Archive | Jesus Feminist

In which “Jesus Feminist” has an official cover!

May 15, 2013

This is it! The official, real, final, yes-that-is-my-name-on-there, someone-please-pinch-me cover for Jesus Feminist!

What do you think, friends??

Also, if you missed it last week, I let it slip on Facebook and Twitter that I received my first “official” endorsement.

“I love writers who are insightful enough to be cynical but choose not to be. I love books that help me see things I’d never noticed before—in life, in myself, in others, in the Bible, in Jesus. I love writing that makes reading enjoyable and easy, because I know how hard it is to write that way. For these reasons and more, I love Jesus Feminist. It’s not ‘just a woman’s book.’ In fact, it’s the kind of book that will help both women and men see how unhelpful that distinction is.”

– Brian D. McLaren, author, speaker, activist

I’m beyond honoured that my dear friend, Rachel Held Evans, has written the Foreword for the book. Someone once told me they think of Rachel as the logical and rational teacher Jesus feminist, and I’m the soft squishy mama-heart Jesus Feminist – and so together we complement each other nicely (<insert joke about how we make wonderful complementarians>) in these discussions. I wrote a post about R achel when her own wonderful book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, came out last fall if you would like to understand why Rachel’s Foreword – and friendship – means so much to me.

My husband always makes fun of the guy celebrating and dancing in the end zone for football after a touchdown. He says, “Act like you’ve been there before, buddy, and act like you’ll be there again.”

I want to play it cool, I do.

But you know what? I haven’t ever been here before and I don’t know if I’ll be here again and so I’m just going to let myself be happy and dorky about the fact that my name is on the cover of a book and I wrote that book and I love that book so much and I’m excited about people actually reading it. So there may be more flailing freak-outs along the way, avert your eyes if you must.

P.S. Preorder info is here.

Continue Reading · books, Jesus Feminist, writing · 74

In which I share my favourite books for Jesus Feminists

May 8, 2013

I often hear from men and women who are struggling with their traditional teachings on women in the Church, callings, vocation, and particularly the complementarian view of marriage. I don’t engage in debates online anymore because, well, they are exhausting and usually unhelpful plus it’s pretty time-consuming. But many people are genuinely searching because their marriage or their experience or their reading of Scripture does not line up with the narrow and tiny box they’ve been offered in their tradition, particularly when it comes to these issues. So they are searching.

Often our heart (or I would even argue, the Holy Spirit) leads us with our questions and our struggles, and then, as the proverb says, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. My teachers are often hidden in the pages of books.

I did a tremendous amount of research for Jesus Feminist – which means I read a rainforest’s worth of books. Some of the books were good, some of them were not. Some of them were supporting my position, some of them thought my position made me a heretic and disqualified me from “true” womanhood and delivered me to the flames of eternal conscious punishment. I read feminist books from people who hate Christians, and I read books from Christians who hate feminists. And I read a lot of blogs and websites and I underlined and dog-eared pages and scribbled notes until my kitchen table resembled something out of that movie A Beautiful Mind.

Every word of Jesus Feminist has purposeful thought and intention behind it but, as is my habit here, I often work through theology with story or prose, as an invitation and conversation, instead of in a traditional scholarly fashion. (There are other works which inform my underlying theology ranging from N.T. Wright to Walter Brueggemann, Jurgen Moltmann to Eugene Peterson to Stanley Haurwas, and probably a bit too much Barth for some of you, but I didn’t include those works as they are more foundational to me, and less focussed specifically on this issue.) I also have not included online websites and resources here but hope to gather those up for you soon, as well.

So here are my top books for becoming a Jesus Feminist. These books are a mix of story-telling, journalism, theology, and academics. (P.S. They are in alphabetical order because a ranking was impossible for me.)

A Woman Called: Piecing Together the Ministry Puzzle by Sara Gaston Barton (Leafwood Publishers: 2012.)

A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” by Rachel Held Evans (Thomas Nelson: 2012.)

Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender: Why Both Sides Are Wrong – and Right by John G. Stackhouse Jr. (Baker Academic: 2005.)

Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women by Carolyn Custis James (Zondervan: 2010.)

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Vintage: 2010.)

How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership: Compelling Stories from Prominent Evangelicals edited by Alan F. Johnson (featuring essays from Stuart and Jill Briscoe, John Ortberg, Tony Campolo, Bill and Lynne Hybels, and many others) (Zondervan: 2010.)

