Just Keep Swimming Race, Gender, Sexuality, & Religion Category
Religious Liberty in the U.S. and cat pictures
Posted on November 19, 2020 1 Comment
I ran across this paper I wrote for a Religious Liberty class at McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University. I didn’t think it was half bad, so I’m posting it in my blog. It’s a little thick, so I’m adding some cat pictures. Historical Context of the ControversyThe religion clause of the U.S. Constitution states, […]
White People, What Are We Thinking?
Posted on June 3, 2020 Leave a Comment
It’s time for white people to check our thinking. Right now. What are we thinking? I don’t mean, as in, What are we THINKING?? No, I mean, as in, what are we as white people actually thinking right now as the U.S. moves into week two of protests and month three of social distancing? What […]
“White Savior Barbie,” Not me!
Posted on October 25, 2019 Leave a Comment
I really love my seminary, the McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University. Faculty and staff there are committed to issues of justice and spiritual growth. It is also a place where only about 45% of the students are white. I want to support a place like that and more important, learn from the variety of […]
My White Privilege: An Unexpected But Unsurprising Glimpse
Posted on June 29, 2019 1 Comment
This week I had to check my whiteness two times, first at the ONA Coalition National Gathering and then at the UCC General Synod. The lesson was reinforced for me that, even though I have more than one historically marginalized marker with which I identify (gender and sexuality), that does not mean I am enlightened […]
Race, Religion, and the Lost Cause: Observation from the National ONA Gathering
Posted on June 19, 2019 Leave a Comment
Today is June 19th, Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when news of Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier finally reached enslaved persons in Texas. It coincides with the National Gathering of the UCC Open & Affirming National Gathering and a Race and Religion course assignment on whether the Lost Cause still exists […]
Remembering Sri Lanka on Earth Day 2019: A Lament Psalm
Posted on April 22, 2019 Leave a Comment
Update: CBS News confirmed that an Islamist extremist group claims responsibility as retaliation for the NZ Christchurch bombing. Seems ISIS and the locals are vying for top spot. So my musing is this: if “Islamic Extremist Groups” are terrorists, then are white nationalists who wear red MAGA hats also? They’re playing with and off each […]
Louisiana Black Church Fires: A Psalm of Community Lament
Posted on April 17, 2019 4 Comments
Holy God, we must speak the names. St. Mary Baptist. Greater Union Baptist. Mount Pleasant Baptist. Louisiana smolders. In the names and the smoke our sin is manifest. We do not speak of their pain because the pain is their own—it belongs to their hearts. We do not get to cry those tears. Theirs is […]
Missionary Position: The UMC, Sexuality, and the Global Church
Posted on April 15, 2019 3 Comments
First, I need to acknowledge my white privilege and citizenship in a colonizer nation. Additionally, I am a U.S. Christian in a missionary culture, which has contributed to colonization. That said, I am also a gay female Christian from a rural Fundamentalist denomination, so I also can speak from intersecting places of marginalization. In late […]
Till Death?: The Curiously Ethical Question of Intentional Monogamy
Posted on April 8, 2019 2 Comments
This week’s post is an updating of a one that began as a paper I presented at the 2017 South Eastern Women’s Studies (SEWSA) Conference called Intentional Monogamy: Not Your Grandma’s Sexual Ethics. I’m thinking about monogamy as an act of queer intentionality. Even before I started my MDiv at Mercer, I had been playing with […]
The Choice to Live Passionately
Posted on March 30, 2019 Leave a Comment
My Spiritual Formation this week is from What Matters Most: Ten Lessons in Living Passionately from the Song of Solomon by Renita Weems. She takes takes the “ten lessons” from the Shulammite woman’s fearless living and loving in the Song. Interestingly, I’ve heard the Song of Solomon called “The Porn Book of the Bible,” which […]
