Feminism – Page 90 – Feminism and Religion

Blindness, Lethargy, and White Supremacy by Marcia Mount Shoop

With Black History Month fast approaching, it is fitting to investigate the latest call to get rid of it.

This investigation may seem futile to some feminists/womanists since we know denials of racism are part of life in white supremacy patriarchy. As a feminist theologian, however, I’ve got nothing in my tool kit if I lose my hope for redemption and transformation. The following is my attempt to not give up on the possibility that white supremacy culture can be dismantled.

White patriarchy has all kinds of messengers of its narrative—not just white men of privilege, but anyone who has internalized the muscle twitches of white supremacy. This time, the messenger is Stacey Dash, an African-American actress and contributor to Fox. Ms. Dash chastised Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith for saying they will boycott the Oscar awards because of the all-white list of nominees. She called their protest “ludicrous.” She added that if we want to end segregation, we need to “get rid of BET and Black History Month.” oscars image

Having a person of color deny the existence of systemic racism is a big win for white supremacy patriarchy. A person of color as the carrier of white supremacy culture is a Trojan Horse full of social capital for those in power—enough to fool scores of people into thinking they are justified in their misconceptions about race. Dash’s protest of the protest comforts everyone who is tired of all the “whining” and “anti-white” rhetoric they hear in the #blacklivesmatter movement.

A brief scroll down through #OscarsStillSoWhite encapsulates white supremacy apologetics rhetoric. Actress Charlotte Rampling suggests that Black actors just weren’t good enough to make it. Actor Michael Caine asks Black actors to “be patient.” Others say that since Denzel Washington won two Academy Awards the Oscars can’t be racist. And there are several using the tired old accusation of “reverse racism.”

All the bases of white defensiveness are covered: asserting the inferiority of people of color, the benevolent call to be patient, the case in point of the person of color who “made it,” and the accusation of Black on white “racism.” The tenacity of this defensiveness is remarkable. And it is time for its demise.

Why can’t the race discussion in the United States break through this moral inertia? I believe it is because of the two archenemies of healing and justice: moral lethargy and willful blindness.

No matter how many times white patriarchy’s apologists want to accuse people of color of “reverse racism,” they cannot alter the very nature of racism itself. Racism is only racism when it comes with the power of systems, institutions, cultures, and a societal pay off. Racism is a system of privilege based on race in which there is power to create disadvantage with things like access to power, social capital, and accumulation of resources.

If people of color think too many white people and not enough Black people have access to the social capital of the Academy Awards, that is not racism. That is an observation. There is no payoff to this observation. There is no power imbalance solidified. There is no oppression created. If people of color even just don’t like white people, that is not racism. That may be a racialized bias, but it is not racism.

All biases based on race do not equal racism. Some of those biases are a result of racism. But not all of them are expressions of racism. Racism is, at its core, about power: the power to create and entrench advantage and disadvantage. And many of the subtleties of systemic racism and racialized biases carry with them the power to entrench disadvantage for people of color and advantage for people who are identified as white.

It is moral lethargy and willful blindness that keep so much of American culture from seeing the contours of racism and its resulting racialized disadvantage.

Moral lethargy is failing to listen to the cues of our conscience when racism is pointed out. Defensiveness is the way moral lethargy gets its way. If you push back against the narrative you don’t want to hear with enough denial, then you don’t have to change. Moral inertia is like eating too much sugar—at first, you are hyped up on indignation, and then you slump back into a poorly nourished fog of familiar ethical fatigue.

Willfull blindness takes more effort to maintain itself. It requires a counter narrative to the one we choose not to see. And so, it gets filled up with rights and wrongs, shaming and blaming, and all sorts of other value judgments and norms that are seen as “right,” “good,” and “common sense.” This willful blindness then can actively NOT see racism, because it sees all the ways people of color are, themselves, the problem. And every day, this willful blindness is infused with more reasons not to see what we need to see because of what we think we see all around us.

If it sounds circular, it is because it is.

Willful blindness is a tightly wound system of millions of tiny little choices not to see what is right in front of our eyes because of what we’ve trained our eyes to see.

