What to Say at a Naked Party

[Christianity Today, February 2005]

Anyone who's been on a college campus lately will confirm the depressing report delivered by Vigen Guroian in his essay [about sex on campus]. As someone who does a lot of campus speaking, I've seen my fair share of posters announcing sex-toy workshops, transgender celebrations, and, on one Ivy League campus, an open invitation to a "naked party." What's a naked party? Anybody who wants can attend, but you have to take off all your clothes to stay.

It makes you want to weep for the children, for girls in particular, who deserve to be protected from this carnival of leering and molestation.

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The Problem with Women's Ministries

[Beliefnet, July 6, 2004]

There are lots of things I like about my church, but you know what I like best? None of that stupid "women's ministry" stuff. No simpering "gals only" events advertised in voluptuous purple italics and threatening to do something to your heart (open, touch, heal, re-calibrate and change the filter). No color-saturated photos of beaming, hefty middle-aged gals (gals who look like me, that is, but with a dye job and a whole lot more makeup). No unique opportunities to Explore God's Precious Promises in an environment that offers all the sober tranquility of a manic-depressives' convention.

And the hugging! Well, actually, I don't mind hugging. It's hugging in front of a convulsively applauding, tear-spattered audience that has me groping for the Pepto-Bismol.

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Jane Juska

[National Review Online, May 9, 2003]

Got big plans for Mother's Day? Candy and flowers, hugs and kisses? Maybe snapping some heartwarming photos of Grandma with the multiple generations of progeny gathered all around?

Boy, are you out of it. Didn't you know that playing with grandchildren is something women do just to keep themselves from thinking about how they've wasted their lives?

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Phyllis Schlafly

[The American Conservative, April 21, 2003]

Feminist Fantasies, by Phyllis Schlafly, Spence Publishing, 262 pages

Not every fifty-something mother of six decides to go to law school; not every one who does graduates near the top of her class. Not every woman juggles these high-octane pursuits with a syndicated column and an uphill battle against the Equal Rights Amendment. But then again, not every woman is Phyllis Schlafly. You can hear three decades of bruised feminists breathing "Amen."

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The Oneida Experiment

[Touchstone, November 2002 — expanded version of “Free Love Didn’t Come Cheap”]

In the middle of the room there was a woodburning stove. The small iron door was open on this chilly day, and the red flames could be seen leaping within as if in time to music. For there was music, too, a marching song, and the little girls who circled the stove marched around it in time. The girls were not happy.

Each girl was holding in her arms her favorite doll. These were pretty dolls with painted faces, who usually wore fancy clothes reflecting current fashion. But today the clothes had been left in a pile, and the wax figurines were exposed, hard and bare. One by one, each girl marched up to the open door of the stove. One by one, each girl threw her doll into the “angry-looking flames.”

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Three Bad Ideas for Women

Few book titles have had the sticking power of Richard Weaver’s “Ideas Have Consequences.” Even people who’ve never read it find the blunt title instantly compelling. Weaver’s thesis was that the ideas that we absorb about the world, about the way things are or should be, inevitably direct our actions. Though the book was published in 1948, before many current bizarre ideas had fully emerged, the thesis is an eternal one. It sets people to wondering which ideas were the seeds that sprouted our present mess, and which new ideas might be helping us out of it — or further in.

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A Clear and Present Identity

[Christianity Today, September 4, 2000]

What was his name again? I'm trying to remember. It was one of those Swiss names.

If you draw a blank at the concept of "one of those Swiss names," you're typical. There are some nationalities that bring to mind richly detailed associations, and Swiss is not one of them.

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My Cab Ride with Gloria Steinem

[Books & Culture, May-June, 2000]

A journey of a dozen blocks begins with a single stepCin my case, stepping into the front seat of a cab on the Harvard campus while Gloria Steinem stepped into the back. My eyes were still red from crying. How I got there is another story.

In October, 1999 Harvard Divinity School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government co-sponsored a conference titled “Core Connections: Women, Religion, and Public Policy.” Admirably, the conference’s organizers tried to include in the mix women that don’t usually get invited to such shindigs, such as evangelical Christians. To recruit these attendees, Ambassador Swanee Hunt, director of the Women and Public Policy Program at the JFK School, enlisted the help of her sister, June Hunt, evangelical author and host of the Hope for the Heart radio broadcast. A third sister, Helen Hunt, (not the actress, but director of the Sisters Fund), provided funding for the conference.

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Chasing Amy

[Christianity Today, January 2000]  

Amy Tracy prepared to die.

She had linked her arms through those of fellow pro-choice activists as they surrounded a van stopped outside an abortion clinic. Inside the van were women in the second trimester of pregnancy

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Men Need Church, Too

[Christianity Today, May 24, 1999]

Next time you're in church, count the number of adult heads and divide by the number of pairs of pantyhose. If the pantyhose contingent makes up more than half the total, there's a word for your church: typical.

"Every sociologist, and indeed every observer, who has looked at the question has found that women are more religious than men," writes Leon Podles in his book, "The Church Impotent." (Ouch; the stentorian title makes me wince. Once inside, however, it's reasonable and well-written.) Podles cites a deluge of statistics: in 1986 church growth expert Lyle Schaller observed 60% female to 40% male churchgoers, a split which has widened since. Jesuit theologian Patrick Arnold says he's found a female-to-male ratio ranging from 2:1 to 7:1, and "some liberal Presbyterian or Methodist congregations are practically bereft of men." Even in churches that have an all-male ordained leadership, the inner circle of laity that actually runs things is likely to be mostly female.

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