Living on the Edge of the Edge

There are several divisive issues that separate Christian from Christian in the current century. One issue is the church’s management of clergy sexual abuses of children, teens and adults. A second is the issue of sexual gender orientation and church membership. Contemporary Christian denominations often intermingle the divisive issue of clergy and religious leader sexual abusiveness with the equally divisive issue of sexual gender orientation. In this book Professors Krall and Schirch disentangle and discuss these two issues. They discuss their personal and their professional opinions about ways in which religious and spiritual teaching communities can avoid the institutional perils of abusive clericalism and divisive denominational management practices. Throughout the book, they apply Anabaptist-Mennonite principles of peace-making in situations of sexual violation. Case studies are provided. A feminist hermeneutic is applied.

Each letter-essay is auto-ethnographic in style: the professional and the personal are deliberately blurred inside a framework of narrative and story. Each essay is deeply rooted in its author’s academic interests and in her personal life history.

This book can be a text in graduate and undergraduate classrooms. It can also be used in denominational self-study programs.