Old Guys Have Fertility Problems, Too

Old women can't have kids. Older mothers risk more birth defects in kids. These facts are well known. Now research is accumulating that older men are less likely to have kids at all, and older fathers are more likely to have kids with birth defects. The numbers are not as dramatic as for women, and the risks are not as great. Eggs, after all, are not made new, but keep aging from the mother's birth. New sperm are created all the time. But the organs for making sperm keep aging, and they wear down and make mistakes more often in later years.

To put some numbers to these risks, the children of younger fathers run a 3% risk of birth defects. With fathers over 45, the risk rises to about 4%. This is still not a large risk, but a huge percentage increase. Likewise, autism is rare, but there seems to be more of it than there used to be. One reason might be that older fathers are more than 5 times as likely to produce autistic children compared to younger (under 30) fathers. One of the most specific results reported comes from a large-scale Israeli study of schizophrenia, which found a risk of 1 in 141 in children of fathers under 25, 1 in 99 for fathers 30 to 35, and 1 in 47 for fathers 50 and older.

The research on the fertility of older fathers is just beginning, compared to studies of older mothers. There is not even the same level of speculative theory about why male fertility declines in number and quality. Still, I think it is already clear that both men and women – and their children – are better off if a couple can have their kids in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties.

DePauw Sorority Shows It Has Class When Its National Office Does Not

The Delta Zeta sorority at DePauw University was having some recruiting problems – the normal ups and downs of Greek life. With falling numbers, the national office was a little concerned. With the 100th anniversary of the chapter's founding coming up, the nationals wanted to more than fix the problem – they wanted to reinvigorate the chapter. So some officers from the national office came to interview every member of the DePauw chapter. They suggested that the women dress up. They wanted to see who was really committed to recruitment.

When the national officers left, the sent form letters to 23 of the 35 women living in the sorority house notifying them that they had been moved to alumna status, and should vacate the house. The women who were evicted included all the fat and non-white women. The ones they kept were white and pretty. The chapter president was one of those tossed out. According to the women who were sent off, some of the ones kept by the nationals were not very active in the life of the chapter to begin with.

To their credit, six of the 12 women who were asked to stay also resigned in solidarity with their ejected sisters. Alumni, parents, other students, and many faculty members protested. The Delta Zeta national officers who conducted the purge would not comment, while the official responses from the sorority have been mealy-mouthed.

I agree that it is time for a big shake-up at Delta Zeta – not at the DePauw chapter, but at national headquarters.

Are Episcopalians Anglicans?

The leaders of the worldwide Anglican communion just released a document chastising the Episcopal Church of the USA for ordaining a practicing gay bishop. Even the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, who supports gay ordination, signed the document, calling for a season of restraint before either side issued further provocations. She is getting grief from some American Episcopal leaders for not fighting this censure. In an even more extraordinary concession, Bishop Jefferts Schori agreed to the creation of a non-geographic diocese for traditionalist Episcopal churches, to be overseen by a commission of foreign bishops.

To rewind a couple of steps, when the Church of England was considering naming a celibate gay man as bishop, the Archbishop of Canterbury eventually asked him to withdraw his name, rather than create controversy in the Anglican communion. When non-celibate gay priest V. Gene Robinson was being considered as Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, the Archbishop of Canterbury asked him to withdraw his name, as well, for the good of the worldwide Anglican communion. The American, however, refused, on the grounds that it was inevitable that his side would win the struggle, so the conflict might as well come now.

The Archbishop of Nairobi, Peter Akinola, presides over a church that is about ten times larger than the Episcopal Church, and has more active members on any given Sunday than the mother church in England does. He has emerged as the de facto leader of the third world Anglican church – where most of the world's Anglicans are. The worldwide Anglican communion has disapproved of the American church for decades, but has put up with them because Anglicans are polite, and because the Americans provide quite a bit of money.

The limits of Anglican patience seem to have been reached, however, The showdown is upon us. The Episcopal Church must decide whether to follow the rules of the Anglican Communion, or get booted out.

Unitarians Build a Church for Dragons

In the virtual world Second Life, Unitarian-Universalists have built a real church. Some of the regular congregants are human, and some are not. Bizarre Berry, the creator of First U-U Church of Second Life, wanted to create a real congregation, not just a show building. Catherine Cleanslate, a U-U minister in the real world, sees participation in the Second Life church part of her ministry of "radical welcome."

Other religious groups are colonizing Second Life, but FUUCSL seems to be the only regular congregation so far. Second Life seems made for U-Us, as both have a strong "do your own thing" ideology.

I was trying to imagine what First Presbyterian Church of SL would be like. I don't think it would fly. The world of permanent self-invention – the world of Catherine Cleanslate and those like her – is not really suited for the understanding of the world as fallen and in need of redemption.

And, of course, theological disagreement and moral uplift would not really be in the Second Life spirit. One of big draws of SL, I gather, are the sex clubs. I expect that a crusade to clean up the virtual red light district would seem to strike at the very soul of Second Life.

Second Life jihad, anyone?

A Market Solution to the Asian Bride Shortage

In many Asian countries there is a growing shortage of women. Years of favoring boys and disposing of girls are catching up with them. In South Korea, a market has sprung up in the past few years to find foreign brides for South Korean bachelors (my thanks to regular reader D-rew for this New York Times story). At first the marriage brokers went to ethnic Korean communities in China. Now, though, the brokers are arranging quick marriages further afield. This year's favored source for brides is Vietnam. South Korea is more prosperous than Vietnam, at least temporarily, and the "Korean Wave" of pop culture has made South Korea seem a good place to live.

Until recently this marriage market was unregulated. After a series of scandals involving lies and abuse by brokers and husbands, the Korea government has begun to set some rules, and the etiquette of the market has weeded out some of the bad actors. This market evolves very quickly – Vietnam is getting richer, and may dry up as a source of brides a few years hence. What first struck me about this development is that it is a market solution to a market problem. It was the cumulative effect of many individual actions that created the women shortage in the first place, creating a market that entrepreneurial brokers can fill. To be sure, some rural governments in Korea are sponsoring marriage tours to Vietnam, but they did not make the arrangements in the first place.

I can also see a few unintended positive consequences that might come from this international marriage market. Many Asian nations have exaggerated ideas of their own "racial purity," which they make central to their national identity. South Korea is no exception to this self image. Yet in 2005, 14% of South Korean marriages involved foreigners, up from 4% just five years earlier. Over time, mixing populations that way would undermine the idea that racial purity is essential to national identity – or even that it is ever was very prevalent. A second possible silver lining of Vietnamese women living and prospering in South Korea is that their frequent communications home might spur the Vietnamese people to press for democracy to go along with their increasing capitalist prosperity.

The Asian women shortage is due to the worst kind of sexist discrimination, devaluing of girls, and even deliberate killing. I find it encouraging to think, therefore, that there might be an unexpected silver lining or two to this dark cloud.

The North Carolina YouTube Breakup

The phenomenon of the moment on YouTube is the breakup of Ryan Burke and Mindy Moorman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Burke found out Moorman was cheating, and set up a public humiliation for her. The innovation is that he advertised it ahead of time on Facebook, and hundreds of people showed up. She came to the Pit, a public square at the university, for a "surprise." An a capella group serenaded her with a somewhat odd choice of song (the Dixie Chick's "I'm Not Ready to Make Nice"). Then he dumped her. She, taken aback, responds with a torrent of condescension. The crowd eggs them on for nearly ten minutes. He walks away first.

There has been some suspicion that the whole thing was staged by both of them. It doesn't look that way to me. I think he is surprised at how much publicity there has been.

I was struck by how they attacked one another. In that sense (and only in that sense) it does not much matter whether her response was spontaneous or scripted. The particular insults they, and the audience, chose were revealing. It is very hard to hear what they are saying, but he appears to call her a slut. At one point the crowd chants "Slut! Slut! Slut!" She responds by asking him if he is gay, asserting that "I am a woman and I have needs," and suggesting that he has a small penis. The crowd then chants "Small penis! Small penis!"

His position is that if she had sexual relations with another man, she deserved whatever humiliation he could think of. He appears to have no self-knowledge or critical reflection. Her response is also entirely in sexual terms. Neither of them makes reference to any deeper aspect of their relationship – no emotional connection, no intellectual engagement, not even the material gifts they gave one another. And no love.

Ryan Burke is clearly an ass. She is no prize, either. What is most striking to me about the whole spectacle, though, is that their entire relationship seems to be sexual, and they have no qualms about parading that in public.

May the Wilberforce Be With You

The film "Amazing Grace" opens in two days. I was favored to see a preview last week. I commend the film highly. The ads suggest that the movie is about the song, but it isn't. The film is about the long struggle of William Wilberforce to end the slave trade in Britain. Friday, the day the film opens, is the 200th anniversary of the crucial vote in Parliament.

