Pamela White

From the heart of a Christian feminist
Pamela White

Where has God gone?

On April 21, 2014, I got news that no woman wants. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I’d spent two long weeks praying that the abnormality they’d spotted in my mammogram wasn’t cancer. But that prayer went unanswered.

The radiologist’s words hit me like a fist, my sense of shock overwhelming. I cried all the way home, not knowing at this point what kind of breast cancer it was, whether I’d need chemo, or whether I was already beyond hope of remission. The sense that God had let me down, that God had betrayed my faith, was overwhelming.

My prayers in the days that followed were angry, sometimes laced with profanity. I was enraged. Why should I bother to pray if God ignores me? Why pray to a God who advertises miracles but doesn’t pull through when needed? Does God even care?

This was certainly not my first serious setback in life. I’m a survivor of childhood sexual assault. As an added bonus, two men with switchblades—rapists—tried to break into my apartment when I was home alone with my then 9-month-old baby. (They failed thanks to two brave police officers.) A few years after that, I fell a total of 40 feet down the side of a mountain, breaking bones, rupturing my quadriceps, and sustaining a head injury.
I’d felt that God was with me during these tragedies, but not this time.

The ordeal—which brought mastectomies, chemo, and radiation with many challenges and much pain—put my relationship with God on rocky ground. The pastor at my church listened to my rage and fear and told me to consider the fact that I’d already had an appointment with her, arranged two months in advance of my diagnosis, that just happened to fall on the day after I got this terrible news. 

God was putting things in place to support me, she said.

I could see that, but what mattered more to me was that God did not spare me this evil or this suffering altogether. I had prayed not to get breast cancer, but I’d gotten breast cancer anyway. Then came the suggestions by friends and strangers on Facebook that this was part of God’s plan for me. That enraged me further. If God’s plan for me was breast cancer, then I wanted nothing to do with God.

The difficulty for me was that I couldn’t walk away from my faith. I knew that God was real. I had what some would call a “conversion experience” in my twenties, so I had no doubt that God was real. But I had prayed, and that damned lump had turned out to be cancer anyway.

What the hell, God?

Without knowing it at the time, I went in search of a believable theodicy—the theological term for the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil. Theodicy attempts to answer this question: “Why do bad things happen to good people in a world that God created if God loves us as the Bible claims?”

I prayed. I talked with clergy. Then I joined a four-year theology program called Education for Ministry, seeking answers that might reconcile the loving God I thought I knew with the tragic events and suffering of that long, terrible year.

I want to share the answer I found in the hope that it might help someone during this hard time of COVID-19. So many are suffering from illness, isolation, financial despair, unemployment, and the terrible grief of losing loved ones. While literalists and fundamentalists might see God’s hand in this tragedy, blaming it on marriage equality, feminists, or liberals, I cannot believe an angry God sits in heaven with a finger on the Smite button, handing out misfortune and suffering.

But, then, why do bad things happen?
The first part of my answer can be summed up with one word: freedom. God is not a helicopter parent. The construct in which we live is ours to manage as we see fit. Through our own actions and omissions, we cause misfortune for ourselves and others. God cannot honor our free will and at the same time hover over us and fix our mistakes and abuses. 

The second part of my answer comes from Theology: A Very Short Introduction, by David F. Ford.

Ford suggests imagining a God “who creates a world in which there is genuine freedom and refuses to manipulate that freedom into always doing good.” 
Then he writes: “When freedom is misused, God might offer ways of coping with the results, ways of patience, resistance, healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation. God might even in some sense suffer the consequences of evil, taking responsibility for it by identifying both full with those who undergo it and those who do it. Others could be drawn into this responsibility and a way of life opened up that can both face the worst realistically and also share a new quality of life.”

