A War on Christianity?

"That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
2 Corinthians 12:10 (NIV)

After our class discussion on Thursday concerning a change of the name and content of the English Literature Department here at Messiah, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how Christianity is viewed in our world today.

I must first admit that I am torn at the thoughts of making the English Department at Messiah wholly centered on Christianity and Christian Literature. I worry about what this will mean for me when I graduate. What will it mean to tell a possible employer that I graduated with a degree in Christian Literary studies? Will this gravely affect how, when, and where I get a job? How will I be able to explain that I am still just as qualified as the next person to teach English Literature even though my degree has the word Christian in front of it? Will employers judge me because of the Christian label I posses?

There are so many personal and selfish worries I have over the change of name for our English Department at Messiah. However, that is just what they are: Selfish. I have come to the realization through being obsessed with these questions that I fear persecution in the name of Jesus Christ, the man I claim to give my life to and follow. What does this mean for my Christianity? If I am not willing to allow my studies to be Christ-centered because I am afraid of how the world will respond, what does this say about my faith?

Simple. I am a coward.

Christians in other parts of the world are physically tortured, sexually abused, beaten, and killed because they proclaim themselves to be Christians. This is not even close to the same level of "persecution" that might be endured if Messiah students endorse Dr. Power's proposal for the English department. So maybe we will have a difficult time finding a job at first. Is this really too much of a hardship to endure for the sake of truly owning and proclaiming our Christianity?

I know it would be easy to say that there are other ways we as Christians can make this proclamation and it should be left out of our English education. However the truth is, our Christianity should be the center of every single aspect of our lives. We go to a Christian school, a Christian school named Messiah College. Why as students, did we choose to spend $30,000 to come here. Maybe for some it was for the facilities or a specific major or the scenery. I know for myself, it was to be in an environment where my faith can permeate every single particle of my life; most importantly, my education.

Why are we as Christians so afraid to own our Christian label? We stand by and let the world assume we are all close-minded, judgmental fanatics. By not standing up and saying "I am a Christian, and I am going to break the mold of what you believe a Christian is" we endorse the secular view of Christianity which is forcing us to be silent.

As students at Messiah College, we represent the next generation of Christians in this nation. Will be choose to silently endorse a negative view of Christianity or learn what it means to own our faith and endure hardships because of it?

I know this seems like a heavy topic to come out of our class discussion of the English department, but these are the issues I believe are the heart of the issue.

Just some things to think about....

Also, I found some articles discussing what some would deem "a war on Christianity." I am not exactly sure how I feel about this topic yet but wanted to share what I found in case anybody would like to do some further reading:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-03-26-religion_x.htm
http://atheism.about.com/b/2005/02/07/war-on-christianity.htm
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/9/29/153253.shtml

Dr. Power's Proposal

This blog is going to be a short one because, as some of you know, I could go on about this topic for hours...

I came to Messiah College as a freshman carrying great expectations as to what it would be like to receive a Christian college education. It did not take long for disappointment came crashing down on me. In an effort to strive for worldly recognition and coincide with other universities' standards of political correctness, Messiah College has hidden it's light under a bushel. It has become dangerous and wrong to analyze and see the world through Christian eyes, for in doing so, it seems to some that we unjustly and unlovingly reject other people or tell them they are wrong. So, biblical analysis, interpretation, and application has become scarce at this Christian college.

It is because of this observation that I am excited about Dr. Power's proposal of the abolishment of the English Department at Messiah. Of course, like so many others, I have my reservations about this new approach, most of which center wrongly about what this new education will mean when I graduate (getting a job, living up to literary knowledge expectations, etc). However, further than this fear, I believe it is pertinent for Messiah to return to our roots which, in this case, is education that creates a vision of the world based on biblical truth and faith. I am interested to hear what others have to say about Dr. Power's proposal as I am open to other opinions which may help strengthen and sway my own. 

Double Standard?

I wanted to take this blog to expand on the comment I made in class today concerning Ngugi's article as well as connect it to the comment Danielle made relating her concerns about the same article. As I read Ngugi's proposal, I am struck by, and very appreciative of the fact that he is so balanced in his view of literature. Although Ngugi does seem to reject English literature, he does this only so that African language and literature can become the center and focal point of literary studies at the University of Nairobi. Ngugi then goes on the affirm the belief that other works of literature (including English and French pieces) can and should be studied at the University but only in relation to the Kenyan culture which stands on it's own, separate from European influence and thought. For a man who has seen many of the affects of Colonization in his country, it is incredibly impressive to me that Ngugi still maintains such a rational and intellectual views of the function of literature and a department of literature. 

