A few weeks ago I wrote an article for Global Comment on the ongoing discussion in parts of the feminist blogosphere about Hugo Schwyzer, and more broadly on the place of people with a history of abuse in feminism and other activist movements. The short version of the controversy (from my article):

Schwyzer, a professor of gender studies and male feminist personality….has written prolifically, and controversially, about recovering from sex and drug addictions, his now 13-year sobriety, and his ”pre-sobriety” predatory behavior towards younger female students – including, at one point, sleeping with four students on a class trip he was chaperoning. The current backlash against him, set in motion by yet another article recounting this troubling history, took on unprecedented intensity after the resurfacing of a post, originally written a year ago [which Schwyzer has now redacted to protect himself from legal consequences], in which Schwyzer admitted to nearly killing a former girlfriend in a drug-fueled* murder-suicide attempt.

The subsequent outcry and campaign against Schwyzer has, for the first time, resulted in concrete consequences for him: the pulling of his writing from Scarleteen, a well-respected resource on teen sexual health, and his departure from Healthy is the New Skinny, an organization co-founded and directed by Schwyzer, dedicated to addressing body image issues in teen women and the beauty and fashion industries. Schwyzer did not fully inform either organization of his history.

*I included this in the article in the interests of stating all the facts, but unlike Schwyzer and many who have defended him, I don’t think the fact that he was high when he tried to kill his partner and himself is all that relevant. Many, many people manage to go on drug binges without attempting to murder anyone.

The debate about Schwyzer has touched on a number of important questions, including the role of men/male allies in feminism, about whether there’s space in feminism for people with checkered pasts, about what constitutes sufficient rehabilitation, restitution, and amends-making for people with a history of violence or abusive behavior. These are all important questions, and they’re certainly relevant to the debate around Schwyzer…but the more responses I read about this situation specifically, the more convinced and concerned I am that they are obscuring an equally important discussion of Schwyzer’s ongoing behavior - including, as Campus Progress aptly summarizes (under “Atonement”), disturbing aspects of how he writes about his past.

I was particularly struck by two responses defending Schwyzer’s place in feminism (and linked by Schwyzer as responses to the controversy for which he’s “personally grateful,” which…well, I won’t say anything about that) – one from Feminism and Religion, a space and project that I respect, and another from Elizabeth Nolan Brown. These responses describe the backlash against Schwyzer, as “cruel and vulgar,” “cutting and obscene,” “cynicism and ridged hostility,” an inability or refusal to live with the dualistic reality of the “darkness and light” that lives in all of us (Feminism and Religion), and “ridiculous,” “sadly typical of the feminist blogosphere,” an attempt to “cluster and ostracize [dissent],” and a rejection of “paradoxes and contradictions in the ideals versus lived experiences of its proponents.”

I have to say that reading comments like this in spaces I respect and that are sincerely working for justice for women is alarming and terrifying.

There are a few things we need to be absolutely clear on.

Hugo Schwyzer lied for several years about his attempt to kill a woman - on one occasion, falsely describing his attempt to kill his girlfriend and himself as a only a suicide attempt that “accidentally” endangered her. On the record, preserved in on Internet Archive here, “suicide attempt,” and here, “I came close to accidentally taking the life of my girlfriend.” This was long after he was self-identifying as a “male feminist” who was “recovering” and being “redeemed” from his past behavior.

And just in the past two months, since the backlash against him, Schwyzer has edited his past posts to conceal the fact that he repeatedly lied about his history . There are no disclaimers or notes on these posts to indicate that they’ve been edited in any way. For example, the post that once claimed that he accidentally endangered his girlfriend now reads:

As I’ve written before, my last episode of drinking and drug use ended on June 27, 1998; my body filled with massive amounts of alcohol and prescription pills, I blew out the pilot lights on the stove in my old apartment and turned on the gas, trying to kill myself and my girlfriend. Miraculously, we both survived.

This post is rather perversely titled “A very long post on how to rebuild trust.” Well, here’s a hint: it doesn’t involve lying about what you’ve done and then trying to cover up that lie.

There’s also the fact that Schywzer compared the guilt and remorse he says he feels over deliberately trying to kill a woman to the guilt and remorse someone else felt over having accidentally endangered a dog.

