Religion Dispatches
…ments on the series’ erasure of women, Gafney’s take on its portrayal of Hagar, the battle of Jericho, the portrayal of most characters by white actors, except for Samson, depicted as a mandingo figure, in Gafney’s view, and rape and polygamy in the story of King David. The third of ten episodes airs tonight on the History Channel. UPDATE: Gafney’s post analyzing the third episode is here….
Read More…pective of a Hebrew Bible scholar. In his response, Messer referred to Dr. Gafney as a “unnamed male Rabbi” who perhaps had a racial axe to grind against Long. You can’t make this stuff up, people. If “Rabbi” Messer had consulted Google, it would not have been difficult to figure out that not only is Gafney a woman, but she is an African-American woman. The remainder of Messer’s hour-long video apologia was not an admission of being wrong, but co…
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…o bring disaffected Catholics-turned-Nones back to the church either. Rev. Gafney points out that “Roman Catholic churches are experiencing the same membership losses as other mainline churches in the West,” and that she has never seen a study linking that loss to an egalitarian clergy. Rev. Brekke says any Catholic who thinks women’s ordination would bring back disaffected young Catholic Nones “will be disappointed. Women’s ordination to the Diac…
Read More…ewish sensibilities (and so utterly in error in terms of tradition, as Wil Gafney points out at HuffPo) it would be laughable. I wish I could say I was surprised by Long’s latest antics, but I’m not. Actually, I am surprised he stayed away from the church this long. After declaring in December that he was taking a hiatus to work on the problems in his marriage, Long has returned with a new lacefront and a defiant attitude. Having a fake rabbi de…
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When I heard that Elaine Pagels, world-renowned scholar of New Testament and the history of the Early Church, had written on the Book of Revelation I was intrigued. The conflict of generations—whether WWII, the Civil War, or contemporary culture wars—is seen through the lens of this controversial text, and its language has been perpetually available for those who would demonize their enemies. But what Pagels demonstrates in her newest book, Reve…
Read MoreIn his recent appearance at Ahavath Torah Congregation, the new executive vice president of the Family Research Council, Jerry Boykin, ably demonstrated why his new employer is a hate group of the first order. By even taking a question from an audience member asking if President Obama is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Boykin legitimated this conspiratorial inquiry, engaging in an act of profound disrespect for the President of the United Sta…
Read More…r manipulated by self-serving bigots. The reality is, as Bible scholar Wil Gafney has put it, “The bible is a wonderfully rich, complicated, challenging, illuminating, revelatory text. It is also horrifically violent and does not say what we want the way we want it to.” Of course the Bible doesn’t directly address the transatlantic slave trade; the reasons it doesn’t should be obvious. But there is a lot of slavery in the Bible. Who is Linker to s…
Read MoreIn Noah Darren Aronofsky has crafted a provocative cinematic midrash weaving the stories of Genesis and stories from the book(s) of Enoch set in an antediluvian Iron Age. Midrashic commentary traditionally fills spaces in scriptural stories, asking questions of the text, and answering those questions. Aronofsky’s choices create a new interpretation of the story of Noah—neither a good nor a bad thing in itself. Some will care that the movie deviat…
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Nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls have been ripped from their desks and chairs, notebooks and pencils, smiles and giggles and sent to hell. They’ve been sold, trafficked for sex and reproduction and household labor. Typically described as “forced” marriage, it would be more accurate to call it rape marriage. And, along with polygamy, rape-marriage is a form of biblical marriage despite being regularly overlooked by conservatives proclaiming their d…
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As a fellow—make that sister—tenured black woman, I feel a particular kinship with Dr. Larycia Hawkins. When I read that a tenured professor was suspended for expressing a theological view some in her conservative evangelical college community found to be incompatible with their views, their covenant, I was deeply concerned for my sister scholar whom I’ve never met. For I know how it feels to use my voice as a black woman to speak theologically a…
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