My issue with Ngugi's article stems from the fact that the majority of people in the world cannot see past their own bitterness and beliefs to be as rational as Ngugi is. People are constantly moving from one extreme to another and do not automatically address a situation with a balanced, two-sided view. An example of this occurred at the beginning of class today. Dr Powers prefaced our discussion of Ngugi's article by affirming that fact that some may have felt Ngugi was completely rejecting any study of English literature or just white people in general. Although we know now that this is not the case, it was easy for even well-read, intelligent English students to jump to this irrational conclusion from reading Ngugi's article. Once these conclusions occur, the next step is putting up a defense, and usually this means taking one's belief in the complete opposite direction so as to counter that which seems wrong. 

This same pattern of behavior can and may occur when other Kenyan's read Ngugi's proposal. Although some can think rationally, not all have this ability and it would be easy from Ngugi's article to call for a rejection of all European literature. This then would lead to a group of people who are elitist and believe that one form of culture or literature is better then another. So this thinking becomes a vicious cycle. If Kenyan's take Ngugi's article the wrong way, history may repeat itself, except this time European culture and literature might be on the opposite end. I know this is only hypothetical, but it is a concern I have with Ngugi's article. 

A connection to this can then be drawn to the comment Danielle made today in class. As a reminder, she brought up the idea that if Americans ever took the stance Kenyans did concerning literature we would most likely be considered elitists and receive reprimand and hatred for it. Why is this? If Kenyans can study literature from their own cultural perspective, should not American be able to do the same? This is where a concern about repeating the past comes into play for me. It seems that ever so subtly and slowly, American culture and thought is being suppressed under the argument that our culture is suppressing others. How long will it be before even more extreme views are created and English/American literature is silenced and oppressed like African culture was in our history?

Trying to Fit in Someone Else's Shoes.

"If there is a need for a 'study of the historic continuity of a single culture,' why can't this be African? Why can't African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it?" (Ngugi, 2093). 

Reading Ngugi's On the Abolition of the English Department was an incredibly informative and enlightening experience for me. I went into the essay knowing a minor amount of information about this author, but enough to understand the point from which he was coming from. After reading the essay, I tried to take some time to imagine what it would be like for Americans to be in the situation that literature students in Africa are in today. Let's say, for instance, that instead if winning the Revolutionary War, early American lost this battle and thus became subjected to all the laws and influences of not England but solely France. Because of this, your entire life you are raised to speak completely in French. This means that when you write a paper, speak to your friends, or do anything pertaining to language, it is done in French, a language that come from a faraway country that has oppressed and hurt you and your family. Because of this French government all your father can do is farm, and half of his crops and money are taken away from him every year, leaving your family poor and hungry. However, despite this injustice, you are still told in school that you must worship and follow the words and linguistics of the French language. So there is a discrepancy between what you dislike and what you are told you must like and/or follow. Thus your own language and thoughts become slaves to another more powerful system's and you are left to wonder what life would have been like had you possessed the ability to retain your English-speaking roots from your fathers who came over from England, all the while continuing to feed into the French culture which has placed you in a position of poverty. ouch. that would not be fun at all. 

I think it is difficult for those on "our" side, the side that some claim is being attacked or rebelled against in literature, to even begin to understand the other side of the situation. For this reason I would like to encourage every student from class to take time to really contemplate what life would be like if the above situation did indeed take place. I know this contemplation does not even come close to the real thing, but it is a good starting point, for anybody who wants to understand Ngugi, to try to put themselves in a Kenyan English Student's shoes. For as these students press forward in their education, which is something needed to gain sustenance and success, they are being forced to lose their identity. As Kenyan students study, they are pushed further away from their roots. This is something Western World students could never even begin to fathom. It is not our fault that  countries like Kenya have been oppressed under Western education. However, it is our duty to make sure it does not continue to happen and that all cultures are given an equal opportunity for expression and opinion through literature in their own language. 

The Female Version of Story Telling

During our literary criticism class today, we had a small discussion about how the short story seems to be modeled after the male sexual experience. Within a short story there is the beginning (the conflict) which eventually rises up to the climax. The short story structure then slowly descends as the climax has been revealed and the story come to a close. Before class today, I had never thought about this parallel and I have to say I am intrigued by what could be a very true (or false) claim. I just recently finished reading a book called How Stella Got Her Groove Back and I am amazed with how this book, written by a female African American fiction writer, resists the normal layout of the short story. As myself and a friend read this book, we found ourselves becoming extremely agitated with the way the book plays out. It is impossible, we feel, to find a climax anywhere in the book. This because there is literally so much going on in the story that there could be six or seven different climatic points of the novel. The author's (Terry McMillan) writing style is not set in the structure of the normal story, but in fact, jumps all over the place. In my own societal ignorance, I finished the book feeling dissatisfied with not being able to identify the most important part of the book. However, after class today, I have been given a completely new perspective on why McMillan chose to do this in her writing. For a woman author writing about the life and story of a woman, it would make no sense what so ever to follow the normal and male-dominated sequence of events in storytelling. Now, looking back, I find this to be an amazing and important way of writing a novel like How Stella Got Her Groove Back. 

