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Tag: body image

  • Sports, Wellbeing – and the Theology of the Body

    by Helen King with Revd Pete Wheeler

    On Tuesday, Synod is hearing a presentation followed by this motion:

     ‘That this Synod recognise the missional potential for churches of sport and wellbeing through its ability to transform the lives of people and communities.’

    I (Helen) am among the members of Synod least qualified to speak in this debate, my own experience of sport including deliberately spraining my own ankle in order to get out of school hockey. When I see images of energetic lively young people on the website for the Church of England’s National Sport and Wellbeing Project, I feel the urge to go into a corner with a book. And yet… I want to speak in this debate.

    That’s because, at a recent deanery synod meeting, I heard about St Peter’s Aylesbury. We are not a pilot diocese for the Sport and Wellbeing Project, and St Peter’s is part of our diocese’s Estates Ministry Network. It has recently experienced revitalisation, which started from a ‘breakfast church’ initiative about five years ago.

    But before I share what they are doing, I want to say that I am concerned by the way that the supporting document for the debate, GS2381, focuses more on ‘sports ministry’ than on wellbeing, talking about numbers, and ‘success’, even (paragraph 1 of the executive summary) how to “find the sweet spot of how this could contribute to a growing and outward facing church”. In the research appendix that forms the second part of GS2381, we have “strategic aims” and “buy-in” and “sustainable business development” and “standardised systems and processes around data collection to refine Sports and Wellbeing Ministry models and approaches” and yet more language of “success’.

    For St Peter’s, their interest in wellbeing and exercise comes from a different direction. It is not about ‘sport’; it’s part of a focus on “health, hope and wholeness through fun, faith and fitness”. That’s backed up not through a focus on numbers, but through their theology of the body. The vicar, Pete Wheeler, told me that “In Estates ministry we commit to walk alongside people who often live very chaotic lives in areas of high deprivation. Their discipleship pathway is never a straight line – so, it can’t be about ‘numbers’! (And related to this I also long for the CofE to recognise that churches that are struggling financially are not necessarily ‘failing’!).” He went on, “Our theology of the body is not only as a sacred space where God chooses to meet with us, but as something that is fully endorsed by God in the bodily incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is, therefore, anti-gnostic – declaring that our own bodies, how we look after them, and what we do with them, really matter to God and to how we live a ‘whole’ and fulfilled life.”

    There are two projects which they run which express this theology most fully.

    Revelation Fitness runs free classes for all abilities, including chair-based classes. Pete writes “Each weekly class has a Bible theme (usually part of a series) which is developed and explored as the class exercise together – sometimes circuit, high-intensity interval training, exercise to music, etc. (For example, our current Series is on Colossians 3: 12-17 with each week focusing on a different attribute Paul mentions). It ends with a cooldown that includes a time of reflection and prayer. The music we use is combination of secular and worship tracks. After the class there is opportunity for Prayer Ministry and healthy smoothies.”

    Last month, they offered a 21-day sugar fast, with daily Bible passages and encouragements, to “clear your mind, boost your health, and reset your cravings – while drawing you closer to God. Let’s break free from sugar’s grip and focus on what truly satisfies.” Pete observes, “We reject the false economy presented by organisations such as ‘Slimming World’ who talk about treats as ‘sins’ (and subtly perpetuate the unhealthy focus on body shape and a cycle of failure to change habits). Rather, Revelation Fitness focuses on our call to be ‘fit for life’; to understand our bodies and how to fuel them well by using healthy, simple, practical and spiritual disciplines; learning to move, use and ‘tune’ our bodies into the daily rhythms of our life and calling.”

    As for the second project, that’s Revelation Run. Pete writes that “The missional energy for Revelation Fitness has also led to ‘Revelation Run’ which helps local people to learn how to run, with prayer as an integral part (and which usually starts with walking!). We have also developed links with a local group called ‘Recovery Runners’ – a community of people recovering from addiction, burnout, bereavement, mental health, etc., which we refer people to often … we have seen people’s lives changed through encounters with Jesus; freedom for those with addictions developing new healthy habits and disciplines; and those who find new hope as they discover their bodies are not the enemy.”

    I find what Pete and his community are doing is an inspiration. So I would urge a reset from sports to wellbeing; from a focus on children and young people (the result of the Vision & Strategy) to adults; and something driven not by the rhetoric of management and ‘success’ measured by numbers, but based on a rich theology of the body. Reflecting on the paper being presented to Synod, Pete noted that there was no need to do “evangelism by stealth” using sport as the way in, because Revelation Fitness is already advertised as a faith-based activity, and this does not put people off; they want to explore spirituality and faith without suspicion.

