{"id":697,"date":"2014-05-07T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T09:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/05\/an-open-letter-from-a-secular-student-of-religion.html"},"modified":"2014-05-07T09:10:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T09:10:00","slug":"an-open-letter-from-a-secular-student-of-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/05\/an-open-letter-from-a-secular-student-of-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter from a Secular Student of Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Hey, we\u2019ve (probably) never met, but there\u2019s something that I\u2019d like to get off my chest: I\u2019m a secular student of religion. Maybe that doesn\u2019t seem like a big deal to you, but it certainly\u00a0feels<\/em>\u00a0like a big confession to make in a forum about religion. That said, let me explain why I think it matters that feminist seculars like myself study in seminaries and theological schools and what these non-secular institutions can do to help foster our growth within their walls.<\/span><\/div>\n
You may be wondering why I\u2019m bringing this up. Let me continue in my confessional spirit while it lasts: I\u2019ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what it means to be non-religious and to choose to study religion in a theological setting (i.e. obsessing over it). In that hectic combination of post-Easter break haze and an ever-increasing mountain of end of semester work, I have found many odd moments of reflection that key me into the fact that I\u2019ve changed a lot in the four years since I\u2019ve begun my theological studies.<\/span><\/div>\n
For example, on Easter Sunday I had found myself giving a fairly rousing interpretation of the two endings of the gospel of Mark to my parents, neither of whom asked for it (weren\u2019t they surprised!). Four years ago, I couldn\u2019t even tell someone what the four gospels were, never mind their individual content. In my youth, the bible was merely a confusing amalgamation of stories and letters that were not meant for me. Before coming to a theological education, that text was simply a tool for others to condemn me, as well as a means to deny myself agency (\u201cI don\u2019t understand this. How can my \u2018friend\u2019 tell me I am going to hell? What did I do wrong? Maybe I will never understand.\u201d).\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey, we\u2019ve (probably) never met, but there\u2019s something that I\u2019d like to get off my chest: I\u2019m a secular student of religion. Maybe that doesn\u2019t seem like a big deal to you, but it certainly\u00a0feels\u00a0like a big confession to make in a forum about religion. That said, let me explain why I think it matters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Open Letter from a Secular Student of Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hey, we've (probably) never met, but there's something that I'd like to get off my chest: I'm a secular student of religion. 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