Tag: church

After attending Salem Lutheran Church in West Central Spokane for the past year, Pastor Liv Larson-Andrews contacted me to speak to the question of why I chose to attend Salem. It was easy and immediate to answer. Salem has always felt like coming home. I started my faith journey with Lutherans at Trinity Lutheran in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

This past December, I got a tattoo on my wrist that says, in my handwriting, I am enough.

Society and life circumstances have told us over and over that, no matter how hard we try, no matter how much money we spend, that it’s simply not true, we’re not enough.

We each have a cross or crosses to bear. We can see obvious pain around us as well, and we usually do what we can to help. But do we understand how we also contribute to structures of oppression in our society? In our church?

I can see it in her face even when she dismisses it as “not a big deal.” The faces of many older women with some sadness in their eyes. These women have called me their pastor at one time or another.  Their husbands don’t come around the church unless it is a command performance or they are asked to fix something at the church. Most of these men will say they are Christian, when asked. Some have in their head a list of Christian values that got as a child.

The book of Exodus is the memory of how Israel came into being as the chosen people of God. Because as church we often refer to ourselves as Israel or the new Israel, we need to see ourselves in the story.

Religion being thrown around in public discourse gives us a particular opportunity to challenge ourselves to realize our meanings and assumptions when we talk about ecumenicalism. To talk about the church is to include the global Christian community, not just a certain domination or authority.

At some point church, and religion for that matter, became the cultural preserver and not the culture maker. The Christian tradition, the tradition I am most familiar with, was a dynamic force for equality that tore down boundary after boundary and eventually deconstructed the ideology of the Roman Empire.