Singular Christianity: Marriage and Singleness as Discipleship

If only Paul had not written chapter seven of his first letter to the Corinthians. Christians can fairly easily avoid questions about whether to be married or single when they stick to the Gospels, for Jesus does nothing clear-cut with respect to states of life. He is present at the wedding at Cana in John; in Matthew, he issues a prohibition against divorce; he speaks about being eunuchs for the Kingdom of God, and reconfigures family in his exhortation that the ones who are his disciples are his mother and brothers. Because Jesus does not appear to have much of a line one way or the other, the Gospels appear to allow us not to get too caught up in questions about whether to marry or whether to stay single. Paul, though, does not let Christians off quite so easily. In verse eight he writes that for the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they remain as I do. Later in the selection, Paul contrasts the married and the non-married by suggesting that the unmarried virgins can follow Christ, but people who are married are concerned with the world and with family. Paul tempers these points by saying that it is better for people to marry than to be aflame with passion. In other words, do not strive for remaining unmarried if it will just cause you to sin. Most of the early church fathers interpreted this passage as suggesting that virginity is better, far better, than marriage. For example, John Chrysostom discusses how Paul has saved a thorough discussion of virginity for after he already has spoken about marriage relationships with the hope that they have learned from his previous words to practice continence, and can now advance to greater things

New Evangelization, New Families, and New Singles

When Pope Francis issued his calls for a synod in 2013, he stated that he wanted bishops to discuss the “pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization,” surely also a link to the recent calls for a “New Evangelization.” Evangelization has long been tied to Catholic understandings of family. Parents are deemed the original source of Christian evangelization and witness for their children, and thus the family is assumed to be at the center of any kind of broader evangelization that happens. It makes sense, then, that family becomes a central topic of conversation for bishops in relation to what it means to be church in the contemporary world. That said, in this brief discussion, I raise a tension in the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family. On the one hand, it seems to raise up the nuclear family as a kind of idol. On the other hand, it discusses several forms of singleness that present a more expanded and open view of the family

Women, Disabled

Women are disabled. This is not simply the notion that some women have disabilities (in the way that I myself am a woman with a hearing loss), but that the very fact of being a woman is a disability. I have no doubt that there are people who might find this statement offensive. People with disabilities (as commonly understood) might find it so because it would seem to lessen difficulties, pains, and real encumbrances that disability entails. Some feminists might do so because it would seem to emphasize some of the very stereotypes of women that they wish to overcome: that women are weak and irrational. Yet I do not make this statement to be provocative so much as to highlight that women\u27s problems have been curiously similar to those experienced by people with disabilities. By many feminist accounts, Nancy Eiesland\u27s quote above could easily apply to women, substituting women for persons with disabilities:\u27 The woman-disability connection exists in part because feminists often write about the ways in which women wrestle with bodies that are limiting and frustrating, and the ways in which Christians have contributed to poor theology and oppressive practices about those bodies. As Doreen Freeman writes, Looking through the Hebrew and Christian scriptures and writings of the tradition, it is hard to tell women apart from disabled people (Freeman 2002,74). Writers over the centuries have noted that women bleed, are missing (apparently) some key anatomy, and are not rational - just as those with disabilities have wounds that don\u27t heal, may be missing some parts of their anatomy, and may not present themselves as rational. Feminist and disability theologians alike critique thought that suggests normal is a young, physically muscular, perfectly formed adult male body, which by default is rational. Bodies are especially difficult and frustrating for those who are patronized or persecuted because of them, so in this sense, perhaps women and people with disabilities have similar concerns and points to share with each other. Although thoughts about disability and women may well be intertwined, disability theologians and feminist theologians rarely reference each other except in passing

We Do Not Know How to Love: Observations on Theology, Technology and Disability

Does technology enable those who are disabled to be fuller members of society, or does it ultimately seek to eradicate disability and so promote a kind of eugenics against those who are disabled? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, literature and debate on this question ran rampant. A common example is that of cochlear implants, which endured much debate at the time within the Deaf community regarding whether they eradicate an impairment— or whether implants actually do away with entire communities of the Deaf and thus displace an important minority culture. Yet, very little is written today on this question. Is it because the question is settled, or because we have become satisfied with the presumed answers? (Answers which, repeatedly, tend to be: decisions regarding cochlear implants should be left up to patients, focused on their autonomy, and almost entirely avoiding the more troublesome question of whether a culture is being eradicated.

