So out of the 20+ speakers who are scheduled for the upcoming Fall 2015 Liberty University convocation this year, only 5 of these are women, and one of them has a man scheduled to speak the same day.
First of all, I would like to take a moment to write specifically to David Nasser. Pastor Nasser, I applaud you and your work here at Liberty University. I do. I am in full support of you and everything you have done for this school even in the single year you have been here. I could not be happier with a campus pastor. I know you faced a lot of opposition from a lot of different people here since you joined the LU family. And on behalf of the student body and those who agree with me, I sincerely apologize. You do not deserve, nor have you done anything to deserve, the criticism and the terrible words you received. You are a blessing to this school and I am excited and expectant to see what positivity you bring to us in the years to come.
But, to whom it may concern, and to you as well, Pastor, I want to extend a suggestion: You need to bring on more women convocation speakers. Approximately 56.5% of both the residential and online population or Liberty University is female. That is your demographic. These young women are the majority. Young women don’t need middle age, married men with 2.5 children telling them how to live out their faith. They need older women who have successfully navigated the world both as a Christian and as a woman, as well as everything else that comes along with those titles. If any of the young women (or any of the women for that matter), who sit on campus or who watch live streams of convocation come from a similar background I do, they didn’t have a lot of women leaders. They didn’t have good, godly, Christian examples to look up to. They had mothers and grandmothers, yes, but they almost certainly did not have other women they were taught about or they heard about who were successful in their fields and lives and who were also Christians. I know I did not. Now, we are in college or we are continuing our education, and in this time we have to expand our horizons and see farther beyond our homes and our childhoods, we still do not have strong, Christian women to look up to and to sit under. We are still listening to men. And yes, men are the ones who God ordained to be pastors. I understand that and agree with that. It is biblically-based and sound.
But, Liberty University, you do not invite just pastors onto your stage. You invite all kinds of people into Vines Center. You invite politicians and journalists and authors and comedians and missionaries and performers into our Liberty Bubble. So why can’t any of these people be women? There are women politicians and journalists and authors and comedians and missionaries and performers who are all successful and who are very good examples to bring in. Women have just as much experience in their lifetimes as their male counterparts do, and sometimes, they even have more experience. Yet we do not see them, and we do not know how to find these women. Liberty, you have an incredible opportunity to pour into the lives of these women. Because women are the doer’s of the world. Women do not sit and talk as men do. Women stand up, and women wake up before dawn, and women get things done. And this generation of women are so eager to get up and to move and to get things done. But when we do not see any other generations in front of us encouraging us on, we become disheartened and discontent.
This generation of Christian women do not need an older generation of men telling them the same thing 20 different ways. We NEED to see more successful women. We NEED to see Christian women who have overcome the stigma of being a woman. We do not need men telling us how they think we should succeed. We need women showing use how they themselves succeeded.
You have one TBA spot open in the Fall semester. I ask and I pray that you all deeply consider bringing in a woman to speak.
Frustrated and discouraged,
Emily E.
http://www.rebeccakiessling.com
ReplyDeleteRebecca Kiessling…conceived in rape, but now she's an attorney who speaks out against abortion. I had the privilege of eavesdropping as she gave an interview in the middle of The March For Life. Rebecca is sharp as a tack, knows her statistics, and totally destroys arguments that favor exceptions for abortion in cases of rape and incest. I haven't heard her talk about her faith much, but with her being one of the top pro-life speakers, it shouldn't be too difficult to get an idea of where she stands. What's interesting is that she is really and timid when argumentative liberals attack her viciously on TV, but she is still one of the top pro-life speakers, and knows her stuff inside and out.
ReplyDeleteEmily,
ReplyDeleteI stumbled upon your post, and as an alum with both my BA and MA from LU, I want to offer you a few thinking points.
You said, "Young women don’t need middle age, married men with 2.5 children telling them how to live out their faith. They need older women who have successfully navigated the world both as a Christian and as a woman, as well as everything else that comes along with those titles." While I agree with a few of your thoughts, the way that you're approaching this is a little inflammatory. I have learned a great deal about faith and grace and mercy from middle-aged men with 2.5 children. There is a need for their voices (and a need for the voices of the marginalized and oppressed and ignored). John Piper and Matt Chandler and Francis Chan, for all of their faults, are indeed men, and the fact that we're women doesn't make their teaching any less applicable. In fact, we degrade ourselves in implying as much-- women don't need a special version of the gospel or spiritual truths in order to comprehend them.
And later you say, "You invite politicians and journalists and authors and comedians and missionaries and performers into our Liberty Bubble. So why can’t any of these people be women?. . . Women have just as much experience in their lifetimes as their male counterparts do, and sometimes, they even have more experience. Yet we do not see them, and we do not know how to find these women." First, some of the invited speakers are women, and it's not fair to ignore their presence (though there should be more, yes). And second, I don't think that it's solely the University's job to fill your world with role models. Is it a perk? Sure. But you have a personal responsibility to seek out women of faith, women who are blazing the way with political reform, missionary work, scientific advancements, and theological contributions. There is a wealth of information available to you, and many of these heroines can be found in the classrooms at Liberty University. A woman doesn't need a stage and a microphone to be worthy of imitation and esteem.
At the end of the day, I encourage you to take initiative to discover and hopefully develop relationships with female role models, regardless of whether they appear on convocation's lineup.
