Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: BARBARA LEE SPEAKS FOR ME

This was originally posted on June 23, 2014. This post is as pertinent today as it was 12 years ago. In fact we are still deeply living with the decisions made at that time.

While I was in Crete on the Goddess Pilgrimage teaching about and experiencing a Society of Peace where violence and domination were neither celebrated nor encouraged, another war broke out in Iraq, breaking my heart, breaking all of our hearts—yet again. When will we ever learn, oh when will we ever learn?

Barbara Lee was the only member of Congress to vote against the US war powers authorized after 9/11 which were used to launch war in Afghanistan; she also voted against authorization for the Iraq war in 2002. Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq war, despite clear indications that the US administration was lying about weapons of mass destruction—which were never found in Iraq. I voted for Barack Obama because he opposed this war. Then he listened to General Petraeus and expanded the war in Iraq. Barbara Lee speaks for me. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama do not.

The Iraqi people are once again living in fear of their lives as reports surface that armies and militias are engaging in mass executions of their so-called “rivals.” Is there any cause that could justify this?

Lips Sealed Unsealed by Claire Taylor

My Grandmother, Bernadette Mary Claire at her first communion.

My name is Claire Taylor. I’m seventeen, and I was named after my maternal grandmother’s confirmation name, the Catholic tradition of giving someone a saint’s name at first communion. Her full name was Bernadette Mary Claire Szafranski, so you can tell religion was a big deal in her life. I was raised in an agnostic family with basically no spiritual life, but for the last six years I’ve gone to Immaculate Heart, an all-girls Catholic school in Los Angeles. And I love Catholicism.

I love the singing and the psalms, the traditions, the Bible stories, and how my teachers push me to actually think and argue about things. But something bothers me: my grandmother grew up Catholic and then left it, raising my mom with no religion at all, and my own school was founded by sisters who, in 1968, had to choose between staying under the archdiocese or keeping their values: social activism, feminism, progressive theology.

Faithfully Dissident Daughters Reclaiming Christian Womanhood Beyond Patriarchy by Chelsea Kim Long: Book Review by Esther Nelson

After a beautiful and insightful Foreword by Christena Cleveland, Chelsea begins her engaging book by telling us, “Up until the age of 26, I didn’t struggle to align my identity and my life experiences with the white, evangelical way of seeing the world.” Born in the late 1980s and raised in a nondenominational megachurch, she grew up with a strong sense of belonging. All was well as long as she matched her thinking and experiences with authoritarian expectations. “I was able to exist in those spaces just fine until, quite suddenly, I wasn’t.”

What changed? Pregnancy. “It was the first splinter in a crack that eventually ripped my whole worldview apart, forcing me into a crisis of theology where I felt I had to choose between myself and the church I loved.” Experiences surrounding pregnancy and childbirth opened Chelsea’s eyes to the realization that as a woman in a patriarchal structure, built by men, she didn’t fit. Interpretation of Biblical text empowered men. “I couldn’t see my femininity reflected in and affirmed by the God they made in their image.” She fled her home church.

“I walked through many lonely years trying to wrestle my way into a version of faith that reflected my reality and contained my life experience.” Chelsea, as a child, had memorized Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” No room in her natal faith for “heart knowledge” since logic and reason superseded intuitive thought. She had learned to mistrust and silence any wisdom that came from within her own Being.

Mary as Sister, Trickster, and Mother by Elanur Williams

The road to the House of the Virgin winds through the hills, a thin ribbon of light. Nestled on Mount Koressos (also known as Bülbüldağı, Turkish for “Mount Nightingale”) near Ephesus, its discovery in the late nineteenth century was inspired by the visions recorded in The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary by mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich, whose descriptions led priests to identify the small stone dwelling she saw in her revelations. Although the Bible is unclear about Mary’s later life, passages such as John 19:26–27, in which Jesus entrusts his mother to the Apostle John, lend narrative weight to the belief that she followed him; whether to Ephesus or elsewhere, this is a matter of faith and ongoing historical debate. For many, the House is a place of pilgrimage and serves as a symbol of interfaith devotion across centuries. At the wishing wall, candles and paper flutter in the breeze, small, tangled petitions to the divine. I feel my own within my heart as I light a candle among the others, its black wick catching the wind.

Meet Nehalennia: My Return to a Dutch Sea Goddess

In Zeeland, the southern, sea-kissed part of the Netherlands, a severe storm in January 1647 exposed a sanctuary to the Goddess Nehalennia. The altars and images found a new home in Domburg ’s church, until that burned down in a fire in 1848. Water, wind, fire, weren’t kind to the Goddess! Years went by, until a fisherman hauled up stone fragments from the depths in 1970 near Colijnsplaat.

This lead to a large research project by the University of Leiden in collaboration with The Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, or RMO) that since recovered around 300 objects including altars, sculptures and roof tiles. Based on this, they were able to reconstruct a full Nehalennia temple at Colijnsplaat in 2005. 1)

Read on about my journey of meeting her, some of her background, and how she set me on my path of goddess archetypes…

Gloria Steinem: A Personal Remembrance by Beth Bartlett

Wikimedia Commons, Jewish Women’s Archive, Share Alike 2.0.