When these words were read in EfM class one night, they hit me hard. I asked my fellow student to read them again and again. Let me go through it for you.
God, the Creator, gives us a beautiful world and the radical freedom to do wrong. Jesus Christ suffers with us, takes the worst that we are onto the Cross, forgives us, and endures death on our behalf. The Holy Spirit, in the meantime, offers us ways of coping, enabling us to live by Christ’s example “in faith, hope, and love without letting evil have the last word.”

I don’t think a person has to believe in the Trinity for Ford’s theodicy to have meaning. God creates a free world. God causes Jesus to be begotten and born into this world to suffer with us, teach us The Way, and destroy the sting of death so that evil loses its power over us. And God acts through the Holy Spirit to prompt action, bring us comfort, and give us strength. 

Over time, as I digested Ford’s words, I came to believe that God suffered through breast cancer with me. I was able to look back and see how God’s people—my faith community and my friends and family—rose up to help me through that terrible time, doing God’s compassionate work with human hearts and hands. 

I see now, too, the good that God managed to bring about despite the calamity that cancer wrought in my life. I’m not saying that cancer had a silver lining or that I’m grateful for the experience. I’m saying that God took the darkness of that nightmare and transformed darkness into light. My search for an answer for my own suffering has deepened my faith and strengthened my relationship with God in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

The world is facing unprecedented times with COVID-19, due in part to our own abuse of creation. Human failings and failed institutions cannot be separated from the continued spread of this disease. People are sick, suffering, dying, grieving. 

But God has not abandoned us, betrayed us, or stopped loving us. God’s love and compassion for us is unchanged. God is suffering with us and working through the Holy Spirit to bring us comfort, help, and peace. 

God can’t promise us that we and our loved ones will never face a diagnosis of cancer or COVID-19 or any other disease. But God does promise that disharmony, disease, and death won’t be our last chapter.

Starting a Garden

Note: I prefer the term garden to the inelegant term American word “yard.” So when I say “garden” I’m speaking about the land around your house that is available for planting.


Know your USDA Hardiness Zone and your average last frost/first frost dates. 

Spend a few days tracking sunlight in your yard. You need to know how many hours of sun different areas of your yard receive. Remember, in summer the sun is farther to the south. Visualize the path of the sun across the terrain and choose the best place for your garden. Most plants want six hours of direct sunlight per day, but you can grow some things in shadier conditions. 

Prep your garden beds, either by building them or tiling into the ground. If you till into the ground, remember that a lawn will have depleted your soil while giving almost nothing back. 

Be honest with yourself about your available time and know that gardening, while also spiritual and enjoyable and relaxing, is something that will require your attention every day during the growing season.

Discuss the garden with family members, including children. It’s not a bad thing to give them garden chores, even if they have no interest now. Hey, I was made to work in the garden — to weed, plant, dig, harvest. I planted my first onion sets at age 2. Kids need to learn these skills because they might need them. Explain why you’re doing this — to improve your food security and health. It’s never a bad time in life to be taught that you need to contribute to your family’s wellbeing and that you have to do things you don’t want to do. That’s good preparation for adulthood. (Can you tell I had zero sympathy for whiny teens?)

Decide what you want to grow. TIP: Don’t plant things you don’t eat! That’s a waste of resources. If you hate kale, do not plant kale.Buy your seeds ASAP. They’re selling out. Seed potatoes might be found at garden stores, but if you’re isolating you’ll want to find them online. They do sell out.

If you want fruit trees, research varieties and space. We have 13 strategically placed fruit trees in our garden: Four pear, two peach, one plum, three cherry, and three apple trees. Most are semi-dwarf varieties that are cold-hardy and diseases resistant. TIP: 

Know what diseases are common in your area. Here, it’s fire blight. Buy accordingly and get ready to learn about beneficial insects and nemotodes.PLANT YOUR TREES THREE YEARS BEFORE YOU WANT TO RELY ON THEM FOR FRUIT. TIP: Planting fruit trees is its own topic, so we’ll get there. but getting these in the ground is a great first step because it gives your garden permanent structure. You need to know where and how to plant them.

