Faith & Wonder
Faith for curious minds, open hearts, and people unafraid to ask bigger questions.
Faith & Wonder is a collection of inclusive resources for exploring scripture, spirituality, worship, religious traditions, and the questions that shape what we believe. These resources make room for curiosity, doubt, discovery, justice, and the possibility that our understanding of faith can continue to grow.
Explore progressive Bible studies, worship and liturgy, spiritual practices, interfaith and world religions resources, LGBTQ+ affirming faith materials, church and theology guides, and resources for healing and rebuilding after religious harm.
Created for individuals, families, churches, small groups, educators, and faith communities looking for thoughtful ways to engage religion without requiring everyone to arrive at the same answers.
Faith does not have to be the end of our questions. Sometimes faith is what gives us the courage to keep asking them.
Curiosity & Common Good
Inclusive learning for a kinder world.
Bible studies and resources for exploring scripture with curiosity, historical context, justice, and room for questions. Discover marginalized voices, women in scripture, difficult passages, LGBTQ+ inclusive readings, progressive theology, and new ways of engaging familiar biblical stories.
Queer Theology & Sacred Identity
Queering the Parables
Modern Retellings, Historical Context & Queer Theological Reflections
What happens when we read Jesus’ parables from the margins?
Queering the Parables is a progressive Christian Bible study resource that returns to familiar stories with fresh questions about belonging, power, exclusion, identity, community, and grace. Rather than treating queer theology as something added onto Scripture, this resource asks what becomes visible when LGBTQ+ lives and experiences are welcomed into the conversation.
Each parable is presented as a two-page study designed to be accessible enough for individual reflection while offering enough depth for small groups, adult Sunday school, progressive Bible studies, and affirming congregations.
Each study includes:
A clear modern retelling of the parable
Historical and cultural context that helps readers understand the world behind the story
A Greek Word to Know, with transliteration, meaning, and insight into why the word matters
What the Story Disrupts, highlighting boundaries, assumptions, and hierarchies challenged by the parable
A Queer Reading that brings LGBTQ+ experience into conversation with the text
A thoughtful reflection question for personal or group discussion
Explore familiar stories including The Good Samaritan, The Lost Sheep, The Great Banquet, The Persistent Widow, The Prodigal Son, The Pharisee & the Tax Collector, The Workers in the Vineyard, and The Mustard Seed.
This resource does not argue that every parable is secretly “about” LGBTQ+ people. Instead, it practices a way of reading Scripture that takes seriously the perspectives of people whose bodies, identities, families, and lives have often been pushed to the margins of Christian interpretation.
Because sometimes the most interesting thing about a familiar story is discovering who we were taught not to see.
Digital Product: Printable PDF • Instant Download
Ideal for: Progressive Christians • LGBTQ+ Christians • Affirming churches • Clergy • Adult Bible study • Small groups • Personal study • Deconstruction and faith reconstruction
Queering Revelation
Empire, Resistance, Queer Survival & a World Made New
Revelation has been used to frighten people, predict the end of the world, and create elaborate timelines about the future. But what happens when we return this strange, beautiful, unsettling book to the world in which it was written—and then read it from the margins?
Queering Revelation is a progressive Christian Bible study exploring Revelation through historical context, modern retellings, Greek word study, and queer theological reflection.
Rather than treating Revelation as a secret code for twenty-first-century events, this resource introduces readers to its first-century world: Roman imperial power, the communities of Asia Minor, apocalyptic literature, emperor worship, economic pressure, resistance, violence, survival, and hope.
Then it asks what queer experience can help us notice about these ancient visions.
Inside the study
Each of the 10 studies uses a consistent two-page format:
Modern Retelling — accessible language that preserves the imagery and movement of the passage
Historical Setting — substantial context for understanding Revelation in its Roman and Jewish apocalyptic world
Greek Word to Know — a key Greek term, transliteration, meaning, and why it matters
What the Text Disrupts — assumptions about power, belonging, bodies, empire, and faithfulness
A Queer Reading — LGBTQ+ experience brought into genuine theological conversation with the text
Reflection — a question for individual or group discussion
Studies explore the seven churches, the slaughtered Lamb, the innumerable multitude, the woman and the dragon, the Beast and 666, Babylon and empire, violence and victory, new creation, and the city whose gates remain open.
Special attention is also given to difficult parts of Revelation—including its violent and gendered imagery—without ignoring either their historical context or the ways these texts can be harmful when interpreted carelessly.
This isn't a study about finding secretly queer characters in Revelation. It is about asking what people who know something about contested bodies, enforced conformity, religious harm, survival, chosen community, resistance, and queer joy may notice when they are welcomed fully into the work of interpreting Scripture.
Revelation ends not with the Beast, but with water, fruit, healing, divine presence, and gates that remain open.
