What Happened at Tov Unleashed this Week?

Monday: How did the Reformation impact women? Beth Barr:

What Barr says is that the Reformation led to a deformation of women rather than a reformation. Prior to the Reformation the virginity of a woman have her power to surrender marriage to be a nun, and as a nun a woman had more agency and oftentimes much more of a voice. After the Reformation, in which motherhood was holiness, a Protestant woman no longer had the power of being a “religious.”

Woman becomes wifedom and motherhood. Barr is saying the so-called “biblical” motherhood is only 500 years old. 

Tuesday: We had a good civil conversation about a road sign.

In her new academic book called An Introduction to Religious Language: Exploring Theolinguistics in Contemporary Contexts, Valerie Hobbs examines not only what a text says but what it does.

I’m asking for a good conversation. Honest, civil, intelligent, vulnerable. Let’s learn from one another what happens when we experience the sign below. (Hobbs uses this image in her book. I found it online.)

What does this text do? Or, we could ask it otherwise: What do you think the creator of this sign intended? or what did the creator want to happen?

Wednesday: Rebekah Eklund’s new book on the beatitudes of Jesus.

They seem so simple, those beatitudes. “Blessed are…” and we’re off and running. But they raise a number of questions which are explored in Rebekah Eklund’s new and important study called The Beatitudes Through the Ages.

Thursday: the pastor as writer.

Writing, more than anything else, requires lots of time and generous amounts of tranquility.

Time and tranquility.

Eugene Peterson’s story, as told by Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones (pp. 196-239; for the reading plan), seems to have been a search for both time and tranquility for more than a decade.

The writer searches for a schedule that is open.

Friday: I reposted something from CBE, a great interview with some voices I deeply respect.

I am a huge fan of Mimi Haddad and Christians for Biblical Equality, and now that I’m on Substack it is easier for me to grab the old permissions she’s given me to share their posts on my space. This one is worth all of our time.

I like especially that this is a safe space. So, your comments are welcome.

Sorry about this AM’s post that was set for Tuesday next week but somehow I managed to hit the wrong thing, and still am not sure what I clicked. Newsletters can’t be “unsent” so it’s in your Inbox and I hope to draw attention to it Tuesday for more conversation.