​September 30 | Spirituality and Devotion
Particularities of religious traditions are formed more by what people practice. Integral to this practice are spirituality and devotion. Despite the similar claim in worshipping one God, Christianity and Islam differ in their spirituality and devotion to God. We will discuss how each religion helps cultivate spiritual and devotional lives in people of faith.

October 28 | How to Live with Others According to Scriptures
Muslims and Christians, throughout the ages, have been experiencing religious diversity, although today’s context is unprecedented in term of its enormous scale. Nevertheless, foundational texts of both Islam and Christianity speak about the necessity of living with those perceived as “others” as fellow creations of God. We will discuss how these texts provide us with insights to deal with “others” in our own contexts.

January 27 | Sharia and Politics
Sharia is often misunderstood as Islamic law in the U.S. However, sharia has to do more with guideposts and principles rather than rules. Moreover, many think that unlike Christianity (with its apparent separation between church and state), Islam does not have such a  separation. This meeting will discuss nuances in order to clarify various positions in Islam and Christianity regarding the relationship between religion and politics.

February 24 | Women and Religion
Islam and Christianity are often accused to be perpetuating sexism and patriarchy which impedes women’s empowerment. On the other hand, Muslims and Christians claim that their religions instrumentalize the empowerment of women. How do we resolve these conflicting views? This session will discuss ambivalent positions in both religions and elaborate on how Islamic and Christian traditions perceives the notion of gender justice.
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​Hessam Dehghani is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at Boston College. His research focuses on the notion of community especially, Islamic community. He came to Boston 6 years ago with his family after finishing his first Ph.D. in Linguistics and Philosophy in Tehran. He has presented papers and published books and translations in Persian and English on religious matters, including “A-political Islam” at Clough Center for Constitutional democracy.

​Mahtab Sirdani is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at Boston University. She completed her Master of Theology at Harvard Divinity School where her focus was on the picture of women in Islamic literature since its birth. Sirdani’s research includes the role of women and the practice of Hijāb (body covering) across cultures and religious traditions. Her current research focuses on Muslims in exile especially the situation of Iranian Shia Muslims in America, a minority group that only gets very minimal attention in public discussion.

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Hans A. Harmakaputra is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Theology at Boston College. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Christian Theology from Jakarta Theological Seminary, Indonesia, and a master’s degree in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations from Hartford Seminary, CT. His doctoral work delves into a comparison between a theological concept of sainthood in Christianity and Islam.

Click here to go the Nov. 4 2018 event page.

A space for people across age range and ability to come and celebrate a gift they have or want to explore. Although there may be some of that, you don't need to be an "expert" or be on Broadway to come up to the mic. Sing a song, play an instrument, tell a story, perform an act, speak about your art. Anything you are passionate about.

We will affirm and celebrate all ages and abilities. 

10 people. 4-5 minutes each.

Come participate and encounter something beautiful.

We’ll have hors d’oeuvres & beverages. Feel free to bring a little something to add to the table. Most importantly, just bring YOU.

The event will take place in our beautiful chapel space.

Wait, there's more? Yes.
​We will have Musa Collective artists and Andrew Riley, documentary family photographer, displaying their (descriptions below) work.

Interested in signing up or displaying your art for the next open mic? 
Email john[at]fbcnewton.org

Next Open (& Affirming ) Mic Night: Sunday, November 4.

​Andrew Riley graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a degree in Graphic Design. Andy is a visual thinker and storyteller. When not designing, Andy enjoys documenting life’s moments, and is giddy when he’s captured an image that makes people feel something. Specialized in documentary family photography, Andy is inspired by its ability to capture, forever in time, real human emotions and honest connections between people. Real life is raw, vulnerable, tender, funny, awkward and brief. What's not to love? To learn more, click here.
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Nina Stolz Bellucci (MFA), recipient of numerous nominations and awards, including a 2018 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant in Painting, creates dynamic paintings and large-scale drawings that are based on original collages and poems. She is inspired by light, the unique shapes and shadows it creates, and the inherent spirituality of the natural world. Her work is represented virtually at Uprise Art. Nina maintains a studio at Waltham Mills Artist Association and lives in Newton, MA with her husband and two children. To learn more, click here.

Erik Grau (MFA, M.Ed., BCBA, LABA), born and raised in Milwaukee, focuses on depictions of cats, crystals, and knick-knacks in his immediate home environment.  In addition to visual art, Erik studied Applied Behavior Analysis and Education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and began working full time as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and Boston Public Schools Kindergarten inclusion teacher. Most recently Erik was the artist in residence at Room83Spring in Watertown, MA.  Erik is the current President of the Piano Craft Gallery. To learn more, click here.