Printable PDF • Instant Download
Ideal for progressive Christians, LGBTQ+ Christians, affirming churches, clergy, adult Sunday school, small groups, Bible studies, deconstruction, and faith reconstruction.
What’s in a Name?
A Queer Theology Study of Naming, Gender, Identity & Being Known
What does it mean to be named, known, and recognized as yourself?
What’s in a Name? is an accessible queer theology study exploring biblical and Jewish texts about names, identity, gender, embodiment, transformation, and recognition. Written for readers both inside and outside religious communities, it requires no previous Bible knowledge. Each biblical story is retold in clear, easy-to-follow language before moving into historical context and queer theological reflection.
The study explores stories including Abraham and Sarah, Jacob/Israel, Hadassah/Esther, Simon/Peter, Saul/Paul, Hagar, and Mary Magdalene, asking what these ancient stories can open up when read alongside the experiences of transgender and nonbinary people.
It also introduces rabbinic Jewish discussions of zachar, nekevah, androgynos, tumtum, aylonit, and saris, exploring the long history of bodies and gendered lives that complicate a simple binary.
Throughout the resource, you’ll find Hebrew and Greek words, historical and cultural context, substantial Queering the Text sections, and personal reflection questions centered on self-knowledge rather than having to defend or prove who you are.
Topics include chosen names, deadnaming, pronouns, transition, gender expression, changing identities, multiple names, privacy and disclosure, bodily autonomy, being seen, self-trust, and finding the sacred in becoming more fully yourself.
Designed for
Individual reflection, queer and trans spiritual exploration, LGBTQ+ groups, progressive Bible studies, classrooms, small groups, clergy and faith leaders, or anyone curious about queer approaches to scripture.
Digital PDF • 12-point readable body text • No previous Bible knowledge required
This is not a resource asking queer and trans people to justify their existence through scripture. It is an invitation to encounter ancient texts with curiosity and to consider a deeply personal question:
What might change if you trusted yourself to name who you are without first proving it to anyone else?
Finding an LGBTQ+ Affirming Church
A Practical Guide to Looking Beyond “Everyone Is Welcome”
Finding a church that says “Everyone is welcome” is easy. Finding one where LGBTQ+ people can truly belong, lead, love, marry, raise families, ask questions, and participate fully can be much harder.
This practical, LGBTQ+ affirming guide helps individuals and families look beyond welcoming language and determine what a church actually believes and practices.
Designed especially for LGBTQ+ people, parents and caregivers, families, and people returning to faith after church harm, the guide provides concrete questions and tools for evaluating a congregation before—and after—you walk through the doors.
Inside you'll find guidance for:
Understanding the difference between welcoming and affirming
Researching a church before visiting
Questions to ask pastors and church leaders
Determining whether LGBTQ+ people have full access to membership, leadership, marriage, and ministry
Evaluating transgender and nonbinary inclusion
Looking closely at children's and youth ministries
Recognizing theology that sounds welcoming but still requires LGBTQ+ people to change
Identifying common red-flag phrases
Evaluating the actual culture of a congregation
Visiting churches after experiencing church harm
Knowing when vague answers deserve more questions
The guide also includes a printable LGBTQ+ Affirming Church Checklist and a Church Comparison Tool so families can research and compare congregations side by side.
This isn't a guide to finding a church that will simply let LGBTQ+ people through the door. It's a resource for finding a community where they can bring their whole lives with them.
Printable PDF • Instant digital download • LGBTQ+ affirming • Faith-friendly • Parent & family resource • Church checklist • Comparison worksheet • Practical questions & red flags
Curiosity & Common Good
Inclusive learning for a kinder world.
Bible studies and resources for exploring scripture through history, context, power, justice, and voices too often pushed to the margins. Discover the biblical world, question inherited interpretations, examine how scripture has been used to cause harm, and find new ways to engage familiar texts with curiosity and care.
Bible & Belonging
What happens when we stop treating the women of the Bible as supporting characters and start reading their stories closely?
Women the Bible Couldn’t Silence is a progressive, inclusive Bible study that brings the prophets, leaders, theologians, survivors, disciples, witnesses, and unnamed women of Scripture into clearer view.
Created for Curiosity & Common Good Co.’s Faith & Wonder collection, this resource is especially welcoming to adults who want to explore the Bible with curiosity—even if they have little Bible knowledge, have questions about traditional interpretations, or are returning to Scripture after church hurt or deconstruction.
You’ll encounter women including Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Esther, Phoebe, Priscilla, Junia, Mary Magdalene, Hagar, Bathsheba, Tamar, Rahab, Lydia, the Samaritan woman, Philip’s four daughters, and women whose names were never preserved.
Each study goes beyond simply retelling her story. You’ll explore historical and cultural context, women’s lives in the ancient world, significant Hebrew or Greek words, details easily missed in the text, and the difference between what Scripture actually says and what later Christian tradition taught us to remember.