The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight. (Zondervan: 2008.)

Junia Is Not Alone by Scot McKnight (Patheos Press: 2012.)

Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Gospel & Our Culture) by Darrell L. Guder, Editor. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: 1998.)

Theology for the Community of God by Stanley J. Grenz (Wm. B. Eerdmans: 2000.)

Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (American Society of Missiology) by David Jacobus Bosch (Orbis Books: 2011.)

Why Not Women : A Biblical Study of Women in Missions, Ministry, and Leadership by Loren Cunningham and David Joel Hamilton with Janice Rogers (YWAM Publishing: 2000.)

Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry by Dr. Stanley J. Grenz with Denise Muir Kjesbo (IVP Academic: 1995.)

Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis by William J. Webb (Intervarsity Press: 2001.)

Lastly, my heart and thinking is always rooted in Scripture, and so, of course, the Bible.

And in a bit more book news, I should have the final official cover ready to announce soon! I’m excited to share it with you. (The one online is just a place-holder draft.) November feels really far away because I can’t wait to give this book to you. It feels very precious and sacred to me right now. You can find info about preordering – and my first “official” endorsement! – here.

P.S. My full reading lists are here.

image source, Creative Commons

Continue Reading · 10 Books A Day For a Week, books, faith, Jesus Feminist · 28

In which I’ve got a song to sing

May 6, 2013

Sometimes, I’m just so tired of All the Reacting. Every one is always reacting to every one else’s work, and right now, I want to create. I want to create my own work, not react to or critique someone else’s work. I want to build something beautiful and true, I want to call things that are not, as they should be.

I’m over reacting or evangelistic debate commenting or weighing in or unfruitful arguing. I can’t lose sleep when someone is wrong or mean on the Internet. I’ve fallen quiet, even withdrawn a bit lately, because I can’t absorb it all without withering.

I would rather create than react.

So I’m not interested in being sweet and inoffensive, I’m not interested in playing church or sorority girls with anyone. I’m not interested in confusing conformity with unity.

And I’m also not interested in being the Go-To Feminist or Post-Evangelical or Mama-Bear for every weird and terrible response and open-letter (actually, I’m just over open-letters, period). I’m not called to hold every person who’s wrong on the Internet to accountability. That’s not me. I’m thankful for those who do this important work – I read them, and I learn. But I cherish my status as an outsider to the mainstream striving arenas and debates.

I need to tell a better story, a beautiful story, an unconditional love-filled truthful story. I’m not a preacher or a teacher, and I’m realising that I am not a good “react-er” either - wait a tick, is that even a word? I don’t think it is, unless the word “nuclear” is in front of it, which may be apropos for the tone of some rhetoric. Reacting sucks the life out of me.

Instead of big arguments and point-by-point apologetics, instead of reacting to slights, imagined or legitimate, political or religious or relational, I long to get on with my Father’s business, to live into freedom in my real walking-around life, and I pray there’s an invitation in there somewhere.

I left behind that old gate-keeper pontificating performance-hamster-wheel of religion a long time ago. Despite invitations, I’m not going back to the The Table to keep fighting for legitimacy or permission. Let them fight. I’ve got a life to live and a song to sing.

I long to offer real gritty grace that enters into the mess and complexity while valuing people and choosing tough love – not fake grace that masquerades as apologism or silence. I long to worship. I long to live prophetically, somehow, into a reality of Jubilee and Kingdom Come – and I have babies to raise, and a husband to love, a house to keep, bills to pay.

So I’d rather write a better and real story than a point-by-point defense, and I long to really see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I want to live out an embodiment of the Love I’ve experienced and know. I can’t live – let alone write – a better story if I’m being swept up in a million comments and expectations and Twitter mock-fests and Facebook debates and frustrations and whirlwinds of offense.

I can’t create, if I’m constantly busy reacting. Some of my best work - on-screen and off – comes when I’m listening more than I’m talking, when I’m creating instead of reacting, when I’m choosing to offer grace instead of epic sarcasm, when I swallow a few words, walk away, and come back again, later, to try all over again to make a little space for God, here in the light of day, outside where I belong.

This post is an edited version of an old post. I’ve forgotten how to write again so needed this reminder.

Continue Reading · faith, fearless, Jesus Feminist, journey, writing · 36

In which Jezebel gives way to Deborah

April 1, 2013

The false binaries can grind a girl down.

