Mothering Sunday

Now of course, Mothering Sunday, as it was, had nothing to do with human mothers, rather, with mother churches.  From the 16th century people would return to their mother church on this day, often a cathedral for the Mass for Laetare Sunday, also known as Refreshment Sunday, Sinmel Sunday, Mid-Lent Sunday or Rose Sunday.  Children started picking wild flowers along the way to their mother churches or families to give to their mothers, and it it this that started what is now the secular festival of "Mothers' Day".

Which brings us to the present day's observation.  This is ambivalent.  On the one you have the nice moment when children go forward to get flowers to give to their mothers; I've always seen daffodils used, my favourite flower.  Children do breakfast in bed for their mothers, buy them cards and maybe presents as well.  On the other side there is some concern by some Christians about the issue that such an observance is a burden for women who have had miscarriages, or have not been able to have children, or have decided (with their partners) to not have children.  Today can therefore be about reliving pain, or feeling left-out or under pressure to exclusively define being a woman by being a mother.  To add to that, despite what is largely said for today, not everyone has had positive relationships with their mothers.

A friend wrote on Facebook that today is for those who are mothers, as well as women who mother people in different ways.  I find this to be a good way of linking the joy that some have with the pain that others have.  Indeed, I've seen women who are not mothers receive flowers today.  Flowers can also be given to those who have been harmed by their mothers.

There's another issue here, seeing as we're talking about mothers, namely, the language used in liturgy.  I mean here, the use of the word "mother" to talk about God.  There are different issues going on here as well:

We have centuries of what some call an overtly "masculine" way of looking at God, with ordination being restricted for men.  Therefore, calling God Mother is a way of "redressing the balance", taking verses of Jesus comparing himself to a mother hen, and God being like a woman in labour (other examples can be seen here.)

We also have the issue that there are people who have problems with the word "father" due to their own experiences and therefore find talk of "Father God" to be off putting.

Within Orthodox theology is the concepts of the essence and energy of God.  As Vladimir Lossky says in that article: 

Wholly unknowable in His essence, God wholly reveals Himself in His energies, which yet in no way divide His nature into two parts--knowable and unknowable--but signify two different modes of the divine existence, in the essence and outside of the essence. 

Therefore what we know about God can only come from what God has revealed to us.  God has revealed himself as Father, that was the word that Jesus used to describe that one hypostasis.  Biblical mentions of God being mother take the form of similarities, not expressions of God's nature.  I can say that someone is feline without that person being a cat.  It is from this understanding that there are Christians who reject talk of God as Mother, while can be comfortable with God as being like a mother.  Our limited understanding requires one the one hand similarities in order to understand God, on the other hand, some negative theology is order to ware us off from creating our own God, so to speak.  It is not that God is like our fathers.

In fact, like Marx I believe that we all create our own conceptions of God.  It is feasible that the revelations of God were culturally conditioned and that other societies may have seen talk of God as Mother.  I don't believe that myself, preferring to go for the "what is revealed is that which should be revealed" route.  But still.

In any case, while I am quite OK with talk of God as being like a mother, I (being a standard Anglican) see that others find talk of Mother God to be very helpful and healing.  It doesn't speak to my condition (as we Quakers say), but then again, just because I don't like something in theology doesn't mean that I should not engage with it.

In any case, Robert Bly in his introduction excellent book "Iron John" wrote of how men began to reject their fathers who were following the "John Wayne" model of being a tough, hard-working, rough father, and in doing so rejected fathers outright.  I would add that women did likewise, but this had different consequences for men when they themselves become fathers.  Some became "softies" but found that "women don't like that", or that they were allowing themselves to be abused and belittled by women.  The term "patriarchy", I believe is part of this, which implicitly links fatherhood with domination.  Of course, men have huge advantages in life, sexism against women is endemic to our societies.  I prefer the term "domination" within an intersectionalist framework, namely that there is more than male domination, also white and heterosexual dominations, among others.

Therefore while I'm all for talk of God as being like a mother, I believe that "inclusive language" should also include God as being like a father, or even Father.  Perhaps then all our wounds to the deepest part of our beings will be healed.

The massacre of the Holy Innocents

I believe that most Christians know the story about the massacre of boys at the order of Herod.  You know, the story when the Magi visited Herod, asking them about the born "King of the Jews", and Herod wanting to find out about this rival, probably with dastardly intentions.  In the end the Magi didn't report back to Herod about where Jesus was, hence the massacre of all male children in Bethlehem and vicinity.

Now, I've never heard  a sermon about this, as the festival of the Holy Innocents is three days after Christmas and therefore we're not in church, or if it's a Sunday, the First Sunday After Christmas takes precidence.  Sermons I've read for this festival don't mention something that I consider to be important:

This was a crime done against boys because they were boys. 

Now, first we have to work out whether these were actually only boys, or otherwise this is like the story of the "Three Kings" who were not kings, and were maybe more than three, and could have included women.  (It'd be harder to sing "we three kings who are not kings and....")  Various bible translations gives us "children" instead of "boys" or "male children".  The word used in the Septuagint can mean "boys", "girls" or simply "children".  We can presume that boys are meant, though, seeing as Herod was worried about the birth of a king.

