Lutheran Church Service

Sunday morning church services are held at our church at 8:00 and 10:30 a.m., with Sunday School and Adult Bible Study held between the two services.  The 8 a.m. service comes pretty early on the weekend, especially after getting up at 5 a.m. during the week, but we attend this service almost every Sunday.  Our family belongs to a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, which is the middle-of-the-road in relation to strictness in the Lutheran religion.  Evangelical Lutheran Churches (ELCA) are the most relaxed and Wisconsin Synod are the most strict parishes in the Lutheran religion. 

We have attended the same church for approximately 16 years, with regular attendance for the past approximately 10 years.  For the first several years of our attendance, we were always early or at least on time for the 8 a.m. service, but the past couple of years our arrival has been just on time to a couple minutes late.  I have attributed this to having lost control of dressing and managing our 2 daughters, ages 9 and 12.  When they were younger, my husband and I woke them up, dressed them, fed them, and left for church.  And now, as anyone with children over the age of 6 knows, we attempt to wake them up (several different times), then end up threatening them that we are leaving in 10 minutes, and they need to get up NOW!  Anyway, back to the subject at hand, in relation to walking into church service, there are not formal assigned seats, but there are unwritten assigned seats.  Everyone always knows where every family sits in church, and it is odd when a family is not sitting in their regular pew, or within 1 or 2 pews of their regular seating arrangement.  Typically if a family is not in their regular seat, they are absent or something is up.  Yes, that’s right, somebody new to the service took their seat because the regulars were a couple minutes late. 

The dress code at our church is for the most part relatively dressy, but jeans and a sweater are fine and don’t look out of place at all.  Since we have attended this church for so many years, we know most everyone very well.  I mention this because we have become close friends with some families, so have done many different activities and been to several functions with them outside of church services and activities.  It is amusing to observe all of our personalities and behaviors in church versus in a relaxed casual atmosphere anywhere else.  The men, my husband included, clean up their language, while the boys clean up themselves and their behaviors.  The women and girls pretty much act the same except utilizing more ‘looks’ than verbal reprimandings to quiet the kids. 

During communion, standard operating procedure is for men to let their wives go ahead of them throughout the procession.  In our synod, women are not allowed to hold office, nor be a pastor, so all of the officials in our church are men.  It is the Elders of our church, who are, of course, men, who instruct us when it is our turn to go take communion, as well as the Elders who pass the collection plate and collect our money envelope.  One of the things in this religion that has changed over time is that girls who are in confirmation class (7^th and 8^th –grade) are required to acolyte, whereas only boys were required (or allowed) to acolyte when I was that age. 

According to McIntosh, men are privileged, but in my opinion within the Missouri Synod, this is an unfortunate privilege in regard to increased responsibilities and duties.  In church there are not really gender specific rules, except for the ability to hold office, which really does not offend me at all, because the way I look at it, the more offices you hold, the more meetings you attend, and I have very little spare time for meetings. 

Many people question the benefits to the relationship between church and government, as does Valenti in her article where the virginity movement was led by Evangelical Christians, the Government, religious leaders, and legislators.  The unwritten rules within the church are more related to behavior.  Sometimes the behavior within the church walls doesn’t exactly feel genuine, but that probably is not really an accurate description, as we all just clean up really well when going to church and know how to act appropriately while at church, whereas when we are together socially with our church friends, we are all immensely relaxed and relieved of our uptight good behaviors. 

We do have one black family who belongs to our church, and specifically within this family, I don’t notice any of Springer’s portrayals of the typical black woman, and in fact, the complete opposite comes to mind.  This woman is a member in the US Army, and on a number of occasions has worn different military uniforms, appearing to be and coming across as a woman with a strong personality who knows that her body is her own and not to be messed with.  In relation to other factors that would affect people’s behavior at a church service, I really can’t think of any except that the Missouri Synod does not accept/acknowledge homosexuality, so if there was someone of that orientation who was a member of our church, that might be different, but I can’t say that with 100% certainty.  I fully believe that our ‘church family’ is a very friendly group who is not hard to get along with, so for our church to ostracize someone for that just doesn’t realistically seem like it would happen. 

 

References

McIntosh, P. (1988). White Privilege and Male Privilege. In S. M. Shaw, & J. Lee, Women’s Voices/Feminist Visions:  Classic and Contemporary Readings (5th ed., pp. 75-82). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Springer, K. (2008). Queering Black Female Heterosexuality. In S. M. Shaw, & J. Lee, Women’s Voices/Feminist Visions:  Classic and Contemporary Readings (5th ed., pp. 207-212). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Valenti, J. (2009). The Cult of Virginity. In S. M. Shaw, & J. Lee, Women’s Voices/Feminist Visions:  Classic and Contemporary Readings (5th ed., pp. 181-185). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

"If You Can Read This, My Bitch Fell Off"

     I'm writing my blog in the car on the way back home from vacationing in Keystone, South Dakota.  This road trip will last ten hours, starting from the Black Hills region and ending in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

     Keystone, originated in 1883 as a mining town, but has since transformed into a summer vacation destination, which is located two miles from Mount Rushmore National Memorial and approximately twenty-five miles from Sturgis, one of the largest annual motorcycle events in the world.  Keystone has been reconstructed to resemble a sleepy, old, and dusty 1880's western town, where the main attractions are actors who stage gunfights in the street and ride horse driven wagons, cowboy inspired saloons, family restaurants, and numerous gift shops filled with fake turquoise, homemade fudge, and kitschy souvenirs.  Most of the people vacationing in this town are with their nuclear family, which consists of middle aged heterosexual parents, energetic children, and slow moving grandparents; however, an interesting sub-culture of people struck my attention as I watched the world go by, Harley Davidson Motorcycle Gangs.

