Lauren Winner | |
---|---|
Born | 1976 (age 47–48) |
Nationality | American |
Other names | Lauren Frances Winner |
Spouse |
Griff Gatewood
(
m. 2003;
div. 2009) |
Ecclesiastical career | |
Religion | Christianity ( Anglican) |
Church | Episcopal Church (United States) |
Ordained | 2011 (priest) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Material Culture and Household Religious Practice in Colonial Virginia (2006) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | |
Institutions | Duke University |
Lauren Frances Winner (born 1976) [1] [2] is an American historian, scholar of religion, and Episcopal priest. She is Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke Divinity School. [3] Winner writes and lectures on Christian practice, the history of Christianity in America, and Jewish–Christian relations. [4]
Winner was born to a Jewish father and a Southern Baptist mother, and was raised Jewish. [5] She converted to Orthodox Judaism in her freshman year at Columbia University, [6] and then to Christianity while doing her master's degree at Cambridge University, and one of her most popular books, Mudhouse Sabbath, is about becoming a Christian while appreciating the Jewishness of historical Christian faith. She completed her doctoral work at Columbia University in 2006. [7] Winner's fourth book, A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith: Anglican Religious Practice in the Elite Households of Colonial Virginia is based on her dissertation. [8]
Winner has worked as a book editor of Beliefnet [9] and senior editor of Christianity Today. In 2000 she wrote a column asserting that few young evangelicals took a commitment to premarital chastity seriously, using the phrase "evangelical whores". [10] Julia Duin suggests that Winner was a "fairly recent convert" at the time, and "the evangelical response to Winner was livid." [11] Duin goes on to relate that "Christianity Today quickly demoted her to a staff writer spot when people started asking why such a recent convert in her early twenties and still in grad school had managed to attain senior writer status at such a revered publication." [11]
Since 2000, Winner's writing and theology has continued to evolve. She completed a Master of Divinity degree at Duke University in 2007. She has served as a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University [7] and the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University [12] and volunteers regularly at the Raleigh Correctional Center for Women. [13]
Her memoir, Girl Meets God has been described as "a passionate and thoroughly engaging account of a continuing spiritual journey within two profoundly different faiths." [14] A second memoir, Still: Notes on a Mid-faith Crisis, released on January 31, 2012, [15] chronicles her thoughts on God as she descends into doubt and spiritual crisis following the failure of her brief (2003–2009) marriage. [16] Christianity Today calls Still "an instant spiritual classic." [17] Her other books include Mudhouse Sabbath; Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity; and Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God (2016).
Winner was ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia on December 17, 2011. [18]
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