My Conversion to the Lutheran Feminist Faith

Just when I thought everything was going so well in the Baptist Church, another church came along and swept me away. In fact, from the moment I logged on to www.HerChurch.org I realized I had to move to San Francisco to join Ebenezer Lutheran Church (ELCA). Now that I’ll no longer be Baptist I can have sex standing up without the fear that people will think I’m dancing.

Another advantage of ELCA is that it dubs itself “A home for women’s spirituality” rather than a “house of God” (how boring is that?). It’s a sort of spiritual headquarters for the “Lutheran Feminist/Womanist Movement,” which exists to celebrate the feminine persona of the Goddess and “dimensions of the sacred as expressed in faith, worship, learning, mutual care, and acts of justice.” I assume their discussion of acts of justice omits the fate of places like “Sodom” and “Gomorrah.” Only a male God could be capable of that kind of justice.

I was initially attracted to ELCA because they claim to be “a diverse community.” As a professor at a university, I know that when people claim to be diverse they really mean it. Also, ELCA stands firmly within the Christian tradition in an effort “to re-image the divine” by focusing more on her feminine persona. I’m sick and tired of a God who made me in his image. I want to make up my own God. And I want him to be a chick – preferable a cute lesbian with lots of cute friends.

I also like that ELCA challenges the church’s restrictive language of the past. ELCA pays special attention to “images” and “metaphors” that seek to celebrate “divine fullness” offering a witness of, among other things, “inclusive justice.”

The people at my new church are not joking when they say that a new form of church is happening at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, which, by the way, is located at 678 Portola Drive in San Francisco, California. When people gather at 10:30 A.M. on Sundays for worship, it is lively, engaging, thoroughly inclusive, and feminist in nature. I’m hoping that the first Sunday of every month the church will eventually skip communion and have a pillow fight led by Pastor Stacy Boorn.

But, already, I’m finding that at ELCA the music and readings really reflect a commitment to reclaiming the feminine persona of the divine. Because the philosophy at ELCA is “Come as you are” anyone is sure to find hope, healing, and community. After all, ELCA explicitly says “All are welcome at this table!” Even if you’ve been out all night at a drag show or a gay bath house you can still make it to worship Sunday mornings at 10:30. (I hope that crack about the gay bath house doesn’t “bomb” as badly as my last one).

The ELCA feminist prayers are very inclusive and draw upon a “storehouse of tradition” to bring forth names like Mother, Shaddai, Sophia, Womb, Midwife, Shekinah, and She Who Is. They do so out of “renewed insights” into the nature of the Gospel empowered by the risen Christ-Sophia. These are things my former brothers within the Baptist Church failed to grasp all along.

At ELCA, we even have our own feminist version of the Lord’s Prayer, which goes something like this:

Aside from the sexist “Amen,” which should have been “Amyn,” you have to admit that it was a tear-jerking rendition of the Lord’s Prayer. It certainly beats the hell out of Jesus’ take.

ELCA believes that Christianity continues to “silence the voices and power of women, the divine feminine, and efforts to empower women and support the equality of all peoples.” So we all need to join ELCA and their feminist faith community in order to be agents for change in the church and, most of all, the oppressive patriarchal systems.

It was a big decision to leave the Baptist Church but, fortunately, ELCA gave me the following prayer of meditation to help ease the transition:

When I prayed that simple prayer I finally realized that all my critics were right. I’ve been too critical of the gay and feminist movements in America. All they want is to be left alone. It’s not as if they want to overthrow our most sacred institutions.

Goddess Bless them, one and all.

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Mike S. Adams

Mike Adams sadly passed away on July 23, 2020, in Wilmington, North Carolina. We leave his work here as a tribute to his always boldly stated conservative values.
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Mike S. Adams was born in Columbus, Mississippi on October 30, 1964. While a student at Clear Lake High School in Houston, TX, his team won the state 5A soccer championship. Mike Adams graduated from C.L.H.S. in 1983 with a 1.8 GPA. Mike Adams was ranked 734 among a class of 740, largely as a result of flunking English all four years of high school. After obtaining an Associate's degree in psychology from San Jacinto College, Mike Adams moved on to Mississippi State University where he joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity. While living in the fraternity house, his GPA rose to 3.4, allowing him to finish his B.A., and then to pursue a Master's in Psychology. In 1990, Mike Adams turned down a chance to pursue a PhD in psychology from the University of Georgia, opting instead to remain at Mississippi State to study Sociology/Criminology. This decision was made entirely on the basis of his reluctance to quit his night job as member of a musical duo. Playing music in bars and at fraternity parties and weddings financed his education. Mike Adams also played for free beer.
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Upon getting his doctorate in 1993, Adams, then an atheist and a Democrat, was hired by UNC-Wilmington to teach in the criminal justice program. A few years later, Adams abandoned his atheism and also became a Republican. He also nearly abandoned teaching when he took a one-year leave of absence to study law at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1998. After returning to teach at UNC-Wilmington, Adams won the Faculty Member of the Year award (issued by the Office of the Dean of Students) for the second time in 2000.
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After his involvement in a well publicized free speech controversy in the wake of the 911 terror attacks, Adams became a vocal critic of the diversity movement in academia. After making appearances on shows like Hannity and Colmes, the O'Reilly Factor, and Scarborough Country, Adams was asked to write a column for Townhall.com.
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Today Mike Adams enjoys the privilege of expressing himself both as a teacher and a writer. Mike Adams is also an avid hunter and reader of classic literature. Mike Adams published his first book, Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel, in 2004. His second book, Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus, was published in 2008.

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