An Open Letter to Students and Alumni of Color at Wheaton College

An Open Letter to Students and Alumni of Color at Wheaton College

Dear Students and Alumni of Color of Wheaton College,

Many of you have recently seen DannyAguilar’s post regarding racism at Wheaton.  I had the privilege of watching Danny and a group of motivated, dedicated, and brilliant students respond to the events of #chapeltweets in February, 2012.  I can say that even amidst the tears and pain of that event, I was never so moved by the passion and concern of students for one another and for their wider community. It was a time when hundreds of students of conscience, the majority students of color, rose up and led us all to think together about what it means to be Christians in the face of racism, fear, and willful ignorance. It was a pivotal event for many on this campus in thinking about our mission as a college and it demonstrated the power of students to affect change.

Nevertheless, Danny is absolutely right when he says that then, as now, the response of many White students was defensiveness, bewilderment, and denial.  For the 13 years I’ve taught at Wheaton, I’ve had a front row seat to this.  Generations of students have faced similar frustrations in an institution with a relatively homogeneous constituency, who are notoriously blind to issues of culture, structure, race, and history. Each year, we welcome a new crop of earnest, bright young students who bring with them the same baggage of White racism and privileged perspective that the classes before them have brought.  Change is slow.

For that reason, it is no surprise that many of you who have commented on Danny’s post have noted that it resonated with your experience as well. I wish it weren’t the case that this experience were so common, but we can all be grateful to Danny for putting together his years of thinking and work in one place, alongside the incontrovertible and painful evidence, so that we can continue to demonstrate the important and undeniable problems that exist at Wheaton.

At the same time, I hope that you will not lose the sight of the hope that is in Danny’s post.  He has strong words for Wheaton’s leadership, but ultimately he calls not for withdrawal, but for engagement and change.  In other words, in the face of this cultural and structural evil…

                                                                       lean in.

Push us. Demand action. Be involved. Lean in.

Though the pace of change at Wheaton is too often confoundingly slow;  though there is frequently more rhetoric than action; it is true that people who speak out forcefully are sometimes made to feel disloyal, irresponsible, or unchristian. At the same time, there are good things happening at Wheaton that are not merely window dressing. God is not silent and there are signs of God’s redemption even at Wheaton.

Some of these changes may be the result of demography. The fact is that the United States will be a majority minority country in perhaps 30 years or less. Latino/as are the fastest growing population, a community with a strong Christian contingent.  Wheaton would be foolish to ignore this change, and, in fact, we are not.

Some of this change may be the result of a younger leadership in among the trustees and senior administration who are more aware and connected to diverse communities.  Our current President, Phil Ryken, is in his fourth year at Wheaton, and has made deepening ethnic diversity one of his top priorities.

Some is the result of innovative and inspiring students, like Vince, Veronica, Irma, Rachel, and so so so many others who have had brilliant ideas and pushed them into reality. (The B.R.I.D.G.E. program was one such dream cum reality.)

All of it is, unquestionably, the movement of the Holy Spirit bringing shalom through his faithful servants, servants like Danny who are willing to speak, brashly even, to motivate and inspire greater faithfulness from us all.

It is my hope – my prayer – that those who believe in the vision of Wheaton, the idea of this place that is too rarely realized in the living, will not abandon us, but lean in to the opportunity to push it further in the right direction.

Here are some concrete things you can do as alumni, future alumni, and current students that can bring these changes to campus and make Wheaton a more accessible place for everyone.

1. Come back to campus for alumni events and meet with senior leaders. Tell them what your priorities are and how you would like to see Wheaton reflect those.
2. Take Danny’s suggestion to pool your resources to support initiatives that matter to you. (How amazing would it be to have the Adeline Collins Chair of Women’s Studies [first woman to graduate from Wheaton, 1870] or the Edward B. Seller’s Institute of African and African American Christian Studies [first man of African descent to graduate from Wheaton in 1866]). 
3. Organize the Wheaton Alumni of Color Network to push Wheaton to realize a truer vision of what it means to be a Christian community that actively works against White racism in all its forms.

I, along with so many of my colleagues – your current and former faculty and staff - will continue to work with, and sometimes against, those at Wheaton who may not feel the urgency for change that Danny has articulated here. We’re in this. We hope you will be, too.  

