Born-again Christians who support legal abortion

Anne Linstatter being interviewed on Ask a Christian

Share this YouTube video with any Christians you know who may be anti-abortion.  It's also on the Facebook page Ask a Christian (Sept. 30).

Let them know that some seriously committed Christians see God as respecting a woman's decision on whether to complete a pregnancy that she and her partner cannot cope with.

A woman may choose to give that little potential human back to God rather than bring him or her into a situation of conflict, stress, hunger, and even abuse or death.  

The women in my book prayed about what to do and came to a decision with a sense of God's permission, sometimes with the support of their priest or pastor.

God may approve and understand a woman's choice--often made with her husband in a marriage where there are already two or more children. 

Fifty-nine percent of abortion patients in 2014 had had at least one previous birth--Guttmacher Institute.

A report on NPR said that about 70% of the women seeking abortions in Texas this year already have two or more children.  The family cannot afford to raise another child, either financially or emotionally.  Children require a lot of time and loving care.  One more child can cause a fragile situation to fall apart.

In this video Amie Regester of Ask a Christian @askaChristianfriend interviews me on the book I edited: Abortion--My Choice, God's Grace: Christian Women Tell Their Stories (Pasadena CA: Hope Publishing House, 1994).  Scroll down to September 30.

To Christians who stress the sanctity of life, I make several points in this 40-minute interview:

• Respect women.  Respect pregnancy, birth, and raising a child for the difficult work it is.  Respect a woman's decision that she can't give up for adoption a child who carries her genes and whom she has carried in her womb for nine months.  Women who choose abortion respect life and understand how hard it is to bring another human being into a happy life.
• Put the burden of birth control on men.  Encourage fathers to get vasectomies.  If you truly respect life, pay each man $10,000 to get a vasectomy--don't pay that to someone who accuses a woman of having an abortion.
• Take reproductive choice away from men who commit murder or rape.  They don't deserve to create life.  Cut off their balls.  They have not respected life.
• The government should not tell a woman she has to complete a pregnancy she did not seek.  Will forced pregnancy produce a loving mother?  Will the child be unloved?  Will the father love and support a child he didn't want?  Is it respectful of life to force a child into a miserable situation?

My book is available from Amazon or from me, and it's in many libraries.  It's also free on the Kindle app.

On the wall behind me is a poster with the words of Rabbi Moses Sofer, who died in 1839: "No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself."  This was his conclusion after studying the Torah, especially the one Bible passage that mentions miscarriage (Exodus 21:22-25).

The Story of Betty Reid Soskin & Rosie the Riveter

By Ann Rosener, U.S. Office of War Information 

Betty Reid Soskin turned 100 years old on September 22, 2021.

During World War II she worked as a file clerk for Boilermakers Union A-36.  At age 85 she became a park ranger for the National Park Service, a job she still holds today.  

Recently she fought to get a park in Richmond CA to honor the women who worked in welding and shipbuilding during World War II -- "Rosy the Riveter" real women.

Here's a photo of a real worker dropping her daughter off at day care so she herself can sleep during the day and be ready for her next nightshift of work.  Other photos can be found at Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park.

Betty Reid Soskin

Now a middle school near Richmond has chosen to change its name from Juan Crespi Middle School to Betty Reid Soskin Middle School.  The decision began with one student's campaign to honor Soskin. 

Juan Crespi was one of the Franciscan priests who accompanied Spanish soldiers exploring and claiming California.  In the process, they conquered the Native Americans living in California, built forts, and enslaved many of the people to build missions. 

Thank you to Pastor Stacy Boorn of herchurch, San Francisco, for highlighting this bit of news in her message this Sunday morning.  

Rest in Peace: Albert Gleaves Cohen

 A holy man died last March, born in the 1920s and leaving this earth early in the 2020s.

I am richer for knowing this saint.  Sanctus, kadosh, holy--every language has a word for the kind of person Albert Gleaves Cohen was.  

