“Christian women fear being ‘outed’—that if our truth comes out, no one will love us or accept us and we will no longer be credible—when the truth is exactly the opposite.” -Lisa Kittle
Part 8 in series: Women of Faith in Leadership
Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Wrong Man’ tells the story of Emmanuel Balestrero, arrested for a crime committed by his physical double. It portrays in miniature what theorist René Girard has described as a ‘mimetic crisis.’ The plight of the central character is not a product of blind chance, but rather due to the mimetic fears, desires, and vanities of the members of society that accuse him. Our failure to resist the flawed but contagious human desire to punish a scapegoat for every wrong suffered, not only fails to bring justice to the world, it subjects innocent scapegoats to suffering injustice themselves.
Part of 4 series: René Girard: Greatest Christian Intellectual You Never Heard of
Women in American churches know how they want to be perceived by others: they want to be influenced by the Bible, and reject the idea of being heavily affected by the media. But is this an actuality or merely an aspiration?
David Kinnaman discusses new Barna research.
Remember that the moment you hit “send” on an email, you’ve lost control of it. In that moment of frustration or anger, what you write will live on – and it will be in someone else’s hands.
The themes of redemptive violence, scapegoating, mimesis, and feuding identities dominate both the films of Martin Scorsese and literary theory of Rene Girard. ‘Shutter Island’ (2010) starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo was Martin Scorsese’s second highest-grossing film ($128M), behind only Oscar-winner, ‘The Departed.’ What first appears to be a classic horror film (voted #7 on Business Insiders Highest Grossing Scary Movies of All Time), turns out to be so much more. A story of violent scapegoating of Girardian proportions.
It’s 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston’s Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He’s been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn’t been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy’s shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals “escape” in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything – his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.
On “The Daily Show” recently, Jon Stewart grilled Mike Huckabee about a TV ad in which Huckabee urged voters to support “biblical values” at the voting box.
When Huckabee said that he supported the “biblical model of marriage,” Stewart shot back that “the biblical model of marriage is polygamy.”
And there’s a big problem, Stewart went on, with reducing “biblical values” to one or two social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, while ignoring issues such as poverty and immigration reform.
It may come as some surprise that as an evangelical Christian, I cheered Stewart on from my living room couch.
As someone who loves the Bible and believes it to be the inspired word of God, I hate seeing it reduced to an adjective like Huckabee did. I hate seeing my sacred text flattened out, edited down and used as a prop to support a select few political positions and platforms.
Unlike our current examination-based ‘quick response’ educational system, serious intellectual effort requires slow, usually painstaking thought, often with wrong roads taken along the way to the right destination, if one is lucky enough to arrive there.
Being a great woman leader doesn’t have to mean suppressing your gender Part 6 in series: Women of Faith in Leadership by Margaret Feinberg Over the years I have met many fantastic women leaders. I lean forward to hear their every word…
“A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.” …
“There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.” …
“People are against my theory, because it is at the same time avant-garde and Christian: the avant-garde people are anti-Christian, and many of the Christians are anti-avant-garde.” -René Girard
Part 3 in series: Women of Faith in Leadership Scot McKnight, an award-winning author, blogger, Two Handed Warrior contributor, and professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lombard, IL, has written extensively about women in the church, discipleship and the…