Feminism and Religion – Page 86 – Feminism and Religion

Islamophobia is Gender Violence and a Feminist Issue

The case of Larycia Hawkins, an African-American Christian, Associate Professor of political science at Wheaton College in the United States, who published a photo on Christmas day on Facebook wearing a headscarf in solidarity with Muslim women victims of Islamophobia, has raised a significant controversy about whether non-muslim women wearing the hiyab is useful for Muslim women and our feminists struggle in Islam or not. Beyond the debate about veils, the heated discussion that followed reminds us that Islamophobic violence against Muslim women is a gender matter that must be addressed not only by Islamic feminists, but also by all decolonial feminists.

According to Itzea Goicolea Amiano, a Spanish researcher, in her work “Feminismo y Piedad” (“Feminism and Piety”):

Gender Islamophobia is a term that refers to the xenophobic and Islamophobic attitudes mixed with sexist and misogynist discourses that oppress, discriminate and targets with a negative preference for Muslim women more than muslim men …

Continue reading “Islamophobia is Gender Violence and a Feminist Issue”

Fear and Loathing in Discussions of Female Power in the Academy by Carol P. Christ

Carol Molivos by Andrea Sarris 2 No matter how carefully developed they are, theories of female power in pre-patriarchal societies are dismissed in academic circles as “romantic fantasies” of a “golden age” based in “emotional longings” with “no basis in fact.” I was reminded of this while reviewing three books about the Goddess last week.

In one of the books, the co-authors, who define themselves as feminists, summarily dismiss theories about the origins of Goddess worship in pre-patriarchal prehistory. In another, the author traces the origin of certain Goddess stories and symbols found in recent folklore back to the beginnings of agriculture. Inexplicably, she stops there, not even mentioning the theory that women invented agriculture. Considering that possibility might have suggested that the symbols and stories the she was investigating were developed by women as part of rituals connected to the agricultural cycle. To ask these questions would have raised a further one: the question of female power in prehistory. And this it seems is a question that cannot be asked. This question was addressed in the third (very scholarly) book, which I fear will simply be ignored. Continue reading “Fear and Loathing in Discussions of Female Power in the Academy by Carol P. Christ”

Wisdom Fiction (Part 2) by Elise M. Edwards

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

In my previous two posts, I’ve discussed the wisdom that can be found in black women’s literature. Continuing this series, I’m sharing a statement from the most well-known novel written by Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston was an American novelist, folklorist, anthropologist, and cultural critic whose work was first published in the 1920s-1940s. Their Eyes Were Watching God was published in 1937 and has since been reissued and adapted into film.

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” This quote is one that has circled around my mind every New Year and every birthday for many years. These times of year are when I’m likely to reflect on the previous year and wonder what has come from it.

Continue reading “Wisdom Fiction (Part 2) by Elise M. Edwards”

Releasing Artemis by Carol P. Christ

As I was writing th carol molivos with view 1 is story, my Word program froze several times, and I lost what I had written. This has never happened before. The fifth time, it occurred to me that Artemis was not happy with the way I was telling the story of her life and death. I lit a candle and prayed for her spirit to fly free like the gulls over the sea that I could see out my window and began again. The words in italic are the ones she added.

Yesterday morning I heard the church bells tolling a plaintive, “dong, dong, dong,” as they do when someone dies. Quite a few people die in our village in winter, and I did not wonder who it might be. You didn’t think of me? A few hours later, I saw the death notice on a telephone pole next to my car. My friend and neighbor Artemis died. The words “Theos voithos,” “with the help of God,” came immediately to my mind. Continue reading “Releasing Artemis by Carol P. Christ”

Coloring Holy Women by Angela Yarber

Coloring is a fast growing trend among over-stressed adults. “Soothing coloring pages” are a top Google search item. There are coloring books featuring mandalas, garden scenes, inspirational quotes, and even curse words written in fancy calligraphy sprouting branches, flowers, and swirls eager to be illuminated with colored pencils toted by hipsters, young professionals, retirees, clergy, and other adults searching for artistic ways to tap their creative spirit and sooth their jangled nerves. Articles—popular and academic—whose authors range from psychologist to spiritual director purport the power of coloring to calm anxiety, relieve stress, and provide a creative and spiritual outlet. Is this a feminist issue? I’d say so.

There are, indeed, feminist coloring books and goddess coloring books, though I’ve seen very little that fuses together both feminism and religion. In order to fill this gap, while also seeking to expand my own creative expression, I have finally completed the drawings for my forthcoming Holy Women Icons Contemplative Coloring Book. Continue reading “Coloring Holy Women by Angela Yarber”

To Know Her Is to Love Her by Joyce Zonana

“As my mother passed from this life, she was surrounded by a great matrix of love. As she died I began to understand that I too am surrounded by love and always have been. This knowledge is a great mystery.”— Carol P. Christ, A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess (forthcoming, FAR Press, 2016)
Joyce Zonana head shot

It has taken me 66 years—my entire life—to learn to love my mother, and, even more importantly, to accept her love for me.

When I was younger, I could not distinguish that love from control, and I felt smothered by her constant attention, care, and what I took to be criticism. I felt overwhelmed, stifled. I resisted, fighting to assert my autonomy and freedom, my difference. Our relationship become one of painful, sometimes ugly conflict, extending well beyond my adolescence and into my adulthood. For too many years, it was almost impossible for me to be in the same room with her.