Those who have been away for years, even decades, you are welcomed to come back and see the ways Wheaton has (as well as the ways it has not yet) grown in becoming a more diverse and inclusive community. 

Those of you who have been here more recently, I encourage you to take Danny’s energetic call as a reason to stay involved and be connected.

The vision that gave rise to Wheaton, rooted in abolitionism, gender equality, and engaged Christianity has wavered in its history, but the dream is not dead. There are good reasons to be hopeful. Stay with us. God honors the brave. But most of all, God is with those who stand for righteousness in love. Stand with us. 

Humbly,

Brian Howell

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Why I Won't Be Filling a Shoebox this Christmas

Why I Won’t Be Filling a Shoebox this Christmas

Christmas starts the annual season of Christians wrestling with materialism and inner-conflicts of shopping vs. worshipping.

At the same time, gift giving has its place. Remembering the gift of God through His son, and thinking of others through gifts under the tree is, for many, a deeply spiritual act. Many will be looking for ways to help their children, nephews, or kids in their churches to think of others and not simply what they’ll be getting.

For this, Operation Christmas Child (OCC) seems ideal.

This project, a part of Samaritan’s Purse, encourages churches and schools to pack crayons and toys and toothbrushes, along with $7 for shipping, into a brightly colored shoebox for a boy or girl somewhere else in the world. We are given a tangible way to bless a child in another country, perhaps even starting a relationship through a letter and photo the giver is encouraged to put into the box.

Call me a Grinch, but I won’t be filling a box this year.

This is certainly not about whether Samaritans Purse is a good or bad organization. They do many good, long-term projects.  My point is that this kind of giving - like Tom's shoes, or food give-aways to deal with chronic hunger - is always a bad idea, no matter how it is done. Except in response to emergencies, to give this way suppresses local markets, creates feelings (if not the actuality) of dependency, and does nothing to address systemic problems nor empower local leadership.

The Tom’s Shoes give-away, used clothing distributions, and even some parts of the U.S. Food Program, have been collectively termed “bad-vocacy” or “bad advocacy.”  By bringing in resources from outside an economy, without supporting trade, industry and investment in the local context, no one is empowered, communities are not changed, and problems remain in place.

Of course, to say that a program doesn’t solve all the problems in the world doesn’t necessarily mean the program is bad.  Doesn’t OCC bless a child with a gift they wouldn’t have otherwise received? The child receiving the gift feels loved – their faces ‘light up’ when they receive their boxes - and you can teach a child in a wealthy country to be generous. What’s the problem with that?

First, consider the effect in the local context. The distribution of these gifts is guaranteed to be inequitable in a community (since each box is individually filled). This is guaranteed to create conflict via jealousy between those who receive the “best” goods (or any goods) and those who don't.  

Moreover, it leaves those selling these goods undercut by the freebies showing up.  It's easy to understand that handing out free rice grown in California will make it difficult for local farmers to sell their rice.  I can equally imagine that some of these poor parents who can't afford a toothbrush, doll or pencil for their children actually make their living by weaving among traffic or at a tiny market stall selling toothbrushes, dolls or pencils.

Second, imagine the feelings of the parents watching their children get these boxes.  I’ve heard, in anecdotes and promotional literature, about how the kids' faces light up when they receive their box.  Of course the kids are happy. My kids would be happy too if the wealthy people in my local community (and there are people in my town who are MUCH wealthier than I am) gave them iPads and $100 tennis shoes; things they couldn’t (well, wouldn't) get from me. The joy on their faces would be indescribable. Sure, my children would feel loved, but not by me, their father. Instead it is the love of a wealthy benefactor somewhere else.

Finally, our children certainly learn a lesson through these give-away programs, but it’s the wrong one.  They learn that the problem of poverty is primarily a problem of “stuff.”  One person told me that by criticizing OCC, I was being “astonishingly cynical” about a program that does good by teaching our children to be generous.  She defended her view by saying:  “As a pastor I have found that the connections that are formed by doing things like this can be used to foster further participation in missions and outreach in all ages. For example, "Remember those kids you gave presents to? They also need...’”  But that’s just it. Through these kind of temporary give-aways, we’re teaching our children, and ourselves, that the real problems of poor countries is lack of resources and their ongoing, insatiable need.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The real problem of poverty is a problem of access and opportunity, not stuff.  Nobel Prize winning economist Amartra Sen called poverty the problem of lacking autonomy and freedom. Giving stuff to the poor each Christmas contributes to what Jayakumar Christian calls the "god complexes of the non-poor." Certainly, in some cases stuff is needed for opportunities and autonomy (shoes to go to school, for example), but while the hand-out is the fastest way to solve the problem, it’s a never-ending ‘solution’ that does nothing to expose the real problems.

