Reads of the Week
1) God Has A Body by Emily Maynard
"One time I heard a woman take a deep breath and close her eyes and lift up her hands and pray: Father, Mother, Brother, Sister God, be with us. I cringed; my body tensed up. God couldn’t be like that. God was Jesus, was man, was male, was Father, was Lord, was King, was God. I couldn’t handle a prayer like that. To use feminine names or references for God was disrespectful, liberal, unbiblical, and wrong. It was making God in my own image to use a feminine pronoun. God wouldn’t be like that, like a woman, like me, like Emily."
2) The 5 Stages of (Faith) Loss by Addie Zierman
"You start tentatively saying the word shit, and before long, you’ve worked your way up to fuck. These forbidden words seem the only language sturdy enough for your anger and pain, so you use them again and again and again. You begin to call them 'Church People,' and you take a certain amount of comfort in pointing out their faults. Petty. Judgmental. Closed-minded. Sometimes you even stoop to critiquing their clothes, their personalities, their mannerisms. You’re so angry that once you start pointing out faults you can’t stop."
3) LOL Interwebz: The Great WorldVision War, the Battle of Noah, and the Rise of Mob Justice by Luke Harrington
"Because it’s not enough to disagree with people anymore, and it’s not enough to explain that disagreement clearly and sincerely. It’s not enough to encourage people to change their minds and give them good reason to do so. In the era of instantaneous responses, we are all the mob, all of the time. We have to assume the worst of each other. We have to demand blood."
4) Hymnals and the Way of Faith in the Story of the Church by Benjamin Moberg
"These are the songs I once hated, but they are meeting me right now with a precision and truth I cannot explain. In the midst of my own cynicism and sensitivity and anger, in the mess of all the wrong and unkindness of the Church, these plain and poetic words arrive standing before me, unadorned and beautiful, like peace, like Jesus out on the water."
5) "God's Not Dead" and the Angry Atheist Professor: That Was Not My Experience by James Hoskins
"Not once did my philosophy professors attack my faith or treat me unfairly. In fact, I found all of them to be extremely kind, patient, and generous. Several of them, including the Nietzsche expert, wrote me glowing letters of recommendation for grad school that, I’m certain, included compliments I didn’t fully deserve. I felt respected, even mentored, by them. And all of this despite the fact that they passionately disagreed with my beliefs."
A Few We Missed While We Were Away
Holy Saturday and Harry Potter: On Tombs, Thestrals and the Descent into Hells by David Henson
Smoke Break by Shannan Martin
Farewell Evangelicalism? Not So Fast by Hannah Anderson
Tweets of the Week
"If you drive a Nissan and its name isn't 'Liam,' you're wrong." - @Jesse_Baker
"Mitch McGary can't smoke weed at college, so he's taking a six-figure job instead. I think we can all relate to that." - @en_cohen
"I don't think KD is struggling. I think he accidentally transcended physical existence and has to score from the astral plane." - @runofplay
On Pop Theology Week in Review
Dear Theology by Lane Severson
"Dear Theology, I don't know what happened. I never thought I'd be writing this letter."
Go, Diego, Go (Away!) by David Creech
"Go, Diego, Go! is ruining the world."
The Case Against "I Believe" by Lyndsey Graves
"A classmate shared an anecdote about a friend who wasn’t sure he could agree with everything in the Nicene Creed, and I felt confused."
The Word is Dead; Long Live the Word by Charity Erickson
"So, Richard Foster and I are fighting."
Song of the Week
"All Of the People" by Panama Wedding
Peace,
Ben
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