Abuse of Power – Page 12 – Feminism and Religion

Waking Up in Shock by Carol P. Christ

I went to sleep in Greece on Wednesday night January 6 feeling elated that Jon Ossoff, following Raphael Warnock whose victory had been declared earlier, was officially named the winner of his runoff election in Georgia, returning the Senate to the Democrats by the slimmest of margins. I expected to wake up to the celebration of Stacey Abrams’ contribution to the victory and to listening to commentators discussing how it came about and what we could expect from the next Congress.

Instead, I learned that a violent insurrection by thousands of people hoping to overturn the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had taken place in the Capitol of the United States. It was clear from the early footage that there had been a massive failure on the part of police and security forces to secure the Capitol building. The President himself, abetted by his son Don Junior, Rudy Guiliani, and other Republicans, urged the mob to march to the Capitol and to fight to overturn the certification of the Electoral College results. This is why Democrats will most likely move to impeach him for a second time.

Just as disturbing is the emerging news that the Capitol Police had been adequately warned that some of the groups urging their members to attend the rally were posting on social media about their intent to storm the Capitol. Apparently there had been discussions about trying and hanging Vice President Pence and also about killing Nany Pelsoi. Questions have been raised about how the mob knew its way about secret rooms within the Capitol building, with the suspicion being that members of Congress, their staff, or security personnel within the building had been in communication with leaders of the mob.

Though the press has been hesitant to fuel the fires by reporting on it, insurrectionist groups are calling for armed rallies at the US Capitol and state capitols on Inauguration Day or in the days leading up to it. In other words, the failed coup of January 6 could be the beginning, not the end of violent insurrection in the United States. Continue reading “Waking Up in Shock by Carol P. Christ”

Crow and the Pornographic Gaze by Sara Wright

Once she believed that
it was her fault
they came on to her,
that she owed them
something…
They owned her?
Secretly the
girl was pleased
because any kind of attention
was better than none,
or being so “different” –
stitched into an Indian skin.

She was a pretty shell,
an abandoned spiral
worn down by waves –
assaulted from within
by the pornographic gaze.
How she hated being young.

Continue reading “Crow and the Pornographic Gaze by Sara Wright”

Vote, Vote, Please Vote! American Democracy Is at Stake by Carol P. Christ

Like many of you, I am weary this election season. In the early part of the Democratic primaries I was enthused. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and also Kamala Harris, and sometimes Amy Klobochar were articulating progressive political positions with which I agreed. Joe Biden, who eventually won, was not my candidate. Though I understood that defeating Donald Trump was the most important thing, I stopped following the campaign.

I have resisted writing this blog because I am so disgusted by Republican moves to suppress the vote, Trump’s attempts to slow the delivery of mail-in ballots, his declaration that mailed ballots are likely to be fraudulent (there is no evidence supporting this), and his unwillingness to say that he will accept the election results. The possibility that the election could be stolen or that Trump will refuse to leave office turns my stomach and frankly terrifies me because many of Trump’s white male supporters have guns and are willing to use them. Continue reading “Vote, Vote, Please Vote! American Democracy Is at Stake by Carol P. Christ”

Poem: In These United States- The Court Supreme By Marie Cartier

We have nine justices usually but one of our most beloved, and notorious,

Ruth Bader Ginsberg, RBG, has gone to the Summerland, across

the Rainbow Bridge, to the afterlife—wherever that is for her, she’s

gone there. May her memory be a blessing. May her memory be a revolution.

And we are left with eight, five conservatives and

three liberals. RBG was liberal. Our current Pennsylvania Avenue occupant has already

nominated someone to replace RBG. This someone believes that god

speaks to the wife through her husband, the wife is submissive to the husband in all things,

she must submit in all things to her husband.

Sigh. As someone joked, this someone is walking through and slamming shut,

all the doors that RBG kicked open.

This nominated replacement believes that a woman has no choice in the matter of pregnancy,

and being gay is (once again) a sin in the eyes of the law, as well as her church.

This RBG replacement is Catholic, I guess.

I’m Catholic, too.

Maybe you’ve seen that meme on social media?