Al Cohen was reverend too, ordained a minister/servant in the United Church of Christ.  Early in his life, he attended the Naval Academy in Anapolis, Maryland, graduating just after the world's second great war.

I loved visiting him at his home in Pasadena.  He read widely and followed the political follies of the last several years in Washington, D.C., where he was born.  Our political views were very similar though his observations were made with humor and patience, mine with frustration.  

His study of theology at Oberlin College made him a radical Christian, the kind that changed the world in the first centuries of the Common Era.  From the 1960s through the mid-1990s, he worked on two California State University campuses as a chaplain, showing students how to be a follower of Jesus:

attending peace marches, organizing protests, registering voters in Mississippi and in Selma, Alabama, organizing trips to U.N. environmental conferences and generally "speaking truth to power."  (from the legacy.com website below)

Then in 1996 he became executive director of the Southern California Ecumenical Council, working for racial justice and against US military adventures, among other causes.  

My path intersected with his in 1994 when Faith Annette Sand of Hope Publishing House decided to publish my prochoice book on Christians choosing abortion (Abortion--My Choice, God's Grace: Christian Women Tell Their Stories).  I had met Faith, his second wife, at conferences of evangelical feminists.  She died of cancer in 2015 at age 76.

To the end, he remained a keen observer of humans, their ups and downs, and their foibles.

Albert Cohen was the kind of man who causes others to say, "Yes, there is a God.  The deity he sees and serves, I want to believe in."

Praise be to the Holy One who gives us life.  

Or as the Kaddish says, "Magnified and exalted be God's great Name throughout the world created by divine will."

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/latimes/name/albert-cohen-obituary?pid=198313275

A public memorial service will be held on October 2, 2021, in Pasadena.  

Rest In peace, Rebecca Ward

Deep river, my home is over Jordan...

My sister-in-love crossed that river yesterday In Baltimore.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_River_(song)

Thank you to Tiana Marquez, who introduced me to this beautiful song. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2bytFrsL4_4

Fourth of July: pledge

"We pledge allegiance to the flag of the USA... with liberty for all except enslaved persons..."

Panya and Stormy listening to the pledge

[Panya and Stormy growl and howl...]

Oh well, humans, let's keep trying on justice:

• for all the innocent ones killed by guns
• for all the innocent killed by the police 
• for all those killed in our wars
• for all pets who are abandoned and euthanized...

 and stiff justice for all who invaded the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

Arff!  Arff!

[with much jumping and tail wagging]

Celebrating the Divine Mother of All

 

First page of a worship service of herchurch (May 2, 2021)

Are you sick of the bearded White Guy in the sky?

Try herchurch in San Francisco, available by Zoom.  We worship the Divine Creator of all by using female nouns: Goddess, Mother, Grandmother, She Who Is, Her, Hers, Sister Spirit, Ruach (Hebrew), Sophia Wisdom (Greek and English), Shekinah (Hebrew), Living God/dess. 

We also use non-binary names: Spirit, Holy One, Great Mystery, the Sacred, Divine Soul, Tree of Life. Presence of Love. 

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, our Liturgy of the Divine Feminine has been offered through Zoom on Sundays at 10:30 am.  You can request a link to visit the service by emailing Pastor Stacy Boorn at herchurch@aol.com.  The liturgy Zoom address is also posted on the herchurch website.  

Now that we can meet in person again, those who are local come together in San Francisco on Thursdays at 6 pm for a Litany for Sacred Gathering.  The address is 678 Portola Drive.  Women, men, and persons of any gender expression are welcomed.   

Order these facemasks from gaeaguild.com

Our harpist, Jack Pantaleo, is a composer and his work can be heard on Spotify. 

We offer a drum circle, sacred art classes, Goddess rosary, and singing circles.  Most of these events are currently available via Zoom. 

See also the Gaea Guild, an independent fundraising project by a member of the community.  These face masks featuring the words of Julian of Norwich can be ordered there.  All profits benefit herchurch.

May the love of the Goddess be ever in your heart!

