Tag: Interfaith
Thanksgiving Day For Christians, Jews, and Muslims
"The time for enmity is over... few non-Muslims know that Islam considers reconciling with people to be better than many acts of worship. "
Stirring Waters: Feminist Liturgies for Justice
"These rituals are meant to prod, to push, to force action rather than provide a passive “church lady” response. From issues facing our world (the environment, hunger, sex trafficking) to those borne of the need for personal healing, participants will find new sources of hope and healing."
Adam After Eve: A Form of Mitsvah When Two Become One
"As the rabbis taught, woman was created from man's side to underscore that she was not meant to walk ahead of him in mastery nor to walk behind him in a subservient manner. She was meant to walk at his side as his equal."
Kol Isha from a Whisper to a Song: The Voice of a Jewish Woman
Our tradition encourages, even requires, us to examine things from different angles, to question, and to make sense of ideas in the context of our own time and place.
Women’s History Month: Honoring the Sacred Feminine
For all who came before and all who follow in our footsteps, we will honor the feminine, eternal, life-giving force of this Universe. And then, women will join together, once again, in the sacred circle dance that is our power and our divine source.
Bridge to the Sacred: A Collection of Interfaith Prayers
Lisa has this to say about prayer: “Prayer provides a venue that gives voice to our concerns and sufferings . . . can reassure us, clear our minds, and reconnect us to a higher power. What a surprise it can be to sometimes find the words of prayer spoken in another faith might perfectly address our own longing or anguish.”
Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology
I think this book is of value for anyone, particularly women, struggling without or within their religious tradition and anyone interested in feminist theology. Younger people, especially, might benefit from the perspective of time it provides. From Christ’s and Plaskow’s examples, challenges clearly exist on any path, but they also present a hopeful model of continuing engagement, intellectual rigor, and self-empowerment.
The Beautiful Not Yet by Carrie Newcomer
My first listen to this album was during the commute between my hospice patients’ homes. I was reminded that there are many points of light and joy in a world that seems so dark and inhospitable to the people of God. We hold on to "The Slender Thread" of our faith and hope, because love always calls us back. Always.
Islamic Feminism Clarifies the Tasks of Christian Feminists
Barlas points out the irony that out of a collection of 70,000 Islamic sayings, only about six can reliably be called misogynistic. But it is always “these six that men trot out when they want to argue against sexual equality” (p. 46). The parallel to using the Bible against homosexuals is obvious, but so is the parallel to male supremacist theories in the Jewish and Christian traditions. We Christian feminists need to lift up such ironies, repeatedly and without apology.
Embracing the Other: The Transformative Spirit of Love
"Kim deftly weaves together Asian American theology, feminist theologies, postcolonial theory, biblical interpretation, and pneumatology to speak prophetically of the transformative and connecting power of the Spirit-Chi, energizing faith communities toward justice and care."
The Lost Sutras of Jesus: Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks
A fascinating glimpse of this far Eastern Christianity... divided into three sections: the historical story of the recovery of the Jesus Sutras, excerpts from the Sutras themselves, and, finally, reflections on the Jesus Sutras for today.
Faith & Feminism: Ecumenical Essays
The common connection is that each of the authors originally presented the content of these essays at the Phyllis Trible Lecture Series at Wake Forest University School of Divinity between 2003 and 2013. Another commonality is that they all identify themselves as feminists.
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).
And Be Thankful
November 27, 2014
Click image to view larger version.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,
to which indeed you were called in...
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
I acknowledge Aslan as a gifted and passionate writer. He may be a scholar of religions, but he is definitely not a biblical scholar. His thesis creating Jesus as a zealous insurrectionist has overpowered the available evidence and colored his selection and (mis)interpretation of many biblical texts. I see too many flaws and errors to recommend this book.
“A Permeable Life” by Carrie Newcomer
It’s like a sweet cup of a caramel macchiato. The silence of the first snowfall. A porch swing on a perfect spring day. A breeze carried from the surf across your beach blanket. These are the inviting images that came to me as I listened to Carrie Newcomer’s newest album, A Permeable Life. This is Newcomer’s twelfth album, and it will not disappoint those of us who enjoy her music.
