Christ on a Bike

Marks of His Wounds

Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection

by Beth Felker Jones

I believe this book began as a doctoral dissertation, which is not too surprising because it seems like all the most interesting 

scholarship comes out of theses and such... it being a fairly new discipline that I'm interested in. No pressure.

Jones looks at the doctrine of bodily resurrection from a feminist, body-positive perspective. Looking at Calvin and Augustine, 

she argues that we have resources within Christian tradition for treating the human person as an essential unity of body and 

soul, that salvation necessarily works on the physical body as well as the soul, and that separating this union (by valuing 

soul over body, or valuing the body uncritically) is sinful.

She focuses on the ways we have conceptualized the resurrection as evidence of Christian attitudes toward the physical body. 

Will we have fleshly bodies at the resurrection? (yes, necessarily, she says.) What will they look like? Will they have gender 

characteristics? What about scars or medical conditions?

It brings up some great questions, both explicitly and in my head. It's hard to imagine what my post-resurrection body would 

look like... it would be somehow "ideal," (but who decides what is "ideal"? clearly most of our judgements about ideal body 

type thus far have been rooted in sin of some kind...) but what would happen to the scars (psychic and physical) that for 

better or worse have helped define me as a person? What about people who have unhealthy relationships with their own 

bodies, what will their post-resurrection bodies look like?

In some ways, of course, this debate is a moot point. We don't have any idea what the resurrection will look like, or even if it 

will be something that we could call "resurrection." But as with much theology, it's interesting to think about because it tells 

us so much about the way we conceptualize this life and our present bodies. It is important to treat ourselves as body-soul 

unions both because it is spiritually "right," and also because of the implications for our interactions with others and 

ourselves.  

What might it mean to honor our bodies in church together with our souls? We might need to learn a religious vocabulary for 

talking about sinfulness and holiness as they relate to actual bodies, not just writing off bodies as "not the church's problem."

It is interesting, though, that Jones chose to look at doctrines of resurrection rather than anything dealing with actual 

human life. But I suppose it's easier to talk about a taboo subject by talking at it indirectly, as is the case with so many other 

things. It'll be fun to apply some of her research to the other end of life, particularly crucifixion.

bodies and power and jesus

The thesis research is going!  I'll get my first book review up soon.  For now I wanted to say some words about where I'm starting from and where I hope to go with all of this.  (Although, of course, that direction will no doubt evolve over the next 6 months!)

Last year in my Christology seminar, we were centered as a class around the image of the cross and the lynching tree, which is the subject of James Cone's new book that he's off writing now.  (instead of being my thesis advisor!  grrr!)  We dealt with a whole lot of different perspectives, historical and more modern, on christology as a discipline and how they might be applicable when speaking about present-day suffering.  

I focused heavily on feminist work, because there's a definite trend in feminist theology to write off the cross entirely, because talking about suffering is somehow antithetical to alleviating suffering.  Right.  (Well, yes, the *way* we've been talking about Jesus' suffering has been incredibly harmful to women over the years.  I don't mean to write that off.)  As I said in my presentation, the cross is necessary "simply because any theology that wants to have meaning for people who suffer must address the issue of suffering."  Crucifixion is painful to deal with, but we must deal with it faithfully so that we can speak about the abuse and suffering of real people today.

In contrast to many white feminist thinkers, I cannot give up the cross.  As mentioned above, it is an essential vehicle for talking about physical suffering, but additionally the cross is significant for me because it means that the incarnation of God was true and remains true. For God to be truly embodied means not just that Jesus walked and ate and drank, but that Jesus’ body was a liability in the same way that today it is a liability to be embodied. Bodies can be assaulted, bodies can be broken, bodies can be raped. Jesus is not truly embodied unless the divine body is a body that can be violated.

What does it mean, today, to talk about the Body of Christ?  It is a body that, physically, resembles the broken and abused people at the margins of society, those raped and lynched and humiliated.  Yet we celebrate this same body at the Table every Sunday.  What does that mean for these real bodies today?  What about queer bodies?  If we, the church, are "the body of christ," does that mean that we queer bodies and broken bodies are the essence of church?

