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The Princess (Syndrome) Must Die: On Poisoning Schoolgirls’ Bodies and Minds

This article makes me so mad I could spit. For the third time in two weeks, the Taliban has been accused of poisoning little girls, spraying down their schoolrooms with toxic chemicals to discourage the education of women. This time, 160 girls were admitted to the hospital after experiencing headaches, dizziness and vomiting. As horrible […]

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Hustler’s Explicit Image of S.E. Cupp is Virtual Rape

It takes a lot to piss me off. But Larry Flynt has managed. Pundit-phobe that I am, I had never heard of S.E. Cupp until I was confronted with a picture of the pretty young conservative commentator with a penis in her mouth. Apparently Hustler magazine created the cleverly photoshopped image and published it with […]

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Tylenol Christianity: Offering Hope and Healing, Instead of Easy Answers and Trite Advice

Sometimes, I feel like the church has a hard time lingering in places of pain. Abuse. Homosexuality. Bullying. Singleness. Disability. Abortion. Illness.  Addiction. Grief. We tend to skim right over these topics, offering quick, carefully-crafted statements about our stance on the issue. It winds up feeling more like a presidential candidate’s stump speech than a […]

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Oppressors, Activists, and Spiritual Stinginess: St. Paul’s Guide to Praying Better Prayers

“And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ.” -Philemon 1:6 I was reading Philemon this weekend, and many things stood out to me. Paul’s tone with Philemon, acknowledging Philemon’s friendship, fidelity, and good […]

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Boyfriends, Bad Ideas, and the Bella-Katniss Continuum: Jenny’s Message on Identity in Christ

I was SO blessed to be able to speak at my beloved Mission Covenant Church last Sunday! The topic was how cohabitation hurts women and children, but we focused on the why–WHY do women get involved in relationships they know are bad for themselves and their children, or stay in abusive, dysfunctional relationships that bear […]

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Patriarchy, Pop Culture, and Pornography, Part 2

(Continued from Part 1) What it comes down to is that in many ways, society ascribes value to women based on how attractive they are to men. (This is only exacerbated by women’s idolatrous tendency to base their identity on who they are in relationship with others, rather than on who they are in Christ. […]

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More Statistics on Child Abuse, Or, Why Single Moms Should Probably Stay That Way

(I know, I know–another inflammatory title. But if you’re not feeling a bit inflamed by the end of this post, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.) Wading through statistics makes me cranky. My inner journalist, latent as she may be, pitches a fit when she hears people making making vague allusions to “research,” or […]

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Are Women More Physically Abusive than Men? Why Mommies Hit Their Babies.

Okay, yes, inflammatory title. But I read something last night that made my stomach knot up into a ball Contrary to public perception, research shows that the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child’s mother, not a male in the household, although the mother’s plight often is complicated by her […]

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Toxic Christianity: When Our Public Face Poisons Faith

If there’s one thing that leaves me completely aghast, it’s Christians hurting one another and using religion to justify their behavior, or citing it as the reason that they didn’t step in to defend the hurting, vulnerable party. It’s the child who is abused on the mission field or in the church, but no one […]

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Video About Domestic Abuse and the Church: What ABUSERS Need From Their Church

Melody Harrison Hanson wrote a beautiful, brave post on her blog today about her experience growing up with a father who “was in ministry and was a generous, gracious, loving, God-fearing man,” but who was also abusive. In fact, he wrote a book about it: “Strongest in the Broken Places: A Story of Spiritual Recovery.” […]

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The Girl Who Cried Wolf, and Other Myths

You can’t go online lately without hearing about hearing about Herman Cain and the allegations of sexual harassment haunting his campaign. Those posts inevitably make me wince—not the articles themselves, but the comments crowded beneath them like protestors punching hand-scrawled signs in the air, screaming at the “other side.” Now, before you get all riled […]

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“It’s more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier…”

The PBS documentary “Women, War & Peace” will be starting tonight. I never watch television, but I will be watching this. Check your local listings to see what time it will be on in your area. Watch the full episode. See more Women War and Peace.

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Liberia, the Nobel Peace Prize, and Me

On Friday, three women were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their commitment to women’s rights. Two of those women, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee, were from Liberia, the country I called home for most of my elementary school years. I haven’t stopped grinning since I heard the news. See, it was in Liberia […]

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Why Are 200 Million Girls Missing?

“It appears that more girls have been killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine ‘gendercide’ in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.” -From […]

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Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault: Why the Church Needs to Get Involved

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and we’re kicking it off tomorrow with our first AVA (Advocates for Victims of Abuse) informational meeting in the Twin Ports. In true Covenant-style (Evangelical Covenant Church, for those of you who don’t happen to be of Scandinavian stock or live in “da nort’land”),  there will be coffee, there […]

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