This week Blessing discusses women, faith and leadership with Pastor Sarah Omakwu.
Pastor Sarah Omakwu is the senior pastor and president of Family Worship Center and President of Family Ministries. She calls herself God's errand girl and also happens to be Blessing’s mom.
In this episode the mother-daughter duo cover a range of topics including:
Why women leaders struggle with compliments
Grandmother Theology
Resilience in difficult times
Tips for being a Christian woman leader
Ordaining women pastors
And much more!
Find Blessing on social media @BlessingOmakwu and Pastor Sarah Omakwu @sarahomakwu
In this episode, Blessing continues a deep dive discussion on sex, purity culture and the Bible with Linda Kay Klein.
Linda Kay Klein (she/her) is an award-winning author, a purity culture recovery coach, and the founder and president Break Free Together, a not-for-profit organization serving individuals recovering from gender- and sexuality-based religious trauma. Her work has been featured by over 150 outlets, including the New York Times, NPR, CBS, NBC, and Elle Magazine. This work was born out of Linda’s 16 years of research for her award-winning book, PURE: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free.
Find Blessing on social media @BlessingOmakwu and Linda at @LindaKayKlein.
Purchase Linda’s book, PURE here:
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1501124811?tag=simonsayscom
In this intimate episode, Blessing shares personal stories, provides a brief Biblical analysis of premarital sex, and outlines her raw thoughts on purity culture.
Find Blessing on social media @BlessingOmakwu
Submit your anonymous question for the podcast here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1I318RqMnlHS2tFWhRAZR85kpVHZyI3xPGrYDc72SiVU/edit
The book Blessing reads from on this episode is PURE: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Kay Klein. You can purchase it here: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1501124811?tag=simonsayscom
In this episode of the podcast, Blessing asks Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce, some of her hard questions at the intersection race, gender and the Bible. They discuss a range of topics including:
Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce is the Dean of Vanderbilt University’s School of Divinity. She was previously the Dean of Howard University’s School of Divinity (the first Black Woman to serve as Dean in its 150 year history).
Find Blessing on social media @BlessingOmakwu and Yolanda at @YNPierce.
Purchase Yolanda’s latest book, In My Grandmother’s House: Black Women, Faith and the Stories We Inherit here: https://yolandapierce.com/in-my-grandmothers-house-dr-yolanda-pierce
In this episode, Blessing chats with Dr. Beth Allison Barr about the history of patriarchy in the church.
Dr. Beth Allison Barr is a Professor of History and an Associate Dean at Baylor University in Texas, where she specializes in medieval history, women's history, and church history. She is also the author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood, How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth.
Blessing and Beth discuss:
How patriarchy got rebranded as complementarianism in the church
How patriarchy got written into the Bible through manuscript translations and transmission
How “Biblical womanhood” was conceptualized by a group of men in the 1980s
What a church that truly reflects Christ could look like
Find Blessing on social media @BlessingOmakwu and Beth at @BethAllisonBarr.
Purchase Beth’s Book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood here: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Biblical-Womanhood-Subjugation-Became/dp/1587434709
This episode is a crossover between the Our Bibles, Ourselves podcast (Hosted by Blessing Omakwu) and the Legally Clueless podcast hosted by Adelle Onyango, the Legally Clueless podcast is dedicated to telling African stories. In this episode, Adelle interviews Blessing, who shares her journey to become a Christian feminist, and her goals for the Our Bibles, Ourselves podcast.
They discuss:
How her father’s death made Blessing revisit Biblical literalism
How the process of getting married made Blessing revisit what that Bible says about women
How religion and the Bible is sometimes misused across the African continent and beyond
Christianity’s role in slavery and colonialism and its potential to dismantle patriarchy
Practicing faith as modern Black + African women
Find Blessing on social media @BlessingOmakwu and Adelle at @adelleonyango
Welcome to the Our Bibles, Ourselves podcast: a podcast that deconstructs what the Bible says, especially about women, towards liberation. In this trailer, Blessing Omakwu shares why she is launching this podcast, and what to expect!
Host: Blessing Omakwu
Find Blessing on social media @BlessingOmakwu