Recently Published
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."
A Visual Diary
February 2019 Poetry Selection
These grew and became works of art.
Reared and fostered by my own hands.
But these were not my literal children.
These grew and became works of art.
Reared and fostered by my own hands.
But these were not my literal children.
An Interview with Cindy Wang Brandt
I don't feel like people give parents enough credit and an important enough of a role. Parents are critical to every social justice movement, because they have kids and children are radical, radical hope.
The Pastoral Epistles — Introduction and Questions of Authorship
Lesson 1 - "... the letters to Timothy and Titus can seem like outliers. They differ so much in tone and content that most Pauline scholars today assume they are pseudonymous."
A Politically Incorrect Feminist: Creating a Movement with Bitches, Lunatics, Dykes, Prodigies, Warriors, and...
"...reading the first few chapters left me wishing I had been part of the early second wave feminist cultural phenomenon. Chesler’s stories give a clear impression of the excitement and energy surrounding the efforts to define reality and create sweeping changes."
Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion
An "intensely felt and clearly articulated path of one woman’s experience: ... a beginning born of evangelical Protestant roots, a ten-year period of questioning—her foray into feminism and a subsequent faith crisis—and her arrival now, in her mid-thirties, a Catholic who stakes her conversion on rejecting previous feminist convictions and critiquing Protestantism."
A History of the World in 21 Women
Jenni Murray's book 'History of the World in 21 Women' provides a look at several women, each of whom has, as Murray puts it, 'faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles to achieve her ambition...'
Survivor Care: What Religious Professionals Need to Know About Healing Trauma
Christy Gunter Sim succeeds in providing an incredibly insightful and meaningful text that is significant for survivors, the Church, and all people and entities who support survivors.
Link of the Day
Sexual Abuse Uncovered in Fundamentalist Baptist Churches
December 15, 2018
During the last week, journalist Sarah Smith published the results of her investigation into sexual abuse in fundamentalist, ultra-patriarchal, independent Baptist churches....
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
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.'"
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."
Coming Back from Coming Out
"Coming out ruined my life. At least, that’s the way it seemed. To claim my identity as a lesbian meant sacrificing everything on the altar of my own selfishness, of my need to be “true to myself.” To come out as a 43- year- old woman meant walking away from a tolerable twenty- year marriage, leaving behind a career in church ministry, and learning to negotiate custody arrangements and a new solo life. To come out, for me, meant walking away from God."
From the Archives
Fearing the Feminine or Embracing Our Mother
"Multiplied over the course of a lifetime, it is easy to see how our culture reinforces male preference at the same time it methodically undermines any sense of well-being and confidence a woman works to cultivate. Our exclusive language continues to make women invisible and in some cases our derogatory language aimed at women reinforces an insidious sexism that is more difficult to expunge than the more easily located, explicit variety."
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