Believe With All Your Heart, Mind, and Strength
This is a guest post from Rev. Jennifer Crumpton, author of the new devotional book Femmevangelical: The Modern Girl’s Guide to the Good News. I’ll let her introduce herself: I am a progressive, liberal Christian minister in New York City who was raised a fundamentalist evangelical Southern Baptist in Birmingham, AL. It’s been a long road,…
Should I Rethink My Theology? (a Flowchart)
Next time you’re talking about God, stop and listen to the words coming out of your mouth. Does the person you’re describing sound like an asshole? If so, consider it an invitation to rethink your theology. I know how scary that can be, like being lost at sea without a compass, or a map, or…
Divorce
The author of Ecclesiastes once said: “The end of a thing is better than its beginning.” I’m not sure that the author of Ecclesiastes had ever been divorced. If he had, perhaps he wouldn’t have been so quick to talk about what a good thing an ending is. I am the last person who ever…
Confessions of a Reluctant Christian
“Tell me your story,” he said. Where should I start? “Start at the beginning.” So I did. I think I was about eight years in when he stopped me. “Wait, you’re still a Christian, after all that? You realize that’s a miracle, right?” Yes. And yes. /// They always say that, when they pull up…
Keep Walking
I want to show you my new tattoo. Like the words scrawled across my chest, this one splashed down my left arm is all red and black and full of hope. But in order to tell you about this tattoo, I need to tell you a story. /// It was December, the month that would never…
I'm Tired of Talking about Bill Gothard & the Duggars
I’m so very tired. I just got home from a four-day camping trip — four days of sunshine and rain and afternoon naps and black coffee — and when I opened my computer for the first time last night, the notifications started rolling in. Tweets and Facebook comments and interview requests from the tabloids and click-bait…
The Prodigal (A Theologically Correct Parable)
Jesus loved using stories to mess with people’s theology. One of my favorite stories from Jesus is the one we’ve come to know as “the parable of the Prodigal Son”. However, Jesus’ telling of it left out a few important theological points, leading to some rather unbiblical implications. So I’ve taken the liberty of rewriting it to…
What I Wish the Church Knew About My Mental Health
Today’s guest post is from Jade Miller. She has written about her experiences with church, faith, and recovery in “Pieces of Me: A Collision of Art, Poetry, Essays, Faith, and Mental Health.” I’m grateful for her story. Content Warning: Emotional/Spiritual Abuse, Suicidal Ideation, Self-Harm, Eating Disorders ___________________ I was 12 the first time I was admitted to…
Write Like You Talk
Yesterday a friend asked me what I thought about writing personal vs. objective blog posts. Should you try to strike a balance between connecting with your audience and sharing your story? It’s a question that lurks in the back of every blogger’s mind (probably) when we’re hunched over a coffee-shop table pounding the keys and procrastinating on Twitter.…
Why Your Links Look Like This (and How to Fix Them)
So you’ve written a blog post and picked out a great image and posted it on Facebook. And now it looks like this: Instead of a nice wide image grabbing potential readers and drawing them in to your carefully crafted words, there’s a vertical image standing awkwardly over to one side, with the title and text of your…
Why My Boys Wore Spiderman Costumes to Church Today
“Daddy, can I wear my Spiderman costume to church?” It’s Sunday morning and I’m trying to drink my second cup of coffee and procrastinating on getting dressed. “Go find some clothes so I can get you dressed,” I’d told Keenan. (He’s four years old, and this mission usually has a fifty percent success rate.) Today…
10 Reasons Why Christians Should Give Pizza to Everybody
Are we seriously still having this argument? How do you even respond to stuff like: “We’re not discriminating against anyone, that’s just our belief and anyone has the right to believe in anything… I choose to be heterosexual. They choose to be homosexual. Why should I be beat over the head to go along with something they…
Dear Christianity, I Have a Few Questions
Dear Christianity, We’ve been together a while now. My whole life, to be exact. I know we’ve had our hard times, our breakups and makeups and are-we-going-to-make-it stretches, but you’re still my religion. So I have a few questions for you. I’ve been seeing a therapist lately. (Don’t worry — it’s not you, it’s me.)…
Ghosts in the City
I used to be a photographer. Then somewhere along the way I stuck my camera in an old backpack and let it gather dust for a few years. But a snowy night in March seemed like the right time to open it up again, to capture the ghosts in the city.
We Are "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt"
When I was in first grade, my family joined Bill Gothard’s homeschool cult. So when Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt showed up on Netflix this month, it sometimes felt like rewatching parts of our life. In today’s guest post, my older sister Kirstin Murray Kyner put that feeling into words: The new Netflix show “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”…