“I’m Christian. Oh…classic Jesus or Republican Jesus?”

That’s a joke: Ha. Ha.

Continue reading “Poem: In These United States- The Court Supreme By Marie Cartier”

Matriarchal Manifesta by Heide Goettner-Abendroth

What is the STATUS of WOMEN today?

To cite a brief summary of the 1980 UN Report:

WOMEN make up half of the world population, work nearly two thirds of all hours worked, receive one tenth of worldwide income, and own less than one hundredth of worldwide property. (United Nations Report 1980)

What a SCANDAL that is! Yet no one seems to get worked up about it.

But if we women believe a lot has changed in the meantime, then we are mistaken.

In 2010, the President of the UN Economic and Social Council cited the following figures:

WOMEN work 66% of all hours worked worldwide and produce 50% of the food. But they get 10% of the world income, own 1% of the property and represent 60% of the world’s poorest.” (Hamidon Ali, UN Press Conference on June 25, 2010)

This was the sitaution in 2000, in 2010, in 2018. The U.N.report is published annually, but nothing changes. The SCANDAL continues, and we are outraged! Continue reading “Matriarchal Manifesta by Heide Goettner-Abendroth”

The Silence of the Girls: A Reflection on War by Carol P. Christ

Suppose, suppose just once, once in all these centuries, the slippery gods keep their word and Achilles is granted eternal glory for his early death under the walls of Troy. . .? What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won’t want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won’t want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won’t want to know that we were living in a rape camp. (324)

In The Silence of the Girls Pat Barker retells the story of the siege of Troy from the perspective of Breseis, a captured Trojan princess who became the slave and concubine of Achilles and Agamemnon. She was among the “spoils of war” allotted to the “great heroes” to “honor” their success as killers in war. Breseis does not tell her story of terror in The Iliad, but despite her not speaking, her story and that of the other captured and raped women—many of whom fared much worse that she did–is there is plain sight.

The problem is not that we who have read The Iliad don’t know these women were living in a rape camp. The problem is not that we have read The Iliad do not know that the heroes of the Trojan war were awarded women and loot as a reward for good fighting. Nor is the problem that we do not know that in the times of the Trojan war a man’s “honor” was everything to him and that it was defined by the prizes (women and loot) that he commanded, as well as by the respect of other men his deeds and property inspired.

When I first taught The Iliad in 1972, I was appalled by the women’s story. While my colleagues spoke of the “spear captive” who was the focus of the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, I urged them to call her a “rape victim.” Needless to say, I was summarily silenced. “That is not the point of the story,” I was told. “This is a story about men, their glorious deeds, and the honor due to warriors. This story speaks of the origin of culture.” A few guffaws signaling agreement followed. And that was the end of the discussion.

Although I enjoyed reading The Silence of the Girls, it did not provide me with any new insights into the horrors of war or the pervasiveness of rape in war. These were stories I already imagined. Indeed, rape, looting, slavery, and the spoils of war are at the heart of my “A New Definition of Patriarchy.”

The question I ask after reading The Silence of the Girls is how western culture managed to “silence” the women whose stories were there in plain sight for anyone who read The Iliad to see. Breseis was forced to have sex with and wait upon the man who killed her four brothers and her husband and who treated her as a possession not as a person. (283) She learned that when Achilles tired of her, she would probably be offered to his favorite men, and when they had their fill of her, she would be sent to live with the women who were at the mercy of the foot soldiers. “But that’s war,” (284) the Trojan king Priam replied when she asked him to help her escape.

There is more than one “conspiracy of silence” at play here. The conspiracy was compounded when the first person who questioned euphemisms such as “spear captive” was ridiculed and when every man or woman who recognized that rape is an ordinary part of war was told to keep silent about that. It was justified by the phrase “that’s war.”

If The Iliad is the origin of western culture, then western culture originated in a rape camp. Let’s not keep silent about that any longer! We must name the atrocities at the origins of so-called “culture” if we wish to create a more just world. These atrocities did not end with the Trojan war. They continue up to the present day. Ask any woman who has been in the path of invading armies. Ask the soldiers what they did and were permitted to do.

