We may not be Thelma and Louise, but we will definitely take you on a wild ride. And we may even go over a few metaphysical cliffs.
What Chelsen has declared, in our very first blog post on our new blog, Faith & Chelsen: Tackling Tough Topics in Church and Culture on the Patheos Evangelical Channel, is that we are rather more like Jael, the Biblical lady who drove a tent peg through the head of Sisera than we are like Queen Esther. That will give you some idea of where we are headed!
Chelsen says:
Yeah, we’re nothing like the beautiful, popular, and ever-respected Esther. That doesn’t mean we don’t admire and seek to emulate Esther’s courage and boldness against injustice. And it certainly doesn’t mean we weren’t placed here “for such a time as this.” We just resonate a lot more with Jael (Judges 4:17-22; 5:6, 24-27).
Jael isn’t a very popular figure in Scripture. She was a “tent-dweller” who took out, in a rather crass way, an enemy of the Lord. Scriptures don’t mention her beauty, grace, or elegance. Some people question her method of justice, while many more don’t even know her story. The same is true of us.
We are women watchers on the wall, guarding against the Religious Left. As part of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) team, our mission is to “reaffirm the church’s biblical and historical teachings, strengthen and reform its role in public life, protect religious freedom, and renew democracy at home and abroad” and our vision is to “lead the fight rallying Christians to champion biblical, historic Christianity and its role in democratic society, and to defeat revisionist challenges.”
Now, we are not violent women just because we believe our way of working for the Kingdom of God is more akin to this Bedouin woman whose name means “wild mountain goat” or “gazelle” (that doesn’t sound so bad!). But we do fight against the enemies of the Lord in our own way, and in our blog we intend to tackle tough topics — not with a tent peg and a maul, but with the Bible, reason, and our own experience of reality in our world today.
Please do go to Patheos and read the rest of her introductory blog post here. And we would love it if you would leave comments, questions, and share the link to our blog with others!
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