PDF Ebook Borderline: Reflections on War, Sex, and Church, by Stan Goff
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Borderline: Reflections on War, Sex, and Church, by Stan Goff
PDF Ebook Borderline: Reflections on War, Sex, and Church, by Stan Goff
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In his sharp, observant book, Stan Goff grapples with a problem crucial to modern Christian values. The sanctification of war and contempt for women are both grounded in a fear that breeds hostility, a hostility that valorizes conquest and murder. In ‘Borderline’, Goff dissects the driving force behind the darkest impulses of the human heart. The un-Christian history of loving war and hating women are not merely similar but two sides of the same coin, he argues, in an “autobiography” that spans two millennia of war and misogyny. ‘Borderline’ is the personal and conceptual history of an American career army veteran transformed by Jesus into a passionate advocate for nonviolence, written by a man who narrates his conversion to Christianity through feminism.
- Sales Rank: #6841181 in Books
- Published on: 2015-07-30
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x 6.02" w x .0" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 470 pages
Review
A health warning: this is not a book for the squeamish. Stan Goff is a former American soldier and Vietnam war veteran. He served in the airborne Rangers and Special Forces Groups. He is very frank about his experiences during this time, admitting to terrorizing and brutalizing the weak and poor, burning houses, killing livestock, maiming people and exploiting women for sex. He describes himself as a divorced alcoholic who left a damaged trail that involved the suffering of his own daughter, 'avery young witness to this insanity' (p. xvii). And he took a human life. (Alan Billings Theology, Vol. 119 No. 3, May/June 2016)
About the Author
Stan Goff spent most of the final three decades of the twentieth century as a soldier―most of that in what is euphemistically called "special operations". He is sometimes a writer, sometimes an "activist", sometimes a husband, dad, and granddad, and sometimes a gardener.
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Exposing Violent Masculinity
By Johnny Walker
It's likely that only Stan Goff could have written this book - and thank God that he did. Reading through the some 400 pages of Borderline is akin to sitting with your doctor as she relays diagnosis after diagnosis of your sick and failing body. The pages are often jarring and unsettling, disclosing secrets you'd rather remain blind to, yet they are desperately needed and therapeutic - even if the therapy is painful. Whenever someone commited to the church and its Lord exposes the ways the church has failed to be faithful to God's gracious Word, we ought to humbly receive this chastisement as the merciful discipline of God. To confess Christ as Lord is to stand under his judgment, which, as Rowan Williams puts it, is to receive the truth "about us as human beings implicated in a network of violence and denial" (OCT, 81).
Goff begins,
I want to tell you some stories, but I will need a little theory, a little philosophy, a few schemas and paradigms, and a little cultural criticism to make the stories tell you the stories within the stories. Narrative theologians say that Christians are a 'story-formed community,' so if stories are formative, then we have to attend to all the stories that for us, especially those stories that might be forming us prior to the story of Christ and that might hold us back from fuller participation in the story of Christ. (xv)
The stories within the stories that Goff hopes to unveil are the stories of masculinity, or manliness, and its relation to war, as well as manliness and its relation to women. Both of which, of course, are united by a shared vision of masculinity which creates an intersection between war and gender (or sex). All of which find themselves colliding together in Goff's own autobiography, as a long-time war veteran turned feminist-Christian-pacifist.
The thesis is simple and, even at first glance, persuasive - all the while being disturbing.
War is implicated in masculinity. Masculinity is implicated in war. Masculinity is implicated in the contempt for and domination of women. Together, these are implicated in the greatest sins of the church.
Borderline is about two questions. First, why have Christians been so warlike? Second, why do Christian men still caricature, dominate, misrepresent, condescend to, and dismiss women? I am convinced that these two questions must be answered together. (1)
So in order to answer this, Goff tells a couple big stories, "provid[ing] a rough genealogy of church-and-war alongside church-and-sex in which the reader can discern how often, and often terribly, the church has allowed itself to be pulled away from the example and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth" (3). The narrative narrows as it moves forward, beginning in early Christendom, working up to Enlightenment Europe, spending a good length of time in US history, and ending with Goff's own experience in the military, beginning in Vietnam and stretching to the end of the 20th century.
For Christians then, especially Christians in the West, especially Christian men in the West, especially white Christian men in the West, this is a kind of "group autobiography" (6). One which plants us (I'm writing as a white Christian man) within a story that we'd rather not be a part of us, but which nonetheless we must confront, because it continues to determine how our lives are lived.