There’s the fact that until this backlash, Schwyzer appears to have never once called what he did “violence,” and had never once acknowledged that he was the perpetrator of an act of domestic, intimate partner violence, or gendered violence in a number of ways - despite the facts that:

• Over 90% of perpetrators of murder-suicides are male
• Over 70% of murder-suicides are committed against an intimate partner, and in 94% of these cases the intimate partner is a woman
• Over 75% of murder-suicides are committed in domestic settings. [Source: Violence Policy Center, PDF. ht Campus Progress]

We can have a conversation about what it looks like for someone with a history of abusive or otherwise harmful behavior to take full responsibility for their actions, but I hope we can all agree that “taking full responsibility” doesn’t ever involve lying about what one has done. It doesn’t involve concealing one’s history from people who invest trust in you and could be harmed by your withholding of relevant information.

We can have a conversation about what it means to be truly remorseful for abusive behavior, or to make amends for it. But there shouldn’t be any debate about whether or not sincere remorse over attempting to murder a woman should ever, ever be compared to accidentally endangering a dog.

We can have a conversation about whether and how men should be allies or leaders in feminist and woman-oriented spaces, but it shouldn’t be seen as cynical or hostile to insist that at the very least, men with a history of gendered, misogynist abuse and violence who want to claim a space as *leaders* or *role models* in feminist spaces should be able to own up to their history and clearly name it for what it is.

There’s a lot more going on in Schwyzer’s case and the responses to it than this – glossing over a history of abuse in a way that is enabling to perpetrators and silencing and harmful to victims, white privilege and tolerance of racism and racial double standards, different perspectives on what role male allies can have in women’s movements, and different perspectives on whether and how we should limit access to feminist/women’s spaces. And these issues need to be discussed as well, but not without addressing the the very clear cut dishonesty and lack of remorse in how Schwyzer has written about his past behavior, and why this is extremely dangerous.

This is what I can’t get out of my mind when people, especially other feminists, caricature statements that Hugo has no place in feminism as mean-spirited, perfectionist, even hateful exclusivism. I have to wonder if people – again, especially feminists – who feel this reaction is no more than pettiness are aware of the above information, or simply believe it’s irrelevant.

Yes, we’re all imperfect. Yes, there are always contradictions and shades of gray in the space between our stated ideals as advocates for women’s rights and our lived realities. In general, I’m sympathetic to the idea that we need to keep in mind that activists and leaders are real people too, with real flaws and needs and low moments and things we’re ashamed of – just like everyone else. In general, I’m sympathetic to the idea that we shouldn’t hold leaders to unrealistic expectations or put them on lofty pedestals. Part of respecting the humanity of others is not holding them to an unfair standard. I agree with all that.

But I think these objections are dangerously misplaced in this case. This is not about expecting perfection. It’s not about stifling dissent. It’s not about feminists and other activist women who object to Hugo being incapable of forgiveness, or refusing to come to grips with the paradoxes between feminist ideals and reality.

Because really, if we’re going to paint cynicism as a bad thing (and frankly, I don’t see why that’s automatically a given) which is the cynical position here? That we should be able to expect leaders and role models to not actively and consciously tell lies about past violent behavior? Or that it’s unrealistic and excessive to expect such a thing?

This past week The Atlantic ran an article on Schwyzer’s “exile” from feminism (a deeply irritating and problematic framing, but that’s a topic for another post) in which I was briefly quoted. I said a lot more about the situation to the author and wish more of those points (though not necessarily from me) had ended up in the final piece – particularly this: “I think we shouldn’t hesitate as a community to eject someone who has lied about and minimized his history of abuse, and I think feminists in Schwyzer’s circle really failed in this regard.”

Sadly, that failure is ongoing. The discussion about which men belong in feminism is allowing people to abstract the conversation from what Schwyzer actually did, not just before his “transformation,” but in recent years – in recent months! – and why it’s dangerous. It’s turning it into this theoretical discussion about parameters for letting people into feminism – which is a related but separate discussion from how feminists should deal with a case where there is a demonstrated pattern of abusive behavior from someone in the community. It distracts from discussions of concrete actions and their implications.

Talking about the presence of “darkness and light” in “all of us” obscures the fact that this one specific person has engaged in abusive and predatory behavior and lied about it. Not “all of us,” Hugo Schwyzer. And a community dedicated to social justice needs to address questions of accountability for perpetrators and justice for their victims – not implicitly paint the abuse as something anyone could do.

