The Junia Project

Advocating for Women's Equality in the Church and Home

Feminist Friday – Origins & First Wave

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Christians don’t know very much about feminism. It’s one of our “knowledge blind spots”. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, except that today we find ourselves in the middle of a 35 year-long debate on what the Bible says about a “woman’s place”. And for a group of people who hate when we ourselves are misrepresented in the media, we sure make a lot of public claims about this topic that we know so little about.

In my own journey, I became a Christian and an egalitarian before I had even grown into a woman. I didn’t learn about feminism until I was in graduate school. And, if I’m honest, I did so begrudgingly.

Women’s History Month 2015

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The term “feminist” gets thrown around a lot in the Christian debate about “a woman’s place”. Having been involved in this debate on the Christian blogosphere for the last year and a half, I have noticed that while many like to talk about feminism, it seems that very few actually know much about it. In fact, I’m not sure any word is more misunderstood and misused in evangelicalism today than “feminist.”

Last year I taught a college course on Women in Politics where we spent 4 weeks going over the history of the women’s movement. We also evaluated egalitarian theology, and the stories of women who were personally touched by feminism. This seemed to help my students understand the power dynamics between men and women in society and have more educated discussions on the topic in class, so I thought it might be of help to others as well.

Celebrating Women in Leadership – Event Review

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  On February 14, 2015 The Junia Project partnered with Neighborhood Christian Fellowship, Azusa Pacific Seminary, The Wesleyan Church, The Free Methodist Church of Southern California, and The Friends Center at APS to host Celebrating Women in Leadership. It was a wonderful morning with over 200 people in attendance! Check out the full Photo Gallery! Our […]

6 Differing Views on Wedding Traditions

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I really don’t like weddings.

They’re just not my thing. For the most part, I don’t like attending them, I don’t like being in them, and I don’t like planning for a hypothetical one that may or may not be in my future. My aversion to weddings stems from my annoyance with the commercialism tied to it, the financial burden placed on family and friends who participate, the focus on the wedding instead of the marriage, and the abundance of patriarchal symbolism intertwined in various parts of the ceremony.

As you can tell, I have strong opinions on the matter, so when The Junia Project admin team talked about writing about weddings for Valentine’s Day, I thought that instead of pushing my opinions on all of you, instead I’d ask you for your thoughts on these very issues. I am very happy with the result, and am encouraged at the varying opinions within egalitarianism. So, without further ado, I give you…

They Say the Church is “Too Feminine”

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The claim that the Church is “too feminine” has come around again recently, from both the Evangelical and Catholic camps, and it makes my skin crawl. It instantly hits my annoyance button for the same reason that the misuse of language irks me – it shows that we aren’t thinking things through before we say them.

Announcing the Junia Project Blog Contest Results!

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Thank you to everyone who participated in the first ever Junia Project blog contest! Our panel of four was honored to read your entries and we are so thankful for all who took the time to write! Choosing category winners was very difficult because there were so many incredible submissions. In fact, every entry we received had great value that was worth sharing, making it hard to pick only 3 to feature on the blog …so we selected 5 winners and 10 runners up!

Each winner will receive a copy of Lynne Hybel’s “Nice Girls Don’t Change the World” and their winning entries will appear on The Junia Project blog this fall.

We would also like to feature the blog entries written by the runners up. We will be asking the authors for their permission, so be looking for those in the coming weeks!

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

Freedom in Christ

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Through the Fall, the human race became slaves.

Slaves to sin
Slaves to death
Slaves to shame
Slaves to a life isolated from God
Slaves to broken relationships
Slaves to patriarchy

But we were not created for slavery. No, we were created for so much more than that. Sin may have damaged what God had intended, but Christ came to restore what sin had broken.

And to what end? Why did Christ seek to restore humanity?

In the Image of Man They Created God; Male They Created Him

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Last week Owen Strachan, prominent complementarian leader and President of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, called Rachel Held Evans‘ teaching “heresy” because she used a female pronoun to describe God in one of her posts. Oh, and he did it over Twitter, so naturally a series of Twitter conversations ensued. I personally love Twitter, […]

A Complementarian View of Justice?

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Last week, I attended The Justice Conference that was held here in Los Angeles. I have to say up front that it was incredible. I truly appreciated The Justice Conference for presenting a great line up of speakers who, unlike those at many Christian conferences, didn’t all look exactly the same.  The gender, race, and […]

Questions About Egalitarian Dating

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On The Junia Project, we talk a lot about the egalitarianism/complementarianism debate in various parts of life – Church, marriage, community, family – but there is another part of life that we haven’t really addressed… dating. So on this Valentines Day, as the only single member of The Junia Project admin team, I want to […]

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