Let me say a bit about the movie first. Ioan Gruffudd does a pretty good job as Wilberforce. There is also a courtship story in the middle with a gorgeous Romala Garai as the eventual Mrs. Wilberforce. I thought the best performance came from Benedict Cumerbatch as Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, friend and close ally of Wilberforce's. Bristol Bay Productions made the film, following "Ray" and "The Chronicles of Narnia." Bristol Bay is not a Christian company, but, as we were told at the preview, it is full of Christians, and they have a mission to make decent films about moral triumph. "Amazing Grace" was one of the stories that Bristol Bay was created to make.

William Wilberforce is a hero of evangelical politics. I think he is all but unknown in this country due to his "right" religion and his "left" politics. He falls between the stools of American ideological polarization, which is a double pity – he should be a hero to both sides, and the sides shouldn't be divided into these camps, anyway. I think Wilberforce exemplifies the kind of "God's Politics" that Jim Wallis has in mind in the book of that title.

I had long wondered why it took more than twenty years for Wilberforce and the other abolitionists to succeed. What derailed the movement toward abolition for years was the French Revolution, and the subsequent war with France. Though there was no logical connection between the two, the slave powers succeeded in painting abolition as sedition, because abolitionists were critical of existing government policy in wartime.

"Amazing Grace" is not a great movie, but it is quite good. It is, though, the best movie about a great story, and a great model for religious politics today. I will be going with a colleague to opening night, taking vanloads of family and students. I urge you all to see it, too.

Natural Selection Speed Dating

This one writes itself. CNN.com had a story about a special speed dating event in New York. The rules were not clearly specified on camera, but it appears that the women had to be young and beautiful, based on a judging panel's estimate of their photographs. The men had to have a net worth of a million dollars and (or?) income of at least $200,000 per year, with a higher minimum for older men.

Yes, it really was called Natural Selection Speed Dating. Paula Zahn's summary: "Deep cleavage meets deep pockets."

The organizer said they are planning a follow-up speed dating event, Sugar Mamas and Boy Toys.

The Curriculum is the Untapped "Identity" Resource

I missed you all yesterday, as I was on a retreat with college students and colleagues. The topic was that current college favorite, "identity." We talked about our personal identities, our group identities, the identity of the stereotypical Centre student, and how these all connected. Students talked quite a bit about how their various identities shaped who ate together, who played together, who joined which social groups together.

Near the end of the retreat I as struck by the fact that almost nothing had been said about the curriculum. Yet as I reflected on my own college experience, what I learned in class actually had as deep an effect on me as any social experience I had in college. In fact, the best social experiences were based on talking about ideas that we had studied in class. In the last class I taught before the retreat, two newlywed alumni came back to talk about marriage. Again and again they came back to how things they had learned in their classes applied to their new life and work.

One of my projects over the past few years has been to write a history of the college. I was impressed with how long Centre has had a distinctive identity, and shaped students in a distinctive way. Many factors go into that identity, but the curriculum always holds its own as a shaping force.

When we think about how our teaching shapes lives, the faculty are comfortable with the idea that we are making "critical thinkers." When we start talking about our teaching making good citizens, we get more nervous. To think that the curriculum should help make students into more virtuous people is to invite resistance. Yet the alumni attest it all the time.

The curriculum does shape student identity, whether we intend it or not. I think we should intend it, and choose our curriculum accordingly.

Luke and Logan

I have been watching "Gilmore Girls" faithfully with Mrs. G. and our girls since its inception. I have enjoyed the show's wit, speed, and it must be said, fine-looking women. This season, the last, is probably the weakest. Still, we must watch, to see how they resolve the two great marriage plots of Lorelei (mother) and Rory (daughter) Gilmore.

As a sociologist I have particularly enjoyed "Gilmore Girls" because it is one of the very few ever to show rich people as more than caricatures. Lorelei's parents are Connecticut Old Money. Lorelei has both resisted this influence, and benefited from it. Her main romance has been with local working-class diner owner Luke. However, rich-boy Christopher, the boyfriend of her teen days who fathered Rory, has returned as a rival. Meanwhile young Rory, at Yale, has been torn over the years between hard-working scholarship boy Marty and reckless rich kid Logan.

At the beginning of this season, Christopher swept Lorelei off her feet, took her to Paris, and talked her into eloping. Logan, meanwhile, has been off in London learning the family business, leaving Rory in school at Yale.

I think the conventions of television require that both titular girls end up married. At this point in the series, the real contestants are on the field. SO, accepting these assumptions, there are four possible outcomes for mother's and daughter's husbands, respectively:
1) rich, rich
2) rich, poor
3) poor, rich
4) poor, poor.

The writers have it in their hands to make any of these men sympathetic enough – to make them, in other words, the right choice. The playing field was level at the start of the season.

I would have been most interested if the writers had had the nerve to take the first solution – rich, rich – which would in many ways have been the most class appropriate. Mrs. G. argued, though, that this is just not possible in American television world, and I think she is right.

At some other moment in history it might have been possible to take the fourth option – poor, poor – though it is hard for me to think when that might have been. The novel, movie, and television examples I can think of from the past usually have at least one of the heroines ending up with money.

So we are left with the middle two as the most likely. On the whole, I have been thinking the most likely outcome was 3 – poor Luke, and rich Logan. Some clues at the outset were that both men were more central to the last few seasons than their counterparts. Moreover, in the recent crisis of Lorelei's father's heart attack, the suitors got to show their true character, and Luke and Logan came through with shining colors.

I think this solution is, on the whole, the most appropriate. The rebellious independent woman finds the person who matches her entrepreneurial character and the place she has made for herself in the community. Thus, Lorelei and Luke. And the reckless rich kid is civilized by the ever-decent, and ultimately socially conforming granddaughter of her Old Money grandparents. Therefore, Rory and Logan. American individualism is honored, but in the end family and tradition win, in updated form.

We will see how the string plays out. That is my call.

Smart Men Marry Smart Women 5: The Deeper Point

Christine Whelan thinks the main point is that smart women marry at the same rate as other women, just later in life. This is an important point, and probably true or nearly true. The deeper issue than whether smart women will marry, though, is whether they can get all the education their brains can use, and launch their high-achieving careers, and still have kids at the same rate as other women.

I think smart men are coming to see that women who want lots of education and high-powered careers can also have kids – and given the right supportive husband, they will have great kids.

Whelan approaches marriage as being primarily about the man and the woman. The deep sociobiological, social, and, for most couples, personal impetus for marriage, though, is to have and raise children. There have always been highly educated and high-achieving women. Until recently, though, that path did present very high obstacles to having and raising children. The women knew it, and the men they might marry feared it. One solution has been happy childless marriages of high achieving partners. These are fine marriages, and I am not in any way disparaging them. But most men, and especially most women, do wish to have a life with children, integrated with all their other work.

Whelan notes in passing what others who have studied high-achieving mothers make central to their research (especially if the researchers are themselves high-achieving moms): you need lots of help. Nearly all mothers who successfully raise children have helpful husbands, or the functional equivalent. Many of the women Hewlett interviewed at the highest levels of their careers bluntly say that in addition to a supportive husband they needed to "hire a wife." This seems to me a reasonable solution, and being that nanny is as honorable a kind of work as the professional careers she enables.

The deeper point of why smart men marry smart women more than they used to is that both of them realize that they can still have their smart careers and have smart children.

Smart Men Marry Smart Women 4: The Baby Elephant in the Room

The critical issue for high-achieving women is not so much whether they will ever marry, as whether they will ever have children.

As I noted yesterday, Christine Whelan is arguing, in Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women with Sylvia Ann Hewlett. Hewlett reported in Creating a Life that at midlife, 1/3 to 1/2 of the highest-achieving women had no children, vs. about 1/5 of other women. Whelan disputes that there is a gap at all, citing an article by Garance Franke-Ruta in The American Prospect. Franke-Ruta contrasts a Current Population Survey analysis with Hewlett's more focused National Parenting Association survey. According to Franke-Ruta, the CPS shows that married high-achieving women are just as likely to be mothers as other married women. The reason that other women have more kids altogether is that the high achievers are less likely to have kids out of wedlock than other women are.

So what does this comparison mean? Let us take it as given that high-achieving women do marry at about the same rate as other women, and the married women among them have kids at about the same rate as other married women. That is not quite the end of the story. Hewlett also reports that a large minority of the high-achieving women who did have a child wished that they had started early enough to have more. And even Whelan takes for granted that if high-achieving women have kids, nannies and day care are a "given." Yet most mothers would like to be home with their babies, even if they want to return to full-time work later. This, I think, is why Hewlett found that 1/5 of professionally trained women were not working in their professions – most were home with their kids at that stage in life.

That last point is a crucial one: Hewlett does not say that women have to choose either high achievement or marriage and kids – as Whelan charges her with. Rather, Hewlett says that women can have it all – education, marriage, kids, career – but probably not all at once. If they plan, they can have it all eventually, but some things have to come before others. And the most imperious item on the list is having kids. The biological clock is less forgiving than the timetable for any other item on the list.

