Abuse of Power – Feminism and Religion

NoKings October 17, 2026: VOTE! by Marie Cartier

The NoKings rallies across the country in October, to.promote early voting, voting registration, and a nationwide blue wave at the polls. Over 3,000 rallies were held– the emphasis being on local get out the vote efforts. No Kings event draws crowds across the country : NPR

I was at the Seal Beach , California protest. You can see some pictures here- and please FAR readers Vote!

Executions of Women in Iran in 2026: The Human Cost of State Violence by WNCRI

Today, October 10th, 2026 is World Day Against the Death Penalty

Mothers, Child Brides, and Victims; 54 Killed in 12 Months

As the World Day Against the Death Penalty is observed, the situation of executions of women in Iran presents a horrifying picture of the scale of structural violence against women.

According to information documented by the Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, at least 28 women have been executed in prisons across Iran since the beginning of 2026. Over a twelve-month period, from October 2025 to October 2026, the number of women executed in Iran reached at least 54. This shocking figure underscores the continued use of the death penalty against women.

These figures have been recorded under circumstances in which, following the nationwide protests of January 2026, months of widespread internet shutdowns, severe communication restrictions, and extensive censorship made the flow of information from inside Iran to the outside world extremely difficult and, in many cases, virtually impossible.

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?

Iranian Women Trapped by War, Poverty, and Domestic Abuse by WNCRI

The war and intensifying economic crises in recent months have exerted the greatest and most direct pressure on Iranian women, placing them on the frontline of vulnerability as the psychological resilience of families sharply declines.

The inevitable consequence of these conditions is an unprecedented rise in domestic violence against women, a violence that increasingly manifests in complex psychological, emotional, and economic forms, severely jeopardizing both their physical and mental safety.

The Changing Face of Domestic Abuse Under Economic Stress

Livelihood pressures, severe economic insecurity, and war-induced anxiety have fueled an escalation of abusive behaviors against women within the home. While domestic violence was once primarily recognized through physical assault and battery, women now constantly face emerging and pervasive forms of abuse, such as systematic humiliation, threats, extreme control, deliberate deprivation of financial resources, and continuous psychological distress.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Cop on the Beat is Not Ice-T, the Prosecutor Is Not Sam Waterston, and Mariska Hargitay and S. Epatha Merkerson Are Not in Charge

This was originally posted on December 8, 2014

I have watched every episode of Law and Order and Law and Order SVU, and most of them more than once. Though there is police violence on these programs, it is usually investigated, and viewers are given the sense that it is not OK. Not living in black America or even in the United States, I guess I was under the illusion that police forces are no longer primarily white and male, that police reforms advocated decades ago have had some effect, and that cops cannot get away with murder.

This despite the fact that I knew that inmates in US prisons are far more likely to be black than their numbers in the population warrant, and that I knew that stop and frisk and arresting black men for petty crimes are ordinary police policies.

For readers who don’t watch MSNBC as avidly as I do, stop and frisk, now banned in New York City, is the policy of searching (primarily) young black men hanging around on street corners to see if they have illegal drugs or weapons on their persons. This policy can lead to the incarceration of young black men for having one or two marijuana cigarettes intended for personal use in their pockets. Stop and frisk is not a policy on college campuses, where police are just as likely to find young white men and women in possession of illegal drugs. Why? Because college authorities and parents of white college students simply would not allow it.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Anne Hutchinson, America’s First Feminist Theologian: 1591-1643

This was originally posted on Oct 20 2014

“She had rather been a husband than a wife; and a preacher than a hearer; and a magistrate than a subject.” Reverend Hugh Peter of Salem

Anne Hutchinson was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy in 1637 and excommunicated from the Puritan Church of Boston in 1638. Her banishment came just three years after she, her husband, and eleven living children arrived in America seeking the freedom to practice their religion as they saw fit. Governor Michael Dukakis pardoned her in 1987. Historian Howard Zinn called her a true American hero.

I managed to get through graduate school in Religious Studies without ever having studied the theology of Anne Hutchinson,* though I vaguely remember references (probably with smirks of disapproval) to the “Antinomian Controversy” which is associated with her name. I recall Anne Hutchinson’s name because of an article published in Feminist Studies in the 1970s, when I had just begun to study women and religion. However it was not until recently that I learned of her place in history through reading American Jezebel by Eve LaPlante.