Special sections include Her Story / Their Story, Where Are We?, Women in Her World, A Word Worth Knowing, Look Closer, How She Was Silenced, Who Got to Tell the Story?, Reading from the Margins, Why Her Story Matters, A Note from Pastor Kelley, Wonder → Reflect → Act, and Read It Yourself.
The personal A Note from Pastor Kelley reflections connect these ancient stories with questions I have encountered in ministry, church life, leadership, justice, and my own years of reading Scripture.
This isn't a collection of perfect biblical heroines. Some of these stories are beautiful. Some are complicated. Some should disturb us. And some have been told in ways that blame women for circumstances the biblical text itself never blames them for.
The goal isn't to make every story inspirational.
It is to read carefully, ask better questions, recover voices we have overlooked, and wonder what these women might teach us about faith, power, justice, leadership, survival, and the world we are still building together.
Perfect for: individual study, progressive Christian education, small groups, adult Sunday school, women's groups, deconstruction and reconstruction, clergy and church leaders, or anyone curious about the women of the Bible.
Digital product: Printable PDF • Instant download • Includes Sources & Further Reading
Faith & Wonder — Explore faith with curiosity.
A progressive, inclusive guide to reading the entire Bible with history, context, power, and lived experience in view.
The Bible From the Margins is designed for readers who want to understand the Bible without leaving their questions—or themselves—at the door. Instead of treating individual verses as isolated rules, this guide helps readers explore each biblical book as a whole: what happens, what was happening historically, who held power, whose voices were pushed to the margins, and how certain passages have been used to cause harm.
The guide walks through all 66 books of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, in an accessible, visually engaging format. Each book includes a clear overview and outline, authorship and background, key themes, and a Historical World section that places the text in its ancient political and cultural setting. Readers also get a small glimpse into everyday life—from food and household work to lamps, pottery, farming, and other details that help the biblical world feel more tangible.
The heart of the resource is its From the Margins approach. Readers are invited to ask Who has power? Who is at the margins? and to examine interpretations that have been used against LGBTQ+ people, women, immigrants, poor people, disabled people, outsiders, and others whose experiences are too often overlooked. Rather than simply labeling difficult passages as harmful, the guide provides historical and literary context and invites readers to deconstruct the interpretation and read the text again.
The guide also includes key Hebrew and Greek words and a dedicated Reflection Journal page for each biblical book, with space for What I Thought Before I Read, What I Think Now, My Favorite Part, and The Part That Confuses Me. The goal isn't to tell readers what they must believe—it is to give them tools and room to read, question, reconsider, and grow.
Perfect for: progressive Christians, LGBTQ+ Christians and allies, people deconstructing or reconstructing faith, adult Bible studies, small groups, church education, seminarians, ministry leaders, and anyone who wants to encounter scripture with greater historical context, curiosity, and care.
269-page printable digital Bible study guide • Instant download • Curiosity & Common Good
A Progressive Bible Study of Belonging, Justice, and God’s Expanding Table
Who gets called an outsider—and who gets to decide where the boundaries of belonging are drawn?
People the Bible Called Outsiders is a progressive, inclusive Bible study that returns to the stories of people who lived at the edges of religious, social, political, economic, and cultural power.
Meet Ruth, Hagar, Rahab, the Ethiopian eunuch, Mephibosheth, Naaman, the Samaritan woman, the Syrophoenician woman, Zacchaeus, Onesimus, the enslaved girl at Philippi, and many others whose stories invite us to reconsider what we have been taught about insiders, outsiders, holiness, identity, and belonging.
Rather than simply retelling familiar Bible stories, this resource asks deeper questions.
Who had power? Who controlled the boundaries? What did words like unclean, sinner, foreigner, and eunuch mean in their historical worlds? What does the biblical text actually say—and what did later religious culture add to the story?
Special attention is given to the Ethiopian eunuch and other biblical eunuchs as part of trans and queer history, recognizing the long history of people whose embodied, legal, social, and gendered lives existed beyond a strict male/female binary.
Throughout the study, you'll explore historical and cultural context, important Hebrew and Greek words, disability and biblical interpretation, migration and foreignness, enslavement and economic power, purity and religious boundaries, gender diversity, and the complicated ways Scripture itself wrestles with who belongs.
Each study includes Their Story, Where Are We?, A Word Worth Knowing, Look Closer, Who Called Them an Outsider?, Who Got to Tell the Story?, Reading from the Margins, Why Their Story Matters, A Note from Pastor Kelley, Wonder → Reflect → Act, and Read It Yourself.
This isn't a Bible study about pretending every biblical boundary disappears.
It's about reading closely enough to notice that the Bible itself preserves arguments, tensions, challenges, and expanding visions of belonging.
