Too Hot to Handle: Women in the Church Today

Bloggers like me look to things like site stats and comments as indexes of what nerves we are striking in the blogosphere. After hundreds of posts over the last five years I can tell you that there are three topics that consistently spike my blog's traffic:

• cussing Christians
• the debate about eternal damnation and hell
• the so-called controversy of women teaching, leading and being in positions of power within the pulpit and pew of the contemporary American church

It is the third category that is most interesting to me, and also to my readers. Most of my readership are disenchanted Christians who are sorting out what's really real to them in their faith and what's dogmatic conditioning from religious rhetoric and traditionalism. The perspective of women in the church by their men, and particularly the perspective of women of themselves is still in the grip of an archaic, hierarchical mindset that keeps women quietly busy serving in the kitchen or the nursery. But not the pulpit or the lecterns where only men can teach the faithful. It is unfathomable to the people I know here in Portland who are not Christ followers when they learn of the gender inequity that is alive and well in the halls of Christendom. "Really?" they ask,   "In this day and age?"

Happy Christian Women...really???

My friend Jim Henderson of Off the Map has embarked on an ambitious and somewhat contentious road for his latest writing project. He's tackling an arena some would call the battle of the sexes, but in the evangelical context. Jim is researching how the modern American church treats women.

At one time I was Jim's invited co-author for this project. This appeased many women who loudly criticized Jim for going down this path alone. A man, writing a book about the state of things for women in the male-dominated institution known as Church?  His intentions are well, said many in my circle, but he is blind to the irony of what he is doing. He only reinforces that it is men who hold the power to whether or not women are acknowledged or heard, particularly in the realms of leadership and religious influence.  Many of my friends were ecstatic that Jim "saw the light" and invited a woman to co-author this important work, and also happy for me, knowing that this would be a huge boost to my platform as a writer.

Book Review: Giving Church Another Chance {finding new meaning in spiritual practices}

I've had Todd Hunter's new book, Giving Church Another Chance, hanging around my house like a stray pet for several months. I finally cracked it open on the threshold of my recent trip to Cambodia. It ended up becoming my mainstay of reading during my trip. I read it at 30,000 feet in the air flying over the Pacific Ocean and I continued to read it while staying in Phnom Penh and then later in Krati, a central province of Cambodia along the Mekong River. It was superb timing. Read my review and you'll see why I say that.