I am a native New Yorker who is now living in the UK from Newport Beach, CA, by way of Minneapolis and the South of France. I travel often to speak and teach, but also to discover new things, people and places. I love instagram and cocktails. I learn as much as I can when I can. I’m curious about a lot and am always asking the next question. I love my life even the parts that are sometimes hard to love. I march to the beat of my own drum. My heart is pastoral, and I love to teach Scripture, theology, and what it means to engage faith in the 21st century. My favorite word is lover and in the words of Marilyn Monroe, “I am very definitely a woman and I enjoy it.” I am married to an absolutely singular man who I deeply love and adore. European cathedrals are my happy place and beauty is my home.
My name is Maria Francesca French.
I am a purveyor of story and a teacher of things Christian and post-Christian.
I am a content curator and theological coach via my Patreon, church and community consultant at H&Co., a columnist at Patheos, an author at Quoir, a research fellow at GCAS Dublin, and a travel enthusiast at Women About the World.
I am author of Safer than the Known Way: A Post-Christian Journey and Reconfiguring: A Collection of Post-Christian Thoughts and Theologies. Head to my amazon author page for more.
Faith for me is the life long dance between being spellbound and suspicious all at the same time.
I hold two Masters degrees from ATS accredited seminaries and a Doctorate from Wesley Theological Seminary via Wesley House at Cambridge University. The entire tenure of my career has been in ministry innovation and transformation and theological education as a professor and administrator. I currently work as a theological educator in the areas of innovation, imagination and reconfiguration, offering new forums for faith that are viable and sustainable for an uncertain future.
Post-God Culture
My story is Christianity. My narrative has been Jesus and the radical imperatives of the New Testament. My question is what does it look like to move this story forward among new stories and new parables in a culture that is post the big God in the sky? Post-church, post-Christian, post…A LOT. What does God look like for a culture that is post-God? Those who have moved on from traditional paradigms still want faith engagement in ways that it matters for their lives, communities, and the world.
Emerging Faith Frameworks
There are new ways to believe, new ways to be Christian, new ways to move on from religious trauma and abuse. After the hurt and anger and grief…there is new life. Intelligent life and intelligent faith. When we reimagine Christian embodiment and transformation, when we have faith that we are the next part of the story, new faith frameworks emerge.
Meaning, Truth, and Complexity
We are living in a time more complex than any other. Truth is a la carte, meaning is obscure and elusive and complexity calls to us like a ghost that leads us on a hunt for something that vanishes the moment it turns a corner. What does it mean to make meaning in a time when meaning is constantly in flux? Where truth is only as you see it? And the only certainty is complexity?
Barry Taylor and Maria Francesca French
“Safer than the Known Way book Launch”
St. Andrew’s Church, Rugby, UK
I preach and teach often. It is one of my favorite things to do. I speak about controversial issues, but not to be sexy or provocative. I do it because it is what’s emerging from culture and we need to reckon with new realities that we have ignored for far too long. It is changing the way we believe, the way we gather, what it means to be human, and what it means to engage God. My background is in New Testament, Philosophical Hermeneutics, and Radical Theology. I am ever pursuing the intersections of these spaces as well as culture, future, meaning, community, and God.
What do we speak of when we speak of God? That which is unspeakable.
“Religion has traditionally been about providing sense to some of life’s most unnerving complexities. But what happens when we flip the switch and reimagine the search? That the exploration in and of itself is theological. What if it’s the crossing we are after and not the landing? The integrity is in the journey. But surely all journeys are on their way to somewhere?”
These queries and other curious things in my book Safer than the Known Way: A Post-Christian Journey.
— MFF
“God and Other Outsourced Things”
Corner Coffee, Minneapolis, MN
“I get asked a lot, ‘what do you believe?’ I don’t think belief has anything to do with it. It’s more about entering into a bigger story than our own and working out our humanity via that story.”
— MFF
“Radical Love LIVE”
St John the Divine, New York, NY
Mallorca, Spain