Author Archives

Esther Nelson teaches courses in Religious Studies (Human Spirituality, Global Ethics, Religions of the World, and Women in Islam) at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. She has published two books. VOICE OF AN EXILE REFLECTIONS ON ISLAM was written in close collaboration with Nasr Abu Zaid, an Egyptian, Islamic Studies scholar who fled Egypt (1995) when he was labeled an apostate by the Cairo court of appeals. She co-authored WHAT IS RELIGIOUS STUDIES? A JOURNEY OF INQUIRY with Kristin Swenson, a former colleague. When not teaching, Esther travels to various places throughout the world.

• RELIGION, GOD, CHURCH, THE STATE, AND ABORTION by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on September 14, 2022 • ( 8 )

  

  The phrase, “separation of church and state,” crops up frequently in conversation these days. I hear it most often when someone wants to clinch their argument on a politicized subject. Lately, it’s been concerning one’s “right” to an abortion. “It doesn’t matter… Read More ›

• SNAPSHOTS FROM SUMMER by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on July 29, 2022 • ( 6 )

  

  I’ve been told that most children in the United States learn to write haiku in third grade. At the very least they learn that haiku is a traditional poetic art form using  seventeen syllables divided into lines of 5 – 7… Read More ›

• FREE OUR CHILDREN by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on June 25, 2022 • ( 8 )

  

  I remember a poignant conversation with my sister when our children were young.  Our biggest fear at the time? How would we ever manage if one (or several) of our children refused to speak to us as they grew into young… Read More ›

• From the Archives: Abortion–the topic that won’t go away–or even morph

  By Esther Nelson on May 19, 2022 • ( 4 )

  

  This was originally posted on March 12, 2014. It was Esther’s first FAR post. Recently, I got involved in a conversation about abortion.  It happened on Facebook when a relative posted that her heart hurts when she considers her “sweet… Read More ›

• TULIP by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on May 7, 2022 • ( 8 )

  I’ve been blown away this Spring by the abundant beauty and sheer number of tulips planted throughout Roanoke, Virginia, a city I’m beginning to think of as “home.”  If I were to pick a favorite flower, it would be the… Read More ›

• A COMPLICATED CHOICE by Katey Zeh – Book Review by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on March 26, 2022 • ( 14 )

  Katey Zeh, an ordained Baptist minister, CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and a contributor to this Feminism and Religion (FAR) blog recently published her newest book, A Complicated Choice  Making Space for Grief and Healing in the… Read More ›

• Abortion Rights (?) by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on February 26, 2022 • ( 5 )

  Slowly, yet systematically, women, men, and everybody else along the gender continuum, are losing access to a timely, legal, and safe abortion. This is not breaking news. Pushback in the United States against abortion “rights” has been happening in various state legislatures… Read More ›

• Transitions by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on January 1, 2022 • ( 13 )

  It’s been a rough couple of years.  Even though thousands of miles distanced us from the first-discovered Covid-19 outbreak (late 2019) in China, the virus soon traveled the world, doing what viruses do best—infect us, spread, morph, and then infect… Read More ›

• Professors, Sex, and the Academy by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on October 11, 2021 • ( 11 )

  

  Amia Srinivasan (b. 1984) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford.  Her recently released book, THE RIGHT TO SEX: FEMINISM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, is a series of essays, drawing on earlier feminist tradition, dealing with topics… Read More ›

• Looking for Home by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on August 13, 2021 • ( 13 )

  

  For as long as I can remember, I’ve been looking for home—home being both a beautiful, comfortable, geographic space as well as a peaceful state of mind/being.  For most of my life, I’ve “made do,” settling for wherever or whatever… Read More ›

• All We Have is Our Heart by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on June 14, 2021 • ( 12 )

  

  One of my former students recommended UNFOLLOW to me, a memoir written by Megan Phelps-Roper, granddaughter of Fred Phelps (1929 – 2014), the (in)famous pastor of Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, Kansas. Some people may not be aware that Fred Phelps… Read More ›

• What Does a Woman Want? by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on May 14, 2021 • ( 26 )

  

  Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), well-known Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, “…said once to Marie Bonaparte: ‘The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into… Read More ›

• Anorexia Nervosa Take 2 by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on March 17, 2021 • ( 29 )

  

  This past year (2020) has been a year of tremendous upheaval and unwelcome change for most of us due in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s the second time in my life (first time I was in my 40s)… Read More ›

• Is Authoritarianism a Christian Value? by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on February 11, 2021 • ( 19 )

  

  Many Americans described the recent (January 6, 2021) attack on the Capitol in Washington DC as shocking.  I believe the event reflected one of the many times we’ve reaped the fruit of what we’ve sown throughout the course of American… Read More ›

• Good(?) Grief by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on December 31, 2020 • ( 28 )

