{"id":525,"date":"2011-10-07T13:25:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T17:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=525"},"modified":"2011-10-07T13:53:18","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T17:53:18","slug":"tripp-york-five-questions-with-amy-laura-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=525","title":{"rendered":"[Tripp York] Five Questions with Amy Laura Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tripp recently moved his blog, Amish Jihadi<\/a>, to The Other Journal. \u00a0This interview originally appeared on his page.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

TY: What\u2019s it like having double x chromosomes?<\/em><\/p>\n

ALH: Tricky, scary, and fun. I learned during my first months in the ministry that people aren\u2019t scared of me. People would talk to me about the mess of their lives, maybe because it was really obvious that my life wasn\u2019t all picture princess perfect. I think also it is because I am not only XX, but short. So, God seems sometimes to use me to help people be honest with themselves about their problems \u2014 their fears, vices, desires \u2014 and this somehow can, with pastoral wisdom (which sometimes God throws my way) help lead to a bit more self-awareness and even, eventually, healing for others. Given our past, dear Tripp, I should admit that, when I first arrived at Duke, I found myself thinking \u201cWow, if I were a man, I would be doing much better here.\u201d Stanley really likes men. He loves my colleague from Yale days, Eric Gregory for instance, and Sam, my beloved colleague here now. It was and sometimes still is painful to appreciate someone\u2019s work so much and to be the outsider, in part because I am XX. It was the first time in my life that I found myself wondering what it would be like *not* to be female. I had never had that thought cross my mind once, not once, before that first year teaching at Duke. Now, as scholars look to \u201cthe next generation\u201d in their field, at least around here, they look for men who look like they did, or who look like they *wish* they did, when they were starting out. We hear all sorts of nonsense, like \u201cWho will fill these great shoes,\u201d or \u201cHe has a really big motor,\u201d or, my favorite, \u201cWho has the gravitas to carry this post.\u201d Stephen Colbert could have a field day around this place. But things will change. More of the men around me need to watch that fabulous movie \u201cWhale Rider\u201d and realize that a XX scholar can be somehow used by God to teach the next generation, even the next generation of pacifist holy warriors, or whatever. By the way,\u00a0Kelly Johnson<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Therese Lysaught<\/a>\u00a0are totally holy XX warriors. You need to interview both of them. And, by the way, I could write many paragraphs about how messed up this place can be in regards to race. I love my colleagues, but a few of them are really, really confused about how much baptism must re-form us as blood kin, especially as we teach together in the South.<\/p>\n

TY: You\u2019re trapped on an island with the complete works of two authors:\u00a0Slavoj Zizek<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0John Milbank<\/a>. Whose books are the first to be turned into toilet paper?<\/em><\/p>\n

ALH: Who? Can I just have some toilet paper? Books are scratchy.<\/p>\n

TY: If you could, genuinely, solve just one problem with North American Christianity, what would it be?<\/em><\/p>\n

ALH: I would beg God to scramble our churches for a year. Acts 29 people would get all jumbled up with Unitarian Universalists, or maybe UCC. AMEZ churches would get all mixed up with PCA people. Baptists of all the various types would have to enter a blender and then get poured into different buildings, so that all of those who\u2019ve been divided are stuck with one another for a year. (That image sounds violent, I realize. Not sure how to say it better.) And, God bless them, working class Roman Catholic parishioners would have to worship and plan potlucks alongside Episcopalians (not the Anglicans, that is another story). Focus on the Family types would have to figure out how the heck to communicate with Planned Parenthood\/Stuff White People Like sorts of Christians. Anyway, you get the idea. My crazy sense of the Holy Spirit is that we are up to much more messiness with one another, as people who love Jesus, than we give ourselves credit for. We segregate ourselves in all sorts of ways because we don\u2019t really believe that the Holy Spirit is up to dealing with how much we hate one another. I think the Spirit is stronger than that. But, let me be clear, this would require a Mao-style re-education campaign. And that is why this question is crazy, and scary, and the answer must be eschatological. No forced blending, folks. I am not for that.<\/p>\n

TY: If you had to choose a spouse for me, and your only options were Sarah Palin, Camille Paglia or Kim Kardashian, who would it be?<\/em><\/p>\n

ALH: Don\u2019t know who\u00a0Kim Kardashian<\/a>\u00a0is. Sarah is a bit old for you, isn\u2019t she? And isn\u2019t Camille a lesbian? Well, I guess I\u2019d say Sarah, because then you\u2019d have to wash dishes and clean toilets, I mean, with all those cute kids to take care of. That would be good for you. But you\u2019d have to talk to her about all that moose shooting stuff<\/p>\n

TY: Who is, currently, the most important person we should all be listening to and\/or reading?<\/em><\/p>\n

ALH: Ick. This is a leadery leading leader who leads question. A proto-fascist question. \u201cThe most important person.\u201d Tripp, you are better than that. But, if this is the way you are thinking, then read yourself some early\u00a0Barth<\/a>, again and again and again. He saw what the desire for a \u201cmost important person\u201d \u201ccurrently\u201d can get you in the modern era. Bad news. Very bad news. Habermas wrote on this for a New York Times op-ed recently. (Can you link that?)<\/a>What struck me, after reading it and being scared, was that I could have knocked on Rev. Dr. William Turner\u2019s door and heard the same thing, only with much more Jesus-centered language. But many of us were struck by a big name, very old German philosopher getting out his walker to get to the computer to type a warning to us all \u2014 \u201cI have seen this before. Wake the Freaking Heck up!\u201d (That is a paraphrase, of course.) Some friends in Germany were really worried over the Obama scene prior to his election. They kept saying that they had seen this before. Some of that desperate desire for a redemptive leader has backfired, if that is the right image, as people are angry that the redemptive leader has not saved us from our misery and depression and impotence. The scenes of thousands of people cheering to rhetoric did beg for analysis, but the only people I heard over here giving that analysis were right-wing folks who were tools of big oil and such, big men with very much to lose if Obama had actually pushed through the reforms some of us thought he might push through. Now that I write this, I am guessing that some of the\u00a0Jesus Radicals<\/a>\u00a0were writing on this. Damn, should\u2019ve been reading them. (Turns out the big oil dudes needn\u2019t have been terribly scared, or that they are now threatening his children or something, to keep him from doing what, for God\u2019s sake, needs to happen in regards to oil.) Anyway, the desire for a \u201cone person to read\/listen to\/heed\/follow\u201d in our \u201ccurrent\u201d climate is horribly dangerous. Repent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tripp recently moved his blog, Amish Jihadi, to The Other Journal. \u00a0This interview originally appeared on his page. TY: What\u2019s it like having double x chromosomes? ALH: Tricky, scary, and fun. I learned during my first months in the ministry that people aren\u2019t scared of me. People would talk to me about the mess of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-ethics","category-guestposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EotM-8t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":530,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}