{"id":7260,"date":"2004-05-19T14:30:05","date_gmt":"2004-05-19T14:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html"},"modified":"2004-05-19T14:30:05","modified_gmt":"2004-05-19T14:30:05","slug":"the_red_tent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html","title":{"rendered":"The Red Tent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A reader wrote to ask if I&#8217;d read it. I haven&#8217;t. Her comments&#8230;and yours if you&#8217;d like to add to them?<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I&#8217;m writing because I just finished reading &#8220;The Red Tent&#8221; by Anita Diamant. A lot of my Protestant and agnostic friends read it, and loved it. So, keeping in mind it is fiction based very loosely on a Bible story, I picked up a copy.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m wondering if you&#8217;ve read the book, and if so, what you thought about it. And what you think generally about writing fiction that&#8217;s originally based on a Bible story.<\/p>\n<p>I have to say, I was greatly disturbed by the author&#8217;s (over)emphasis of pagan gods, and flippant treatment of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It also rang false to me that Jacob would ever allow the worship of false gods in any of his tents, and that he wouldn&#8217;t teach his wives and all his children about the Lord.<\/p>\n<p>It also bothered me that the author turned Rebecca and Sarah into pagan priestesses. Grrrr.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I&#8217;d be interested in reading your thoughts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A reader wrote to ask if I&#8217;d read it. I haven&#8217;t. Her comments&#8230;and yours if you&#8217;d like to add to them? I&#8217;m writing because I just finished reading &#8220;The Red Tent&#8221; by Anita Diamant. A lot of my Protestant and agnostic friends read it, and loved it. So, keeping in mind it is fiction based&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Red Tent - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Red Tent - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A reader wrote to ask if I&#8217;d read it. I haven&#8217;t. Her comments&#8230;and yours if you&#8217;d like to add to them? I&#8217;m writing because I just finished reading &#8220;The Red Tent&#8221; by Anita Diamant. A lot of my Protestant and agnostic friends read it, and loved it. So, keeping in mind it is fiction based&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-05-19T14:30:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Red Tent - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Red Tent - Via Media","og_description":"A reader wrote to ask if I&#8217;d read it. I haven&#8217;t. Her comments&#8230;and yours if you&#8217;d like to add to them? I&#8217;m writing because I just finished reading &#8220;The Red Tent&#8221; by Anita Diamant. A lot of my Protestant and agnostic friends read it, and loved it. So, keeping in mind it is fiction based&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-05-19T14:30:05+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html","name":"The Red Tent - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-05-19T14:30:05+00:00","dateModified":"2004-05-19T14:30:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/the_red_tent.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Red Tent"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}