In the News
When I was thirteen, I joined a youth group at our local church. (Full disclosure as to my motivations: the youth minister was day-dreamingly attractive and impossibly kind.) Raised in a household of lapsed Lutherans who had drifted into agnosticism, I inherited some of my parents’ skepticism.
WWJD – Why Supporting Trump Is Antithetical To Jesus’ Teachings
Jesus and Magda in Outer Space
Imagine a world that is truly egalitarian, where “otherness” and “difference” are celebrated, not feared. Where everyone’s first question each morning is, “Whom can I help today?”
A world with less gravity. A world with more light. The kind of world Jesus and Magda would recognize.
Doing my due diligence, I started researching the author and read a blog on Ursula Werner's website entitled "Blowing Jesus' Mind." The premise of the article is that the current political diatribes of revenge and retribution, along with the past actions of Donald J. Trump, our current president, are not demonstrative of Christianity.
So I decided to accept the free copy of the book Magda Revealed by Ursula Werner and review it. My experience reading the book made me consider a completely new question: Can you learn from a novel that makes you squirm? Can you grow your faith by questioning the definitive texts of your belief? Do you benefit by considering radical alternative theories?
Can You Learn from a Novel that Makes You Squirm?
Reviewer Mari Carlson Interviews Ursula Werner
We can imagine today’s guest hosting one of those historical dinner parties with an invite list made up of the early Christian Church leaders responsible for diminishing the role of women in the Bible. We’re certain Ursula Werner would like to ask them dozens of probing questions but first and foremost, why the all-out smear campaign against Mary Magdalene? Why turn this close disciple of Jesus, the first disciple to see Christ after he rose from the dead—why the grand lie to recast her as a prostitute? She’s talking to you, Peter and Paul.
Q&A with Ursula Werner
Q: What inspired you to write Magda Revealed?
A: Oddly enough, it was a pedicure. I was 41 and I’d never had a pedicure (shameful, I know). As this expert salon worker washed and massaged my feet, I thought, “What a loving thing it is, to tend to someone else’s feet!”
Anyone’s who sat through a history class has likely speculated as to how they might have responded to key historical events. But for Chevy Chase poet and author Ursula Werner, posing this question was more than just a thought experiment. In the case of World War II, she knew how her family had responded — her great-grandfather worked for Adolf Hitler’s government.