I think Whelan, who is 30 and proudly announces her engagement in the Acknowledgements, has not had to deal with the tragic sense of baby hunger that Hewlett's 50-something high achievers have. Whelan quotes with approval from Ann, an unmarried 30-year-old medical resident:

"As a doctor, I'd advise women to think about having their kids when they are younger, in their early 20s. But this just isn't practical for high-achieving women. And it's a disconnect that lies in our biological challenge of reproduction."

As Hewlett shows, the brave reliance of younger women on medical technology (and wishful thinking) to solve the problem of finding husbands and having babies after school and career are well-launched is setting many of them up for heartache.

You can have it all, but not all at once. The main issue is not whether smart women will find smart men to marry, but whether both of them will find one another in time to have smart kids.

Smart Men Marry Smart Women 3: The Main Point

"High-achieving women marry at the same rate as all other women; they just do so a bit later in life."

This is the main point of Christine Whelan's Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women. Whelan looked at the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, and the work of U. of Washington economist Elaina Rose on the decreased likelihood that educated women would marry. Rose found that 25 years ago, women with graduate degrees were 13.5% less likely to have married by 40 than the least educated (less than high school) women. By the 2000 census, Rose found, the "success penalty" had largely disappeared. The CPS shows that women with advanced degrees and/or who earned $55,000 per year or more (in the top 10% of earners nationally) are just as likely to be married as other women who work full time.

Whelan is arguing against Sylvia Ann Hewlett, whose Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children brought the scary news that the highest achieving women were less likely to marry and have children. Hewlett showed a strong success penalty; Whelan says it has disappeared. How can we judge between the two?

First, they can both be right on the main point: there used to be a success penalty, but it has diminished. Hewlett, reporting mid-90s data, showed that the highest-educated and highest-paid women were only 60% married at 40, vs. 67% of all women. This is a gap, but not a huge one. It is plausible that a decade later, most of this gap has closed.

Second, Whelan compares high-achieving women with other women who work full time. Most women, especially highly educated ones, do work full time, so this is not a bad comparison. It is, though, not the same as comparing all women. Hewlett found that a fifth of highly educated women were not working full time. A real apples-to-apples comparison would have to include all women.

Third, and most importantly, the main point of Hewlett's book was that the highest achieving women miss having children, not marriage. Most of the high-achieving women that she talked to, especially the ultra-high achievers (earning more than $100,000 per year) had no children or fewer than they wanted to. Few of them had planned to end up that way; childlessness was a "creeping non-choice," the unintended outcome of a high career focus through their main childbearing years.

High-achieving women are marrying at higher rates. Whether they are having as many kids as they want to is another matter. And the subject for tomorrow's post.

Smart Men Marry Smart Women 2: SWANS Won't Fly

Christine Whelan begins Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women with a cute story. She describes Beth, who took out an ad in 1970 looking for a man who wasn't afraid of a "Ph.D. in a miniskirt." She found her man. She then wrote a couple of bestsellers: A Baby … Maybe? about educated women choosing to have children, or not, and Boy or Girl? about sex selection. Then Beth and her husband had a child. The birth announcement reproduced the two book covers, with "Yes" in answer the first title, and "Girl" circled in the second.

Christine Whelan is that child.

Whelan's best shot at pop sociological immortality of her own is the acronym SWANS – Strong Women Achievers, No Spouse. She even holds the trademark on the acronym and phrase; the title page notes that they appear in this book under license.

There are several interesting findings and ideas in this book, but I don't think SWANS will be one of them. For one thing, it is too cutesy. She has to torque the phrase too much to fit the acronym she wanted to get to. For another, the point of her book is to offer hope to SWANS that they don't have to stay that way. Those promised Smart Men will come along and turn them into SWAWS, which just doesn't have the same sizzle.

SMMSW doesn't sing, either.

How about Smart Women And Men, Paired?

And then the next stage, Smart Women And Men, Parents? But that will be the subject of a later post.

Smart Men Marry Smart Women 1

For years I have been telling students that smart men marry smart women. I mean that in a double sense. On the one hand, men who are smart and well educated tend to marry women who are smart and well educated. On the other, if a man is smart, he will look past physical appearance, which fades, to brains – because brains endure. Men who figure this out early get first pick of the smartest women.

In fact, today is the day in the sociology of family life class when we first talk about this idea. It will not be the last time.

Christine Whelan has just published Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women. As you can see, this was "must reading" for me, even if we are in the middle of the term. Whelan presents some interesting new research showing a change in the marriage patterns of the most educated women, a change for the better. I will be blogging on this book, and this idea, all week.

Today I just want to share one finding from a Harris Interactive poll that Whelan commissioned for the book. In answer to the question, do you want (or have) a spouse who is less capable of earning a good income than you, as capable of earning a good income as you, or more capable of earning a good income than you?

About 61% of the women say "as capable of earning a good income as me";

Among the men, there is a bell curve, with a quarter saying "more," a quarter saying "less," and half in the middle.

Here is the most interesting finding, though: among single men, 73% say they want a wife as capable of earning a good income as they are. Only 3% say she should be less capable. This bodes well for high-achieving women.

The Presbyterian Schism Begins in Earnest

This week the New Wineskins Association of Churches met at First Presbyterian Church in Orlando to discuss leaving the Presbyterian Church (USA) and joining the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Officially, they were lamenting how unfaithful the PC (USA) is, and the EPC was there to "stand with" the New Wineskins dissidents. But the main agenda was clear. In fact, it is clear that New Wineskins, which began as a conservative ginger group, has turned into the main vehicle of the schism. The leaders of New Wineskins and the EPC have been talking about a merger since at least the 2006 General Assembly, which adopted the Peace, Unity, and Purity report.

151 congregations have signed on to the New Wineskins essential tenets. 130 of them sent representatives to the Orlando meeting. The EPC has 182 congregations with 75, 000 members. This compares to the 11,000 congregations and over 2 million members of the PC (USA). The EPC appeals to dissidents in the mainline denomination more than the larger Presbyterian Church of America does because the EPC will (in theory) ordain women, while the PCA will not.

New Wineskins has sensibly not insisted that its member churches leave the Presbyterian Church (USA), nor that they join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Instead, co-moderator Dean Weaver proposed two "faithful options": leave the denomination for a better one, or stay in place as a dissident congregation (which is what they are doing now).

The EPC, for its part, has made a sensible proposal as well. They invite any New Wineskins congregations, as well as other dissident congregations not part of New Wineskins, to form a non-geographical New Wineskins Presbytery for a five-year transitional period.

I don't think all the New Wineskins churches will leave the PC (USA), nor even all the congregations that sent representatives to the Orlando meeting. Still, if even half of them join the EPC, they will make the latter denomination half again larger. And the New Wineskins leaders will go from marginalized dissidents in the old church, to instantly prominent leaders of the new.

I am distressed that the New Wineskins folks are trying to leave already. They feared that bad things might happen as a result of the PUP report. I, too, am waiting to see if the "local application" of the church's essential tenets really will degenerate into "local option," as some conservatives fear – but it hasn't happened yet. I remain hopeful that by returning to the traditional Presbyterian standards of the Adopting Act of 1729 we will, instead, turn back some of the politically correct excesses that beset the church from the other side. In any case, though, I think we should all work for a good outcome, and wait to see what it really is.

It is probably inevitable that some of the New Wineskins churches will leave. I think that if the overwhelming majority of a congregation want to go, the Presbyterian Church (USA) should let them, and wish them godspeed. The congregation should buy their building for a reasonable amount. The PC(USA) will most likely be losing a good location, and should suck it up. If the big church is reasonable with dissidents, there will be fewer of them. I don't want them to go, but I don't want the denomination to be a dog in the manger, either.

My Nominee for Best Super Bowl Ad: Chevrolet "Ain't We Got Love"

I have been surprised in the post-mortem on the Super Bowl commercials that my favorite has been so little mentioned: the Chevrolet "Ain't We Got Love" ad. This one is a compendium of forty years of pop songs mentioning Chevrolets. Some of the songs are performed by the original singers, some by regular people (ok, actors playing regular people).

Advertising is designed not just to sell a product once, but again and again. The other ads are trying to insinuate their product into the popular consciousness. This one proves it.

Raspberry Worries that Black Marriage Past the Tipping Point

Longtime Washington Post columnist William Raspberry was at Centre College last night. In his public lecture he talked about the efforts he has made to promote strong homes to help children learn. He has started a program called Baby Steps in his home town of Okalona, MS, and he promotes the idea elsewhere. He did not elaborate in his talk on what he means by strong homes, so I asked him afterwards. In particular, I wondered what he thought about the extraordinarily low African-American marriage rate today.

Raspberry shared my concern that there is a crisis today in black marriages. In fact, he went further than I would. Raspberry fears that there are not enough African Americans in the younger generation who have made strong marriages like his. He says it appears that black America may have gone past the point of no return on establishing a strong marriage culture.

