This is a scary time and as someone with Complex PTSD, I am personally struggling with the stress and anxiety that the Corona virus pandemic is causing. It's hard to know whether to turn off the news and stay off of social media because it can be overwhelming to be inundated with the updates, or …
Tag: Christianity
A Ruthian take down of purity culture?
Let's talk about sex.
Mary started it: An Advent reflection
"Why are you making Jesus political?" "The social gospel proponents don't care about individual salvation, and that's what Jesus was all about." Interacting online is something that I do as a public theologian and I often see questions and statements like those above while perusing the internet. A major, if not THE major, theme of …
Once upon a time…An Advent reflection
Once upon a time... I was a bigot, brazenly proclaiming my bigotry towards God's beautiful and wholly beloved LGBTQIA rainbow children. Once upon a time... I was completely unaware of the racism I carried within me that sometimes came out of my mouth. Once upon a time... I had no concept of white privilege or …
Help Wanted: No penis required
There is a prevalent idea among many Christians, spurious though it is, that women cannot serve in church leadership as ministers, or to teach men in any capacity such as in a seminary class. To do so these folks claim is to ignore Biblical authority. In their view, the world is a sinful place filled …
Bible 101: What the Bible isn’t. Part One
In an earlier post, I wrote about what the Bible actually is because many people are truly confused about the Bible. They think that it is a single coherent narrative with a consistent theological view point despite the fact that it is really a disparate collection of writings that show a great variety of views. …
Strike!
Today all around the world people are striking for climate change because government's have been responding at a sloth like pace. A movement that began in large measure because of the persistence of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who has become the face of the movement, has grown exponentially. I wholeheartedly thank her for standing in …
Incremental changes
In permaculture design, one of the principles is to make the least change for the greatest effect. One of the reasons to do this is to ensure that one doesn't overdo something--like I did while trimming my beard the other day which left me with some designer stubble rather than a full beard...Another reason, in …
What we should never forget about 9/11
In response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City, the Pentagon, and in a hijacked airplane over Pennsylvania, country music superstar Alan Jackson put out a single entitled "Where were you?" I was living in El Paso, TX in officer housing on Fort Bliss, the army base where my then wife was …
A Prayer for Donald Trump
Holy God I lift up Donald Trump, the currant occupant of the White House, in whose hands rest an enormous amount of power, and I pray Holy One, that you will with astonishing grace pierce through the hardness of his heart that has led him to behave in such reprehensible ways. Holy One, Trump's words …
The Tattooed Theologian 