By Courtney O’Banion Smith. In her book Dawn, Octavia E. Butler scrutinizes issues of patriarchy and gender through the protagonist, Lilith. The Oankali—a terrifying, biotechnologically superior alien species—all but force this African American woman to become the thankless savior of humanity. A self-proclaimed feminist, Butler’s fiction often features Black women as strong, complicated heroes through […]
By Kaya McCluskey. Two cultures collided in my home of origin. Growing up, I experienced Catholic Mexican family members depending on the collective. It felt wrong not to include the whole family at every gathering, not to mention heaven. On the other hand, white evangelical culture preached exclusively individual salvation. Some family members might be […]
By Anneli Loepp Thiessen. Anneli Loepp Thiessen is a 2024 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholars Award winner. You can read her award-winning article in the most recent edition of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, available now. From its earliest days as a movement, contemporary worship music has drawn heavily on intimate and romantic […]
By Tamisha A. Tyler. At the beginning of 2020 I wrote a tweet that stated, “The Parable Series by Octavia Butler is your required reading for 2020. You think Handmaids Tale got close, you ain’t read nothing yet.” I did not anticipate how well that tweet would age. If the last two years have taught […]
By Yohana Agra Junker and RJ Lucchesi. As we enter the third academic year disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, I come to the realization that nothing about this experience has been predictable or steady. The spread of the Delta variant has forced our institutions to evaluate, yet again, how classes should or not meet this […]
We want to hear your responses to FSR Blog’s @theTable: “FSR Summer Book Club” The “FSR Summer Book Club” series started off Summer with a bang! Holly Hillgardner started off the series with an introduction to the stunning novel, Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. Second, Rev. Mia McClain suggests that you read a classic play this summer through […]
By Jimmy Hoke. “Is a virus not a kind of zombie, a quasi life-form moving in and out of inertness? It is zombie time…” –Lorrie Moore, New Yorker, April 13, 2020 It is “zombie time”—or time to think with zombies. While the spread of Covid might provide a particularly poignant moment for reading stories that […]
By Yasmine Singh. How does one live in an atmosphere where most if not all bets are against you because of your class, gender, and/or religion? Is advancement possible for those who dream and aspire but struggle to survive? If so, at what cost? Who gets a second chance if they find themselves at the […]
By Christy Cobb. In the past year, the fragment called the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” has received a resurgence of attention in popular media, after the journalist Ariel Saber published the book Veritas which outlines the discovery of the papyrus as well as the complicated path that ultimately revealed this fragment as a forgery. Yet […]
By Mia McClain. “And then there are all those prophets who would lead us out of the wilderness—into the swamps!” –Beneatha Younger, A Raisin in the Sun Last November, I prepared a special dinner and excitedly sat down to watch the highly anticipated film version of August Wilson’s play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Released on […]