Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Who gets to decide what God is like? I am the way, the truth and the life (Image: Pixabay) Well, God presumably has a pretty good idea. The rest of us struggle a bit more. So where do you get your theology from? Who tells you what God is like? And who do you believe when they tell you? I'm asking these questions because I recently read At the Gates , which I reviewed here . It made a lot of useful points about disability and the church. But it also, I noticed, had a very particular view of theology. Once again, I was glad I'd previously read Models of Contextual Theology , because I was able to pick up a few assumptions that the authors of At the Gates were making. I didn't feel that I totally disagreed with these assumptions, but I wasn't sure if I agreed with them either. So I'm using this post to explore them further. Assumption 1 A disabled person's lived theology is just as important as an academic person's theology This generates two opposing reaction...

"A church with an accessible culture makes sure a diverse community can participate in everything they do. That's not a burden on a church - it's a cultural shift that benefits everyone." "This is a book about justice." So reads the first sentence of At the Gates: Disability, Justice and the Churches . Written by Naomi Lawson Jacobs and Emily Richardson, who are themselves disabled, At the Gates  draws on interviews with dozens of Christians with disabilities to put together a picture of how they have been treated at church. In the book, the interviewees are called storytellers . All too often, the stories tell of lack of access, hurtful comments, and unfounded assumptions about their abilities and faith. This, the authors describe as ableism  - an ideology that gives power to those who are able-bodied and neurotypical, while regarding others as deficient. What is the book about? The first part of the book covers the issues that disabled people have in havin...

"I studied Theology... Despite the fact that most of the world's religious people are not white, we learnt very little about the theological thinking and experiences of Black and brown people." Chine McDonald is director of Theos, an organisation which provides research and opinion on the place of religion in society. She moved to the UK from Nigeria at the age of four. McDonald has been involved with the Evangelical Alliance, Christian Aid, and Greenbelt, as well as working as a journalist, so she has some wide-ranging experiences within the Christian and secular culture. This book uses stories from her own life, and historical examples, to illustrate the problem of racism in the church. She focuses on the British church in particular, although she refers to American events too. What are the main themes of this book? McDonald's argument is that white people - men in particular - have been assumed to be superior. They are regarded as more intelligent, more authoritati...

"To our reading of the Scriptures we bring our reason, experience, and the traditions of our faith, feeling down into the truth we trust is there waiting for us." Equality is Biblical is the only book I've read where the questions have been as good as the main text. Usually study questions range from mediocre to dire, with a distinct feeling that they are only there because someone suggested it at the last minute. Penelope Wilcock, on the other hand, provides questions like surgical tools, probing deeply into what you believe and why. The book's main topic is the place of women in the church, but the questions cover everything from how we visualise God to the power of shame in society. What are the main themes of this book? The subtitle of Equality is Biblical is Lifting the Curse of Eve , and a large chunk of the book focuses on Genesis, analysing how the story has traditionally been interpreted, and offering alternative readings of the text. Then there is a look at...

Here is a man. He's always known he's different. It's the kind of difference that, when people find out about it, they ask questions like, "What went wrong? Was it his upbringing? Or something faulty in his brain?" He often asks himself the same questions. In the endless hours of the night, he wonders what could have been changed, or what could still be changed, to alter who he is. One day this man meets someone who says a startling thing: that this difference is not  something wrong inside of him. He doesn't need to alter who he is in order for God to work in his life. They say this in such a way that the man actually starts to believe it. They enact a simple ceremony - a little mud to dirty him, a gentle touch, a wash in a pond to make him clean - which fixes this belief in his soul. His difference is no longer a sign that he is broken. It is a sign that he is whole. His community quickly notice the change in him. For the first time, he starts to feel like h...

The 40 days of Lent can be awfully long if you're trying to do something (or not do something) every day.  Here are a couple of things I found this year which I thought I might actually be able to keep up with.  One has a very small action each day, and the other is something to read and think about - but only on Sundays, until you get to Holy Week. Get Outside in Lent Christian environmental charity A Rocha has provided six weeks of ideas to get you and your family outside in Lent.  The PDF is here:  https://bit.ly/ECGetOutsideforLent .  There are six activities each week (and yes, the first one really is "Hug a tree") and a suggestion for a celebration and prayer on Sundays.   The logical way to do six weeks seems to be to start next Monday, but then the final Sunday is Easter Sunday.  So I guess you could also start today (or tomorrow) and finish on the Thursday before Easter.  There are no dates, making it pretty flexible. Ashes to Rainb...