Gospel Prism

Thanks to DJ Chuang, who pointed out this rebuttal from Judy Abolayfa, who was quoted in the Salon article, it seems as though the writer of the article did do what I thought happened, that is a cut up job on Mars Hill. But is this really anything new?

Listen to how Lauren Sandler, the writer of the Salon article, depicts Judy:

For Judy Abolafya, a young mother in her early thirties, it was harder to come around to the Driscolls’ version of what a woman should be. As she sets out coffee cake on the kitchen table in her Seattle apartment, straining to be heard over her infant daughter’s cries, Abolafya tells me without apology that she never wanted to have children. She shudders as her daughter wails, shaking her auburn ponytail. “Listening to her like that just grates on me.” She grimaces. In a high chair at the table, her toddler, Asher, glumly pokes at blocks of cheese with grubby fingers, periodically mashing them into a paste he rubs into his black Metallica T-shirt. “Let’s face it. Asher is whiny and clingy and talks back. It’s dull and tedious here — there are myriad things I don’t enjoy about being at home, but it’s a responsibility.”

This life of homebound wifely submission is the opposite of what Abolafya thought she wanted, and the opposite of what she had. Before she met her husband, Ari, Abolafya toured all over the world with bands like Bush and Candlebox, staying at four-star hotels, living life on her own terms. She made a great income heading up merchandising on tours, managed it well, enjoyed her freedom, and was confident and outspoken. Now she defines that behavior as prideful, even if she misses it. “Everything was great when my conversion happened. I was making money, I was about to take a trip to Mexico, I was totally in control of my life,” she tells me. “My life is much harder, not easier, now that I’m a Christian,” she says, clenching her teeth against Asher’s droning whine. “We had originally planned not to have kids, but now we have to do our best to repopulate our city with Christians.”

Abolafya’s conversion was a total surprise to her. She was a nonbeliever who accompanied her husband, Ari, to a service at Mars Hill — he was curious to check out the “tattooed punk-rock church” he had heard about. That Sunday, one of the church’s worship bands was playing an electric version of “Amazing Grace” toward the end of the service, its loud and powerful sound filling the giant space. Suddenly Abolafya realized she was sobbing and couldn’t stop. That night she gave her heart to Jesus. “It wasn’t like I was looking for a solution, or that my life was a problem in any way,” she explains. In fact, the problems were just beginning.

At a weekly Bible study class at a Mars Hill pastor’s home, Abolafya first heard about the doctrine of wifely submission. The pastor’s wife gave Abolafya a book to study called “The Fruit of Her Hands,” which can essentially be summed up in Ephesians 5:22: “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.” When Abolafya stretched out on her couch one evening to read the first chapter of the book, she screamed and threw it across the room. But she prayed to God and was led back to the Bible, to understand Wilson’s perspective. In the Bible, Abolafya found story after story about women being willfully deceived, following their own desires, wreaking travesty in their relationships and homes. In these stories she saw signs of her own past, her mother’s behavior, her friends’ actions. She began to submit to Ari about purchases and plans she wanted to make.

Abolafya no longer reads secular books or speaks to her old friends, She is now a deacon at Mars Hill and is responsible for planning the weddings held there, which always include a biblical explanation of marriage and gender roles; each year Mars Hill averages about one hundred marriages between couples within the congregation, all of whom must agree with this doctrine. Between her marriage ministry, the women’s Bible study she runs, her two small children, and taking care of her husband and her home, Abolafya says she doesn’t have time for many relationships anyway, and when she starts to home-school her kids soon, her time will be even tighter. “It’s not what I ever imagined,” she tells me, “or even what I ever wanted, but it’s my duty now, and I have to learn to live with that.”"

And here’s how Judy responds:

I’m nothing short of furious that Ms. Sandler felt it was ok to pick & choose snippets of our conversation and weave them together to create a more controversial story. I write this, not so much to defend myself, but to defend my family who she’s dragging through the mud in the name of journalism.

First of all, yes, I admitted that there was a time when I did not want children. What she curiously chose to leave out of the article, is that once I got older and had a change of heart, my husband & I tried for almost a year to conceive our son. And during my pregnancy, I had a dangerous complication that threatened his life. My heart was breaking because I loved him so much – even before he was born. My faith in Jesus and my friends at Mars Hill (both women and men) were what kept me strong during the 88 days that I was in and out of the hospital on strict bed rest. Sure the kids drive me nuts sometimes, but why can’t I admit that without being accused of not wanting to be a mother??? Have any of you tried to do a two hour interview with someone while your 2 year old and newborn are vying for your attention? Yes, I was frustrated. Do I wish I didn’t have my children? Of course not. And this quote: “We had originally planned not to have kids, but now we have to do our best to repopulate our city with Christians” is insane.

Secondly, there is no reason for anyone to feel sorry for me. I am not a woman who has been put in a cage only to be let out for procreating and to fix dinner.

To suggest that I am at the effect of a misogynist husband and church is hilarious when you consider the real sexism that I experienced in the music industry as a single woman. I toured with a band once whose tour manager used to make jokes that I should play “bunk roulette� with the guys on the bus. I got kicked off a tour for the simple fact that I was a woman because the drummer’s girlfriend thought he’d hit on me. And I couldn’t go to a venue without local security guards assuming I was a groupie or that one of the guys in the band was my boyfriend.

I praise God for delivery me from that world and blessing me with a husband who loves me and treats me like gold.

So go ahead, believe what you will. I expect that none of this will change anyone’s mind about me, Mars Hill, or Jesus but I had a few things I wanted to get off my chest.

-Judy

I think this certainly corresponds to what I was saying about the media. They generally have an agenda and therefore, they will slant things accordingly. It’s as if Mars Hill solely exists to repopulate the Seattle with zombie-like Christians.

You can read on the blogs that correct some of Ms. Sandler’s Misrepresentations…

Knowing God Blog

Rabe Ramblings, “A Trip to Mars”