The two main points that he main in his public lecture were (1) we all partly agree with the positions we oppose, and (2) people who disagree with us are not necessarily knaves or fools. With that wisdom in mind, it would be proper humility, I suppose, to think that perhaps the black marriage pattern is not all that bad. Maybe, contrary to what I think, the low black marriage rate is not as bad for African Americans as a similar rate would be for other ethnic groups. And maybe, contrary to William Raspberry's fears, young African Americans have not gone past the tipping point, but will create a revival of marriage.

I wish that prominent African Americans who have made strong marriages would go on the stump to promote such a revival. I have applauded Bill Cosby for doing so in the past, for which he has taken much heat.

I think it would help if Bill Raspberry himself took a leading role in the movement.

Darwin Says " Marry, Marry, Marry Q.E.D."

When Darwin was 29 he had returned from his voyage on the Beagle. He wanted to get on with the ambitious career of natural science that he had set for himself. But first, he must answer a much bigger question than the origin of species: should he marry? Being of an analytic turn of mind, Darwin drew up a pro and con list. (I have highlighted a few choice considerations):

Marry

Children (if it Please God)
Constant companion (and friend in old age) who will feel interested in one
Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow
Home, & someone to take care of house
Charms of music and female chit-chat
These things good for one’s health—but terrible loss of time
My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, and nothing after all—No, no, won’t do
Imagine living all one’s day solitary in smoky dirty London House
Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music perhaps
Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Great Marlboro Street, London

Not Marry

Freedom to go where one liked
Choice of Society and little of it
Conversation of clever men at clubs
Not forced to visit relatives and bend in every trifle
Expense and anxiety of children
Perhaps quarrelling
Loss of Time
Cannot read in the evenings
Fatness and idleness
Anxiety and responsibility
Less money for books etc.
If many children forced to gain one’s bread (But then it is very bad for one’s health to work too much)
Perhaps my wife won’t like London; then the sentence is banishment and degradation into indolent, idle fool

Marry, Marry, Marry Q.E.D.

Darwin promptly married his cousin, Emma Wedgewood, and they had a long fruitful, and notably happy marriage.

This whole story is charming. "Better than a dog anyhow" may enter the family lexicon.

I was struck by two particular lines. The great London clubs, the successors to the coffee houses that I have written about often, were truly attractive for the conversation of clever men. They were not quite third places, because of their exclusive membership, but they did offer varied conversation of a large enough group of informed men. The downside for me, and other "clever men" today, is that the clubs did not include the conversation of clever women.

In contrast to the clubs, Darwin draws a picture of the ideal type of the home scene of a knowledge class man of the Victorian era: " a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music perhaps." We know that the Darwins did have much intelligent conversation at home, and that Charles Darwin respected Emma Darwin's opinion. He loved playing with his children, too. Darwin is a model for an engaged husband and father who sustained his prodigious schedule of work and thought.

Marry, Marry, Marry; Converse, Converse, Converse; Work, Work, Work. Q.E.D.

The College and the Coffee Shop

The New York Times has a story dear to my heart: "Rural Colleges Seek New Edge and Urbanize." They tell of rural colleges and universities adding urban amenities, including denser adjacent housing. Their aim is not just to serve students, but to turn the college town into "a small city in the country that is not reserved for only the young." Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, a partner in Centre's consortium, is featured. When I visited Hendrix I found the coffee house on the edge of campus. It is a fine one, but at that time it was the only thing like it anywhere near campus.

Danville, Kentucky, where I live, is a wonderful Norman Rockwellesque small town with a fine little college in it. It does not think of itself, though, as a college town. Town/gown relations have long been friendly and respectful, but not, I would say, intimate. The college had its life and amenities, and the town had a different set. Lately, though, the two have been moving together, in just the way envisioned in this article. The college moved its bookstore into an empty downtown department store. The college worked together with a local entrepreneur to build a new coffee house attached to the bookstore. This coffee house, the Hub, is named for the old department store. I spend hours in the Hub each day. I hold office hours there, and talk to students, colleagues, and friends and neighbors from town.

When my wife sent me this article, she entitled her message "Read it. Read it now." The dessert, she promised, is at the end. And indeed it was. The article ends with John Fry, president of Franklin & Marshall in lovely Lancaster, PA, describing the serendipitous ideal of liberal arts college life in the new kind of college town: “You’re in the coffee shop on a Saturday morning sipping a cup of coffee and you run into a professor, and two hours later you’ve had one of those transformative moments.”

Amen.

Republican Third Place?

In teaching a course about coffee houses, we went to lots of independent coffee houses, and a few chains. The independents were overwhelmingly – no, uniformly – left of center in their feel. The corporate ones were more politically neutral, but even Starbucks feels more Democratic than Republican. I have taken to asking people if they have ever been to a Republican coffee house. So far, no examples. It seems possible that there are some evangelical Christian coffee house ministries that might serve GOP lattes, but I haven't met one yet.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine what, exactly, a Republican "third place" would be like. I know about some redneck bars that have a right-wing stance, but I don't think they are really for party regulars and primary voters. And I suppose the average country club restaurant is more R than D. Still, it is hard to think of the kind of place where Republicans would normally go to hang out and talk about the world with strangers who gradually become acquaintances.

Any ideas?

Gay Fathers Should Breastfeed

Men can breastfeed. Manual stimulation, especially with a breast pump, can stimulate lactation. Men's milk is pretty much as good as women's milk. Breastfeeding builds a bond between mother and child – I think it should have a similar effect for father and child, in the absence of a mother.

Anyone see a downside?

Why Is Super Bowl Sunday a High Holy Day in the Civil Religion?

When I made my civil religion calendar last year the holiday of Super Bowl Commercial Sunday came before Rodent Shadow Day. Such have been the rapid advances in our civilization that in only one year the movable feast of the Super Bowl has gone beyond the day of the ground hog, and is heading toward Forced Romance Day.

Someday, perhaps, it can make it all the way to Fireworks Day on July fourth, a holiday clearly in need of revitalization.

But what is the Super Bowl for? The game is usually not interesting, the commercials have been pawed over before they are even shown, the half-time show is bloated beyond parody. The most memorable moment in recent Super Bowls concerned a “wardrobe malfunction.”

We make a big deal of the Super Bowl because we need what the great sociologist Emile Durkheim called a “collective effervescence.” Every social group, large and small, periodically needs a shared emotional experience to renew our bond with one another. The larger and more spread out the group, the more it needs a collective effervescence. 9/11 clearly was a genuine collective effervescence for the United States.

The Super Bowl is an attempt to manufacture an annual collective effervescence. It is successful in that in creates a common topic of conversation among, say, half the nation. And it does provide an excuse in the new year to get together with friends and do something social for the purpose of doing something social. In Kentucky we spend a week celebrating a two-minute horse race for the same purpose.

Despite being mostly scripted, though, the Super Bowl can work as a collective effervescence for two reasons peculiar to itself. First, there is an actual unscripted football game buried underneath, which carries the possibility of being interesting. And, because it is just a football game, people can get themselves worked up into ritual emotions, without actually caring about the outcome. Indeed, I think the point of spectator sports is to create a bond that is purely social because it is not, in the end, about anything that really matters. And the bond of sports watchers is not only among fans of the same team, but even with fans of opposing teams. The ritual of opposition creates a bond when the thing we are “fighting” about doesn’t really matter.

The Super Bowl, despite being mostly ridiculous, earns its place in our civil religion calendar.

HP Squared

The final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will be released this summer. Pre-orders are already setting records. No suprise there. The Gruntleds will order their copy and line up for the midnight release. Last time we started reading it on the way home, started again the next morning and read aloud all day, and finished it the next day. The kids then took turns re-reading it.

Here is the unexpected humor: Amazon.com is offering a pre-ordered copy, paired with another book, as they often do. And what are they pairing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with? A second copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!

Murray 3: Educate the Gifted to be Good … and Married

In the final installment of Charles Murray's Wall Street Journal series, Murray argues for special education for the gifted to be good guardians of society. It is not enough that the cognitive elite be smart or technically educated. "It is not enough that gifted children learn to be nice," Murray writes: "They must know what it means to be good." Murray wants the gifted to get a double dose of history and philosophy, aimed at teaching them critical judgment. In an era critical of making judgments at all, this is a controversial thing to say.

I agree with Murray on this point entirely. Indeed, in a small way, this is the main point of my job.

Murray does not attend to another critical part of the education that I would have our cognitive elite receive: an education in the importance of making good marriages and working hard at raising their children. When students are educated about marriage at all, if we say anything good about marriage, it is about how they can benefit individually. Married people, we point out, are happier, healthier, and richer. This is all true. I teach these points myself.

