Faith & Culture
Tired of Justice
“Which chapter has been the hardest to write?” My friend Kate asks as I express anxiety at the overwhelming task I had writing a chapter on racism in my Unfundamentalist Parenting book. “All of them,” as I recall recently finishing my chapter on economic justice as it relates to children—how enormous the challenges we face in our…
Read More7 Reasons to Stop Seeking the Will of God
“Just pray about it.” This is the phrase we throw around in Christian culture when someone needs to make a decision. “I prayed about it and God said to…” What we say after we’ve made the decision. The idea is that one must carefully discern each step of life to stay on a divinely ordained…
Read MoreThe Most Subversive Act of All
When I tell my story of faith shifting, moving from the conservative evangelicalism of my youth to my now quite-progressive-faith, I always refer to the start of my blogging career as the turning point of moving towards wholeness. This is the truth. The years before I began tapping words out into the internet, I was…
Read MoreThe Fight for Unfundamentalist Christianity
Real talk: sometimes I don’t know why I’m writing a Christian book. Engaging in the Christian conversation publicly gets exhausting, especially because it has become so wrapped up in political culture wars. Ugly. Divisive. Draining. It has become extremely tempting to simply walk away. I feel done reading and writing the same old arguments, explaining…
Read MoreWhat Does Embodied Spirituality Mean to You?
One of the reasons I kissed evangelism goodbye is because of the troubling method of convincing our conversion target of their need to be saved. It’s Marketing 101, create the need then supply the solution. Both Christian establishment and global capitalism depend upon the same formula. The message we are bombarded with, both from secular…
Read MoreAttending a White Conference – Follow Up
“This conference isn’t made for me,” my new friend Drew says to me by the fireplace in Calvin College’s Prince Conference Room at the Festival of Faith & Writing. “It isn’t made with my needs in mind.” I nod in understanding, because of course it wasn’t. It was presented for the majority white people who…
Read MoreWhat I’m learning – Intersectionality
I heard someone say that facebook is who you went to school with and twitter is who you wish you went to school with. It was on twitter where I first learned of the term “Intersectionality.” Most of the people I follow on twitter are 120% smarter than me, so often it’s like cracking open…
Read MoreAttending a White Conference
In less than two weeks, I am flying halfway across the world to attend a writing conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am thrilled in many ways to learn at the feet of seasoned writers, meet fellow writers, but mostly it feels really empowering to invest in a costly trip like this for my own…
Read MoreThat Time I Hated Someone
Growing up conservative Christian there were a lot of protocols. Christian culture can be very formulaic. There were the prayers you had to pray a certain way, the testimonies of prescribed narratives that you told, and cookie cutter advice you gave to people in crisis. One particular policy procedure was how to proceed when you…
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