Today, I happily sit on the floor at her feet, holding her hand, basking in the glow of her love, offering what I can of my own. Continue reading “To Know Her Is to Love Her by Joyce Zonana”

The First Performance of Antigone: Phaenarete’s View by Stuart Dean

Fragment of an Ancient Greek Statue (Acropolis Museum, Athens)

The first performance of the play Antigone was in Athens around 440 BCE. It is possible that Phaenarete, the mother of Socrates, was in the audience. By then she was certainly practicing medicine and perhaps had been doing so for a decade or more. Given the nature of her practice she would have had any number of connections that might have led to an invitation to attend (including from Sophocles himself, who was roughly the same age as she was and who is known to have been married and to have had children).

The much debated issue over whether Athenian women were even allowed to attend theatrical performances should not turn attention away from the fact that even if Phaenarete did not actually view the performance of Antigone she surely would have had a ‘view’ about it. The basic elements of what today seems merely the myth on which it is based but which, for her, was effectively history (and thus concerned with what a woman actually said and did) would have been known to her quite apart from the play itself. Phaenarete’s interest particularly in Antigone would have derived from its relationship of burial to the womb–literally and symbolically–and how that could readily be associated with her medical practice. Continue reading “The First Performance of Antigone: Phaenarete’s View by Stuart Dean”

In Dreamtime with the Ancestors by Carol P. Christ

Carol Molivos by Andrea Sarris 2 The last few days I have been living in dreamtime with my Swedish ancestors, most especially with my great-great-grandmother Ingrid, about whom I have learned a great deal over the past year. Through a distant cousin Thomas Sievertsson, who has been researching the part of Sweden from which she came, I have discovered details about the kind of life she lived in the old country that few descendants of immigrants are lucky enough to know. Here are a few of them. Continue reading “In Dreamtime with the Ancestors by Carol P. Christ”

Wifehood Redefined: The Twentieth Century Sita by Vibha Shetiya

In 2003, I picked up a collection of essays on little known Ramayanas. Buried within was a poem by Pathabhi Rama Reddy. Pathabhi, a rebel of Telugu literature, defied not just conventional rules of grammar but also those of popular thinking, best exemplified by his poem, “Sita,” the subject of this post.[1]

Rama’s harsh treatment of Sita in the Ramayana epic when he first doubts her purity, compelling her to undergo a trial-by-fire, and then banishing her despite the fact that she had proved her loyalty to him, has attracted criticism from all quarters – how could the “perfect man” behave so callously towards his own wife who had been Ravana’s helpless victim? The fluidity of the story has ensured a visibility for Sita, no doubt. Continue reading “Wifehood Redefined: The Twentieth Century Sita by Vibha Shetiya”

Stealing the Yarn: Jewish Women and the Art of Feminist Dreaming (Part 2) by Jill Hammer

Jill Hammer In my last post, I discussed the uses of dreamwork for Jewish women who are uncovering their own spiritual language. The protagonists of recorded Jewish dreams, from Joseph to the dream interpreters of the Talmud to the kabbalists, tend to be male. Yet there is a legacy of Jewish women dreaming, occasionally documented, and painstakingly uncovered by researchers. This hidden history offers us resources for understanding the women of the past, and for connecting to women in the present.

The Roman poet Juvenal (2nd. cent. CE) mocks a poor Jewish woman of his time for sitting under a tree and telling the meaning of dreams, calling her “high priestess with a tree as temple.” Much later in history, Hayyim Vital, the disciple of master kabbalist Isaac Luria, records in his diary that Jewish women in the city of Sfat (Jewish holy city in Galilee known as a center for Kabbalah) in the early 17th century were actively engaged (along with men) in recording, sharing, and interpreting dreams. Vital mainly records women’s dreams when the women dream about him! He saves these dreams from the dustbin of history, ironically, because he sees the dreams as prophecies of his greatness.

For example, Vital records the dream of a friend and patron, Rachel Aberlin. In the dream, Aberlin watches Vital eat a feast of vegetables at a table full of sacred books. Behind Vital, a fire rages, yet does not consume the pile of straw in which it burns. When Aberlin shares the dream, Vital understands this dream to be a manifestation of a biblical verse: “The house of Jacob shall be fire, and the house of Joseph flame, but the house of Esau shall be straw” (Obadiah 1:18). Aberlin, however, responds to Vital’s interpretation: “You quote me the words as they are written, but I see them as a reality.” (Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism, p. 106ff).

Vital sees the dream’s fire as his own spiritual fire, witnessed by Aberlin. Yet we might read the dream differently. In our dream of Aberlin’s dream, we might imagine that Aberlin’s dream encodes her experience of watching Vital consume the nourishment of sacred books, which she, as a woman, is denied. Yet, the dream suggests, the fire of revelation is behind Vital, eluding him. Within the dream and in waking life, Vital is focused on text, but Aberlin, like Moses, perceives the fire that does not consume. Aberlin, not Vital, is the prophet in the dream— and the waking Aberlin says so. Vital records the dream, without recognizing Aberlin’s implicit criticism of his way of knowing.

Continue reading “Stealing the Yarn: Jewish Women and the Art of Feminist Dreaming (Part 2) by Jill Hammer”