Accountability doesn’t look like lying about trying to kill someone. Remorse and amends doesn’t look like making money off of a history of abuse and predation – without the consent of the people whom you have harmed – or soft-pedaling this behavior as “what many addicts do” (no, actually, many addicts manage to not try to kill people while high), as “age-appropriate” and “less overtly predatory” than it could have been, etc. Remorse doesn’t look like comparing the near killing of a human being to the unwitting neglect of an animal.

Where is his “confession” on this point? How does someone work towards “redemption” for not just withholding information about, but actively lying about a history of violence?

Where is his recognition that his framing his past behavior in this way, all while claiming to be a women’s advocate and claiming to have been “redeemed,” inherently disqualifies him from being able to see what he’s done clearly? Where is his recognition that it’s a profound and dangerous failing on his part to not see how lying about past violence makes him an unsafe person to be around, how equating much lesser offenses to attempted murder makes him unsafe to be around? Where is his recognition that at this point accountability means that he has a lot more work to do before he fully grasps the harm he’s done to others and the danger he poses as long as he continues to minimize his past behavior?

That’s what accountability looks like. That’s what remorse looks like. That’s what responsibility looks like. If Schwyzer truly grasped how serious his behavior was, he wouldn’t hesitate to withdraw from women’s spaces to make them safer – or at the very least to make women feel safer in those spaces. That’s what really being willing to accept the consequences of one’s behavior looks like – being ready to accept that you may lose certain things because your behavior was just that egregious.

But to be honest, I don’t expect Schwyzer to take on that measure of responsibility for himself – few people with a history of repeated abuse ever do. It’s a sad truth that most habitual abusers opt for changing their external behavior just enough to get by over accepting hard consequences for their actions. And we can see it in this case, where at every point Schwyzer has had to be forced out of spaces where he probably shouldn’t have been in or tried to gain access to in the first place, if he had really understood the ramifications of his past behavior.

He has responsibility for his behavior, but those around him also have a responsibility for the spaces to which he’s given access. And the question we need to be asking is not – who’s allowed in these spaces – but rather, at what point is behavior so harmful, so dangerous, so beyond the pale that it makes a person unsafe to be around? At what point does allowing that person continued access to certain spaces become tolerance of and even complicity with their behavior? Is there such a point?

I think there is. I think when we defend the right of someone who has lied – is still lying – about his past abuses to be a feminist leader, we become complicit in fostering an abuse culture where abusers are tolerated and coddled and their victims are silenced and marginalized. This is alarmingly evident in defenses of Schwyzer that are focused entirely on him and his redemption and rehabilitation and recovery, and barely mention the victims, the still-living, quite possibly still hurting and recovering themselves real people that he exploited and harmed.

We’ll be discussing chapters 6 and 7 of Whipping Girl tomorrow at 2 pm EST; anyone who doesn’t have the IRC chat info can email me at arewomenhuman2 at gmail. Feel free to get a discussion going in the comments, too!

Details about how to get the info on the chat site are below, but first, a quick word on some guidelines for the discussion.

This is a discussion of oppression and privilege, specifically anti-trans oppression and non-trans (cis or cisgender) privilege. We don’t want reproduce those lines of oppression and privilege in our discussion, so for cis participants, that means deferring to the voices and lived experiences of trans participants. A good rule of thumb for cis participants (and anyone with any kind of privilege dialoguing with someone who doesn’t have that privilege) is to listen more than we speak. There are also some good guidelines on checking privilege in this post, particularly the section on “How to approach minority spaces.” Please try to check the post out (or at least that one section) before the discussion.

Folks who are on Twitter should be getting direct messages from me with the URL/server/channel info for the IRC chat. Everyone else should email me at [arewomenhuman2 at gmail dot com] for that info.

The chatroom is open now for anyone who wants to hang out there and get some small conversations going beforehand. Feel free to comment there and/or here!

Anyway, I’m back! And I’ve got a group reading project for anyone who’s interested in joining me :p I’ve wanted to have a book discussion on the blog for a while now. When I got Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on the Scapegoating of Femininity as a Christmas gift, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to start up a reading group.

The first discussion will be this Saturday, Jan, 28, in the early afternoon. I’ll post more details about the exact time and venues in coming days, but there’ll be a live-chat and also an opportunity for people who can’t make it for the live-chat to discuss on an open-thread here on the blog. We’ll aim to have about 1/4 of the book read for the first discussion.

