back to Christianity Today
RSS Feed | Help
email this to a friend
follow us:
The Christianity Today women’s blog provides news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women. We cover news stories and books related to international justice and evangelism, pregnancy and sexual ethics, marriage, parenting, and celibacy, pop culture, health and body image, raising girls, and women in the church and parachurch.
Her.meneutics was co-founded by Katelyn Beaty and Sarah Pulliam Bailey.
September 11, 2012 10:00 AM
Earlier this year I reflected at Her.meneutics on lessons learned in anticipating my upcoming marriage. I continue to learn new lessons, for marriage is an ever-present schoolmaster. You see, I married relatively late (39), and through those single years, I...
September 5, 2012 9:43 AM
Last month, my husband and I celebrated three years of marriage, and thus far I can honestly say that I fall in love with him more every day. Marriage has been a beautiful adventure for the two of us, and...
August 17, 2012 8:51 AM
Around this time three years ago, I was busy preparing for one of the biggest days of my life. My wedding was just around the corner, so my schedule was filled with RSVPs, last-minute dress alterations, music selections, and...
August 15, 2012 8:20 AM
Among classic literature’s great seductresses—Becky Sharp, Lady Chatterley, Anna Karenina, and Madame Bovary—the most irresistible of them all just might be Katie Scarlett O’Hara, the vivacious and impetuous protagonist in Margaret Mitchell’s American classic, Gone With the Wind. Scarlett’s...
August 8, 2012 9:21 AM
I rarely read chick lit, but I couldn’t walk past the Jesus bobble head on the cover of Sarah Healy’s Can I Get an Amen? without flipping it open. And after reading the first few pages — which include...
July 23, 2012 8:40 AM
Bachelorette Emily Maynard chose her man in last night’s finale of the popular reality television show. Millions of viewers wanting a beautiful love story watched the season in which 25 eligible men wined, dined, and romanced Maynard who, interestingly,...
July 19, 2012 8:56 AM
A beautiful, educated, British-born fashionista was once the apple of the international media’s eye. Deemed the glamorous “‘rose in the desert”’ by Vogue, and regarded as the modern-day Princess Diana of the Middle East, First Lady Asma al-Assad (above...
June 14, 2012 8:58 AM
Every spring marks the launch of the wedding season, which means that every spring our refrigerator door fills with Save-the-Dates, and my husband prepares to officiate some of them. I always look forward to each of these happy occasions, but...
June 11, 2012 10:55 AM
I’m going to let you in on a little secret I’ve never talked about with anyone. On November 2, 2008, I walked into a polling booth in Glendora, California, and voted for Proposition 8, which sought to add the clause...
May 30, 2012 8:46 AM
When my parents divorced when I was 32—already married for nearly a decade and with two children of my own—I remember thinking, Great. Now, I’m a statistic. My marriage is doomed. I’m pretty sure any child of the 1970s or...
May 21, 2012 8:34 AM
They met in college and fell in love. They talked about getting married, and he started looking for a ring. They dreamed about life together, a life of beauty and joy, raising babies and laughing with friends and growing old....
April 18, 2012 8:39 AM
Before I got married I was single for 28 years, and I learned a lot during that time. One lesson? That it can be horribly lonely as a single person in the church, especially given the popular teachings about marital...
March 16, 2012 11:16 AM
Words are my life. As an avid reader and an English professor, I can easily get carried away by their magical power to evoke emotion and crystallize conceptions. But sometimes my enthusiasm for language leads me to idealize a word...
February 22, 2012 8:56 AM
Among other heart-shaped headlines last week, the world’s most famous newlyweds spent their first married Valentine’s Day separated by an ocean, courtesy of a military deployment. This was week two of what’s expected to be six weeks solo for Kate...
January 27, 2012 11:21 AM
To all the single ladies: Last week Groupon offered a ticket to lasting love (at a 76% discount!) by way of your own personal “boudoir photo shoot.” The ad proclaims: The great Romantic painters had the same goal—to craft an...