To Welcome Her Stillness
So much of this must be naked trust, walking away from the stack of tasks, walking into the stillness. This is not a responsible choice. This is not a logical choice. This is not the right choice. If we are to belong to Her, this is not a choice at all.
Maggie Anton’s Historical Fiction Novels: “Joheved” and “Apprentice”
... in a class taught by Rachel Adler, Anton fell so in love with the Talmud that she has since written four novels about rabbis who broke with tradition by teaching their daughters the Talmud (i.e., the Oral law, including the Mishnah, that topically arranges all the laws from the Torah, and the Gemara, which records discussions about the meaning of the Mishnah).
Coming Out— It’s a Struggle for Atheists Too – Wild Goose
Everyone has felt like an outsider; everyone has felt misunderstood. I always believed that a Christian church would have all the answers, that embracing Christianity meant an end to the isolation and the confusion. Clearly, I was wrong; so many people are searching for answers.
Birthing God: Women’s Experiences of the Divine
Interviews with forty women from a variety of religious traditions—Taosim, Judaism, Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, Indigenous, Hindu, Religious Science, and Christianity, including several women who are part of Ebenezer Lutheran Church, more commonly known as “herchurch.”
Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in...
The concept of Christian identity was new to me, so I was especially intrigued by the lengthy first section, as McLaren discussed several ways in which Christians relate to people of other faiths in our country and world. Interestingly, other religions can have the same range of identity conflicts."
Changing Church: Stories of Liberating Ministers
Jann Aldredge-Clanton, a Baptist minister, is crystal clear about the relationship between God-language and social systems: “The strongest support imaginable for the dominance of men is the worship of an exclusively masculine Supreme Being.”
Jesus Through Jewish Eyes: Rabbis and Scholars Engage an Ancient Brother in a...
Jesus was clearly intensely alive in his time, intoxicated by God and by what he saw as the highest message of Torah, the mythic, historical, mystical and spiritual yet ultimately practical teachings of his (and our) ancestors. Despite the painful anti-Jewishness of some of the Gospel stories, many Jews find Jesus of Nazareth a highly attractive figure.
A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously...
As for Islam and violence, Eck quotes Jamal Badawi's insistence at Boston University in 1994: "Jihad cannot be equated with senseless terrorism. . . . I would challenge anyone to find an instance of the term holy war in the Qur'an. Jihad means exertion, effort, excellence. The Qur'an is described as the tool of jihad, 'Make jihad with the Qur'an,' but not with the sword."
A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists
This is the kind of book I would want to read if I were a skeptic or atheist. The book would not persuade me that Christianity is true, since that is not its aim, but it might prompt me to look more closely at Christianity.
New Jewish Feminism: Probing the Past, Forging the Future
A number of familiar themes resound: strongly self-critical commentaries; recovering stories from the past and spinning new ones; the importance of knowing the tradition in order better to reclaim or redefine it; the problematics of determining what practices and beliefs are “authentically Jewish”; a robust attitude that can celebrate gains while recognizing there is much left to do.
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.
The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus
In my words, each tradition must hold its deepest theological convictions firmly and humbly with enormous respect for the other’s perspective. The God of Israel and of the church is One and the same; we need not fear dialogue under the wings of a loving, merciful God, portrayed both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Everything Is Everywhere – Carrie Newcomer
I think we like music that speaks for us. I often feel Carrie Newcomer's music speaks for me. But after listening to this album many, many times, I realize that it doesn't really speak for me as much as it speaks for all of us. Everything Is Everywhere defines the people we can someday become, and the loving Spirit we, as one people, will someday embody.
Before and After – Carrie Newcomer
Singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer's newest album, Before and After, features a collection of thirteen original compositions—including many contemplative, midlife songs that have grown out of Newcomer's reading and conversations with other spiritual people like Parker Palmer.
Latest Posts on CFT
New Noah
May 2023 Poetry Selection
We travel the waters;
the waters travel us, trace us,
turn us dark and dank. The
trip from pupil to lip: traversed
We travel the waters;
the waters travel us, trace us,
turn us dark and dank. The
trip from pupil to lip: traversed
