment of the family wealth. She didn’t care.

I don’t mean to too my own horn but the part I bolded, that was meant to a T while I was a teenager. I should have used “well, Catherine of Siena did it” as an excuse during those years. Though, yes, I did not give food away, or clothing, or even go to church; details, man, details.

While digging around the ELCA website for financial statistics, I finally came to terms that in at least one category, I am part of the world-famous 1%. I am a hispanic worshipping in the ELCA and there were only 41,000 of us in 2010. That’s fantastic. FINALLY – a claim to the big time! ONE POINT FOUR PERCENTER RIGHT HERE! Aren’t you glad you know me?

Now, of course, I don’t fit the typical “hispanic/mexican” mold. My family has been on this side of the border for quite awhile so I’m part of the first generation to not learn Spanish (though I keep telling people that I’ll pick it up some day). In other ways, I probably fit the stereotype. I’m stocky, I like mexican food, I enjoy the World Cup, etc. Actually, it’s silly to label myself as a stereotype but when it comes to statistics, I’m an oddity. I’m hispanic but not spanish-language oriented. I’m in a strange place where I’m a minority but I’m not at the same time. I’m part privileged, part not. And I would think, based on the Lutheran Church’s history with the assimilation of immigrant groups in the US, that people in my category would be an easy draw for the ELCA. Built into the very history of the ELCA is the struggle with assimilation and entire generations were born into the place I am at now. You’d think that the atmosphere and flavor of the church should reflect that struggle of assimilation. But I rarely see it and I wonder if the church makes a mistake is misidentifying the wrong characteristics that define the Hispanics as “the other”. The Lutheran church has a long history of dealing with the problem of language and it seems that dealing with language is the first step in reaching out to our current society’s others. However, that doesn’t solve it. Hispanics aren’t a cultural bloc even though their Spanish (in their various dialects) unite them. Mexicans are not Dominicans and Argentineans are not El Salvadorans. A century ago, the differences between the Norwegians and the Swedes were not solved by the Norwegians starting a Swedish language ministry.

The question, I think, is not language based but culture based. Opening the communication doors is a good first step but I wonder if the ELCA – the whole ELCA culture rather than just its leadership – is willing to allow Hispanics into their churches with the expectation that they wouldn’t just become Lutherans but that they will also engage, like the Finns, Germans, and Swedes before them, in the cultural development of what it means to be a Lutheran in the United States. And I’m not sure if that’s really the case – though whether that’s a conscience choice of the ELCA or just a part of the reality that our polity focuses on individual congregations that will mostly be risk-adverse. One of the main power bases of the ELCA is its 95.6% Caucasian population. The question is if they want folks like me at the table. The fact that I’m on the ordination track makes me think they do – but whether they want me to be the exception rather than a norm is something that I sometimes wonder about.

But the brouhaha over Hilary Rosen’s injudicious remarks is not really about whether what stay-home mothers do is work. Because we know the answer to that: it depends. When performed by married women in their own homes, domestic labor is work‚Äîdifficult, sacred, noble work. Ann says Mitt called it more important work than his own, which does make you wonder why he didn’t stay home with the boys himself. When performed for pay, however, this supremely important, difficult job becomes low-wage labor that almost anyone can do‚Äîteenagers, elderly women, even despised illegal immigrants. But here’s the real magic: when performed by low-income single mothers in their own homes, those same exact tasks‚Äîchanging diapers, going to the playground and the store, making dinner, washing the dishes, giving a bath‚Äîare not only not work; they are idleness itself.

…

So there it is: the difference between a stay-home mother and a welfare mother is money and a wedding ring. Unlike any other kind of labor I can think of, domestic labor is productive or not, depending on who performs it.

Katha Pollitt writing in The Nation is exactly spot on. The simple fact is that WHO does the work is just as important as WHAT the work is. Even New York, where nannies can make a lot of money, it depends on WHO the nanny is – their background, race, skin color, class – that depends on how much money they can make. Domestic work isn’t a virtue in itself; the virtue of the individual defines that profession. A lower-class, illegal immigrant, single woman is not the view the same as Ann Romney. They just aren’t and there’s no single way to compare the two without noting the differences. And there are way more lower class women doing domestic work than there are Ann Romneys. The fact that she’s become the face of this reality is insulting, not only to those who are left in her shadow, but to the countless women, and men, who don’t have the opportunity to be stay-at-home moms.

What’s funny about this, to me at least, is how this issue has been around for millennium. You can see it within the Book of Acts. For Luke, the women work best as patrons. In the story of Lydia, Paul, and the slave girl with the spirit of divination, Lydia is valued because she is rich and has the opportunity to take care of Paul. The slave girl, the one who goes around announcing that Paul is a servant of God, has her spirit removed from her. She’s silenced and vanishes from the text while Paul returns back into Lydia’s household later. Although there are many ways to read this text, one way to read it is simply that the slave girl who vanishes is worth less than Lydia for Luke. Paul had an opportunity to baptize the slave girl, to bring her into the fold, but doesn’t. Instead, he silences her. Lydia was given the opportunity for entrance into the body of Christ but the slave girl was not.

The parallel to the Ann Romney/Hillary Rosen story isn’t exact. But it does show that, even in my Christian tradition, the reality is that individuals becomes types that overshadow and hide reality behind them. “It depends” is just as important component of the church as it is with US society. On this side of the eschaton, that’s where we live – in a place where “it depends” matters more than it should. As long as we, as a society, self-define our own elites and look to them as our models of our reality, at the expense of the vast multitudes that will never fit those templates, we’re going to make the mistake of talking about the WHAT but always missing who the WHO really are.