Part of my journey towards healing is examining the wounds of my past. Wound-care is often messy and uncomfortable. Time to examine more cuts.

I love writing. I love teaching. I love studying the Bible. For years, I considered starting a blog, but because of my arrogance towards the mommy-blogger phenomenon, I never did. (I repent.) Then we left our church. When we left, we assumed we would hide and heal at the local megachurch. Then covid happened. Then the January 6 insurrection happened. Then I got on social media and witnessed the racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and about every other -ism and -obia of Christian leaders I had been taught to respect. Eventually, my husband and I realized we were leaving something much larger than our local church—we were leaving conservative white evangelism. (Categorizing the american church is tricky, but that’s the best phrase I currently have to describe my heritage.) I started writing trying to process it all. Very little of my writing has “positively” explored spiritual tensions the way I originally envisioned. I keep wondering when that day will come. Someday soon, I hope, but not yet. Recently, I read a series of poems by marla taviano, a woman on her own journey out of “white evangelical indoctrination”, that captured the state of mind in which I currently find myself. I have found catharsis and understanding in her words. Allow me to share them with you. (For my readers that may be offended by cursing, please forgive the language, but sometimes cussing is a needed way to express deep emotions.) These poems come from marla taviano’s book jaded, a follow-up to her book unbelieve.

Musings on why I do not love the label egalitarian

I don’t love the label egalitarian. I claim it, but labels are tricky things. Though often necessary to quickly capture complex subjects in easy, accessible language, the very act of simplifying people and ideas into labels obliterates nuance and oversimplifies complexity.

I’ve avoided the egalitarian label most of my adult life. I’ve been trying to process why. I’ll begin the story in the middle, when I first learned the terms complementarian and egalitarian.

This article is a follow-up to an earlier post, Age of Patriarchy: Desire of Woman & Rule of Man.

I enjoyed writing Age of Patriarchy: Desire of Woman & Rule of Man. It’s probably my favorite article I’ve written thus far, but ever since I posted, I’ve had a nagging feeling it’s incomplete. In the original, I mixed interpretive layers and oversimplified the connection between Woman’s desire in Genesis 3:16 and Man’s desire in Song of Song 7:10. In this article, I want to flesh out and offer some deeper insights as a companion to my first post on desire and rule.