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This next week, we begin to read Beyond a Binary God. The author Tara K. Soughers wrote an article for EfM that I've excerpted below. Soughers also offers a light-hearted video put together with young adults, Trans 101 (about eight minutes long). - Scott
...If our faith has nothing to say about difficult issues, then it really isn’t very important, is it?
...In EfM, we work hard to develop close and trusting communities where we can safely talk about things that are really important to us. That environment should also be one where we can talk about controversial topics, remembering that the point of our discussion is not to change each other’s mind or to win an argument, but to share our understandings in a way that allows each of us to decide the implications of our faith for ourselves. If we can’t talk about controversial topics in EfM, where can we do so? Where else do we have the opportunity to talk with people who may have a different opinion in an environment that provides a level of safety and security for the participants? This is a gift that I think EfM brings to the Church and the wider community....
...Finally, EfM does not attempt to indoctrinate you into believing certain things. This is true of social issues as well as theology; instead, it shares the best scholarship that it can find, and asks the students to engage with that scholarship, in dialogue with the tradition, our culture, our own beliefs, and our experiences...
...[Theological reflection is a resource for dealing with diversity of experience, positions] Our structured process of discussion moves us out of our ordinary responses and asks us to consider things from different points of view: our shared tradition, our culture, our own beliefs, and our own experiences of how God is at work in the world...
[Hear Yee, Hear Yee is my own essay about another "difficult" book from EfM, the feminist theology presented by Gale Yee.]
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