My husband and I, like most parents, try our best to instill our values in our kids so they grow up to be responsible citizens of the world. One of my greatest passions is to see an end to extreme global poverty, the reason I serve on the board of a poverty fighting grassroots movement called One Day’s Wages. Because of my role with ODW, my children are mindful of world hunger, model peace making, and only consume fair traded chocolates.... Read more
How do you prepare to send your kids into an environment that stands for everything you don’t? How do you handle the tension between loving and honoring parents and protecting your kids’ developing minds? I am going to be travelling for a few weeks this summer. My 5 kids are going to stay with their very conservative Christian grandparents while I’m gone. I worry about what kind of influence will impact them, then I hesitate, because isn’t that just what... Read more
Here is the thing that I still believe from my purity culture days: The world has dangerous ideas about sex, and it is totally up to Christians to combat those ideas. Here is the problem with purity culture: We fought bad ideas with equally terrible ideas, sometimes worse ideas. I was raised in the height of the purity culture madness.The holy grail of the Purity Movement, I Kissed Dating Goodbye came out my freshmen year of high school, right when... Read more
Image: Pixabay It’s easy for the faith of children to go unnoticed. But here are six spiritual things kids do better than adults: They Ask Questions: Nobody asks more — or better — questions than children. “Who?” “What?” “Where?” “When?” and “Why?” are expressions patented by kids everywhere. They’re obnoxiously curious and want to know everything about everything. They aren’t afraid to ask the most difficult and messy questions. Too often we mistake spiritual maturity for certainty, and lose our... Read more
Liberation theology is a theology of self-determination. In Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz writes that, “Liberation is not something one person can give another.” Instead, liberation is “a process in which the oppressed are protagonists” (1). Gustavo Gutierrez echoes this in A Theology of Liberation, saying that, “We will have an authentic theology of liberation only when the oppressed themselves can freely raise their voice and express themselves directly and creatively in society and in the heart... Read more
Image: Wikimedia Commons My five-year-old tends to have a Song Of The Week—the random tune she warbles to herself all day, every day, until a new song comes along. Last winter, one song stuck around far longer. It was being taught at school and had several verses so as she learned more, so did everyone who came within five feet of her: Come on up, I got a lifeline. Come on up to this train of mine. They said her name was Harriet... Read more
Image: provided by Kathy Escobar In my Raising Children Unfundamentalist facbeook group, many of us are figuring out how to parent while we are deconstructing or otherwise changing our most foundational Christian values. This is what Kathy Escobar calls Faith Shift, the title of her latest book. Many have been helped by this book so I asked if Kathy would be so kind as to answer some questions my group members had with faith shifting specifically regarding parenting. I love Kathy’s... Read more
I was at church once and the pastor was telling us a story about his son’s Christian college class trip to Asia. On this trip they were invited to go inside a temple, and his son and friends said no way. Why would we go inside a religious building for someone other than Jesus? And as this man was telling the story, he was laughing and sneering at the idea that Christians would ever want to go into a... Read more
A movement is happening, and in its purest form is about one thing: following Christ. This transformation is reshaping the Christian landscape. Believers are starting to simplify their faith in order to exemplify Christ—a simple yet profound way to live out the gospel. This has become a revolutionary concept and the “new” Christianity is sick of culture wars, political agendas, hypocrisy, and legalistic doctrines. These followers of Jesus prefer inclusion over restriction, dialogue over debate, practice over preaching, and love... Read more
This letter is reposted from the website Dear Tomorrow, with permission from the author, Christina Krost. Image from Dear Tomorrow with permission from the author Dear Madeline, Ava, and Harper, As I watch you three grow, my greatest hope is that you love and care for each other. You do it so well, even in these elementary and pre-teen years. So it is a great comfort to me to know that you girls will never be without a sister—or two—by your... Read more
Unfundamentalist Parenting
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