Sexism & Churches: A Twitterview with Sarah Sentilles

I happened upon the book, A Church of Her Own, last spring on a colleague’s bookshelf, and immediately decided to add it to the reading list for my seminar on Sex and God.  Specifically, the first week that we spend talking about women’s ordination in Christian traditions.  After working through John Wijngaards’ careful study of the major arguments against ordaining women in the Roman Catholic tradition, students turn to consider Protestant Christianity, and specifically what happens after traditions do decide to ordain women.

Sexism is dead, right?!

Hardly.

A Church of Her Own starts from Sentilles’ own experience with the Episcopal Church’s ordination process, and expands from there to include her interviews with many women in many different Christian traditions.  She includes chapters on call, the job search, mentors, and other stages of the journey of discernment and employment.  She recounts stories of sexism, hostility, joy, and grace.  The book even covers topics related to clothing (a priest in open-toed shoes?!) and sexuality (a pregnant priest?!  a transgender priest?!).

I invited my students to write tweetable questions for the author.  I tweeted them to her, she responded, and here is the result … in Storify format.  (Technology can be kind of groovy!)