Southern Baptists dump anti-black, anti-women leaders

Los Angeles Times on today's vote

Great news from the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville!  

A moderate president was elected Tuesday on the second round of votes, repudiating two right-winger candidates Mike Stone and Al Mohler.  In a blogpost 11 years ago, Al sputtered against my 2010 article in Sojourners, "The Persistence of Patriarchy."  

 

Ed Litton, the new president, has expressed support for Black Lives Matter and for critical race theory, the analysis that all US institutions (educational, religious, economic, governmental) have a long history of racism that needs to be changed.  He supports acceptance of women as pastors.  Alas, he is not pro-LGBTQA.  

Well, the vote is "one small step... " 

Losing prominent SBC women like Beth Moore and losing some black churches has hurt the denomination and caused much interest in this year's convention.  Attendance was 19,000, twice as much as in 2019.

In March, Beth Moore, a prominent white evangelical teacher and author (no relation to Russell Moore), said in an interview that she could “no longer identify with Southern Baptists.” --Great summary by Ruth Graham in the LA Times today.

Meanwhile, Dr. Beth Allison Barr at Baylor University in Texas is waging a war on SBC misogyny with her book The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth.  Buy it and pass along to a Baptist friend.

Another book that influenced the vote is Kristen Kobes Du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne.  It traces how evangelicals moved from apolitical to supporting Ronald Reagan to supporting Trump, all the while cherry-picking and misusing the Bible.  She teaches at Calvin University in Michigan. Buy her book and pass it along--it just came out in paperback.  

Kristen  also published a book on Katharine Bushnell (1855-1946), The New Gospel for Women: Katharine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism.  Bushnell was a late 19th C. to early 20th C. feminist, Bible scholar, and medical doctor.  She investigated the use of prostitutes by British troops in India.

Kristen spoke on Bushnell's anti-trafficking efforts in at the 2016 Gathering of Christian Feminism Today in Indianapolis.

Pastor Nancy Hastings Sehested is another SBC woman fighting for the right to preach and pastor a church.  Prior to 2000, she pastored a church, but when right-wingers took control of the convention, she was forced to give up her church.  She became chaplain at a maximum-security prison and also spoke to Christian Feminism Today.  

Now she serves as co-pastor of Circle of Mercy Congregation in Asheville, North Carolina.

Two important articles by her:

"News Alert: God speaks through donkeys, burning bushes, rocks--and women ministers" in Baptist News Global, 2017.

"By What Authority?" in Sojourners, 2017.  

Continuing concern about the SBC's sexual abuse problem also influenced the vote. See this opinion piece in the Washington Post by David Von Drehle on how the SBC's theology about women has resulted in sexual abuse.

Most notably, Russell Moore spoke out against SBC mishandling of sexual abuse and left the SBC by accepting a call to pastor a large Baptist church that is not part of the convention.

In February he resigned from his post as president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC with a scathing letter that surfaced in March. 

See "The Scandal Rocking the Evangelical World" by Peter Wehner in The Atlantic, June 7, for more on Russell Moore and the impact of his letter.

Pray that the SBC folks will soon: 

• restore women to receiving ordination, preaching, and pastoring churches. 
• take firm action against sexual abuse by pastors and leaders of the SBC. 
• listen to younger members who accept faithful same-sex marriage as approved by God.

And be sure to praise God for these people putting the brakes on the denomination's race to the right in the last thirty years.  It's the largest Protestant denomination in the US with 10% of all American Protestants.

 

On Mothers Peace Day: cut the garbage

 

Don't give me any garbage about Mother's Day--flowers, breakfast in bed, saccharine cards.

It's Mothers Peace Day, set up by Julia Ward Howe and other activist women after the Civil War to stop the killing of our children in wars.  She wrote her Mothers Peace Proclamation in 1870, and the first demonstration was held in 1872 in New York City.

The Mother’s Day Proclamation was partly a lament for the useless deaths and partly a call to action to stop future wars. The call was directed, not to men, many of whom may have felt proud for their “service,” but to women, who often have proved more thoughtful and humane about issues of human suffering.