Racism depends on moral lethargy and willful blindness from all kinds of well-meaning people. These habits are racism’s lifeblood. Overt racism is just the gravy. The everydayness of moral lethargy and willful blindness do the heavy lifting to keep the systems of racism working smoothly.

These should be two maladies that the academy and the church could cure. Both of these institutions claim to be all about giving sight and light and cultivating moral courage and fortitude in human beings. But unfortunately these institutions embody the same habits we so desperately need them to disrupt.

Would that 2016 be a year for consciences to be elevated and eyes to be opened. And maybe it could be the year of white defensiveness’s demise.

Black History Month can’t get here soon enough.

Marcia Mount Shoop is an author, theologian, and minister. Her newest book, released from Cascade Books in October 2015, is A Body Broken, A Body Betrayed: Race, Memory, and Eucharist in White-Dominant Churches, co-authored with Mary McClintock Fulkerson. Marcia is also the author of Let the Bones Dance: Embodiment and the Body of Christ (WJKP, 2010) and Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs of Apocalypse: Lifting the Veil on Big-Time Sports (Cascade, 2014). Find out more at www.marciamountshoop.com

Forgiveness is a choice by Vibha Shetiya

Vibah Someone I dearly love recently lent me a very sensible piece of advice: “You should forgive.” I know he resorted to these words out of love because he didn’t like seeing me in pain, a sentiment for which I was and remain grateful. I also know he wasn’t judging me when he brought it up, nor was he pressuring me into doing something I wasn’t ready for.

I truly understand how forgiving someone who has deeply hurt you can set you on the path to freedom. In the sense that forgiveness can loosen the chains that bind you to the past, the anger, the deep sense of betrayal, helping you learn to live again; that forgiveness is not so much about the other person but about the self. I have watched shows in which victims of horrific crimes or their family members have chosen to forgive, not always out of a sense of human bonding towards the aggressor, but because they could not live with the debilitating anger and hatred festering inside, and so chose to forgive to set themselves free. Continue reading “Forgiveness is a *choice* by Vibha Shetiya”

Reconstructions of the Past 6: Hafsa bint Sirin (My Story of Her Life 1) by Laury Silvers

silvers-bio-pic-frblog - Version 2 In this sixth reflection on the life of Hafsa bint Sirin and in blogs to follow, I will be emphasizing that her much praised great piety was not incompatible with social engagement, or even sometimes a good dose of family drama.

Hafsa bint Sirin was the oldest child of freed slaves. Her parents had been taken as captives and most likely distributed as war spoils to the Prophet’s companions, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq and Anas b. Malik. Because her parents had been enslaved by such significant companions, and after their release became clients and treated like foster family, certain social advantages were open to her that might not have been for a free woman of no connection.

Let me pause here to say that there is no point in pretending, as some do, that slavery in Islam meant that the people they enslaved or clients were “like family,” in any way that makes sense to us now. The wealth of legal injunctions discussing the rights an owner had over those they enslaved makes the point. Likewise, innumerable calls to be good to enslaved people in piety literature demonstrates just how often the free had to be reminded to treat those they enslaved well. Furthermore, conversion to Islam did not mean that enslaved people were set free. I make this point because I do not want the successful story of Hafsa’s family to give the impression that Muslims who enslaved others were somehow less ethically culpable than slave owners in the Americas, nor do I want to minimize the Hafsa’s own purchase of a woman for household labour (who goes unnamed yet is also a transmitter of her story). I look at Hafsa’s story to demonstrate how women’s histories were transformed and worked for elite male purposes, this includes the histories of those who were enslaved. I address this aspect of pious women’s history in my piece on pious and mystic women in The Cambridge Companion to Sufism.

It is often said that with the coming of Islam Arab tribal social hierarchies were upended. While this is true to some degree, in practice, the social levelling that came with Islam was more of a redistribution of status than the elimination of it. Social status came in many modes and often hand in hand with great piety and great poverty. Those who sacrificed everything to join Muhammad early on and fought alongside him had the greatest rank. Those physically nearest to him or his companions had the greatest opportunity to learn about him and transmit his teachings. So even a slave of a household of one of the Prophet’s Companions would have been able to establish higher social connections based on mere proximity to these elites than a wealthy free man who lived in outside Medina.

