Hearing the Voices of Peoples Long Silenced
Gender Justice 2014
An Opening Editorial on Silenced Women’s Stories “The same Spirit who inspired the prophets and apostles rules our faith and life in Christ through Scripture, engages us through the Word proclaimed, claims us in the waters of baptism, feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation,
MoreExcerpts from a ‘Biblical Edition’ of the Vagina Monologues Introduction by the Authors: Mary, Martha, Mary, Eve, Mary…some biblical women are part of our common cultural language. But what do we really know about them? What is the truth and what is the patina of ages of misogynist commentary? And
MoreOriginally published here on May 8, 2013, as part of Rev. Marci Glass’ personal blog “Glass Overflowing.” Perhaps you read Elizabeth Smart’s comments on human trafficking recently. As a 14 year old kidnapping victim, she connected her feeling of worthlessness after her abduction and sexual abuse, with an abstinence lecture
MoreAddress at the Presbyterian Voices for Justice (formerly Voices of Sophia) Breakfast 220th General Assembly, PCUSA July 3, 2012 Pittsburgh, PA This article was originally published on the Presbyterian Voices for Justice (PV4J) website. I’m overwhelmed by the honor of speaking to you this morning, in the company of the
MoreTheological Principles – incarnation, emmanuel, ecclesia – to guide the journey into re-imagining God The following article was originally published in the May/June 1994 edition of Church & Society. Download a PDF of the original here. Barbara de’Souza worked for almost eight years among poor communities in Säo Paolo, Brazil,
MoreAffirming Diversity and Life-Sustaining Relationships The following article was originally published in the May/June 1994 edition of Church & Society. Download a PDF of the original here. Listen to the words of Elizabeth, an enslaved woman and minister, born in Maryland in 1766: “I betook myself to prayer and in
MoreThoughts about creating life out of the good for nothing rags of injustice threadbare hope The following article was originally published in the May/June 1994 edition of Church & Society. Download a PDF of the original here. I begin with a poem by Kathleen O’Keefe Reed, a clergywoman of the
More“Language used in the worship and work of the church should affirm the wholeness of God and the full personhood of every individual.” So wrote Starr Luteri, in the PC(USA)’s 1996 study paper “Language About God”. [1] When you think about it, isn’t that what we want the Church to
MoreThis article was originally published at Marci Auld Glass’ personal Blog, Glass Overflowing, on October 3, 2012. Many people presume that because I am a pastor, I must, therefore, be pro-life. It is presumed to be the “Christian” position on the subject, right? And I want to be able to
MoreIt’s no secret that the church loves babies. We love cooking meals for families with a newborn, and we coo over tiny infants in their white baptismal gowns. Our lectionaries are full of Bible stories recounting miraculous births. But what happens before a baby arrives – and before a baby
MoreIt is hard to remember back to the pre Roe v. Wade days. There were the road trips from Idaho to California with classmates seeking abortions. There were fledgling birth control devices and pills that made some aspects of decision-making easier and others ever more difficult. Somewhere in the 80s
MoreHow Gender Justice Brought Me Back to the Church “I have always found it difficult to walk away from the church, but I have also found it difficult to walk with it.” [1] Those evocative words, the first sentence of feminist theologian Letty Russell’s formative work Church in the Round, are
MoreI’ve always loved telling my story. In college, my campus Christian group would pass out spiritual gifting inventories, and we’d take a test to help determine whether we had the gifts of prophesy, faith, teaching, healing, evangelism, service, etc. I never identified strongly with any of these gifts, so I
MoreFeminism, Evangelism, and New Worshiping Communities If you were going to create a church that fully lived into gender equality as one of the central values, what would that look like? Who would preach? What language would you use to represent God? Who would preside at the table? Who would make up
MoreA church-wide study of the status of women on all levels of the PC(USA) is now underway. This will be good news to many advocates who invested time and energy in advancing the idea of the study or served on the task force that created the original design which was
MoreMidrash on the Great Woman of Shunem and Palestinian Refugees 2 Kings 4:8-37 2 Kings 8:1-6 She wouldn’t be a refugee any more if she could come back to the home she had made. She’d left seven years ago, at the urging of the man of God, taking her son
MoreA Palestinian American Christian Woman I was born, the youngest of four children, into a Presbyterian (Church of Scotland) family in Jerusalem, Palestine, in 1939. My birth year marked the end of the first uprising of Palestinians against their British occupiers, who were encouraging mass immigration of European Jews into
MoreGender Justice 2014 The Right to Come Home: Midrash on the Great Woman of Shunem and Palestinian Refugees, Barbara Kellam-Scott She wouldn’t be a refugee any more if she could come back to the home she had made. She’d left seven years ago, at the urging of the man of
MoreConstructing and Applying Christ-Centered Masculinity to Interpersonal Relationships Download Kevin’s Curriculum “Men in the Mirror: Orienting Our Lives Toward a Christ-Centered Masculinity.” The Presbyterians Against Domestic Violence Network (PADVN) was formed in 2001 as a ministry network of the Presbyterian Health, Education, & Welfare Association (PHEWA). PADVN was created to continue the
MoreTouchdowns for Jesus and Domestic Violence in Big-Time Sports Read Marcia Mount Shoop’s response to this review here. If, as Calvin famously said, Scripture is the lens through which we see the world, then we’re each wearing a unique pair of frames. In her book Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs
MoreMarcia Mount Shoop Responds to Rachel Mastin’s Review of Touchdowns for Jesus Read Rachel Mastin’s Review of Mount Shoop’s book here. I am grateful for the time that Rachel Mastin took with my newest book, Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs of Apocalypse: Lifting the Veil on Big-Time Sports. My
MorePraying for Justice When God Seems Silent I saw it there, a black-and-white magnet on my friend’s refrigerator. Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. “There’s no use trying,” Alice said: “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I
MoreMothers for Justice is a grassroots group that has done work in partnership with Self-Development of People. Ginna: Can you tell me a little bit about who Mothers for Justice (MFJ) is and what you all do? Kimberly Clark: Mothers for Justice is a grassroots advocacy group that organizes, trains,
MoreA Story of Economic Oppression When Americans think about “oppression,” we’re inclined to go straight to civil and human rights. We think of voting rights and voter intimidation, of warrantless wiretaps and law enforcement dispersing crowds of peacefully-gathered demonstrators. We think of countries where citizens do not have freedom of
MoreFive years ago I visited a project of the Livingstonia Synod AIDS Program (LISAP) in northeastern Malawi. Here I met a 12-year-old girl who had recently been freed from a forced marriage she had been in for 4 years. Divorced at 12 – it boggled my mind and broke my heart.
MoreA Concluding Editorial The practice of the General Editor and Managing Editor each doing an editorial for most issues goes back to when Patrick Heery was the Managing Editor. It was a way to highlight the generational differences on some topics. In this case, the gender difference may also be
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