To build your garden, think structure. Place beds where they get plenty of southern exposure, preferably SE. SW is often too hot and dry, at least here in Colorado. Plant tall things and install trellises on the NORTH side of beds so they won’t shade the veggie. Leave room for yourself to get through with tools and perhaps a wheelbarrow.

When your beds and soil are in, your seeds have arrived, you’re ready (right now, depending on your zone) to plant cold-weather crops: peas, radishes, carrots, arugula, lettuces, spinach. Peas, radishes, and spinach are always the first to go in for us.

For soil, I like a mix of 1/3 coir, 1/3 organic compost, and 1/3 vermiculite. You can buy these separately and mix them (wetting the mixture as you go). Or just buy organic raised bed mix in bags. Open while wearing a MASK so as not to inhale any fungus or pathogens that might have grown in the moist environment.

Think 3D. When I plant anything slower growing (peas, garlic), I underplant with radishes or greens of some kind. By the time the peas are up and growing, I will have harvested lots of radishes and bags full of lettuce or spinach or arugula.

Think succession planting. Don’t plant ALL the peas and radish seeds at once unless you want to eat them all at once. I don’t want waste, so I typically will plant radishes two weeks apart. When one crop is harvested, I replant. That’s succession planting. You can get an amazing amount of produce out of a single bed or whisky barrel if you are conscientious about harvesting and replanting, taking the season into account. Cold-weather crops do not do as well in heat and will bolt when summer arrives. (You can combat that by planting some in shadier, cooler parts of your garden, but it’s hard to trick Mother Nature.)

If you live in a climate like mine, you are going to have to water regularly. Tip: If you plant in grow-bags or pots, you will have to water DAILY. You’ll doom your crop if you don’t.

Okay, that’s a quick-and-dirty checklist. Each one of these could be its own topic.

A word about garden planners … You can find them all over the place. Some are more useful than others. I’ve got a Clyde’s Garden Planner. I’ve never had a garden planner before, but it was $5 on Amazon and I figured what the heck. If you’re new to growing fruit and veg, this might be helpful.

For a harvest this year… Plant raspberries and strawberries, as well as veg. Those raspberry bushes will produce this year, though it will take them a few years to ramp up.

In everything, READ about the varieties you’re planting. Keep notes about planting dates and everything you plant. Know what you’re putting into your garden. It seems obvious, but it isn’t.Refresh your grow-bags, pots, and garden beds with organic compost or composted manure regularly.

Gardening in hard times, Part 1

I’m a student of history. My degree was in Classics (Latin, Greek, ancient history) and my graduate work was in Classical Archaeology. I am also in the middle of studying the history of Christianity. If there’s anything that history teaches us it’s that life can change in an instant. That’s true for nations and the global community as it is for individuals.

Complex chains of events create unexpected—and sometimes completely foreseeable—consequences the have a staggering impact on people’s lives. A volcanic eruption brings down one civilization and opens the door to the rise of another. Discontent in one nation brings war to all the states around it. Irresponsible and greedy speculation on Wall Street results in crashes that bring depressions and recessions and wipe out the retirement plans of rank-and-file workers.

Now, COVID-19, or novel coronavirus, is making headlines. More than 130,000 have been infected and almost 5,000 have died as I write this, with the death toll increasing daily. Italy has shut down and placed its overwhelmed medical system on war footing, meaning that the sickest people might not get treatment in order to save the lives of those with a better chance of surviving. The virus is spreading in the US, but the numbers are unavailable because of lack of testing. People are canceling trips, which is having a economic impact on airlines, travel agents, and pet-sitters. The potential for a global recession or depression is real.

Plagues have always changed history. We are fortunate to live in times that give us access to modern medical care, but those resources can be overwhelmed, perhaps to a degree that we who haven’t lived through a major pandemic or world war can imagine. Italy ran out of medical supplies. Who could imagine that even a month ago? With a potential for 1 million fatalities in the US if aggressive steps aren’t taken quickly, it’s important for people to begin planning for long-term stability.