Refuse to accept the aeons-old cover-up: “that’s war.” If that is war, it is time to end war.

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist and ecofeminist writer, activist, and educator who lives in Heraklion, Crete. Carol’s recent book is Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Carol has been leading Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete for over twenty years: join her in Crete. Carol’s photo by Michael Honneger.

Listen to Carol’s a-mazing interview with Mary Hynes on CBC’s Tapestry recorded in conjunction with her keynote address to the Parliament of World’s Religions.

“This World Is Not My Home” by Esther Nelson

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 evangelical, fundamentalist space.

I grew up with ultra-conservative, missionary parents in a small community of believers who thought they were the only people who understood “life” properly. Especially relevant to the theme of this essay is their understanding that political leaders are in power because God willed it. “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God” (Romans 13:1). Nothing happens in the political arena (or anywhere else) outside of God’s will which is perfect even though we may not always understand God’s strategies. Continue reading ““This World Is Not My Home” by Esther Nelson”

Dear Cousin: Can We Talk about Structural Racism? by Carol P. Christ

,A few years ago, I visited the family farm founded by ancestors from Germany in the Pokonos with a newly discovered cousin. The woman I met was delightful: warm and friendly and very much connected to family still living in the area. Her mother had vivid memories of the farm. In contrast, my great-grandmother left home to marry in Brooklyn. My father had fond memories of visiting the farm as a child, but lost touch with the relatives there when his family moved to California in the 1930s.

My cousin was working as a department manager at Walmart. She seemed smart as a button, so I asked her why she had not gone to college. She said that though she had the grades no one encouraged her to do so. Her response made me wonder if I would have gone to college if my part of the family had remained close to the family farm. I was stunned by the roles chance and the choices of others play in our lives. Though I had more education than my cousin, I was not sure that mine was a happier life. I envied the family ties that shaped and defined her days.

About two weeks ago my cousin wrote on facebook:

I have often wondered about why Whites are racists, and no other race is. Someone finally said it. How many are actually paying attention to this? Continue reading “Dear Cousin: Can We Talk about Structural Racism? by Carol P. Christ”

Matriarchal Politics: The Vision of an Egalitarian Society (Part 1) by Heide Goettner-Abendroth

Matriarchies are not just a reversal of patriarchy, with women ruling over men – as the usual misinterpretation would have it. Matriarchies are mother-centered societies: they are based on maternal values: care-taking, nurturing, motherliness, mutual support, peace keeping and building by negotiation, which holds for everybody: for mothers and those who are not mothers, for women and men alike. Matriarchal societies are consciously built upon the maternal values and motherly work, and this is why they are much more realistic than patriarchies. They are, on principle, need-oriented and not power-oriented, they are gender-egalitarian societies, and most of them are fully egalitarian. Their precepts aim to meet everyone’s needs with the greatest benefit. So, in matriarchies, motherhood – which originates as a biological fact – is transformed into a cultural model.

It is becoming increasingly clear that this radically different cultural model of matriarchy will have great significance for the future of women and mothers, and of humankind in general. We can gain much stimulation and insights from them, which – unlike abstract utopias – have been lived over millennia. Continue reading “Matriarchal Politics: The Vision of an Egalitarian Society (Part 1) by Heide Goettner-Abendroth”

Last Will and Testament by Carol P. Christ

Just over a month ago and shortly before Greece went into Coronavirus lockdown, I signed the contract on my new apartment in Crete (after waiting 6 months for the owner to submit his paperwork). Though I did not realize it until I had been sitting in the notary’s office for several hours, the date of the signing was February 25, my father’s birthday. My father and I had a troubled relationship, due to the fact that he could not accept that I did not “know my place” in a world where women were expected to be submissive to men.

My father and I did not see each other during the last thirteen years of his life. After having received “the silent treatment” for two of the four months when I was teaching in California and living less than a mile away from him and his third wife, I had gradually come to the conclusion that I did not want to put either of us in the position where he could be cruel to me again. When he developed a heart problem a few years before he died, I decided not to visit. Nor did he ask me to do so. Continue reading “Last Will and Testament by Carol P. Christ”