Bio

Lilian Calles Barger

When she was eight years old, Lilian Calles Barger immigrated to the United States from Buenos Aires, Argentina, with her parents, who wanted greater educational and economic opportunities for their children. Since then, she has been a student of American culture.

“Coming to the United States and learning to fit into the culture sharpened my skills of observation,” Ms Barger says. “I notice things about American culture that most native-born people take for granted as facts of the universe.”

Ms. Barger’s ongoing interest in the culture, paired with her faith-based upbringing, compels her to ask difficult questions regarding issues of faith and spirituality and how they relate to contemporary culture.

Culture and Spirituality

After graduating with honors from the University of Texas at Arlington, Ms. Barger became a certified public accountant and soon opened her own practice. Over time, she says, “I realized that there was a huge disconnect between what I saw in the workplace and what I saw at church.”

In an October 2006 interview with The Dallas Morning News, she defines that disconnect: “The women at church were different from the women I saw every day at work. For the latter group, the way the church was speaking to them was highly irrelevant.”

Always the reader, Ms. Barger found that the biographies of a variety of women “named things for me.” And because she grew up in the 60s and 70s, “when feminism was a big part of what was going on,” she desired a place where she and other women could combine discussions of faith with themes from their own lives. “The things that feminists have always been concerned about are what Jesus cares about,” she says.

The Damaris Project

Ms. Barger created The Damaris Project in 1997 as a place of dialogue where women can talk about spirituality in new and relevant ways. The Damaris Salon has become the vehicle for that dialogue.

With The Damaris Project, she works as a researcher, cultural critic, writer and speaker on the intersection of the teachings of Jesus and contemporary issues. Today she is considered an expert in feminist spirituality and theology, and she continues to be an astute observer of social trends.

In 2000, Ms. Barger sold her successful accounting practice to devote more time to The Damaris Project and to write her first book, Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body, about how cultural views of women’s bodies affect their spiritual lives. Her second book, Chasing Sophia: Reclaiming the Lost Wisdom of Jesus, was published by Jossey-Bass in early 2007.

Recognition

In January of 2000, Ms. Barger was honored with the Outstanding Woman in Leadership award from Azusa Pacific University.
She has been interviewed for print, radio and television, including on PBS and CNN Live!

Her writings on the relevance of the spirituality of Jesus to the contemporary experience have appeared across the media spectrum, including Women’s Studies Journal, Beliefnet.com, The Dallas Morning News, Washington Times, Mars Hills Audio and Sojourner magazine.

In addition to addressing United Nations women diplomats, Ms. Barger has spoken frequently on college campuses and at seminaries and national conferences.

Lilian Calles Barger talks about…

Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body

“Over time, I kept reading and listening, and what I discovered is that women’s bodies have become the focal point of their lives. Regardless how successful, smart or ‘with it,’ if we don’t feel that our bodies measure up, nothing else seems to matter. This not only keeps women from living full lives but also impacts their spiritual selves.”

Brazos Press published the highly acclaimed Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body in 2003. Endorsements include feminist leader Naomi Wolf and positive reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal.

Chasing Sophia: Reclaiming the Lost Wisdom of Jesus

“This book is the natural progression of Eve’s Revenge. When women don’t trust their bodies they end up not trusting themselves or what they know. You can hear this when women couch their words, hesitate to act, question themselves and generally display a pervasive sense of self-doubt. This self-doubt is an inability to own our knowing, and it keeps us from having true wisdom. That wisdom is the power to know and speak for ourselves and live whole, connected lives. My book is filled with personal stories and those of others that are making the journey to being wise women.”

Chasing Sophia: Reclaiming the Lost Wisdom of Jesus will be published by Jossey-Bass in early 2007.

Her message

“I speak from a woman’s perspective, but much of what I say applies to men also. Our entire culture, including men, has a problem with embodiment. Although we have accumulated huge amounts of knowledge, our culture lacks the wisdom to make all that knowledge work for us on an everyday level.

“My message for women and men is that Jesus has called us to a whole life. Our cultural ideas have us cut up into a million little pieces that we are supposed to ‘balance.’ We are surrounded everyday by thousands of false messages about who we are and what is important. I hope to bring a change to how we all think—change that results in different choices and leads to a changed community.”

Her role

“What I do is read the works of feminists thinkers as well as theological and philosophical scholarship that the average person will never read. Then I translate the work of scholars into everyday language and pair it with anecdotes from my life and the lives of others.”

Asking the “difficult” questions

“I began to give words to questions that had been there all along, when I became a mother. I think becoming a mother really nails it for many women in terms of having to deal with what it means to be a woman in this society. Motherhood has huge practical effects on your life, career, relationships, finances, dreams and, always, your body.”

What others say about Lilian Calles Barger…

“If we are to speak of ‘cultural encounters’ which promote the conversation between theology and culture, then we must listen to voices outside of the academy, voices which are sometimes called public intellectuals. Whether these individuals mingle in the markets, have a role in government, or faithfully keep a hand to the plow, they are uniquely gifted social observers who help concretize what the rest of us spend so much time theorizing about … Lilian Calles Barger reveals reality where others allow abstraction.” Book review, A Journal for the Theology of Culture, Summer 2005