The larger point that we should teach the cognitive elite is that it is hugely valuable to society if they marry well and raise children well. [No, I am not saying that each individual, in any class, must marry or must have children. I am talking about the social effect of the whole class.] The cognitive elite are part of the ruling class, and that class's actions have a disproportionate influence on what other people do. A married elite is more likely to be socially minded and careful. Smart people are more likely to marry other smart people than ever before, and their kids, if they have any, are quite likely to be smart, too.

The biggest reason to put marriage education in gifted education is that gifted women today are less likely than other women to have children. Women who can handle lots of education and demanding careers are the most likely to let that education and career-making consume their entire childbearing years. Our society has benefited in thousands of ways from opening all realms of school and work to smart women. One unexpected lead lining of this golden cloud, though, is that smart women are less likely to have children now than they were in past generations. And that is a great loss, to them and to society as a whole.

Murray 2: Vocational Education … AND Liberal Arts

The second of Charles Murray's recent Wall Street Journal series was entitled "What's Wrong With Vocational School? Too many Americans are going to college." This combines a feature of Murray's argument that I agree with the most, with one that I think is completely wrongheaded.

One of the most admirable parts of Charles Murray's argument about IQ, in The Bell Curve and in this series, is that all kinds of occupations are noble, and are good things for smart people to do. The main thrust of the Bell Curve was not really about the bottom of the IQ distribution, though that got the publicity (along with a minor part of the argument concerning race). His main point, though, was that our educational system had become very efficient in sorting nearly all high-IQ students toward a handful of occupations. A "cognitive elite" is being created that is getting narrower and more exclusive. Some high-paying professions, such as law and investing, are drawing a bigger share of smart people than their social utility deserves, impoverishing other fields; Murray favors engineering. America was worse off, he argues, in the days when smart people were held back from advanced education by sheer poverty and discrimination. But the silver lining of that dark cloud was that smart people were spread over more occupations.

Therefore, I agree with Charles Murray that vocational education is honorable. Vo-tech training is good schooling for a job. I would rather deal with people trained for their work than have them make it up – or even to have them try to guess how their liberal arts education can be applied to a technical problem. And for students who don't want, aren't ready for, or aren't up to a demanding liberal arts college curriculum, vocational education is an honorable and sensible alternative. It benefits them and society.

I teach at a demanding liberal arts college. We do not offer vocational education. Many students, probably most of them, think that the justification for college is to get a better job. This is wrong, and I tell them so early and often. They pick majors on the basis of jobs they hope it will connect to. Doubly wrong. At a liberal arts college, everyone "majors" in the liberal arts. The curriculum is not about this job skill or another. The point of a liberal arts education is to grow wiser and of better character. In some students, this aim is not realized, at least not at the time. But it works often enough, and shapes students over their whole lifetime, in a way that vocational education can't.

I agree with Charles Murray that work, and vocational training are honorable. But I also think that everyone could benefit from a broad education that helps them become wiser and of better character. Moreover, society needs a broad, wiser, and virtuous ruling class. Liberal arts education and vocational education are both needed in society and even in each person.

Murray 1: All Children Can Learn, Though Half are Below Average

Charles Murray continues the argument he and Richard Herrnstein advanced in The Bell Curve in an interesting three-part series in the Wall Street Journal last week. I will take up each of his three points in the next three posts.

Murray makes the point that half of all children are below average in IQ. This is true by definition. Yet laws such as the federal No Child Left Behind Act, or the Kentucky Education Reform Act, believe that all children can learn, and many at high levels. These two points do not logically conflict with one another. However, I think Murray is right that in practice Americans take comfort in the idea that just about all children can achieve at the same high level if we just try harder and/or pay more money for schools. This is not so.

Murray's argument rests on a bell curve distribution of "g," the general intelligence thought to underlie IQ. If our school curriculum is good enough to challenge the smartest students, then its hardest courses will be too hard for the weakest students. However, school achievement is not a simple reflection of underlying intelligence. Some students achieve below their ability. They might not be motivated to work hard. Or they might have so many obstacles in their environment, especially at home, that they can't concentrate on school as they ought. Still, if we got up to optimal conditions, there would be a limit to how much the kids at the bottom of the intelligence distribution could learn.

The gap between where we are now and where we should be comes from those environmental conditions. In my opinion, family dysfunction causes most of the educational problems that can be improved. Yes, there is much that can be done to make education better, especially in the worst urban schools. But the main reason that bad schools are bad is because the school has to spend so much energy on just getting the kids there regularly and getting them to do their work. And most of those problems, I believe, come from family dysfunctions.

Murray is right: half of all children will always be below average in school. And if we improve family functioning so that more kids can reach their intellectual potential, the bell curve will become more obvious.

All of which means, though, that we should improve family functioning. Because all children can learn, and many at high levels.

Chinese Divorce Crisis Over! (Sort of)

Last year the Chinese government reported an alarming spike in the divorce rate. The official divorce rate was reported as 2.76 per 1,000. This is still well below Western rates (the U.S. is about 4 per 1,000) but much higher than the Chinese divorce rate was just a few years ago.

The Chinese government has now admitted that they goofed, according to the official China Daily. They counted the number of divorced people, rather than the number of divorces.

The new official 2005 divorce rate for China is 1.3 per 1,000.

Temporary Marriage is Rational, But Wrong

Shi'ia Islam allows men to take temporary wives in addition to their permanent wives. Sunni Islam does not. The practice is old, based on the Shi'ite reading of Muhammad's own attempts to provide for widows. In a "mutaa," the religious term for temporary marriage, the man pays the woman up front, then pays her expenses for the duration of the marriage. The term can be as short as a night, or as long as he wants. He can end it whenever he wants to; she cannot end the marriage before the agreed-upon term without his permission.

Mutaa are "pleasure marriages" because they are not supposed to provide children. If the woman gets pregnant anyway, the man is supposed to support the child, but the religious courts in most places don't have the authority to enforce child support expectations.

Saddam Hussein had banned mutaa. Not only was he a Sunni Muslim, he was originally a secular nationalist. In Iraq today the Shi'ite majority is in power, and their distinctive practices, including temporary marriage, are back.

Temporary marriage was designed to protect widows in a society in which men would scorn widows (and divorced women) for virgins. Iraq today is producing many widows every day. The revival of mutaa is a rational solution to a serious problem. However, temporary marriage is so prone to abuse that it is not worth the cost to society. Temporary marriage takes advantage of women in trouble on terms that please men. As the Sunni critics say, temporary "marriage" is really a way of giving religious sanction to prostitution.

We probably can't stop the revival of temporary marriage in Shi'ite-dominated Iraq. That is their call, and not ours. But we can stay clear about why it is a long-term danger, even if it seems a rational solution to current problems.

Is the Montreat Presbyterian Church Leaving for Big Reasons, or Small?

Montreat Presbyterian Church voted 311 – 27 to ask to be dismissed from the Presbyterian Church (USA) to the more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The conservative congregation had been upset with the denomination for some time for what it regarded as the denomination's drift away from the Bible and toward pluralism. Moderator Joan Gray met with them before the vote to attempt to answer their questions.

So far, this story has only been reported in The Presbyterian Layman, which reads the congregation's actions wholly in light of national Presbyterian issues. The congregation itself has not issued an announcement, and other news sources – the Presbyterian News Service, the Presbyterian Outlook, the secular press – have not covered the story yet. Others who have discussed the issue with me see this departure as part of a slow national schism driven by the General Assembly's adoption of the Peace, Unity, and Purity task force report.

I wonder, though, how much this particular congregation was moved by a local issue not mentioned in the Layman account: the decision to close the Presbyterian Historical Society office at Montreat. This has been a passionate grievance for many Southern Presbyterians. Surely the anger over the PHS closing has touched more people personally at Montreat Presbyterian Church than anywhere.

Until there is wider coverage of this vote, I can only speculate. But I urge those who see each congregation's departure as a symptom of a national schism to consider how much local issues also drive these votes.

The Scabies Spiritual

My #2 daughter, the wonderful Endub, has written a spiritual.
I thank her for sharing it with us.

The Scabies Spiritual

I'm so oppressed, and it itches really bad.
I'm not quite sure what I did to make God mad
But if I'm in the same boat as old Jobab
I guess I'll wait for Him right here
With my pottery and my scabs

CHORUS
Scabies, scabies
How I wish I'd been a stillborn baby
Maybe then I would not suffer as I do
Scabies, scabies
It shall surely drive me crazy
Let my skin fall off, Oh Lord,
And let the Sarcoptes scabiei leave me be

Job's only friends sat beside as he cried
He whined at them about how much he wished he'd die
But I have no one to refute me by my side
'cause my friends think I'm contagious
And both my goldfish died

CHORUS

I want to give God a piece of my mind
Ask him why he's treating me unkind
This really bites
I'm covered in mites
And I'd better get my camels when this is through
And yes, God, I'm talking to you.

Military Divorces Up Due to Deployment

One further casualty of the Iraq war: according to the Army, from 2003 when the war began to the following year, more than 3,000 soldiers got divorced, a 78% increase in one year.