January 19, 2012 10:34 AM
On the shelf of your church’s bookstore, Are You Waiting for ‘The One’? (InterVarsity), by Dwight N. and Margaret Kim Peterson, might look like any other Christian book on dating and marriage. Look a little harder. The new book, subtitled...
November 14, 2011 11:15 AM
There is a great need for the church to stop lying to people. That is a critical first step to resolving some of the marital illusions and the rising divorce rate even among Christians. Christian Sunday School instructions to girls—even...
November 7, 2011 9:21 AM
My family and friends and I have a long-running joke about the close relationship my husband and parents share. I tell people that my parents secretly like my husband more than me. For instance, my mom calls me every time...
October 13, 2011 4:46 PM
In his recent book, Young and in Love: Challenging the Unnecessary Delay of Marriage (Cook) pastor Ted Cunningham joins a conversation that hit the media spotlight a few years ago with Christianity Today’s cover story “The Case for Early Marriage,”...
October 6, 2011 12:25 PM
If the mathematics of marriage is two becoming one, how do you factor in couples that have decided that some temporary division improves the odds of their relationship’s longevity? A recent Slate piece highlighted one of the findings from Iris...
September 26, 2011 11:46 AM
Could fasting and prayer ever be a kind of sin? That was more or less the implication of one person’s response to the news that I had joined a group who weekly fast and pray about marriage and singleness. (And...
September 13, 2011 8:33 AM
I breathed a sigh of relief upon finding out the rumors of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's separation were false. In Touch magazine first reported the couple’s split, after 13 years of marriage. Rumors of infidelity quickly followed, and...
September 6, 2011 10:35 AM
We wait for grief to loosen its stranglehold on our hearts. We wait for signs of hope in the Horn of Africa. News that the economy is recovering. The kids to go back to school. The workday to come to...
August 24, 2011 8:32 AM
What do you do if you’re engaged but have serious misgivings about your decision, red flags popping up left and right? Do you a) get married, since you’ve set a date, sent out the invitations, spent a boatload of money,...
August 5, 2011 10:33 AM
Inevitably, it happens a few times throughout the year, always when we’re exhausted, feeling overworked and as if everyone wants a piece of us. It’s our recurring major fight (most couples have one). It’s the fight over who does more...
July 14, 2011 10:30 AM
Because I write often about reproductive ethics, I knew Bethany Patchin’s story long before Mark Oppenheimer wrote about it in last weekend’s New York Times. Bethany and Sam Torode divorced in 2009 after nine years of marriage, during which...
July 6, 2011 9:47 AM
Less than three weeks ago, I watched as my husband, Nathan, became the commanding officer of a U.S. Marine Corps infantry company. About 160 men, most of them barely adults, stood at attention in their camouflage and combat boots and...
June 23, 2011 9:44 AM
Dear Donald, First of all, I’m a fan. I’ll admit I’m not young enough or hip enough to have discovered you on my own, but the college students I teach help me to keep up with the times, and they...
May 31, 2011 10:36 AM
Another day, another high-profile sex scandal. Many Americans yawned when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s extramarital activities hit the headlines two weeks ago. By now it’s difficult to escape the fatalistic feeling that we’ve seen it all before and will see it all...
May 3, 2011 9:05 AM
I married up. While I am impatient for the traffic light to change, the summer to arrive, and the bottle to drop from the soda machine, my husband is the most patient person I know. While I am cynical...
April 28, 2011 1:23 PM
I’m just going to say it: I can’t wait for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding. One, I love weddings. (The dresses! The flowers! The dancing!) Two, I love pomp and circumstance. Probably because much of my life feels chaotic,...
April 5, 2011 9:30 AM
Some moons ago, my first official “date” was with a black boy. (I am white, by the way.) Technically he was half-black, but in the remote Maine community where I grew up, it didn’t make much difference either way. There...
March 23, 2011 9:33 AM
A popular Christian blogger recently announced that she's getting divorced. She knows all the biblical reasons to stay married, and she understands the far-reaching repercussions when Christians divorce. On her personal blog she writes, “I can see why the Scriptures...
