Activism – Page 10 – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives:“Vaginas are Everywhere!”: The Power of the Female Reproductive System by John Erickson

Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost in the archives. We are beginning this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted June 19, 2012. You can visit it to see the original comments here.

I have a beautiful picture of vagina hanging on my wall. However, for the longest time it was in the back of my closet, with a plastic bag covering it. I wasn’t ashamed of it but my ex-boyfriend, like most gay men, refused to have it on the wall where he could see it. He is now long gone; the vagina is now out and proud.

I bid on the picture one fall during a showing of the Vagina Monologues at Claremont School of Theology. One of my best friends was in the show and I had always loved its powerful message. I walked out of the theatre, waiting for my friend, and there it was: the picture of the vagina. I found myself caught up in its beauty. Its gaze had mesmerized me. The outlying layers of red, the contours of its shape, they all began to mold into a figure before my eyes. While I have never thought of myself as a religious person, I realized that at that moment I was no longer looking the old photo but rather I was staring at the outline of the Virgin Mary. At that moment, I realized that I had to have the picture.

Hope Lives in the Twinkling of the Stars by Carolyn Lee Boyd

For millennia, we humans have found hope in the dark of winter through holidays featuring lights or the sun such as the Winter Solstice, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Soyal, Christmas, and others. As the people of our beautiful, fragile planet celebrate these traditions in these perilous and momentous times, I have been wondering what fresh perspectives on hope our global goddess myths and stories can offer.

Let’s start with the Greek goddess of hope, Elpis. In the Greek Pandora’s story as usually told, Elpis/hope is all that is left for humanity after Pandora lets misery escape into the world by opening her box, However, according to Patricia Monaghan in her New Book of Goddesses and Heroines, originally Pandora was the ever-abundant Earth goddess and her box was a pithos, a clay jar used to store food, but also remains of the dead awaiting rebirth. In her Roman incarnation as Spes, the goddess of hope also served Fortuna, the goddess of destiny who brings people together to create life. Finally, She is associated with Salus, the goddess of health.

Carol P. Christ’s Legacy: Susan B. Anthony’s Bargain with the Devil

Moderator’s Note: We at FAR have been so fortunate to work along side Carol Christ for many years. She died in July this year from cancer. To honor her legacy as well as allow as many people as possible to read her thought-provoking and important blogs we are pleased to offer this new column to highlight her work. We will be picking out special blogs for reposting. This blog was originally posted November 25, 2019. You can find the original post here to see the original comments along with her responses.

[T]he most grievous wrong ever inflicted on woman has been in the Christian teaching that she was not created equal to man, and the consequent denial of her rightful place in Church and State. –Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church, and State, 1893, page 1

I do not approve of their [referring to Gage and Stanton] system of fighting the religious dogmas of people I am trying to convert to my doctrine of equal rights to women. –Susan B. Anthony to Olympia Brown, following the disputed merger of the radical National Women’s Suffrage Association with the conservative American Women’s Suffrage Association in 1889

Join the Resistance by Mary Sharratt

“Rest is resistance,” journalist Cassady Rosenblum wrote in her recent essay in the New York Times , entitled “Work is a False Idol.”

This statement completely undermines our American work ethic that elevates productivity to the highest altar. Rosenblum, a journalist who left a high stress job, wrote lyrically of the happiness she discovered just sitting on her parents’ porch in West Virginia. Some of her readers were up in arms—how dare she hang out on a porch when she could be working? Who does she think she is? Rosenblum received such a bashing in the comments section, you’d think she was Marie Antoinette torturing puppies.

Rest is a four-letter word, as un-American as Communists were in the 1950s. If you want to provoke the rage of strangers on the internet, publicly praise the joys of taking a sabbatical.

The Return of the Exile by Mary Gelfand

A few years ago I encountered a Norwegian folktale titled “Prince Lindworm.” This tale was completely new to me and aspects of it have lingered as I contemplate the future of my country.

In “Prince Lindworm,” a childless Queen wants an heir and follows the advice of the Wise Woman she meets in her garden. The Wise Woman tells the Queen where to find two magical roses, instructs her to eat only one, and warns that she “will be sorry” if she eats both. The Queen, of course, eats both and gives birth to twin boys. The elder child emerges as a serpent or lindworm and immediately disappears into the forest. Only the Queen witnesses this birth and, as this is not the child she wants to parent, she remains silent. The second boy is beautiful and healthy and grows into a fine young man. When he is of age to seek a wife, his path is blocked by his unknown exiled brother, Prince Lindworm, who has grown into a massive, repulsive serpent and claims his right to have a bride first. The Queen admits her failure to follow the Wise Woman’s advice and the kingdom must cope with the knowledge that the heir to the throne is an exile.

