Thirty years ago my Baptist boyfriend told me I should avoid the charismatic movement.  The reason: charismatic churches were comprised of 60 percent women, a statistic he’d been given by the director of our campus evangelical group.   

Ultimately, I ignored this advice, a… Read full post »

Last year on my 49th birthday I invited my stepchildren and grandson out to dinner to celebrate with my husband and sons and I and it was really fun, except that my stepchildren and my stepson's girlfriend got carded and I didn't.  Of course, this was an unreasonable expectation on my part;… Read full post »

My father was a lapsed Mormon.  Mormonism could be considered one of the more patriarchal of American religious practices, one that teaches it’s the father’s responsibility to get his children into heaven.  Carried to extreme, this need to produce spiritual offspring has been us… Read full post »

What I intended to be an hour-long interview for a local newspaper ended up as a two and a half hour discussion.  

My interviewee began by assessing my relationship with Christianity, asking if I considered myself a spiritual or a religious person.  In evangelical circles &ldq… Read full post »

Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life"

I liked to play with coins as a girl.  My roll-a-coin bank, which sorted each coin into its proper slot, was one of my favorite toys.  By 10 or 11 I was making budgets for my allowance, though even then I couldn’t… Read full post »

We thought they’d throw flowers.  Not size 10 shoes.

My husband and I discussed the shoe-throwing incident, how it’s a Middle Eastern custom that says, “You’re lower than the dirt under my feet” and thus was probably a little stronger than flipping the birdie… Read full post »