Activism – Feminism and Religion

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: “Oh For a Pair of Clean Dry Warm Socks”

This was originally posted on Jan. 15, 2018

Stories about refugees in the island of Lesbos (where I live) are no longer front page news. Yet according the United Nations Refugee Agency, 12, 742 refugees arrived here in 2017. This number is equivalent to 15% of the year-around population of the island. Though this number is huge, it does not compare to the estimated 91,506 arrivals in Lesbos in 2016. In January 2018, 7572 refugees are estimated to be stranded in the island waiting for their applications for asylum to be processed. The government-controlled reception center has a capacity of 2000, but up to three times that number are being housed there at any one time, in conditions that must be described as inhumane. It is suspected that “someone” in Greece or the European Union is slowing the asylum process in order to discourage refugees from attempting to enter the EU via Lesbos.

Recently I have begun to work with the Starfish Foundation, a local non-profit helping refugees on the island, using my skills as a writer to help with outreach. Today I share with the FAR community a blog I wrote to contextualize the desperation of the situation the refugees find themselves in.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Refugee Crisis: Through the Eyes of the Children: Review by Carol P. Christ

This was originally posted on Dec 12, 2016

The Refugee Crisis: Through the Eyes of the Children by Robert and Robin Jones. Santa Barbara, CA: Blue Point Books, 2016. $19.95. Website: http://www.throughtheeyesofthechildren.com

Arriving in Molivos, Lesbos for a summer break, Robert and Robin Jones quickly became caught up in the refugee crisis engulfing the island that had been their second home for over forty years. Initially Robin and Robert provided water to weary refugees walking along the roads of Lesbos, grateful to have arrived in Europe. Soon, Robin, an artist who holds a certificate in art instruction, began providing marking pens and paper to recently arrived refugee children awaiting transport to processing centers at the other end of the island.

The children’s drawings are the centerpiece of this moving book, while Robin’s photographs and Robert’s words set them in the context of one of the many humanitarian crises of our time. “According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 1,000,573 refugees and migrants arrived in Europe from the Middle East and North Africa during 2015. Of these, some 850,000 landed on the Greek islands. Of these, 49 per cent were Syrian, 21 per cent Afghan and eight per cent Iraqi.” 573, 625 arrived in the island of Lesbos between January 2015 and February 2016. Continue reading “The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Refugee Crisis: Through the Eyes of the Children: Review by Carol P. Christ”

The Gendered Dimensions of the Water Crisis in Iran: Impacts on Women’s Health, Livelihoods, and Security

Moderator’s Note: This post has been brought to you in cooperation with the NCRI women’s committee. NCRI stands for the National Council of Resistance of Iran. You can learn more information as well as see this original article by clicking this link. A description of their Council can be found at the end of this post.

The water crisis in Iran has moved far beyond a simple environmental issue — it has become a humanitarian, ecological, and economic disaster.

While at first the problem seemed to be the result of drought and declining rainfall, its true causes ran much deeper: entrenched corruption and mismanagement at the heart of the ruling establishment. Until these systemic roots are addressed and removed, Iran’s present — and its future — will only become more precarious.

A significant number of researchers and international observers emphasize that 70 to 80 percent of the current crisis stems from mismanagement, unsustainable policies, lack of transparency, and corruption. As one report notes, “Iran’s water crisis is not a crisis of resources; it is a crisis of decisions—decisions that have made the land thirstier and the future darker. This crisis, alongside the erosion of public trust in governance, is a symptom of structural and managerial failure.” (Newsweek, August 1, 2025; The Times, December 8, 2022; Reuters, April 27, 2021)

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Toxic Masculinity: “Masculinity Must Be Killed” by Carol P. Christ

This was originally posted on June 20, 2016

Carol Molivos by Andrea Sarris 2 A few days ago I watched the movie An Unfinished Life starring Morgan Freeman, Robert Redford, and Jennifer Lopez. Though it was recommended as a sensitive psychological drama, and though on the surface level it criticizes (male) violence against women and animals, on a deeper level, it confirms the association of masculinity with violence, suggesting that violence is the way men resolve their problems with each other.

At the beginning of the film, Robert Redford, who lives on a ranch in Montana, picks up his rifle with the intention of shooting a bear who mauled his friend Morgan Freeman. This act of violence is stopped by local authorities who arrive to capture the bear. However, the bear is not removed to a more remote area, but rather is given to a local make-shift zoo where it is kept in a small cage. At the end of the movie, Redford frees the bear after Freeman realizes that it should not be punished for injuring him. The bear is last seen crossing a mountain ridge in the distance.

Redford is grieving the death of his only son who died in an automobile accident while his son’s wife (played by Jennifer Lopez) was driving. After being beaten by her current boyfriend, Jennifer Lopez escapes with her daughter and ends up on Redford’s doorstep, announcing that her daughter is Redford’s granddaughter. Redford, who believes Lopez is responsible for his son’s death, grudgingly allows them to stay.

When Lopez’s boyfriend tracks her down in Montana, Redford drives him out of town, threatening to kill him with his rifle. When the boyfriend comes back, Redford shoots out the tires of his car, smashes the car’s windows with his rifle, and beats the boyfriend bloody before putting him on a bus out of town.

