Every summer, my brothers and I would attend vacation Bible school. We all marched into the sanctuary for opening assembly led by a processional of children holding the American flag, Christian flag and the Bible. In unison we recited the…
Pantyhose, purity and the theological implications of the Virgin Mary
I recently attended the funeral of a beloved man and a darn good deacon. The morning of the service was wet with a crisp winter chill. Of course, my pre-COVID funeral suit doesn’t fit, so my only semi-solemn option was…
‘Our Father’: A quiverfull of racism and anti-reproductive rights
“Quiverfull” is a word I recently learned via the vast educational network of Netflix. “Quiverfull” is a Christian theological position concerning mass reproduction, meaning how many children a man can create. Please hear me. I mean no offense to any…
Don’t keep sweet: Why white Christians need to celebrate Juneteenth
One of the top documentaries on Netflix right now is Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey. It’s about the FLDS, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who once were in Utah and then in Texas. If you were…
Let’s begin again: The birds, the bees and abortions
As a preacher, teacher and spiritual leader, I start to get the nervous armpit sweats at the mere thought of speaking on the topic of abortion among church folk. The dialogue always feels more like a Medieval witch trial that…
Leaving church: Grateful confessions from a dying pastor
Night falls. Sleep fails. It’s 3:00 a.m. My anxiety rises. My mind races. I’m wide awake again. Fatigue cannot describe the soul exhaustion I have felt for 18 months. The knots in my back tense with every toss and turn….
No church wants the Moby Dick of ministers
They call me Erica. Well, no they don’t. The folks at Buechel Park Baptist Church actually call me Pastor Erica, and the more formal members refer to me as Reverend Whitaker. We’ve been on the seas of ministries together for…
No ifs, ands or butts: Binary thinking makes the Christian life hard to wear
Binary thinking is the butt crack of the body of Christ. Yes, I’m being cheeky, but the reality is that our Christian faith gets sucked into the bottom half of a sagging belief system sort of like when a person…
A lesson from Sister Meg on celibacy helped me understand white supremacy
No one, not even church folk, like talking about celibacy let alone white supremacy. Celibacy and white supremacy — like sexuality and skin color — are two preferably avoidable conversations. Perhaps these conversations are sidestepped because they invoke images that…