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Inspiration Porn: What It Is and Why It Hurts
Have you ever heard that sermon about the disabled kid? You know the one. Small child becomes disabled, parents are heartbroken, predictions are grim… Then skip forward about twelve years and this same...
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God is Beyond Limits, Including Gender Binaries
When progressive Christians talk about God, we talk about a God so big that neither our bodies or our words can hold the divine. But we try anyway. And if we believe that we all are created in the...
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The Fire at Standing Rock: Three Lessons for Continued Struggle
After spending part of this past week with faith leaders invited to a camp at Standing Rock, I came away with three important lessons in the continued struggle to defeat the Dakota Access Pipeline....
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#NativeLivesMatter: Protecting the Water at Standing Rock
“We are alive…. We are alive…. We are alive.” This was the first thing we heard when we arrived at the Water Protectors camp established by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and inhabited by...
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You’re Allowed to Laugh in Church
My church has enjoyed a little bit of fame recently. It started when I had an idea for our sign that would acknowledge the season and make light of how a lot of grocery stores, restaurants, and...
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A Kingdom of Nonbelievers? Maybe.
If you haven’t heard of Gretta Vosper, she’s currently center point of the biggest war in Christianity. Rev. Vosper, an ordained minister within the United Church of Canada, is currently embattled with...
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My Sexual Assault is More Than Locker Room Banter
Trigger Warning: The content of this post may be triggering for people who have experienced sexual assault. I was in college. I was drunker than I should have been—much drunker—and I was flirting with...
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I Don’t Know, and I’m Learning to be Okay with That
When you’re a recovering legalist, there is a phrase that hurts. It hurts to say, to think, to admit. But once it’s said, once you get used to saying it- the freedom it brings is oxygen for your lungs...
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Why the Children at My Church Don’t Have to Hug Me
Yesterday I fumbled my way through a children’s moment (we invite the kids up every Sunday to sit on the stage and talk with them in front of the congregation) about bodily autonomy. I told them about...
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A Story Every Woman Knows
A woman in her 80s stopped by my office this week to reflect on a time she had been sexually harassed by a college classmate. Although the event occurred decades earlier, she still hesitates to attend...
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Fighting Words
Before I opened my eyes this morning I began my new daily ritual of obsessing over the lost election and the reality of a Trump presidency. It occurred to me that the election was a masterful success...
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Loving Hymns Doesn’t Make You Smarter
A cross-fitter, a vegan, and a person who doesn’t like contemporary worship walk into a bar. I know because they told everyone within two minutes. I’d say that on average, every two or three weeks I...
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The Sacred Encircled by Violence: Reflections from Standing Rock
Oceti Sakowin is not a protest camp, it is a prayer camp. The camp is constructed on holy ground. Each day begins with a call to prayer. Each action of resistance is based in prayer. The Indigenous...
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When Will White Progressives Leave Their Bubble?
In a brilliant Saturday Night Live skit, “The Bubble,” political progressives who are frightened after the presidential election build a literal bubble around their community so they don’t have to deal...
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Why This Christian Woman Stopped Being So Nice
I didn’t recognize that I even suffered from “Nicey-Nice Woman Syndrome” (NNWS) until I was mistreated while filming a TV project. NNWS is exactly what it sounds like—a woman obsessed with being “nice”...
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Faith Without Sex: What Does It Mean To Be Asexual and Christian?
I recall being at a youth group event and hearing my pastor correct a young man who’d used a slur against LGBTQA people: “That’s not what we believe here,” he said. “We welcome all.” This moment was...
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The Holiness of Swearing
During the recent Advent season, a group of budding theologians decided to blog each day using various swear words and melancholic expressions. F**k This Sh*t gave voice to those trying to express...
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Scratch a Lie
The new President of the United States devoted years to spreading false information about his predecessor. He is prone to exaggeration and hyperbole. A self-professed billionaire, the new President...
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The Church is Too Afraid of Death
If you’ve been paying attention, feelings about American politics, presidential or otherwise, are… let’s say divided. This division is rooted in different visions of our nation’s values, its history,...
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Get Behind Me, Satan: White Women and Our Well-Meaning Aggressions
@womensmarch solidarity is more than a selfie pic.twitter.com/pi3KiRgzRO — Angela Marie (@MsPeoples) January 21, 2017 White women, this post is for us. After planning to attend the Women’s March on...
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Self-Care is Not Just for Clergy
In the wake of the presidential inauguration, with the tsunami of executive orders that immediately followed, I have watched as my friends on social media have retreated. One by one, they’ve announced...
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When Hate Attacks and Love Strikes Back
A couple Sundays ago, I had the chance to worship at Park Rose United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon with a group of confirmation students on retreat. I was really looking forward to worshipping...
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Making Your Church a “Safe Space”
In 2015, there were 5,818 reported incidents of hate crimes where a victim was targeted because of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability. 65% of all women and 25% of men have...
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#THISisChristian: It’s Time to Take Back Our Faith
I am fed up. And I hope you are too. Under the guise of moral outrage, the “religious right” justifies breaking up families with travel bans and immigration raids, telling transgender children they...
