• Viking Warrior Discovered in Sweden Was a Woman, Researchers Confirm

Viking Warrior Discovered in Sweden Was a Woman, Researchers Confirm

Viking Warrior Discovered in Sweden Was a Woman, Researchers Confirm

by Emily Shugerman

Scientists had long assumed the skeleton belonged to a man

Swedish scientists have revealed that the body of a Vikingwarrior long presumed to be male is, in fact, female.

A team of researchers from Stockholm University conducted a DNA analysis of the skeleton and confirmed that it belonged to a woman. The 10th-century skeleton, the researchers concluded, is the first confirmed female high-ranking Viking warrior.

Scientists had long assumed that the skeleton was male – despite early indications that she may have been female – largely because of the status symbols buried alongside her.

Early archaeologists uncovered a sword, an axe, a spear, armour-piercing arrows, a battle knife, two shields, and two horses in the grave, signifying the buried individual’s status of as a “professional warrior”.

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• Gender Complementarian Trinitarian Analogies Do Not Work

Gender Complementarian Trinitarian Analogies Do Not Work

Blogger and author Scot McKnight made a series of posts about complementarianism and the Trinity this past week. I tweeted links to some of these blog posts earlier. The other night, blog Wartburg Watch made a post about these McKnight posts.

In that comment thread at TWW blog, I made a few comments, which I’ll get to in a moment.

For now, here are links to the McKnight posts (on his “Jesus Creed” blog):

Complementarianism’s Trinity: The Story Now Told – Aug 14

The Rise of the Complementarian Hypothesis of the Trinity – Aug 15

Civil War Among The Complementarians – Aug 16

Why Did It Take So Long? – Aug 17

The Trinity: Not from the Bible Alone – Aug 22

Some complementarians use a doctrine called E.S.S. (Eternal Subordination of the Son) to ground the subordination of wives to husbands in their very being (they use ESS as an ontological device).

They argue that because (in their view) that Jesus Christ is supposedly eternally subordinate to God the Father, in the same way, married women are subordinate to their husbands.

(I am unclear if the complementarians arguing ESS mean to say all women, regardless of marital status, are to be subordinate to all men or not. In all the cases I’ve seen of complementarians arguing ESS, it’s generally been on the basis of marital submission.)

• The Death of a Child: Understanding the Grief Facing Charlie Gard’s Parents by Jessica Firger

The Death of a Child: Understanding the Grief Facing Charlie Gard’s Parents by Jessica Firger

I don’t think most people, Christians above all, have a handle on how to minister to someone who is in grief. It’s a topic I wish were covered more often on spiritual abuse type blogs.

The following editorial focuses on the loss of an infant, but I think a lot of the advice the expert gives is applicable to about anyone who has suffered loss, regardless of the age.

The Death of a Child: Understanding the Grief Facing Charlie Gard’s Parents

Snippets:

This week, Connie Yates and Chris Gard said goodbye to their son, Charlie Gard. On Thursday, a judge of the British High Court ruled the 11-month-old, who had been suffering from an extremely rare and untreatable genetic disorder known as mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, should be taken off life-support and moved into a hospice facility. He died the next day.

The story of the young boy has stirred up an international and contentious debate about the limits of hospice and end-of-life care.

…Newsweek spoke with Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, a grief counselor whose area of expertise is traumatic death, particularly that of children. Cacciatore is professor of psychology at Arizona State University and founder of the MISS Foundation, a nonprofit that provides social support services to families grieving loss.

Although Cacciatore has published more than 60 papers on the subject of bereavement and traumatic death, her expertise is also firsthand. More than two decades ago, she lost her daughter, Cheyanne, at birth.

What makes grieving the loss of an infant different from grieving an older child?

The death of a child at any age and from any cause is life-changing for parents. It’s always extremely painful. What makes the death of a young baby different is that often the family grieves alone.

Very few people knew the child intimately other than the parents.

And because babies are, of course, highly dependent on the parent for care, such a death is different in some important and really painful ways. Many parents who experience the death of a baby feel a tremendous sense of responsibility for their baby’s death.

….Does the bereavement process become easier over time for parents that find themselves in these circumstances?

I’m not a fan of the idea of “recovery,” because I don’t think we ever recover from a catastrophic loss. But the grief can become lighter. I try to teach people how to carry it, how to turn toward it, and how to stay connected to the child who died. We need space and people to remember with us in nonjudgmental ways.

