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Apologia Report 12:22
June 7, 2007
Subject: "Fleeing Fundamentalism" for feminist spirituality
In this issue:
APOSTASY - review of two books by former Baptist women
PSYCHICS - cataloging Sylvia Browne's track record
THEOLOGY, LIBERAL - the story of how "American liberal theology bet on the wrong horse"
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APOSTASY
The lead item in Christian Century's "Spring Books" feature (May 1 '07, pp36-37) is a joint review of The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from the Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine, by Sue Monk Kidd [1]; and Fleeing Fundamentalism: A Minister's Wife Examines Faith, by Carlene Cross [2].
Kidd's name may well be familiar, since her novel The Secret Life of Bees [3] has been a best seller. Her latest book, Dance, "about her decision to leave the Southern Baptist church that she had attended all of her adult life is a story of feminist awakening and growing consciousness about her need for a specifically feminine spirituality. ...
"She recounts her own story in four stages - awakening, initiation, grounding and empowerment - which she thinks apply to all women facing similar experiences. She includes references to Jungian stereotypes, dream work, goddess consciousness and ancient female deities. Her ultimate goal is the integration of a feminine divine into her religious life and spiritual practices."
Reviewer Amy Johnson Frykholm, the author of Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America [4], was likely sympathetic as soon as she read the full title of each book for the first time. She tells us: "I found myself skimming to see if Kidd was willing to complicate or question aspects of feminine spirituality. She is more interested in winning converts than asking questions.
"The book reads like a tract on 'Five Steps to Peace with My Feminist Self. ...
"Like Kidd's, Cross's journey leads to a shocking encounter with the history of Christianity. [Described simply as a "Baptist," she] begins to read widely in history and theology, hiding books in her closet and bringing them out to read while she homeschools her daughters. Her disillusionment with faith intensifies. As with Kidd, the crucial sticking point is the church's teaching on female submission and subordination to men.
"Parts of Cross's tale seem unbelievable. Nearly every fundamentalist marriage detailed in the book involves pornography, a controlling husband, adulterous affairs or other forms of hypocrisy. Only much later in Cross's journey does she wonder about her failure to focus on the many people around her who were essentially good. Her own anger and bitterness had hidden from her the 'fine-hearted, decent people who had come [to the church] to find God,' she writes. This realization allows her to begin to pursue another spiritual journey, one that is less driven by dogma." [3]
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PSYCHICS
"Sylvia Browne's Biggest Blunder" by Benjamin Radford -- Browne is probably the best selling psychic book author alive. You may not often run into people who hang on her words, but chances are you will sooner or later. This item may come in handy then. Radford reports that "Several years ago during one of her many appearances on the Montel Williams show, Browne told the parents of missing child Shawn Hornbeck that their son was dead. ...
"According to a spokesman for the Hornbeck family, following the Montel broadcast Browne tried to get money from the family....
"In fact, Hornbeck and another boy were found very much alive January 16, 2007, in the home of Michael Devlin, a Missouri man accused of kidnapping them."
Radford records that a statement in response found on Browne's web site <sylvia.org> includes the words: "'I cannot possibly be 100 percent correct in each and every one of my predictions.'
"Yet her documented track record is one of nearly 100 percent failure rate instead of 100 percent success. Browne's confidence in her body of work is baffling, and her claim that her flawed visions were 'one human error' is amazing understatement.
"During the final week of each year Sylvia Browne boldly appears on the Montel Williams show to make her predictions for the upcoming year. Despite her low accuracy rate, followers and believers anxiously tune in with optimism that she has a sixth sense to 'see' what will happen in the future." What follows is a litany of the more obvious goofs such as the 2006 prediction that a "hormone would be discovered that keeps weight off" - oh, and that John Kerry would run for president. Skeptical Inquirer, May/Jun '07, pp12-13.
Ron Rhodes includes a response to Browne in his recent book The Truth Behind Ghosts, Mediums, and Psychic Phenomena [5].