Folks on twitter can follow the discussion and planning on the hashtag #wgirl.

Who’s in? Leave a comment letting me know, and feel free to make suggestions about what questions we can discuss and how we should approach the discussion.

This morning my daughter asked me if her dad pees out of his butt.

Back up for a moment. Mr. G and I are both feminists (shocker, I know), and committed to applying what we believe about gender equality and female empowerment to how we parent. Part of what that means for us is providing our toddler with accurate, age-appropriate information and terminology about her body and human anatomy in general.

So when she started saying a few months ago that her pee comes out of her butt, I explained to her that it actually comes from her vulva. (“Urethra” seemed like more detail than a 2 year old really needed.) Of course she wanted to know if her dad and I have vulvas, too. I explained that I have a vulva too, but her dad doesn’t. I may have explained that her dad has a penis. If I did, she didn’t remember.

Back to this morning’s conversation, then, which went something like this:

Kiddo: Does papa pee from his butt?
Me: Uh, no…*pause* Papa pees out of his penis.
Kiddo: He pees out of his penis?
Me: Yes.
Kiddo: Pe-nis?
Me: Yes.
[This may have gone on for a couple more rounds. Nightmares of my daughter randomly going up to strangers and blurting out "penis" - or worse, asking them if they have one - may have flashed through my head.]
Kiddo: Do you have a penis?
Me: No, I have a vulva.
Kiddo: Do I have a penis?
Me: No, you have a vulva too.

And so on. It became clear that she had more questions about this, so I explained further that her dad’s penis is in the same place as her and my vulva is.

And then I felt a moment of panic, because I could see she was heading towards asking more general questions, not just about her body or her dad’s or mine, and I didn’t know quite what to tell her. Translating what I’m so accustomed to writing here on the blog – gender isn’t determined by genitals, that sex and gender both come in a diverse array, not in rigid, mutually exclusive binaries – for a toddler? I didn’t quite know where to start.

Telling her boys have penises and girls have vulvas was out, of course, as it’s not true. Most boys have penises and most girls have vulvas, but some girls have penises and some boys have vulvas? Closer, but potentially more complicated than she can understand right now, and leaves out intersex and/or nonbinary people, whom we haven’t really talked to her about yet.

I finally settled on “Most people either have a vulva or a penis.” This seemed to satisfy her. And it seemed to me like an answer that gave her the information she was curious about without imposing universal claims on other people’s bodies or genders, and also leaving space for future conversations about sex and gender.

This brief conversation set of a frequent line of thought for me. Namely, about how the uncertainties and unexpected challenges of parenting are compounded by our choice to parent our child according to principles we weren’t raised by, and to which we’re quite new ourselves. And this applies to much of my life outside parenting. It can be scary territory.

Coming to believe something different that what you were raised to believe doesn’t erase all your prior socialization. I have a lot of lingering discomfort around talking openly and honestly about anything I was taught to consider “sexual.” This morning, some part of me was deeply uncomfortable with discussing not just penises in the abstract with our daughter, but my husband’s body specifically. Despite the fact there was nothing remotely sexual about our conversation, that it was simple, age-appropriate curiosity, that my daughter had a right to an honest answer and I had no reason to withhold one.

And at the same time I was conscious that shutting down, redirecting the conversation, or otherwise denying her an honest answer would send the message that these things were secrets, not to be discussed, not to be asked about. In fact reacting that way would have had, in the long run, the exact effect I was socialized to perceive in the conversation: it would have taught her to sexualize bodies, by seeing knowledge about them as taboo.

It may not be so long before my daughter can sense my hesitation, my searching for words, my awkwardness and desire to bolt in these conversations. I know these kinds of conversations between parents and children are often (always?) awkward for at least one party. But I don’t want her to think these things are secrets or wrong to ask about. For her sake as well as my own, I want to to work to make minimize my discomfort with talking about sex, to have a healthier attitude about it.

And this is the other scary part: I’m figuring out how to do this on the fly. Which is also part of the nature of parenting. Still, as a parent who has consciously rejected much of parenting “wisdom” from the communities Mr. G and I grew up in, I feel a heightened sense of being in uncharted territory. We have so few models for how we want to relate to to the kiddo. The conservative evangelical blueprint for “doing things right” as a parent is now mostly a set of guidelines to what we don’t want to do as parents.

