Thinking about this🧵all day today.

I wonder if this dynamic also relates to way (at the risk of overgeneralization) Christian male leaders may expect to walk into a room & be heard, can expect their words to result in action - that is diff from what many women experience. 🧵/9

https://twitter.com/esaumccaulley/status/1793304772868546917

Reminds me of Helen’s observations 2 yrs ago. ⬇️

Perhaps a reason women show up more as advocates is b/c we know what it is to be unheard. 2/9 acnatoo.org/acna-witnesses…

Survivors continue to wait for responses & basic updates on processes as @The_ACNA procedures drag on

Many reasons why continued silence has always been unacceptable, but I will always be stunned by the *pastoral negligence* & passivity of it, esp in light of ordinal vows. 🧵/8

https://twitter.com/ACNAtoo/status/1791460501383475435

Bishops in @The_ACNA are given shepherd's rods to symbolize how they are entrusted with Christ's flock.

Shepherds are to take action: "hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind up the broken, bring back the lapsed, and seek the lost."

Ignoring people is not a pastoral option. 2/8

Throughout history & across culture, women are often the ones washing dead bodies, keeping watch before burials, feeding the mourning, ministering in the wake of death.
So too Jesus’ women have, in the hours before dawn, prepared age-old recipes of grief-scented spices. 🧵 They didn’t know how they were going to roll away that heavy stone, but they leave w/the sunrise anyway.
I wonder if, as they hurried through the quiet, ephemeral beauty of early dawn, anticipation threaded their weeping or if they dragged their steps to make time slow down. 2/

"Dedicate the youth according to his way.
Even when he grows old he will not depart from it."

⬆️ is how Dr. Bruce Waltke breaks this down in his commentary on the Proverbs.

Note: phrase "he should go" is not in Waltke's rendering. The reason for this: it's not in the text.🧵 Let's take a closer look.

I contend that this verse is primarily a sobering observation-intended-to-provoke-action about how the way the lessons received in childhood are formative, how they have long-lasting impact into adulthood & old age. 2/?

Final post in a series (linked at end) that uses story-telling/questions to argue against use of corporal punishment:

Part 1: perspective of 3YO child being spanked
Part 2: perspective of a sibling
Part 3: perspective of a parent
**Part 4: 20 yrs later**

🧵/?





These imagined scenarios are far from comprehensive, but I hope they spotlight ways corporal punishment contributes to the shame, inauthentic relationships, & painful estrangement many Christian families experience.

2/?

This week I continue making a case against the use of corporal punishment by Christian parents.

I've already argued: it isn't biblical, it's not the way of Jesus, & decades of research show the harm (🔗at end)

This 🧵shows-not-tells a child's perspective of a "spanking" 🧵/13 It is not meant to be comprehensive or to speak for every child's experience, which is varied.

I wrote it for those who so easily claim there is a "right" way to spank young children.

Utilizing a scenario/formula Tripp offers, let's drag it out from behind closed doors: 2/13

It can be difficult to evaluate the impact of corporal punishment (exploration of this & linked studies in this 🧵).

That does not mean we cannot make robust conclusions about the harm.

IMO @janetheimlich's thorough work is essential reading: 🧵 a.co/d/1kxVK4l
Any research attempting to evaluate CP (either as "working" or "turned out fine" or "harming" or "trauma") must consider the limitations of self-disclosure, the only data source for things happening behind closed doors.

Loyalty, shame, & memory recall all are relevant. 2/?

Many Christians ardently defending "spanking" again today

Bolstered by (IMO) eisegetical claims & doctrinal interpretations, they insist that God requires adults to hit young children & claim that is what God does for us.

I find this to be profoundly unChristian. 🧵/10 Jesus did not force compliance. He invited ppl & instructed His followers to…follow His example.

He sent them out to do His healing and liberating work, saying, “Freely you have received; freely give.”

Neither did the apostles punish ppl into behaving. 2/10

The Bible nowhere commands parents to "spank"/hit young children. Nowhere.

Neither does it tell parents that God gives them authority to hit young children.

Direct instruction given to Christian parents (repeated 2X)? *Fathers, do not embitter/provoke your children.* 🧵/4

https://twitter.com/Vorrex7/status/1762503988526657910

Before someone proof-texts the Proverbs (a book intended to cultivate wisdom), consider:
✔️Applying "the rod" verses literally=beating young men w/stout rods
✔️We do not apply most Proverbs as imperatives

So ask yourself why those & why in that way? 2/4

“Christian parents who wish to sell their concept of God to their children must first sell themselves,” Dobson writes.

“If they are not worthy of respect, then neither is their religion or their morals, or their government, or their country, or any of their values." 🧵/? In a moment of reckoning for American evangelicalism, Dobson’s words take on a different tenor.
After I read Fea's article for @theatlantic, I read "Dare to Discipline." Published in 1970, it sold over 2 million copies & launched a parenting empire. 2/?

https://x.com/MBurtwrites/status/1755759784228458929?s=20

When I saw the priest swipe the Ash Wednesday cross on my baby’s forehead, I cried.
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return,” the priest said, and I looked at my round-cheeked, bobble-headed, newly-born gift, and I was terrified. 🧵/? He will die one day, I thought, and the simple truth of the human condition quickened inside me.

