It is time! It is time to acknowledge and confess as faith communities the pressures and restrictions women often experience in religious culture. Texts of scripture provide divine guidance and inspired insight for life when responsibly interpreted and faithfully applied. However, texts must be read, overheard, and absorbed so that lives lived might be both formed and transformed by the witness of scripture. This can happen in the act of proclamation. What will be proclaimed is a word about and through the main character, Tamar, David’s daughter who is raped by her brother Amnon.In this powerful text, many of the controlling issues of patriarchy and the subjection of women, which severely limit the options women can exercise, are exposed. The implications of this text for women in church and culture are immense. Here is a text of terror that has the potential of lancing our comfort and complicity with things as they are and our inclinations to suppress what is just by not rocking the boat.

Dale E. Luffman