Samantha Field is a queer woman who grew up in an authoritarian church that forbade women from seeking college educations or employment, but eventually escaped. Now a seminarian at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, Samantha is a writer, activist, and speaker exploring feminist and liberation theologies.
Posts By This Author
Josh Duggar’s Sentencing Underscores Need to Reform Homeschooling
Josh Duggar attends the March for Marriage rally in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 2014. Credit: Patsy Lynch/Media Punch/Alamy Live News
For many of the people who watched the show and enjoyed the Duggar’s supposedly wholesome, winsome lifestyle, the recent conviction and sentencing of the eldest child, Josh Duggar, to 12 years in prison on multiple counts of possesion of child pornography may be shocking. How could a family with such strong “Christian values,” who kept their children far away from the evils of “The World,” have created this?
A Christianity That Makes Room for Rage
I slowly came to understand that if I was going to remain a Christian, I needed to find a path that had room for the rage and grief I carried with me as a rape survivor. Rage is the only human and rational reaction to the trauma I’d experienced, and I could not smother my humanity in order to remain a Christian. It was around this time that I first read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. This past Tuesday, after we read Martin & Malcolm & America by James Cone, my seminary professor asked “what elements of Malcolm’s theology could contribute to Christian theology?” and my answer was immediate: holding space for rage.
Why White Women Love Esther ... But Ignore Zeresh
It’s not surprising that Christians don't relate to Zeresh. She’s one of the monsters, a biblical Lady Macbeth. But one group could stand to examine her character more fully.