Christianity – Page 49 – Feminism and Religion

Women Are More Spiritual than Men? The Mormon Conception by Caroline Kline

In the Mormon tradition, women are often held up by Church leaders and members as naturally more spiritual and selfless than men. While it’s nice that Mormonism escapes traditional Christian conceptions of women’s nature being inherently deceptive, seductive, and sinful (these ideas stem from the Eve narrative in Genesis 2), this characterization of women as naturally spiritual and selfless does present problems for some Mormon feminists like myself.

First, it often seems to be used a a palliative, as an excuse to not incorporate women into the priesthood hierarchy of the Church. Because women are naturally so spiritual, the common reasoning goes, women don’t need priesthood like men do — men must learn spirituality and altruism from their priesthood service in order to develop these same qualities. Continue reading “Women Are More Spiritual than Men? The Mormon Conception by Caroline Kline”

The Undoing of Patriarchy in the Life of Tom Jorde (1922-2011)

Last week I attended the funeral of the one man, who in my feminist musings, was able to image the maleness of God as father, friend and pastor. If I had thought about it, I would have given him the T-shirt that reads, “This is What a Feminist Looks Like,” but it never occurred to me until now.

A successful sales manager, Tom decided at the age of 36, and with 6 young children, to enter full-time ministry by enrolling in Pacific Lutheran Seminary at the GTU (in Berkeley). Imagine undertaking an MDIV degree with that kind of responsibility? As the adage states, “It takes a village,” and it did. Marie, Tom’s wife, took charge of the kids while his four brothers help support him until his graduation in 1965. Continue reading “The Undoing of Patriarchy in the Life of Tom Jorde (1922-2011)”

Progressive Religion to the Rescue By Mary E. Hunt

The happy hoopla surrounding the lifting of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had a shadow side. Close inspection revealed a lot of partners and spouses of LGBTIQ military people who had been cloaked in secrecy and euphemism (“Meet my cousin”) for years. Now they, too, can come out. But they remain second-class citizens whose marriages don’t count because of the Defense of Marriage Act. They are not eligible for health care and other benefits routinely provided for dependents of military members. This injustice is a new and important front in the struggle for full human rights, one that has a unique religious twist that bears watching.

In late September, I attended a moving celebration hosted by the Military Partners and Families Coalition called “Beyond 61.” It was a celebration of the new lease on life that these folks experienced after the 60-day waiting period following the repeal of DADT. It took place at Arlington Cemetery, fittingly at the Women in Military Service Memorial, since women have a long history of unequal treatment in the military, as well.

Unaccustomed as I am to military anything (I continue to serve my country in the peace movement), I was impressed by the diversity among the participants and their singular commitment to justice. I was alarmed by the fact that, after decades of struggle, today’s young people are still subject to indignities due to their sexuality even when they enlist for military service. Given the current economic situation, their options for education and other kinds of work are limited. This only makes discrimination against the queer ones nastier. Continue reading “Progressive Religion to the Rescue By Mary E. Hunt”

A Reflection of What Influences and Controls My Ideologies: An Examination Of Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus By Michele Stopera Freyhauf

Michele Stopera Freyhauf: Feminist scholar, activist, and graduate student in religion and biblical studies at John Carroll University, Michele is the student representative on the Board for Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society (EGLBS) and author of several articles including “Hagia Sophia: Political and Religious Symbolism in Stones and Spolia.” Her research interests involve Feminism, Sexuality, the influence of Goddess imagery, Myth, and Rhetoric especially in the Old Testament, Ancient Egypt and Early Christianity. She also focuses her research in feminism, migration studies, and genocide as it relates to women, especially in the Middle East and Latin America.

Exploring the new world of historiography this semester has been an adventure. In my studies, I came across an interesting person named Louis Pierre Althusser. He is considered a structuralist Marxist and in 1970, he wrote an essay titled Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation). The basis of his argument explores how various institutions control the working class. We have our ideas taken from or given to us because we were essentially molded by various institutions that are being controlled by an agency of power, like government or church. Someone has told us what it is to be moral and ingrained that definition. Someone has influenced our idea of what it means once you graduate from high school then college. Someone else has defined the benchmark for wealth and happiness or when we have enough “stuff.” Ideologically we are controlled by so many outside factors. It is this point that I want to reflect an explore as a Feminist, a mother, a graduate student, and part of the proverbial 99%. Continue reading “A Reflection of What Influences and Controls My Ideologies: An Examination Of Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus By Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

ADVENT: THE ACTIVE-WAIT, PART II, By Cynthia Garrity-Bond

On Nov. 14 I posted Part 1 of Advent: The Active-Wait. What follows (in Part II) is a rereading or exegesis of Mary’s encounter with her cousin Elizabeth as an Advent waiting with hope, anticipation and trust, but also with action.

The second form of waiting, illustrated in verse Luke 1: 39, reads: “In those days, Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” The verse before this has Mary in complete surrender, “Here I am” Mary proclaims, “the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your Word.” Continue reading “ADVENT: THE ACTIVE-WAIT, PART II, By Cynthia Garrity-Bond”

Birthing God at the Edges of Life, Death, and Beyond: Reflections on Mary, Motherhood, and Kali Part III By Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier

Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. She teaches and researches in the areas of women and religion, interreligious dialogue, comparative theology, Asian and Asian American theology, and Hindu-Christian studies. Tracy also co-chairs the Los Angeles Hindu-Catholic Dialogue.

