Who AM I when I DO nothing? I don’t know whether most people ask themselves that question regularly. I do, but then I’m quirky. But I do suspect that in this time of COVID-19 quarantine, more people than ever before are being confronted by that question whether they like it or not. In our culture, …
Tag Archives: faith deconstruction
Recovery from “Salvation”?
“We are still recovering from being ‘saved.’” Last week, this phrase was said repeatedly to me and to others by the instructor of a class called Gospel of the Masses. She was speaking on behalf of the people of color who have been the targets, perhaps the victims, of various evangelical initiatives. Our class spent a …
Advent, Embodied
My body seemed to know that I needed to follow the pattern of the liturgical year long before my mind did. For those who might not know, the liturgical year is the annual seasonal pattern of the Christian year. It begins around the first of December with Advent, celebrates Christmas and Epiphany, moves into the …
Embodied
I am a fifty-eight year old, white, middle-class Protestant American woman. My entire life has pushed me toward disembodiment, toward the separation of my mind and heart from my body. And even more, toward the separation of my thoughts from my feelings. Culture, education, family background have all made it clear that intellect is the …
I’m [not] gonna “love on” you
Some time ago–10 years? 15 years?–I began to hear Evangelical pastors encourage their flocks to “love on” other people. As in, “Let’s make hot chocolate and sandwiches and go ‘love on’ those homeless people in the park” or “I know Brother or Sister X is struggling with their faith right now, but we’re gonna ‘love …
When “Love” Is Not Love
In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare claims: Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds. As generations of my students can attest, I scoff at “refrigerator magnet Shakespeare”—quotes taken out of context because they are pretty or sound wise, and that usually have a more complex meaning than will be evident from the quote. And …
Love at the Center
When we think about what most characterizes a Christian, it should be love. And yet, far too often, Christians are associated in the public imagination with being legalistic, judgmental, and even hateful. Something has gone badly wrong. And it isn’t just that somehow Christians have been misunderstood. It is that what some Christians have been …
“Salvation”
One of the key incidents in the reconstruction of my faith happened as I worked through my grief at my father’s death. I had been taught a hard-lined Evangelical sense of “salvation”—if you haven’t said a specific prayer “asking Jesus into your heart,” you are not a Christian and are going to hell. I was …
Faith vs. Certainty
Many conservative Evangelicals would no doubt say that they are certain that they are right about faith. In this, they are missing something very important: faith and certainty are not the same thing; in fact, faith and certainty are opposites. Faith is not necessary if one is certain of anything; it is being uncertain that …
Recovering Evangelical
I became a Christian as a teenager in the late ’70’s, in the latter days of the Jesus Movement, when that decision meant being “born again.” At the time, I didn’t realize that it also seemed to mean swallowing the entirety of the conservative Evangelical expression of the faith. It wasn’t long before a steady …
The Recovering Evangelical 