Figuring out what we should do instead? That’s a lot harder. That requires actually seeking out people and communities who’re forging new models for parenting. Models that are often not as socially supported as “traditional” conservative models. Models that can seem less time-and-trial tested, less proven – even as I realize that the supposedly “time-tested” models haven’t worked out so great so far, certainly not for me or many people I know.

This is one of the things I think people who haven’t spent much time in or around conservative evangelical communities (or similar high-demand groups) really don’t understand. About why people stay, what people get out of it. One of the big attractions is the psychological assurance that having someone tell you what the “right way” to do things can bring. More than that, it’s having a whole community of people who are ready to affirm the exclusive awesomeness of this “right way,” who you can look to as “right way” examples and success stories. It’s the power of a common vocabulary, shared commitments and frustrations, living out the same blueprint together with so many other people.

This might sound contradictory, given what I’ve written about the ongoing negative impact this cultural emphasis on always “doing things right” has had on me personally, and how the seemingly endless litany of things you have to make certain you’re doing the right way is an extremely powerful means of controlling people. And it is absolutely that.

But part of what makes it so powerful is precisely the sense of security and community it offers, feelings that can coexist right alongside intense negative feelings about striving for the unattainable standard of “God’s way,” or not being able to choose how to live, or not being able to escape an oppressive family or church community. In fact it can be precisely this deliberately cultivated and ingrained confidence that one is doing things “God’s way” that gives people the ability to so thoroughly repress or deny negative feelings about being part of a high control religious group. That’s part of what makes it such a powerful tool for manipulating and controlling people.

And this is why I’m so grateful for feminist parenting blogs like bluemilk and Raising My Boychick. They make me feel not quite so alone in trying to cobble together an approach to parenting that doesn’t always come organically or easily. Because that kind of community support is important. Not a community that dictates a blueprint for “doing things right,” not a self-congratulatory, exclusionary community, but a community struggling together to turn ideals and principles into action, providing support and shelter through all the complications and unforeseen challenges and unsolicited lectures about how we’re doing it all wrong. Ideally, anyway.

All of that from a question about whether my husband pees out of his butt. Make of that what you will!

I’ve written a bit about the narrow, dehumanizing stereotypes that characterize most representations of women of color, especially black women, in mainstream media. So you might understand why I’m so excited about Pariah, a movie opening this week about a young black woman beginning to explore her sexuality and gender identity and dealing with implications of this on her relationships with family and friends.

Not only is Pariah about a queer, gender non-conforming woman of color, it’s written and directed by Dee Rees, herself a black lesbian. A big contributor to negative images of women of color is that most entertainment that depicts us are produced by people who aren’t women of color (and this goes for any marginalized group). It’s not that it’s impossible for someone to produce an authentic and nuanced portrayal of lives and communities they’ve never experienced. But it’s extremely difficult when the bulk of power to tell stories about a marginalized group – and therefore shape perceptions about that group – lies in the hands of people who are societally privileged. This easily lends itself to stereotyped, two-dimensional, and/or prejudiced portrayals.

(I’ll try to post a transcript of this later. ht to @NorthStarPics, from the production company run by Rees and Nekisa Cooper, for bringing this clip to my attention.)

So I’m thrilled that Pariah is getting the attention and acclaim it as a film that is created by a queer black woman and is about a queer black woman. Being able to tell our own stories and exercise creative control over how we are portrayed is an incredibly powerful thing. It’s especially powerful when story tellers, like Dee Rees has done, make an effort to depict marginalized identities as not monolithic, encompassing a diversity of experiences and perspectives – you know, just like anyone else! Telling a single story about a group of people is an incredibly effective way to dehumanize them.

I’m also loving that the critical acclaim and attention Pariah is receiving has created a space for other women of color who are queer and/or gender non-conforming to reflect on their identities and coming out process. Here are a few of my favorite personal reflections on Pariah:

On Autostraddle, Spectra discusses how Pariah spoke to her as a Nigerian immigrant to the U.S. and masculine presenting woman of color:

I remember holding my breath during pivotal scenes in the movie — like when Alike was forced to put her earrings back on before she returned home in an effort to hide her gender identity from her parents. I wondered nervously if my brother saw then the direct parallels to his own sister’s life, if he could finally understand that my protesting the outfit my mother had brought with her from Nigeria wasn’t just about defying norms for the sake of being a rebel; I really did feel more like a boy than a girl.

