Recently Published
Rev. Courtney Pace, Ph.D., Interview
"Opposing systemic racism, sexism, and classism are moral issues, and it is appropriate and good for people of faith to participate in liberation movements. It is also appropriate and good for people of faith to share their concerns about contemporary moral issues within their communities of faith."
Titus 1: 5-16—Harsh Words for a Church in Chaos
Lesson 20: “Amid all the polemic, it is hard to miss the brutal insult against all the inhabitants of Crete in 1:12: ‘Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.’ They are acting more like animals than human beings! It is true that Americans today are hearing similar racist attacks on Mexicans as rapists and drug dealers, on lazy immigrants from Central America, or on people of color from ‘s---hole countries.’ But do we expect to hear such rhetoric from our Holy Bible?!”
I’m ceded, I’ve stopped being theirs
November 2019 Poetry Selection
The name they dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church,
Is finished using now...
The name they dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church,
Is finished using now...
Titus 1:1-5 — Salutations and Thanksgivings
Lesson 19: “Paul’s undisputed letters of Corinthians and Galatians portray Titus as a long-time companion of Paul—a brother, partner, and co-worker—and, as a fund-raiser who must carry bags of coins, utterly trustworthy. Although he did not write letters (that were preserved) and did not have Jewish credentials, Titus sounds like an equal to Paul.”
Letter to Titus-What’s Next? 2 Timothy or Titus?
Lesson 18: “Surprise! I am taking the liberty to do a bit of canonical rearranging. We will study the letter to Titus next, and finish [our series on the Pastoral Epistles] with 2 Timothy. Why reverse the familiar order? Because 2 Timothy presents the Apostle Paul at the end of his life, it makes sense to include it last."
Golden Thread
October 2019 Poetry Selection
Maybe I am just a golden thread
on God’s spindle,
tethered from within.
Maybe I am just a golden thread
on God’s spindle,
tethered from within.
OtherWise Christian — A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation
"There is a lot to like in OtherWise Christian, like Chris’s enthusiasm about the way biblical interpretation will be enriched as people learn to read through liberated lenses. I like the emphasis on wisdom, which suggests the healing wisdom that ancient native people saw in their two-spirit leaders."
1 Timothy 6:3-21—Closing Advice for Church Leaders
Lesson 17: “Here we learn that opponents in the ongoing church fight believe their faith can help them get rich (1 Tim. 6:5,9). . . . The fact that the ‘prosperity gospel’ still thrives today indicates the persistence of such twisted theology. We can agree with our author that ‘the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,’ because we see how it pervades our current capitalist, free-market economy.”
The Collective Response of Males
"A collective response is different from a set response. A set response is when the teacher asks for questions from us, so we raise our hand, the microphone goes around, and one person at a time has the floor. The collective response is the teacher asking the entire class a question."
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Meditation on a Pedicure
So as I go through what I now call my three-quarter life crisis, I must be open to dialogue with my physical body. It tells me: “Exercise, Kathy, or you will slowly lose my ability to carry you around, and pay attention to your sleep apnea or you’ll stop breathing. "
Christian Feminism To You
Speakers Bureau
Let our speakers bring the inclusive message of Christian feminism to you. Check out our available speakers and presentations here.
2018 Gathering Reflections
Editor's Picks
Calling God “She” — It’s Just Another Pronoun!
To linguistically portray God as a father, or God as a woman giving birth, or an eagle, or a sacred wind, all of those things put a limiting image up to represent God. And, for that matter, so do the three letters, G-O-D. All the ways we choose to refer to God are images, all are limited representations, all are potentially idolatrous symbols. But all our metaphors and ways of referring to God are not necessarily idolatrous. Only potentially.
From Kingdom to Kin-dom—and Beyond
But in the larger context of the New Testament, both “kin-dom” and “kingdom” make sense. The Apostle Paul plants small house churches, and when he writes to them, he calls them adelphoi—sisters and brothers—united in a kin-group not by blood but in a common loyalty to the Lord Jesus, over against the Lord Caesar. To these tiny outposts, Paul promises the coming victory of God over all other empires, through the return of his representative, Jesus.
How to Help a Victim of Domestic Violence
If someone is being abused, they feel responsible for the abuse. Why this logical inconsistency? Because if everything is the victim's own fault, they have the power to change it. I would advise you not to take that sense of power away, but, instead, to model what it is like to not accept responsibility for what the abuser is doing.
No Longer Trapped: Insights on Spiritual Abuse Recovery
Survivors of spiritual abuse can feel justifiably averse to anything having to do with God or spirituality after emerging from the war zone of spiritual abuse. However, cutting off the aspects of oneself that are yearning for healthy, edifying connection to something other than the self—the essential definition of spiritual expression—can be equaling damaging.
When Evangelicals Were Open to Differing Views on Abortion
"There was a time in the not too distant past when the majority of Protestant Christians, including those who called themselves evangelical, did not consider the point at which a fertilized ovum or developing embryo or fetus becomes a human being to be clearly defined, indisputable, and settled for all time."
Latest Book Reviews
Biblical Interpretation: Can We Get It Right?
Lesson 1 "This new series of lessons in Reta’s Reflections will not be a book study, as earlier studies have been. Rather, it will deal with the broader issue of hermeneutics, the science of interpretation as it relates to how we understand our Scriptures. The question of how we interpret authoritative texts becomes acute when current social, economic, or political issues divide believers who look to these texts for answers."
Christian Feminism and LGBT Advocacy: Let’s Move Away from Slippery Slope...
"The call for change is about acknowledging and honoring the dignity of whole categories of people who have been regarded as 'less than' or 'lower than' or 'unequal to' the privileged groups that determine who benefits from a society’s social arrangements and rewards. In other words, justice movements form in order to challenge the hierarchies that have been set up to keep whole groups of people 'in their place.'"
Precious God, Forgive Them, Because They KNOW What They’re Doing
With all the LGBTQ people courageously coming out in conservative Christian settings, with all the information available freely on the internet and through print and broadcast media, with our new host of educators and speakers (both LGBTQ people and allies) reaching out to conservative and evangelical Christians, it would be impossible for someone to miss the obvious wounding of our people.
From the Archives
A Charleston Lament – #BlackLivesMatter
I am convinced that this is the lesson of Gethsemane
Not Jesus crying humanly about his own impending suffering and death
But rather Jesus's awareness of the depth of the intractable ruin of us
The universal suffering of the other who threatens the status of the entitled just by being
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