Kalie May Hargrove

Kalie May Hargrove (she/her) is a writer, theologian, and ordained minister. She lives in the greater-Atlanta area with her partner and two kids. Kalie has been part of LGBTQ+ activism bringing awareness of the legalized discrimination queer and trans students face at religious universities. She received her Master of Divinity from United Theological Seminary of Twin Cities. You can find out more about Kalie May here.

Pride and Intersectionality

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June is a rather interesting month. It is most notably known as Pride Month. However, it also carries Juneteenth and often has a period of major protests like BLM. Many times, we are taught to view these events as independent occurrences that just happen to be at the same time, but that is not actually true. These events are interconnected due to their origins as subversive movements that stand up to white supremacy. Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash One thing that must be recognized is the fact that many cultures have traditions that affirm and celebrate gender-expansive people and … Read more

Our Struggle is with Human Authority

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“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, authority, world leaders of darkness itself, and against [those with] a spirituality of wickedness among the heavenly places.” – Ephesians 6:12 Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash           If you’re like me, you might have grown up being told that Ephesians 6:12 is telling us that our struggle, or wrestling, in this world is against Satan and spiritual evil. In fact, you might have also been told that addressing systemic oppression is against the Bible because it focuses on ingrained evil instead of individual … Read more

When God Can’t, We Must

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What Open and Relational Theology Tells Us About Social Justice Recently, I took part in a virtual conference discussing works in the field of Open and Relational Theology (ORT). When my friend Mason found out that I had been invited, his response was “I didn’t know you were in the ORT world.” It is honestly something I don’t talk about much. I was first introduced to ORT through Dr. Thomas Jay Oord and his book God Can’t, which attempts to explain why there is persistent evil in the world. Ultimately, in his conclusion, it comes down to the fact that God’s love … Read more

Solidarity with the “Non-Human”

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“What’s it like to develop an entire identity around the sexual sin you desire…” – Dave from Twitter. I’ve often thought about what it means to be human and stepping into the person I’ve been created to be. However, we often don’t think about what it means to be non-human. This is where the quote above comes into play. In just a few short words, Dave was able to take my entire identity as a full human and reduce it to a simple ideology that he could express into a simple idea. It doesn’t bother me much when this happens, … Read more

Salvation Versus Liberation: Where is the Focus?

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A few weeks ago, I made this tweet and it sparked a lot of debate. In some ways it was too simplistic, not every instance of “soteria” should be translated “liberation,” but that wasn’t the point. The point was to critique the way that our English translations use theologically saturated words that no longer reflect the original meaning. The word “salvation,” although technically an accurate translation, has come to mean spiritual salvation from hell and is only occasionally used metaphorically for physical salvation. However, the use of “soteria” in the Bible is rarely (if ever) actually about the afterlife. This … Read more