It’s been a good summer for spending half hours standing on a beach with no shoes. Back in July, while I was in San Diego for an annual conference, I managed to stop by the Pacific the day before I left. I hadn’t planned out the beach trip at all and was wildly overdressed. But […]
Suffering and solidarity
This week I’m reading a remarkable essay by Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker on the many, many ways that theologians and activists have explained redemptive suffering, punishment, and justice. It’s part of the old collection Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse. What’s fascinating about the arguments I’ve read so far is that they’re more than 28 […]
Core questions for Christianity
In the classic book Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse, several writers and feminist theologians discuss how Christianity teaches people, particularly women, to accept suffering as a utility for spiritual growth or an explicit virtue modeled by God Godself through Jesus. This was a theme that I and Herb Montgomery addressed during our talks at the Spectrum […]
About Noah—and What Happens After Trauma
This post mashes up a lot of things, including descriptions of violence, genocide, religious hatred, and religious apathy; literature and Christian hermeneutics; and mild spoilers for the new movie Noah (2014, Darren Aronofsky and Ari Mendel). Don’t read on if you haven’t seen the film yet and still intend to. Also don’t read if you’ve been struggling with […]