First as enslaved servants and then clients of close companions of the Prophet, Hafsa’s parents, Sirin and Safiyya, were able to claim such connections and Sirin was eager to make use of them. Sirin had run a coppersmith business before his enslavement. He seems to have been eager to reclaim his lost status. Safiyya was the perfect wife in this regard. She was an appropriate match as a former slave, but she would also have raised him in status through her clientage relationship to the Prophet’s best friend and father-in-law, the first caliph of the Muslim community, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq. Throughout her life, Hafsa’s mother enjoyed relationships with the extended family of Abu Bakr as well as the Prophet’s wives. She was so well-esteemed, it is said that when she died three of Muhammad’s wives laid her out along with other notable companions.

The depiction of Sirin’s wedding to Safiyya bears the mark of a lavish and somewhat awkward event. He is said to have held a celebration (walima) for seven days, most likely paid for by Anas b. Malik, which would have been ostentatious by prophetic standards. Anas was a highly regarded companion, a transmitter of many hadith, but seems to have a sense of wealth that was out of keeping with some other companions of the Prophet. It is reported that Anas demanded 40,000 dirhams or more from Sirin for his freedom. Sirin could hardly afford this. He was forced to go to ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab, Muhammad’s close friend and the third caliph, for help facilitating his release. At the wedding party, the esteemed companion Ubayy b. Kaʿb stopped by, bringing other companions with him and praying for the couple. Ubayy b. Kaʿb was an early companion of the Prophet, one of his scribes and the possessor of a personal copy of the Qur’an. But notably Ubayy refused to eat at the celebration, saying he was fasting, which would have been considered a slight directed at Anas.

Despite this implied criticism, Anas held great status and was able to give Sirin and his spiritually and intellectually precocious children the best opportunities for success. Through her father and mother’s connections, Hafsa, her two sisters Umm Sulaym and Karima, and her brothers Muhammad and Yahya–not to mention her half-siblings, some of whom also transmitted hadith–would have grown up in the deeply intertwined social, scholarly, and devotional circles of the Companions and Followers in Medina and Basra. Because her family had access to these elite social circles, Hafsa had the opportunity to memorize the Qur’an by the age of twelve as well as sit with companions such as Umm ʿAtiyya, Abu al-ʿAliya, and Salman b. ʿAmir from whom she transmits hadith. Ultimately, she became known as a reliable scholar and a woman of great piety and was taken seriously in influential circles (as we saw when she argued the legal status of women’s right to pray the ʿeid prayer at the mosque).

Later Anas contracted a second marriage for Sirin to one of his former slaves, then, again decades later, to one of his nieces as a third or fourth wife, thus elevating Sirin from client to family. Given Sirin’s multiple marriages, Hafsa grew up around many siblings in what was likely to have been a bustling compound of rooms. Her father tried to make space for his children’s devotional needs. It is said that he built separate prayer spaces of wooden planks for her, Muhammad, and Yahya. But such quiet spaces devoted to piety did not keep Hafsa from family drama arising from Sirin’s marriages.

When Anas offered Sirin his niece in marriage, Hafsa was supportive of the match despite her mother’s clear objection. Hafsa may very well have accepted the multiple marriages. She may have felt some advantage to them given her close relationships with her siblings and the social ties it further afforded them. Marriage was primarily a social arrangement for families, not solely a matter of legitimating desire or love. Or she may simply be portrayed this way to promote what male transmitters would consider a proper pious response highlighted against that of her mother. Whichever the case, it is reported that when given the news, she congratulated her father for a tie that would raise them from a clientage relationship to family with Anas. But when Hafsa delivered the news to her mother, Safiyyah insulted Hafsa for supporting her father and retorted, “Tell your father, ‘May you be distant from God!”’

To be continued…

(Accounts are taken from Ibn Saʿd’s Tabaqat al-kubra, her transmissions of hadith, and Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa). Thanks goes to Yasmin Amin for clearing up a few matters, including the nature of Safiyya’s message to Hafsa’s father [literally, may God keep you young, but meaning, may you be delayed in meeting God and so distant from God]).

