Finn: Mum, are you sad that you didn’t have any girls? I sometimes hear people say to you they don’t know how you do it with three boys, and poor you because you don’t have a daughter… do you wish that you had a girl?
Mum: I’m sorry you’ve heard people say that. Because it’s totally wrong to think that one gender is better than another. I wouldn’t swap any of you boys for a girl!
Read MoreGraham Beynon and Jane Tooher have produced a wise and irenic work drawing on their combined ministry experience. Immediately the force of the book’s message is displayed in this partnership of authors.
Read MoreIn my last post we took a look at some different types of feminism, and also some of the gains achieved by the movement. We also, in light of those gains, wondered whether we should be calling ourselves feminists. My preliminary response was ‘no’: God’s word gives us better diagnoses and better solutions. In this post I’ll try to show you what I mean.
Read MoreThe New York Times magazine labelled 2015 as “the year we obsessed about identity”,[1] and it’s an obsession that isn’t finished yet. Answers to questions of personal identity—‘Who am I’ and ‘What do I identify as’—are now shaping public discourse, and increasingly the answers are expressed in labels. I even discovered recently you can now ‘identify’ as vegan!
And one of the labels people are obsessing over is whether or not to be a feminist.
Read MoreThe New York Times magazine labelled 2015 as “the year we obsessed about identity”, and it’s an obsession that isn’t finished yet. Answers to questions of personal identity—‘Who am I’ and ‘What do I identify as’—are now shaping public discourse, and increasingly the answers are expressed in labels. And one of the labels people are obsessing over is whether or not to be a feminist.
Read MoreSince 2011 Jane Tooher has been Director of the Priscilla & Aquila Centre: a centre with the stated mission of benefitting women and encouraging their ministries in partnership with men. We chat with Jane about possible blindspots and barriers to effective complementary partnerships in ministry.
Read MoreThe Bible speaks of distinctive and complementary roles for women and men in ministry, but what might that look like in practice? What does it look like in a parachurch setting like university ministry? We chat to Tim Earnshaw and Julia Bollen. Tim is the Campus Director and Jules the Senior Women’s Staff Worker with the Christian Union at James Cook University (JCU).
Read MoreWhat does complementarian ministry look like? We chat to Lisa Boyd and Bruce Morrison of St John’s Cathedral, Parramatta, about the ins-and-outs and ups-and-downs of working as a team.
Read MoreMany of us have a pretty good idea of the state of race relations in South Africa, but what of gender relations? How do men and women fare in the rainbow nation? We interviewed Grant and Lillibet Retief, who work in Durban and were visiting Australia for the Geneva Multiply Conference.
Read MoreArchdeacon Kara Hartley writes about lessons for Sydney complementarians that she picked up at two recent ministry conferences in the UK.
Read MoreWhen Rosie Batty was appointed Australian of the Year for 2015, we knew (or at least hoped) it would get everyone talking about domestic violence. It seems to have worked, and now we can only pray that real and lasting good comes from all that talking. Despite growing community awareness and concern, statistics suggest domestic abuse is rife, and that it’s not only outside the church.
Read MoreWomen, Sermons and the Bible: Essays Interacting with John Dickson’s Hearing Her Voice (WSB) is an important contribution to the discussion concerning the appropriate context for the preaching ministry of women. The essays provide much valuable food for thought across a range of disciplines and areas of inquiry.
Read MoreDifferent by Design encompasses six talks by Claire Smith on the role of women in the church and in relationships. These talks are based on six important but controversial Bible passages: 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Peter 3, Ephesians 5 and Genesis 1-3. The two of us met to discuss the talks over a period of weeks, and found it to be an enriching experience for our relationship with God, with each other and with the local coffee shop.
Read MorePerhaps because my reading coincided with the recent debates in the worldwide Anglican Communion and the Uniting Church of Australia about homosexual and lesbian clergy, or perhaps because I am a Christian woman living in a feminist (or post-feminist) society, I found Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood one of the most rewarding books I have read for a while.
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