Julia von Metzsch Ramos (MFA), a painter from Boston, uses transparent layers of paint to achieve depth and illusion. This disjunction between the layers of paint application creates a tension particularly well suited to the ever-changing New England weather. Julia is in the collection of Danforth Art and the Cape Anne Museum. Her work can also be seen at Mercury Gallery in Rockport, MA and at Gallery Naga in Boston, MA. Julia works at Massachusetts College of Fine Arts as adjunct faculty. A founder and member of the Musa Collective, Julia currently lives and works in Cambridge. To learn more, click here.

Alla Lazebnik (MFA), is a figurative painter and printmaker born in Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia and currently based out of the Boston area. Her works use imagery from Russian folklore and storylines that have intertwined with her life. Experimentation using techniques achieved with mechanical woodcut tools has been her primary medium. She has taken part in juried exhibitions throughout the states of FL, MA, NH, NY, OR, TX, and VT, including recently at the Off the Wall show in the Danforth Museum. Alla currently works as an Adjunct Art Professor at Lasell College. To learn more, click here.

Marta Kaemmer (MFA), was born in Zimbabwe and spent her teenage and college years in the Midwest before moving to Austria. She had numerous exhibitions in Austria before returning to the United States. Trained as a painter, her interest in materials keeps her moving between media and has included printmaking, sculpture and textiles in her work. She currently has a studio in Waltham Mills in Waltham, MA. To learn more, click here.

Join us at The Corner of Beacon and Centre St. for an afternoon of family fun! Cool down from the hot summer sun with a treat from the ice cream truck that will be on site (pretty cool, right?). Compete in a corn hole tournament and a rousing game of ping pong. Get your face painted and try your luck in a water ballon toss. It’s going to be so much summer fun! And did we mention...there’s an ice cream truck ON SITE?! 

When: Sunday, July 29th from 12:00 PM until 2:00 PM
Who’s invited: YOU (and your friends and family)

​Heather Palmer, a doctor and former member of the faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health lead a discussion on how gender relationships have changed over her lifetime. Read along to learn more about how being in community assured Heather that someone had her back: 
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In many societies, and until the last century in the Western world, women could not work outside the home and virtually had to marry. They and their property were then owned by their husbands. A lot has changed in gender relationships and much for the better in my own lifetime. This is an anecdotal account of some personal experiences in living through these changes.

On my first day at Medical School in 1957, I was one of 12 girls in a class of about 290 men. We girls had been to all-girls schools and were younger than most of the men who had served conscripted time in the armed services. We sat in a row in the back of the huge amphitheater, wearing white gloves and demure attire, terrified! But we were in Medical School!

The historic shift in women attending Medical School is well illustrated by a local example. At Harvard, in 1943, there was a prolonged fight over allowing women into Medical School. The purpose was to make up for the absence of students due to the deployment and sacrifice of so many men in World War ll. One faculty member, however, had this to say: "The pro-feminists are apt to overlook the fundamental biological law that the primary function of woman is to bear and raise children, and the first social duty of woman is to develop and perpetuate the home." The proposal to admit women failed.

In 1945, a few women were allowed to enter Harvard Medical School for the very first time “on an equal basis” with men. By 2017, of 165 entering medical students at Harvard Medical School, 51% were men and 49% women. 

Entering a “Men’s World”
For my generation, and in my career, the biggest problems I encountered fell into the categories of put-downs, pay, and promotion. The large organizations for which I worked were especially slow to change.

Putdowns
During my career I was often the only woman working among men and I had all male superiors. I had many friendly male colleagues and some wise male mentors. But I frequently encountered putdowns that, although trivial, when repetitive, damage one’s self-confidence. I’ll share a tiny selection of examples of these incid
ents designed to “put me in my place.” 

When I revealed in a job interview that my father and sister were doctors, the senior physician interviewer exclaimed with satisfaction “that’s how your father got his sons!” The same senior physician met with a female colleague and me to discuss our academic appointments on our return to work after a pregnancy. His first question was, “Are you breast feeding?” Among pediatricians, that’s a professional question. But when we both said we were, he added with a leer “Well it doesn’t hurt your figures, does it!”

Outside the clinical setting, putdowns were common too. When I was testing the projection equipment at a meeting in DC where I was to be the first speaker, a well-known Washington gadfly mistook me for a secretary and shouted across the room at me, “When is the chairman arriving?”  Since I was not a staff person, I could have had no idea. When serving on national councils and committees I resigned myself to the inevitable senior male shoulder-squeezer. 

