Amanda is a pie-baking, music-listening, lindy-hopping, yoga-doing, power-tool-wielding feminist, atheist, and wife. She divides her time equally between cooking delicious things, trying to make nice with the house cat, and ranting about religion.
A few years back, I found myself surprised to discover that all of the problems of equity in the U.S. had been fixed, right under my nose. Somehow, this had happened despite the rather apparent issues of racial profiling, sex discrimination, and the growing socioeconomic gaps that I observed in my day-to-day life. Not surprisingly, this assertion of already-established equality came from a group of white, middle-class 16-year-olds in a suburban school where I was guest teaching a lesson on… Read more
Christianity has had a bit of a sexism problem since it began; with all of the apologetics surrounding the issue, I believe that the problem starts with the opening narrative of man being created in God’s image and the woman a lesser copy, made in the image of man. Even in the most favorable of contexts, the Bible cannot be seen as a guide for any individual who values egalitarianism — it’s rife with issues of financial, gender, and racial… Read more
If you want an example of the problems of applying a 2,000-3,000-year-old text to modern life, look no further than Alabama State Senator Shadrack McGill. Alana Horowitz with the Huffington Post reports: “Teachers need to make the money that they need to make,” McGill said, according to the Times-Journal. “If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach … and these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would… Read more
Once, when I was twelve or so, my dad forgot to pick me up from play rehearsal after school. In the pre-cellphone era, I just stood at the big double doors of the school’s entrance, watching for headlights in the rural blackness of middle-of-nowhere, Indiana. The evening janitorial staff kept shooting me these pitiable looks, and I was starting to wonder how comfortable the tile floor would be to sleep on, and how I’d never live down wearing the same… Read more
There’s hardly a week that goes by without Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, saying something offensive and incendiary; whether it’s giving bad marital advice through his latest book, trashing his definition of “effeminate” worship leaders, or demonizing sex and sexuality by associating pornography with Ted Bundy, this guy tops my Official Douchecanoe List. He delivered again this week, when an ex-member of Mars Hill tentatively shared the horrifying story of his brutal excommunication from the… Read more