March 22, 2011 11:02 AM
Years before TLC launched its polygamous reality show Sister Wives, Tom Hanks and company produced HBO’s award-winning drama series Big Love, about a family of polygamists who emerged out of a creepy Mormon splinter group. I’ve watched all five seasons...
February 11, 2011 9:00 AM
When it comes to attitudes about sex in America, I often find myself somewhere between cynical and hopeless. I read statistics about 95 percent of adults losing their virginity before marriage. I look at the magazine rack in the grocery...
February 4, 2011 11:16 AM
Are single women single because they are too picky? Lori Gottlieb argues this is precisely the case, and she uses herself as the prime example. When asked to list the qualities she wants in a husband, the then-41-year-old journalist came...
January 31, 2011 4:45 PM
The “Vows” section of The New York Times typically features romantic, heartfelt, and sweet wedding stories. At first glance, the story of Carol Anne Riddell and John Partilla appears to fit the bill: beautiful bride, handsome groom, lots of...
January 12, 2011 10:00 AM
Fewer and fewer Americans are getting married. Those who do are, on average, waiting longer to wed than have previous generations. But according to Time's "Who Needs Marriage? A Changing Institution," women and men still want to meet and build...
January 4, 2011 9:30 AM
A silver anniversary isn’t what it used to be. I know this from experience, having celebrated mine last month, but the data speaks for itself. According to a 2005 U.S. Census Bureau report, only 33 percent of us reached the...
December 6, 2010 11:11 AM
“How do you celebrate a wedding anniversary with only half of a couple?” asked Margaret Nyman only 26 days short of being wed to Nate for 40 years. Her husband, who had succumbed to pancreatic cancer six weeks after his...
October 11, 2010 11:40 AM
“How long am I to remain in this relationship?” This is the haunting question 65-year-old Glenda Crosley asks in the documentary Sin by Silence, about the abusive husband she killed in 1986. She has been in prison for as long...
September 14, 2010 9:59 AM
“What Is It About 20-Somethings?” Robin Marantz Henig asked recently in The New York Times Magazine. Young American adults are taking longer than previous generations to grow up. They are faced with more possibilities, and their idealism runs rampant. Therefore,...
August 30, 2010 9:40 AM
Toward the end of spring semester, I set a box labeled “I Always Wanted to Ask” on the table at the front of my class. I invited students to write down lingering questions about sex and gender, the subject of...
August 17, 2010 11:10 AM
No-fault divorce is now legal in every state, making filing for divorce in America — whether both parties agree or not — simply a matter of getting the proper paperwork. New York just became the last state to adopt the...
August 2, 2010 4:22 PM
If a recent New York Times piece is to be believed, the latest trend in dating is a spin on the calling card, delivered to attractive strangers, with instructions on where to find the bearer online. Religious communities have often...
June 15, 2010 10:32 AM
My husband runs a dormitory of 30 high-school boys. Recently two of them lounged on our living room floor, asking questions about our faith. It started with theodicy (If God is good, why do bad things happen?). We covered confession...
May 19, 2010 9:45 AM
In her new and buzzworthy book, For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage, The New York Times's Tara Parker-Pope examines what brain chemistry and genes have to do with happy marriages. She begins a recent Well column with a...
May 10, 2010 10:51 AM
Tiffany Tehan, a pastor’s daughter and graduate of an Ohio evangelical college, went missing Saturday, April 17. Local authorities deemed the 31-year-old mother’s absence suspicious: her green Ford Explorer was found in a park near her home with a flat...
May 4, 2010 9:43 AM
During our engagement, my husband and I dutifully pursued premarital counseling. A well-meaning seminary professor and his wife graciously walked us through some of the highlights and lowlights of their marriage and how they had addressed issues. We covered faithfulness,...
April 15, 2010 8:44 AM
Out of habit, I still watch Tina Fey in 30 Rock and Steve Carell in The Office every week, even though I do not particularly like the shows anymore. Both started out as a fresh, humorous takes on usual suspects,...
