(Repenting of) Judging Nadia Bolz-Weber
How I came to see the truth about an "irreverant" preacher.
I originally posted this essay in January to my newsletter. I’m reposting it to Bible, Sex, and Gender because it conveys the common tendency to judge and write people off based on differing opinions on sexual ethics. I’ve been guilty of that. Here’s my confession.
In 2011, while visiting my parents in Colorado, they asked if I had heard about the tattooed woman pastor who preached an Easter sermon at Red Rocks Amphitheater. They had seen her on the local news and found it all rather curious. Women pastors, especially tattooed ones, were not part of my church upbringing. “No,” I replied, grabbing my laptop to search for this anomalous figure. That’s how I discovered Nadia Bolz-Weber.
A rebel preacher, proclaiming the good news with Spirit-filled authority intrigued me. Wow, I thought, this Lutheran pastor has the potential to reach people for Christ that would never step foot in a church. My heart quickened at her sermons, and not only because she was funny and incredibly articulate. Nadia spoke Kingdom truth like a bell ringing liberty. But years later, my admiration would turn to judgment . . . and for that, I’m ashamed.
Nadia Bolz-Weber grew up in Churches of Christ, an insular faith community, predominately found in the southern United States. It grew out of the 19th century Restoration movement, which sought to restore New Testament ways of doing church. That included eschewing instruments in worship (since the NT doesn’t mention them), leading to a rich heritage of a capella music, where everyone from youngster to adult learns to sing four-part harmony (a musical tradition Nadia still appreciates).
Growing up, Nadia chafed against the confines of her conservative faith tradition. She struggled to find her way, turning to alcohol and drugs for solace. But by the grace of God, she became clean and sober in the early 1990s, eventually attending seminary and becoming ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). In 2008, Nadia planted a church in Denver called House for All Sinners and Saints and became a popular author, writing about her personal story and ministry work in Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint (2013) and Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People (2015).
Among progressive pastors, Nadia has stood out for her Lutheran proclamation of both sin and grace. While many progressive Christians are reluctant to talk about sin, often over-correcting for fundamentalist backgrounds, Nadia has no qualms. She knows the way to get off the treadmill of trying to measure up is realizing our sins don’t make us unlovable. God’s grace is unconditional. In this vein, she started a podcast called The Confessional, which she describes as a “car wash for our shame and secrets.”
I followed Nadia’s ministry with interest and gratitude, tolerating her penchant for profanity, knowing she was reaching people other pastors could not. That is, until 2019. That’s the year I put her books in the Goodwill pile. That’s the year she published Shameless: A Sexual Reformation. When I look back on that strong reaction, I feel saddened. Despite witnessing so much good in her ministry work, I allowed one point of difference to erase everything else.
To appreciate my reaction is to understand the faith heritage that shaped me, where sexual sin is worse than anything else. And not just any sexual sin (e.g. sexual abuse was rarely discussed) but non-marital sex. The line Nadia crossed was approving sex apart from marriage. The book was published shortly after divorcing her husband of two decades, in part, because her marriage lacked physical intimacy. She then rekindled a relationship with a former boyfriend (whom she eventually married in 2024).
The irony of judging Nadia was my own sexual sin. How could I throw a stone? Yes, I had been living chastely for years, but I had faltered in the past. Nevertheless the same teaching that compelled me to destroy secular music CDs in my youth, spurred me to rid myself of Nadia’s books. I did it without serious contemplation, out of old habit. Of course, my reaction was irrationally selective, reflecting the selectivity of sins prioritized by my particular faith tradition.
I have no memory of church leaders preaching against sexual abuse or rape culture. But I heard many, many teachings on women’s modesty and women’s submission. Only in retrospect have I realized how much my responses to sexual sin are shaped by a mostly male viewpoint. The church leaders in my world did not teach ethics in a way that reflected the experiences of women. They often centered male preoccupation with sexual temptation, whether pre-marital or adulterous. As a result, I internalized the same selective fixation on non-marital sex, even over gross abuses of power.
Not only that, I inherited the all-or-nothing tendency to write off people if they crossed a line on the selective list of sins. One mistake meant a person no longer had anything to offer. The irrational hierarchy of sins meant greed, gluttony, domestic violence, and many other transgressions were overlooked or treated with a light hand. The biblical examples of God using imperfect leaders like King David were applied unevenly, excusing one’s own sin, while treating others more harshly.
Judging Nadia was like an ingrained reflex. I did it without appreciating the underlying mechanism leading me to set her aside. If you had asked me, at the time, whether such a reaction reflected my actual theology of sin and grace, I would have said no. Of course, I didn’t believe in writing someone off just because we differed on one thing or because someone faltered. In everyday life, I didn’t shun friends who lived in ways that contradicted my own moral sensibility. I knew what it was like to experience ostracization and judgment from others. I had no desire to inflict the same. And yet with Nadia, I did.
Increasingly, I’m mindful of subtle ways I favor those similar to myself. That’s a common problem across the nation and globe. We retreat into silos and tribes, intolerant of anyone who differs from us. Distorted theology taught me to be afraid of different viewpoints, lest I be led astray. It taught me that listening to a contrary opinion equaled agreement, and therefore I shouldn’t listen at all.
But despite reflexively getting rid of Nadia’s books, I still found myself hanging out on the edge of the crowd to hear what she had to say. I violated the edict to stay away from “bad company.” Ocassionally, I would read one of her articles or listen to a sermon. And I found the same Nadia still prophesying God’s gospel truth. Ultimately, God used Nadia to convict me of sin and bring me to repentance. Whether I agree with all her sexual ethics or not, my prideful judgment of her was wrong. God is working in and through Nadia in wonderful ways. Recently, she wrote:
When we have received grace, we develop compassion toward anyone who is also in need of grace. This is how God’s kingdom works. It’s a league of the guilty. I bet you anything that the Samaritan wasn't just some merit badge level good guy. I bet he was someone who had also needed help at some point and just knew what that felt like. Maybe he himself had robbed someone and not ‘gotten what he deserved’. My money is on that explanation.
So the good news is not that you can be a better person if you just try harder so that then Jesus won’t have to keep being disappointed in you. The good news is that you can be a new person. That indeed you are being made a new person by God. And wait till you get a hold of who God is making you into, because it might just look like God is making you into a person who has experienced so much grace that you cannot help but come near to the one who lays robbed and beaten - God is making you into someone who shows mercy not out of your goodness, but out of your newness.
Amen, pastor Nadia. May you hear my confession: forgive me for I have sinned against you and God. May I be ever aware of my own fallibility and the grace I have received lest I think myself superior to anyone else. Thanks be to God, for as Paul the apostle says, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy” (1 Tim 1:15-16).
Read more about overcoming judgmentalism
I’ve also written about my sins of judgmentalism and self-righteousness in the article, “The Truth about LGBTQ People,” at Red Letter Christians:
The fear of going astray was strong. As a result, we kept our distance from ‘them’ (whoever ‘they’ might be). Even as I came to discover my own sexual orientation, my head was full of stereotypes about LGBTQ people. Ironically, it was avoiding people who believed differently from me that led to being deceived. My imagination filled in the blanks with false caricatures. I had to draw near to those I disagreed with to discover what is true and what are just ghost stories. Only in coming face to face did the blurry outlines take clear shape.