    Pete suggests that we are in a “new shifting missional landscape. We have the opportunity to enable all apostles (not just ‘pioneers’!) to ‘take church to the people’, by running, for example, local community sports and wellbeing groups, that include spirituality / faith / prayer as an integral part. This is something that the new parents of the next 10 years will happily be a part of with their children!”

     

  • WWBD? What Would Barbie Do?

    barbie1.JPG

    By Anon.

    Above, The Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew, rector at Christ Church in Manlius, with a Barbie that was a gift from Rev. Julie Blake Fisher in Kent, Ohio. Photograph by David Lassman.

    As you are probably well aware, Barbie is the summer’s blockbuster movie. The premise of the film rests on haemorrhaging stark reality into a tightly engineered fantasy-land. The film immediately summons the paradoxes highlighted in the acclaimed 1998 satirical movie The Truman Show.

    Barbie (the movie) focusses on the most popular of all the Barbies in Barbieland, and begins with her experiencing a serious existential crisis. So, Odyssey-like, she travels to the human world in order to understand herself better and discover her truer purpose. Ken – a kind of boyfriend, albeit struggling with his low self-esteem issues and a sense that he is somewhat surplus to requirement – tags along. In Barbieland, men are, well, non-essential. But Ken and Barbie enter into this human world. Ken, all the while, remains acutely conscious that his own existence depends far too much on Barbie acknowledging him, or even treating him as an equal. She does not need to.

    The film pivots, as one might expect, on feminine nature – and the nature of feminism. Knowing something about the original creation of the Barbie doll is important here. In 1956, an American business developer, Ruth Handler, had observed her daughter (Barbara) playing with paper dolls, and noticed that she often enjoyed ascribing adult roles to the dolls. At that time, the vast majority of dolls were baby-like or toy representations of infants. Furthermore, the clothing with which the dolls were marketed, packaged and sold was often affixed to the doll.

    Handler, with her husband Eliot, who was a co-founder of the Mattel toy company, pitched the idea of an adult-bodied female doll with changes of clothes that gave her different roles. Mattel were initially cool on the idea, and it wasn’t until 1959 that Barbie launched. Yes, there were fashion clothes for Barbie and the inevitable nurse uniform. But there was an astronaut Barbie doll (1965) long before there was any actual woman in NASA’s astronaut corps (1978), let alone a woman in space.

    We forget that the Barbie dolls allowed young girls to imagine future roles that could barely have been contemplated by their mothers, yet had a normative existence in Barbieworld. Furthermore, Barbie’s multiple career possibilities were not subject to any male gaze or masculine censure claiming “such roles are unsuitable for women”. Barbie could be a flight attendant. But she could fly a jumbo jet too, long before airlines hired women as pilots. In Barbieworld, and in the Barbieland film, Barbie rules; and Barbie makes the rules.

    As one might hope, the movie acknowledges Barbie’s unrealistic physical proportions—and the very real body issues that these could create in young girls—while also celebrating her role as a feminist icon. Ken, in contrast, begins with a kind of ‘himbo frailty’ (as opposed to the threat of any ‘bimbo identity’ that some might attempt to foist on to Barbie).

    Yet as the film progresses, Ken goes from being Barbie’s uncertain and needy boyfriend to becoming some kind of advocate for macho-posturing and laddish culture, as he starts to think and act as a real man should behave. Without saying more about the film and issuing spoiler alerts, both Barbie and Ken discover a number of harsh truths and realities along their road to enlightenment. This is a funny, ironic and classy odyssey, and well worthy of the praise it has garnered.

    Well, since there has been a Barbie astronaut long before there was a female astronaut, I had wondered about a sequel to Barbie called Barbiechurch. There have been Barbie priest outfits for some time, and a few homemade Barbie bishops. To the best of my knowledge there has been no Barbie Cardinal, Archbishop or Pope. Yet. But in a more serious vein, I began to contemplate what the Barbie-doll-as-human, and Ken tagging along for the ride, might make of the Church of England at the moment?

    I think our heroine would be surprised and shocked by concepts such as ‘mutual flourishing’ and ‘complementarianism’. Not least because in Barbieland and Barbieworld, Ken is Barbie’s helpmeet and accessory. He is only there to complement her. No doubt he is there to compliment her as well. It is Ken who supports Barbie – and it is she who is the achiever and breadwinner. I think Barbie would be even more surprised to meet real women (human) who have signed up to inequality as being good, helpful and fair – which is still the simplest way to characterise ‘mutual flourishing’ and ‘complementarianism’. Furthermore, some women seem to think Manchurch (an odd kind of Fresh Expression full of ‘liberated’ Kens) is a great place for women to hang out and flourish. A kind of Frat House spiritual community? Women keen on ‘mutual flourishing’ love it, apparently, and find it all very convivial. (Though statistics on women sticking around in or moving to such dioceses suggests otherwise).

