I’m pretty passionate about women needing to embrace their own sexuality without shame and without regard to male sexual desire, and today I’m over at The Friendly Atheist to review Dannah Gresh and Dr. Juli Slattery’s book Pulling Back the Shades, their Christian response to 50 Shades of Grey. This [is] a pervasive problem in Christian relationship books…
Okay. Okay. I’m fed up with the annual Summer Modesty Argument On The Interwebz. Here’s the rundown: 1) Modesty keeps men’s uncontrollable sex drives in check! vs. NO THAT’S RAPE CULTURE 2) God commands modesty to honor his creation, your body! vs. Uh, modesty is a shame thing and that’s the result of the fall.…
In which I will probably sound a lot like Lauren Dubinsky, who is usually right about this stuff. The credits were rolling on the Disney princess movie. I was in a swoony-moony eight-year-old’s post-Disney euphoria, soaking up the soundtrack swelling as I leaned back on my elbows on the living room carpet. I don’t remember…
My purpose with almost everything I write here is to communicate two things: 1) you are not alone and shame is not from Jesus, and 2) it is possible to develop an authentic theology of the body and live as an embodied sexual being and experience both healthy boundaries and real grace. These two things…
And we’re baaaack. Commonplace links went away when I stopped reading blogs for a month or so. This week there’s been a fantastic rash of posts on virginity and Christian culture, and I’m really excited that this is being discussed. I have been hesitant to say so, but I have become increasingly convinced that the…
I didn’t expect to write two angry-at-abusive-mindset posts back to back, but here I am. This needs to be said. Christians take romantic relationships too seriously. Not even just courtship-only Christians, or virgins-until-wedding-night Christians. Pretty much any sincere Christian who wants to serve God and honor him with how they handle a romantic relationship is…
This week’s collection is a little more light and brief than the last few have been. Enjoy! Joy Bennett writes on “all you need is Christ” and the inherent Gnosticism in that idea. I get so excited when other bloggers discover the significance of embodiment and the incarnation! One blogger writes on why complementarians as…
This is a less documented, more anecdotal post, as a result of my discovery a few days ago that all my books on this subject are in storage. I think I did that deliberately because I was tired of reading things that made me angry. So, this post won’t have a ton of sources, but…
Have you heard of a “commonplace book”? It’s an old idea, and has been most recently resurrected by hipsters bearing Moleskines. Basically, it’s a notebook full of accumulated everyday notes – your shopping list, a quote from the book you’re reading, the recipe copied from your mom’s cookbook, a sketch from the metro of the…
Previous posts in this series: Loving Your Food, Eating in Community, and Jesus Ate. For the benefit of my readers: I write this for Christians, with the understanding that communion is a sacrament and an essential, regular part of a healthy practice of faith and a healthy church. For my own part, I am of the…