     As the iron horses rumbled through the streets, each bike was louder than the next, a clear symbol of masculinity.  It was no secret that the loud pipes represented testosterone and the length of the man's penis.  These men ride "hogs" and pack their "bitch" on the back, who cling tightly to the black leather of their man.  What attracts these modern day desperadoes' to these western towns is not such a mystery for if they were born over 125 years ago, they would have been gunfighters that rode into town on a horse.

     The majority of people who drive Harley's are men.  The unwritten dress code may include:  bandanas, dark shades, sleeveless jackets, chains, heavy black boots, dusty leather chaps, and greasy jeans, but they are expected to never wear helmets.  Some have beards, most have tattoos, and as their hopped up cycle shoots off like a gun, the back of their completely degrading t-shirts say, "If you can read this, my Bitch fell off" and "It won't suck itself".  If a man can emulate the appearance of a Hell's Angel and portray a "take no shit" type of attitude, he is a life long member of this club.  In "Shame-O-Phobia", Wexler describes that men have an overwhelming fear of feeling:  incompetent, not valued, unimportant, weak, and most of all feminine; therefore, most men will try to reduce this anxiety and do whatever it takes to prove their manhood.  Riding a Harley automatically earns a man "Guy Points", by providing them with an instant hard exterior, which protects a man's masculine self-image and reduce any risk of feeling shame; however, this is often used as a cover up to hide deep seeded emotions that may be festering from either family, peer, or cultural experiences.

     I recently spoke with a man who once rode a Harley and who had experienced Sturgis first hand.  He stated that if a man trailers his bike out to Sturgis, his friends will consider him to be a "pussy", another name for a vagina that is commonly used to shame a man; however, the longer the distance a man rides his motorcycle to get to Sturgis, the more masculine he will appear to his peers.  This is similar to the ice water study mentioned in "Shame-O-Phobia" by Wexler.  When men were told that the longer they kept their hands in icy water was a measure of male sex hormones and physical fitness as opposed to female sex hormones and the ability to bond with children, they kept their hands in the freezing water much longer.

     The women who ride on the back of Harley's are less than feminine in their appearance and behaviors.  As they straddle the "hog" in a masculine fashion with a less than friendly facial expression, they are also similarly geared up in a black leather costume that represents Harley.  As their tangled hair blows in the wind and their weathered, tired skin resembles wrinkled leather, they are considered to be the "tough and owned".  It appears that these women are trying to be equal to the men in this group; however, they are oblivious to the reality that they will always be the devalued and socially dominated gender as long as they ride on the back of a Harley.

     Lorber writes in "The Social Construction of Gender", that as a process, men and women learn the norms and expectations of their gender; therefore, in a Harley gang it is clearly established that men dominate the position of authority by driving and women have less power by riding.  She continues by saying that in a gender-stratified society, men are valued more highly even if both genders are doing very similar activities.  This is interesting, because when comparing Harley men to Harley women, they are very much alike in their interests, style of clothing, and their perceived threatening public attitudes, yet unequal gender roles are present.  Lorber also states, that this stratification system places men above women of the same race and class.  Harley packs predominately contain white heterosexual members that consist of all ages; however, determining class in a Harley pack is often unrecognizable.  Even though most Harley drivers and riders may superficially appear to be of lower socio-economic status, many members lead double lives and may be doctors, lawyers, or accountants during the week, but choose to convert their identities into rebellious warriors on the weekend.

     For some Harley gangs, being a member of this exclusive club gives them the chance to be someone else for a while.  A chance to disguise themselves in different clothing, change their personality, be free from the everyday stress of inner city living, and live a life of an iron horse outlaw that they may have fantasized about since childhood.  This is understandable; however, it is surprising that Harley women, who appear to be so masculine and harsh on the outside, actually tolerate this gendered inequality sub-culture which seems almost archaic.

                                                                     References

Lorber, J. (1994).  The Social Construction of Gender.  In S.M. Shaw & J. Lee (5th Eds.),
     Womens Voices Feminist Visions (pp.126-129).  New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill.

Wexler, D. (2010).  Shame-O-Phobia.  In S.M. Shaw & J. Lee (5th Eds.), Womens Voices
     Feminist Visions (pp. 141-144).  New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill.

Managed to get into the blog

Lois Shaler