Category: Christianity

Chicken Patriarchy by Caroline Kline

One of the most powerful and frequently cited Mormon feminist blog posts, Kiskilili’s “The Trouble With Chicken Patriarchy” on Zelophehad’s Daughters discusses the strange brand of patriarchy Mormons contend with in the modern LDS Church. On the one hand, Mormons are told that men are to preside over their wives, and on the other hand, husbands and wives are told to act as equal partners with one another. As Kiskilili shows in her post, this embracing of two seemingly contradictory stances towards the issue of male headship leaves many Mormon feminists frustrated.  She writes:

This rather mind-boggling situation, in which the Church simultaneously embraces most of the spectrum on gender roles from traditionalist positions to egalitarianism, is not simply soft patriarchy, although a recent tendency to soften patriarchal language is one important ingredient in the mix. Neither is it traditional patriarchy; nor egalitarianism. Chicken Patriarchy never allows itself to be pinned down to a single perspective; chameleonlike, it alters its attitude from day to day and sometimes even from sentence to sentence, too chicken to stand up for what it believes. By refusing to settle down in any one place on the map, Chicken Patriarchs can embrace egalitarianism and still continue to uphold time-honored traditions of male authority. Continue reading “Chicken Patriarchy by Caroline Kline”

Son of Man: An Updated Gospel Story of Jesus Set in South Africa by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

January 12, 2012

Son of Man is an updated story of the life of Jesus set in the fictional State of Judea that is modern day South Africa – complete with warlords and child soldiers.    It could easily be mistaken for modern day Rwanda or Darfur with its modern issues and political overtones.  Roger Ebert stated, “The secret of the movie is that it doesn’t strain to draw parallels with current world events – because it doesn’t have to.”  The director draws parallels between the gospels and 21st century Africa.  According to Dartford-May, “we wanted to look at the Gospels as if they were written by spin doctors and to strip that away and look at the truth.”  The director “captures the rhythms of African life in both rural settings and sprawling townships.”  “Feather-clad young angels offer an eerie echo and reminder of Africa’s lost generations.”

The movie also sticks with what Eric Snider calls “Traditional African trial music, dance, and costumes” as a type of worship or or allusion to Jesus’ godhood.  Judea is in flux; warlords and corruption take center stage.  Poverty, violence, and oppression affect the all of the people.  The key idea is that Jesus is a freedom fighter – one that fights injustice and oppression.  The director does not emphasize “Jesus’ divinity so much as his leadership, good sense and compassion.”  Jesus is not violent and his followers, most of whom were former child soldiers, are encouraged to respond non-violently, which goes against their upbringing and training. Continue reading “Son of Man: An Updated Gospel Story of Jesus Set in South Africa by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

The “Tenting” God and the Tenacity of Hope by Sheila E. McGinn, Ph.D.

Easter Sunday 2010 marked the last Mass at Historic Saint Peter Church in Cleveland, Ohio. After over 150 years of continuous use, the oaken doors of this sacred space on 17th and Superior were closed and locked. In rich irony, the building that once had been the womb of a vibrant inner-city Catholic community closed like a tomb on the very day when the Christian church around the world celebrated the feast of Christ breaking the bonds of death and rising triumphant from the grave. The official ecclesiastical act of “suppression” that closed the church building was intended likewise to roll the stone across the grave of the vibrant parish community that inhabited that domus ecclesiae. But Christians know that Resurrection happens. Easter cannot be stopped, not even by bishops.

Almost before he set foot in the door of the Chancery in Cleveland, Bishop Richard Lennon announced his intention to close one-third of the 180+ parishes in the diocese. Sixty-three parishes were to be selected for elimination based on the criteria of declining membership and financial dependency. Not surprisingly, many of the faithful were quite disturbed at this announcement. The diocesan spokesman sought to reassure them: “We don’t close parishes; we close empty buildings.” “Alright,” I thought, “maybe this won’t be so bad as it sounds.” And at first, that looked to be the case. Continue reading “The “Tenting” God and the Tenacity of Hope by Sheila E. McGinn, Ph.D.”

(Non-Human) Animals on the Agenda by Grace Yia-Hei Kao

“[E]thical interest in nonhuman animals is flourishing.”