...

While we're pondering, I also put up my final paper for the seminar: "... Bringing Radical Transcendence to Earth"  I focused on the experience of Mamie Till-Mobley (the mother of Emmett Till) in exploring those and other questions.  It touches on some things I'd like to explore more this year.  Hope you enjoy it.  

"they lay themselves down beside every altar"

So I am back.  To school, now, for my third and final year of seminary!  And also to (this corner of) the internet, on what will soon be a more regular basis.  

I feel sort of thrown back into this, like I don't really have any idea what's going on.  I registered for classes back in the spring, but I only sort of had backup ideas in case my elective classes didn't work out... which they didn't, of course.  

So I found myself struggling with an impossibly difficult class on Hebrew poetry, which is great and fascinating, but I don't really speak enough Hebrew to, you know, *translate*... and if this had anything to do with anything else I'm doing, maybe it would be okay to spend way too many hours per week slogging through Accordance with my BDB and my BHS so that I don't embarrass myself in class when I stumble over a furtive patah and can't even get my consonants right (nevermind knowing what anything means) ...

Maybe some other time.  

There are a few classes that make sense right now, and I'm taking those.  And I've got some unscheduled time, and a new studio space.  And a pile of books I keep buying and not having time to read.  Now I'm going to read them, and narrow down this massive thesis vision I have in my head.  (And keep adding to the book pile.)

For now, I think I'll use this space to keep some notes on the books I'm reading.  They're mostly going to be books about theology and bodies and feminism, maybe some sex here and there :-)

It should be good.  

remembering the passion

One of my least favorite things about Holy Week is the way that the days between Palm Sunday and Easter get sort of lost in the shuffle — incidentally, those are the days that are still a little more complicated/interesting than the typical hosanna!- and trumpet-filled Sundays.

So I asked to participate in the Maundy Thursday service where I work. Apparently their Good Friday service is basically a concert every year, so on Thursday there's a service that starts with the Last Supper and ends with a tenebrae crucifixion sequence. I was pretty apprehensive... I mean, those days get short shrift anyway! Why shorten them even more by squishing them together?

There was a hymn ("Go To Dark Gethsemane") that marked the transition. While we were singing, the clergy stripped the Communion table, the altar girl took the purple hangings down from the pulpit and lectern, the ushers extinguished the candles along the center aisle, and the clergy removed their purple stoles and sat down in the first pew.

There was the standard reading from Matthew – singing – turning out lights process. But the candles that each of the readers put out? Advent candles, arranged in a circle minus the wreath part. Same candles and everything. So cool! I love the bookending of the story like that. Jesus comes, we light candles, Jesus leaves, we extinguish them.

And then at the end, when all the lights are out and the bell is tolling, and the congregation is sitting there in this tense state (described in my mind by a sustained, dramatically discordant violin chord), and the head-altar-guy picks up the Bible, in the pitch dark, and slams it shut. As it said in the program, to echo the closing of the tomb and the departure of the Word.

I was really pleasantly surprised. I'm a big fan of involving multiple senses in worship, and of ritual objects. Generally I'd say the more the better, unless it's done poorly. But they really pulled it out! All of the actions and "drama" were really coordinated and made very clear points. The transition from the cozy upper room into the chaos of the arrest and crucifixion was visually explicit (which is something that can be lost when they're on separate days). And I thought the actions around the tenebrae section were really powerful and added a lot. All while staying in a fairly traditional liturgical format!

If one of the most formal churches I know can use symbolic action and movement in a new and effective way, there is some hope! It is possible to make a service like that into something moving and meaningful. It just takes some work....

do not be conformed!

I'm taking two worship classes this semester (both wonderful), and tonight I just finished reading a few chapters from Dan Kimball's Emerging Worship. Now, I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of stuff I disagree with him on theologically, but man!

I am really inspired by the idea of completely new and different gatherings (worship services) that actually draw my folks in. (By "my folks" I mean people about 18-35, maybe punk rock, maybe artists, maybe philosophers, maybe activists, maybe homeless, maybe Buddhists...) Well, I've always been inspired by that. Imagining those gatherings is sort of what got me into this whole seminary thing in the first place.