Goff writes as a pacifist, however, he is clear that "As a Christian, I am not trying in this book to 'make the case' for pacifism. I don't need an account of the state, war, or masculinity to underwrite my commitment to nonviolence, because that commitment is based on my belief that war has been abolished in the kingdom of God, even as we live now between Pentecost and Parousia" (5). So this book is not a book for pacifism, nonetheless, there is obviously much prodding that direction, especially as Goff demonstrates the way in which war, as a set of practices, cultivates masculinity-conceived-as-domination, which has been so detrimental to women. That is definitely not to say that only pacifists will find this book worthwhile. That history and analysis set forth here are such that any Christian, especially just-war Christians, must deal with.
Stan Goff is a very gifted writer and wonderful story teller - even if the stories he tells are not so wonderful. The book is very readable and engaging. He rangers from discussion of the Crusades to witch-hunts, to a cultural analysis of the movie Man On Fire, to ramblings in Enlightenment philosophy and psycho-analysis, even touching on American ideals of respectability and eugenics.
The book prompts question after question. Some of which go answered, many of which do not. His skilful wielding of wide of feminist theory, helpfully gives readers new eyes to discern the hidden ways in which harmful power arrangements are upheld in apparently neutral cultural myths and practices. Especially illuminating was Goff's (Augustinian) insights about the often perverse nature of sex (married or non-married) within a society of masculinity-as-domination. Any Christian sexual ethic must deal with the uncomfortable relationship between eros and violence.
All in all, this a very important and well executed book. One which I am still trying to come to terms with - and which I expect the church as whole needs to come to terms with. Discussion over gender today is confused on all quarters and while Goff does not give us a prescription for how to go forward, he does offer certain delimitations that should be commended. Likewise, debates over the Christian engagement in violent conflict will continue, but Goff has rightly pointed our attention to the way in which decisions here have dramatic affects upon women and our understanding of gender.
There is honestly so much that could be said about this book. Its scope is massive and I don't pretend at all to have done it just. Many areas demand further reflection and investigation and I suspect certain points need much greater nuance and theological/philosophical consideration. Nonetheless, I earnestly commend this book and I pray it receives a wide hearing.
It deserves it and the church downright needs it.
NOTE: This book was provided free of charge in exchange for an honest review.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Mr. Goff's opus
By Charles Allen Lynn
This is not a quick read. However, Mr. Goff has much to say and the effort to read his message is well worth the time spent. This is not a war hating, man bashing, Jesus loves you type of book. It's more analytical than that. Any fool can rant. Mr. Goff backs up his views with solid support, intertwining his own first hand experiences with relevant research. This book is an informed statement about the inherent cruelty of war with regard to women and how the church has been co-opted into the mess. Anyone scratching their heads and wondering how we ended up where we are today might find some answers here.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A necessary book for a feminist, for a literary scholar, for a Christian
By rebecca
There's a special feeling you get, as a reader, when you open a door into a work and suddenly doors are flying open everywhere. As a feminist academic, I recall experiencing this especially when I first read The Second Sex: suddenly things started falling into place, categories of reality shifting, veils lifting, texts revealing themselves. This book, an amalgamation of memoir, historical analysis, philosophy, and cultural criticism, I see as a necessary companion to The Second Sex.
We women have been alert for some time to the powers and systems that have forced us not only into self-contortion but into loving our pain, but men, masculinity, the masculine as object and subject through texts and history, have been curiously neglected, and men have been excluded (or have excluded themselves, for reasons that this book makes clear) from this conversation. Borderline is a needed book because without the perspective of the male who can speak plainly about the problematic dominance of masculinities, our vision is fractured.
With any work on sex and gender, a lot of self-understanding (sometimes of a wry or even horrified nature) is entailed in the "awakening" moment - as one begins to identify forces that have dictated fear, desire, self-definition, submission, and rage. I imagine the male reader may feel this more fiercely than I did - but I can also imagine a tremendous catharsis.
I especially recommend Borderline to anyone teaching the "Great Books" of the Western tradition (by men, for men, about men). Goff's observations on war, masculinity, sex, and history give new vitality to one's encounter with foundational texts, as well as "Christian" myths, and with modern works dealing with violence, masculinity, and sex.
It's also a book that can help in one's attempt to live a Christian life, though this is not something I often note in a review.
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