Bridging Evangelical Christianity & Feminism with #Femmevangelical

Last updated on: May 27, 2015 at 1:04 pm By Caryn Riswold

The latest dispatch from a woman emerging out from under evangelical Christianity is now available. It’s another lifeline for women who are trying mightily to hang on to a Christian faith while bumping up against patriarchal limits on their humanity. I’ve written before about Sarah Bessey’s Jesus Feminist and Dianna E. Anderson’s Damaged Goods, and now Jennifer D. Crumpton offers up “The Modern Girl’s Guide to the Good News” with Femmevangelical. As she interweaves personal anecdotes with substantive information about... Read more

At the Intersections: #BlackLivesMatter Vigils & the (white) Privilege of Growing Up

Last updated on: May 20, 2015 at 1:11 pm By Caryn Riswold

Many good people live and work at the intersections and I occasionally invite someone to tell a story from where they stand. Linnea Peterson is a first-year student at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where she is majoring in Economics and English. She wrote for this blog last summer about the film The Fault in Our Stars, and reflects today, on what would have been Michael Brown’s 19th birthday, about her experience at the intersection of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, campus vigils,... Read more

Freedom & Renewal: Lutherans at 500

Last updated on: May 14, 2015 at 3:26 pm By Caryn Riswold

In case you aren’t hanging around enough Lutherans and Lutheran institutions, I thought I’d let you know that 2017 will mark the 500th anniversary of what is widely noted as a watershed moment of the Reformation … Martin Luther’s posting of his Ninety-Five Theses (actually, his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, to be precise) for discussion at the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517. Lutherans of many stripes are observing this anniversary in a variety of... Read more

Summer Reading List from a Lutheran Roundtable

Last updated on: May 13, 2015 at 11:14 am By Caryn Riswold

I recently attended a meeting of the Theological Roundtable of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a network of groups of theologians, scholars, activists, and clergy working in various positions around the country. As part of our introductory session, the chair of the meeting asked each person to recommend a book … something from each person’s field(s) of work and interest that would benefit others around the table. I compiled the list that follows to show the diversity of texts... Read more

Writing the Sabbath: Plans and Invitations

Last updated on: May 7, 2015 at 8:58 am By Caryn Riswold

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about anticipating my upcoming sabbatical. If you haven’t read that, I invite you go back to it and do so. Today, it’s officially one week and three days away! (But, who’s counting…) As I said at the end of that reflection on the seasonal and theological purpose of Sabbath-ing, no college or university awards a sabbatical for a faculty person to just do whatever she wants, so here’s some of what I’m planning... Read more

At the Intersections: The Sacred Feminine, Medieval Style

Last updated on: April 28, 2015 at 9:58 am By Caryn Riswold

Many good people live and work at the intersections, and I occasionally invite someone to tell a story from where they stand. Today’s piece comes from Lisa Deam, scholar of art and the history of the middle ages. I met Lisa when we were both postdoctoral fellows in the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts, engaged in regular and vibrant conversation about vocation, scholarship, teaching, and learning. These days, Lisa works to make medieval spirituality relevant to life in the... Read more

How Should People of Faith Respond to {Bruce} Jenner? (#CallMeCaitlyn UPDATE)

Last updated on: June 6, 2015 at 12:36 pm By Caryn Riswold

[For updated reflections on #CallMeCaitlyn, scroll to the end of this post.] As Bruce Jenner prepares to tell some of his story in an interview with Diane Sawyer, I find myself intrigued and terrified. Intrigued to hear how he tells it. Terrified of the hateful mockery that is likely to continue and intensify. On that front, I am reminded of what LZ Granderson wrote a few months ago: “When Jenner does speak, I hope we resist the urge to mock.... Read more

Rites of Passage: Sabbatical as Sabbath

Last updated on: April 21, 2015 at 10:40 am By Caryn Riswold

The first spring I spent in Chicago after two years of living in southern California was magical. Do you know how brilliant the first green grass is after a long snowy winter? Having grown up in South Dakota I was and am intimately familiar with dramatic season changes. But something about having been out of that rhythm for the two years of graduate school in sunny Claremont let me forget what a marvel spring can be. After we moved to... Read more

Christian Privilege & the Religion Professor

Last updated on: April 14, 2015 at 9:41 am By Caryn Riswold

Today is Better Together Day! The designation comes from the Interfaith Youth Core, lifting up the day to encourage more people to have one conversation with a person of a different religious or non-religious background. It’s an effort to combat some of the basic ignorance about other religious views that pervades our culture, and religious tension that permeates the globe: “That’s why, on April 14th, we want you talk to an actual human of another religious or non-religious background about... Read more

When Religious Freedom Only Protects Heteropatriarchy

Last updated on: March 31, 2015 at 10:48 am By Caryn Riswold

It’s not really religious freedom. Conservative politicians have been on a roll for the past couple of years coopting the idea of religious freedom, itself an important element of our pluralistic democracy. The version they are trumpeting and carving into law, however, is anything but religious, free, pluralistic, or democratic. Indiana’s new law is only the most recent example of what has been made more possible by the terrible Supreme Court decisions in Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. Even those... Read more