The Tree of Equality in the Forest of Harmony by Carolyn Lee Boyd

For millennia, people have struggled for gender and many other kinds of equality, with progress achingly slow and sometimes regressing. Egalitarian societies have existed and do exist, such as those described by Marija Gimbutas and Heide Goettner-Abendroth and others. So why does a 21st century egalitarian world seem so far away? Sometimes looking at challenges from a fresh perspective can be illuminating as well as inspiring for the long journey ahead. So, what if we envision equality as a tree, those wondrous beings that make life on earth possible and symbolize our world in so many cultures? What are the roots, the source truths which lead to all forms of equality and, if embraced by everyone, would make equality an assumed fact of life? What is the trunk where the roots manifest as positive supports for equality work? What are the branches, our acts reaching up towards our greatest aspirations for a truly equal society?

Let’s start with the roots, the basic statement from which all forms of equality grow. To me it is “All participate in the essential life force of the universe and are therefore inherently, completely, and infinitely valuable.” “Essential life force of the universal” may or may not refer to a deity, depending on individual beliefs, but it does have a spiritual element in that it relates our individual existence to that universal essence which gave us life, connects us to all other beings, and is beyond any personal characteristics. You may have a different root statement but I think that any root statement is more powerful with a spiritual element.

Lucky by John M. Erickson

This past weekend, I was asked by an individual why I decided to get my Ph.D. in American Religious History focusing on LGBTQ spirituality and sexuality. Now, I’ve been asked this before, and if you know anything about me, you know I like to shock people at times, so my usual response is: “I have always been fascinated with people tell me I was going to hell.”

It’s almost the end of Pride Month and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on where we’ve come and where we must go.

Myanmar’s Dangerous Military Coup by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

On February 1^st, a successful military coup took place in South Asia. The national military of Myanmar arrested top non-military officials and seized all power. While this February coup happened in South Asia, it could have happened on our very shores. Myanmar’s successful military coup d’état took place almost a month after the unsuccessful January 6^th attack on the US Capitol.

Feeling Weary about US Politics by Carol P. Christ

Carol by Honegger cropped

Like many of you, I was anxious and angry during most of the Trump administration years. I watched MSNBC avidly, hoping against hope that a) he could be stopped or b) he would be impeached. Now that he is gone, it would be nice to be able to take a “breather” (I wasn’t breathing regularly during the Trump years), a break from thinking about US politics all the time, but sadly, the political situation in the United States continues to require attention.

President Biden has pleasantly surprised me with his progressive domestic agenda and his decision to remove troops from the heretofore endless war in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, he has proposed an increase in the military budget. Dwight David Eisenhower, who warned of the increasing power of “the military-industrial complex” as he left office, must be turning over in his grave.

Most worrying of all is the fact that so many Americans voted for Donald Trump, believe that the election was stolen from him, and support white supremacy, while the Republican party refuses to deviate from the Trumpian worldview.

As if it could not be any worse, police killings of innocent black men by white officers and mass killings by young white men with easy access to automatic weapons are proliferating. Moreover, Republican-inspired voting restriction legislation is once again threatening the foundations of our democracy. Continue reading “Feeling Weary about US Politics by Carol P. Christ”

An Untitled Poem for Unanswerable Questions by Eva Espinoza

Thinking about the discourse between spiritualists and victims of harm
Thinking about accountability and prison abolition
Thinking about how white supremacy tells us people are disposable
That they–that we, don’t matter
Thinking about “don’t speak ill of the dead”
Thinking about “honor your ancestors”
Thinking about what else is possible beyond prisons, cages, and borders
Thinking about abusers who refuse to take accountability
Thinking about where that leaves us when we die
Throat’s closed
Stories Untold
Thinking about how death is possible for the living
Thinking about how redemption is possible for the dead
Thinking about, what the fuck even is Salvation, anyway?
Thinking about binaries and how exhausting it is to think of these two things as mutually exclusive to each other
Thinking about how many of us are dissociating because cognitive dissonance is hell on earth
Thinking about the waging of war and how it lives in the body
Thinking about how rage turned inwards is depression
Thinking about the will to live and the will to die
Thinking about the sleep of death and the dreams that come from dying
Thinking about regret
Thinking about when an abuser becomes an ancestor
Thinking about where the guilt goes in the afterlife
Thinking about hell
Thinking about eternal suffering
Thinking about conversations of the reconciliation that is possible between an abusive ancestor and those they’ve abused
Thinking about who the hell said this shit was tied to the land of the living

This poem is a birthing after months of sitting in grief circles and bible studies and with the ancestors.This poem is short but holds so many wrestlings. It holds the wrestling between me and my daddy, now an ancestor, who I could never come out to while he walked this earth. It holds the waiting for my biological father’s passing to reconcile the ways in which he harmed me and my mother and my sister, the ways in which he abandoned and neglected us. It holds the wrestlings of iconizing Kobe Bryant after his death while also naming and recognizing him as the sexual predator he was. It holds the wrestlings of what happens in the afterlife, blending theologies of indigeneity and christianity.