I’m not sowing panic here. I’m taking what the CDC says and responding to it as a private citizen, as someone who has felt called for many years now to do all I can to live a more independent life. There are so many interwoven components to meeting one’s own needs, and there are a lot of skills to learn along the way. But the reward is empowerment—the irreplaceable certainty that you can make your life and the lives of those around you safer and more secure during troubled times.

Ready.gov and the Centers for Disease Control have a wealth of preparedness information for emergencies in general (and news about COVID-19 specifically) that most of us seem to ignore. The best time to familiarize yourself with that information is months ago. The next best time is now.

But the point of this column is to focus on one area that can make an enormous difference in your life—and that’s growing your own food.

My great-grandparents and grandparents were all farmers. They grew what they ate and ate what they grew. My grandparents lived in Springfield, IL, and grew most of their own fruit vegetables. My mother’s parents fed a family of eight out of their back yard from a garden plot, fruit trees, grapevines, and rabbits. They fished, too, and ate the catch. They preserved their food, too. My mother’s mother had a goal of putting up 160 quarts of green beans every summer to get them through the winter.

This work of growing and preserving, combined with frugality beyond the experience of most of us, meant that they always had food, even when my mother had to wear converted flour sacks as skirts when she went to school. In economic upturn or downturn, they still had food on the table. This meant that any available cash could be spent on staples they couldn’t grow—such as flour, milk, etc.— as well as healthcare, shoes, and home repairs.

Let’s dive in.

Growing your own food isn’t rocket science, but it is science. It’s not difficult, but it’s also not something you can do successfully without some learning and deliberate effort. I say this because I’ve met people who place their security in packets of seeds and the belief that, if the time comes, they’ll be able to figure it out. I know others who save seeds from produce bought from the store, believing again that when the time comes, this will reap a sustaining harvest.

Chances are, both of these approaches will fail. Seeds don’t last forever. While I’ve had seeds last years, there’s always a decline in the number that sprout. When every bite counts, that’s not okay. Seeds from apples and squash purchased from the store, even organic seeds, might not come from varieties of plants that will go on to produce viable fruit. I’ve done that experiment, growing squash all summer that failed to produce anything.

It’s important to note that one need not have a big yard like my grandparents did to grow bountiful crops. Grow bags and large pots enable almost anyone to create patio gardens that can offer a surprising harvest. There are also community gardens. There may be other programs, too. Our county offers a veggie garden in a box every summer—seedlings and instructions to help the novice grower get started.

For the past four or so years, we’ve been shifting toward growing our own in our Colorado Zone 5 garden to the greatest extent possible. Maybe it’s in my DNA, but it’s also a call I’ve felt for a very long time. Growing food—gardening—is as close to human roots and the human soul as any activity.

First, we planted perennials—raspberries, blackberries, apple trees, pear trees, cherry trees, peach and plum trees. We have 15 fruit trees now, mostly semi-dwarf varieties, strategically spaced in our ordinary urban back yard. These need time to grow before they produce much, so the time to plant them was three years ago. The next best time is now.

Then we began experimenting with grow bags — felt bags and plastic bags that we fill with compost and raised bed mix. We’ve grown potatoes, tomatoes, and green beans in these bags and had enough for canning. This, of course, meant I needed to learn how to can. In the course of a few summers, I’ve gone from someone who was afraid of canning to a person with cans of fresh organic peaches, green beans, and my own raspberry jam on shelves in my pantry. I’ve also learned to bake my own bread without a machine. 

 

Have I mentioned I don’t have an abundance of free time? I don’t. I also don’t have a lot of expendable cash on hand. What I do have is determination. I’ve been known to make small-batch jams at 1 in the morning.

