Author Archive
Margot Starbuck
A Moderately Conservative Case for the Defeat of NC Amendment 1
Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
As soon as my husband accepted our friends’ offer of an “Another Family Against the Amendment” yard sign in January, I knew exactly how it would play out. The corrugated plastic sign wouldn’t be forgotten in somebody’s car trunk until after the May 8 North Carolina election, the way it would if I was responsible for doling anything out. It wouldn’t be hidden by shrubbery so that no one ever had to see it in front of my house. No, it would be—and was—stabbed right in the middle of our tiny yard just as our socially and politically diverse cadre of acquaintances paraded into our home for my groom’s stupid Super Bowl party.
When I say diverse, I mean political-advisor-to-G.W.Bush and local-GLBT-activist diverse.
“HEY, WHO WANTS MORE SALTY SNACKS?!?!?!”
Biggest Loser Wins: Small Things with GREAT Love
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Biggest loser wins. That’s the whole premise of the popular weight-loss reality show featuring women and men who are hundreds of pounds over-weight. Whoever loses the most, wins. Every week, as someone is voted off of the weight-loss ranch, a compassionate host must confirm, “You are not the biggest loser ” Dejected, the not-loser packs up his or her belongings and heads home.
If the scene feels weirdly familiar, it’s because it’s a story that’s been told before. In Matthew 25, Jesus describes a divine host who gathers all the contestants and divides them up into two teams. Up until then, they’d all been living and dining and working out together in one big group. The host forms a red team on his right and a blue team on his left. And although the show’s producer knows how the cut was made, the participants aren’t yet privy to the behind-the-scenes priorities.
How to Respond to Our All-American Muslim Neighbors
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
Lowe’s national retail chain, following a conservative Christian group’s call for businesses to boycott advertising on a new TLC reality show about Muslims, pulled its advertisements from All-American Muslim. The Florida Family Association (FFA) claims the series, which follows five families in and around Dearborn, Michigan, is nothing more than propaganda masking a radical Islamic agenda. Though the FFA suggests over 60 other advertisers have also pulled their ad dollars, these reports have not yet been confirmed. In any case, Lowe’s has borne the brunt of media criticism for pulling their ads from the show.
To What KIND of Sinners Was Jesus a Friend?
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011
It’s no secret that Christians, of various flavors and stripes, are all over the board on how we deal with sin and Sinners. Though most of us have all sort of grudgingly agreed to “hate the sin and love the sinner,” the actual implementation of Gandhi’s admonition hasn’t always been pretty. Some more liberal Christians are not comfortable with the “hate the sin” part and some more conservative Christians are not willing to admit that Jesus ever entertained the presence of sinners. This, of course, has put a crimp in the love part.
And all this is before we even try to create any kind of weird mutually-agreed-upon “sin list.”
Still, there are a few things to which most Christians can agree:
Requisite Reading for the Squeamish Lightweight
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
If you don’t know me, or my reading habits, you have no reason to be surprised by the two newest titles on my nightstand. The requisite info is simply that I am such a squeamish lightweight that — despite sharing God’s heart for the weak and marginalized — I have been physically unable to watch Schindler’s List, Hotel Rwanda or Precious. Whatever the next hard-to-watch movie in theaters will be, I won’t be able to see it.
Suffice to say that it’s an oddity that my two current nightstand books are both about the sexual exploitation of children. A Stolen Life, the recent autobiographical account of kidnap victim Jaycee Duggard, who was held captive for 18 years, was given to me by a neighbor after I confessed to a penchant for trashy lit. (Even though what I really meant was the rare People magazine.) I quickly put it down and won’t be picking it back up.
Myopically Mothering My Own as Mission?
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011
Within evangelical culture, many mothers of young children have received a blanket assurance that “motherhood is mission.”
Maybe when a mother was leaving a job she loved, or wiping human excrement out of car seat upholstery, or missing book club because she had a sick kid, a well-meaning soul told her that motherhood was “mission.” And as she handed her keys to her boss, or finished reading the book she should have already read for book club, or dropped dirty brown paper towels into the garbage, there was nothing she wanted to believe more.