We need to stop responding emotionally to these issues and consider policy and programs that do something. Why waste our money and time on OCC when there is real work that can be done?

I would love to see churches develop relationships with organizations that do development work in specific places where the church can develop connections with leaders in those places, and respond to the needs that will bring long-term change. (One cell phone for a farmer can do more to change a child's life than 100 boxes full of little toys.)  Organizations like World Vision and Heifer International provide the opportunity for you, and your children, to “buy” a goat or beehive or rabbit and “send” it to a local community. Local community groups use the donated money to buy the animal locally and decide who will receive it. And I love teaching my kids about giving when our family sponsoring bunny rabbits and bees through Heifer Int'l. They totally get it and we don't have to send cheap plastic toys halfway around the world.

Recent research has shown that child sponsorship is very effective at producing many positive, long-term results for poor children. Have your child help you choose a sponsoree from the photos that many well-run organizations will send.  Correspond with the child and bring the kids in your church into the process.

But can't we do all these? Do we need to stop doing Operation Christmas Child if we are also supporting these other things?

The Bible teaches us to be generous, and so we must be, but it also teaches up to be smart; and sending shoeboxes of little gifts is just not smart. I haven't even mentioned the carbon footprint necessary for shipping these things (sometimes back to the places in which they were made!), but climate change aside, if we could take the energy, enthusiasm and good will that goes into OCC and channel it into the other programs that Samaritan's Purse, and a hundred other organizations, do to make long-term change, we'd be doing a much better thing.

OCC works because of it's emotional appeal to us.  We imagine a little African child, opening his Christmas box, and finding the items we loving packed there. We imagine a connection as he has the Christmas our children have, and he feels loved and cared for in the name of Jesus.  In fact, his family does love and care for him. And after the box is opened he walks back to a life of hunger and lack of opportunity. His Christmas is not just like our child's middle-class American holiday, no matter what's in his box.

We need to release the emotional appeals of these Christmas appeals and focus on the work of the local NGOs trying to lobby their government to enforce land tenure rights for the local farmers, build accessible educational institutions, and reform legal systems, all the while sharing the hope that is in Christ. Now that's a gift worth giving.

Why "Brave" is a Bust

I always look forward to Pixar films with great anticipation. Cars 2 notwithstanding, every effort is interesting, innovative, and creative.  As a feminist dad of a teen daughter, the idea of the female protagonist seemed interesting. And I like Scotland. I really wanted to like this. I really did. Unfortunately, Pixar retreated to shop-worn movie themes without much inspiration for anyone.

First of all, a princess. Really? A princess? Is this the only thing people can think of for female characters? I don't need to explain why Brave is a failure of female empowerment, since Mary Pols already did in Time.com, but I simply affirm her critique that having yet another princess who rebells against the wishes of her domineering parents is "so chapter one."

Yet we hardly get out of chapter one with the next problem, rebellion against tradition. This hackneyed theme of "Always follow your heart" is as old as princesses.  Tradition is always held to be the enemy of freedom, humanity and self-realization.  Tradition is, as in Brave, defended by doddering old men who are either too dim to see the wisdom of individual choice, or desperate to hold to a waning (and irrational) power base of legend and fairy tale.  Whether it's the fearful old penguins despising the dance revolution in "Happy Feet," or a cranky old father who thinks his mermaid daughter should avoid inter-species relationships, it is always wrong to follow tradition.

This is not surprising as the echos of romanticism continue to reverberate in our culture. From Romeo & Juliet to The Godfather, we've learned to throw off tradition as a constant fetter on human flourishing. But that's just it. It's tired. It's been done. Move on, already.

As an anthropologist, I get tired of the constant message that communities bound to tradition, or authority, or hierarchy can only be portrayed as backward, unchanging and limited.  Progress, whether in international development or Pixar, seems to only have one direction.  As a Christian, I am frustrated that my culture pushes against any notion that we should have obligations to community or tradition. The desires of our heart are not always, or should not always, be our guiding principle. Of course, I don't expect my culture to conform to my faith; this is part of being in but not of the world. At the same time, it doesn't mean I have to enjoy getting this message time and time again.

