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Please welcome Rev. Ruth Everhart this Sunday! 

When Jesus spoke with the woman at the well (John 4), he implicitly challenged every cultural assumption about who is worthy of his time and conversation. But this shift has been slow to percolate through the cultural layers of church and society. Rev. Ruth Everhart will consider the Samaritan woman’s story in tandem with her own, because gender still shapes a woman’s world. From her viewpoint of decades in ministry, Rev. Everhart considers: how did living water trickle through the layers of an oppressive church system and the horror of rape at gunpoint? Because the living water is still available, and still ever-fresh.

11:15 a.m. Pastors’ Forum in the Sanctuary.   Rev. Ruth Everhart is a Presbyterian pastor in the Washington DC area, and the award-winning author of two spiritual memoirs. Her recent memoir, RUINED, was given a “2017 Book Award” by Christianity Today as a book “most likely to shape evangelical life, thought and culture.”

In her memoir, Ruth describes her experience of sexual violence as a young woman, the reaction of the Christian subculture in which she attended college, and her faith journey through the decade that followed. She wrestled down questions that haunted her, such as: What is a woman good for? Had God willed her to be a victim? And if God had willed this horrific act, how could she love God? How did her sexual purity — or lack thereof — factor in? And what does scripture say to survivors of sexual violence?

 

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