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In seminary I took a course called Cultural Hermeneutics team-taught by two professors. One would go on to become one of my favorite teachers and the other would become my senior thesis advisor. A close friend, at the time and now, Erica Liu, along with a handful of other Asian Americans and I sat eagerly looking through the syllabus on that first day of class. We would be introduced to African American, Latin@, African, and Asian frameworks for reading the Bible and doing theology. But…where was the section on Asian American hermeneutics? It would be an understatement to say we felt let down.

But, the professors were both very open to revising the syllabus right away and added a section including some relatively new resources by Asian American theologians. This is what made me love and respect these teachers – their willingness to listen to us, and even be changed…

Last year for Fr. Shannon Kearn’s Queer Theology synchroblog I wrote about the image of God in Genesis and the potential to reimagine the dominant interpretation of the creation story otherwise (and some material from that has reappeared here in edited form). To queer creation is to reimagine from a perspective that’s not invested in upholding heavily binarized categories: man-woman, human-animal, creator-created, and so on.

There can be no doubt that the narratives of Genesis 1-3 (creation, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve) have been weaponized and used against LGBTQ folk in order to delegitimize their existence, to name them as “unnatural” or “contrary to creation”. Transgender people, for example, are told that God created “man and woman”, and that to “tamper” with one’s “biological sex” is sinful and disordered; and those who are nonheterosexual often hear that clichéd refrain: “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” For many Christians then, Genesis…

Eugene Peterson’s advice to seminary students:

“I’d tell them that pastoring is not a very glamorous job. It’s a very taking-out-the-laundry and changing-the-diapers kind of job. And I think I would try to disabuse them of any romantic ideas of what it is. As a pastor, you’ve got to be willing to take people as they are. And live with them where they are. And not impose your will on them. Because God has different ways of being with people, and you don’t always know what they are.

“The one thing I think is at the root of a lot of pastors’ restlessness and dissatisfaction is impatience. They think if they get the right system, the right programs, the right place, the right location, the right demographics, it’ll be a snap. And for some people it is: if you’re a good actor, if you have a big smile, if you…

This flow chart shows connections between the authors & illustrators and the inspirations that have created a universe that is over 100 years old.

This is done in different ways, first there are four different groups that are not only charted by illustrator and/or author, but also chronologically when they were published.

1. The first forty novels.
2. The movies produced from 1908 to 1939.
3. The staged musical and plays from 1902 to 2006.
4. The very short Disney involvement.

The second way is to show the connection between authors & illustrators (who worked with who). The third way is the highlighting of inspiration. For example Alexander Volkov, a Russian author, translated Wizard of Oz and titled the novel “The Wizard of Emerald City.” He also wrote five other squeals, which spawned over thirty other novels, and they inspired American translations and adaptations.

Through the years there were authors devoted to the writings…