"It clicked some thought into place that has been wandering up and down my insides since that absurd moment Glennon Doyle admonished her readership to “Eat the Apple, Let it Burn” in that book where she valorizes the devouring cheetah option for women. That book… what’s it called? hang on, it will come to me, oh yes… Untamed was the benighted screed that launched a thousand awful books with the word “Fierce” in the title, some even purporting to be Christian. Of course, we have long been slogging it out in the age of the Self. That is indisputable. But that book, and all its copy-apex-feline-predators did something cruel to the feminine half of humanity. For even in the age of trying to have good self-esteem, it was still possible to contemplate other people, ideas, objects, and even gods beyond oneself. But after that book, women took a fierce, as it were, dive into the abyss of self-consideration. If I were a scientist who knew about graphs and things like that, I would figure out how to study the happiness of American women before that book and after it." Anne Kennedy, link below

"We thought we’d do something a little bit off the beaten path and livestream this evening instead of on Monday. This week, Matt and I discuss my internalized misogyny, my fundamentalism, my sexism and generally have fun time answering the various people who think that when I wrote on Friday that more rigorous standards for seminary education might serve to attract fewer women to seminary, I really meant that women are dumb and can't think their way out of paper bags and only go to seminary for the glory of being Anglican priests which, as everybody knows, is the most glorious career path ever. We also talk about the difference between the way Women's Ordination was debated back in the early 2000's and aughts and the way it's debated now. Also, we had the chance to remind you to go to church! Enjoy!" Link below

"The mercy, you see, is necessary because the love by which the whole cosmos is held in being is meant also to spring forth from the inner person. And yet I, and everyone else hobbling into the pew, find myself “ill-equipped” to love anyone at all with any amount of myself, let alone the whole. Worse still is the confusion that many self-identifying Christians suffer over this great command. How many times, over the past twenty years, have I heard it said that we just need to preach “the gospel” which is, “love God and love your neighbor.” Every time I hear this, I gnash my teeth. For “love God and love your neighbor” is not the gospel. It is a law, an obligation if you will, that none of us can keep." Anne Kennedy, link below

“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith…” Sometimes preachers wrest this passage out of context and say things like: Consider the thoughts in your head, the words of your mouth, the things you do with your hands…Do they measure up to the law of God? Christians love God and keep his commandments. Do you keep his commandments? Are you bearing the fruit of true faith in the conduct of your life? And you take one look at the thoughts that passed through your head Saturday night and you say, ‘No. I mean, I see some good things in my heart. But there’s terrible things down in there too. Maybe I’m not really saved.” And it gets worse because the further on you go in your Christian life, as you become more sanctified, you become even more aware of your sins. So it is entirely possible to think that you’re getting worse when in fact, by God’s grace, you’re getting much better. But Paul’s not saying, to examine your behavior. It’s a fine thing to examine your obedience and behavior. But not as a matter of deciding whether you’re in Christ/ Because you’re not saved by your behavior. ‘Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith,’ Paul asks the Galatians. And the answer, of course, is hearing with faith. Examine your obedience or lack thereof in order to confess your sins and be forgiven…But if being in Christ depends on obedience, then we’re all lost. Paul’s not telling the Corinthians (of all people) to examine their lives for obedience because his point depends on their passing the examination, not failing it. The Corinthians, of all people shall not pass this examination if it’s an examination of obedience. Well what’s the examination? It has to do with first with “the faith.” “The” faith refers to the objective truths revealed to you in the scriptures. Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, born of a virgin, without sin; that he died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice, raised on the third day, seated at the right hand of the Father, coming again to judge the living and the dead? Do you believe in his Holy Spirit, dwelling in all his people? Do you believe his word, the scriptures, are true even when you don’t understand them? That’s the faith…do you believe it? And secondly, is Jesus in you? Do you personally trust in Jesus? Do you cling to his cross as your only hope? Have you forsaken any reliance on yourself for righteousness? Do you confess your sins Do you seek Jesus’ help Do you love the law in your inner heart even though there’s another law at work in the members of your body so that you do what you don’t want to do and you don’t do what you want? These are all things impossible for a person in the flesh. The natural person is hostile to God. To have these things to whatever degree going on in you means that you’re in Christ. The necessary consequence is a changed life of increasing obedience but obedience isn’t the test. You’re not justified by obedience, you’re justified by faith in Jesus Christ.” Sermon on 2 Corinthians 13:1-14, link below

"For the rest of us looking on, here is a fairly uncomfortable truth. The church does not need women to be ordained to function. It does need ordained people, but those people need not be women. The issue, functionally, is non-essential in that we are arguing about whether women can be, on one level, but underneath it, some are insisting that they should be, that the church is missing out on some particular gift that only women provide. In other words, two conversations are being had simultaneously and the ground and nature of each argument is often deliberately shifted so as to make it hard to resolve the conflict. This recommendation by the task force assumes that someone will move on the issue. Either those who are pro-WO will let go and agree not to ordain women for the sake of unity, or those who are against will…well, I expect they would have to leave because they, on the whole, don’t believe the orders of women to be valid. I suppose some medium step might be taken such as a moratorium on such ordinations for a time but ultimately the matter must be settled. These conversations and changes of mind will of course be painful, but they are very necessary and should not be kicked even further down the road." Anne Kennedy, link below

"On this episode of the Stand Firm podcast, Jady and Nick discuss David Roseberry’s suggestions for how the ACNA can “get our wind back.”" Link below

"There are two reasons that I think she is suddenly the focal point of our cultural malaise. First, Elliot rejected feminism at the moment when it might have made substantive inroads into the church. She rejected it in two ways. She wrote about how it was wrong, and then she lived as though it were wrong. In her actual life, in her actual marriage to a man many Christian women today would likely not hang around for, she lived out her vow. This, I think, is what is so deeply unsettling for women today, especially in the church. Second, she embraced the gospel of self-sacrifice. This used to be the gospel full stop. When you came to Jesus and accepted him as your Lord and Savior and said the sinner’s prayer and all that sort of thing, at some level, you understood that you were giving up yourself, that there was some kind of death that would lead to a greater and more precious gain—Jesus himself. Indeed, Jim Elliot’s famous quote is a pithy restatement of what our Lord says about finding him. If you don’t die to yourself, well, then you can die forever. But other kinds of ideas have crept into Christian institutions that have muddied this clear, earth shattering truth. Or rather, one main idea—you simply have to understand how beloved you are by God and then you will stop sinning or whatever. It is as though Alex Cooper crept into the foyers of big mega churches and chatted up all the women up about how they needed to go on journeys of self-flourishing. The gospel according to Elisabeth Elliot is completely contrary to this other gospel, and I think that makes a lot of women and men today feel jittery." Anne Kennedy, link below

"It’s so short, I did transcribe it. If you aren’t in a place you can watch, here is his immortal and yet fatuous sentiment: "In one of my favorite poems, the Islamic mystic, Hafiz, says that we are all invited to join that dance. He says, “Every child has known God. Not the God of names, not the God of don’ts, but the God who only knows four words and keeps repeating them, saying, ‘Come dance with me.'"I am not familiar with this particular Islamic mystic. I am not at all surprised that the person making the homiletical effort in a progressive ecclesiastical situation would quote something like this. People climbed up into the beautiful old carved pulpit of my seminary and said stuff like this all the time, back in the day, and then I would creep out of the back and go console my bruised spiritual soul with a bucket of ice-cream. There’s something so awful when someone lies about God during the sermon." Anne Kennedy, link below