Muriel Porter lives in Melbourne and is a familiar speaker at Anglican meetings such as Synod. She’s written ‘The Christian Origins of Feminism’, found in Maryanne Confoy, Dorothy A Lee and Joan Nowotny’s Freedom and Entrapment: Women Thinking Theology. Porter has an agenda in writing this piece: she’s an avid supporter of women’s […]
Will Mackerras is a storyteller and poet — the Ridley poet-in-residence, really! In 2010, his love of Australian bush poetry led him to recast a series of Bible stories in a traditional Aussie form. The results are brilliant. Some pieces are thoroughly chuckle-inducing, like The Man From Ironbark, while the sustained […]
Two exciting new blogs from friends: Sam Cohen, now in England, is writing beer reviews at Sam’s Brews. Pete Greenwood, ninja, is writing about ministry and theology at Ministry Ninja. (If you can’t find his RSS, it’s this.)
Sudan is Africa’s largest nation. As I write this, it is about to split in two. This time it will be official. The South is currently holding a referendum that will almost certainly result in a call for its independence. I have friends among the Melbourne voters for whom this is […]
An important feminist principle is to self-define womanhood rather than defining woman according to men. For example, women whose primary self-understanding is as wife, mother or widow are defined by their relationships to men; sister and daughter are often not very far behind. If women are described positively in masculine […]
I noted after reading Cheryl Exum’s work on Deborah that the Old Testament’s conception of motherhood is broader than family or biological ties. Though the Reformation elevated and celebrated biological motherhood, there were some women who claimed a larger title of mother. Katharina Schütz Zell (KSZ) was one such woman […]
One of Kirsi Stjerna’s conclusions in Women and the Reformation is that “more than any other factor, gender determined a woman’s ability and avenues to respond to the Reformation.” However, their responses were not uniform and she stresses that it would be a mistake to see women as responding en […]
Meet Jesus at uni 