Salamishah Tillet’s article on Black lesbian films that paved the way for Pariah is a great read, too.

Pariah opens in national release this Friday. I’ll definitely be checking it out as soon as possible, and I hope you will, too!

10. Documents that led to C.J. Mahaney stepping down?
9.   Confirmed: SGM leader C.J. Mahaney to temporarily step down
8.   Reaction to Brent Detwiler’s documents – highlights
7.   Damage control at Covenant Life Church, pt. 1
6.   Mark Driscoll: If you don’t believe in hell, you’re going there
5.   Dianna Anderson: Dear Mr. Driscoll
4.  Ann Voskamp and Jesus as lover: Perspective from the Puritans, pt. 1
3.   Must read: On Cage Fighting, “Masculinity, Misogyny, and the Fear of Losing Control”
2.   Mark Driscoll Apologism Bingo (a top post in large part thanks to it being linked by Slacktivist! So exciting.)
1.   About Penn State

I guess people like reading about bizarre culty church scandals and Mark Driscoll. Go figure.

As for the exciting news: AWH is moving! I’ve been feeling constrained by the limits of wordpress.com as a platform, so I’m moving the blog to self-hosted WordPress. The blog’s URL will be changing, so readers will have to change their bookmarks and update their RSS feeds to the new address. I’m hoping to have the new site live on New Year’s Day (that is to say, tomorrow). I’ll make a post here when it’s up.

Happy New Year’s Eve!

Part 1 // Storify of my live-tweets // Mars Hill Documentary

I’ve noticed for some time that Mark Driscoll is at least as obsessed with money as he is with sex and gender roles – and further, his obsession with money is directly connected to his preoccupations with sex and proper gender roles. So it was interesting to see the considerable degree to which money is a major theme, if not the single dominant theme, in the Mars Hill documentary. Driscoll talks about money literally from the first minute of the film right through to the very last minute.

The douchey beginning: It takes less than a minute for Driscoll to make a nasty remark about “men in dresses.” Not one minute. The full comment reflects how how class and wealth are integral aspects of what Driscoll believes separates “manly” men from “girly” ones:

The last thing I ever thought I would be was a pastor, ’cause growing up Catholic, the pastor is a guy who lives at the church, is flat broke, is committed to never having sex, and walks around in a dress. So pretty much that was [the] last career choice of all possible career choices. – Driscoll, ~ 00:50-1:05 in the film.

Driscoll, of course, is not this kind of pastor. He owns a home. He’s not broke. He has lots of sex. He dresses in an appropriately virile fashion. And apparently, part of his job as a pastor is to make sure that everyone is informed of these facts. Repeatedly.

The vast middle: Driscoll repeatedly regales viewers, accompanied by sad womp-womp music in the background, with tales of the days when Mars Hill was “broke” and “homeless.” Homeless,” apparently, means “renting out someone else’s building for services rather than owning our own property” and “broke” means “not having as much money as other churches.”

Bonus: the use of “ghetto” (though not by Driscoll) to describe the temporary housing of the Mars Hill offices and three male church staff in the Driscoll home. Staff who, by the way, despite being grown and capable adults, left Driscoll’s wife Grace to do their dishes and clean up after them. Real manliness, y’all!

Driscoll talks about Mars Hill like it’s a business (to be fair, like most megachurches, it is one). In fact, he seems to see churches in general in business terms. He describes established denominations starting new churches as equivalent to a big business opening a new branch – denominations simply “write a fat check” as seed money and they’re good to go.

So it’s not surprising that Driscoll also casts Mars Hill as a brash and cutting-edge startup that “innovates” and bucks church traditions out of necessity (read: being “broke”). Traditional churches simply use their oodles of money to try to “buy cool” instead of innovating themselves.

The “absolute gamechanger” in Mars Hill’s history: receiving gigantic sums of money from wealthy donors. The first large donors to Mars Hill – a couple who single-handedly donated $200,000 – are described as “the first ones to believe in the possibility of what we were doing.” Because, as my husband says, you can tell who’s the first to believe in you by who gives you a large amount of cash.

