Author Archives

Feminist, theologian, and Christian identified woman, Xochitl recently accepted the position of Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the area of Women and Religion and the Philosophy of Gender (LGBT), Sex, and Sexuality at California State University, Northridge. She received her Ph.D. in Practical Theology at Boston University School of Theology. Her research is focused on new and postmodern forms of church, feminist theology, and feminist ecclesiology. Finding herself on the boundary of different social and cultural contexts, she works hard to develop her voice and to hear and encourage the voice of others. Her work is inspired by the conviction that all people are inextricably connected and the good one can do in any one area inevitably and positively impacts all others.

• “You Look Trim” and Resisting the Tyranny of Thinness by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on September 13, 2016 • ( 13 )

  

  I caught myself reinforcing the norm. The ever present default of focusing on women’s body size and prioritizing their weight gain and loss. I did this with a colleague/friend of mine. After not seeing one another for most of the… Read More ›

• Updates on Listening by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on March 14, 2016 • ( 4 )

  

  The pieces of my dissertation are beginning to float to the surface, piece by piece, released into the world as smaller parts of the whole. At some point this all may become a book, but for now, I have enjoyed… Read More ›

• Painting Our Own Realities in the New Year by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on January 1, 2016 • ( 14 )

  

  A friend of mine once commented that my feminism is evident from the moment you step into my house. In reference to all the female images around my house, she noted that my space reflected a different way of being… Read More ›

• My Terrible Transition Year and the Return of my Humanity by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on December 18, 2015 • ( 28 )

  

  I have called it, The Terrible Transition Year, this year of finishing dissertation, uprooting from home, moving cross-country, and starting a new full-time teaching job. Last year at this time I was in LA for a 7-8 week stay, away… Read More ›

• From Mary Daly to the Emerging Church – An Unlikely Dissertation Trajectory by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on June 21, 2015 • ( 15 )

  

  It was 2004 during the first semester in one of my classes for the master’s program when my TA presented a lecture on feminist critiques of atonement and introduced me to the writings of Mary Daly. It was my first… Read More ›

• Learning to Live by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on June 10, 2015 • ( 13 )

  

  The earliest memories of myself are as a student. I have distinct memories of myself in my kindergarten classroom. I even remember the location of my seat in the specific cluster of tables I was assigned. I also remember the… Read More ›

• What “I Believe” and Found Worth Sharing by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on April 30, 2015 • ( 34 )

  

  The end of my Ph.D. program is in sight. Originally, in 2004, I came to Boston University School of Theology (BU STH) from Los Angeles for a two-year masters program. Along the way I switched to a three-year masters program,… Read More ›

• The Case of Mary’s Decency by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on February 22, 2015 • ( 10 )

  

  This post builds on yesterday’s post on Marcella Althaus-Reid’s indecent theology. In her book, From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology, Marcella Althaus-Reid states that liberation theology has two dominant characteristics: the familiar ‘preferential option for the poor,’ with its suspicion of… Read More ›

• A Little Indecency with Marcella Althaus-Reid by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on February 21, 2015 • ( 9 )

  

  Inspired by the conversation following Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente’s post yesterday, I offer here a little synopsis of Marcella Althaus-Reid’s work in Indecent Theology: Theological Perversion in Sex, Gender, and Politics. This link to her website also offers a little synopsis. Marcella… Read More ›

• The Work of Justice-Making by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on December 19, 2014 • ( 11 )

  

  Written two weeks ago on December 5, 2014, but offered still as some food for thought: I’m supposed to be writing my dissertation. Hand on the plow, no looking back. I have even left town for the whole month of… Read More ›

• We are Worth the Time it Takes to Create a Practice by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on September 10, 2014 • ( 17 )

  

  Recently, in response to the excellent conversation following Nancy Vedder-Shults’ post on the goddess Kali, Carol Christ commented to Nancy, “I too love our conversations, wish there was more in depth talk on our blog [FAR], maybe there will be.”… Read More ›

• Systemic Violence and the Killing of Michael Brown by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on August 14, 2014 • ( 18 )

  

  Oppression is systemic. Injustice is systemic. It pervades the whole – it seeps into everyday actions and becomes habits and patterns that function as default. As a result, the actions that fall within these patterns hardly need justifying. If anything,… Read More ›

• Using the Listening Guide to Leave Oneself Open to Discovery by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on July 31, 2014 • ( 11 )

  

  I am deep in the throes of writing my dissertation. Writing started in earnest, in its most recent stretch, in mid-July when I came out to write in isolation in my home city of Los Angeles.* If all goes as… Read More ›

• Transforming the Church from Within or Without? by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on April 22, 2014 • ( 20 )

  

