Invasion of the Body Snatchers: An Interview with Lilian Calles Barger
An Interview with Lilian Calles Barger
Interviewers: Andy Crouch and Jennifer Goodson
April 1, 1999
Why are we obsessed about our bodies? Lillian Calles Barger says it's because we hate them. Barger, a CPA and founder of the Damaris Project in Dallas, Texas, has done notable work in recent years in bringing evangelical theology and women's issues together. Editorial board member Jennifer Goodson and editor-in-chief Andy Crouch talked with her—in the disembodied format of a conference call—about why bodies mean so much, and so little, in contemporary culture.
JG: Why did you begin thinking about the body and our culture's obsession with it?
LCB: Several years ago I became interested in women's issues and feminist theory and the possibility of engaging in a constructive dialogue with this particular worldview. I basically set out to see where the gospel could be relevant among the ideas that feminist theorists had presented. The issue of the body quickly surfaced as one of the main issues that feminist theory and postmodernism are looking at. The body, its meaning, how it's socially constructed, and therefore how it's used against women—these are very hot issues.
I began to see that the body had been stripped of any significant meaning. It simply means nothing. This, of course, was unacceptable for me because I knew that God had made me, not only physically, but also gendered—I am female—and therefore it had to have some meaning. So I set out to look at the biblical roots of the significance of the gendered body.
JG: To go back a step, then, what got you involved in women's studies?
LCB: I was about to celebrate a milestone birthday, and I started examining my own life, where I'd been, where I was going. I started to see that there had been some strong influences in my life and in the lives of the women that I knew that I hadn't ...
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