“I’m angry. I’m sad. I feel as if we’ve reached the end of an era with this bunch, and I don’t know what’s next.”
Debra RienstraJune 10, 2023
We’re all speculating here, I guess, with the understanding that the speculation is itself a process of hope: what do we long for? what outcomes can we imagine and, through that imagining, help enact?
Debra RienstraJanuary 4, 2023
I want to focus on the power of meaning-making narratives. In the wearying events of the last few years, we’ve seen two tiny little denominations struggle to figure out (once again) what narrative we are living into. Is the future of our denominations a game…
Debra RienstraJuly 9, 2022
The most amazing thing about this passage, at least to me, is the evident fact that God is longing, too.
Debra RienstraMarch 19, 2022
The birth of the child is the focal point of God’s communion with the whole of creation. This is the deep wisdom of the doctrine of incarnation: the person Jesus is the crucial stitch uniting heaven and earth, spiritual and physical, entirely and forever.
Debra RienstraDecember 25, 2021
Mark Wallace, Swarthmore professor of religion and environmental studies, takes this scriptural moment as much more than an exercise in symbology. Instead, in his 2019 book, When God Was a Bird, Wallace argues that the baptism narratives are quintessential manifestations of a second incarnation. Just…
Debra RienstraDecember 11, 2021
Anyway, our team has heard that you young people are getting really discouraged about, you know, everything. So we decided to reach out and have a little chat.
Debra RienstraNovember 20, 2021
So let’s call this an exercise in religio-anthropological observation. A kind of disambiguation attempt.
Debra RienstraOctober 23, 2021
For UK Christian leaders, the challenges are fraught and puzzling: how to steward property, how to do church in a changing cultural context. The heavy questions of how many will remain faithful, and what faithfulness now means.
Debra RienstraJune 4, 2021
