{"id":1363,"date":"2014-11-09T04:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-11-09T09:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/?p=1363"},"modified":"2016-12-01T10:59:55","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T15:59:55","slug":"read-this-book-november-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/2014\/11\/read-this-book-november-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"READ THIS BOOK November 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Each month, we ask a member of the Vanderbilt Divinity School faculty to recommend a book they are currently reading. Our November recommendation is offered by\u00a0Ellen Armour, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair in Feminist Theology, Director of the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality. <\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The U.S. may be moving rather quickly toward acceptance of same sex marriage, but controversies over the full inclusion of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, or queer (LGBTQ) continue to divide communities of faith. \u00a0This week here in Nashville, the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention is hosting a conference on \u201cThe Gospel, Homosexuality, and Same Sex Marriage,\u201d an event focused, according to its organizers, on helping attendees understand how to defend (so-called) traditional marriage and speak the truth (with love) to those who disagree with them. Last week, news broke that Crescent Hill Baptist Church just up the road in Louisville KY \u2013 pastored now by VDS alumnus Jason Crosby \u2013 will likely be disfellowshipped by the Kentucky Baptist Convention for its recent decision to adopt a welcoming and affirming stance. South of us, well known Baptist ethicist David P. Gushee (on the faculty at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University) announced that his thinking on the matter has changed and he now supports full inclusion of LGBTQ people in the life of the church. And the list goes on\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With that in mind, let me recommend to you a book that I have found to be very helpful in thinking about these conflicts: Dawne Moon\u2019s God, Sex and Politics: Homosexuality and Everyday Theologies<\/span> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). An ethnographer, Moon studied two Methodist congregations \u2013 one conservative, one progressive \u2013 that were engaged in debates over homosexuality\u2019s compatibility with Christian faith and practice.\u00a0 In compelling and accessible prose (it\u2019s a real page turner, I promise!), Moon describes in rich detail the shape that these debates took in each congregation. She helps us see the role that theological differences play in them\u2014not just over biblical interpretation but over how people of faith understand God and sin, as well. Moon\u2019s study also illuminates the roles that modes of handling conflict (or, more often, avoiding it) played in these debates. She stops short \u2013 as she should, given the principles of ethnographic study \u2013 of offering recommendations for managing these conflicts more productively, but there are surely timely practical as well as theological lessons to be learned from immersing oneself by proxy in these two congregations\u2019 experiences.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each month, we ask a member of the Vanderbilt Divinity School faculty to recommend a book they are currently reading. Our November recommendation is offered by\u00a0Ellen Armour, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair in Feminist Theology, Director of the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality.       The U.S. may be moving…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1576,"featured_media":1177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[484,480,482,485,292,223,1050,324,483,486,604,31,1051],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-read-this-book","tag-dawne-moon","tag-ellen-armour","tag-feminist-theology","tag-god","tag-lgbtq","tag-nashville","tag-readthisbook","tag-reading","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-sex-and-politics","tag-the-carpenter-program","tag-vanderbilt-divinity-school","tag-vdsfaculty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1576"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1376,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions\/1376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}