The movie asks us to condemn the boyfriend’s violence against Lopez and Redford’s desire to kill the bear, but it also asks us to condone and even to celebrate Redford’s violent acts against the boyfriend. After all, in this case, justice is done. Right? Continue reading “The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Toxic Masculinity: “Masculinity Must Be Killed” by Carol P. Christ”

Legacy of Carol Christ: Can You Kill the Spirit? What Happened to Female Imagery for God in Christian Worship? by Carol P. Christ

When I first began to think about female language and images for God I imagined that changing God-He to God-She and speaking of God as Mother some of the time would be a widespread practice in churches and synagogues by now. I was more worried about whether or not images of God as a dominating Other would remain intact. Would God-She be imaged as a Queen or a Woman of War who at Her whim or will could wreak havoc on Her own people?

Forty years later, very little progress has been made on the question of female imagery for God. I suspect that most people in the pews today have never even had to confront prayers to Sophia, God the Mother, or God-She. Most people consider the issue of female language in the churches to have been resolved with inclusive language liturgies and translations of the Bible that use gender neutral rather than female inclusive language.

In her new book, Women, Ritual, and Power: Placing Female Imagery of God in Christian Worship, Elizabeth Ursic states that one of the reasons that the issue of female language seems less pressing than it once did is because those for whom the issue was important have for the most part left the church. But the question is why.

NO Kings Day Protest – Lakewood, CA by Marie Cartier

Note – usually we have a Carol Christ Legacy post on Mondays. Today we have a post in the spirit of the elections taking place this week across the United States.

October 18, 2025

Largest single day protest in US history- over 7 million people- 2700 + gatherings

P.s. That’s my wife in the inflatable bear costume– NO KINGS and YES ON 50!

From the Archives: Matthew Shepard Is a Friend of Mine – Part II…by Marie Cartier

This piece was originally posted on November 2, 2013. Part I published yesterday.

The day after his death, I went to teach Gender Women’s Studies (then Women’s Studies) and I cried in front of my students and then sang to them because I didn’t know what else to do. So in 1998 I sang a 1975 Holly Near song to my students, “It Could Have Been Me,” about the Kent State massacres and murder of Chilean poet Victor Jara. “And it could have been me, but instead it was you./ So I’ll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two…/If you can live for freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom! …if you can live for freedom, I can, too.”

From the Archives: Matthew Shepard Is a Friend of Mine – Part I…by Marie Cartier

This piece was originally posted on November 2, 2013.

Matthew Shepard died October 12, 1998 – fifteen years ago. This month I have already attended three events memorializing his death. The first was a screening of the Emmy-award winning teleplay The Matthew Shepard Story (starring the amazing Stockard Channing as Judy Shepard), where I served as the moderator for an impassioned question and answer session for the monthly meeting of Comunidad, the Ministry of Gay and Lesbian Catholics group where I serve on the board at St. Matthew’s in Long Beach, CA.

I also recently attended two productions of Beyond the Fence produced by the South Coast Chorale, in which my friend Robin Mattocks performs. This musical created by Steve Davison and others moved me to tears several times—and I know and teach the story of Matthew Shepard every year at this time—I have already done so four times this month. I attended with a friend the first night and because I am a professor the director let me come to the Gala the next night where I met Matthew’s real life best friend Romaine Patterson.

From the Archives: Careful Criticism: Resisting Hetero-Patriarchy while Resisting Trump by Sara Frykenberg

This was originally posted on May 2, 2017

My students are taking their final exams this week, which means I will be spending the week frantically, but attentively grading in order to make our grade submission deadline next week. End of semester grading is a mountain of careful criticism we educators scale one step at a time, with deliberateness, towards an ultimate goal of student success (if not in our classes, then in the next, or in life, relationships, etc.). Thus, I often find myself returning to the question: what am I hoping to create in what I say and write, and in how I critique?

One of the goals of feminist pedagogies is to help us prevent recreating the domination of kyrio-patriarchy in classroom spaces. While activism is not the same thing as education, and strategies of resistance are different than pedagogy in important ways, the concern for careful critique is warranted in both praxes. What do we create in how we critique, resist, and protest? What do we recreate, wittingly or no? I have found myself concerned with this since the election of Trump, DT (cause I can only write that name so many times), to the presidency. Continue reading “From the Archives: Careful Criticism: Resisting Hetero-Patriarchy while Resisting Trump by Sara Frykenberg”

THIS IS HOW WE DO IT: In These United States, September 2025 by Marie Cartier

Poem:

Photo of author at banner drop action, August 2025, “Be Brave With Us.”

Part I

We didn’t want to believe we had lost so much, so fast-

Our dignity perhaps and certainly our ability to speak entirely freely

We didn’t want to believe that we had lost so much so fast—

Our ability to be connected to each other, to form a more perfect union

We didn’t want to believe that we had lost so much so fast—

But when they took away the comediennes whose job it was to help us make fun of ourselves…when they took away the gatekeepers of clean water and renewable energy and when they took away the scientists working to cure children’s cancer…

when they took away took away took away

You see we didn’t want to believe that we had lost so much so fast

Our flag for instance didn’t make sense and our statue of liberty and justice for all,

her torch reaching into a sky littered with planes of those being deported to cages without due process

It happens so fast –the loss it happens so fast
We learned that it takes a long time to build good
We realized it doesn’t take long to tear it down meaning the failure to keep the good
The holes in the flag were gaping and we could see through them
we saw images of the sick, the old and …women and children always go first.
We didn’t realize we had lost so much… until it was gone