Hutchinson was accused of theological errors in her trials. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination figured heavily in the accusations. But the real issue at stake was that Anne dared to follow her own inner knowing, to articulate it theologically, and to teach her views against the grain of the Puritan authorities in Boston.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: We Could Have Been Canadians and Other Thoughts about My New England Colonial Heritage

This was originally posted on Sept 1, 2014

My 2x great-grandparents Nathaniel Searing and Louisa Caroline Martin were pioneers who cleared the land and built a log cabin in Lyons, Michigan in 1840. They were descended from English Puritan Colonial settlers in New England. At least two of my ancestors are recognized by the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolutions. Other members of my family who were Quakers proudly refused to take part in the Revolutionary War.

My great-grandfather James Augustus married a woman of German descent, his daughter Lena Marie married a Swede, and my mother married a man who was German, Irish, and Scottish. As the descendants of Nathaniel Searing and Louisa Caroline Martin moved around the United States and married into the families of newer immigrants, the succeeding generations also lost touch with their history. Our family’s connections to the New England Colonists were not even mentioned at Thanksgiving!

Patriarchy Unbound by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Some new terms in our language have been after people. Both the terms sadism and masochism were so named according to etymologyonline.

Here is what the site says about sadism: “love of cruelty,” especially as evidence of a subconscious lust that the cruelty satisfies, 1888, from French sadisme, from the name of Count Donatien A.F. de Sade (1740-1815). Not a marquis, though usually now called one, he was notorious for the cruel sexual practices described in his novels.”

And here is what the site says about masochism: “The word masochism originates from the name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian novelist best known for his 1869 novel Venus in Furs, which explored themes of submissive sexuality and domination.”

I have a new term to add that I would like to add to our vocabulary: Robertism to be named after John Roberts. Here is my definition: love of cruelty, not just cruelty by itself but by spreading cruel acts as widely and far as possible while giving them the authority of legality. Robertism encourages the most base and ugly parts of human behavior, brings them to the surface to be expressed in actions that are given permission through legal cover.

From the Archives: The Story of Juneteenth by Kelly Brown Douglas

This blog has been posted twice before. June 18,2013 and June 19, 2022. Today is Juneteenth in the USA.

Tomorrow is a special day for me. It is Juneteenth. On June 19, 1865, news finally reached Galveston, Texas that slavery had been abolished. This was of course two and a half years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. While the actual impact of the emancipation for the enslaved remains a source of historical discussion if not debate, the fact of the matter is that the proclamation of emancipation and the reality of freedom for black women and men did not necessarily coincide. To be sure, for a variety of reasons, the Emancipation Proclamation did not have an immediate impact on the daily lives of enslaved women, men and children. While the “official” historical records marks January 1, 1863 as a day of emancipation, the historical record for the descendants of enslaved men and women marks June 19, 1865 as the day of freedom. For, it was on this day that the last slaves were free.

While the celebrations of Juneteenth have waxed and waned over the years, it remains a day in which African Americans reflect upon the “mighty long way” we have come as well as the “mighty long way” we have left to go on the pathway toward freedom. As I celebrate Juneteenth, in the words of a black gospel song, “My soul looks back and wonders how they got over.” And so it is that my theological imagination is stirred, for it is clear that it was by faith that they (the enslaved) got over. And so I ask, what kind of faith was it that allowed them to get over, that is, to survive a life of bondage? This question is even more pressing to me each time that I am reminded that there were those who were born into slavery and died in slavery, and thus, as Toni Morrison once exclaimed, “never drew a free breath.” So, what kind of faith was it that carried these people through life?

Zahra Tabari by WNCRI

Women’s National Council of Resistance of Iran (info below)

In a continuation of the escalating crackdown on political dissent in Iran, Zahra Shahbaz Tabari, a 67-year-old political prisoner, was sentenced to death by Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Rasht on October 25, 2025. The regime’s judiciary has accused her of “supporting the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).”

Who Is Zahra Tabari?

Zahra Tabari, 68, holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and is a graduate of Isfahan University of Technology and the University of Borås in Sweden, specializing in Sustainable Energy.

She suffers from chronic health conditions, and the poor conditions in Lakan Prison, combined with shortages of medication, medical care, and constant psychological pressure, have severely deteriorated her physical condition.

She was arrested on April 17, 2025, after security forces raided her home in Rasht without presenting a judicial warrant. During the raid, agents searched the house and confiscated her and her daughter’s electronic devices. For weeks, her family had no information about her whereabouts or health condition. She is currently being held in Lakan Prison in Rasht.