• Complementarian Marketing To Men Doesn’t Work, but It Doesn’t Stop Comps From Blaming Women – Churches Are Not “Too Feminine”

Complementarian Marketing To Men Doesn’t Work, but It Doesn’t Stop Comps From Blaming Women – Churches Are Not ‘Too Feminine”

Gender complementarians have turned male leadership, masculinity, and the male biological sex into idols that they worship.

And this obsession and strategy has not worked to draw in men to churches or to keep them in church – and complementarians, most of them anyway, keep assuming it will work.

This fixation on masculinity and making churches more masculine in feel does not account for women who have begun dropping out of church in large numbers the last several years, either (The Resignation Of Eve).

Male hierarchy, and defending and promoting it, now takes precedence over about any thing else with complementarian Christians, and, at times, it causes them to do and say some very weird (and unbiblical) things.

• Regarding Grief, Sickness, and Depression: Hold Your Tongue and Offer Your Heart Instead by Heather Plett

Regarding Grief, Sickness and Depression: Hold Your Tongue and Offer Your Heart Instead by Heather Plett

This is a topic I’d like to see addressed more often on some of the other spiritual abuse blogs out there. The link to the Plett-authored essay is much farther below. I wanted to say a few words first.

Many Christians are either too lazy, too selfish, or too inept at assisting someone who is walking through grief.

After my own mother died a few years ago, no Christians were there for me, and it still shocks and saddens me to this day.

When I did muster the courage to phone or to open up to Christians (some church people, some were relatives, all of whom were ages 45 and on up), I was not met with compassion and empathy.

Rather, I was met with cliches,  sunny-sounding platitudes, criticism, judgmentalism, people who downplayed my grief (by comparing it to someone else’s pain in life and saying my grief was nothing).

• When Your Spouse is Mentally Ill, from Christianity Today

When Your Spouse is Mentally Ill, from Christianity Today

I was just saying in another post on gender complementarianism a few days ago that out of all the complementarianism coverage I’ve ever seen manufactured by complementarians, they never factor in situations where a woman’s husband dies, or develops dementia, becomes mentally unstable, becomes physically incapacitated so that he can no longer be the “head of the household,” and of course, they rarely discuss what to do with or about women who never marry or who divorce.

Here we see a post where a woman’s husband developed severe mental health issues to the point she had to divorce him. She had to learn to take care of herself and her children on her own.

When Your Spouse is Mentally Ill, from Christianity Today

Snippets:

by Anonymous

My husband’s schizoaffective disorder devastated our family. Here’s what I’ve learned in the years since he was first diagnosed.

[Her husband began exhibiting signs of mental illness. He was hospitalized.]

…My pastor, to whom I turned for counsel, didn’t have answers either, but he and his wife listened and loved my family well. I looked for secular resources for spouses of the mentally ill.

…A delusional partner

My husband and I had been true partners in our home. We parented together and shared the weight of responsibilities. I was dependent on him financially but also in a thousand other ways.

• Dear Ray Comfort and David Barton: Depression is Not a Culture War Battle by Warren Throckmorton

Dear Ray Comfort and David Barton: Depression is Not a Culture War Battle by Warren Throckmorton

I myself just wrote a Part 1 and Part 2 about the very same subject – Christian apologist Ray Comfort’s movie about suicide, called “No Exit.”

The “Exit” movie has its own website. There is a trailer available for the Exit movie on You Tube.

What I appreciate about Throckmorton’s take on this is that he plainly puts it out there that Comfort (while perhaps well-intentioned) is making depression and suicide evangelization tools. That was something I noticed too in Comfort’s presentation of the topic on TBN’s “Praise” program but didn’t think to mention it.

Comfort seems to be using depression and suicide as apologetic tools by which to convince Non-Christians, including atheists, to accept Jesus as Savior.

One problem of this, as I noted in Part 1 and Part 2, is that as someone who was a Christian for many years, and who used to have clinical depression for over two decades (along with suicidal ideation and anxiety) is that being a Christian did not deliver me from the depression (or anxiety or thoughts of suicide).

Depression is Not a Culture War Battle

by Warren Throckmorton

Excerpts:

During his April 21 Wallbuilders Live broadcast, David Barton had Ray Comfort on to discuss his new movie about suicide, Exit.  I intend to watch and review the movie but for now I want to advise readers to be wary.

For the most part, the advice given during this episode about depression and suicide is not helpful and in fact for some could be counterproductive.

….Suicide is Not a Cultural War Issue

Good intentions or not, there is a troubling thread here which continues throughout the program. The hosts and the guest treats suicide like it is a culture war battle — Christians on one side and non-Christians on the other.