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How My Son Skipped a School Party, and Schooled Me in Boundaries
“He doesn’t want to go,” my husband said. I was expecting a call about sweatpants. Should we challenge our headstrong six-year-old to change into dress pants for that afternoon’s celebratory siddur...
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Trumpcare ‘choices’ are an affront to faith-based values
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price spends a huge amount of time these days talking about “choices” in health care, and how he’s committed to ensuring you will have more of them. Be it...
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Should the Headlines Make Your Sermon?
If you watched this year’s Super Bowl, you might remember several ads that lifted up messages of inclusion, diversity, and kindness. They were reportedly in production for months, but given the...
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When Brown Hands Can’t Bless You
When I was training in a hospital as part of a cohort of chaplains, we were each assigned units and it was expected that we would visit, or at least attempt to visit, each of the patients in each unit....
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Love in the Face of Fear
I have spent a significant portion of my short life living in fear, terrified of the people around me. The fear is not unreasonable; I face daily stigma from being openly transgender, I spent my school...
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A Maundy Thursday Protest
Today, on Maundy Thursday, I am attending a vigil for a trans woman of color, Sage Smith, who has been missing from my community since 2012. There have been several young women who have gone missing in...
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The Isolation of Pain
I recall sitting in my office late one afternoon in February. No one was around, and I was focusing the best I could on finishing what I needed to complete by the end of the day. I paused. As I sat...
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Hold the Sign Up High and the Door Wide Open
A picture of the marquee at Wantagh Memorial Community Church (Long Island, New York) reached the top of a social media website called Reddit. For context: Reddit’s user base is big. Really big. In the...
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Searching for the Fountain of Youth Group
My senior high youth group was bright, engaged, eager to share opinions, and compassionate. I still carry those days with me as my entrance into Christian discipleship: the informal yet passionate...
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Why I Can’t Be Cautious with My Love
Late last year my spouse and I got the call we’d been waiting for. We had been chosen! After a long process to become licensed pre-adoptive foster parents, we had been matched with a sweet little baby...
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Your Silence is Shouting Your Values
White men, including white pastors, are failing women’s health. I’m not saying every white man in the Trump Administration, or every white male pastor in the country is intentionally working against...
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Racial Identity: Human?
How do you identify racially/ethnically? White/Euro-American Black/African American/Afro-Caribbean Latin@/Hispanic Asian/Asian American/Pacific Islander Native American/Alaskan Native Arab/Middle...
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Why People Think the Church Hates Science
I put on my clerical collar and drove the rainy streets to Lancaster, PA, suddenly regretting ever signing up to speak. I was sure that these people didn’t want to hear from a pastor, and with good...
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When Did Rex Tillerson and I become Such Good Friends?
When he was chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson agreed that climate change was real. He is not a climate denier. Exxon endorsed the Paris agreement. He does work for a President who thinks...
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What White Christians can Learn from Get Out
This essay contains spoilers for the movie “Get Out.” I’ve watched white churches attempt to confront racism in ways their members can digest, whether it be with campaigns or curriculums. So I’d like...
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I Won’t Worship Being Busy
For a few (too many) tortured months in seminary, I was working multiple jobs, taking a full course load, and doing my internship as a chaplain in a hospital. It was a season where the math just did...
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Dismantling From Within
Words matter; but without action, they lose their dignity and meaning. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a servant of the church, it’s this: We love talking about race, racism, and white privilege,...
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WWJD? Put His Body on the Line for Racial Justice
Here in Charlottesville we have issued a call to clergy and faith leaders to join us in the struggle to dismantle white supremacy. On August 12th, white nationalists will descend upon our town in an...
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Why We Can’t Be Complacent after Charlottesville
I am afraid. I walk in the world as a woman of color. I walk in the world as the wife of a woman of color. I walk as the mother of beautiful baby of color. And I have to confess that I am afraid....
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Funeral Drama and a New Take on Eulogies
Until I found myself sweating in my seat, I never gave much thought to funeral drama—at least, not beyond the storylines of a few guilty pleasure soap operas. I had my own moment of turmoil though when...
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Seeing God Where You Least Expect It
Unlike my husband, I had no special interest in seeing the eclipse. But he really wanted to make the short drive from our place in Beaverton to a spot where he could see the totality, and he hardly...
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The Lie of White Supremacy
Several months back I was at the monthly meeting of the local chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJCVille). We were given the prompt to reflect on how white supremacy has hurt us as white...
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Ready, Willing and Able for Peace
We were told that there would be booms. It was one of the first things that we were told about our new home. We’ll hear the booms, they said. Booms that shouldn’t frighten us or cause alarm, but are...
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You Too
You nodded as a friend said a woman’s dress was too short and she was asking for trouble. You rolled your eyes when a sex positive woman said she was raped because you believed a frequent yes didn’t...
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Sidewalk Angels
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1 Even when a wheelchair-bound friend pointed it out, I didn’t pay much attention to just how uneven sidewalks can be and how...
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American Jesus
A phrase often used in church circles is that of finding one’s “Identity in Christ.” The substance behind it is that one is defined by Christ’s love for each one of us, expressed in his death on the...
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