Stanley Hauerwas’s Influence on Catholic Moral Theology

One might begin considering the reception of Stanley Hauerwas’s work in Catholic moral theology by asking: why did both Commonweal and First Things opt to publish reviews of Hauerwas’s memoir Hannah’s Child? What is it about Hauerwas’s theological discussion of his own work that engages an educated Catholic audience of magazines putatively representing both ends of the spectrum? It is not only that both journals actively seek engagement with Protestant voices; nor is it only that Hauerwas has a degree of renown, thanks to Time magazine. It is also exactly what Peter Steinfels alludes to in his review, that Hauerwas is at once disturbing and rewarding for Catholics. Hauerwas is so strongly in support of certain “liberal” Catholic ideals (e.g., that ethics should not be about laws in the way it was perceived pre- Vatican II), so intensely in support of certain “conservative” Catholic ideals (e.g., that tradition and authority should be important aspects of Christian life), and so seemingly dismissive of natural law and state politics that Catholics cannot help but have a kind of unsettled fascination with him and his work

What Kind of Family is Needed for ‘Domestic Church’? A Mystagogy of the Family

Is there an ideal Christian family, or indeed, is the term family even the best way to think about Christian life together, especially in relation to the term domestic church ? When it comes to marriage and family, scholars writing about the concept of domestic church often do one of the following: (1) focus on Gen 1 and 2 as putting forth an ideal nuclear family; or (2) make family out to be a redeeming or eschatological vision on its own, in place of Jesus Christ. This is not a conservative or liberal problem, for people from across the spectrum make these kinds of intellectual moves, but they are very theologically problematic moves. A focus on Gen 1 and/or 2 is a good place to begin, but often unduly suggest that family must mean husband/wife/children. Even theorists discussing gay marriage in the light of Gen 1 and 2 tend to discuss marriage in terms of the so-called nuclear family. Yet theologically, Gen 1 and 2 limit scholarship of marriage too much because they do not take into account Christ. Chapter appears in The Household of God and Local Households, Thomas Knieps-Port Le Roi, et al. eds, (Leuven: Peeters, 2013)

Not So Private: A Political Theology of Church and Family

The words used to describe that relationship are public and private, words that frequently appear in both secular and Christian conversations about marriage and family. We name family and church as private matters, parts of life that are necessarily held distinctly from public matters, as in political life. At the same time, because Christians rightly understand family as a place where people learn discipleship and a place where formation and evangelization happen,3 we care very much about how to think about families in relation to church and state. There is a relationship between these three entities, American Christians insist, and the work that we need to do is to determine exactly how to properly balance that relationship in order to ensure the best possible marriages and the best possible families. Yet what I argue in this chapter is that the current conversation, which tries to delineate how family, state and church are public or private, derails Christian discipleship. This is because Jesus Christ upends the very notions of public and private; the risen Christ causes us to realize that not only do we have no common views of what is public and private, but that the very ideas are reconfigured to the point that the public/private distinction is shattered. First, then, I discuss some of the several ways Americans, especially Christians, make use of the words public and private, showing how this dichotomy is utterly unhelpful for Christians. Then I support my claim by discussing what Jesus\u27 life, as attested by Scripture, shows Christians about family, state, church, public and private. Finally, I suggest that for Christians there can\u27t be public and private in the ways we have tended to name, that we are called to be the church first, and I conclude with some practical implications of making this claim

Imposter Happiness or the Real Thing? Marriage, Singleness and the Beatitudes in the 21st Century

When I, as a single woman, first began thinking about singleness, I was thinking largely about the fact that marriage is so much the focus at many churches that singleness hardly ever enters the conversation. Churches direct so much energy and time and attention to helping form and foster good marriages and families. This is important work, but our focus on marriage and family has been to the detriment of good thinking about what it means to be single, to the point that singleness becomes maligned and that the church’s ability to witness to Jesus suffers as a result. This view among Christians mirrors what we think in culture at large. According to research done at the Pew Research Forum in 2010 and confirmed in the latest study in 2011, the rates of marriage are declining. Just over half (51 percent) of all adult Americans are married compared with 72 percent in 1960; rates among the youngest adult generation (age 20-34) are declining even more rapidly, down from 59 percent in 1960 to 20 percent today. Many scholars give several reasons for the decline: economic factors, education (people with more degrees wait longer to get married), an increasing societal norm to wait to marry, and caution due to high divorce rates in previous generations. At the time the study was published, news outlets loudly vaunted the statistics about decline, as they should. These are important indicators of how Americans understand marriage and family, and they are important statistics to grapple with in thinking about Christian marriage and family, for Christians often (depending somewhat on denomination) have divorce rates that are equal to those of the general population. What does such a view of marriage mean for the variety of single adults? There are strong indications that it means marginalization of singleness in all its forms