Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
I’ve recently read Jim Belcher’s In Search of Deep Faith: A Pilgrimage into the Beauty, Goodness, and Heart of Christianity (2013). Even though I had several issues with the book, I couldn’t put it down once I started reading and finished it in the space of one day.
What’s the book about?
Continue reading “No Parenting Anxieties (Yet?) About Passing Down the Faith by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”
My recent literary digests have included memoirs and nonfiction audiobooks on sex, relationships, and non-monogamy. A recent listen, Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage by feminist activist Jenny Block, provides insight into the paradigmatic features of open marriage drawing on the personal experiences of a bisexual woman. Currently, I’m musing over my latest read: The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures written by psychotherapist Dossie Easton and author and sex educator Janet W. Hardy. Through my literary adventures, I can’t help but reflect on my own sexual conditioning and upbringing in the Pentecostal church.
The authors of these feminist-friendly, sex-positive books and social movements did not exist in the church I grew up in, and I feel quite saddened by this. While my sexual conditioning in the church was far from liberating, these reads have helped me realize that the religious community wasn’t as mundane as I thought. My early sex education which was conservative consisted of the anatomical and biological basics (Arizona education system, need I say more?) and early conditioning of sex morals and ethics in the church. The latter was more influential to my perception of sex, gender, and relationships. Of course the media and my peers constructed my views of sexual culture and gender norms, but the church had the greatest impact during my childhood and adolescence. Continue reading “Christian Sex Ain’t So Vanilla by Andreea Nica”
During the Christian season of Lent, many Christians focus on spiritual practices or disciplines that bring them closer to God. This year, I did not really engage in this type of reflection until the end of Lent. I have been wrapping up my first year teaching college students full-time, I’ve been focused on several writing projects, and I’ve been traveling. I did not intentionally think about spiritual practices until I participated in a silent retreat before Holy Week and traveled first to spend the holiday with my family and then again to mourn and remember the life of my aunt. I reflected on them when I most needed them.
Amy Wright Glenn’s Birth, Breath, & Death: Meditations on Motherhood, Chaplaincy, and Life as a Doula is a mid-life memoir of the author’s personal encounters and professional insights drawn from her work in the spaces of birth and death. Glenn gleans from her formative experiences as a daughter and sister, her trained experiences as a teacher and doula, and her wisdom experiences as a mother, chaplain, and friend. In an accessible voice, Glenn reflects compassionately on her early life in a Mormon family. She considers critically the nature of religious worldviews that are doctrinally dualistic and apocalyptic. Glenn further describes the therapeutic and illuminating value she found in the scholarly study of religions as an anthropological phenomenon. Glenn explores how religious discourse both expresses human joy and grief and also aids us in our encounters with life and death. Glenn intertwines her academic study with personal narrative and achieves a professionally-informed and experientially-based “thinking out loud” about the bookends of human life. Her writing is tender, and her vision is thought-provoking.
Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: Amy Wright Glenn’s Birth, Breath, & Death by Natalie Weaver”
In Greece the liturgies of lent and especially of the week before Easter are known as the “divine drama,” in Greek theodrama. This may refer to the “drama” of the capture, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus and to the suffering of God the Father and Mary.
However, it is important to recall that the drama in ancient Greece referred to both the tragedies and comedies, most specifically, those that were performed in the theater of Dionysios in Athens. While we have been taught that the Greek tragedies celebrated “downfall of the hero” due to his “tragic flaw,” it is important to remember that Dionysios was the original protagonist of the Greek tragedy: it was his death and rebirth that was first celebrated.
Some have argued that the Greek tragedies should never be “read” alone, for they were always “performed” in tandem with the comedies, which were followed by the bawdy phallic humor of the satyr plays. The tragedies end in death and irreparable loss. But if the comedies and satyr plays are considered an integral part of the cycle, death is followed by the resurgence of life. Continue reading “THE DIVINE DRAMA AND THE UNIVERSALITY OF DEATH by Carol P. Christ”
In John’s account of the Resurrection, Mary Magdalen mistakes Jesus for the gardener. Or perhaps it is not a mistake or not just a mistake but also a poetic truth. In any event, John’s Gospel makes clear: the Resurrection takes place in a garden!
(For the feminist significance of horticulture, I refer you to Carol Christ’s recent post on this site: Women and Weeding, the first 10,000 years .)
