Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
The biggest mistake people make is to use theology and catechesis interchangeably. This is an important distinction that impacts the scholarly community of Catholic Theologians. So what is the difference? Catechesis in the Catholic tradition is an “echoing” of the faith. Theology on the other hand, using St. Anselm’s definition, is “faith seeking understanding.” Michael G. Lawler and Todd A. Salzman, in “Beyond Catechesis: What is the Proper Role of Theology”, states that catechesis can be included in theology, but theology is distinguished from catechesis because it “uses scholarly principles not only to communicate the truths of faith but also to explore the meanings of those truths and contemporary ways of articulating them.” Also the theologians’ role is seen as mediator between the magisterium and the faithful. Richard P. McBrien states that the required role of a theologian is to investigate and examine the whole of the Christian tradition; what it means, how it fits, how it is developed, and how it relates to the outside the world in theory and in practice. Ex Corde Ecclesiae also emphasizes community and dialogue, which is not always realized in practice. Continue reading “Diminished Quality of Catechesis as a Basis for Limiting the Role of a Catholic Theologian: An Examination of the Controversy Surrounding Elizabeth Johnson’s Book The Quest for the Living God By Michele Stopera Freyhauf”
One of my Mormon feminist friends once made an observation to me about feminists who were able to stay and even thrive within the Mormon Church, versus the ones who left or were forced to leave. She saw that the more pragmatic and cynical feminists seemed to be able to remain practicing, whereas the idealistic feminists were the ones who didn’t stay.
I thought this was an intriguing framework: the idealistic ones who can’t endure the dissonance between what they know in their heart is right/just and what the Church teaches about gender eventually leave the Church, whereas the pragmatic or cynical ones who see patriarchy as inescapably infusing almost all institutions (universities, corporations, etc.) or who decide to weigh the pros and cons and stay for various reasons including community, family, heritage, and root belief in core Mormon teachings tend to be able to make Mormonism work for them.
This gave me pause. Where do I fall in this framework? Continue reading “Idealistic, Cynical, and Pragmatic Mormon Feminists: Who Stays, Who Goes”
Some have said that all theology is autobiographical. Whether this is always the case or not, in my case, it is absolutely true. I came to the topic of religious mestizaje because of my own need to make sense of the fact that I fully identify as a Goddess loving person as well as a Christian-identified one. I have made reference to this before on this blog; I have admitted that even after my feminist awakening, even after coming to love and practice Goddess spirituality, even after reading all of Mary Daly’s books (some of them more than once), I have chosen to affiliate with Christianity all while also maintaining my Goddess devotion nonetheless. Therefore, Gloria Anzaldua’s understanding of mestijaze, and religious mestizaje in particular, has contributed to the ongoing revision of my religious identity.
The word mestiza or mestizo is born of the incarnation of hybridity and diversity.[1] Historically mestizaje is the new hybrid race, a reference to Mexicans who are the mixed people born of Indian and Spanish blood in the 16th century.[2] The Spanish invaded the land now called Mexico, and in partnership with rival tribes, conquered the Aztec people. Oscar Garcia-Johnson, in his book A Mestiza Community of the Spirit, states that mestizaje “represents a hub of dehumanizing stories and self-empowering templates.”[3] Thus, there is an inherent violence implied in mestizaje as the word originated, and this violence is also implied in my Goddess Loving Christian mestizaje. Christianity has been the cause of much harm and dehumanizing violence, especially in its relationship to women, and really is in need of transformation and self-empowering templates. The origin of mestizaje implies the violence of one tradition or people dominating and suppressing another and the reality that new life, a new people and tradition, find a way nonetheless; I think this is part of what leads to my religious mestizaje. The new ‘way’ that I have found has taken form in a Goddess Loving Christian religious practice that reflects the concrete embodied reality of my experience – a religious practice that is always negotiated with a community of people. .
This post is written in conjunction with the Feminist Ethics Course Dialogue project sponsored by Claremont School of Theology in the Claremont Lincoln University Consortium, Claremont Graduate University, and directed by Grace Yia-Hei Kao.
Gilligan’s In a Different Voice was a revelation when I discovered it three years ago. At the time I was struggling within my Mormon tradition, wondering if I could continue to remain practicing when doing so, in a sense, perpetuated an institution which I saw as limiting women’s opportunities. Many of my Mormon feminist friends had made the painful decision to leave. They left on principle, as they could no longer lend their support to an institution which promoted teachings which violated their core beliefs in men’s and women’s equality. They were willing to face the pain and disappointment their families would undoubtedly experience, as well as possible ostracism.
I understood and supported my friends’ choices to leave. However, I knew I wasn’t ready to make that choice. Continue reading “Gilligan’s Framework and its Implications: The Benefits and Dangers in my Mormon Context by Caroline Kline”
A founding mother of the study of women and religion and feminist thealogy, Carol has been active in social justice, anti-war, feminist, anti-nuclear, and environmental causes for many years. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely used anthologiesWomanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.
In my last blog I wrote that the image of God as a dominating other who enforces his will through violence–found in the Bible and in the Christian tradition up to the present day–is one of the reasons I do not choose to work within the Christian tradition. To be fair, there is another image of God in Christian tradition that I continue to embrace. “Love divine, all loves excelling” is the opening line of a well-known hymn by Charles Wesley. Charles Hartshorne invoked these words and by implication the melody with which they are sung as expressing the feelings at the heart of the understanding of God that he wrote about in The Divine Relativity.