I grew up going to a lot of punk shows in church basements around the de/pa/nj area. I think maybe once I went to the same church twice; all the other times, kids broke stuff or defaced something or cursed out the wrong person, and the church stopped hosting shows. What would it be like for a church to host a show and for the pastor to be there? To be giving out water or something? Man, I would do that at my church just so I could go to shows all the time! And what if I made up some flyers (properly hand-lettered and xeroxed, of course) inviting people to come back on Sunday?

Well, of course I'd have to have a cool enough service for them to come to. Free food would have to be involved. Vegan chili? And plenty of fellowship (by which I mean hanging out), and maybe reading some Bible together. Singing. Maybe making art sometimes? What would you want in a worship-type gathering?

The other day I led a chapel service at school with a group of artists I'm involved in. One of my friends had written a song on Romans 12:2, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect," so we picked that as our theme. Our thinking was, well, what are the patterns of this world? Hm, war, violence, racism, greed.... those are things we should definitely not conform to as people of conscience.

We picked out a bunch of photos from newspapers and magazines that we thought depicted some of those things. One of us put them in black & white and blew them up fairly large (and grainy and beautiful). We arranged the space with circles of cushions on the floor and a few groups of chairs around tables, each group with a picture in the center. After various ways of thinking about the scripture and the photos as they were, I invited everyone to imagine/discern a new pattern that could transform the old pattern. BUT: we imagined with our fingers and tempera paint.

I was amazed to see what people came up with. People did very different things, but every group really did transform their image. One group had an image of a morgue in (I believe) Iraq, and they very simply drew a person giving the bereaved man a hug, and wrote things like "God's child" and "love" over the bodies. Another group had a picture of the rubble from the recent building explosions in nj, and they completely covered over the image with an explosion of color, bearing their fingerprints.

It was really beautiful to watch. People really got into it, talking to one another and playing together, in varying degrees of solemnity. Even the fact of having people sitting in groups immediately makes a difference — people come in and sit together and talk to one another! Being able to engage different aspects of their bodies and brains was also really effective.

What kind of worshipping community can we create when we actually engage each other? As our full selves? Why has traditional worship come to be so boring? Seriously, even when I'm helping to lead one of those services, I find myself yawning. Is that what we should be getting out of worship?

Who knows what love brings?

This summer's been kind of a lonely one for me. I'm not seeing most of my seminary friends regularly like I did during the year (though I have made some fabulous new non-school friends), and my partner, this boy who I'm insanely in love with, is still living 200 miles away.

But not for long! We're getting ... somethinged ... this summer, and then he's coming to New York and we're moving into a cozy (tiny) little apartment together. "Somethinged" is a lot like "married," except that I cringe at words like "wedding," and "wife," and "husband," and "married," and "bridal shower," and so on, and so on... There are a lot of reasons for that, and for why we're not asking for legal recognition, many of which I can explain and intellectualize, and many of which are purely visceral. It just feels wrong to me, on every level. I'm not going to get into the other reasons now, though I'm sure they'll come up.

What we are doing is throwing a wicked party for the many people who are important to us, to celebrate this wacky and wonderful relationship we have now and are promising to build together. We have something awesome together, and even though we have no idea what that something will look like in a decade, a year, or even a month, we are joining hands to shelter and nurture this amazing fledgling relationship. It promises to grow into some sort of magnificent bird or other, but we are giving it the freedom to be whatever kind of bird it wants to be. Or maybe it will decide it wants to be a horse, or a pig, or an oak tree. Who are we to try and fit this beautiful, dynamic, growing creature into a pigeon-shaped box?

Part of giving our relationship freedom to grow is not feeling bound, necessarily, by the kind of rules that most people assume are just The Way a Relationship Must Be; but instead respecting the relationship enough to figure out our own rules that feel right. For now, the rules are Love and Respect and Honesty, which seem like good rules to me, in this and any situation.