While I was growing up in third-wave charismatic circles, women were often cautioned against “the Jezebel spirit.” (I think I just heard half of the old crowd barf on their shoes at that old label, but oh, I’m going there.)

Yes. Terrible Queen Jezebel of the Old Testament was a warning to women in my circles, the death knell for any woman in leadership, carrying the accusations and implications of female bitterness, manipulation, emasculation, power, idol-worshipping, hyper sexuality, layers upon layers of pet sins encapuslated in one woman’s ancient story of Israel. So sure, let’s just take it at face value, perhaps Jezebel was a whore and a power hungry idol worshipping prophet killing madwoman. Even so, when a woman in the church betrayed the slightest bit of leadership or giftings or callings, it became the quickest way to silence that feisty woman in question: accuse her of a Jezebel spirit. An unrelenting, power-hungry, manipulative spirit.

She has a Jezebel spirit.

Bury her at the whisper of it, she’s done, the final verdict, the final silencing for many a legitimate woman of God.

I think about that old accusation of a Jezebel spirit when people talk about feminism or women in the church or whatever-term-you-want-to-call-it-now. We think you can be a feminist or you can be like Jesus, you can be a feminist or you can be in a happy visions-of-Christ-and-the-Church marriage, you can be a feminist or you can be a mother, you can be a feminist or you can be mutually submissive, you can be a feminist or you can be servant-hearted, you can be a feminist or you can be a Jesus-follower committed to the whole last-shall-be-first, least-shall-be-greatest thing. We might call you a feminist or maybe we’ll call you Jezebel or maybe we’ll say you’re angry or bitter.

Usually we’ll just say we love Jesus and believe the Bible more than you.

How damaging. Not only to the Kingdom but to the souls and lives of people around us, to our own selves.

I believe we serve the both-and God, the God-with-us-God. The Lion and the Lamb, the Judge and the Father, the Love and the Justice. And I believe you can be a feminist precisely because of your great love for Jesus. I believe you can be a woman and be a leader by God, I believe you can be a man and be a servant, I believe you can be both a servant and a leader, and I believe false binaries make us feel more right but they rarely make us more right in the sight of God.

So the false binaries – either/or – of most faith discussions grind me down. What an adventure in missing the point….

For instance, regarding women in leadership: there is a vast difference between a Jezebel Spirit and a Deborah Spirit. Just as there is a vast difference between David and Saul. (Just because two individuals share a gender doesn’t mean they share a story or a prediction or a precedent.)

Deborah was a general in the ancient armies of Judah. She was a prophetess and a warrior; she helped lead the armies of Barak into battle and, at the time the ultimate degradation, she was seen as responsible for a major military triumph. Plus another woman, Jael, was responsible for the death of the opposing forces leadership in her tent. Two women, two warriors, a song in Scripture.

We haven’t even talked about Priscilla or Junia, about Hannah or Anna, about Mary or Martha.

And yet women who showcase leadership in the Church today are more likely be accused as a Jezebel than celebrated as a Deborah.

This is the thing I believe about the Kingdom of God: it’s for all of us. It’s for the powerful and weak, it’s for men and for women, it’s for the outliers and the insiders. It’s for all of us. And so there is no neat and safe and tidy box: instead there is the wild and untamed and glorious riches of Christ Jesus, there is Deborah and David, there is Junia and Paul, there is Martha and Lazarus, Esther and Sarah, and there is you and there is me. In Christ, oh, hallelujah, there is room for us all. Don’t let anyone scare you from the battle, Deborah. God has called you, Esther, for such a time as this.

People cloak it in spiritual language. But don’t be deceived: anything that steals the very essence of God’s calling on you, God’s shalom, God’s justice, God’s way of life and living as a warrior, as a prophetess, as a mother, as a teacher, whatever-your-vocation-or-calling as a woman after God’s own heart, is a liar. There is a big difference between choosing silence and being silenced.

There is room for all of us in this story of Jesus. The Kingdom of God isn’t created by fear or shame or narrow name-calling or false binaries. The Kingdom of God is created in the rising up, in the singing of the song, in the battle of the every day justice, in the daily mundane gorgeousness of servanthood and leadership, regardless of gender.

I look forward to the day when women with leadership and insight, gifts and talents, callings and prophetic leanings are called out and celebrated as a Deborah, instead of silenced as a Jezebel.