Formats Archives: Aside

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What’s a Nice Evangelical Girl Like You Doing With a Rosary Like That?

I have a confession to make. I’ve always been jealous of my Roman Catholic friend’s rosaries. Actually, it didn’t start with rosaries–it started with a Muslim friend’s prayer staff. He had come to our apartment in Liberia for dinner, and unrolled his prayer mat on our porch during the call to prayer. Afterward, he saw […]

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Orphans, AIDS, and Education: How Underwear Could Save the World

Pop Quiz: What’s one of the most effective ways to turn the tide on the African AIDS epidemic? A. Fund public health and family planning initiatives. B. Develop better curriculums promoting abstinence and monogamy. C. Provide better medical care, lowering mother-to-infant pass-along rates. D. Send African girls to high school. Ding ding ding! If you […]

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When Veterans are Victims: Declaring War on Sexual Assault in the Military

“For everyone who cares about our military and feels it is our duty to stand up and protect the people that give their lives to protect us, The Invisible War is your call to action,” said Alexandra Marie Daniels on TheWip.net. According to the Department of Defense, over 20 percent of female veterans have been […]

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Duluth Underwater: Pray for Flood Victims in My Community

It hasn’t been raining for 40 days and 40 nights, but it’s been close! My house out in the country is high and dry, but the mayors of the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior have declared a state of emergency due to flooding. Please pray–for our people, property, and local businesses. I’m afraid there […]

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Why Christians Need to Break the Rules

I have a thing about “rules.” Like most individualistic Americans, I’m not a huge fan of them. But like most Good Christian Women, I’m really good at following them. Like that time they were doing road construction in West Duluth. My husband and I lived, worked, and worshipped in that neighborhood for several years. It’s […]

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50 Shades of Broken: Why Do Women Fantasize About Abuse?

I first noticed it when I bought my Nook Color last year. Erotica. Everywhere. Written by and for women. So much for letting my kids peruse the free books section! It seems that e-readers opened up a whole new world to women, a world they were too ashamed to admit interest in with a Barnes […]

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Friday Favorites: Songwriter’s Secret

I haven’t had time to peruse a lot of blog posts this week. And most of the posts I did read were from bloggers I discovered through Rachel Held Evans’s #Mutuality 2012, which I featured in last week’s Friday Favorites. Part of the reason I’ve had so little time for blog-reading is that my husband […]

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How to (Not) Raise “Worthless Daughters”

Today I’m honored to have Judy Douglass guest posting. I hope you will find her words as motivating as I do. “Thank you, Mother, for raising a worthless daughter.” These words, part of a lament of a bride going to meet her husband for the first time, summed up the experience of women in China […]

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7 Ways YOU Can Fight Human Trafficking, Plus A FREE DOWNLOAD!

We hear about human trafficking happening overseas, in places like Thailand and Cambodia. But did you know that it happens here, in our own backyard? Law enforcement agencies estimate that 45,000-50,000 people are trafficked into the United States every year. 15,000 of them are children, and most of them wind up working in the sex […]

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Rape Drugs, Roadside Stands, and Human Trafficking: There Are No Innocent Bystanders

I’m thrilled to have the insightful Tim Fall guest posting today. “Enjoy” seems like the wrong word to introduce this post with, so…read thoughtfully? Tomorrow, I will be posting about some new resources available from the Evangelical Covenant Church to prevent, recognize, and combat human trafficking. Un-Innocent Bystanders Earlier this month my son and I […]

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How Much Money Does it Take to Be A Good Christian Woman?

When I was in my twenties, I attended a “Bible” study on how to be a Good Christian Woman. Good Christian Women, I was told, stayed home with their children. Mothers who worked outside the home were compromising, trading their morals for material gain. Good Christian Women decorated their homes with artistic flair, making a […]

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Holy Harmony, Batgirl! #Mutuality 2012

I never did get around to posting my Friday Favorites for this week, but each and every one of them (and then some!) are on this list! Rachel Held Evans has been hosting the Mutuality 2012 synchroblog, and the articles have been AMAZING, to say the least. She’s included links to all 188 of them […]

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Making Space for the Feminine Voice

  Women are natural communicators. No one doubts this, really, and a quick, unscientific glance at the blogosphere confirms the female desire to enter into the conversation about important issues impacting our world. But why are so many of these bubbling female voices still running underground, or being siphoned off into their own little “women’s […]

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Abraham, Abiding, and Jesus in My Heart: Heresy and Hermeneutics, Part 2

I was four years old when I led my first person to Christ. I know I was four because I couldn’t read yet (I explained the gospel by offering commentary on the Jesus pictures in my Children’s Bible), and she wasn’t in diapers, though she was younger than me. That was a very narrow window […]

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Heresy, Hermeneutics, and Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing: Part 1

I’ve been thinking about controversy among Christians a lot lately. A writer I follow on Facebook is accused of promoting a “dangerous” liberal theology. Ironically, his theology isn’t liberal at all, just rooted in a historical Christian tradition the accuser wasn’t familiar with. Which must make it “liberal,” right?   A Reformed book reviewer labels […]

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