Laury Silvers is a North American Muslim novelist, retired academic and activist. She is a visiting research fellow at the University of Toronto for the Department for the Study of Religion. Her historical mystery series, The Lover: A Sufi Mystery, is available on Amazon (and Ingram for bookstores). Her non-fiction work centres on Sufism in Early Islam, as well as women’s religious authority and theological concerns in North American Islam. See her website for more on her fiction and non-fiction work.

The Sacred Feminine or Goddess Feminism? by Carol P. Christ

In recent y Carol Molivos by Andrea Sarris 2 ears “the Sacred Feminine” has become interchangeable with (for some) and preferable to (for others) “Goddess” and “Goddess feminism.” The terms Goddess and feminism, it is sometimes argued, raise hackles: Is Goddess to replace God? And if so why? Does feminism imply an aggressive stance? And if so, against whom or what?

In contrast, the term “sacred feminine” (with or without caps) feels warm and fuzzy, implying love, care, and concern without invoking the G word or even the M(other) word–about which some people have mixed feelings. Advocates of the sacred feminine stand against no one, for men have their “sacred feminine” sides, while women have their “sacred masculine” sides as well.

Nothing lost, and much to be gained. Right? Wrong.

Perseus with the Head of Medusa: Sacred Masculine? — Perseus with the Head of Medusa: Sacred Masculine and Sacred Feminine?

When Goddess feminism emerged onto the scene early in the feminist movement, it had a political edge. It was about women affirming, as Meg Christian crooned in “Ode to a Gym Teacher,” that “being female means you still can be strong.” Goddess feminism arose in clear opposition to patriarchy and patriarchal religions. It was born of an explicit critique of societies organized around male domination, violence, and war; and of the male God or Gods of patriarchal religions as justifying domination, violence, and war. In this context, “the sacred masculine” was not understood to be a neutral or positive concept. To the contrary, the male Gods of patriarchy were understood to be at the center of symbol systems that justify domination.

The terms “the masculine” and “the feminine” were floating around and sometimes evoked in early feminist discussions, but when examined more closely, they were rejected by most feminists as mired in sex role stereotypes. The psychologist Carl Jung, for example, associated the masculine with the ego and rationality and the feminine with the unconscious. True, he argued that modern western society had developed too far in the direction of the masculine and needed a fresh infusion of the feminine in order to achieve “wholeness.” This sounded good, but when feminists looked further, they discovered that Jung and his followers harbored a fear of the uncontrolled feminine.

Jungians consider the unconscious to be the repository of undisciplined desires, fears, and aggressive feelings that require the rational control of the ego. Though strong and intelligent women were among Jung’s most important followers, Jung and his male companions retained a fear of independent women, speaking of women who developed their rational sides fully enough to argue with men and male authorities as “animus-ridden,” a term not meant as a compliment.

Hades Abducting Persephone: Marriage of Sacred Masculine and Sacred Feminine?

Jungians, following Erich Neumann, understand the progress of history through an evolutionary model in which humanity began in a matriarchal stage in which the unconscious reigned. This period of culture, which spawned the image of the Great and Terrible Mother, was primitive and irrational. Matriarchy was naturally superseded by patriarchy, in which the individual, the ego, and rationality emerged. In the patriarchal stage of culture, male Gods and heroes were the primary symbols, and rationality reigned supreme.

The patriarchal stage of culture had its limitations, which were revealed in the two World Wars of the twentieth century and the nuclear and environmental crises that followed. Rational man, Jungians argued, had come to the point where he needed to reconnect with his feminine side. The unconscious feminine was now understood to be a nurturing matrix that included the body, nature, and feeling, from which rational man should and could never fully separate himself.

The great archaeologist Marija Gimbutas also spoke of two cultures within Europe, an earlier matrifocal one she called Old Europe and a later patriarchal one. The Jungian Joseph Campbell endorsed Gimbutas’ work, leading some to assume that Gimbutas and Jungians hold similar theories of human history. In fact they do not: Gimbutas did not subscribe to an evolutionary theory of culture. She would never have said that the earlier matrifocal culture “had to be superseded” by the later patriarchal culture “in order for civilization to advance.” The clear conclusion to be drawn from Gimbutas’ work is that the patriarchal culture was in almost every way inferior to the one it replaced.

