[Trigger warning] As news of the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke last fall and Penn State students rallied in support of their football coach, one brave young woman decided to step out and be a voice for the victims of sexual abuse. She was totally disgusted by a culture in which […]
Author: LynnPechuekonis
A problem we can’t ignore…
My sisters, this is real and is happening right here in the USA.
More Power
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t having any.” – Alice Walker Author of The Color Purple In my previous post, I wrote about women and power—how sometimes women don’t have as much as we would like and how important it is […]
Putting Power in Its Place
I work at the University of Virginia, and today saw the resolution of a power struggle that, for better or worse, pitted the university’s first female president against its first female rector. It got me thinking about power and women. For the better part of human history, power has resided […]
Those ‘Monsters’ Have Victims
In the May 2012 issue of Christianity Today, the editors were appalled to learn that a former co-worker at the magazine was arrested for sexually assaulting two of his foster children. On the heels of this story came the revelation that a Wheaton College Christian education professor was arrested for […]
“Thank You” or “Please Forgive Me”? Pondering the Prostitute’s Purpose
Was she there to beg his forgiveness or to worship him for a cleansing already received? This was the question that sparked all the Bible study I’ve invested in the subject of Jesus and women over the years. (God may have possibly had something to do with this, as well.) […]
Jesus in a Patriarchal Age
The first-century Middle-Eastern world that Jesus experienced in the flesh was a patriarchal culture several millennia old. Although Jewish patriarchy had been shaped by the Law of Moses early on, its views about women had become distorted over time in its oral traditions, or midrashim, and were often influenced by […]
“I Have Seen the Lord”
Today is Saturday, the day before Easter, and I’m wondering what Saturday was like for the women disciples of Jesus two thousand years ago who had just experienced the unthinkable. Their Lord, this amazing teacher whom they believed was the Messiah (Christ), the Son of God, the Hope of Israel—this man […]
Risky Business
What do the following have in common? – Reaching out in a crowd to touch a rabbi’s robe, even though it will make him ceremonially unclean. – Waltzing into a house full of hostile religious leaders who all know about your immoral past. – Sacrificing a year’s worth of wages […]
All the Single Ladies
Despite all our best efforts, the number of single adults in the U.S. now nearly equals the number of married adults. Just under half of those single people are women. Women today are single for a variety of reasons. Some are completing their education and getting established in a career before […]