One of the most powerful threads runs from biblical restrictions concerning eunuchs, through Isaiah's vision of eunuchs receiving an everlasting name in God's house, to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts standing beside water and asking:
“What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
That question sits at the heart of this study.
People the Bible Called Outsiders is designed for individual study, progressive Christian small groups, adult Sunday school, clergy, church leaders, LGBTQ+ affirming communities, people experiencing deconstruction or reconstruction, and anyone curious about reading Scripture from the margins.
Digital Product • Printable PDF • Instant Download
Faith & Wonder — Explore faith with curiosity.
Inclusive, ready-to-use worship services and liturgies for progressive Christian and interfaith communities. Thoughtful resources for creating worship rooted in curiosity, compassion, justice, and belonging.
Worship & Liturgy
Experience Advent through the voices of women whose stories invite us to see hope, peace, joy, love, and the coming of Christ from the margins.
Through Her Eyes is a complete Advent candle-lighting worship resource featuring Hagar, Rahab, Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna. Each week connects a traditional Advent theme with a woman from scripture whose story speaks to justice, belonging, dignity, and voices too often overlooked.
The 13-page printable PDF includes scripture anchors, first-person readings written for worship, justice connections, responsive leader-and-people candle-lighting liturgies, and the Christmas Eve Christ Candle reading. Each spoken reading is approximately 300–350 words, making it easy to incorporate into an existing worship service.
Created for progressive Christian congregations, worship leaders, pastors, and communities looking for an Advent resource that is scripture-centered, justice-minded, inclusive, and ready to use in worship.
Practical resources for pastors, clergy, church leaders, and faith communities building more thoughtful, inclusive, and compassionate ministries. Explore tools for pastoral care, leadership, ceremonies, church life, and creating communities where people can fully belong.
Pastors & Church Leadership
LGBTQ+ Weddings: An Inclusive Premarital Counseling & Ceremony Toolkit
Create meaningful, affirming weddings for LGBTQ+ couples with a complete resource designed specifically for pastors, clergy, chaplains, and wedding officiants.
This digital toolkit provides practical guidance for walking with a couple from their first premarital meeting through the wedding day. Rather than adapting a heterosexual marriage resource by simply changing a few words, the material intentionally addresses experiences and decisions that can be especially important for queer couples.
The toolkit includes a three-session premarital counseling guide covering communication and conflict, finances, household and emotional labor, intimacy, family relationships, chosen family, children and family planning, children from previous relationships, faith and religious experiences, evolving identities, safety and minority stress, legal protections, and preparing for a shared future.
It also helps clergy create a ceremony that reflects the couple themselves, including names, pronouns, relationship titles, family structure, chosen family, faith traditions, and the language they want used when they are pronounced married.
WHAT'S INCLUDED
Three-session LGBTQ+ premarital counseling guide
Queer-specific counseling topics and clergy guidance
Names, pronouns & relationship-title guidance
Family boundaries & navigating unsupportive relatives
Honoring chosen family
Children & family-building conversations
Children from previous marriages or relationships
Finances, household responsibilities & emotional labor
Communication, conflict & repair
Intimacy & maintaining connection
Legal and practical protection conversations
Faith, religious experiences & evolving beliefs
Professional referral guidance when needs extend beyond pastoral care
Ceremony-planning guidance
Traditional Christian wedding ceremony
Interfaith wedding ceremony
Secular wedding ceremony
Symbolic and unity ritual ideas including handfasting/knot tying, unity sand, candles, ring warming, planting, remembrance, community blessings and more
ALSO INCLUDED: PRINTABLE COUPLE PREPARATION BOOKLET
The toolkit includes a separate Before We Get Married booklet that clergy can print, place in a folder, and give to the couple at their first premarital counseling meeting.
Rather than repeating the counseling questions, this booklet gives the couple practical things to do before getting married, including:
marriage-license preparation • wedding and first-year budgeting • beneficiaries and important legal documents • insurance • combining households • shared calendars • routine health preparation • planning a wedding-free date • establishing couple rituals • preparing family and chosen-family relationships • preparing when children are already part of the family • writing vows • gathering handfasting cords, unity sand, candles or other ritual materials • rehearsal-week preparation • a 48-hours-before-the-wedding checklist • and important post-wedding tasks.
The couple booklet has a clean white background, 12 pt+ text, and print-friendly formatting so pastors and officiants can easily reproduce a fresh copy for each couple.
DESIGNED FOR
Christian clergy • progressive and affirming churches • interfaith officiants • chaplains • independent wedding officiants • LGBTQ+ affirming ministry leaders
Digital PDF | Instant Download | Printable Resource
No physical product will be shipped.
Curiosity & Common Good Co. | Faith & Wonder
Resources for a kinder, more inclusive world.