We sing a lot in the Episcopal Church! It’s not that members of other Protestant denominations don’t sing (they certainly do), but our liturgies – depending on the individual congregation, priest, and music director – are routinely peppered not only with hymns but also chants, responses and intoned prayers. We sing many beautiful hymns – […]
For all intents and purposes, the first-ever virtual Democratic National Convention, held August 17 to 20, was a great success (at least according to many pundits). Among the comments heard in the aftermath included kudos for holding two-hour sessions during prime time, the wide diversity of speakers, the creative manner in which delegates’ votes were […]
The rock reliefs carved on the acropolis hill at Philippi in northern Greece are a unique archaeological artifact that raise a number of important questions for the history of Christianity, the role of women in the church (and hence the West) and the legacy of St. Paul. The reliefs – which depict primarily the goddess […]
We have met some of the women of Graeco-Roman antiquity in the past, especially those that may shed light on the early Jesus movement. We have looked at St. Paul’s female colleagues, a female ceramicist from Crete, the first apostle Mary Magdalene, several women named Salome, the sainted Thecla, and priestesses in pagan religion. This […]
From The Council of the Society of Biblical Literature and Executive Staff of the Society of Biblical Literature A Statement on Black Lives Matter, Right to Protest, and Bible as Prop The Council of the Society of Biblical Literature and Executive Staff of SBL issue the following statement: We are appalled at the murder of […]
It will strike some readers as “heresy” for members of one of the mainstream Christian denominations (in this case, the Episcopal Church) to question several tenets of a major document of the church – especially when the questioning comes during the major season of Christmas. For other readers, though – perhaps those searching in a […]
The death by apparent suicide on August 10, 2019, of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has again raised the issue about how victims achieve justice when the accused perpetrator kills him- or herself while in prison. Epstein may potentially have more victims than most serial killers: dozens (?) of women whom he trafficked for sex, assaulted […]
In our previous post, we examined some of the current discussion around reparations for slavery. Many factors are coming together in our society that make it apparent that our “original sin” of slavery still has serious ramifications more than 150 years after the Civil War, ramifications that need addressing sooner rather than later because of […]
The issue of reparations has lately become a fairly significant part of our national conversation. The fact that we are even discussing this in 2019 shows that the legacy of the enslavement of African Americans still persists – 156 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 154 years after the end of the Civil War and the […]
There is a strong possibility that in prehistory – in Old Europe and perhaps elsewhere – our ancestors lived for centuries in peaceful, matrilineal societies that revered an all-powerful Nature Goddess. To illustrate what life might have been like in such a Neolithic society, we can focus on an archaeological site called Çatal Hüyük (also […]