Religion

MineralMan

(147,591 posts) Tue Jun 25, 2019, 02:27 PM Jun 2019

Good News: Lutheran Pastor Has Unique Use for "Purity Rings"

While many evangelical churches seek to limit women's roles and prohibit women from pastoral positions, that is not the case with some denominations. ELCA Lutheran Churches ordain women and many Lutheran churches have women as pastors. Those churches are also often very friendly to LGBTQ people. Here's an interesting story about what to do with the "purity rings" so often put on the fingers of young girls in fundamentalist churches to "protect their purity." There is great variety among churches, and not all Christians are gay-hating, foaming-at-the-mouth" troglodytes, it seems.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/purity-rings-vulva-sculpture-nadia-bolz-weber_n_5c63354ee4b07115222adfc5

Feminist Pastor Unveils Vulva Sculpture Made Of Old Purity Rings

Months after Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber issued a call for Christian feminists to send her their old “purity” rings, the once-discarded jewelry has been completely transformed.

The purity rings ― symbols of an abstinence pledge ― were melted or pounded down and reshaped into a sculpture of a vulva emerging from a throne of flames.

Purity rings were a cultural phenomenon that emerged in certain evangelical Christian communities during the 1990s and 2000s. They symbolized a promise to abstain from sex until marriage. Critics argue that the rings, and purity culture more broadly, taught young people to feel shameful about their sexuality and suggested that a person’s sexual thoughts and choices ultimately determined their spiritual standing in the eyes of God. There was also no room for queer love within this theology.

Bolz-Weber was the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints, a queer-inclusive Lutheran congregation in Denver. Although she was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family, the pastor has become a prominent voice in progressive Christian circles.