War has always been hard on marriages. As the military has gotten more married, the armed forces have of necessity become more involved in supporting marriages in order to retain volunteer soldiers. This makes the war's toll on military marriages a more significant problem for the armed forces. No one, to my knowledge, has calculated the effect of divorce on re-enlistment, but it surely can't be good.

The military's family support apparatus gets bigger, and more necessary, year by year. The Iraq war is the biggest test that the military family system has faced in the all-volunteer era. The fall-out will continue for years to come.

Married with Children … and a Rifle

Yesterday I noted that the All-Volunteer Force has obliged our armed services to be much more family friendly. Betty Alt gives us two statistics that show the sea-change in the family structure of the military.

At the end of the Second World War, 1/3 of the members of the armed forces were married. This is a large increase over pre-war numbers. These 1945 numbers include those iconic rushed marriages of G.I.s about the shipped off – which led to a huge divorce spike in 1947.

Today, 2/3 of the members of the armed forces are married. Moreover, 60% have dependents, though not all the dependents depend on married soldiers.

In the past, the military prohibited, discouraged, or scared off family men. Now, the military way of life is attractive to men, and women, with families.

The Volunteer Military is a Pro-Family Military

I have been reading Betty Alt's Following the Flag: Marriage and the Modern Military this week. She makes a point that I could have figured out, but never thought of: the volunteer military has to support families, or the soldiers and sailors and airmen will leave.

There have always been wives, even children, following soldiers from post to post. They were, at best, tolerated, but never welcomed, especially for enlisted men. What changed the military's attitude toward families was the advent of the All Volunteer Force in 1973. For most of the history of the American military, the force was very small. Only officers would marry, and then only with permission. There weren't that many families to accommodate, and, except for a few lifers, they needn't be accommodated for long. Even in major wars – the Civil War, WWI and WWII – many men were drafted, but whatever accommodations were made to families, and especially by families, were temporary. The massive build-up was followed by a massive demobilization.

When we ended the draft after the Vietnam War, though, we had a superpower's need for a large, permanent armed force all around the world. The military had to make a fundamental change in the way it viewed families. In order to recruit and keep good volunteers, their families needed to be more than tolerated. Permanent base housing was built, a school system was created, medical benefits for families were increased. In time, with more female soldiers (now about 13% of the armed services), these benefits were extended to that new species, the military husband. Childcare services were created for working moms who were married to soldiers, or were soldiers themselves.

The military has been clumsy in adapting to families. And it is in the nature of war that families are separated, and mothers and fathers get wounded or killed. I, for one, think that mothers of small children should not be soldiers, though I would stop just short of making this a law. Still, the armed services have done a remarkable job in only one generation in changing their long custom and adapting to military families. There is more that could be done, of course, but in this area, as in many others, the military actually leads the way in practically accommodating new social formations.

49 Up

The latest installment in the "7 Up" series has come out on DVD. "7 Up" was meant as a one-off when Granada Television profiled a group of 7 year olds in Britain in 1964. The kids were drawn from different classes, and the first show was fairly heavy handed in its socialist critique of the British class structure.

Then they did a follow up at 14. And another at 21. The class critique began to fall away, while the stories of the people came to the fore. By 28 most had married and started to have kids. 35 had a strong theme of parents dying, and the next generation stepping up to full responsibility. Some were divorcing, too. The subjects themselves began to be so famous for being in this series that their resentment of the disruption of their lives starts to come into the documentary as a theme.

"42 Up" seemed to me a turning point. Up to this point, the story was mainly about fulfilling youthful promise – including the opportunities and limits that their initial class position created. Their stories at 42, though, were more about realization. A few still had major turning points coming. The happiest part of that episode was that the nicest guy befriended the most troubled guy, and helped him get on his feet. The nicest guy also got married just before the 42-year-old revisit by the camera crew.

At 49, quite a few are grandparents, especially those who started in the working class. Michael Apted, the director, asks most of them about the effect of class on their lives. He agrees with the general consensus that they have transcended class, or at least the old class structure. The former East Enders had moved out, succeeded by Asian and Caribbean families who changed all the landmarks of the old working-class citadel.

The theme that I noticed this time was that those who stayed married were notably better off than the others, especially financially. Several of them, notably Tony, clearly teetered on the brink of divorce in earlier episodes. Some had divorced, and went on to make second marriages or partnerships that were pretty good. But the losses to divorce run through the whole story. At 49, a good moment for stock-taking, marriage mattered as much as class in how their lives were turning out.

I think the "7 Up" series is the greatest sociological documentary ever made. In Roger Ebert's interview with Michael Apted on the DVD, Apted, who will be about 70 when the time for "56 Up" comes around, worries that he will die long before all the participants do, or before they all refuse to participate any more. I am a few years younger than the subjects of these films, so I have always found them personally helpful as a glimpse into my own future. I hope, with Apted, that someone will carry the project out to its conclusion – to "98 Up."

Most Women Not Living With Husbands – Congratulations, Healthy Widows!

A new Census Bureau study shows that slightly under half of women are now living with husbands. Some see this as further as proof that women don't need marriage, that it is a minority lifestyle and will fade in the future.

Phooey.

Three fourths of women marry. More than half are still married. The 9 percent who are widows can't be read as "anti-marriage." Most of the 11% who are divorced remain pro-marriage – just not to their exes. And many of the unmarried quarter are younger women who hope to marry.

Moreover, most men are married, and continue to benefit from it.

Many women delay marriage, but still cohabit and have children. This is especially true of children of divorce, who want a good marriage so badly that they will mark time cohabiting until they are sure.

I think that when the word starts to get out that cohabiting prevents good marriages more than it helps secure them, the marriage rate will go back up. And I believe the divorce rate can continue to go down, especially as panicy young marrieds absorb the wisdom that they can ride out the rough spots, just as all previous generations have.

This study is the low moment of the curve, not the wave of the future.

ADDENDUM: Michael Medved reports that the New York Times story is even more flawed than I thought. They included all girls 15 - 19 in the total. This hugely inflates the number of females who are living without husbands, but does not, as they claim, mean that most women are living without husbands. My 17- and 18-year-old daughters are living without husbands, and a very good thing, too. I want them to marry someday, but not any time soon. Shame on the Times for such distorted -- if not deliberately devious - reporting.

Baptists Fire a Teacher for Being a Woman

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas gave Sheri Klouda a Ph.D., hired her to teach Hebrew, and then fired her for being a woman.

The seminary based its decision on its reading of I Timothy 2:12, "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence" (King James version). They normally forbid women to teach men in theology or biblical languages, though women may teach men in other subjects.

I think Southwestern Seminary has a perfect right to tailor their hiring rules to their reading of Scripture. My objection is not on feminist or equal protection grounds, or anything like that. They are a free school in a free country, and can follow their conscience in reading Scripture.

I think they have made an incorrect decision, on two grounds. First, on a narrow reading of the verse in question, I can see how they might justify excluding a woman from teaching theology. But Hebrew? If they let women teach music, I think they should let them teach languages. Both can be used for teaching theology, but so can they be used for many other purposes. I don't see why biblical languages are included in the ban.

Second, I think they err in reading this verse as applying to professors. I believe this verse and its neighbors are meant to apply in the home, so I don't even think it rules out women ministers. But even if you think I Timothy rules out women as pastors, as Southern Baptists normally do, I don't think that prohibition carries over to professors. Teaching is not simply proclaiming the word or proselytizing the faith. Southwestern is open to many kinds of Christians, and teaches Hebrew and theology and many other subjects to men and women who want to understand the Bible and the Christian faith for all kinds of reasons.

I think Southwestern Seminary has erred in firing Sheri Klouda, and erred in a way that will bring as much strife within the church as it will draw outside criticism.

Tagged

I was tagged by fellow blogger Dennis Hancock to come up with five odd facts about me.

1. In college, I knew the combination to the college's safe.

2. I once performed P.D.Q. Bach music at Lincoln Center in New York. We even made a record, the Liebeslieder Polkas, of the same renowned fictitious composer's work.

3. Despite teaching a coffee class, I only have one cup a day.

4. I am the richest man in the world (3 kids @ GNP of North America = oodles)

5. I drive barefoot.

Coffee House Debate is a Minority Calling

This morning our seminar on Cafés and Public Life met in our local coffee house to talk about whether public life needs coffee houses (or something like them), and whether most people need public life of the kinds that coffee house debate provides.

Our conclusions: Yes to the first, No to the second.

Habermas argues that society needs a robust public sphere in which the public critically debates the issues of the day. This creates public opinion, the necessary counterweight to the state and the corporations. Otherwise, public opinion is corrupted into propaganda and advertising.

Not everyone, though, wants to think critically about the Big Picture, about the structure of society and the relations of power. As several students said (possibly autobiographically) it is easier and more comfortable to live in a bubble, not worrying about the structures that shape ordinary life.