    I’m also wondering how this would play out with any potential new outfits available for the Barbie doll range? I can see a promising line of clothes that might draw on the BBC TV series Call the Midwife. But I suspect that the Admiral, Chief Engineer, Jet Pilot, President, Judge and Priest garb will be in short supply.

    The Church of England is currently beset with all manner of knotted and barbed issues it seems unable to address, let alone resolve. Despite Living in Love and Faith (LLF), the conversations and resolutions on human sexuality seem less than honest, and at times bizarrely surreal. Special dispensations for those who hold ‘honoured views’ or have ‘alternative-but-traditional positions on the role of women’ are sanctified.

    The Church of England would not, today, attempt this on the grounds of skin colour, ethnicity, class, disability or any circumstances where the person deemed to be a sign of social deviance was not ‘at fault’ (e.g., they were born illegitimate, or conceived through a mixed-race liaison, or a wife deserted and destroyed by the infidelity of their husband). The Church of England would not attempt to hold two opposite but mutually incompatible views on slaves and slavery. But the Church of England does do this with sexuality and gender.

    Of course, you are not allowed to draw this historical comparison to the attention of the leadership. It is deemed to be impolite and unpolitic to remind church leaders and bishops that the Church of England used to discriminate against all of these groups, even refusing them communion, holy matrimony, ordination and the like. To do some history homework would, apparently, be “unhelpful”. Nobody wants to be reminded that, back in the day, we discriminated against all manner of persons on the grounds of their colour, class and condition.

    WWBD? What would Barbie do now in a real-world situation where we had two mutually incompatible integrities on slavery, disability, ethnicity or class? It wouldn’t wash in Barbieland or Barbieworld. Just take a brief look at the range of Barbie dolls over the years. “Colored Francie“, a version of Barbie’s cousin, was marketed in 1967,  although Black and Latina Barbies were not available until the 1980s. The medium was the message.

    Church of England double-think is an elephant occupying the chancel, sitting in the sanctuary or propped up in the pulpit. But you are not allowed to say what you see. The ground rules in Churchyworld dictate that discriminatory views have the same equal value as progressive views. And that views and values of the wider public (which are, incidentally, overwhelmingly pro-equality) have no part to play in the doll-world where Ken rules.

    There is no play-world where Barbie supports or submits to Ken. All credit to Mattel and Ruth Handler here. We have never been offered a ‘Submissive Barbie’, ‘Helpmeet-Vicar’s-Wife’ or even so much as a Deaconess Doll. The striking element of Barbieworld is that girls are being given imaginative empowering possibilities: to become what they aspire to be. Furthermore, I am always struck by how many of the Barbie costumes exemplify professionalism and servant leadership (unlike Action Man; or poor Ken).

    There are many stalwart Synod advocates striving for an awakening of the church. For recovering our social and political conscience, albeit with its long history of struggling with a weak pulse, and failing to live out its calling as a full-blooded incarnational entity. But as I observed General Synod discussing safeguarding in July – I think especially of the wigged-up-gowned lawyers, dress-down episcopal garb (bishop Ken beach holiday attire seemed to be in vogue) – I did ask myself how real the Church of England currently is?

    The Archbishops’ Council and their presentations on safeguarding might just as well have come from mannequins or dolls. Theirs was juvenile staged play; a plastic and inauthentic tea party with no genuine humanity detectable at all. Indeed, you’d find more genuine humanity and reality in Barbieworld or Barbieland.

    So, what would Barbie do with the Church of England today? I think she’d conclude that of the two – Churchyworld and Barbieworld – the latter is the more real and far more human than the former. WWBD? Stay at home in Barbieland, where Ken knows his place, struggles with his insecurity and identity, women are free to be themselves and can aspire to anything, and nobody has to pretend.

    Pretence is the key, and that is what makes Barbie such a great, and even subtle-deep movie, recalling the Toy Story trilogy. It is ironic that in the world of play, pretending is meant to be there for imagination and pleasure and, much like theatre, not a substitute for reality. The purpose of child’s play, or staged play, is to hold up a mirror to reality, and help us to perceive our world and imagine it in some better state.

    Yet in the Church of England, pretending – and silly pretence-denials – have now become so normal and fundamental to its everyday functioning, we have forgotten what reality actually is. WWBD?