This resource is provided again this week for all those women and men out there who are pro-choice, pro-faith, pro-family, and pro-prayer. They do exist. 40 Days of Prayer to Stop the War on Women is a campaign by Faith Aloud, with a prayer a day beginning September 28 and leading up to the election. “Faith Aloud is a movement to give spiritual support to persons making reproductive decisions. As people of religious faith and conviction, Faith Aloud supports reproductive... Read more
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy One of my favorite lines from Rachel Held Evans’ interview on The Today Show this week, about her new book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, comes toward the end: “As a person of faith, I love the Bible, and I hate seeing it reduced to an adjective.” Several times, Evans alludes to this idea that the bible and women are much more complicated (and more interesting!) than... Read more
I wish that what Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said this week, that pregnancy as a result of rape is “something that God intended to happen,” was so rare and out of the ordinary that I had to write something new in order to respond thoughtfully to it. It’s not. Here’s some of what I wrote on this blog after Todd Akin suggested there was such a thing as “legitimate rape” and note that it wasn’t new even then:... Read more
What are the key issues for people of your tradition to consider as they approach this election? I stand in two traditions – Lutheranism and feminism – and answer this question from that multiplied perspective. First, in terms of key issues for people in the Lutheran (ELCA) tradition, I refer to words from Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson from this past summer: “Poverty. When we begin there, I suspect we will focus on abstract economic conditions. We may turn to income... Read more
The denomination to which I belong, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has a constitutional mandate informing its Justice for Women program: to work to enable this church to realize the full participation of women, to create equal opportunity for women of all cultures, to foster partnership between men and women, to assist this church to address sexism, and to advocate justice for women in this church and society. To that end, the denomination has just begun the process of... Read more
As the election comes closer, and as voting is underway in many places, I continue to provide this resource for all those working for reproductive justice. This week’s prayers include work on behalf of survivors of violence, attention to gender identity, and support for women in the military. 40 Days of Prayer to Stop the War on Women is a campaign by Faith Aloud, with a prayer a day beginning September 28 and leading up to the election. “Faith Aloud... Read more
This week, I’m at the Lilly Fellows Program National Network Conference at the University of Indianapolis, and at the meeting of the LFP’s National Network Board, on which I serve. The LFP has been an integral part of my own development as a teacher and scholar, providing resources and community that informed my sense of vocation. Reinforcing that I am in fact called to serve in these ways in the world. That my work has meaning and purpose. As a... Read more
Does a candidate’s faith matter? Judging from voters in recent years, and in the 2012 election cycle, the answer is yes, especially if you think it’s sufficiently different. Last year, over at TheReligiousLeft.org, I was inspired by a question from a former student: “So I was trying to remember what we talked about in class last year, is it a cult?” This was the question that a student popped in my office to ask recently. She’d overheard some chatter about... Read more
Chris Stedman has written the book I didn’t know I needed to read after finishing Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. After discussing Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation. After considering Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great (still sitting on my living room table … waiting). After watching Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous. Because when I read, watch, or listen to these men, there’s not much that I intellectually disagree with when they criticize religion, call faith-claims into question, and challenge... Read more
I wrote about the religious element of Joe Biden’s response to Martha Raddatz’s question about abortion last week. In a great post this week over at Feministing, Mimi Arbeit breaks down four possible answers to the question, pointing out that Biden used the first three: (See video, transcript.) Many others have expressed frustration with Raddatz for framing the question this way. But she did, and others do too, so how should we respond? I see four options: Some people of... Read more
Caryn Riswold
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