Greetings, readers! Thanks once again for a great week of comments, feedback, and discussion. As usual, we’re a bit behind on email. We’ve received more this week than ever before in a single week! Later today, we will also be responding to comments on this week’s blog posts. Up to this point, we haven’t had much time to do that because Lindsey has been at a series of all-day job trainings and Sarah has been busily working on the doctoral dissertation. But no matter how busy we are, we do look forward to reading your comments, interacting with you on Twitter, and responding to your questions.

Let’s get to today’s Saturday Symposium question:

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: We decided upon this week’s question after receiving a significant amount of feedback on Lindsey’s reflection Some Thoughts about “Third Way” Churches. Some readers expressed uncertainty about whether Third Way approaches to issues of sexuality would have any possibility of working within conservative churches. We received many questions along the lines of, “Isn’t a Third Way just asking everyone to give up their convictions and say, ‘I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re all relativists?'” We have some thoughts on this matter, but would be interested in hearing from more of you. Do you think Third Way approaches necessarily require Christians with more conservative sexual ethics to give up their beliefs? Is there any kind of Third Way approach that might be equally fair to both conservative and progressive Christians on this matter? Are Third Way approaches more possible within some Christian traditions than others?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Hello everyone! It’s hard to believe that it’s already Saturday. Lindsey was traveling last week, which has slowed down our email responses a bit. Thanks for your patience while we get back to you!

Now it’s time for today’s Saturday Symposium question:

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week’s question comes to us from a conversation between two readers. Our friend Dan wrote a fantastic guest post called Erotic Eucharist: Nurturing Deep Attraction Between Friends. We want to invite you to participate in a conversation between Dan and Evan discussing the following questions: What is the role of eros in friendships? How do we experience embodied intimacy within friendship? Is it beneficial to distinguish between eros and agape? What distinguishes eros from agape? Is philia distinct from eros? Is it important to draw clear lines to divide philia, eros, and agape?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Hello, Readers. Happy Saturday! It seems that summer has definitely arrived. We’re grateful to everyone who has contacted us. We are going to be spending some time today trying to catch up on email since we have received a lot of email that requires us to author our responses while sitting in the same room.

Now it’s time for today’s Saturday Symposium question:

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week’s question is an invitation for you all to get involved with our What Persecution Is series that we’re authoring with Jake Dockter. As Jake explained in his initial post, the series has been motivated by public figures who claim to have been persecuted for their Christian beliefs. In our first post of the series, we explored how silencing could be regarded as the beginning of persecution. Today, we’d love to hear your thoughts: What is persecution anyway? What are important topics to raise when we’re talking about persecution? Do you know of stories of persecution that are getting overlooked by other outlets? Are you interested in contributing anything to the series?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Hello, Readers. It’s Saturday once again, and this has been a very busy week on the blog. Thank you all for the thoughtful comments and emails. We’ll get back to all of you as soon as we can.

This week, we have an important announcement to share: beginning on Monday, we will be scaling back to three regular posts per week plus our Saturday Symposium question, so four posts in total each week. We will release our posts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays before 12pm EST, and of course Saturday Symposium will be released on Saturday mornings. Occasionally, we might feature a Tuesday or Thursday post. When we began blogging in January, writing six days a week served many beneficial purposes for us, including giving us something thought-provoking to do during our rare bits of spare time after Lindsey’s job loss in December. As we’ve been working multiple tutoring and babysitting gigs in addition to Sarah’s regular job, writing daily has given us the opportunity to cope with multiple stressors positively. Now that we’re looking toward a new job for Lindsey in August and both of us are beginning our summer workloads, this seems to be the most appropriate time for scaling back just a bit. Additionally, we’ve heard from readers that they would appreciate some extra time to read and comment on our existing posts. We’re grateful to all of you who have engaged us in edifying conversation each day and have supported us during the past few difficult months. We look forward to many more positive interactions in the future.

Now it’s time for today’s Saturday Symposium question:

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week’s question comes from a comment we received on our About page. On Thursday, our reader Anya shared the following story with us:

My moms didn’t know anything about Christianity until I was 10. They adopted me when I was 2 because my birth mom was a drug addict. Anyhow, my moms went to church for the first time when I was 10 and we all got saved on the same day. The pastor told us the only way to make God happy and the only way he would baptize us all was if my moms split up. They wanted to obey God so they did what the pastor said. My life changed in hard ways and I thought being a Christian was supposed to bring me happiness. I didn’t find God again until I grew up and found him on my own. I still talk to both my moms and I love them but now they are part of ex-gay ministries and they are unhappy. They haven’t seen each other in years but they pray for each other.

We’re interested in hearing your responses to this story. If this situation were occurring within your faith community, how would you react? What sort of pastoral care do you think your own pastor/priest might offer to a family like Anya’s? If you are a pastor or priest and you witnessed a fellow member of the clergy in your tradition giving this sort of advice to a family like Anya’s, how would you feel about this? How might you discuss a situation like this one with your fellow clergy members and your parish?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Good morning, folks. It’s a lovely Saturday here where we live, and we hope all of you are having an enjoyable weekend wherever you are. As usual, please allow us a bit of time to catch up on email. We’ve gotten a lot the past couple of weeks!

It’s time once again for today’s Saturday Symposium question:

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week’s question is on a topic we would like to explore further in a future post. We’ve noticed that recently, language within the LGBT Christian conversation has been shifting. One shift we’ve observed is that many LGBT (and ally) Christian authors and bloggers are beginning to use the terms “affirming” and “non-affirming” instead of “pro-gay” and “anti-gay” (or “Side A” and “Side B”) to describe progressive and traditional positions on sexual ethics. We’re wondering: from your perspective, what does it mean to affirm LGBT Christians? If you are an LGBT Christian, what sort of things make you feel affirmed within your faith community? In general, what are your thoughts on using the terms “affirming” and “non-affirming” to describe ethical positions related to LGBT sexual practice/celibacy?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.