Melodie Roschman: “100% Sinner, 100% Saint: Encountering Nadia Bolz-Weber” at CZSS

April 11, 2023

(9:30 a.m. Pacific / 11:30 a.m. central / 12:30 p.m. eastern)

Melodie Roschman will present “100% Sinner, 100% Saint: Encountering Nadia Bolz-Weber” for the Choir Zoom Sabbath School at Pacific Union College on Saturday, November 4.

In this presentation, I will introduce the works of Nadia Bolz-Weber, an eccentric Lutheran pastor and close friend of the late Rachel Held Evans. I will explore Bolz-Weber's unusual journey, from conservative Christian child to alcoholic atheist stand-up comedian to pastor of the ragtag "Church for All Sinners and Saints" in Denver, Colorado. I will particularly focus on the rhetorical position she inhabits as an ordained female pastor in a mainline denomination, and the ways in which she simultaneously affirms very traditional Christian understandings of sin, the cross, and redemption while also advocating for progressive causes (most notably the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people).

Melodie Roschman is a writer, researcher, and public educator who studies contemporary American Christianity, gender, and popular culture. She has a PhD in English from the University of Colorado, Boulder (2022), where she wrote her dissertation: "Identity, Counternarrative, and Community in Progressive Christian Women's Memoir." She has a MA in English from McMaster University (2016) and is a proud graduate of the J. N. Andrews Honors program at Andrews University, where she earned a BA in English and Journalism (2015) and served for two years as a controversial editor-in-chief of The Student Movement. She now works as a communications officer in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, but remains active as an independent scholar. She lives in Kitchener, ON, with her husband Taylor and cat Minnie, where she enjoys cooking, knitting, and DIY projects.

Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85040922192?pwd=dDJKSm9qVFhkWC9VblRoNXJyY2t0dz09