Breaking glass ceilings or falling off glass cliffs?
I’ve written in these emails before about the importance and the joy of learning from other traditions, whether other religions entirely or different expressions of Christian faith. We have two new articles this week that have been making waves online, and both of them reminded me of this theme.
Katherine Willis Pershey is a huge fan of the work of the late minister and writer Eugene Peterson. She makes the case that when some progressive Christians write him off, they miss out on treasures of pastoral wisdom. The other new highlighted article, from Danielle Tumminio Hansen, responds to the appointment of Sarah Mullally as the first ever archbishop of Canterbury who is a woman. This piece isn’t about learning from other traditions, but I who am outside the Anglican Communion was fascinated by the Episcopal priest Hansen’s exploration of gender in corporations and religious institutions.
Jon Mathieu Email me: What do you love about your own religious tradition? What do you admire about another one?
(Lunchtime chats temporarily disabled during travel season!)
“Above all, it was Eugene Peterson’s insistence that we live and minister as if God is real. He is the person who taught me, at long last, to pray. I did not need to agree with everything he thought, even about some things that matter a great deal, to be grateful on an eternal scale.”
“Gilead reads as confrontational against today’s wave of performative religiosity. Neither mawkish nor moralizing, the novel is now subversive (whatever Robinson intended two decades ago).”