Early on in our relationship, I was exploring my call to seminary and youth ministry. I think Jesse was a little intimidated by that. He sat me down one night to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into, with him. He said, "When your kids come over, I'm going to be there with my tattoos and my beer and I'm going to teach them about motorcycles." And I said, yes, I know. I hope you'll teach them about motorcycles, that sounds like fun.

One of the sweetest things Jesse's said to me as we've fallen in love is that I've showed him what faith means, just by living it. (I'm still not exactly sure what he means. I'm still learning what faith is, myself. All I know is, I have an incredibly strong belief in the innate beauty and Godness of people and creation, and I live that way.) We've had some great conversations lately about the ways we can team up in our ministries (of love and community and (motor)cycle repair), everything from anti-gentrification community development projects to an open repair shop run on a community time-banking model.

So no, I can't tell you exactly what I mean by "not-wedding," just like I can't tell you what our relationship will look like in a few years, and I can't tell you what exciting Spirit-led mischief-making God has in store for us. But I can tell you it will be exciting, and true, and full of love for ourselves and for our community.

Friends in need

Last week, the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia was devastated by a 7-alarm fire that left at least 27 families homeless or "severely affected," and over 400 homes without power. The Simple Way, a radical Christian community, is based in that neighborhood and lost one of their two buildings, the one that houses their after-school program, community arts center, the Cottage Printworks t-shirt microbusiness, and two community members (Jesce Walz and founder Shane Claiborne).

Two donation funds have been set up, one to help the many neighborhood families affected, and the other to support the rebuilding of The Simple Way's space and ministry. Please click to donate now.

The Simple Way is a phenomenal and inspiring community. They are living out their faith with community programs and a lot of love in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Check out Shane Claiborne's book The Irresistible Revolution, which is a beautiful read.

While I may have some theological differences with these kids, particularly about sexuality, I can't let that keep me from being inspired by their work and example. I think most of what they have to say has incredible possibilities for radical theologies of other flavors, and I think we should get right on that.

A mountaintop experience

I was down in Virginia and West Virginia this past weekend to visit my partner's family, which was gorgeous and relaxing and full of new friends, and all the things a weekend in the country should be.

I also got to see a little bit of the recent development in WV (mostly due to people who work in DC moving further and further out), which reminded me of a piece I wrote for a forthcoming book about anti-poverty work in Appalachia.

The Poverty Initiative here at Union is a group of students, teachers, poverty scholars, and friends working to end poverty. Yes, we set our sights pretty high—but we believe that's the only way we can ever truly end poverty. "Charity" and other ways of alleviating poverty are important, but in the long run only maintain the ideologies that divide people based on their income and perceived social class.

Anyway. We took an immersion trip in January '07 to the Appalachian region—mostly WV, some of Ohio, some of Tennessee. This was an incredibly powerful experience for me, particularly the opportunity to look at rural poverty from an analytical, anti-poverty perspective, when most of my previous anti-poverty activism had taken place in downtown Providence, RI, and some in New York.

This piece, called Gentrification—in Appalachia?, is my reflection on the connection between urban class/development structures and rural ones. We spend so much time feeling disconnected from one another—urban from rural, rich from poor, students from the "real world," white folks from everyone else—but these divisions are all in our minds. The only way we're ever going to make any progress towards anything is if we begin to recognize how very interconnected we all are across whatever psychological boundaries we've built up for ourselves.

NB: Mountaintop Removal is a coal-mining technique that has become common in the past few years and is widespread in WV. It consists of systematically blowing up chunks of mountain, sorting through the rubble for a small amount of coal, and then dumping the remainder into the valleys. The result is that mountains and valleys are leveled into a barren wasteland; it will take 3,000 years for these sites to rebuild enough topsoil for anything to grow on them.

What would "Christ on a bike" look like, anyway?

One thing I pride myself on is being kind, or at least polite, to pretty much everyone. It's kind of silly to believe in peace and nonviolence when your actions show the opposite. But let me tell you, that's really hard sometimes. I mean, people do dumb things, and maybe we can learn to ignore them. But if the dumb things they do actually put you in danger, the situation gets a lot more complicated.