Pixar is still my favorite movie studio. Sure, Brave would've been better had it ended a little more "Roman Holiday" and a little less "Princess Diaries," but it still beats most of what Hollywood tries to sell. Moreover, one (or two) clunkers can't erase their impressive record thus far.  I do hope, however, they'll return to more creative themes, richer characters, and won't be satisfied with only one film featuring a female protagonist.  

Gracism

Learning is hard. Change is hard. But, wow, after all the #chapeltweets, #tweetunity, prayer circles, and conversation, you'd think we'd pick up a few things. I did not attend the President's Ball, the formal Wheaton College dance held Monday night, but I heard one troubling thing. I would love to hear that this did not happen, but the account is that in the midst of top-40 radio pop hits (think Katy Perry), a student requested a salsa song, which was promptly booed. I don't know how many booed the song, but really? Perhaps people were boo-ing everything they did not like that evening, although I doubt it. Perhaps it wasn't a boo at all, but lots of people doing cow imitations at the same time. If it was a boo, however, it is yet another instance of the disregard some have for anyone and any thing in the Wheaton community different from themselves.

I don't even need to get into the question of whether boo-ing salsa songs is racist (it is), to say that it is not nice. It is not a way to communicate concern for anyone but one's self. Even if it had no minority racial component at all - if people boo-ed a country song, say - it is mean to tell people at the same party, who also payed money, who are your fellow students, to boo the things they like because they're not what you like.

David Anderson, a pastor of a large multiethnic congregation in Maryland, wrote a short book recently with the catchy title Gracism: The Art of Inclusion. The book has a single point, taken from I Corithians 12, that there are members of the Body of Christ who are more vulnerable than others. It is the duty, calling, and self-referential privilege of those who are not vulnerable to care for those who are.

I do not know how many people wanted to hear a salsa song at the President's Ball, but I suspect it was a minority. I suspect many of those who were happy to hear a salsa song were in fact actual minorities. I also suspect that they did not feel cared for when their classmates booed. I doubt they felt appreciated, that people were glad to have salsa lovers at the ball. Setting aside any questions of racism, I would be interested to hear someone argue, from a Christian point of view, that it's OK to boo when you hear a song you don't want to dance to.

Tired of talking about racism? Think it's time to move on? I think it's time to move on also. But I won't move on when so many people would clearly get left behind.

Three Things I’ve Learned So Far from #chapeltweets

We’re one week removed from #chapeltweets, in which a number of students tweeted negative comments following the Rhythm & Praise Chapel at Wheaton College on February 10. We’ve seen sit ins at the dining hall, prayer circles in front of chapel, impromptu teach-ins, and community forums. All good things that suggest we’re moving forward. I certainly want to help us continue moving forward, but I also want to do a quick retrospective on a few things I’ve learned through the happenings of the week.

1. Wheaton is a Christian community because Christ has made us one, not because we are perfect people.

Wheaton is a special place. I realize after all this, this might seem like a Pollyanna-ish thing to start with, but overall, I’m very humbled and encouraged by the care and love people are showing to one another. I’m grateful to be among my colleagues as they care for students and one another. I’m grateful for the administrators who have acted quickly to give care and love. But more than what we’ve done right, I am, as Bonhoeffer has reminded us, blessed to see again that Christian community exists not because of the ways we succeed to live out our ideals and the “wish dream” of human harmony; Christian community is in the grace of Christ that has already made us a community.

As we go forward, I know there are those who remain disappointed with the responses they have heard, and others who are frustrated that we don’t just let it all go and move on. I know there will be more difficult conversations and more hurt feelings. At the same time, I am more confident in Christ’s grace and love in which we abide. I have seen God’s hand in this and I know God is at work. It’s not necessarily characteristic of me to pull out the big Evangelical Jesus language in situations like this, but in this case, I have to call it like I see it. Speaking of which, lesson number 2…

2. It is important to call racism racism.

This is a big one, because there are a lot of people who very much resist using the word “racism”. We resist it because it is such a charged word, bringing up ideas of what those who tweeted may or must have intended. It seems to be an accusation that those who made the comments must be racists. We prefer the terms “racial insensitivity,” or even the gentler “misunderstanding,” “ignorance,” and “mistake.”

