Though it’s been over 20 years, I remember with clarity a college professor’s powerful illustration about the nature of Christian ministry. This professor, also a long-time minister and volunteer hospital chaplain, had been called upon to be a pastoral presence in two contrasting yet related situations: first, as a new mother promptly parted with her [...]
In Mark 14 and Matthew 26 we read of Jesus being anointed by a woman while visiting the home of a man called Simon the Leper. The story ends with Jesus’ words, “Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of [...]
Recently I was in need of a certain book. I don’t own the book, and after a brief unfruitful search I gave up. Later that day, I walked by an office ten feet from mine and saw the book on a shelf just inside the office’s open door. I borrowed it and quickly found what [...]
I have recently read in two blogs (neither is CBE’s Scroll) that Jesus sometimes treated women rudely. Each cites John 2:4, where Jesus addresses Mary as “woman” at a wedding feast. Unfortunately, both bloggers have fallen prey to an elementary interpretive fallacy: The implications of a word or phrase in one culture are not necessarily [...]
Perhaps, like me, you’ve been asked, “If you could give someone only one argument for egalitarianism, what would it be?” Perhaps, like me, you don’t like that question because the answer differs depending on the audience. I know people who would respond best to an appeal to theology, focusing on the loving and freeing character [...]
Throughout much of my childhood, I possessed my home congregation’s three unofficial requirements to serve communion: a sport coat and tie, a family that arrived on time, and a Y chromosome. Therefore my brother (who not surprisingly met the same criteria) and I served communion almost every Sunday morning and evening from seventh grade well [...]
Easter brings to the egalitarian mind the fact that women were the first evangelists to proclaim the risen Lord. One of the gospel accounts attesting to this historical fact is Luke 24; verses 9-10 say, “…and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was [...]