For Gimbutas, the agricultural societies of Neolithic Old Europe were peaceful, egalitarian, sedentary, highly artistic, matrifocal and probably matrilineal, worshiping the Goddess as the powers of birth, death, and regeneration. These societies did not evolve into a higher stage of culture, but were violently overthrown by Indo-European invaders. The culture the Indo-Europeans introduced into Europe was nomadic, patriarchal, patrilineal, warlike, horse-riding, not artistic, worshiping the shining Gods of the sun as reflected in their bronze weapons. Gimbutas did not look forward to a new “marriage” of matrifocal and patriarchal cultures. Rather she hoped for the re-emergence of the values of the earlier culture. Her theories had a critical edge: she did not approve of cultures organized around domination, violence, and war.

This critical edge is exactly what is lost when we begin to substitute the terms “sacred feminine” for “the Goddess” or “Goddess feminism” and “sacred masculine” for “patriarchy” and “patriarchal Gods.” When we allege that we all have our “masculine and feminine sides,” and that it is important “to reunite the masculine and the feminine,” it is easy to forget that in our history, the so-called sacred masculine has been associated with domination, violence, and war.

If we hope to create societies without domination, violence, and war, then we must transform the distorted images of masculinity and femininity that have been developed in patriarchy. We must insist that domination, violence, and war are no more part of masculinity or male nature than passivity and lack of consciousness are part of femininity or female nature. It may feel good to speak of reuniting the masculine and the feminine, but feeling good will not help us to transform cultures built on domination, violence, and war.

Carol P. Christ is author or editor of eight books in Women and Religion and is one of the Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement. She leads the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete in Spring and Fall: Early Bird Special until February 15. Follow Carol on Twitter @CarolP.Christ, Facebook Goddess Pilgrimage, and Facebook Carol P. Christ. Photo of Carol by Andrea Sarris.

A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess will be published by Far Press in the spring of 2016. A journey from despair to the joy of life.

Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology with Judith Plaskow will be published by Fortress Press in June 2016. Exploring the connections of theology and autobiography and alternatives to the transcendent, omnipotent male God.

But…They’re Just Animals by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson When I teach my Human Spirituality course to college students, I include a section on factory farming. Merriam-Webster defines factory farming as “a large industrialized farm; especially: a farm on which large numbers of livestock are raised indoors in conditions intended to maximize production at minimal cost.”

This sterile definition does not reflect the barbaric conditions in which chickens, pigs, cows, and sheep are raised in order to “maximize production at minimal cost.” For example, chickens are kept in cages with slanted floors, their beaks removed without anesthesia, and artificial lights kept on most of the day in order to increase egg production. Sows are kept immobile in metal cages, unable to nurse their young except through the slats of those metal cages. Male calves are taken away from their mothers at birth and placed in small cages to become veal after a few months. Male chicks, having no “value” in a factory farm setting, are placed on a conveyor belt that leads to being “ground up” alive. I’ve only scratched the surface of the horrors. Continue reading “But…They’re Just Animals by Esther Nelson”

The Right to Choose is the Right to Our Lives by Marie Cartier

Friday, January 22^ndmarks the 43^rd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 which provided all women nationwide, for the first time, the right to get a legal abortion for any reason–the right to choose. There are celebrations, and actions for visibility planned throughout the nation. Some of them are listed on the Planned Parenthood website.

On this anniversary, the stakes for women’s access to legal abortion are higher than ever. Politicians threaten to further restrict access and the U.S. Supreme Court soon will hear the biggest abortion case in decades. What was life was like for women before legal abortion–and what could it again become? Politicians threaten to continue to take women’s health backwards. Continue reading “The Right to Choose is the Right to Our Lives by Marie Cartier”

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”

Four Tips for New Students in Seminary By Grace Yia-Hei Kao

Yesterday, the institution at which I work hosted an Orientation for some 50 new students who will begin their graduate theological education imminently. I was asked to provide an informal talk to a smaller group of them about student success. What follows below are the revised and expanded tips I made for how to get the most out of their degree programs, which may or may not have ready application outside of the seminary context (or graduate school in religion) for which they were designed.