The problem is that all these other terms keep our conversation on the level of interpersonal relationships. By avoiding the term “racism,” we divorce the conversation from the cultural and social systems that keep us from seeing what’s going on. This became most clear to me among some of the healing moments in which we inadvertently reverted to some of the things that keep racism in place. Specifically, when we were praying together outside chapel, and when we closed our time together at #tweetunity, we ironically turned to the music that has become the default music of serious spirituality at Wheaton, Euro-American hymnody. Here were groups who were dedicated to redressing the hurt caused by the chapel tweets and we too fell into patterns of placing the Euro-American worship forms on the pedestal of spiritual superiority, or at least, cultural comfort.

I’m sure there are some who are now rolling their eyes, amazed that I would want to call something as innocent as this “racism.” Yet this is the system in which we live. Why, when our community is hurting precisely over the issue of African American worship being ridiculed and marginalized do we turn to “Be Thou My Vision,” and “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” as our comfort? We have been taught, conditioned, and formed into a community with a hegemonic structure of preferences, in which implicit assumptions about what is best continually push their way to the foreground, unless and until we name it for what it is: racism. I am no better than anyone in this. Until one of my colleagues leaned over and say, “Let’s try to start singing ‘Amen!’” I was blind to the irony and racism myself. I suspect most of the black kids in the circle or the #tweetunity chapel didn’t think much of it either, so it's not just a White thing. This is racism at work. It must be named to be seen. And in the same breath (pun intended), point number 3 is…

3. Racism, sexism, and other exclusions are part of the same conversation.

It has been very interesting to hear many of my female colleagues, particularly those in male dominated fields (theology, economics, the natural sciences) connect their experiences at Wheaton College with the stories being shared by people of color. It’s not that they’re playing a game of “whose pain is worse,” but rather that they can, more clearly and personally than I, see how assumptions of culture and institutional structure work against the full equality of everyone in our community. Just as we have recently attended to race, we need to bring other forms of community stratification into the conversation.

Our culture, like all cultures, is both a good thing (as the God-given ability to express ourselves in symbol, form community, and relate in complex linguistic ways) and a fallen thing (in the ways sin infects every aspect of these capacities and practices). We have, written into our sociality, sinful tendencies towards domination and idolatry. Just as we continue to explore the ways racist hierarchies are promoted and defended in our culture, so too must we consider how our idolatrous hearts enshrine other preferences for masculinity over femininity, youth over age, and able-bodied over disabled.

I almost hesitate to write these words, knowing how some will see nothing but political correctness and liberal humanism, but I think instead of Galatians 3:28 that tell us that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. These social hierarchies are taken away in Christ, yet we go back again and again to find ourselves worshipping ourselves and our cultural creations rather than the Living God and His good creation.

Where do we go from here? We’re going in some good directions already, but I hope that we can press on to the goal set before us. The Kingdom of God is not something we earn through our good work; nor is it something we bring about through constant vigilance to our cultural idolatries. Yet as we pursue holiness in some areas of our lives, let us encourage one another towards holiness in all this.

God is pleased, Wheaton College, that we have begun to hear God’s voice calling to us. Let’s keep listening, together.

Racism without Racists

In the wake of #chapeltweets at Wheaton College, where a group of white students tweeted negative racial messages about the chapel of African American worship, we've heard a very familiar response:

The students who called the service "disorderly," "crazy," or "a joke," were not making any racial reference. They were just expressing preferences. Or It was joke gone too far. Or It didn't mean anything at all.

Whatever it was, this argument goes, these were generally nice kids who love people and do good in the world. They are not racists, therefore their actions cannot be racist.

But do we really need Klan members to have racism?

The title of this post comes from one of my favorite books about racism, linguist Jane Hill's The Everyday Language of White Racism. Her beautifully crafted argument is that U.S. Americans (particularly White Americans) use several strategies in interpreting language. One is "intentionalism," the idea that language gets its meaning from what the speaker wants to say. The second is "referentialism," the belief that language also gets meaning from the objects it references in the world. In much of our communication, this is exactly how language is working. But, she points out, language also has the feature of "indexicality." That is, when we tell jokes, they're often funny not because of what the language references, but because of the context in which it indexes something else. We can be inadvertently funny when we say something (intention) that references one thing, but indexes another. Like when we put our foot in our mouths with a "compliment": "Oh you look so nice! I didn't recognize you!" The intention and reference are clear, and complimentary, but the index (you don't usually look nice) is also clear. Thus, this is an insult, but without an insulter.

