After engaging in conversation with my peers and my professor about the first draft of the open letter, I noted several areas in which I can continue successfully, and several areas in which I can seek to improve. My peers noted that my first draft was extensively detailed, and only had questions about the wider audience I hope to address and the wariness I expressed. In the future, I hope not to allude to specific situations, but instead to actually describe what I may have been cryptic about. I explained my purpose for the letter well, and hope to keep my intensions clear as I continue writing. I need to make sure that my wording is not inappropriate, and be careful to not express that Lori Alexander is altogether wrong or incorrect, but rather that I personally disagree with her viewpoints, and that there is simply another way to be a Christian.
Weekly Workshop_Open Letter Draft One
Published
A Composition of Self by Alexis Rivera 
Alexis, thanks for the great work you’ve done on your first draft outline of the open letter and also your engagement in the peer workshop. I think you have a lot to say on this topic of there is more than one way to be Christian. In fact there may be as many ways as there are Christians who have a way! With this said, obviously there is something that all Christians have in common. But from that common point there may be infinite diversions. And this is quite similar to life itself: there’s more than one way to be human.
I see acceptance as a central tenet of Christianity. I’ve never been able to completely get my head around the idea of “forgiveness” but I absolutely can embrace the ideas of understanding and acceptance. Perhaps then I would try to both understand and accept Lori Alexander’s way of being Christian as her way, but then I’d go on to explain how my way differs. Certainly there is a contingency of people out there who will lean into Alexander’s point of view and likewise you bet there’s a contingency for people out there that would lean into yours.
One logos I can throw out on this is that we are living in the 21st century. Women have come a long way (even though people like Alexander would like to deny this…) Fact: more women than men are enrolled in pursuit of higher education degrees. Fact: more and more women are in the workplace, in jobs that some decades ago were reserved only for men (all phases of military, clergy, engineering, aeronautics, computer science, doctors of all kinds, politics, police officers, journalists and university professors.
Sure, some people think that women are meant to stay at home, and for whatever reason this aligns with the Christian worldview. (Actually what this aligns with is a “fundamentalist” Christian worldview.) But in today’s world, what would that erase? Let’s just erase all of the meaningful contributions women make in our world every day on all fronts. We’d lose a lot of great stuff! We’d lose a lot of necessary stuff.
Anyway, I think you know how you want to go forward with this letter. Remember the minimum length requirement is just three pages, but of course you can write more if you want to (there is no maximum length limit.) But try not to throw the net too wide here, and stay focused on the primary concept: there’s more than one way to be… anything or anyone.
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