Mother’s Day Vigil for Peace by Voice of Women (VOW) at the Royal Ontario Museum on May 11, 1963. Photo B. Palmer Ward, Toronto Telegram.

Then, on June 2, 1872, in New York City, Julia Ward Howe held the first “Mother’s Day” as an anti-war observance, a practice Howe continued in Boston for the next decade before it died out.  (from website above)

Now on the streets of American cities in this godless, gun-filled culture we inhabit, those who birth and those who don't all demand an end to killing. 

Stop lynchings by cops.  Stop executions.  Pull American troops out of Afghanistan and every other country where we are waging active wars.  Use diplomacy, not weapons.  

Abolish the police, or at least take their guns away.  Let them keep the peace with tasers and billy clubs, or get rid of them.  Let 911 calls lead to trained de-escalation teams.  

I go into hiding 2-3 days before the onslaught of every grocery store clerk and every television newscaster wishing me a Happy-Sappy Mother's Day.  

I never go to church on this profaned holiday.  It's not safe from saccharine.  Today I will give my new church by Zoom, HerChurch in San Francisco, a chance.  At the first drop of syrup, I will pull the plug.

My kids can do an action for peace on this day.  Or they can clean all the bathrooms in the house if they want to make me happy.

When they were 9, 6, and 4 years old, I took them to a Mothers Peace Day event in Orange CA sponsored by Medea Benjamin, who in 2002 co-founded the antiwar group called Code Pink.  She went on to co-found the human rights group Global Exchange.

Now my daughters Roz, Ellen, and Marie call or visit saying "Happy Peace Day, Mom,"  and usually make a donation to a feminist peace organization.  I trained them well.   

By the way, attending HerChurch turned out to be a safe choice today.  May 8 is the feast day honoring Julian of Norwich (1343-1416 or so), and Pastor Stacy Boorn centered our worship on Julian's famous words, "As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother."  

See more about Jesus as our Holy Mother in this post by Kittredge Cherry on the blog QSpirit: "Julian of Norwich: Celebrating Mother Jesus."

In the "Prayers of the People" portion of today's worship, Jennifer Mantle led us with these petitions and others:

Please pray for the mothering spirit in each of us, however it expresses itself.

Pray for those who wish to become mothers but have not been able to realize this desire.

Pray for those who have troubling relationships with their children...

Pray for mothers who have lost children...

Pray for us as we mother ourselves...

Pray for our first trans bishop, the Reverend Dr. Megan Rohrer (elected bishop yesterday in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America).   

Bill Barr & his Department of Injustice

President Biden has been doing such a great job that I thought I could relax and not follow the news 4-5 hours per day.

That trust lasted about a week, from the day Biden gave his speech to Congress until this week.

Yesterday on the car radio I heard that a federal judge, Amy Berman Jackson, had looked at the memo written by the Department of Justice for then-Attorney General William Barr to support his claim that there was nothing worth charging Trump with in the Mueller report.

Judge Jackson looked at the memo supporting Barr's claim that he and the DOJ lawyers had studied the report and concluded that Mueller had produced no evidence of federal crimes done by Trump--no obstruction of justice during his campaign for president or after he was elected.

She realized that the memo was a mishmash designed to come up with a predetermined conclusion: "Nothing worth bringing Trump to court."

Back in March 2019 when we read the Mueller Report and its carefully documented 11 conclusions, and then we heard Barr's conclusion of "Nothing here," many of us said "Wha-a-a-at?"

Barr insisted that the DOJ memo supporting his claim could not be released publicly. Too special for anyone to read. But Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sued for release of the memo.

This past week, or earlier, Judge Jackson got her hands on it.

She released her assessment of the report yesterday, saying that Barr was being "disingenuous" when he claimed he and the DOJ had studied and concluded that Trump could not be charged. That 5-syllable word is a polite way of saying Barr lied.