I spent one January in the hospital with that child when he was gravely ill, and, for a time, the doctors didn’t know how to diagnose him. 2/?

Another interesting (to me) thing.

In Shaping of A Christian Family, EE’s stories from her childhood, she quotes her paternal great-grandfather’s book (alongside a couple of more rigid resources) a couple of times but always passages on duty/order. 🧵/14

https://twitter.com/MBurtwrites/status/1757189412058996738

When I read @LizCharlotteG’ article last week, these books came to mind b/c my impression from reading them yrs ago had been a very strong sense of duty/submitting one’s will as an identifying marker in EE’s childhood.

So I reread them. 2/14therevealer.org/elisabeth-elli…

Fea’s article reads like a variation on: “It could’ve been worse.” “You don’t know how bad he/she had it” or “Remember the good times.”

Fragility & defensiveness plague evangelicalism. 🧵/12
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Parental fragility robs individual families of authentic connection.

Its systemic counterpart in church family subcultures like evangelicalism prevents powerholders from listening to the pain of the betrayed.

Fragility/defensiveness sets trajectory of future engagement 2/12

Let's talk about "slander."
If we equate public critiques of books or sermons w/ cancel-culture & mob attack, or name thoughtful objections to be sinful slander, we platform unchallengeable people. 🧵/? I was offline for many yrs before joining modern Areopagus of Twitter & have learned here's how it goes: provocative/inflammatory content (often markedly intended to stir up controversy & buzz in order to sell books or other resources) quakes through the conversation. 🧵/?

The primary anthropological viewpoint offered by so many popular Christian parenting books is: people are sinners.

This combines with an impoverished view of children (adults in little bodies), so children are written about almost exclusively in terms of sin. 🧵/?

https://twitter.com/Andy35o/status/1736748471103734165

On insta, @kkramermcginnis & I have been examining Shepherding a Child's Heart & this crops up again & again.

Tripp hangs his claims re: sin on this excerpt from Rm 1 (included only as a parenthetical reference in the text). 2/?

It has been w-i-l-d to see how central PSA is to the underlying theological assumptions in much of popular Christian parenting teaching.

It isn’t even just the primary theological lens; for many resources it’s the *only* lens. 1/3

https://twitter.com/pastortrey05/status/1736089658587480222

One of the things I love about @flemingrut’s outstanding book is that she thoroughly discusses *all* the biblical motifs & in so doing offers us a varied vocabulary for something beyond our ability to express in words.

2/3 a.co/d/02ghgLz

The lections give us Isaiah 64 for Advent 1, so I've been thinking about ways I've heard ppl exegete Isaiah's metaphor re: menstrual cloth over the years.

It's often presented as a pejorative, as though Isaiah meant to shock. TBH I think that reveals a hidden contempt. 🧵/14

https://twitter.com/AlethiaWrites/status/1730236262345314792

The metaphor comes in the midst of discussion of sin. NIV: "We have become like one who is unclean; all our righteous acts are like filthy rags."

"So in the original language..." I've heard teachers say, discomfiting modern listeners by bringing menstruation to the pulpit. 2/14

Demands for statistics reveal a willful ignorance re: the complexity of abuse disclosure.

How does one quantify the betrayal of trust that occurs at both an individual & collective level when Christ's church fails the most vulnerable?

Open the ledgers & listen: 🧵/14

https://twitter.com/megbasham/status/1729727472155914381

What numbers will account for the compounded betrayal that comes from organizational structures that enable abuse?

What scale can reveal the weight of shame & victim blaming when the rarity of public disclosure occurs? 2/14

🧵⬇️brings to mind (again) Quest style games vs Sandbox games.

I think much of our cultural Christianity invites us to a Quest style approach (a single path=God's will for one's life, Right Way methods, etc), & this includes parenting as @sometimesalight names so well. 🧵/13

https://twitter.com/sometimesalight/status/1728423294926221316

The Quest style approach leaves one constantly hungering for the confirmation: you are doing it right! On the right path!

Which also perhaps communicates the stowaway doctrine that hardship/suffering is indication one has done it "wrong." 2/13

https://x.com/AlethiaWrites/status/1728464647530140100?s=20

“I do not consider this an acceptable level of transparency….What they just shared is well-intended, righteous bullshit.”

@DBarkleyBriggs unimpressed w/@ihopkc leaders offering the typical: we-are-grieved-trust-the-process obfuscating response. 🔥 🧵1/15

https://twitter.com/reachjulieroys/status/1718415822794768790

I applaud Briggs' response to stonewalling & obfuscation from @ihopkc church leaders, b/c I think for so many of us churchgoers we don't realize it is an option to stand up and say: "I do not consider this an acceptable level of transparency."

Instead we follow directions. 2/15

I want to explore this. 🧐

Women in some Christian contexts learn early on that their sense of calling is irrelevant. The answer is “no”, no matter what.

And men learn their sense of calling makes them indispensable. There are endless 2nd chances for “yes,” no matter what. 1/10

https://twitter.com/alethiawrites/status/1709625955021689212

What a loss.

Most of my adulthood has been in contexts where women's ministry roles were limited in some way.

I didn't like this ofc, but I understood that ministry ambitions were not in themselves a Xian priority.

I assumed everyone else took Philippians seriously, too. 2/10