They died for being male.  This happens a lot.  Consider what happens when a country gets occupied in war - it's men who are considered to be possible militia and therefore arrested/killed (for example, the Srebrenica genocide).  The Nazi anti-homosexual Paragraph 175 was only for men, which saw thousands put in concentrations camps, where many of them died.  The book Equality for men points out other male problems, such as that men are more likely to kill themselves and more likely to die a violent death.  Like those young boys in and around Bethlehem, being born male will end up in violent death for many.

There's a flip-side to this.  The reason why it was boys who were killed is because it is boys who were more likely to be a threat to Herod.  For the same reason (perhaps) why Jesus was born male and is recorded as having only male disciples, those boys would have been in more of a position to be a threat to Herod and the Roman occupying forces, due to the fact that this was a society where those who had more power were men.

Now, the reasons for the mentioned modern day violent deaths of men are complex, but I would say that it one cause that the position of men as having more power in societies that paradoxically makes them more likely to be victims of violence.  Men gain from that system, but also lose because of it as we are competing with each other and with women and judge each other according to so-called "male values".

At the same time, those born female face their own crosses: More likely to be raped or more likely to face domestic violence (in the UK, 7% of women compared to 4% of men), for example.  My experience of churches of many different denominations is that if gender role/sex-related violence is mentioned, it's women who get mentioned.  It is right that they do get mentioned, of course of fucking course.  It's just that a desire to combat sexism against women (a very important issue in all confessions, not just those who don't ordain women) often goes with a defensiveness against talking about male problems (such as those mentioned in the aforementioned "Equality for men" book).  At the same time a lot of male Christians who will talk about male problems.will be those who feel threatened by feminism either because of personal negative experiences or because they hold sexist thoughts about women.

Into this volatile situation comes the Christ who identifies with both sexes.  Now, the Orthodox Kontakion for the festival gives us:

When the king was born in Bethlehem, the Magi came from the East.  Having been led by a start from on High, they brought him gifts.  But in exceeding wrath, Herod harvested the infants as sorrowing wheat; The rule of his kingdom has come to an end.

"His kingdom" is that written about by Walter Wink in his book "Engaging the powers: Discernment and resistance in a world of domination" where a system of Babylonian domination exists which includes racism, class and economic oppression and what he famously labelled the "myth of redemptive violence".  Those boys who died, as do those boys and men who die now due to that system of domination , that same system that killed Jesus, the same system that he and we his disciples fight for all males and females.  The rule of that kingdom has come to an end.  Amen.

The big introduction

This blog is about, in alphabetical order, Christianity and men's issues.

Therefore, this blog isn't for you, because:

You’re a Christian woman or man who fears that this blog is about something like the Promise Keepers, bewailing the ordination of women in the Anglican church, believing in “clear God-given roles” for men and women, being against “limp-wristed pansy modern men”; calling for a resurgence of men’s issues, by which I mean women shutting up about their lot in life, and getting hysterical about the "teaching masturbation to children in schools".

Or because you’re a men’s issues activist who isn't Christian, and you see Christians as being either too "feminised" or simply irrelevant (Rogera Irrelevant?) regarding the nitty-gritty of men’s concerns.

Or because you don’t care for either men’s issues or Christianity.

That’s more or less the entire human world.  Even my (neutered) cat looks at me with disinterest as I write this article*  No, this blog is simply about me being a man, a Christian and a men’s issues activist (of sorts).  As I shall point out in my next article, the victims of the massacre of the Holy Innocents (you know, Herod wanted to kill Jesus but was tricked by the Magi and therefore he ordered the massacre of boys) didn’t happen because they were babies per se, but because they were boys.  Boys and men have their own crosses to carry,  a cross that we to some extent create and maintain for ourselves, a cross that is ancient but one that has evolved, a cross that needs more attention, so I believe.  (Girls and women have a different cross, a cross that we males have a lot of responsibility for.)

What are my qualifications for writing this blog?  Armed with my Churches College Certificate (well, I wrote assignments on “the theology of Matthew Fox”, “Judaism in the Gospel of Matthew” and “Johannine Christology and the Paraclete”, all subjects entirely relevant to this blog you’ll agree, and yes, that I wrote these assignments in the 1990s means that I totally remember whatever it was that I wrote), having read/heard various articles/books/talks on “male spirituality” that I disagree with (finding them too simplistic, macho or stereotypical), not even attending a church where I understand/listen to most of what is said (for I live in Poland and split my attendance between a Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic church, while I am Anglican) and never having discussed these matters with anyone who shows even the slightest inclination towards being interested in my unreflected ramblings, I aim to provide for you, dear reader (in the singular, and that’s being optimistic) some kind of, well not support, consider me more the awkward guy in the pub you avoid, some kind of what I shall positively call a “modest contribution”.

It's best to ignore the German word that almost exists here  (taken from George Htakei)

Alright, that's enough of not taking myself seriously (some people born in GB have been encultured into not taking oneself seriously.  Self-mockery is therefore sometimes misunderstood as denoting a lack of confidence.  In fact I reckon I've got boss opinions that you really should read).  This blog may be of interested to people who are vaguely interested in the subject of Christianity and men's issues (I call them issues, not rights, in that the men's rights movement is tainted with the view that activists want women to be subjugated.  Certainly a men's parade here in Wrocław is organised by ultra-conservative members of the RC church).

So far I have two articles planned: One on the massacre of the Holy Innocents, and one on the circumcision of Christ, both festivals in most catholic churches.  We'll see what happens with future articles.  It'll deffo involves festivals.

*I don’t actually have a cat.  I wrote that line for comedic effect.