Once, my husband and I were seated at a dinner for wealthy donors the evening before a symposium where I was to be a speaker. A prospective donor seated at our table leaned past me to say to my husband, “I’m looking forward to your talk tomorrow, Dr. Palmer.” My husband replied “You’ll have to talk to my wife about that!” My husband was 6 foot 5 inch tall, a distinguished looking man  – we used to joke that I should put him in front of me at the Speaker’s microphone and I would speak from behind him!

My most egregious example of a putdown occurred at a meeting of about 30 participants, where I was the only woman. When the chairman asked for questions, my hand was first up; he waited a second until another hand went up, then took that questioner. He called on other questioners many times. After a while, I gave up raising my hand, until two guys behind me urged me to keep trying. After many minutes, the Chairman, glaring at me, the last with my hand up, announced “That’s all we have time for,” and closed the session. 

Some male peers seemed motivated in part by a feeling that women had an unfair advantage. When I joined a conversation between my boss and a colleague of my age, the young man exclaimed in annoyance “Have you come to flash your ankles at us?” 
It was an unpleasant surprise that some senior nursing staff clearly resented women medical students & tried to impose restrictions on us that our male colleagues did not suffer. Even in our church community, some female members tried to impose their expectations about acceptable contributions from woman members and their disapproval of women who worked outside the home.

Pay
Unequal pay for men and women is now a hot issue. In the UK, large firms are required by law to publish data on the salary difference between male and female employees. As the data roll in, it emerges that women lose out on £140bn ($186 bn) a year due to the gender pay gap. 

My personal experience reflects the complexities of this issue. In 1966, as an intern, those who lived in hospital accommodation received free room and board and $2,000 a year in salary. Those who were married received a large “living out” allowance if they were male but not if they were female, the assumption being that husbands would support female interns. During most of my career I worked at a University where it was widely known that men in equivalent jobs were paid substantially more than women. Lip service was paid to the idea of equal pay for equal work, with the explanations that women couldn’t work such long hours because of home and child care duties, and that women’s careers were interrupted by time taken off for pregnancies or to care for aged relatives. I did not join the earnest committees set up by the University to debate women’s rights because they served as yet another time wasting distraction from getting my work done in competition with my male colleagues!

Promotions
Like many young women entering a male world, I assumed that if I did good work it would be noticed and rewarded with promotion. It was a long time before I realized that wasn’t how it worked! In the mid 1990s, a woman professor in another school of the University warned me that I was being overlooked while less qualified men gained promotion. My requests for promotion were met with blank refusals. My Department head gave no reason but said “Why do you want to be a professor, my wife doesn’t!”  Given the hostility I began receiving from my senior male colleagues, I saw that if I pressed the issue, I would be perceived as an aggressive “bitch.” But many junior women faculty who had left and many women recent graduates urged me to take a lead in fighting for promotion. Without that pressure, the example of a few women in other Schools of the University, and the unflagging support of my husband, I would not have taken the next step: I filed a grievance. This gave me the first opportunity to hear the rationale for refusing promotion. It revealed, among other things, that the all male senior faculty in my department had voted thumbs down without even reading my Curriculum Vitae. 

This process was stressful. One Sunday, during the service at First Baptist Church in Newton Centre (FBCN), we read together Psalm 56: 

Rob and Chris are devoted, fun loving fathers to three kids and invaluable volunteers to Massachusetts Adoption Resource Exchange (MARE). Their involvement with MARE as experienced parents began at the Jordan’s Assumption event where they shared their story with an audience of prospective parents. They were featured in MARE’s Heart Gallery portrait project with their then family of four.
 
This past summer, they wondered if it was time to open their homes and hearts up again to another child and re-enter the adoption process. This is the piece they wrote for Massachusetts Adoption Resource Exchange’s (MARE) Family Blog, explaining how they reached their decision. Click here to read about how they let their hearts take over.
 
Here at First Baptist Church in Newton Centre (FBCN), we are committed to celebrating creativity, courage, and connection. Rob and Chris embody these values.

Here's what they have to say about the adoption process:
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In the midst of all of the conversations about what was practical, we eventually let our hearts take over.

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Big changes like the industrial revolution took a long time. This digital age, however, has been such a fast transition. We find ourselves in the middle of a change that we are yet to fully understand or know how best to encounter or embrace. Where does this leave us and what can we do? 

This blog post captures only a little bit of what transpired. For those interested in accessing some resources that the panelists shared, click on the downloadable PDFs.

Three panelists Jeff Levin, Pam Penton, and Reebee Girash offered insights for parents interested in navigating the challenges of stress, spirituality, and parenting.

