Peter Paul Rubens, The Three Graces Last week, Bible Girl guest writer Laura Conaway wrote about her Southern Baptist upbringing and her journey from a “born-again congregation” to a “less rigid” Episcopal church where an outsider, “a woman married to a woman,” found a spiritual home. Her faith, she wrote,…

Last week deputies with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man for making terroristic threats against Sheriff Lupe Valdez. Fifty-three-year-old Norman Russell had called the Garland Police Department threatening to kill “all gays and lesbians in the world” in order to prove somehow that he himself was not gay,…

In a 2004 column for The Village Voice, Laura Conaway referred to her family–from left, the author, Nathaniel Goodyear and Sarah Goodyear–as “enemies of the state.” This week one of my distinguished colleagues, Village Voice Executive Editor Laura Conaway, will be a guest writer in Bible Girl. I’ll respond to…

Lisa Bevere knows all about church ladies. Now isn’t that special? (Sorry.) We all have our church-lady stories. Here’s mine: I knew a woman of Amazonian stature who loudly extolled the virtues of Marabel Morgan’s 1973 best-seller, The Total Woman. Her single unforgettable feature was an enormous brown beehive that…

Rod Dreher recently suggested someone oughta give Bible Girl a book deal. Well, Rod, you have an agent, don’t ya? Rod Dreher is editor of The Dallas Morning News’ Points section as well as author of a recent book called Crunchy Cons, which makes the case for a new kind…

Creflo Dollar: Now, there’s a name you can believe in. One day a colleague dropped an article on my desk. I imagined it was an emphatic drop, as if he were saying, “Here. The Smoking Gun.” So I read it. It was a New York Times story on black televangelist…

Becky Fischer is the leader of the Jesus Camp depicted in the controversial documentary being distributed by Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner. As promised in an earlier Bible Girl column, here’s a black evangelical perspective on Jesus Camp–from occasional Bible Girl contributor Stephanie Morris: I have to admit I’m always…

In little Talco, certain lines were sharply drawn. Railroad tracks literally separated black from white in this rural East Texas town. And on the black side, you had a further division, of darkness and light. Darkness: The men, plus a few sad-faced women, who gathered to drink whiskey and beer…

Levi is a young preacher in the “army of God” depicted in the film Jesus Camp. Oh, I was ready for a fierce reaction to Jesus Camp. Something really extreme–like wanting to cast a demon out of my 27-inch TV. Or declaring that Oprah is the Antichrist. I’d seen the…

Her name was Stephanie. This much I’ve figured out: She had everything I didn’t. She was cute, with long, dark hair and store-bought clothes. She was athletic—at least more so than a skinny, awkward kid like me. Most of all she was popular. I was not. We were only 7…

Bible Girl finds the, well, fundamental problem with Mel White’s argument that every good God-fearin’ Christian is out to get the gay community. In 43 years of attending evangelical churches, one thing I’ve never seen is a decent conspiracy. I have seen really bad Lutheran basement potlucks. I’ve seen quite…

It’s so interesting to see Dallas Mayor Laura Miller pop up on TV now. She was on twice in the last 24 hours–while in Washington lobbying for the Wright Amendment and then touring power plants with Sarah Dodd of Channel 11. I thought, “Oh, yeah! Laura Miller! I was wondering…

The Dallas Morning News has a story today on the $14 million Bexar Street redevelopment project in South Dallas, which Councilman Leo Chaney would like to present to this city as his legacy. Full disclosure: My church, The Body of Christ Assembly, falls squarely within the redevelopment area. In fact,…

This is what Stephanie Morris, a Bible Girl contributor and Dallas Theological Seminary student, has to say about the spat between the Reverend W. Dwight McKissic and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary over the practice of speaking in tongues: Stephanie Morris: Dwight McKissic can talk to God any way he wants…

Till today, most of us heathens thought speaking in tongues was either a Talking Heads album or something Robert Tilton pretended to do. That’s why we have Bible Girl on hand, burnin’ down the house. A strange noise was coming from somewhere behind me. “Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee…” I looked up at the…

During Terry Hornbuckle’s trial, no one ever disputed his womanizing. His attorney just said he didn’t need to drug women in order to bed them. That is not an answer to the question: WWJD? Not at all. When I moved to Dallas in 1990, it took me a while to…