ABSTRACT
I know that if I want to get closer to God, I must go to where there is broken-heartedness in the world.
Addie, age 19
When a bishop placed his hand on my head to ordain me twenty-one years ago, a palpable weight le its impression. I had read Rosemary Radford Ruether on the myth of apostolic succession1, so it was not the full he of the tradition bearing down on me: it was instead the gravitas of a dozen words spoken by Bishop C. Joseph Sprague in his sermon a few moments earlier. “Preach what you learned in seminary! Teach what you learned in seminary!” he charged, addressing the gap between graduate theological education and the pew.2 I felt burdened because I suspected that the church might not be ready to hear the feminist, womanist, mujerista, and all other manner of emancipatory theology I had learned at Garrett-Evangelical eological Seminary.
