The chair scraped next to me. It was 2:30 on Friday afternoon—time for our scheduled break. For three years I have been writing every Friday afternoon with a group of faculty women, blocking our calendars and ignoring emails. For three years I break with them for 15 minutes, pulling our chairs into a small circle. […]
Because We Have Made God Too Small: A Baylor Professor’s Apology to Kaitlin Curtice Read More »
Today I am pleased to welcome Anna Wells to the Anxious Bench. Anna is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Religion department at Baylor University working with Dr. Carlos Cardoza-Orlandi. Her research focuses on the way culture influences the development of Christianity and looks specifically at female hagiographies from medieval Europe and Ethiopia through a
I almost didn’t write this post. After all, what more could I say? Sarah Bessey already voiced my outrage. The scoffing laughter of John MacArthur’s audience echoed in my head as I read her words. “It’s a sin to quench the work of the Holy Spirit in and through the lives of women. Repent, the
Pride and Preaching: A Medieval Perspective on John MacArthur Read More »
In fifteenth-century England, a (probably Franciscan) friar lived on the east coast near the cathedral city of Ely. Like many other medieval sermon authors, he included in his Lenten series a narrative from Matthew 15: the story of the Woman of Canaan. I have talked about this story before, and I am sure many of
Because Jesus Choosing Male Disciples Doesn’t Mean What We Think…. Read More »
A carved image, about two feet tall, stands alone in a glass case in the Cluny Museum in Paris. At first it seems a typical image of the Madonna and Child. Both look straight ahead, holding the gaze of the viewer. Their matching golden robes fade so easily into the golden background that it is
Sorry, John Piper, (Medieval) Christianity Doesn’t Have A Masculine Feel Read More »
For years, I attended complementarian churches. I kept telling myself that maybe things would change. I kept telling myself that I, as a woman who taught and had a career, set a positive example. I kept telling myself that complementarianism wasn’t misogyny. I kept telling myself that no church was perfect. I kept telling myself
“Lord, I repent of ways I’ve been complicit in & contributed tomisogyny & sexism in the church by my cowardly and inordinate deference to male leaders in order to survive rather than simply appropriately respecting them as my brothers. Forgive me for being part of the problem.” Beth Moore tweeted (@BethMooreLPM) this just last week,
We are so pleased to welcome back John Wigger to the Anxious Bench. John Wigger is Professor of History at the University of Missouri and author of PTL: The Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Empire of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. #MeToo #ChurchToo In 1980 Jessica Hahn was sexually assaulted by one of the
Jessica Hahn and Evangelical Silence on Sexual Abuse Read More »
Kilkenny lies deep in southern Ireland. Its history lies just as deep in the medieval past. The thirteenth-century cathedral of St. Canice stands next to a 9th-century monastic tower; a castle still sits on the site of William Marshall’s 12th-century Norman foundations; and a fourteenth-century inn, Kyteler’s Inn, still operates in the old town.The inn
In the second century A.D., the pregnant wife of a prosperous Greek politician died from a vicious assault. Appia Annia Regilla Atilia Caudicia Tertulla, or Regilla, was born into an affluent Roman family in 125 A.D.; she married the Greek politician Herodes Atticus, also from an affluent family, around 140 (when she was 15); and
Silenced Women–Modern Lessons from an Ancient Murder Read More »