Racism can work like this. When someone listens to gospel music and declares it "disorganized," (true example from #chapeltweets), he may just be intending to say that he doesn't know where to look; there's a lot going on; he is confused. At the level of intention and reference, nothing racial there. But indexically there are some layers here. Mind you, the performance in question did not involve people forgetting the lyrics, bumping into each other, or not knowing who should step up to the mic. At that level it was orderly. But it was more complex than some other (European based) forms of music. To call it "disorderly" is to make a comparison. To what? To "orderly" worship. To "normal" worship. To "white" worship. The word "disorderly" indexes similar terms such as "irrational," "uncontrolled," "messy," and "dirty." It is part of a semantic range of terms.

Where is race? In the tweet in question, it was made explicit by saying the "craziness" of the African American worship should be replaced by "ChappyK," our white college chaplain who became a metonym of White "orderly" worship. But he didn't even need this comparison to make it clear to the reader that the "disorderly" worship of these black folks was being compared to "orderly" worship of traditional European musical forms.

I do not think for a minute that the boy who tweeted this is a white supremacist who avoids people of color and promotes racial hatred. He is a young guy who has not yet been encouraged (or allowed?) to question his cultural and racial assumptions, assumptions built into the language of American English where "slang" is for the "ghetto," and to sound sophisticated is to avoid any trace of urban dialect, no matter what you're saying. This boy is not a racist, but his easy indexing of a racial hierarchy, in which language and art forms associated with whiteness are intrinsically superior to those associated with blackness, is racism. This is the system into which he can tap to produce a 140 character judgement that classifies one group as "disorderly," and keeps Bach canatas on top.

Racism does not require racists. All it needs to thrive is people who deny the wider historical and cultural context in which their words and thoughts live.

Masculine Christianity

It's been a while since I blogged about anything, but Rachel Held Evans, a blogger I quite like, has made an important point regarding John Piper's call for a "masculine Christianity." She said

"There’s a double-standard out there in which a woman’s critique of patriarchy tends to get discounted as nothing more than the rants of an “angry feminist,” and, truth be told, I’ve grown a bit weary of hearing that charge each time I speak out about this disturbing trend in the evangelical church."

That is sadly true, but it is a call for those men who agree with her to stand up and say something. For what it's worth...

Piper is right that God uses many gendered metaphors in references to the Trinity: Father, Son, King. But what does it mean to call these "masculine?" Sitting here in the 21st Century midwestern United States, I suspect I can conjure up common images with my fellow U.S. Americans: professional sports, body hair, Axe Body Spray (for the under 28 masculinity), lawn care (for the over 28), more professional sports. I'm sure others would want to add things that they feel are less culturally specific - providing, protecting, leading - but these are no more universal than the first list.

Did God tell us what men were like and then point out to us that God is "masculine?" Or did we come up with some ideas about men and women to which God spoke, in order to share something we might understand? Abraham (nee Abram) thought it was fine to have several wives, and use his wife's handmaid to bear his child, because he believed in monogenesis, that only men carry the stuff of life leading to birth. God knew this and rebuked him for a lack of trust but not for his faulty science. God let a lot of early Hebraic culture go on and even used these cultural elements to help us understand.

Modern "masculinity" is no less complex. In Indonesia today, particularly among the Javanese, earning money in the marketplace is women's work. Women are considered less likely to be tempted to squander money and therefore more stable than men. When economically possible, men withdraw from economic life and cultivate more high-minded pursuits, such as religious teaching. Is this the "masculinity" that we should have in mind? Or more the professional sports kind? Do we imagine the masculinity of scripture - often rooted in a strong patrilineal and patriarchal family where women and children were like property of fathers and husbands? Can we imagine such a masculinity?

There is so much in John Piper's ministry I love. His book Desiring God was very influential when I was young, but his lack of cultural self-awareness is disappointing. It is so much richer to understand how God has used the people of biblical past to shape the myriad cultures today than simply to try to selectively export our reading of ancient peoples into the present. If we respect Scripture, we're going to work a little harder at understanding how God's work among his people in the past speaks to us today. And that is not a "masculine" job.