Love divine, all loves excelling also expresses my understanding of Goddess or as I sometimes write Goddess/God. Though I am no longer a Christian, but rather an earth-based Goddess feminist, I freely admit that I learned about the love of God while singing in Christian churches. Hartshorne wrote that he knew the love of God best through the love of his own mother, and I can say that this is true for me as well. My mother was not perfect, and she did not understand why I wanted to go to graduate school, my feminism, or my adult political views, but I never doubted her love or my grandmothers’ love for me. (I count myself lucky. I know others did not have this experience.) Like Hartshorne, I also learned about the love of God through the world that I always understood to be God’s body. Running in fields and hills, swimming in the sea, standing under redwood trees, and encountering peacocks in my grandmother’s garden, I felt connected to a power greater than myself. Continue reading “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling By Carol P. Christ”
The following is a guest post written by Karen Torjesen, Ph.D., Margo L. Goldsmith Professor of Women’s Studies in Religion at Claremont Graduate University where she has helped establish graduate programs in Women’s Studies in Religion and Applied Women’s Studies. For ten years she served as Dean of the School of Religion, partnering with religious communities to create programs in comparative religion. She has published extensively on women, gender and sexuality within Christianity.
Originally posted at Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-torjesen/torjesen-women-image-of-god_b_893367.html
Last month I preached — in South Africa — in Johannesburg — in a township — in a Pentecostal church. In Pentecostal worship, preaching is giving your testimony. So how do I translate my life into a testimony, find the threads that connect to their experience, speak in a spiritual vocabulary to these human needs, and be honest about the depths of my unknowing? I am an American academic, a historian of the early church, a professor of Women’s Studies. Where would I find the points of connection?
I could speak of my own struggling with what it meant to be a woman — inferior, valued less, silenced, excluded, constrained, exhorted to be submissive–and my discovery of the American women’s movement. However, for the context of African Christianities, where traditional tribal patriarchies merged with colonial European patriarchies, there would be little resonance. I would need an alternate framework to human rights feminism. Western notions of equality, individualism, and rights have little resonance in cultures with a strong sense of kinship and communal identity and of responsibilities based on age and gender rather than rights based on citizenship. Continue reading “Women Created in the Image of God By Karen Torjesen”
Sometimes it is difficult to make sense of the peculiar paths our religious lives take, much more so to make sense of one another’s paths which can be so different from our own.
I was raised in a Mexican American family and grew up in Los Angeles, California(my parents say I was “made in Mexico, assembled in the U.S.”). And I grew up going to Spanish-speaking Catholic mass. I have often said that the God I know in Spanish is so different from the God I came to know in English when I began to roam Protestant circles in undergrad. Growing up, the Spanish speaking God I knew was as assumed and as basic as the air that kept us alive: always available and always with us in the good, the bad, and the ugly. God was a constant without which we could not exist. But in undergrad, my Protestant friends seemed to have a completely different understanding of God than the one I had grown up with. Theirs was a God that required obedience, a God of very specific expectations, and a jealous God at that! It was a very confusing time for me and my engagement with Christianity wavered.
Then in graduate school, eight years after undergrad, something happened that revolutionized my life – I discovered radical feminists! As ironic as this might seem, radical feminists provided me with a way to make sense of Christianity. They gave me a language and the tools to both critique and engage Christianity and the church. I have often said that if it wasn’t for Mary Daly, I wouldn’t be able to call myself a Christian(!). Continue reading “Be-ing in the Church By Xochitl Alvizo”
Mormon feminists struggle with patriarchy on (at least) two levels. First, since women are excluded from priesthood ordination, women have very few opportunities to rise in Mormon leadership. They can participate as leaders (under the male bishop’s jurisdiction) on a congregational level, but beyond that, the opportunities are very slim. Second, Mormon feminists struggle with patriarchy on the home front. Because all Mormon men are ordained as priests, Mormon wives have not just a husband in the home, but also a priesthood leader. They are instructed to support and sustain their husbands in the home, as he presides over them and the family.
In the world of Mormon feminism, the shorthand term we use to designate this issue of patriarchy in the home is ‘presiding.’ The oft discussed debate among Mormons is how this concept of ‘presiding’ can be compatible with other injunctions by our leaders to act as ‘equal partners’ with our spouses. It was only recently that I realized that this debate is not only alive and well in the Mormon community, but also in the Christian community at large, though the terms they often use are ‘male headship’ vs. ‘equal regard.’ Continue reading “Presiding: Its History Within My Marriage By Caroline Kline”
I try to avoid watching too much television – it feels like there are so many other things I should be focused on; but I was quite engrossed in the show Big Love during its run on HBO. Its concluding season was by far my favorite because of its focus on women and faith. In one of the final episodes the character Barbara Hendrickson struggled with whether or not to be baptized into a new church and it was a struggle I identified with greatly. Although her faith had changed and she no longer felt connected to the doctrine of her previous church, moving on to a new community that fit her beliefs meant abandoning her family.
I was raised in a very traditional Italian/Sicilian Roman Catholic household, attended Catholic schools, and was married in the Catholic Church. As a child, being Catholic offered me a sense of pride; however growing up I began to question the Church as I recognized the many ways it is abusive to women. Becoming a graduate student of religion led me on a roller coaster journey that allowed me to further explore my religious identity. Continue reading “In Search of My Religious Identity By Gina Messina-Dysert”
Feminism and Religion 