To my delight, the New York Times recently chronicled the growing scholarly interest in human/non-human animal interactions in a story entitled “Animal Studies Cross Campus to Lecture Hall.” There are now more than 100 courses in colleges and universities in the burgeoning field of animal studies. At least 40 U.S. law schools now routinely offer courses in animal law. A growing number of formal academic programs, book series, journals, conferences, institutes, and fellowships are also dedicated to (re)examining human-animal relations from a variety of disciplinary perspectives—“art, literature, sociology, anthropology, film, theater, philosophy, [and] religion,” to name a few.

Continue reading “(Non-Human) Animals on the Agenda by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”

The Reclamation of Culture in Reality TV By Elise Edwards

In my academic life, I spend a lot of time thinking about issues of race, gender, religion and cultural production.  In my free time, I watch a lot of tv.  At times, the two interests converge, and I’m fortunate to have this community and forum to share the thoughts that come from it.  A couple months ago, I started revising a paper I’d written a few years ago about the issue of cultural imperialism and in that process, I recognized that there had been a subtle shift in television programming that features black women.  In the wide and ever-expanding reality tv genre, there are many shows that cast a black woman as a villain (the black bitch) or sexual object.  But there are other shows that present alternative, positive images of black women as caring, capable, professional, and talented.[i]   I’ve also noticed that several shows seemed to be overtly designed to combat the lack of positive images by celebrating the passions, skills, and abilities of women of color.  I am encouraged to see black people claiming an active role in their own cultural production. The act of creating is self-affirming, and when used by marginalized peoples, it can be a source of empowerment to counter their mistreatment.   In Art on My Mind: Visual Politics, bell hooks states, “It occurred to me then that if one could make a people lose touch with their capacity to create, lose sight of their will and their power to make art, then the work of subjugation, of colonization, is complete.  Such work can only be undone by acts of concrete reclamation.” [ii] Continue reading “The Reclamation of Culture in Reality TV By Elise Edwards”

A Horrific Bible Story – and Why I Read It By Dirk von der Horst

There are smart, and there are polemical, ways to think about religiously-motivated violence.  As someone who spent his seminary years thinking about Christian anti-Semitism, I was taken aback by the simplistic account of religious violence offered by Sam Harris some years back:

“Religion is the one area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give good evidence and valid arguments in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs regularly determine what they live for, what they will die for and—all too often—what they will kill for. Consequently, we are living in a world in which millions of grown men and women can rationalize the violent sacrifice of their own children by recourse to fairy tales” (The Case Against Faith).  In response, I’d like to explore some reasons I continue to engage with violent biblical stories, taking Judges 11:29-40, the story of Jephthah, who sacrifices his daughter in fulfillment of a vow, as an example. Continue reading “A Horrific Bible Story – and Why I Read It By Dirk von der Horst”

Of Human Life* By Carol P. Christ

Watching the last episode of the Australian series Brides of Christ in which Catherine leaves the sisterhood of the convent because of her disagreement with Humanae Vitae brought me right back to the Yale Roman Catholic chapel and the folk mass I attended regularly.  In 1968 just after the publication of Humanae Vitae, priest and co-graduate student Bob Imbelli preached a sermon on the doctrine of conscience, arguing that though it was incumbent on Catholics to think carefully about the papal encyclical on birth control, it was also the responsibility of every Catholic to follow her or his conscience on the matter.  In the episode, Sister Catherine encourages a Roman Catholic mother of six who has already self-induced more than one abortion to take the pill, but the woman decides she cannot go against the church’s teachings.  Catherine allows an editorial against Humanae Vitae to be published in the school newspaper even though she knows it will probably lead to the expulsion of one of her favorite students.

I had forgotten that Pope Paul VI issued the prohibition on birth control against the clear majorities of the Roman Catholic commissions instructed to study the matter.  In the episode, Sister Catherine, told by her bishop that she can no longer express her own opinions on birth control, tries to explain to her students that Roman Catholics cannot use birth control because it is against “natural law.”  This provokes one of the students to ask if people are not supposed to use birth control because animals don’t use it.  This question sparked an “ah-ha” moment for me.  Hmm, I thought, while “man” has invented birth control, “women” cannot use it because we are meant to remain “like the animals.” This debate really is about the question of whether women are human! Continue reading “Of Human Life* By Carol P. Christ”

My Body Tells A Story: Embracing my Scars and Imperfections By Michele Stopera Freyhauf

As we approach New Years Eve, there is an emphasis on losing weight, getting in shape, etc. in the coming Year.  We make resolutions to better ourselves and reflect on the year that passed us by.  With the impending New Year, there is also a realization that we become a year older, which for some means more grey hair, wrinkles, or other marks that appear on our body.  It is safe to say that we live in a world that is obsessed with body image and the search to find the fountain of youth.  In fact, TV is plagued with reality shows that perpetuate this obsession.  Keeping up with the Kardashians displays such a problem.  People who watch this show watch Kris Jenner’s facelift to her struggle with body image despite the fact that she gave birth to six healthy children and is 56 years young.  There are also shows that show people obsessed, even addicted to plastic surgery – they are trying to attain perfection, attempting to reverse the aging process, and remove the scars of their lives. Continue reading “My Body Tells A Story: Embracing my Scars and Imperfections By Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

A Church With No Walls By Sheila E. McGinn, Ph.D.