I appreciate you tackling these tough topics, and I hope you accept this with the spirit in which it was intended. LU holds a dear, dear place in my heart, and I think, especially when offering criticism, that it should be done fairly and with an even hand.
- Joy Beth Smith
Okay, I had a very well thought out reply for you, but then my network cut out and I lost it -_-
ReplyDeleteBasically, in a nutshell:
The men you named are pastors, I am not discouraging Liberty from bringing in brilliant pastors in to speak to the student body. I am talking about every other career path. Businesspeople, authors, speakers, politicians, athletes, those sorts of people. There are plenty of women who are succeeding in those fields and yet they aren't on our stage.
No it isn't the school's job to give us role models, but it is their job to bring in people who will ofer a wider range of experience and wisdom than they currently are. And it is extremely difficult to find women who are doing or have done those big things, because the mainstream media doesn't talk about them, which means Christian media isn't going to talk about them either, because it feeds of the mainstream. History books, even those written by christian schools or homeschooling curriculums, do not talk about the women who have helped shape history.
And while it is a person's job to find and seek out those role models in their lives, it is incredibly hard when there are no resources that are available to find those people.
The ladies of the Campus Pastors Office would love the opportunity to minister to you, Emily. We're in Green Hall and can be reached at 434-592-5411.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much!
DeleteEmily…a TBA may mean one of the presidential candidates…as well it should. However, you could privately propose that if that's the case, you'd like to hear a little bit from the candidate, and a lot from the candidate's wife, in order to energize LU Ladies to help make her the First Lady. Or, ask that the candidate focus on addressing women's issues. For that matter, ask that Convo speakers--male or female--talk about stuff that ladies need to hear about. The best person to speak on a topic that women need to hear about may not necessarily be a woman at all! As a guy who's been active in the pro-life movement, and a white guy who's been active among Asian-American Christians, I've come to realize that far too often, there's an assumption that if you're not of a certain gender, or ethnicity, that you don't have anything worth saying to a particular audience, or about a particular range of issues. I agree that the male/female ratio of speakers should probably be about 50/50, but getting hung up on that is what's called sexism. If Nasser decides to make a list of the topics he thinks most need to be addressed by the individuals best equipped to address them, then let him focus on finding the best qualified speakers, with no regard as to their gender. When you start looking for jobs, you should want to get hired because you are the most qualified candidate, right? You wouldn't want to get hired instead of a more capable guy, just because you're a female, would you? Maybe it's the topics that need to be addressed. Even then, topics that are often classified as being more related to guys or girls shouldn't always be such. Take the related topics of abortifacient contraceptives and personhood. You can't go but so far in any meaningful discussion of either without bringing up the other. When I think of the experts that I would consider looking at to speak on these topics, well, there's a male pharmacist, a male embryologist, a female who's been at the forefront of a grassroots personhood initiative, and several female doctors/breast cancer researchers/educators. The guys made it to the list because I wasn't being a sexist about it. I would expect a pharmacist who has refused to sell abortifacient contraceptives to have the scientific knowledge and conviction necessary to speak on the topic. He may or may not be a good speaker. The same goes for the specific male embryologist I have in mind…he's certainly got the science and conviction parts down pat, and has a solid faith which he shares.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand, Bernie and Dr. Carson are the only candidates that accepted the invitation. I agree that we should hear from candidate wives, especially to know what they plan to do once their husbands are elected. First Lady's have historically done their own work to better the country and it's important to know their plans just as much as it is to hear their husband's plans.
DeleteAnd no, just because someone is a male does not mean they don't have something that could benefit women, but men don't have the same experiences as women, and it seems it would be more difficult for men to level with women and understand the perspectives of women and the challenges they face from constant criticism for being both a working woman and a Christian. If a young woman needs to hear about how to work and find a balance between being a working woman and a newlywed wife, the person best suitable for women to hear that from is a woman who has been through that, not a man who talks about his experience with adjusting to life as a newlywed husband. I do plan on bringing up several couples who do ministry together who will be able to level with both the men and women in our audience, who will be able to reach out to those who are entering the engaged and newlywed stages of life (because there are a lot of those at Liberty), but who do so in a way that uplifts and builds up and encourages women to not be afraid to step out of the home, and who also encourage men to support their wives in endeavors they want to follow. Because God speaks to and moves women just as much as he does men, and young men need to know how to respond and support their wives when those moments arise.
A woman asking for equality is not sexism, men ignoring women's requests for equal representation is sexism. Sexism is a one-way street because at this point in our history, as well as previously, men have been pressuring women to fit a certain mold, and we have been at a turning point for the last several decades in order to have women seen and valued in an equal right as men. Women cannot be sexist because men (as a whole, not individually) have not been and are not currently the oppressed and discouraged gender.
As for if I personally would rather be hired because I am a female rather than a more competent man? I don't think anybody applying for any sort of job thinks that they are more competent or less competent than anyone else applying for a job at this point in the economy, and if I got hired, I wouldn't know if it was because I was a female or if I was just as competent as a man. There are workplace regulations that offer employee privacy and employers aren't allowed to say that.
And you are absolutely correct, issues like contraception and abortion aren't just female issues, but men should not think they absolutely have to have a say in the abortion debate because it's about whether or not women have a right to make that choice or not, regardless of which side of the debate you are on.
And I have noticed that during the previous year, there were not many speakers of either gender from the medical field or medical research professions, and I will be bringing that up at the meeting I will be attending.