A few weeks ago, I met with Terri Burnor, our new Director of Alumni and Church Relations. We were sitting in The Context Cafe, where, over the years, students have discussed homework and community, theological questions, politics and pop culture. It was the perfect milieu to talk with Terri about United’s alumni, our relationships with faith communities, and her experience as an alum of United. (more…)
How do we share our messages and enact our ministry across different audiences? Social Transformation student, Nikole Mitchell uses Twitter, blogging, and vlogging (video blogging) to reach people where they are. As a self-described biracial, queer woman, Nikole engages questions of social justice, racial equity, and LGBTQ inclusion through social media. In Fall, 2017, Nikole published a series of videos about Biblical passages often used against LGBTQ people. Nikole speaks with a number of religious leaders in the Twin Cities area to think through and counter these so called "clobber texts." Watch the full series below: (more…)
In winter 2018, I took a trip to India with a group of students from the seminary, visiting sacred sites of 7 religions – Baha’i, Buddhist, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, Christian and Hindu. The trip was called The Sacred Sites of India. It was amazing. There are temples and sacred art everywhere, pilgrims and worshipers everywhere. India is busy, beautiful, colorful, crowded –– filled with delicious vegetable curries, fresh fruit, palm trees, silk saris, pashmina shawls. There are men building roads, men building buildings, men with sewing machines on the street making clothes while you wait, men pulling people around in bicycle taxis, men cooking on gigantic platters in the street, men slicing coconuts with machetes. men carrying huge loads on their backs and on their bicycles. I have never seen so many men working so hard. (more…)
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer (more…)
This semester I am taking Interpretation as Resistance: Womanist, Feminist, and Queer Approaches to the Bible taught by Professors Alika Galloway and Carolyn Pressler. This week’s reading concerns the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Sarah is unable to bare children, which is unfortunate since her husband Abraham is supposed to father “a great nation” (Gen. 12.2). Sarah comes up with a plan to have Abraham use a surrogate: her Egyptian slave Hagar. Abraham agrees, lays with Hagar, and Hagar conceives. The Bible then tells us that Hagar “saw that she had conceived [and] looked with contempt on her mistress”(Gen.16.4). Sarah responds by being so cruel to Hagar that she runs away to the desert. Upon finding a spring of water, Hagar meets an angel of God who gives her an ambivalent message: go back and submit to a life of cruelty but also your son Ishmael will be the father of nations. A mixed bag, for sure. (more…)