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In his book <i>Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces</i>, Jon Pahl argues that the consumer aspect of American Christianity is a kind of a feel-good… - Lyz Lenz
" "In his book Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces, Jon Pahl argues that the consumer aspect of American Christianity is a kind of a feel-good cop-out of deeper truths. But for those who have been hurt by the church, who have been told their bodies are unacceptable in the eyes of God, or have witnessed other’s pain perpetuated by religion, it is nothing of the sort. It’s actually freedom. And it’s freedom that has been sought and found by religious outsiders for millennia. The saints we revere like Joan of Arc and St. Francis of Assisi, were difficult nomadic outsiders who created their own religious spaces when none could be found for them. Even the model of Jesus, walking smelly and dirty in the desert with his band of fishermen, all men, was a rogue, cast out by the religious authorities. But these thoughts can be cold comfort when you are the one deemed unacceptable, deemed sinful by the very community that by its very precepts ought to love you.
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About Lyz Lenz
Lyz Lenz (born 1982) is an American author and editor. She was previously a columnist at The Cedar Rapids Gazette and served as managing editor of The Rumpus. She is the author of God Land and Belabored. Lenz moved from Vermillion, South Dakota to Minneapolis, Minnesota while in high school and graduated from Eden Prairie High School. She has an undergraduate degree from Gustavus Adolphus College. Lenz belonged to Evangelical churches but came into conflict with their orthodoxies including on the role of women in the church and the exclusion of gay and lesbian people.
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Additional quotes by Lyz Lenz
Compliance is easier than questioning. The appearance of unity is easier than messy actualities. And I think part of me always understood that if I pushed too hard, I would be cast out of everything. So, I smiled during sermons I hated. I kept silent during Bible studies where people spoke of dinosaurs and humans roaming the earth together before Noah’s flood.
Because I could not imagine life outside the womb of my faith, I struggled inside its limitations. I thought there would always be room for me. But the reality was, there was only room for me if I made myself smaller and smaller and smaller, until I disappeared. Or else I’d be pushed out into a bright new horrible, beautiful world, where I would gasp and scream and try to breathe, for once, on my own.
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We make women feel brave for sticking it out. For keeping private all the screaming fights, the late nights, the broken cups on the floor, swept up in the morning. We make women feel like they are doing something right for persisting in the lonely drudgery of the American marriage, when the aftermath of the happily-ever-after of the heterosexual marriage is simply negotiating a relationship that is inherently unequal. A relationship made unequal not by accident, but as a function of a society that relies on that inequality to fill in the gaps that it refuses to fund — childcare, eldercare. We do not make women feel brave for making the opposite choice, for walking away from unhappiness.
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