Tracy, I am a former Southern Baptist minister who has made the faith transition that your student is beginning. If my experience is any gauge, this could be a very troubling time for your student, and a potentially dangerous one for her. Perhaps only someone who has been encamped within fundamentalism can appreciate the emotional impact of that first realization that "St. Paul said it and meant it - but he was wrong!" It can be difficult to deal with the self-label of apostate, and the temptation to retreat into a more rigid faith can be quite persuasive.
The author I would most recommend is Marcus Borg. His "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" is a very sensitive expression of a liberal faith that has the capacity to embrace both the religious and the scientific. Since your student is a Southern Baptist, she might also find his "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time" of value. Both take religion quite seriously, and may offer her a paradigm useful for reconstructing her faith. Anything written by Robert Farrar Capon also comes highly recommended, but not because he deals specifically with the religion-science conflict. Capon (an Episcopal priest) is an exceptionally entertaining writer with a deep faith commitment that is not rooted in the biblical literalism of her Southern Baptist heritage. I recommend both Borg and Capon as examples for your student to follow. Both tend to be quite respectful of others' faith perspectives while expressing their own in an engaging fashion. It can be quite reassuring to know that one need not abandon "faith" in the name of intellect. The more polemical, liberal authors (e.g. - John Shelby Spong, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, John Dominic Crossan) are not recommended. Although they have much to offer, they tend to attack fundamentalism with a strident voice that may make it hard for your student to grasp the value in their work. Of course, if your student is ready for this type of material, perhaps no one excels Spong's defense of feminism and homosexuality in "Living in Sin." As a final word, I offer myself as a resource to you and your student. Peter Kindle, MA, MDiv Doctoral student, University of Houston, Graduate School of Social Work Adjunct instructor, University of Houston-Clear Lake [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