Those who promote a robust public life often imply that democracy itself is imperiled if the masses don't participate in public debate. As I read the history of attempts to achieve sustained mass participatory democracy, though, this is a utopian quest, and an overstated fear.

For the good of society, it is a good thing that a strategic minority critically debate the issues of the day. They stand over against the interests of powerful institutions – and often support them, albeit knowingly and critically.

For the good of people who want coffee house debate, it is a good thing that there are coffee houses and other third places.

I think, though, that coffee house debate and leadership in public opinion will always be a minority taste and a minority calling.

Coffee Houses vs. Salons

The English coffee house of the 17th and 18th century had its counterpart in the cafés of the continental nations. Jürgen Habermas, though, makes the case that, as far as creating a public sphere for critical debate goes, the real counterpart of the coffee house was the French salon.

The coffee house was public, admitting all kinds. The coffee house was rough, smoky, competitive, and its menu had the "hogo of sirreverence." Few women went there. The salon was private, held in a house, admission by invitation only. Women were not only admitted, they controlled the invitations and the setting.

The advantage of the salon in creating a distinctive public sphere was that it included women and men. The advantage of the coffee house was that included a broader range of classes than any invitation-only group would have in that era.

Now, of course, coffee houses include both sexes and a fairly wide class range. The task is to create critical debate among so varied a group.

Coffee Houses vs. Bars as Gardens of Sedition

When coffee houses take off, the ruling power usually tries to suppress them because they breed sedition. The caliph made such an attempt in Egypt, as did most of the European kings. These attempts all failed, typically because powerful people were already so addicted to coffee and enamored of the coffee house that they nullified the banning order at the outset. To be sure, kings and caliphs found other ways to get coffee houses under control, especially by using spies. But the tension remained.

Kings do not seem to have the same problem with pubs and taverns. Muslim rulers, of course, do not quite have this problem, as alcohol-based public houses were forbidden anyway (though they could still be found). When coffee reached Europe, by contrast, alcohol vendors were well established. On most of the continent, the "cafés" were co-opted into mostly alcohol-serving restaurants, which also served coffee. It was only in the English-speaking lands that coffee houses developed as full-blown alternatives to pubs. There the political contrast was drawn in clearer relief. When Charles II tried to suppress the English coffee houses as hot-beds of sedition, he promoted the good old English pubs as places where people drank without talking about affairs of state that were none of their business.

This history suggests to me an interesting contrast:

Coffee houses pose few dangers to the individual, but some danger to the state; bars pose few dangers to the state, but some danger to the individual.

In fact, a Machiavellian ruler might see bars as a useful tool to keep the population politically quiescent. A sports bar would be the perfect tool of a modern-day "bread and circuses" campaign.

If you want to organize a rally against the war, go to a coffee house. If you want to get people to call in against the coach, go to a bar.

The Hogo of Sirreverence

In the 17th century, when coffee came to England, it was attacked by the traditional ale- and beer-men and women because it tasted terrible and stank. It is true that, in those days, coffee was made in a smelly way. The beans were hand roasted very unevenly, and the grounds were left in the coffee for a long time, often ending up in the cup itself. The many pamphlets against coffee said it looked and tasted like soot, or mud, or worse. Indeed, some said it had the "hogo" (haute gout, that is, scent) of "sirreverence." Sirreverence was a euphemism derived from the apologetic way a servant would describe excrement – "save your reverence."

Markman Ellis, who presents this wonderful expression in The Coffee-House: A Cultural History, says that there was a market in those early days of the modern cosmopolitan market for bitter, astringent, tough tastes and smells. The coffee house, which reeked of coffee and tobacco, served that market. This hogo of sirreverence was another part of the reason that the early coffee houses were overwhelmingly male environments.

Modern coffee houses mostly sell sweet, milk-heavy coffee drinks. But they have within them those who want the bitterness of coffee as it comes from the bean. I have been a mocha drinker since the beginning of the specialty coffee boom, but reflection on how little coffee there is in a large mocha has led me to switch this week, at least halfway. Cappuccino, anyone?

Coffee House Talk Favors Masculine Acquaintances

[I am in the middle of my Cafés and Public Life class, so I thought I would share some thoughts on cafés and coffee houses this week.]

Coffee houses as classic third places – neither home, nor work – where strangers can become acquaintances. Coffee houses promote a kind of sociability through which people from different walks of life can talk about public issues. The regulars in a coffee house may talk often about all manner of things. But the norm for that kind of sociability is that it stays in the coffee house, unless two people make an unusual effort to develop the relationship deeper.

In other words, coffee house comrades can remain at the same friendly acquaintance level for a long time – years, even. I have had a number of coffee house buddies over the years whose last names I never learned, or could recall. This did not diminish the quality of the relationship.

I think this kind of stable friendly acquaintanceship is more typical of men's than women's conversation partners. Ray Oldenburg, the sociologist who coined the term "third place," writes fondly of the group of retired men with whom he regularly gets together to "settle all the problems of the world." I have known many a men's coffee talk group, especially "old goats clubs" of retired men, that did just that sort of thing. They knew one another's opinions on public issues, but they did not know the details of one another's lives very well. The women's kaffeeklatch, in my experience, is quite different. There, the main subject of conversation is one another's lives and families. If a group of women talked regularly over coffee, but never got personal, I expect that most of them would think there was something wrong with the group.

The golden age coffee houses of the 17th and 18th centuries were overwhelmingly male environments. Today's coffee house is much more mixed. Still, I think the distinctive form of sociability of the coffee house as third places favors a more masculine than feminine conversational style.

King at the Mason Temple

Martin Luther King's famous last speech, the prescient "I have been to the mountain top" oration given the night before he was assassinated, was delivered at the Mason Temple in Memphis. I had long wondered why a Baptist minister would be speaking in a Masonic temple. But, as I discovered when I started teaching about American religion, the Mason Temple is not connected with the Masons, the sometimes anti-Christian secret society. Rather, it is the central edifice of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), founded by Rev. C.H. Mason.

COGIC is the largest black Pentecostal denomination in the United States. It might be the largest black denomination of any kind in this country. Sometimes they claim a membership of 5.5 million, which would make it a top-ten American denomination of any kind. However, that number is probably a highly optimistic estimate. Still, it is pretty big. There are more black Baptists in this country, but they are divided into several principal denominations, including King's own, the Progressive National Baptists.

In 1968, when King spoke at the Mason Temple, what was most important about the venue that night was not that it was Pentecostal, but that it was black controlled. Ministers of many denominations worked together for the larger cause of civil rights. Since the 1960s, though, Pentecostalism has boomed. My rough estimate (and it is rough, given the available numbers) is that there were probably more people in either of the two largest black Baptist denominations (both called National Baptist) at that time than there were COGIC members. Since then, though, Pentecostal growth rates worldwide have outstripped even the respectable growth rates of all kinds of theologically conservative Baptists. Pentecostal denominations, including COGIC, are only now starting to get the recognition that their numbers have long suggested.

In yet another, less expected way, King was prescient that night in Memphis. When he was speaking to the future of race relations in America, he was also, indirectly, speaking in a vital house of the future of black Protestantism.

The First American Coffee House Began in a Bookstore

In the 1670s, in Boston, before Paris even had a coffee house.

Marriage is the complementary union of a man and a woman to make and raise children

I made this claim yesterday. It has occasioned some misunderstanding, so let me elaborate.

One misunderstanding is that when I say that marriage entails submission and sacrifice, I am contending that homosexual couples are selfish. I did not mean to suggest that homosexual couples are incapable of submission or sacrifice; I am sure that that happens in many actual homosexual couples. My thought is that the complementarity of man and woman entails (mutual) submission, in a way that the similarity of a same-sex couple does not. Likewise, parenthood entails self-sacrifice, and parenthood is entailed in the social institution of marriage. Some actual marriages don't have children, and some homosexual couples do, and no doubt there are many exemplary marriages and parents contained in those groups. I am talking about is the social ideal, not your relationship or mine.

Another misunderstanding is that when I say that the social purpose of marriage includes children, I am condemning childless marriages. Again, I am talking about the social ideal, the reason that society depends on marriage. All actual marriages, mine included, deviate from this ideal. I do think that marriage as an institution entails children. Children are why complementary couples take the step to become a permanent, faithful, one-flesh unit – that is, become married. Some actual couples do not have children. Society, and the institution of marriage, can live with that. However, if all children were produced without marriage, society would disintegrate. And if no marriages produced children, society would end.

A third misunderstanding is that I am ignoring love as the basis of marriage. I do think that the deepest love among human beings is found between parents and their children, and between husbands and wives. Marriage, though, adds to that love a permanent institution that changes husband and wife into one flesh. This relationship, unique in all social life, has deep consequences for their material lives, as well. Sometimes the feelings of love fluctuate, especially between the husband and wife. The marriage does not need to end, though, if love is at low ebb; rather, the institution of marriage is there to protect the couple from their changing emotions, and especially to protect their children from rash emotional actions that their parents might feel like making.