Here is a link to the Amazon.com page for the book How Stella Got Her Groove Back. I'd encourage you all to read some of it (an incredibly easy, funny read) if for nothing else than just to see how the normal nature of story telling is defied:

Stella

Cixous' Biases

"A world of searching, the elaboration of a knowledge, on the basis of a systematic experimentation with the bodily functions, a passionate and precise interrogation of her erotogeneity. This practice, extraordinarily rich and inventive, in particular as concerns masturbation, is prolonged or accompanied by a production of forms, a veritable aesthetic activity, each stage of rapture inscribing a resonant vision, a composition, something beautiful. Beauty will no longer be forbidden." (Cixous, 2040)

Despite our discussion in class today, I am having a difficult time believing that eros love and Cixous constant reference to female masturbation as liberating, goes beyond a sexual reference to other ways women can explore their bodies, such as in sports. From the above quote, I seem to get the sense that Cixous is equating eros to passion and sexual exploration. In the quote, Cixous equates the "interrogation of her erotogeneity" with "masturbation" and at the same time equates masturbation to the "beauty which will no longer be forbidden." In class today Prof. Powers explained that Eros is supposed to encompass all acts that happen with the female body, not just sex. However, from Cixous point of view, I have a difficult time believing this to be true. The rest of Cixous' essay, The Laugh of Medusa, refers to the creative ability of women in a solely sexual way. Not once does Cixous reference other ways in which women can be liberated (such as by their intelligence, wisdom, athletic ability, or compassion for the world). I feel that in equating a woman's freedom to her sexuality Cixous is actually adding to the warped culture that places men above women. Sexuality seems to define humans in this world and it is something that has gotten all of us into trouble. Instead of focusing so much of this one aspect, it would be so much more beneficial for Cixous and other feminists to focus on the true abilities that can liberate and define who women are and are to become. For a Poststructural feminist who is so interested in saying something "dynamic" in her writing, Cixous falls short by failing to look beyond the bias of Western art as being containing sexual connotations. 

Thoughts on Kolodny

"We must reexamine...the inherent biases and assumptions informing the critical methods which (in part) shape our aesthetic responses" Annette Kolodny

After reading Ms. Kolodny's essay, Dancing Through the Minefield, I find the quote above to be very interesting and somewhat controversial. If human beings, as both readers and critics of literature, are supposed to ignore and throw away all of the assumptions and judgements we have grown up being taught and learning, then what does this leave for us to interpret a work of literature with? I understand that Kolodny is trying to remind us all that it is important to put aside biases and read text from a neutral perspective, but quite frankly, I think this is virtually impossible. The word in the above quote which undermines Kolodny's desire is "inherent." I was incredibly confused by this statement because if something is inherent, it usually means that the person who it is an inherent thought or quality to has no concept of the idea what so ever. This then, would make it extremely difficult to pinpoint and do away with those social constructs which define the way a certain individual reads and interprets a text. I also have an incredibly difficult time with this concept because I believe, to some extent, that biases are important to the interpretation of literature. All human beings have grown up in different contexts. The way I interpret a particular poem is going to be incredibly different from the way somebody who has grown up in a completely different environment is going to interpret that same poem. And this is the beauty of discussing literature! Because we have grown up in completely different contexts and because we have different biases, we each bring new elements to the text that others can think about and learn from. Now, I understand the danger in biases as well, because some people's biases overrule them completely, only allowing them to have a closed mind when interpreting text. However, when used in a good way, with an open mind and communication, the biases and social contexts from which we look at the world can provide a great learning experience for both ourselves and other literary critics that we engage in discussion with. 

I think my real problem with Kolodny's above quote is, again, her use of the word inherent. This word just throws me off because to me, if something is inherent, it cannot be or is extremely difficult to identify within oneself--making it even more difficult to get rid of. 

On another note, I really appreciated Kolodny's view that the "individual success of some women is not enough." I think one of the main issues with bringing women into the light as great writers who should have their voices heard is that when one woman gets published or has her voice heard, she feels so has achieved success and stops there. I agree with Kolodny that there needs to be a community effort when it comes to allowing women's voices to be heard. If every woman just looks out for herself and her own voice, nothing is going to be accomplished.