When I began my studies of Hinduism, I marveled in a dizzying array of gods and goddesses. While non-Hindus assume that Hinduism is polytheistic because of the multitude of gods and goddesses, the reality is far more interesting and complex. Hinduism really isn’t one religion, but a cluster of them. For some, there is one personal, divine God or Goddess, and all other gods and goddesses are either different forms of the ultimate divine or are lower, created beings (like angels). For others, there is one divine reality, but it isn’t a personal God or Goddess. For them, the different deities illustrate or symbolize different aspects of the divine, but are not themselves the one Ultimate Reality. What all Hindus recognize, however, is that there is one Ultimate, Divine Reality and that that divinity pervades all things. But that divine Oneness is so profound, so deep, so real, that no one image can capture the divine essence. Thus, even as Hindus are more monotheists than polytheists, they resolutely celebrate the multiplicity that inevitably comes when finite humans imagine the infinite divine. Continue reading “Birthing God at the Edges of Life, Death, and Beyond: Reflections on Mary, Motherhood, and Kali Part III By Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier”

Birthing God at the Edges of Life, Death, and Beyond: Reflections on Mary, Motherhood, and Kali Part II By Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier

Mary, her purity, and her role as Virgin Mother have become the primary language for talking about women and women’s place in the Church. The late Pope John Paul II held up Mary, both virgin and mother, as the perfect model for women. For the Pope, women’s sexuality and spirituality are united in a vision of woman’s personhood as that of nurturing self-gift. The calling of physical and spiritual motherhood is connected to women’s more receptive and nurturing nature. Men lead the Church, as Christ did, while women receive Christ and others in their homes and in the world, as Mary did. Mary’s receptive openness to God is manifest from the beginning in her consent to Jesus’ conception. Such receptivity is both biologically natural and spiritually essential. Mary as Virgin Mother shows both women and men the value and depth of the receptive, self-giving reality of womanhood. Continue reading “Birthing God at the Edges of Life, Death, and Beyond: Reflections on Mary, Motherhood, and Kali Part II By Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier”

Birthing God at the Edges of Life, Death, and Beyond: Reflections on Mary, Motherhood, and Kali Part I By Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier

I grew up in St. Louis, MO, in the decades following Vatican II. My parish, like many at the time, was an odd mash-up of old and new. Contemporary praise music co-existed with smells and bells, informal homilies by hip priests with solemn novenas. It was an exciting time to grow up Catholic. I was on fire for God, but the opportunities for ministry as a little girl were limited. Boys were taught to follow Christ and were groomed to be priests. They got to skip class to receive training as altar boys. We all knew that boys were special. Girls were taught to be like Mary. While shut out of most ministries at the church, we were essential for the yearly May crowning. Every year, I prayed I would be chosen to crown Mary. I was never chosen; but I nevertheless became incredibly devoted to Mary, talking with her often and leaving little gifts outside my door for her to take to heaven. My favorite game was to pretend to be Mary. Continue reading “Birthing God at the Edges of Life, Death, and Beyond: Reflections on Mary, Motherhood, and Kali Part I By Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier”

Consumption Rather than Production: The Modern Housewife?

Last year I went to an intriguing talk by organizational psychologist Carrie Miles, who spoke about changing gender norms in Mormon society.

One thing that caught my attention was how she traced the way gender roles functioned in pre-industrial society to the way they work now in modern society. According to Miles, in pre-industrial society, women were essential to the survival of the family because they spent the vast majority of their time engaged in production — gardening, sewing clothes, making butter etc. In these pre-industrial societies, if a kid needed socks, there was one way to get them — the mom knitted them. Purchasing such items was not economically feasible for most families, which generally lived in a subsistence mode. They produced the vast majority of what they consumed. Continue reading “Consumption Rather than Production: The Modern Housewife?”

Does My Faith Have Gender? By Brooke Nelson

The following is a guest post by Brooke Nelson, a Ph.D student in Religion at Claremont Graduate University. She is interested in themes of feminine agency, authority, and textual representation in early Church texts, and how these themes intersect with the contemporary need to create a canon of legitimate examples. Her current research project is focusing on the ways that women were represented as taking control of their lives, their deaths, and their salvation through feminine martyr narratives.

For many people, the academic study of religion may provide an opportunity to pursue (or find) a theology in which women play a major role. I, however, hit the books for a very different reason. I grew up in a “Christmas and Easter” Catholic family that subscribed to the larger sense of the faith without worrying too much about the details. I went to Catholic schools, learned my catechism, memorized the ways to spot a heretic, and associated predominantly with my Roman Catholic schoolmates. I never, however, boldly flew the Papist flag. I often failed to identify with the larger Catholic community because I took a rather free, grab bag approach to the Latin Church, taking what I wanted and leaving behind the strictures that I thought were too backwards to apply to modern life. Continue reading “Does My Faith Have Gender? By Brooke Nelson”