We’re currently featuring a variety of articles and reviews that seem to speak to the current variety of disregulated and almost unfathomable situations that have descended upon the United States. How did we get here? How can we respond? What does the Bible have to say?
Faithfully Dissident Daughters: Reclaiming Christian Womanhood Beyond Patriarchy
"We do not have a God who is unfamiliar with the realities of a female existence or a body with a womb—we have a God who bleeds and swells, loses and mourns, births and nourishes, just as we do."
You First: A Love That Will Not Let Me Go
"While it is neither easy nor common for seekers, both willing and hesitant, to integrate their inner and outer selves, this luminous collection delivers the welcome message that it is possible."
What the Church Taught Me About Womanhood—and What Jesus Unlearned
"Maybe the church will look more like Christ when women no longer have to choose between being faithful and being fully human."
Anger Is Powerless: The Gospel of Truth’s Wisdom for Today
Anguish and terror grow when we lose sight of what is real. They thicken into a fog that distorts perception until we can no longer see clearly enough to imagine a way forward.
Believing In the Midst of Betrayal: A Chaplain’s Reflection
"Through Christ’s resurrecting power, betrayal does not get the final word. Instead, betrayal can become a steppingstone on our way to becoming stronger Christians and women of excellence."
There’s Room for All the Colors
Maybe God is the colors, the cracks, the things that don’t fit into the perfect outline. Maybe God’s the messy, uncontainable spectrum of creation itself.
Revelation—Whom Will You Worship?
Lesson 1 - “This may be the most misunderstood book in our entire canon. Some Christians ignore it entirely because of its bizarre imagery, while others pore over it attempting to unlock a chronological key to the future. [In this series], we will challenge some current end-time predictions and schemes based in part on Revelation, as well as seek to understand its genre, its cultural context, and what it might say to Christians in the 21st century.”
Two Books by Eric A. Seibert on Violence in Scripture
For Christians who see the Bible as authoritative, two main steps should be involved in properly interpreting and applying these ancient texts. First, understand what a text meant in its original literary and cultural context. Only then can we wrestle with what it means today.
Hurtful Words Hurt
There are millions of new combinations of words created every day, combinations that are put here, on the web, for anyone to view. And there’s one thing that nobody seems to notice, or care about, or even comment on, one important thing about all those words. A lot of them are hurtful. Some intentionally so.
Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence
Armstrong defines war as “a psychosis caused by the inability to see relationships, “ and describes the First Crusade as particularly psychotic. In Jerusalem the “half-crazed” First Crusaders slaughtered some thirty-thousand people in three days” (p. 214).
Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality
This is a compelling, swift-reading collection of the voices of the women who are leading movements of change in their mosques, synagogues, and churches. Taking Back God provides a meaningful view of religious feminism from the macro level.
Climate Change and Neighbor Love
"What is neighbor love in an era of climate change? That ancient question, 'Who is my neighbor?' remains pertinent. I suggest that two shifts may help focus our ecological lenses for neighbor love— how we understand neighbor love, and who we understand our neighbors to be."
Christian Ecofeminist Theology Today or Gaia, Sallie McFague, and You Walk...
Patriarchy and an industrial military complex, whether implicitly or explicitly, promote masculine conquering of the feminine or the perceived weaker "other," as is common in complementarian and/or hierarchical understandings of the world and Christianity.
Love More: Trump and the Country We Know
We can react by demonizing those who brought the next four years upon our country. We can judge them and denigrate them and turn on them. And in doing so, we will perpetuate the very situation that led us all to this point. Or we can try to figure out how to love more and love better.
Ordered Order—Conservative Christians’ Love Affair with Hierarchy
"In times of social change, any hint of change in the status quo stirs up fears of disorder. The more rapid the change, the more loudly come the calls for clamping down, holding back, conserving the status quo, stressing hierarchy over equality, law over grace."
We Can’t Just “Move Beyond” the Struggle for Gender Equity
"The people who want to “move beyond” debates over questions of equality and inclusion are, most often, the people who already hold power. They do not see a significant problem with the status quo because the status quo is not holding them back from pursuing their goals..."
Untold Volumes Poetry
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An Analysis of Systemic Oppression in Film
"These women deserve to be at the very top of their organization due to their intelligence, fortitude, brilliance, and internal power. But instead, they live in a world that forces them to fight for their positions in a place stained with institutional racism."
Feminist Bible Studies and Related Material
Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve
What would Christianity look like if every Christian interpreted the Bible through the lens provided by the actions and teachings of Jesus? The answer is: very different from how it looks today! And our guide in making some very rich discoveries along this line is the Reverend Paul R. Smith, who for almost fifty years has been leading Kansas City’s Broadway Church from a traditional Southern Baptist congregation toward a model of integral Christianity.
Bathroom Legislation: Unconstitutionality Is Only Part of the Story
In this article, I explain why HB2 is clearly unconstitutional. But I will also stress that constitutionality is always only one small part of understanding why legislators do what they do. A hostile feeling (or animus) toward transgender people becomes an important part of the legal discussion.
To Revere the Image of God in Every Person
It is my prayer that all of us will eventually learn to recognize and revere the image of God in every person of every conceivable gender identity, along with the many other diversities of appearance, belief systems, preferences, and whatsoever differences may occur to us.
There Is More than One Christian View on Homosexuality
"But when it comes to homosexuality, many people have the impression that there is only one religious or biblical view – only one way to consider the question of equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. That view, in the minds of many, is that any and every same-sex sexual expression is sinful in the sight of God."
An Analysis of Systemic Oppression in Film
"These women deserve to be at the very top of their organization due to their intelligence, fortitude, brilliance, and internal power. But instead, they live in a world that forces them to fight for their positions in a place stained with institutional racism."
Some Thoughts on Modesty
We need to stop allowing Augustine and the flawed theology of other early Church Fathers into our hearts, minds, and society, because they have nothing good for women except slut-shaming and blaming women for all men’s lust and sin.
Black History Month — 28 Black Women You Should Know
February 6, 2017
February is Black History Month and that's a perfect time to spotlight some amazing women. Read about more than two dozen courageous black women...
Most Recent Book Reviews
You First: A Love That Will Not Let Me Go
"While it is neither easy nor common for seekers, both willing and hesitant, to integrate their inner and outer selves, this luminous collection delivers the welcome message that it is possible."
From the Archives
Paul the Person, Paul the Personage
Lesson 2 - "Christian feminists who haven’t already tripped over 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and 14:34-36, will probably stop dead in their tracks while reading 1 Timothy 2:9-15, along with various other statements in the Pastoral Epistles limiting women."