He had demanded that his underlings at the DOJ come up with some kind of reasoning to excuse Trump and keep him from being tried in court. The conclusion came before the studying of the Mueller Report, she determined.

See Spencer S. Hsu's analysis in the Washington Post today.

Judge Jackson went on to order public release of the #doj Legal Counsel memo excusing the former guy from prosecution.

I'm feeling resigned now that I need to continue to watch politics in Washington like a hawk.

I'm grateful, however, to all the voters in Georgia who helped to elect President Biden and then elected Senator Raphael Warnock and Senator Jon Ossoff, giving Democrats 50 votes in the Senate and enabling them to take control away from Mitch McConnell and the GOP.

Because of these Georgia voters and all the rest of us who voted for Biden in November 2020, we have a new attorney general: Merrick Garland. He is pursuing justice in the Department of Justice.

The former guy may now actually face criminal charges and be tried.

Let's lock him up, and Bill Barr too. Both of them. No one is above the law.

If you do not obey the law, you will be prosecuted.

The US has two choices: clean house and restore democracy--or face more criminal presidents in the future, men who want to be tyrants and don't mind asking Vladimir Putin for help in getting to power and staying there, even if they lose an election.

Listen to this MSNBC report:

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/judge-slams-former-ag-barr-s-disingenuous-spin-of-mueller-probe-111368773875

Jesus and George Floyd: the last day

Vincent van Gogh - "Olive Orchard" in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

This Van Gogh painting is called "Olive Orchard."  It reminds me of seeing the garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem two years ago... very similar.

I was moved to be able to kneel and pray among those trees where Jesus knelt two thousand years ago, on the night before he died and probably many times before that.

The Gospel of John provides quite a long summary of  Jesus's talk with his disciples at the Last Supper.  He seems to be worried about his followers, giving them a crash course in how to carry on.  He tells God, "I protected them in your name... I guarded them." 

Several times he asks the Holy One to protect them, also saying "protect them from evil."  Was he worried about the evil they might commit or about the Roman soldiers soon to execute him?

That very evening the disciples had been arguing over which one of them was the greatest (see Luke 22:24-27 and also Matthew and Mark). 

I wonder if Jesus foresaw what a mess the church would become at times--the greedy popes, the Crusades, the right-wing Christians supporting Trump.  If so, he also foresaw the saints and many sincere but humble followers.

He kept asking his disciples to "abide in me" like branches of a vine connected to the trunk and roots.  He prayed "that they may all be one."  Well, we know how that worked out.  Christians are splintered into many sects.  

On the other hand, I guess the first group stayed connected to Jesus and the Creator long enough to "bear much fruit," as he was hoping.

"Little children, I am with you only a little longer," Jesus said. "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you..." (John 13:33-34).

Because of these words, the day of the Last Supper came to be called Maundy Thursday in English cultures.  

For many centuries, priests read the Bible in Latin.  "New commandment" is mandatum novum in Latin.  In English, Mandatum Thursday became shortened to Maundy Thursday.

Of course, Jesus would have been speaking Aramaic (a language related to Hebrew), not Latin or Greek.  The Hebrew for new command is פקודה חדשה (pekoodah hadashah).  

In fact, this command wasn't really new; see for example Leviticus 19:18.  Maybe Jesus is stressing it at this point because he won't be around to stop their quarreling. 

On Good Friday 2021, instead of focusing exclusively on the crucifixion, let's spend some time reading Jesus's last words as recorded in the Gospel According to John, chapters 13 through 17.

This year many of us in the US are spending Holy Week focused on another man killed by his government, George Floyd.  He died on May 25, 2020, because of all our sins--our racism, our historicially flawed police systems, and our inattention to funding things like drug rehab programs, Covid relief, and better-trained first responders. 

Just as we are getting to know George Floyd in his last day,  through the trial of the man who killed him, let's focus on what Jesus was saying in his last 24 hours.  

Note: There are shorter summaries of that dinner discourse in Matthew 26:20-35, Mark 14:17-26 and Luke 22: 14-38.