Levin, life coach and educator, spoke of how imagination and independence are essential for identity formation. A stressor that Levin asked the audience to consider is the message that kids are receiving today. “If you want to be successful, your window of opportunity is narrow and you don’t have time to go tire swinging.” Are children hearing that they don’t have time to be outside to exercise independence and imagination? How does such a message, often subtle, affect kids? He further described the process of “mirroring” and asked, “How do you ‘mirror’ when you constantly have an iPhone in your hand?” 

Penton, Director of a childcare center, emphasized how stress is infectious. “We pass it down through our body, eye contact, through our faces.” The big question that Penton asked the audience to consider is, “How does anxiety and stress in adults get passed on (however unintentional) to children?” Penton, a big proponent of being outside in interaction with the world, reminded those gathered in our beautiful chapel that we adults need to make time to be inquisitive and playful. Kids have a way of picking up what they understand to be their family’s downtime. 

Girash, minister and educator, started with a sobering insight. By the time kids are 10 years old, they can see if spirituality is meaningful for their parents. In other words, whatever we do, kids see and feel our values. Girash noted how all parents want their children to be safe, loved, and filled with wonder and to be kind, grateful, gentle, and just. Living in a digital age, she noted, is not necessarily a bad thing for these values. As a way of offering insight to navigate the digital age, Girash shared her own family’s practices. “I love you” means no phones during family dinner or prayer. “I love you” further means taking a full day off to be intentionally present together as a family. 

During the discussion, folks pointed out that technology is now an essential part of formal education at every level. Can one then differentiate between media for learning and social media? What is the balance? 

First Baptist Church in Newton Centre is passionate about addressing the needs of the communities that we are part of. Write to us if you have an idea. We’d love to hear from you.

Raising children in the midst of Snapchat, Twitter, and Youtube presents unique challenges. Parents and professionals need a new set of skills and strategies to navigate the digital world with children. Come, listen to, and participate in a Q&A with three panelists from three faith traditions who will address stress, spirituality, and parenting children in a digital age.

Jeff Levin, M.A.T., M.S.W, is a consultant and coach to parents, families, schools, teams/athletes and corporations all over the U.S. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Boston College School of Education, and the Smith College School for Social Work. Jeff began his professional career as a middle-school English teacher and practiced psychotherapy for over twenty-five years. Jeff grew up in Newton, MA and is now based in New Hampshire and Boston.

​Pam Penton is Director of Meeting House Childcare Centre in Newton, MA. After having majored in Child Study at Tufts, Pam earned her graduate degree from Lesley University in Multicultural Special Needs with a focus on Mental Health issues for Middle and High School students in 1991. Pam began her career working with school age and older students for 12 years and eventually returned to the Early Childhood field in 1998 and stresses Nature Education. Pam grew up in Waltham, now lives in Newton, and is a single parent of an eleventh grader.

Reebee Girash is Associate Pastor at Eliot Church with an emphasis on children’s and youth ministry and Denominational Counselor to United Church of Christ students at Harvard Divinity School, where she received her M.Div. in 2002. She has a great passion for social justice ministry, and particularly for climate action. She is a volunteer with 350MA as well as the Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action. Reebee grew up in Nashville, TN–and still contends that y'all is proper English.

For more details, contact Minister for Community Life, John Boopalan: john[at]fbcnewton.org

A Curated Interfaith Series (Fall 2018 dates: Sept 30, Oct 28)
Our guests for this special interfaith series will include two Shia Muslims and a Christian from the Muslim majority country of Indonesia. Click here to learn more.

Romans 13: What's the Fuss? Sunday, August 5
Sze-kar Wan, Professor of Biblical Studies, explores the historical, political, especially theological factors responsible for Paul's words in Romans 13.1–7. Some recent politicians' misuse and abuse of the passage notwithstanding, Paul intended it as a subversive, transgressive statement. Come join us. Help us unlock the liberating message encoded in Paul's words.

Journeys in Adoption. Sunday, May 6.
We have two beautiful families that have adopted. These families inspire us to embody courage, creativity, and connection. One family has children in college and beyond. Another has children in elementary school. Come join Steve Loar, Chris Teague and Rob Case as they share their adoption journeys.

Click here to find out more about Rob and Chris' journey.

Gender Relationships over the Last 50 Years. Sunday April 15.
Heather Palmer, longtime member of the church, will lead a discussion on 'Changing Gender Relationships over the Last 50 Years.' Come join us as Heather encourages attempts at understanding these events, illustrating with examples from her experiences as a doctor and Faculty member at the Harvard School of Public Health. What does it mean to look back and look ahead?

Does God Really Love Diversity? Sunday, March 25.
Sze-kar Wan, Professor of Biblical Studies at Southern Methodist University, led us in a superb discussion.