Slacktivist: When a lack of anger reveals a lack of love

Fred Clark recently posted one of the most powerful endorsements of anger at injustice I have ever seen. It’s especially relevant to ex-fundamentalist bloggers, since we are regularly accused of anger and bitterness, as though having emotions invalidates everything we say.

Imagine a big muscle-bound biker walks up, knocks you over and steps on your head with his giant steel-toed boot. You respond, “Hey, get off! What do you think you’re doing?!” He laughs down at you and says, “Why should I?” You answer, “Because you’re hurting me!” And he says, “You can’t possibly argue with me while you’re this emotional. I’m going to stand on your head until you calm down enough to present a rational argument.”

Because that makes just as much sense as telling women to be less emotional about patriarchy.

Slacktivist: When a lack of anger reveals a lack of love

Most anger is a response to and a response against something less abstract and more tangible, actual and factual: Injustice, oppression, harm, cruelty, pain, deprivation, suffering, want, intimidation, bullying, tyranny, evil.

In response to and response against such harms, anger is not irrational, it is obligatory. It is precisely “what the evidence warrants.”

When confronted with injustice, cruelty and harm, a lack of anger “is a sign that you are subconsciously” failing to love those who are suffering from that injustice, cruelty and harm. If you love them, then you ought to be angry — and that anger ought to compel you to act on their behalf.

See also:

Free Believers Network: The Bitterness Phenomenon

Amazingly, our teachings have so programed our minds that if the very thought that a person might be bitter enters our brains, we instantly shut down like a computer firewall protecting itself against a virus. I think for the most part, we can’t even help ourselves anymore. It’s become an involuntary knee-jerk reaction that just snaps the moment the “B” word is spoken. Our ears instantly become deaf, our attention span goes blank, and the walls of self protection shoot up.

Gloating and Slander: Michael Pearl, Nancy Ann Wilson, and Christian Fundamentalist Responses to Criticism

Femina has been lighting up like a Christmas tree since The Gospel Coalition blog post that threw Doug Wilson into the spotlight for arguing that egalitarian sexual relationships were unnatural and that if “authority and submission” aren’t honored in sex, men turn to rape to fulfill their animal urges.

Now Wilson’s wife, Nancy Ann, has joined the fray:
10 Reasons to be Glad When Your Husband is Slandered

It’s mostly fluff: reasons like “It makes you grateful” aren’t exactly “reasons.” Nonetheless, there’s something strikingly similar about this response to the response of Michael Pearl to critics after 10-year-old Lydia Schatz was beaten to death by her Pearl-following parents.

Here’s Nancy Ann:

1. It makes him look good.
Of course it does! Karen Grant said that “big lights attract big bugs” and if there are some big uglies out there around the light, well, he must be big enough to be a threat to bring out all the bugs. And the light usually sticks around longer than the bugs.
…
3. It’s a good sign.
It’s a danger sign, according to Scripture, when everyone only has nice things to say about you. (Luke 6:26)

4. It’s a reason for a party.
If Jesus says we are to rejoice and be exceeding glad when people spread lies about us, then that means God wants us to throw a party! (Matthew 5:11-12)

6. You are in good company!
Jesus was slandered, Paul was slandered, and most, if not all, of the prophets and apostles were slandered. What great preacher was not slandered? Your husband must be doing something right.

And here’s ‘Laughing’ by Michael Pearl:

I laugh at mycaustic critics, for our properly spanked and trained children grow to
maturity in great peace and love.

My five grown children are laughing at your foolish, uninformed criticism of
God’s method of child training, for their kids-my 17 grandkids-are
laughing . . . because that is what they do most of the time.

They laughwhen Daddy is coming home. They laugh when it is time to do more
homeschooling. They laugh when it is time to practice the violin and piano.
They laugh when they see their Big Papa coming (that’s me) because Big
Papa is laughing and they don’t care why just as long as he laughs withthem.

My granddaughters laugh with joy after giving their baby dolls a spanking
for “being naughty” because they know their dolls will grow up to be the
best mamas and daddies in the world-just like them.

Even my chickens are laughing . . . well, actually it is more like cackling,
because they just laid another organic egg for my breakfast and they know
that it was that same piece of ¼ inch plastic supply line that trained the dogs
not to eat chicken.

Several writers have called out Michael Pearl for his arrogance and insensitivity in the face of a child’s death. The condescension in Nancy Ann’s response is barely a notch less overt. In a nutshell, both responses are empty posturing. “Too bad for you, I’m right, and your criticism only makes me more right” is pretty much the sticky residue you get after you boil off the redundant parts.

Here’s the hitch:

If being slandered means being right, your own daughter just made Rachel Held Evans a saint and a prophetess.

Changes afoot!

Hang tight, everybody! We’re going to Patheos!

(The new URL will be http://www.patheos.com/blogs/phoenixandolivebranch, but you’ll be redirected anyway.)

It’s kind of like being this cat.

The Phoenix and Olive Branch is about to join its sister sites No Longer Quivering and Love, Joy, Feminism on Patheos. I’m very excited to be part of Patheos’ ever-expanding conversation. Here’s a preview of some of the topics you’ll see me address:

More of the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project (which, by the way, has been reopened for additional participants!)

Adventures in Egalitarian Marriage: My relationship with Stuart, our wedding plans, a report on the wedding itself (next year) and our experiments with chore-sharing and negotiating responsibilities.

Nature’s God: my thoughts on spirituality now.

Yes, You Can be Normal, a series about the strategies I used to acculturate into “normal” society after growing up fundamentalist and my tips to make it easier.

More Survival Songs.

More on Graduate School.

More on Abortion and Birth Control.

The conclusion of the Daughter of the Patriarchy series.

And, of course, your regularly scheduled patriarchy-bashing, poking holes in the modesty doctrine, occasional forays into politics and the economy, and whatever else pops up in the news that pings my fundar.

Got suggestions or requests? Leave ’em in the comments!