Why Would Civil Unions Harm Marriage?

I am in favor of civil unions, as I argued two days ago. I favor them despite the fact that I think they will contribute to undermining marriage. I have been asked by some respondents to explain why I think civil unions would harm marriage at all.

Some argue that if I am free to marry, what difference does it make if other people conduct their relations differently? I believe that we should tolerate many different ways of conducting our relationships. But this is not because they don't affect mine.

Marriage is a social institution. It works because society as a whole believes in it, and supports marriage as such. My marriage is not just made by my wife and me, but by the whole society. Marriage is one of the most powerful of social institutions because it has huge social support.

If marriage were treated as just another private contract (as it is in increasing danger of descending to), fewer marriages would be formed, more marriages would fail, and each marriage would be more tenuous because less taken for granted.

Marriage is the complementary union of a man and a woman to make and raise children. This is the social model for marriage, around which all actual marriages are arranged.

Civil unions are, I think, a species of intense friendship between people of the same type. A civil union is designed to benefit the couple. Children may be brought into the union, but they are secondary.

If some people pursue unions with their opposite sex partners to benefit just themselves, with only a secondary consideration for children, this undermines marriage. Not just that marriage, but marriage as an institution.

It is natural in an individualistic culture such as ours to recast social institutions to benefit me, rather than forcing me to discipline and sacrifice myself for others. Even without children, marriage entails the discipline of submission – mutual submission. With children, to that submission must be added self-sacrifice. It is hard for us to sustain this high standard of marriage anyway. We only make the task harder when we add a competing marriage-like relationship that does not entail the same kind of self-sacrifice, and may not even require self-submission.

Married Homosexuals Can Stay That Way

Children do better if their parents stay married. Sometimes a married parent discovers or decides that he or she (more likely he) has a primarily homosexual orientation. Obviously, we are not talking here about people who have an exclusively homosexual orientation, or they wouldn't have gotten married and had kids in the first place. Rather, we are talking about the dilemma of those who feel torn between their love and duty toward their spouse and children, on the one hand, and their newly estimated sexual orientation.

A pastor recently told me of a discussion in his church about homosexuality. The talk was stopped dead by the stories told by two women whose ex-husbands discovered that they were gay. In this pastor's mind, that case settled the issue: gay men can't be married to women, so they should be free to divorce their wives and, if they want to, marry other men. And the same would go for married lesbians.

I think, though, that these sad cases do not settle the issue at all. There are many married men and women with a homosexual orientation, who nonetheless remain effective and contented spouses and parents. This situation is not ideal, but it is good enough. Michele Wolkomir's studies of effective ex-gay ministries found that the men in these groups (her study did not include lesbians) were not trying to change their orientation. Rather, they were getting all kinds of help in disciplining their actions because they loved their wives and children.

I am not saying that married parents who discern their own homosexual desires must stay married, and I am certainly not saying they should be forbidden to divorce. Rather, I have noted that there are success stories and supportive resources for men (and women, though I know this less well) who wish to stay married.

There is a peculiar tendency on the liberal side of the aisle to regard sexual identity as a mere social construction, a "gender," – whereas sexual orientation is imperious biological identity that we must always bow to. This is odd, if not upside down. At the least, I think it would be safer to think of both sex/gender and sexual orientation/preference as composed by both nature and nurture. Personally I think of both of them as 50/50 propositions.

When married parents discern a homosexual orientation in themselves, they are not obliged to drop everything and respond. Married parents have other identities, orientation, preferences, and duties that call at least as forcefully.

Why Civil Unions?

My post of January 5, 2007, " A Free Society Can Accommodate a Homosexual Minority," generated a rich set of comments. One thread asked the important question, why civil unions? Why not same-sex marriage? My answer is a bit different for civil society and for the church.

For both kinds of society, I believe that marriage as an institution is designed to unite the equal and complementary halves of the human species, a man and a woman, to make and rear children. Individual men and women, and individual marriages, approximate this ideal more or less fully. If they do not fully realize the ideal, they are not any lesser morally or ethically. Individual variation is normal and can have many benefits. The social norm of marriage sets a form of what is usually good for society as a whole, a norm around which all the actual marriages vary. A healthy society can tolerate quite a bit of variation, as long as the core is robust.

A free society ought to tolerate quite a bit of variation, for the sake of freedom. Too much variation, and too much freedom, can, of course, destroy society. That is always a risk. But we should err on the side of freedom wherever possible.

I think that our free civil society in the United States should support the social norm of marriage as a man and a woman united to make and rear children. This norm has ample support in our law, history, practice, and popular custom. Indeed, most people think it is the foundational institution of our whole society; I agree.

Some people, for one reason or another, cannot or do not wish to achieve that norm. I believe that our society is free and robust enough to accommodate many of those variations. Celibate people, married couples who cannot have children, even married couples who choose not to have children in the interests of a different social good are all good forms under the umbrella of our traditional standard of marriage. Single parents of many kinds, cohabiting couples, and cohabiting parents are good-enough forms of family life.

I do not see under our Constitution why same-sex couples, with and without children, are not good-enough approximation of marriages to be allowed under our civil law.

I think the term "marriage" means the equal and complementary forms of man and woman. A same-sex couple cannot, therefore, be married. This is the overwhelming sense of our tradition and our popular opinion about what "marriage" means. However, a civil union would give same-sex couples a good-enough legal status that was as close to marriage as the nature of their relationship allows. The countries with the most experience with homosexual civil unions, the Scandinavians, have found that most people – gay and straight -- can accept this approximation. Opinion surveys in the United States suggest that most people could accept a similar accommodation, especially in the younger generations.

I do not think homosexual couples would ever form civil unions at the same rate that straight couples marry. I think same-sex unions would have a higher break-up rate than marriages, in part because same-sex unions are much less likely to have children. Nonetheless, I believe a free society should offer the option to homosexual citizens who desire it. The effects on society of this accommodation would not be large.

The situation in the church is a little different, because, as I have argued earlier, I believe that the Bible does hold that same-sex sexual relations are sinful. I do not see how the church can condone an intentionally sexual relationship between persons of the same sex, even if such a relationship is likely to curb more or worse sins. I believe that the furthest that the church can go down this road is to tolerate same-sex relationships among those who are trying to avoid sex, even though we all sometimes lapse.

I do not relish reaching this conclusion, but I can see no other way around what appears to me to be the clear word and intention of Scripture, and the reality of desiring people in a fallen world.

I further think that the church can support same-sex civil unions, without asking the civil society to make any judgments about the sexual practices therein. The church itself, though, must make judgments about the sexual practices of those very same unions when they involve church members and officers. The church can, without inconsistency, recognize that the standards of the Constitution are not as demanding as those of the Bible. All citizens are entitled to the protection of the Constitution from the state, while all church members are entitled to choose to put themselves under the more stringent rule of the Bible in the church.

Thus, I support same-sex civil unions, but not same-sex marriage.

Starting the Year With a Bang

I like to start the new year with a bang. This past week's series on a centrist Christian approach to homosexual practice has certainly done that. I am still working through the comments -- I will give a more thoughtful overview tomorrow.

One point has struck me, though: we do not have a good name for a category of moral acts which are discretely tolerated, or formally overlooked, if the actors are making a good faith effort to wrestle with the dilemma. And yet, I think, in dealing with real people, we make such allowances all the time. There is no good way to build this kind of toleration into an ethical principle, because it really is a species of practical judgment in a particular case. Because we have to rely on many actors to make correct practical judgments in cases like this, the issue cannot be settled at the level of ethics.

The Presbyterian Position is Already a Viable Centrist Position - Almost

The upshot of the argument that I have been making over the past week is nearly identical to what the Presbyterian Church (USA) already teaches and promotes.

The church says that homosexuals are welcome in all offices of the church, and should be protected in civil society.

The church teaches that in God's plan for human beings the gift of sex is only properly expressed in marriage (of a man and a woman). Celibacy is a good though difficult discipline. We all have impulses to sex outside of marriage, including homosexual acts, but they are not part of God's plan for us. We should try to control them, and ask for help to do so. We should repent of our lapses. This applies to everyone, regardless of act or orientation.

The one point not yet clarified is whether it is better to try to curb those impulses within a committed relationship, or whether that is already too much of a structure of temptation. The church has already accepted this kind of unmarried but committed relationship as a good-enough starting point for opposite-sex couples. The issue now is whether it will do so for same-sex couples.

SO,

IF conservatives in the church were willing to accept the idea that two people of the same sex in a committed relationship is not ideal, but good enough;

AND

IF liberals in the church were willing to accept that idea that homosexual acts are something to repent of,

THEN

The church could have both its people and its standards, and achieve peace, unity, and as much purity as this fallen world allows. On this issue, anyway.

If I Were A Figment of Your Imagination, I Would Be Better Looking

(My answer to my son's friendly claim that I was a product of his mind).

(This drew a wonderful scrunch-face from Mrs. Gruntled.)