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Pieces of Ease and Grace
The previous volume of essays, Five Uneasy Pieces was warmly received. People of faith and spirituality were looking for liberating understandings of the Bible in engagement with their own sexualities and those of friends, family and beyond. The book demonstrated clearly that oppressive uses of selected texts from the Bible were invalid. But more is needed. The obligation upon scriptural scholars is to establish scripture’s hospitable inclusion of those whose sexual identities have been subjected to such oppression. Pieces of Ease and Grace retrieves biblical texts as actively embracing gays and lesbians within the community of faith. Their stories profoundly intersect with those of scripture. Here is a collection of biblical essays on sexuality and welcome that restores the Bible as a book of grace to those whose sexual identities had previously been lost, or condemned, in interpretation.
264 pages, Hardcover
First published November 30, 2012
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October 23, 2016
This book is a much needed, careful look-again at some familiar sections of the bible (and by implication the whole tradition) to try to challenge the assumption that Christianity is inevitable heterosexist. As someone who is on a faith journey, and occasionally has the opportunity to preach (also blogs on the weekly readings) I found the approaches in the book useful and am very grateful there is an index of the passages used at the back (I realise proper theology books often have this). I found the scholarship careful, with the authors tending to avoid the easy answers, but simply destabilising the heterosexual matrix we tend to read the text through and then drawing connections to the theological and pastoral implications.
Someone who wanted to nit-pick could probably find nits to pick, I had no reason to o that because I think this scholarship and preaching are needed. Every author cited numerous others, they had read the field carefully and were speaking knowledgeably. There was a bias in the writing (but there always is and at least it was honest), I feel that being a bias toward the excluded, rejected and hurting it was a bias that God would encourage. Despite being very scholarly almost every chapter was easy to read (and all were worth persisting with even if there were difficult bits).
How I miss theology!! So furious with myself for dropping it when life got tough. But anyway I feel inspired to go through the footnotes and decide what to read next (wish someone had collated all of that and the recommended reading into one reference list but you can;t have everything).
Someone who wanted to nit-pick could probably find nits to pick, I had no reason to o that because I think this scholarship and preaching are needed. Every author cited numerous others, they had read the field carefully and were speaking knowledgeably. There was a bias in the writing (but there always is and at least it was honest), I feel that being a bias toward the excluded, rejected and hurting it was a bias that God would encourage. Despite being very scholarly almost every chapter was easy to read (and all were worth persisting with even if there were difficult bits).
How I miss theology!! So furious with myself for dropping it when life got tough. But anyway I feel inspired to go through the footnotes and decide what to read next (wish someone had collated all of that and the recommended reading into one reference list but you can;t have everything).
Displaying 1 of 1 review
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