The real kicker, though, is that Driscoll immediately follows this rhapsodizing about rich benefactors whose generosity saved Mars Hill from imminent demise with the sage conclusion that these donations came in because “God showed up….There’s another Trinity behind Larry, Curly, and Moe [Driscoll and his fellow pastors] actually putting this thing together.” In case that’s not clear, he equates people donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mars Hill so that they could renovate a run down church building with divine intervention and favor.

Why doesn’t God “show up” and help actual poor people? This remains a mystery we don’t really need to question. But we can rest assured that God takes time out of the divine plan to make sure people like Mark Driscoll have awesome renovated church buildings so their churches can grow. And we can tell who God really favors by who has big churches with lots of money, obviously.

The shocking conclusion: Let’s start with some context.

• In fiscal year 2010, Mars Hill received about $13 million dollars in general giving, and is on track for $14-15 million dollars in giving for FY 2011.
• Mars Hill owns over $16 million in total net assets
• Between FY 2008 and 2010, their “excess revenue over expenses” – ahem, that is to say, their annual profit – has ballooned from $15,000 to $2.1 million dollars.
  [all numbers from the Mars Hill annual report, thanks WeenatcheetheHatchet for pointing me to this]

Keep these numbers in mind as I tell you how this shining record of Mars Hill’s history, this testament of “God’s work” and Mars Hill’s witness, ends. Given these numbers and what’s come before, you might think Driscoll would conclude by talking some more about how God has showed Mars Hill with money favor. Or perhaps with one more nostalgic anecdote about how “poor” the church used to be, but no longer. You might think that, but you’d be so very wrong.

Long story short? The documentary ends with Driscoll complaining at some length that Mars Hill “has often, quite frankly, really stunk at giving,” then trying to guilt people into giving more money to the church.

No, really. In Driscoll’s mind, “most of the people in the church need to be giving a whole lot more.”

[Partial transcript] Mars Hill has often really just, quite frankly, stunk at giving, and I think the last thing to be saved is a person’s wallet. And so I’m just going to tell you that most of the people in the church need to be giving a whole lot more.

Some of you are being generous. I’m not talking to you. For those people, we’ll have a separate conference for you in a phone booth.

For everybody else, the sad, cold, hard truth is about 24 percent of people at Mars Hill this year have given nothing. In addition, another 41 percent have given $500 or less. So that’s 65-ish percent of Mars Hill, two-thirds of Mars Hill’s twelve thousand people who are giving nothing or nearly nothing….

And I want you to ask this question of yourself. At the end of the year, how much do you anticipate that God wants you to give? We’re at that place now where it is going to take everyone being very generous to open up an opportunity to welcome nine thousand more people, all the new churches, seats, opportunities.

So is it about the money? Yes, it’s about spending the money to reach people for Jesus. Everything costs something. And we think that if you love Jesus and you believe people are going to hell, you should give at least as much money to that as toilet paper, and many of you aren’t.

Bottom line: you can do better. We love you and we trust in the grace of God. You will be more generous.

People are getting saved more than ever. Churches are getting planted more than ever. Leaders are rising up more than ever. Opportunities are surfacing more than ever. And this is the best possible time to get onboard, to pray, give, serve, because I promise you, what comes next is the kind of thing that you’re going to tell your grandkids about.

As I said while live-tweeting, you could land yourself into a coma if you had to drink every time Driscoll mentions money. But it wasn’t until these final minutes that I realized that money isn’t simply a recurring motif in the film, but rather what it’s about. The final note of a film like this is the take-away message – not necessarily the consciously intended message, but a moment that sticks in the viewer’s memory, precisely because of its finality, because it’s the last message you hear.

And this is the message Driscoll chooses to leave viewers with: God wants you do give us more money. You can show you love Jesus by how much of your money you give to me (note: not to charity, not even to Christian causes, but to Driscoll’s church specifically). If you don’t give us money, Jesus is going to send people to hell. Please ignore the fact that we believe in predestination, and no amount of money or time you spend on church will change supposedly preordained divine decisions about who ends up in heaven and hell. Don’t sweat the details! Just do better with the whole giving us money thing.

I mean – you can’t even call this an ‘appeal’ for more money. It’s blatant money grubbing, privileged and entitled grumbling from the pastor of what’s undoubtedly one of the wealthiest independent churches in the country, if not the world, and unashamed emotional and spiritual manipulation.