March 29, 2010 12:02 PM
A Rockford, Minnesota, man was arrested in Chicago two weeks ago for prostituting his wife using Craigslist, transporting her in a van to hotels in eight states and threatening to take away their 3-year-old daughter should she not comply. Clinton...
February 3, 2010 9:41 AM
When is the right time to leave home? Italian government minister Renato Brunetta thinks it’s age 18, and recently suggested a new law to require it. Brunetta’s proposal is a reaction to an Italian judge's decision that Giancarlo Casagrande resume...
January 22, 2010 10:18 AM
Sex. Money. Power. Words that call to mind the recent debacles of Tiger Woods and David Letterman and a host of other celebrities before them. And now Iris Robinson — a self-described evangelical Christian and the wife of Northern Ireland’s...
January 19, 2010 9:29 AM
Family planning has become a controversial phrase in China, due to the government’s One Child Policy, a vast social experiment launched in 1979 to cap population growth and speed up economic development. State media reported recently that more than 24...
January 8, 2010 2:13 PM
I stopped tithing a few months ago. Okay, no scandal here. I got married in September, and my husband and I moved to a new area and wanted to find a church. As we slowly combined our finances, it became...
September 23, 2009 9:05 AM
If you thought navigating the 20-something dating and marriage scene wasn’t complicated enough, former President Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson just put his oar in. In an argument similar to Mark Regnerus’s cover story in the August...
August 17, 2009 4:27 PM
You have to dig a bit, but Vogue's feature story on South Carolina First Lady Jenny Sanford is sprinkled with hints at the importance of her faith. The wife of Mark Sanford left the governor's mansion earlier this month...
August 3, 2009 9:23 AM
The key to a lower divorce rate and healthier marriages starts before the vows are taken, according to advocates for mandatory premarital counseling. Many states, including Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Maryland, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Arizona, have laws in place that provide...
August 3, 2009 8:40 AM
Forty-one years ago last March, when my husband, David, and I went to get our marriage license, he had to bring a letter of permission from his parents. In California in 1968, a woman could marry without permission at age...
July 28, 2009 3:58 PM
If you haven't seen "Jill and Kevin's Wedding Entrance," the video that's shown up all over the Internet since late last week, I recommend you watch it now. It's five minutes of pure joy as the St. Paul, Minnesota, couple...
July 17, 2009 8:58 AM
Summertime is when weddings abound. No one longs for them more than the abundance of single women in our nation's churches. The dearth of marriage opportunities for most of these women calls forth certain coping strategies, one of which...
July 16, 2009 8:49 AM
A new national study suggests that the trend toward cohabiting continues its forward march for young adults, many of whom still expect to marry someday. More than three-quarters of 20- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. said they believe that "love,...
July 8, 2009 8:57 AM
While most moms were celebrating Mother's Day this spring with a family of three or four, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, resident Tiffany Kriner celebrated a graduation ceremony with thousands of college students. Kriner, 31, an English professor at Wheaton College, has...
June 26, 2009 9:06 AM
Just in the last week, two Christian politicians admitted to having affairs, but their wives were noticeably absent from the press conferences. Yesterday, Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford admitted that he had an affair with a Argentinean woman, and...
May 28, 2009 9:53 AM
I admit that for a while I was hooked on certain reality TV shows, but I've pulled the plug on several as of late, keeping my viewing list a lot shorter. (However, I've kept Deadliest Catch on the list...
May 11, 2009 9:23 AM
It turns out that Susan Boyle has been kissed. But her earlier claim that she hadn't was met with disbelief. So, too, are pre-20th century European mores, when premarital kissing was forbidden. Can you think of a recent historical movie...
April 8, 2009 9:42 AM
After heavy criticism from Western aid agencies and human-rights watchers, Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai agreed over the weekend to review a new law he had supported last week that legalizes forced sex within marriage and places Taliban-era restrictions on women...
March 20, 2009 3:01 PM
Three months after Alexandra Pelosi's documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard debuted on HBO, the founder of New Life Church and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals and his wife will be appearing on Divorce Court, the longest-running...