After that, we began building raised beds to accommodate my physical limitations. In those beds, we’ve grown peas, radishes, peppers, more beans, broccoli, beets, lettuces, spinach, arugula, garlic and a host of other produce. We started with one bed and will have 100 feet of elevated growing space by this summer. We’ve done this organically.

Yes, we have had failures, and you will, too. Gardening is always an experiment with the experiments growing more successful as one matures in one’s skill.

Here’s the thing: You need to start now. While you can throw something together in July, you might get some results depending on what you plant. But chances are you’ll be disappointed. If you want to start building security for your family now, spring is the time to begin.

Growing your own food brings with it so many benefits. You know exactly what’s on the food and don’t have to worry about supermarket recalls. The produce is fresher, tastes better, and is often higher in nutrients because it gets to your plate sooner. Gardening relieves stress and brings families and even communities together. It also gives you some security because you know that you’ve got something to put on the table.

Growing your own food doesn’t have to be expensive with countless trips to the garden store. It can be done economically as you gradually build on your newly acquired skills and expand your operation. And it can be a lot of fun for the whole family. I’ll talk about getting started in my next column.

For now, here’s your homework: Find your hardiness zone. Do you live in Zone 4 or Zone 3a? Do you live in a part of Texas where growing is impossible in summer due to heat? To get started, go to https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/InteractiveMap.aspx.

We’ll meet here again in a few days.

Stay safe, and wash your hands!

 

 

Be the ripples

Note: I’ve been away for a three-day conference, so forgive me if we hop back to Good Friday. Here is my contribution to an ecumenical Good Friday service focusing the words Jesus spoke on the cross.

“Then, when he had tasted the vinegar, Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” — John 19:30

I studied classical archaeology at CU, both as an undergrad and in grad school. During a Greek translation class, one of my professors dissected this story, asking what, exactly, was finished. Jesus’ ministry hadn’t changed the world as far as this professor was concerned. It had merely gotten Jesus killed, leaving his followers to make up stories about a second coming.

So much for Christianity.

There are likely many contemporaries of Jesus who looked around at a broken world and felt the same way as that professor. Their best hope for the promised Messiah had just been crucified. Judea was still occupied by Rome. The line of David had not been re-established. 

Why, then, did Jesus say, “It is finished” when so much remained to be done in this world? 

Jesus, of course, spoke Aramaic. John was written in Greek. But let’s assume that the author did his best to be truthful to the intent of Jesus’ words in his mother tongue. 

The Greek word used in John is “tetelestai.” Ancient Greek is a complicated language, and, as with any translation, some of the meaning of the word is lost when we read it in English.

Dana and Mantey, a popular Greek grammar text, tells us: “No element of Greek language is of more importance to the student of the New Testament than the matter of tense.” 

Tetelestai is third person singular perfect tense. In ancient Greek, the perfect tense is a combination two other tenses—the aorist tense, which indicates something happened at a specific point in time, and the present tense, which contains an implied sense of continuation. 

That’s a strange concept for English speakers.

A more awkward but more accurate translation of “Tetelestai” might be, “It is finished and continues.” Or “It is accomplished, and it goes on.” 

Biblical scholars have offered many interpretations of this, some suggesting that the author of John meant to say that the power of sin had been broken for all time. Others points out that the word “tetelestai” was written across the bottom of loan documents to indicate that a debt had been paid in full. In their view, Jesus was saying, “The debt is paid.”

But I have a different take.

As a young mother raising two sons in Boulder, I spent as much time in nature with them as I could. We stopped now and then to toss rocks into a lake near our house and watch the ripples spread. As a parent, one is always trying to teach. So, I told my kids that they could think of the rock as an action or event and the ripples as consequences. They quickly latched onto the metaphor as only children can. I recall my younger son throwing a rock into a lake and shouting, “Martin Luther King Jr,” and then watching as the ripples spread to the shore.

The perfect tense in Greek is exactly like that. An event occurs, and the ripples spread. 