  “Power belongs to those who stay to write the report!” stated Jeanne Audrey Powers during her presentation at the Religion and the Feminist Movement conference at Harvard Divinity School back in 2002. Though the statement sounds a little funny, it does raise a good… Read More ›

• Water, Activism, and Thirsting for Change by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on December 1, 2013 • ( 14 )

  

  Mike Wilson’s persistent replacement of water sources in the desert for those who may be dying of thirst is part of his affirmation that we are all inextricably connected…the affirmation that our individual well-being cannot be separated from our collective well-being. I carry two… Read More ›

• Poetic Stumbles by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on November 13, 2013 • ( 6 )

  

  They feel like incomplete thoughts. One day I finally realized the reason why I, for a very long time, was unable to connect with poetry or appreciate it. When I would read a poem I would feel as if the… Read More ›

• Our Sisters’ Feminisms by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on October 23, 2013 • ( 28 )

  

   We live in a very small and connected world that at the same time is a very large and disparate one. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by all the news available of the things that occur all over the world, to… Read More ›

• Feminism and My Existentialist Leanings by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on July 10, 2013 • ( 10 )

  

  In light of so much destruction in our world – from the violence inside individual homes to beyond and between national borders – how is it still possible to hope for and to live toward a vision of beauty and… Read More ›

• Re-membering the Revolution by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on June 29, 2013 • ( 10 )

  

  This post includes information about a conference scheduled for next spring at Boston University: A Revolutionary Moment: Women’s Liberation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Call for Papers is due July 1st – just two days away! I remember how Mary Daly… Read More ›

• Extending Compassion and Vegetarianism by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on June 26, 2013 • ( 15 )

  

  “I did not know to recognize you as individuals when I bought you, but I know to recognize you as individuals now…” I had been a vegetarian, and sometimes pescatarian, for more than 10 years before becoming vegan. Despite the… Read More ›

• Blessed By Gratitude and Sharing by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on February 5, 2013 • ( 16 )

  Carol Christ’s post yesterday has gotten me thinking about the differences between Christianity and earth-based spiritualities. Of course, there are many differences, that goes without saying. However, being someone who comfortably stands at the intersection of them both I am usually more… Read More ›

• The Wit of the Labrys by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on December 2, 2012 • ( 18 )

  

  Sometimes I wish I were wittier. Or more precisely, there are moments when I become acutely aware of my underdeveloped wit – and I long to know how to sharpen it! I have some pretty witty people in my life… Read More ›

• Being Renewed at the Hispanic Theological Initiative by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on August 20, 2012 • ( 9 )

  

  Feminist theologians have long affirmed the fact that who we are and where we stand, as human communities and as individuals, affects what we see and how we see it, and in turn affects the theology we produce. Sometimes I think I am… Read More ›

• Process Thought: Feminist Friendly Metaphysics by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on July 18, 2012 • ( 10 )

  To be is necessarily to be in process and engagement with the lure of creative advance (that is, with God). In this sense, God is the poet of the world continually luring the world toward its full be-coming. “It all goes back to one’s… Read More ›

• They Are Trying to Trick You by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on July 4, 2012 • ( 9 )

  

  These chocolates embody a truth — the truth that resources are valuable, that living ethically is not ‘cheap,’ and that cheap is an illusion… Information is everywhere and is being collected about each one of us every minute of every… Read More ›

• How Does Goddess Change the World? by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on May 23, 2012 • ( 12 )

  

  It can only be that She begins in a small way at a single place in the world. It can only be that She begins within us.  Carol Christ’s post this week made me think of a favorite little passage… Read More ›

• Home At The Margins With My Sisters By Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on May 1, 2012 • ( 14 )

  My faith is in living and being shaped into the divine way of life that happens at the margins, with others who also see that a new world is needed and are willing to participate with one another in creating… Read More ›

• The Hunger Games, Holy Week, and Re-imaging Ritual by Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on April 3, 2012 • ( 27 )

  Being passive spectators of violence and injustice, even if mournfully so, is not just a thing of Panem, it is our everyday reality. In The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins takes the reality of an unjust society and gives it an imaginative makeover…. Read More ›

• Feminism and the Emerging Church By Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on February 15, 2012 • ( 12 )

  

  What is emerging in the emerging church will not be faithful, liberative, or just if it continues to perpetuate the erasure of women’s herstory.  There has been on ongoing conversation among Christian identified people for about 20-30 years now. It… Read More ›

• Rara Encarnación By Xochitl Alvizo

  By Xochitl Alvizo on December 24, 2011 • ( 5 )

  Rara Encarnación Encarnación The Word became flesh Why is it always a word? Did the Divine listen first? Hear-ing into be-ing… Or just speaking into being? in to flesh Carne