Author Mary Doria Russell is a paleoanthrolpolgist, as well as an adherent to Judaism. However, she grew up Catholic, renounced her faith as a teenager, and took up her current faith when she had children and was trying to figure out what she wanted to pass on to her children. Her professional and spiritual background put her in an interesting position to create a cerebral, unique work of speculative science fiction. The Sparrow is equally engaging and horrifying. I wanted to put it down, but I […]
An interesting, academic glimpse at intersex issues connected with theology.
As you all know, I’ve been working on expanding my scholarly reading in LGBT issues and arguments, so that I can help non- or not-yet-affirming Christian students in their own breadth of knowledge. I decided that I needed to move towards the + in the LGBT+ acronyms, and so this book was checked out from the library. I haven’t read too much on intersex issues, apart from an interesting I.W. Gregorio novel I had read last year, so I thought it would be important to […]
Giving voice to the silenced
I faintly remember the reporting of the Catholic Church scandal in Boston back in 2002, but I definitely have seen the aftershocks in many churches beyond the Catholic faith having to deal with sexual assault scandals and the inability of the churches to protect their parishioners from molestation and assault. Therefore, I was highly interested when the movie Spotlight was released and then won the Oscar for Best Picture of 2015. One of my students had read the book Betrayal for his book/movie project, and […]
A disappointing devotional read
My evening devotional project has consisted of reading Ellen G. White’s Conflict of the Ages series, since I have not read them all the way through, and they are considered landmark texts in the Adventist faith. The Acts of the Apostles is the fourth in the series and is one of the least cited or quoted from the series. I was personally interested to see what insights I could gain into the apostolic quests and whether or not this book lived up to the hype. […]
Reframing a biblical case for same-sex marriage from an academic standpoint
After spending years hearing people glibly declare, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” or slinging around certain key “proof” texts from the Bible, I was longing for a book that would delve into the Bible’s complexity and actual ambiguity regarding LGBT individuals and relationships. The Bible study I undertook for myself in 2012 showed me that my own understanding of the Bible is steeped in assumptions about language, history, and context, and some of that has shifted since the original text was written. […]
An affirming LGBT Christian palate-cleanser
After the Andrew Marin debacle, I was ready to read something a little more…affirming and unconditional, shall we say. I’ve been convinced for the last several years that same-sex marriage is not something that is automatically going to keep people out of heaven. The Bible verses that people have used to “proof-text” against same-sex marriage are often passing references that stand out of context from a chapter in the Bible about something else entirely. My spouse recommended Matthew Vines’ God and the Gay Christian, and […]
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