Hännah Ettinger blogs, tweets, is the founding publisher of The Swan Children Magazine, and dishes feminist critique of YA novels over at The YA Wallpaper.
Liberty University, Jerry Falwell’s evangelical powerhouse college in the hills of western Virginia, is loosely working with Christine Craine of Hillsong Church (in Australia) to start a program (Propel) to support Christian women in business. Inspired by the feminism of the Lean In book, Craine says this will fill a gap for ways women are supported by the Christian community. Read more
It’s interesting to me what keeps people in Christianity and what they believe keeps them in it. There were a few things, as I was growing up in the Sovereign Grace Ministries cult, that were “approved” for my media consumption but were directly counterproductive to keeping me in step with the cult’s ideology. I am grateful they slipped under the wire — these are the things that broadened my thinking and kept me from getting stuck in that world. The Guardian recently ran a piece about young adult (YA) literature and how the author’s exposure to a certain “Christy” book (a perennially popular Christian YA series when I was a kid) was a breath of fresh air when her mom refused to answer hard life questions for her. It was much more influential to her faith, she says, than the Bible: Read more
The Christian community is still shockingly slow to accept women among their ranks of leadership, which is particularly egregious since one of the earliest Christian bishops was a woman (her name was Junia, and the church later erased her story to pretend she was a dude). FaithStreet’s Janel Curry reports that Grace Chapel church in Boston, Massachusetts has finally voted to allow women to serve as elders (though it would appear that they still can’t become pastors there): Read more
Minister Eddie Kaufholz, writing for the Christian publication Relevant, just offered some of the silliest relationship advice you’ll ever hear this past week, advising reader “Christina” to ignore her parents’ suggestion to get a prenup with her fiancé. I am all for making your own decisions and parting ways with your parents when their advice reflects a significant disparity with your personal values. But this article frames marriage in a particularly romantic Christian way: It assumes that marriage is an idyllic state of being that can be achieved by magical thinking and cultivated codependency: Read more
