Televangelist Victoria Osteen took some flak in the Christian blogosphere last week for a video clip where she says that we should worship God and do good because it makes us happy, and God wants us to be happy. Osteen and her husband Joel are regular targets of critique from other evangelicals who say their
Why Believe in a Need-less God? Read More »
A few weeks ago, I forwarded an article on the New Atheism to a longtime friend with the message, “This seemed like something you would appreciate, as a historian and ex-Christian!” My friend is a scholar of the history of science and its intersection with religion and politics. He grew up in the evangelical heartland
An Un-Chosen Person: My Jewish Way of Being Christian Read More »
I grew up in a high-rise on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The dominant group in our micro-neighborhood were Orthodox Jews, though there were also numerous Hispanic families and some Irish, Asian, and liberal Jewish folks (like my family). Our building had 20 floors with seven or eight apartments each. Many modern Orthodox Jews
Religious Rights and the Common Good Read More »
Last month, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the US Supreme Court issued the controversial ruling that Christian owners of closely held for-profit corporations had a religious liberty right to deny contraceptive coverage in their employee health insurance plans. Hobby Lobby and two other companies had sought exemptions from the section of the Affordable Care
Hobby Lobby’s Questionable Theology Read More »
The NY Times, the New Republic, and a slew of feminist blogs have recently been debating whether it’s appropriate for educators to put trigger warnings about potentially traumatic material on their syllabus. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media has taken the tack that students should expect to be challenged and disquieted by new ideas in the
Trigger Warnings in Education: Some Reminiscences and Suggestions from a Survivor Read More »
The girly pink explosion of sweetness that is Mother’s Day will soon be upon me again. Do I have a problem with that? I love this little guy, and I love pink. But when I think about being a mother, the images that come to mind are not sugary, soft, and girly. I channel the
Unconventional Mother’s Day Blogaround Read More »
In late April, I attended the Second Acts Conference in Washington, DC, an initiative of the intentional Christian community and social justice coalition Becoming Church. Becoming Church is an umbrella organization for small-group churches (a dozen people maximum) that follow the Church of the Saviour model of “journey inward/journey outward“. Grounded in their faith in
Becoming Church: My Field Trip to an Intentional Christian Community Read More »
I’m pleased to share the next installment of my prison pen pal Conway’s “City Elegy” poetry series below. This weekend, I’ll be attending the Becoming Church conference, a project of the Church of the Saviour in Washington DC, which will focus on Christian activism for prison reform. My other purpose in attending is to research
New Poetry by Conway: “City Elegy VI” Read More »
A couple of weeks ago, I asked my therapist, “Will I ever get to the bottom of this pile of bad feelings, or is this my life?” I was going through another patch of nightmares and becoming frustrated. No new information was coming up; the incidents were way in the past, by now more thoroughly
Survivors in Church: Insights from Disability Theology Read More »
Winner of the 2013 PEN Center USA Award in Poetry, Amanda Auchter’s exquisite new collection The Wishing Tomb (Perugia Press, 2012) surveys the cultural history of New Orleans over three centuries, in poems that quiver and shake with music and surge with the violence of floods. End-notes provide background on the incidents that inspired each
Two Poems from Amanda Auchter’s “The Wishing Tomb” Read More »