In this case, the event is Jesus’ death on the cross.

But what about the ripples?

During his ministry on this earth, Jesus gave us specific work to do. He gave us our own mission. You can find it in Luke 10:27. It’s not cryptic or vague. 

It says, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Love God with everything you are, and love your neighbor—who happens to be everyone—as yourself.

For much of my life, when I read or listened to the stories of the Nativity or Christ’s crucifixion, I wished I’d been there to help. What a difference I would have made! Oh, yes!

If only I’d been there in 32 A.D, I would have carried that cross. I would have held up a sponge with pure water, not vinegar. I would have slipped Jesus an oxy. I would surely have done something to ease his suffering.

Martin Luther addressed what must be a fairly common Christian fantasy in one of his Christmas Eve sermons. Referring to Jesus’ birth in a stable, he said, “There are many of you in this congregation who think to yourselves, ‘If only I had been there. How quick I would have been to help the baby’ … You say that because you know how great Christ is. But if you had been there at that time, you would have done no better than the people of Bethlehem. Childish and silly thoughts are these.”

Then he goes on to offer this radical suggestion: “Why don’t you do it now? …. You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to serve him. …. For what you do to your neighbor in need you do to the Lord Christ himself.”

You mean there is work I should be doing today? 

What an inconvenient lesson that is.

Now back to the cross as Jesus draws his last breath.

Tetelestai. It is finished.

The work God started through Jesus in that stable in Bethlehem was finished on the cross at Golgotha. It was finished, and it will continue to be finished—by us … with God’s help. 

We are the ripples.

Jesus finished his earthly mission on the cross, dying to show us the meaning of love. But our mission, the work he gave us, continues. We were born to partner with Christ in mending the hurts of this world through acts of mercy and kindness. 

That’s a big job, but as the Jewish text “The Chapters of Our Fathers” states, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

Tetelestai. It is finished. 

And the effort—our working partnership with our Creator—continues.

Reclaiming Christianity

Five years ago, I wouldn’t have identified myself as Christian. Oh, I believed in God, and I loved Jesus. But I didn’t want to be mistaken for or associated with the extremists that had taken over the Christian “brand” here in the United States.

My parents came to Colorado from the Midwest. My mother had been raised as a Methodist and told us Bible stories, singing songs like Jesus Loves the Little Children and Jesus Loves Me. My father had been raised Baptist. By the time I was 14, I’d attended a Baptist church, spent seven years studying with Jehovah’s Witnesses, and had gone to my parents’ new church, a conservative Presbyterian congregation.

None of it had been inspiring or brought me any closer to God. On the contrary, I had experienced sexism, elitism, and hypocrisy. I’d share examples, but that is perhaps the subject of a different column.

The last straw came during a conversation with my parents’ male pastor. In tears, I confided in him that I had been sexually assaulted at age 10 by an adult man, the father of a third-grade schoolmate. The assailant had invited me inside to play with his daughter, but she hadn’t been home. As a child, I didn’t have words for what had happened next, leaving me with fear, trauma, and grief that wouldn’t heal.

How did the pastor respond?

“Don’t worry,” he said. “God forgives you.”

God forgives me?

That was it. I was done with hypocrisy, the misogyny, and the lack of compassion that seemed to plague Christianity as I had experienced it. As my parents became more conservative, self-identifying as fundamentalists, I did all I could to avoid church and religion. I refused to go to church during that time, calling myself agnostic or “spiritual but not religious.” However, I didn’t give up on God, privately praying almost every day to what I feared might be an empty, unfeeling universe.

I was folding laundry one day in the early 1990s and contemplating mortality—how each of us is unique and how all that we are disappears when we die—when I felt as if I’d been hit by lightning. I was knocked to the floor, and there, in my very humble living room amid the folded socks and underwear, was God—immense in power, boundless, loving.

The universe wasn’t empty after all.

God was real.

