The Magical Marriage Switch

Last updated on: December 7, 2013 at 11:10 am By Sarah Moon

[Content Note: Marital Sexual Coercion] Purity culture Christians like to think of marriage as something almost magical. It’s like flipping a magical switch where all the rules, standards, and beliefs about reality change. It’s as if saying “I do” plummets you into an entirely new universe. Looking at how things change after the flipping of the magical marriage switch reveals some gaping holes in purity culture thinking. One of the most integral moments in my decision to say “screw it”... Read more

Who’s Afraid of the Baby Jesus?

Last updated on: December 5, 2013 at 12:18 pm By Sarah Moon

Content note: brief mentions of child abuse, Christian patriarchy, Sovereign Grace Ministries I remember a sermon I heard during chapel at my old Christian college around Christmas time. The speaker lamented the tendency to focus on baby Jesus around Christmas time. He chalked this up to a desire to make God/Jesus safe and gentle and helpless, and he called for us to instead think of God as the victorious, conquering, badass king from Revelation. This idea made a lot of sense to... Read more

Further thoughts on the movie “Fireproof”

Last updated on: November 30, 2013 at 6:45 am By Sarah Moon

As regular readers of this blog may know, I recently watched the terrible Christian movie “Fireproof” and wrote a blog post about it. You can read that blog post here. A few people have asked when I was going to share my livetweet session of this movie with the blogging world and I have finally gotten around to doing just that. Enjoy! [View the story “Fireproof” on Storify] Read more

What if God cares more about sexism than about how much you masturbate?

Last updated on: November 27, 2013 at 3:00 pm By Sarah Moon

“You may think your sins don’t hurt anyone…but it hurts GOD.” If you grew up in an evangelical or fundamentalist church, there’s a good chance you heard this phrase growing up. I know I did. This was the phrase that pastors liked to whip out to counter this “liberal” idea that a sin is something that does harm in the world and hurts other people. In fact, these “don’t harm anyone but GOD” sins are the ones evangelical Christians always seemed... Read more

Gender Justice and the Christ/Church Dichotomy

Last updated on: November 25, 2013 at 5:15 pm By Sarah Moon

Last week I spent way too much of my time reading through and thinking over the book Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. It wasn’t exactly a thrill of a read, but the concepts in this book have helped me think more deeply about the theologies related to complementarianism. I don’t think I like them much. The author of Love and Respect bases his entire book off of the favorite passage of complementarians: Ephesians 5:23. He claims that men and women are... Read more

Complementarianism is a scam.

Last updated on: November 23, 2013 at 10:34 am By Sarah Moon

I’m still reading through the book Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. Dr. Eggerichs is, obviously, a complementarian–meaning he believes that men are the heads of the household and are the providers and protectors, while women’s job (all marriages in Eggerichs’ world are one man/one woman) is to submit and nurture and care for the home. Dr. Eggerichs’ does this thing that complementarians love to do now-a-days where he tries to convince folks that his way is actually good for women. In... Read more

What “Love and Respect” and “Fireproof” Teach Abusers and their Victims

Last updated on: November 21, 2013 at 8:30 pm By Sarah Moon

Content Note: Descriptions of Abuse, Abuse Apologism Ever since we started dating, my husband Abe has been trying to talk me into watching the movie Fireproof with him. No, not because he thought it would help our relationship, but because he insisted that it was one of the funniest movies I’d ever see. A couple of weeks ago, we finally rented the DVD at Family Video (yes, those still exist), and he was right. It was pretty hilarious–in the same way that... Read more

Must Reads!

Last updated on: November 9, 2013 at 2:20 pm By Sarah Moon

Dig Deep: Beyond Lean In by bell hooks Sandberg’s work would not have captured the attention of progressives, particularly men, if she had not packaged the message of “lets go forward and work as equals within white male corporate elites” in the wrapping paper of feminism. Unsafe Spaces by Mikki Kendall Does that mean that there is no good solution? No. Should abusers get help? Absolutely. Can they heal? Again, absolutely. I certainly think that the cycle can be broken.... Read more

Privilege in Christian Pacifism: Privileged Pacifism’s Worldview Problem

Last updated on: November 7, 2013 at 5:28 am By Sarah Moon

This is my fourth, and final (probably…for now at least) piece on some of the problems that unevaluated privilege can cause in Christian pacifist movements. I’m linking this series up to h00die_R’s synchroblog on the topic–The New Pacifism. Be sure to check out my other posts here, here, and here. Content Note: Discussion of Hugo Schwyzer, John Howard Yoder, sexual abuse, and abuse apology Over the past few weeks at my church, my pastor–Julian Davies–has been going through a series of sermons... Read more

Privilege in Christian Pacifism: What Counts as Violence?

Last updated on: November 1, 2013 at 5:31 pm By Sarah Moon

This is my third piece in a series about the problems that privilege brings to Christian pacifist movements. I’m linking this series up to h00die_R’s synchroblog on the topic–The New Pacifism. Be sure to check out the other posts in my series here, and here. I’ve already talked about privileged pacifism’s tendency to take scenarios where violence might occur and treat them as thought exercises where they can fantasize about how they’d respond to that violence. I mentioned in this... Read more