Many prominent (male) theologians, historians, anthropologists, and psychoanalysts among them James Frazer, Jung, and C.S. Lewis made the case for and/or against (in Lewis’ case) Jesus being another dying rising god of vegetation with Christianity borrowing imagery and ritual from earlier or even contemporary cults. The argument against insists that Jesus’s life, death and resurrection is historical, redemptive, and unique. From a tour of Bloglandia, the debate pro and con appears to continue unabated. I say better to pull weeds (if you are lucky enough to have a garden) than pontificate. Continue reading “Resurrection Garden, Resurrection Feast by Elizabeth Cunningham”
I grew up Calvinist and Republican in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. My parents belonged to—but rarely attended—Immanuel Evangelical & Reformed Church in Ferguson, Missouri. When children reached the age of twelve, they were “confirmed” in the church, which meant taking a Bible class taught by the minister, Rev. Press, and then going through a ceremony that made them eligible to take communion, which in that church was grape juice and tasteless crackers. Transubstantiation? I learned what the word meant, but I had (and still have) no idea if it really happens.
I’ve always been one to ask untidy questions, so of course I asked a lot of questions in confirmation class. God tells us half a dozen times in the Old Testament, for example, that he is a “jealous god.” How, I asked Rev. Press, can a jealous god be a loving god? What’s good about a jealous god? (A couple decades later, when I was studying the Aramaic Bible as translated by George M. Lamsa from the Pshitta manuscripts, I learned that the correct word is “zealous.” That was no help. I still don’t see much good in either jealousy or zealotry.) A week or two later, I asked Rev. Press, “What’s good about Good Friday?” Shortly thereafter, my mother advised me to stop asking questions in confirmation class. (Can we assume she’d received a pastoral phone call?) Continue reading “What’s Good About Good Friday? by Barbara Ardinger”
Within the Christian tradition, this week – l known as Holy Week – is perhaps the most significant week on the Christian calendar. During this week Christians are called to contemplate and to remember the core events of Christian identity—the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Given the focus of this week for many Christians I am sharing my theological reflections on the crucifixion-resurrection event.
As I begin this reflection, it is important to recall that which I and others have pointed out in other places. In Jesus’ first century Roman world crucifixion was reserved for slaves, enemy soldiers and those held in the highest contempt and with lowest regard in society. To be crucified was, for the most part, an indication of how worthless and devalued by established power an individual was. It also indicated how much of a threat that person was believed to be to the order of things. There was a decided crucified class of people. These were essentially the castigated and demonized as well as the ones who defied the status quo of power. It is in this respect that I believe Jesus’ crucifixion affirms his identification with the marginalized and outcasts. Indeed, on the cross Jesus fully divests himself of all pretensions to power and anything that would compromise his bond with those most othered in the world. The reality of the cross further affirms the profundity of god’s bond with put-upon bodies..
Continue reading “Crucifixion, Resurrection, and the Reversal of Power by Kelly Brown Douglas”
In my previous post, I shared some of the ways in which I’ve been wrestling with gendered imagery for God, the first person of the Christian Trinity often referred to as God the Father. In this entry, I’d like to reflect on ways I am reconsidering the gender of the Christ.
It is only recently, after reading Melinda Bielas’ post “Waiting for Jesus… I mean, Superman” (December 17, 2013), that I began to question male language for the Christ. I got into an interesting conversation with Grace Kao in January about it. My thoughts on this topic are still unformed and more theologically “speculative” than I usually share on this site, but I’d love to hear what you think. I think it is important for Christian feminists to consider the doctrines of the faith and assess where they support the co-humanity of women and when they degrade it. Continue reading “Gendered Imagery of God (Part 2) by Elise M. Edwards”
As a child, I enjoyed the story of Noah’s Ark. I would often imagine pairs of animals running for safety in Noah’s architecturally majestic haven. Practical questions didn’t enter my mind during this blissful period of naivety. I ignored the part where God expressed regret in creating humanity, or when Noah gets drunk and lies bare naked for his children to cover his shame. My bible study teacher would explain to us that the point of the story was that Noah, a holy man, trusted God and carried out his will.
Disclaimer: I understand that the film is not meant to be an exact representation of the story in the bible, but loosely based around it. Also, if you plan on watching the film, read at your discretion.
In the film, Noah’s character is played by leading actor Russell Crowe, who appears strong, confident, and zealous in his trust in God – all necessary qualities to fulfill God’s demand of killing off the rest of humanity because of their wickedness. Later in the film, Noah realizes that he and his family are also wicked leading to his revelation, ahem, God’s revelation, that humanity must cease with Noah’s family. This doesn’t pan out too well with his children and wife. It was also bad news for Emma Watson, the orphan girl Noah’s family saves and raises as their own, who after accepting that she is barren is miraculously healed and gives birth to two girls. Noah decides that the female infants must die according to God’s will to end humanity. Continue reading “Watching “Noah” Brought Me Closer to Humanity by Andreea Nica”
Feminism and Religion 