James Tallarico

The Southern Baptist Convention itself was pro-choice until the 1980s.

Feminist, womanist theologians are helping us remember Christianity's feminist tradition, a tradition that has been obscured and hidden by generations of men.

Did they teach you in Sunday school that men and women are created equally in the book of Genesis?

Did they teach you in Sunday school that the Bible sometimes describes God as a female, calling her Sophia?

Did they teach you in Sunday school that Jesus Christ himself was a radical feminist?

I don't claim to know what Jesus thought about abortion.

He never mentions it either, which maybe that should tell us something right there.

In the Gospel of Thomas, which was later omitted from the Bible,

by church officials.

The Gospel of Thomas quotes Jesus as saying, when you make the male and female one and the same, when the male is not male, when the female is not female, then you will enter the kingdom of God.

And when a woman decides to do theology instead of doing housework, Jesus affirms her decision.

Jesus honors her choice.

In fact, the only person to ever beat Jesus in a debate in the Bible was the Syrophoenician woman.

Think about that.

The only person to teach Jesus something was a woman.

Even the Son of God had something to learn from one of God's daughters.

The churches start to listen to them again.

But I say all this in terms, in context of abortion, because before God comes over Mary and we have the incarnation, God asks for Mary's consent.

which is remarkable.

I mean, go back and read this in Luke.