This weekend I was invited by the ladies at our church to attend the Women of Faith conference here in Denver. They had extra tickets paid for, and offered one to me a few weeks ago.
I did not want to go. Being that Women of Faith is a Thomas Nelson Publisher-sponsored event, I knew that it would be, well, evangelically flavored. This is something I run from now, having become Lutheran 3 years ago. But, I also enjoy deconstructing the messages propagated from these events, and once I knew that Austin's conference was the same weekend, I had no excuse. I could critique the shit out of it and not pay a cent- plus I could use public transit, leaving me to come and go as I pleased.
The first session I could make it to after work was Friday night. First, the Pepsi Center is huge. I expected big, but not quite 10,000 conservative Christian women big. Second, there was no free swag, a definite bummer for an expensive conference like this one. I'm always uncomfortable being around so many women too, so that didn't help either.
The conference started that night with a short drama- stereotypes of women as supermom, career woman, accountant, sex kitten. The overall message was that women are multiple people at once, and that the household they left behind for the weekend lost 3 people, not one. The message was also that a man is not capable of managing a household, nor capable of being an intelligent adult.
The next two speakers shared stories about their families: children growing up and leaving for college, loss, suffering. As Saturday rolled around, I saw this was a recurring theme: families make trouble and middle age sucks ass. If I were an impressionable teenager, I would be afraid to ever get married and have a family with messages like this. Hell, I don't want to have kids anyway; this helped confirmed it yet again.
I went to this assuming there would be shitty worship (I was right about this one) and some bad preaching. Problem was, I forgot that this was evangelical women, who don't believe in female pastors (or even educated women) sharing about theology or the faith. So I walked away after hearing depressing stories and lame-ass humor for a few hours. I couldn't take any more of the host who spoke in only syrupy Christianese about each speaker- there was a reason I left 3 years ago.
And yet....
And yet, I wonder this every time I find myself in these situations, these tastes from my evangelical past.
Maybe there is something I'm missing.
Maybe my criticism is too harsh.
Maybe I just need to listen again.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
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