Alexandria Beightol is one of the founding advocates of True Prevention Task Force for church sexual assault/ harassment policy change. She graduated from Philips Exeter Academy and is on academic/ professional leave from Smith College to to research LGBTQ inclusion in the church and works as a consultant in a female-owned and led private company.
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The Radical Hope of the Tony Awards
The cast of "Choir Boy" performs. Image via REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Good theater contains a strain of that gospel antidote, that powerful tradition of trying to name and recognize our demons and human propensities. The earnestness in story that pairs what we believe with what we do, can serve as a way to handle truths about ourselves and our dealings that make us uncomfortable. Often written off as fluffy and as a less effective means of activism, the tradition of plays and musicals has the power to stage an inner confrontation in real time, asking the audience to contend with a hard truth or recasting a social norm we seldom question.
Rachel Held Evans Inspired Women To Step Boldly Into Our Own Place
Rachel Held Evans
I stopped praying for God to turn me into a boy after I found Rachel Held Evans and her work. I was convinced that God might love girls, but not so much women. In my world, there was little challenging the ideology that patriarchy was God’s good plan for us. Rachel was the first evangelical I knew who began to articulate any kind of challenge to that idea. Forming a digital community through her writing, she asked the hard questions that haunted thousands of us everywhere. She took a particular risk of faith many of us felt we could not, “the risk of birth” as she would later articulate while referencing Madeleine L'Engle's famous poem. Rachel’s writing and preaching over the years demonstrated a commitment to faith over unquestioning certainty.