There’s a real comfort in being fundamentalist. And disturbing that comfort invokes a protective response that tells us that the depth of the appeal of whatever fundamentalism is involved serves a purpose that has little to do with the kind of doctrines to which a
It was a competitive nine-year-olds’ baseball game. Grandson’s team was in the process of experiencing their first loss of what was so far an eight-game season. Watching a grandson thrive as a truly self-motivated, avid – and grampa would add gifted – baseball player who
To say that the country is polarized is hardly news — especially when it comes to LGBTQI equality. It’s also not news that arguments with those who still want to deny full equality to LGBTQI people rarely hinge on facts. The president has even made
The Bible is just an old, old book sitting on a bookshelf. Well, really, it’s a collection of old books from different times and places that’s more an anthology of writings originally written in different languages. Sometimes people do read it, but most often they
Photo credit: Wendy van Zyl A curious, enigmatic, debated, and often dismissed, verse is found in the nineteenth chapter of the New Testament’s Gospel of Matthew. Some scholars for the past forty years or so have argued that it includes a reference to men who
A tale of the relationship of two women, Ruth and Naomi, is tucked within those books in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian “Old Testament”) that are called historical because they portray a legendary history of a people from its beginnings as a tribe to its
For those of us who are old enough and were somewhat “woke” back then, the COVID-19 pandemic invokes hidden emotions that remind one of the painful early years of the AIDS crisis. There are differences, certainly, because this pandemic is directly affecting a broader demographic,
Queer Religiosities: An Introduction to Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion by award-winning scholar and teacher Melissa M. Wilcox, would make an excellent textbook in an “introductory” course in which I’d like to enroll. And it was especially written for use in such a course,
According to what we’re told in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian “Old Testament”), Jonathan, a king’s son, loved a man who would become a more famous king, David – and David in turn loved Jonathan. No matter what the actual history behind the story, what
It’s common for more progressive Christians to defend LGBTQI people by saying that Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. But is that true, if we’re referring to the versions of Jesus that have made it down to us in the collections of stories found in the
