more, like God: women speak

This is an update of an earlier post like God: women speak.

Suzanne has complete her series with McCarthy vs Wallace 4, McCarthy vs Wallace 5, and McCarthy vs Wallace 6. And her important observations in You shall love your .... complement well today's post by Linda Jones on Christianity and charity.

Hugo Schwyzer (a "pro-feminist" and "Christian" and "feminist" and man) returns to new postings today, engaging the following questions of women and men with faith and feminism:

A reader named Mercy (I have a few with that pseudonym, it seems) writes after participating in this discouraging discussion at Christianity Today. Mercy, a young committed evangelical, youth leader, and feminist, asks in an email
How do you deal, as a Christian feminist, with Christians who seem to still believe women are an after-thought of creation, who deny any feminine qualities of God, who think that because birth control wasn’t accepted by a church until 1930 it’s still evil….I could go one and on, but how do you do it? How do you reason with these people? How do you make them see you’re not a pagan, not renouncing Christ, etc, etc.? How do you live your beliefs?

And here's from Nancy Mairs:

"As my husband has often said, when you talk about Jesus, you reveal little — maybe nothing — about Jesus but a great deal about yourself."

"... as the Mexican American theologian Virgilio Elizondo puts it, that 'the role of the powerless is to evangelize the powerful.' A reviewer of one of my books once took me to task for accepting the tenets of feminist and liberation theology merely on faith, as though one could not possibly, after long contemplation and appraisal, continue to affirm them. But God's preferential option for the poor — expressed at least as far back as Isaiah's cry for the protection of widows and fatherless children — rings true to the Christian ethos. I must accept it, both on faith and on reflection, and act upon it if I am to carry out God's will. And in the tale of a dark-skinned peasant carrying to the conquistadores for their veneration the image of a dark-skinned Lady who promised her compassion to all humanity (even, I must suppose, the conquistadores) lies a model of the care I am, I believe, required to give."

A Dynamic God, pages 109 and 31.