Christians of all stripes make mistakes, but usually they are not quite as public as when a pastor stumbles in a service. I was present at a very painful service earlier this month in Ecuador which started out with good intentions but ended in fiasco. A little girl of 13 in a gorgeous […]
Each year in 28 African countries two million girls undergo what is euphemistically called “female circumcision,” but what is really mutilation and excision of the female external genitalia and clitoris (clitorectomy). “One quarter of them die as a result.” [Daughers of Hope by Kay Marshall Strom and Michele Rickett, p. 12]
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I Timothy 3:1-4: “Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer [elder], he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not […]
Believers in Christian manhood and womanhood would like us all to believe that there is something about masculinity as it is lived out in America that is crucial to Christianity. What it means to be masculine, however, varies from culture to culture, and has no business being inserted into Christian theology. There are […]
Helping boys to open up about what they are feeling takes effort and education on the part of supervising adults. Step one is to recognize the early signs of masking feelings, such as bad grades, rowdy behavior, overly quiet behavior, verbal denials that anything is wrong when other behaviors say otherwise, drugs or alcohol, […]
Educators are becoming increasingly concerned about boys. Much attention has been given to girls recently and they are improving in their access to opportunities and are improving in math and science achievement. Boys, on the other hand, continue to lag in reading, their self-esteem is now more fragile than girls’ self-esteem, are twice […]
“Dear God,
Are boys better than girls?
I know you are one,
but try to be fair.”
From Eric Marshall and Stuart Hample, eds., Children’s Letters to God (New York: Pocket Books, 1966); quoted in Reader’s Digest, March 1967, p. 97; quoted in Ruth A. Tucker, Women in the Maze: Questions & Answers on Biblical Equality (Downers Grove, Illinois: […]
Maggie Gallagher is a freelance writer who writes on the family, and who has written for the Bush administration. In an interview in Christianity Today called
“Editor’s Bookshelf: Raising Up Fathers”, she says some interesting things about men. As CBE is looking into new ways of attracting males to itself, and being a male […]
Continuing in Julie Ingersoll’s book, Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles, the author relates the plight of female students at many evangelical seminaries and colleges (interviews conducted between 1993 and 1995 at seven schools in different parts of the U.S.). Gals outnumber guys at evangelical colleges. Some families prefer to […]
Not as many people know Frank Schaeffer as knew his father, Francis, the early Christian Right apologist, but he’s apparently well enough known in evangelical circles to get hate mail from them. I’ve been quite taken with two of his novels, Portofino, and Zermatt. They, along with Saving Grandma, are the ongoing saga […]