I was only in my 20s, a kid really, when I first heard Gloria Steinem speak to a small gathering in a church in Little Falls, Minnesota. I don’t remember a word she said. I only know that that day she changed my life forever. I left that meeting knowing that that was what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to become like her — an activist, a mover and shaker for the feminist movement. I was already writing my PhD thesis on 19^th century feminism – the First Wave of feminism in the US, but here was the Second Wave right in front of me and I wanted to dive in. I’d found my passion.

A month or two later, I left Little Falls for Duluth, Minnesota. Little did I know that I was moving to one of the most significant hubs of feminist activism in the country at just the right time.[i] Within my first week here I connected with a group of women at the university who were in the process of trying to start a Women’s Studies minor and was quickly recruited to join them in their efforts. I spent the next year very involved in what would be a successful effort and was lucky enough to teach the first Intro to Women’s Studies ever offered at UMD a year later.

Notes from the ‘Field’ in August 2026, part 2 by Sara Wright

Part 1 was posted last week. You can read it here.

Choosing Change:

Because of such poor air quality Coalie and I walk in the morning when the air is clear or isn’t as toxic as it will be by afternoon. For the last two years the ozone level has skyrocketed due to unchecked deforestation, and the ever- worsening particulates burn my eyes. Headaches strike as soon as the air begins to thicken. As a result, summers have become another challenging season with me prioritizing clean air over outdoor time. My Coalie has a small set of lungs and mine are aging.

Although making this transition has been hard on the naturalist who thrives in the woodlands, the outcome is that we have adapted. I am grateful (and guilt -ridden) that raging fires are not at my door. I sense that the trees around me know their sisters and brothers are burning. I also note that when the air quality deteriorates Coalie wants to come indoors of her own accord. The lack of bird song on any day that the air is polluted is astonishing. My guess is that poor air quality is very apparent to all non – human beings.

I used to complain about my sensitivity to moderate air quality. Now I am grateful that my body makes it clear that we belong indoors, not even on the porch on ‘bad air days’ which are increasing in severity. It troubles me to watch others running or biking on the roads for fun. Virtually all other outside work is done with air polluting machines contributing mightily to the problem. The exception is a person like me who chooses to do outside chores by hand. But only on days when the air is relatively clear. But I still drive a car.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Are We Living in a Rape Culture?

This was originally posted on November 24, 2014. It is shorter than our guidelines state now but it is too powerful and too pertinent all these years late to ignore.

SheSpeaks! Women of the Bible Have Their Say by Janet Rudolph

Author’s Note: I have been working on this project for about 3 years now. It is based on almost 30 years of research. I have written about some of the vignettes here on FAR before. With each re-telling and each performance the story deepens and comes more alive. On Thursday, Sept. 24th at 11:00 am NY time, the SheSpeaks!Ensemble will be doing a one hour live/zoom, free performance of the arc called EveSpeaks! You can access the zoom link on the 24th through this webpage. (Scroll to the bottom of the page for the link.)

The storyteller holds great power to both reflect the culture and to give it further shape and form. This is especially true for stories of the Bible which are foundational to our world. Whether we see them as mythological, historical, divinely inspired, wisdom teachings or simple folktales, they have shaped our beliefs and values. People see all different faces of God. If we look to the movies, God has looked like George Burns (Oh God, 1977), a vengeful John Huston (The Bible, 1966), Morgan Freeman (Bruce Almighty, 2003) and even Groucho Marks (Skidoo, 1968). There aren’t a lot of women although Alanis Morrisette did play a silent God (Dogma, 1999). If most people were asked to describe God, they would most likely picture a Charlton Heston-like figure (The Ten Commandments, 1956) when he played Moses reflecting the vehemence of God’s anger.

But . . . alas . . .biblical women’s history is most like Alanis – mute. Women’s voices have been diminished and even silenced. Female deities, female voices have either been translated out of reach or turned into purveyors of “evil” or curses.

The Divine Feminine App

Caryn MacGrandle has been doing some wonderful things with the Divine Feminine App and we invite you to take a look at it here. It is chock full of programs, both live and on zoom.

One of her projects is called Wayshowers and she has included FAR among them. Here is what she writes about wayshowers. Read it and then take a look:

Wayshowers show us that there are other ways: paths rooted in the wisdom of the body, the cycles of the moon, the memory of our ancestors, and the power that lives in women’s circles.

A wayshower doesn’t lead you. She lights the way and lets you walk it yourself. She’s the woman who has been somewhere you feel called to go.

The Divine Feminine App has gathered 75 of them here — priestesses, herbalists, mythologists, sound healers, death doulas, poets, drummers, shamanic practitioners — from across the world.

https://thedivinefeminineapp.com/wayshowers/#finder

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