Sunday, March 25, 2012

Outside the Walls, But Not the Tradition | Emergent Village

Outside the Walls, But Not the Tradition | Emergent Village: But I do have to say, I’m uneasy with one of Halter’s assumptions. And since he’s so adamant about questioning our easy assumptions, I have to mention it here. From the very beginning of Sacrilege, Halter says that he wants to show us the real Jesus—the Jesus who walked in Nazareth, who comes alive when we read the Scriptures aright. He wants to give us Jesus without tradition. The assumptions of American Christendom, (assumptions, I should repeat, that deserve to be questioned) get lumped into a category called “tradition.” But my worry is this: I’m afraid it’s actually a deeply American assumption to think that we can get back to “the real Jesus” without tradition. We love to jump from the New Testament to now. But a plethora of Jesus scholarship has shown us that when we make that leap, we almost always end up creating Jesus in our own image.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Alice Grist: Momma was Gay, Poppa Was a Witch - A Personal Account of Gay Parenting and Gay Marriage

Alice Grist: Momma was Gay, Poppa Was a Witch - A Personal Account of Gay Parenting and Gay Marriage: I was born and initially raised by a handsome stable of heterosexuality. Dad was the local church vicar, Mum his loyal wife. My playground was the extensive vicarage with views of a graveyard. I was a good girl who refused to snack on the body of Christ, even when offered. I knew I wasn't old enough. Life was all sunshine and loveliness.

Then real life struck. Like many children before and after me, my parents divorced. Daddy was to become a 'writer' needing his own space, whilst Mummy moved in with a woman. Life never looked different. My main devastation in all this was that I had to leave my beloved Brownie troop. It didn't occur to me that the lesbian partnership I was about to be raised by was anything less than normal.

The weirdest thing about my childhood was probably when Dad turned his back on the church and became a Pagan High Priest. I was taken aside and point blank informed, "Alice, I'm a Pagan."