Last year about this time, I spent a month in Malaysia, at the invitation of Alpha Omega International College, a school in Petaling Jaya, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur. I was rather surprised at the initial invitation, since AOIC is sponsored by the Assemblies of God and I myself am a feminist Roman Catholic. To put it mildly, the two denominations tend not to be “on the same page” on various aspects of the Christian tradition, so I wanted to ensure that the college administrators knew what they would be getting if I were to come. Happily, the AOIC president who had proffered the invitation confirmed that indeed they did want me to come for the guest lectureship, so the beginning of October saw me making my way almost exactly to the opposite side of the globe, to run my New Testament ethics seminar at the college and to spend time learning from Malaysian Christian and Muslim leaders about interreligious dialogue and inter-ethnic relationships in their country.

Malaysian hospitality was faultless—generous, thoughtful, inviting—and everyone made time to tell me about their cross-cultural experiences and their concerns for the religious climate in Malaysia. I continually was impressed by the sincere convictions of these religious leaders and their constituencies, and by the political and cultural difficulties they faced in any kind of collaborative endeavor or even attempts at dialogue. Wherever I looked, will or nil, boundary issues continued to arise. Although other ethnic groups had the right to choose their religious affiliation, the Malay ethnic group was legally defined as Muslim. Within the Christian tradition, certain denominations traditionally were connected with one ethnic group or another. Continue reading “A Church With No Walls By Sheila E. McGinn, Ph.D.”

CELEBRATING THE BEGINNING OF THE AQUARIAN AGE by Sara Frykenberg, Ph.D.

Looking back, it’s interesting to think of myself as a young woman learning in a time of transition from the Piscean Age to the Aquarian Age.  According to Yogi Bhajan, the man known for brining Kundalini Yoga to the West, 11/11/91 marked the beginning of the last part of the Piscean age and on 11/11/11 the Age of Aquarius officially began.  So, welcome all to the Age of Aquarius!  This change of course, entails a significant paradigm shift that is supposed to affect our attitudes, consciousness and all of our relationships.  The beginning of the Aquarian age, like the end of the Mayan calendar and other overlapping prophesies of change, tends to inspire our apocalyptic imagination.  We may anticipate a breaking of our world.  I tend to imagine the pressure of the Aquarian transition like an event horizon of a black hole: a movement through extreme gravity that feels crushing and inescapable.  However, recently I’ve been struck by how the seeds of this new age, have been blossoming in my own experience and in the world around me.

According to my Kundalini teachers, the attitude of the Piscean age can be summed up as, “I believe.”  The attitude of the Aquarian Age is, “I know.”

As a child I desperately wanted to believe enough.  My evangelical Christian upbringing taught me that all I needed to do was believe that as God, Jesus Christ died for me and saved me from my sins.  If I did this, then I could go to heaven with my family.  Plus, Jesus would take me with him when he came back—that is, I wouldn’t have to go to hell or suffer the trials and tribulations of the apocalypse… this last part really stuck with me.

I thought I believed.  I wanted to believe.  I did “all the right things,” to somehow prove or provoke the kind of unquestioning belief I thought was necessary to be a “real” Christian.  But, the fact of the matter was I doubted.  As a little child (and I’ll admit, into my teens) I was sometimes struck with a sudden and horrifying fear that my family had been raptured and Jesus had left me behind.  I would literally panic until I found someone; but I’d also hide this fear because I didn’t want anyone to think that I didn’t believe enough.

I now know this extreme fear of god and His (sic) wrath was a part of my abusive relationship to what I thought was god.  I also know that our doubts can lead us towards renewed life.  I know that it is not my beliefs that make me valuable: wholeness is inherent in our connection to “a larger creative existence.”  We express this wholeness and our value, “with each committed action.”[i] Continue reading “CELEBRATING THE BEGINNING OF THE AQUARIAN AGE by Sara Frykenberg, Ph.D.”