  

  The current pandemic has kicked our collective butt by putting a huge dent in our ability to maintain relationships so necessary for keeping our social gears greased and running smoothly.  Grabbing coffee with a friend or meeting up for lunch… Read More ›

• They Really Do Hate Us* by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on November 20, 2020 • ( 28 )

  

  A year or so before the November 2020 U.S. presidential election, a private Facebook group now titled “Wives of the Deplorables! Go Vote!” came together because many women were distraught about the political ideological rift between them and their husbands—a… Read More ›

• Embroidery in the Time of Covid by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on October 21, 2020 • ( 18 )

  

  In her recent essay on this “Feminism and Religion” site, Ivy Helman wrote:  “Over the past few months, I’ve been struggling to write posts.  This month is no different.  I am currently sitting with four different half-drafts on three semi-related… Read More ›

• My Brother John—1949-2020 by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on September 24, 2020 • ( 26 )

  

  My 70-year-old brother, John, died recently.  As far as we know, he had not been ill although the death certificate listed “hypertensive cardiovascular disease” as the primary cause of death—something that doesn’t happen all of a sudden.  He shied away… Read More ›

• Where Am I Going? by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on September 2, 2020 • ( 12 )

  

  My sense of direction is, at best, poor.  In spite of that, I love a road trip.  With the advent of affordable GPS (Global Positioning System) devices, driving long distances has become easier.  Unfortunately, that tool (GPS) is not always… Read More ›

• “This World Is Not My Home” by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on August 5, 2020 • ( 25 )

  

  I’ve been puzzled for a long time why people, especially conservative Christian people who seem to be decent human beings, enthusiastically support Donald Trump, our current president.  My thinking stems from my own experience of being brought up in an… Read More ›

• Robert E. Lee Gets a Makeover by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on July 3, 2020 • ( 16 )

  

  For the past four Sunday afternoons, I’ve walked along Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to observe firsthand the changes happening to the statues of Confederate generals placed there a century or so ago.  I focus here on the Robert E…. Read More ›

• My Green Spaces by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on May 29, 2020 • ( 14 )

  

  I don’t do well being cooped up (staying at home) all day and every day.  Thankfully the state of Virginia, where I currently live, has kept their parks open during the COVID-19 pandemic.  For two months, I intentionally scheduled a… Read More ›

• Not My Story Anymore by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on May 8, 2020 • ( 20 )

  

  The meaning we derive from stories—especially religious stories we’ve heard and become familiar with since infancy—shape how we perceive and understand the world.  Our beliefs are an amalgam of “my story” (my individual life experience in a specific context) shaped… Read More ›

• Feeling Squeezed by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on April 1, 2020 • ( 19 )

  

  Tyler Foggatt, associate editor of The New Yorker magazine’s, “The Talk of the Town series,” recently contributed (March 23) an essay titled “Cooped Up.”  She notes that China, the first country to shut down due to COVID-19, is now in… Read More ›

• Say it with Music by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on February 21, 2020 • ( 10 )

  

  Daniel Deitrich, a worship leader in South Bend City Church, a “Jesus-centered community” in South Bend, Indiana, isn’t the first evangelical Christian to go up against fellow evangelical Christians who support the current U.S. president.  Perhaps, though, he’s the first… Read More ›

• Back Home? by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on January 10, 2020 • ( 15 )

  

  It’s between semesters and as I’ve done for the past three or four years, I’m back in Las Cruces, New Mexico, for the winter break.  I only spend a month here at this time of year and find myself thinking… Read More ›

• Would You Rather Just Not Be? by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on December 15, 2019 • ( 13 )

  

  When I was in my late teens, my mother became friendly with Beth, a woman she occasionally worked with on the post-partum unit of the local hospital.  Beth had two children a little younger than I, however, when our moms… Read More ›

• Mini-Reunion by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on November 13, 2019 • ( 2 )

  

  A couple of weekends ago, Nancy, one of my classmates from nursing school, organized what she called a “mini-reunion” at her home in New Jersey.  Seven of us gathered together to well, reunite.  Our graduating class (Muhlenberg Hospital School of… Read More ›

• The Dying Time by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on October 3, 2019 • ( 10 )

  

  At the end of Anita Diamant’s novel, THE RED TENT, Dinah—the same young woman who is only briefly mentioned in the biblical account (Genesis 34)—dies after a long and full life.  The biblical text tells us that Dinah “went out… Read More ›

• Giving Up What You Do Not Have by Esther Nelson

  By Esther Nelson on September 16, 2019 • ( 14 )

  

  I grew up within Christianity—one of the faiths that many religious scholars label as a Western tradition.  It can be difficult at times to wrap my head around religious concepts and symbols labeled by those same religious scholars as Eastern… Read More ›