I will admit that, initially, reading through the tweets and retweets of Josh Harris and John Piper regarding Rob Bell's newest book, I was absolutely disgusted and even more repelled from trying to involve myself in a local church again. The belief that your interpretation of Scripture is the most correct --and deviation from it is heresy -- is so arrogant and is one of the reasons I'm home this Sunday morning, doing homework and cleaning instead of finding a local church.
I will also admit that, at first, I was discouraged by what appeared to be a bunch of white, middle class men talking to themselves. When I performed a quick search on Twitter or Google, the debaters and commenters on Rob Bell appeared to be a homogenous group. Of course I don't have anything against white males, but if your theology is done exclusively with those who are just like you, it seems like you would be missing out on other perspectives.
So, I set out to prove myself wrong. I ended up finding some excellent blogs by women, and not only am I very thankful, but I've added several new blogs to my Google reader. It's encouraging to know that men are not the only participants in conversations about the church and theology. I haven't been able to be a very active participant in the blog world myself, since school has sucked up all my time the past 2 1/2 years, but hopefully soon I can count myself as one of the voices of women online in this area (as a side note, I can't believe this year marks my 8th year of blogging!). And next, I'll set out to prove myself wrong with regard to the white-ness of the discussion.
Here are some blogs that are new to me:
www.emergingmummy.com - she has an excellent post on the traditional and annihilationist views of hell
Here are some women bloggers I already enjoy reading and recommend:
http://krisanneswartley.wordpress.com
http://julieclawson.com/- I recommend checking out her thoughtful post on the Rob Bell/hell controversy
http://thinklaughweepworship.blogspot.com
Great list! And, thanks for including me. :)
One I recently discovered that I like a lot is Women in Theology: http://witheology.wordpress.com/.
It is a cooperative blog with a variety of voices. Very learned, very eloquent, and very charitable. Highly recommend!
Posted by: Emily McGowin | April 14, 2011 at 10:13 PM
Thanks for the recommendation - will definitely check it out!
Posted by: Natalie | April 14, 2011 at 10:57 PM