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THEOLOGY, LIBERAL
The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950-2005, by Gary Dorrien [6] -- the last volume in Dorrien's Making of American Liberal Theology trilogy [7]. Reviewer William C. Placher is an editor-at-large for Christian Century. He reports that "Gary Dorrien, recently named the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Seminary in New York, has given us clear, fair accounts of all the important, and most of the semi-important writers within the tradition he is examining, drawing on published works, reviews, unpublished correspondence, manuscripts and interviews. He seems to have read everything. ...
"This volume's part of the story begins in the early 1950s with two schools of metaphysical theology: the last days of Boston personalism and the heyday of Chicago process theology. It moves on to forms of liberation theology that are sympathetic to liberal theology (not all of them are!), the beginnings of liberal Catholic theology in America, process theology at Claremont, and more recent developments at Chicago, Vanderbilt, Harvard and elsewhere. Dorrien defines *liberal theology* as 'the idea of a Christian perspective based on reason and experience, not external authority.' ...
"Dorrien's version of the story ... focuses more on the doctrine of God and theology's relation to metaphysics than on Christology and theology's relation to biblical scholarship. ... [M]y guess would be that debates about biblical interpretation have played a larger role in defining theological liberalism than have metaphysical arguments about whether or not we can believe in a personal God. Dorrien gave more attention to questions of scripture in earlier volumes; perhaps the change merely represents the increasing compartmentalization of scholarly endeavors.
"Dorrien is also better on the trees than on the forest. If you want to know what X said, who X's teachers were, or how X's mind changed, no one could give you better answers than Gary Dorrien. What larger cultural trends in the background were shaping all that? Here he is less helpful. ...
"As he comes up to the current era, Dorrien remains an enthusiast, though he recognizes that liberal theology according to his definition might seem to have gone out of fashion. Except for the process theology tradition at Claremont, liberalism's great schools of thought have fragmented. ...
"[N]owadays philosophy is often less at the intellectual center of things than are cultural studies and literary criticism. Among philosophers metaphysics is out of fashion, and among surviving metaphysicians [process theology's] Whitehead rarely gets much attention. Hence process theologians are in the awkward position of urging their fellow theologians to get out of our ecclesial ghetto and talk to the rest of the academy and the rest of the world, while relying on a philosophical approach in which academy and world seem to have little interest. In terms of having wide cultural impact, it looks like American liberal theology bet on the wrong horse. ...
"I worry about how any sort of theology at all, or at least any theology beyond the simplest-minded fundamentalism [one would presume ANY form of biblical literalism would fit Placher's meaning here - RP], can become an important force in American Christian life." Christian Century, May 1 '07, pp38-40.
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Sources, Monographs:
1 - The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from the Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine, by Sue Monk Kidd (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006, paperback, 272 pages)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061144908/apologiareport>
2 - Fleeing Fundamentalism: A Minister's Wife Examines Faith, by Carlene Cross (Algonquin, 2006, hardcover, 288 pages)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565124987/apologiareport>
3 - The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin, 2003, paperback, 336 pages)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0142001740/apologiareport>
4 - Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America, by Amy Johnson Frykholm (Oxford Univ Prs, 2004, hardcover, 240 pages)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195159837/apologiareport>
5 - The Truth Behind Ghosts, Mediums, and Psychic Phenomena by Ron Rhodes (Harvest House, 2006, paperback, 160 pages)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0736919074/apologiareport>
6 - The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950-2005, by Gary J. Dorrien (Westminster John Knox, 2006, paperback, 688 pages)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0664223567/apologiareport>
7a - The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, by Gary J. Dorrien (Westminster John Knox, 2001, paperback, 504 pages, ISBN 0-6642-2354-0) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0664223540/apologiareport>
7b - The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900-1950 by Gary J. Dorrien (Westminster John Knox, 2003, paperback, 666 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0664223559/apologiareport>
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