I've been struggling with this recently. I bike in a city that's really unfriendly to bicyclists (at best), or downright hostile (at worst). There are a few scattered bike lanes, but they're full of potholes, everyone double-parks in them, and they're no guarantee you won't get honked at, doored, cut off, or have to dodge pedestrians. Every time I venture out of my (remarkably low-key) regular commute, it seems inevitable that I'll get into an argument with someone who steps out in front of me, doors me getting out of a cab, runs me into a Jersey barrier, or otherwise ignores me and my right to be on the road. Even on that commute — two miles crosstown on residential streets — I was hit last week by someone running a red light. There are legitimate safety issues — riding a bike here is a dangerous proposition. Therefore, in some ways I have every right to scream and curse at the people who do dumb and/or illegal things that put me in danger.

Sometimes I think it crosses the line of my actual safety, though, and I end up yelling at people for doing things that could be dangerous, or just generally being distrustful of and cranky at every driver and pedestrian on the road, because experience tells me there's a good chance they'll do something dangerous.

At the same time, screaming and cursing is not a thing I particularly enjoy doing. It feels bad to me, it feels bad to the person I'm yelling at, and it just adds to the number of people screaming and cursing around the world. I feel called to be a voice of peace, hope, revolution, and love; not another voice of anger. I bike because I love being able to transport myself wherever I want to go, without relying on fossil fuels or anything else; because it's the fastest, cheapest, and most convenient way to get around New York; because my very presence helps advocate for the right of bikers to share the roads; and because I feel good when I do. I do not bike because I enjoy angry confrontation and the constant threat of being creamed by a taxi.

So what, then? Is my choice between being angry all the time and giving up biking? I don't think it has to be. I made a conscious decision years ago that I am not going to let fear rule my life. I am a firm believer in the basic goodness of people — they just do dumb things sometimes.

Honestly, the streets of New York are no picnic for anyone. Driving is insane (but you're encased in steel), walking you're frustrated at slow folks on the sidewalk and in constant danger of getting hit by something (but there's safety in numbers), and even cabs are both expensive and terrifying. The big reason biking is unique is there are so few cyclists — no one expects you, even in the bike lane.

I guess I can try to focus on that. People cut me off because they're just as stressed out by the situation as I am, not because they necessarily are trying to hurt me or inconvenience me or insist that I have no right to be on the road.

Or, you know, I can always just imagine myself in a preacher collar or a habit and remember to act appropriately!

academic hat

I wanted to share with you some of my favorite papers I've written through my first year of seminary. They're obviously a little more formal than things I might normally put on a blog, but I think they're pretty accessible, and they're great examples of some of the directions I'm exploring with this whole theology thing.

First: from Old Testament 101, an ecofeminist reading of the book of Job. I was frustrated at traditional interpretations that read God as ignoring Job's concerns, and Job as just giving up. Job is the only character in the Bible who really stands up for himself—his friends tell him he must have sinned, but he knows that doesn't fit with his experience, and he says so. In my opinion, it's a great book that gets ignored too often. For your reference, the text of Job (RSV).

Next up: from Intro to Systematic Theology (with James Cone, father of Black theology), a meditation on queer theory being (racially) segregated, and ways we can move past that, called "What Does a White Mestiza Look Like?" (borrowing from Gloria Anzaldúa's writings on mestizaje).

On to the spring semester: from New Testament 101, my interpretational theory. We were asked to first socially locate ourselves and then evaluate various methods of Biblical interpretation in light of our personal perspective, all leading to a (future) articulation of our interpretational method. This is (I think) a pretty interesting look at my personal politics/theology, as well.

Last, for now: from Christian History (part 1), my examination of the Byzantine iconoclastic crisis in 726–843 and the gendered nature of the scholarship around it, called Divine Flesh. I started looking at this period around the 7th ecumenical council because I was interested in the use of art and visual imagery in the church, but was really struck by the way most scholars supported the assumption that the iconophiles (those in favor of icons) were overwhelmingly female. I was suspicious, and found enough evidence that this might not necessarily be the case; so this paper is first a historical overview, and second an admonition that critical thinking skills are always necessary, especially where gender is concerned.