June 4, 2012, the Vatican’s Congregation on the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) released a Notification about Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, by Dr. Margaret Farley, R.S.M. A “notification,” for those who are unfamiliar with Roman Catholic doctrinal disputes, is the way the CDF makes public its judgment on matters related to doctrine. […]
I have just returned from a conference on “40 Years of the Feminist Movement in Germany” at the Evangelische Akademie Bad Boll in Germany. Feminist journalist, writer, and activist Alice Schwarzer, the most prominent contemporary German feminist and publisher of the renowned feminist magazine EMMA , was among the speakers. I am happy to report: not […]
As many reading this blog may have already heard, Dr. Ada María Isasi-Díaz passed away in the early morning on May 13, 2012. While there are many other more qualified scholars, colleagues and friends to write a memorializing blog than I, I take up the task with humility and responsibility. I have known Ada since […]
It no longer stings on Mother’s Day. My mother died in 2003 after a brief illness. My sister and two aunts surrounded her as we watched the monitors flat line while the breathing machine kept pumping false life into her. This was not the way she wished to go, and it was hard for my […]
I am less than a month away from finishing my first year as full-time faculty member. Even though I have been teaching in seminaries for the past five years as an adjunct and lecturer, stepping onto the tenure treadmill has raised new questions about scholarship and teaching for me. On most days, I have resisted […]
I worry a lot about contraception these days. No, I have not taken a sudden relational turn, nor figured out how to reset my biological clock. The ethical conversation has simply emerged around me—was I asleep at the switch—in ways that I never expected and find deeply disturbing. I have to admit that, as a […]
The following lines of poetry, first breathed by Sufi mystic Rumi and later masterfully translated into English by Coleman Barks, inspire both my theological locus and the way in which I make art. Rumi writes: Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.[1] […]
Academic and professional mentorship opportunity provided by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Religion and Faith Program and the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality at Vanderbilt University. HRC’s Scholarship and Mentorship Program for Religious and Theological Study nurtures and promotes promising theologians working in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer studies through an intensive […]
Both queerness and Christianity challenge received notions of the good and the natural. While these terms are often depicted as mutually exclusive, queer Christians have been quietly constructing new identities, articulating new understandings of faith, and creating new religious communities. With speakers from across the country, the conference focuses on the history and lived experience, […]
“It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal.” So begins a recent article in the New York Times. According to a new report, more than half of births to women under the age of 30 now occur outside of marriage. Of course, the story is more complicated with birth rates ranging widely by […]