I became a different kind of agnostic that day—one who doesn’t know what she believes but who knows that God exists. Still, I wouldn’t have said I was Christian.

While I explored spirituality and this new relationship with a real and living God, ultimately finding a home in the Episcopal Church, people calling themselves Christian were using their newfound political power in ways that seemed decidedly un-Christian to me, treating the taxes they didn’t want to pay as more sacred than the lives of the poor, the homeless, the migrant, the single mother, the prisoner. The same people that screamed “Whore!” and “Murderer!” at strangers entering women’s clinics rooted for capital punishment, war, and cuts in support programs. They told us God doesn’t make mistakes when speaking of unwanted pregnancies but were vocal in their dehumanization of LGBTQ people, Muslims, and other nations.

I didn’t want to be associated with those people because the God I’d met that day in my living room is more expansive, more loving, more inclusive.

Since then, the situation in the United States has only gotten worse. As I see it, fundamentalists and evangelicals are one of the greatest threats to The Way today—modern-day Pharisees who use their literalist interpretation of Scripture to bludgeon people with whom they disagree, while missing the greater biblical message, which is love.

We see the consequences of their actions as church attendance continues to drop nationwide and fewer young people identify with any single faith. By their fruits you shall know them, and a lot of young people know they don’t want to associate with a religion that ignores climate change, supports nationalism, and promotes unreflective, exclusivist theology.

“If you spend too much time needing to prove that … your race is the only race that God loves, you’re the only religion that’s going to heaven, you’re the only gender that’s worth considering—whatever it might be—that, by almost any criteria, would be called narcissism,” said the Rev. Richard Rohr. “But people get away with it for some reason if they speak it in favor of their group. So, there is only one thing more dangerous than individual narcissism, and that’s group narcissism—when you all agree to tell the same lie together, that your particular ethnicity or racial group or country or religion is the only one going to heaven, the only one God cares about. We can’t handle this kind of stupidity. This is one planet, and we’re clearly all creatures of the same God, and either we start seeing Divine identity in all of God’s creatures, or we’re in trouble.”

That’s why I speak out now. I cannot allow fundamentalists to claim Christianity or to “brand” my faith. Some of them believe they have that right, informing me in online comments that I cannot be both Christian and feminist—or pro-choice or a Democrat or supportive of my gay, Muslim, or migrant neighbors. I’ve even been told that the Episcopal Church is no longer a Christian church.

But the people making these pronouncements aren’t God. They don’t get to decide who gets God’s love or grace. They aren’t the judges of who’s truly Christian or who receives salvation. Those decisions are far above their pay grade, far beyond their understanding and mine.

Other moderate and progressive Christians have already spoken out, working to reclaim Christianity and return it to its loving roots. The Rev. Bishop Michael Curry calls it “Reclaiming Jesus” and urges us to join the Jesus Movement. Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has been open about his faith as a gay married man. Rachel Held Evans used her too-short life and her powerful voice to open the door for thousands who felt excluded from an unloving, judgmental, and hostile church. Pastor John Pavlovitz has taken up the political fight and been outspoken about the hypocrisy and, yes, heresy of far-right evangelical Christian politics.

Now I’m stepping into the ring after six-year hiatus from journalism and opinion writing. I’m not going to suggest in my columns that any political party or candidate is the answer. Although political commentary is certainly relevant when one side claims God is behind their political victories and legislation, Christianity isn’t partisan. It has nothing to do with political parties and their petty squabbling. It transcends that fight for ephemeral earthly power and embraces not just all of humanity, but all of creation.

Jesus didn’t spend his brief time with us urging us to get political. He told us to love God with all that we are and to love one another. Given that we’re close to having exhausted all other options, let’s try love for a change.

So, today marks my coming out. I’m Pamela White, and I’m a Christian feminist.

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“Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who make the journey with us. So, be swift to love, and make haste to be kind.”

—Henri Frederic Amiel


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