Foremothers – Page 2 – Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: SACRED RHYTHMS OF THE OLIVE HARVEST

This was originally posted on December 2, 2013

Olives are being harvested in the fields outside my town these days. We have been having the first rains of the season. The roads are wet and muddy, and the trees are partially shrouded in mist. The fields are spread with black plastic nets, and people are hard at work, the men hitting the trees to make the olives fall, and the women picking up the olives from the nets. The harvest will continue throughout the winter.

The olive press is busy. Cars and trucks come and go, unloading heavy bags filled with olives. These days the bags are white, made of sturdy woven plastic. In Crete this fall several of us bought canvas olive bags, hand-woven by women. These, along with baskets hand-woven by men, were still in use only a few decades ago.

olive harvest in Lesbos early 20th century by Theofilos Hajimichael

A friend who died a few years ago told me that “in the old days” there were no nets. The women and the children had to pick the olives up from the ground, often cutting their hands on thorns and stones. The nets are a Goddess-send. Between harvests, the nets are simply folded up and placed in the crotch of the tree. Here no one steals them.

In the fields where I walk some of the trees have enormous trunks. Some of them have two trunks, growing like sisters. Many of them are 300, some perhaps 500, years old. A man emerges from a field that has some particularly old trees. I ask him how old they are. “Older than I am,” he replies. “They were here before I was born. They will be here after I die.” Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: SACRED RHYTHMS OF THE OLIVE HARVEST”

SheSpeaks! Eve by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Author’s Note: I have begun a project called She Speaks! Women of the Bible Have Their Say. As part of this project, I have done five films with some very dedicated actors (friends of mine) who have dubbed themselves the SheSpeaks!Ensemble. I showed 4 of the films at the recent Yerusha Symposium. Based on the comments and reception, the project is now expanding. I am looking to create longer films that include story arcs. The first one will be of Eve. Below is the script for Eve along with the link to the video.

EVE speaks:

Why hello I don’t get visitors very often! Welcome. Come, come sit under my tree, let’s share some tea. I have the most wonderful and flavorful herbs here in my garden.

Look around at my most marvelous paradise. It is all filled with magical treasure. I’ll tell you a secret, the treasure I care for spans both the heavens and the earth. You see, we are at the place where spirit, breath and matter intersect. Where the living beings of earth and the animating forces of the divine join in harmony.

It is so hard to look at your holy book. I can’t imagine why I keep getting blamed for . . .well . . . just about everything. It’s strange that your world wants to connect me with curses as I am the giver of life. In fact, did you know that my name Eve means life. I don’t understand what has become of you, my children. It is said that I brought a curse to humanity. Do you see life as a curse? Let me tell you a bit about myself. Perhaps then you will see me differently.

Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism by Randall Fuller, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd

“As I sat there, my heart overflowed with joy at the sight of the bright circle…for I know not where to look for so much character, culture, and so much love of truth and beauty, in any other circle of women and girls” – unidentified woman from Margaret Fuller’s “Conversations” (1)

In the early 19th century, the five women of Fuller’s book — Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Mary Moody Emerson, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, and Lydia Jackson Emerson — built many of the foundations of both American feminism and the philosophical movement known as transcendentalism, among many other American “firsts.” Yet, they are almost unknown to most people today.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: What Does It Mean to Say that All White Feminists Are Racist? (Questions Posed to White Women/Myself about Our Part in the Dialogue with Women of Color)

This post was originally published on Oct. 7th, 2011

Carol P. Christ, a founding mother in the study of Women and Religion and Feminist Theo/a/logy, has been active in anti-racist, anti-poverty, anti-war, feminist, pro-gay and lesbian, anti-nuclear, and environmental causes (in that order) for many years. All of these issues have informed her teaching, her scholarship, and her politics.

The recent posting of Mary Daly’s letter to Audre Lorde on the Feminism and Religion blog is a correction of a piece of feminist history that is important in its own right and because of the way Lorde’s letter has shaped feminist discourse and politics up to the present day. Knowledge of the existence of Daly’s letter and the facts surrounding Lorde’s distortion of history has been in the public domain since the 2004 publication of Alexis DeVeaux’s Warrior Poet, but when I searched the internet for a copy of “Mary Daly’s letter to Audre Lorde” a few days ago, what came up was Lorde’s letter to Daly — not Daly’s letter to Lorde.

I often hear younger feminists say that “all white feminists” of the older generations “were racist.” Sometimes Mary Daly is mentioned. Finding the more detailed record about Mary Daly is one step in retelling the history of feminism in a more complex way.

Journey to Freedom: Harriet Tubman Still on the Move, part 2 by Maria Dintino

Part 1 appeared yesterday

Additional Developments

Although there’s a significant dearth of statues depicting real women in our country, Tubman’s image and legacy have done much to address this gap and put a serious dent in the bronze ceiling.

There are said to be at least 9 full-figure sculptures of Tubman with others in the works, along with plaques, busts, parks and museums named in her honor. Also, three commemorative coins have been released, each depicting a particular phase in Tubman’s life.

Speaking of currency, the plan to replace President Andrew Jackson’s image with that of Harriet Tubman’s on the twenty-dollar bill is still in the works. It’s an important endeavor that’s taking far too long. Annie Linskey with The Philadelphia Tribune explains:

“There has never been a Black person on the U.S. currency, nor has there been a woman on a bill in the modern era, despite repeated attempts to diversify the currency.”

Journey to Freedom: Harriet Tubman Still on the Move, part 1 by Maria Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This post is brought to you by a collaboration by FAR and Nasty Women Writers written and hosted by Maria and Theresa Dintino. This post originally appeared on their website on Feb. 20,2024. It has been updated to reflect recent events. the post is subtitled: Nasty Women Writers: Breaking the Bronze Ceiling – Statues of Real Women in Public Spaces

It’s quite fitting that the 9-foot bronze statue of Harriet Tubman, named Journey to Freedom is still on the move, as was Tubman for much of her life.

Since 2020, the statue has traveled around the country. It’s currently on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in Historic Mitcheville Freedom Park. The monument will remain on Hilton Head through April 2025 and from there be transported to Vienna, Virginia.

Sacred Secrets: The Legacy of Women’s Wisdom Across Generations by Rabbi Nadya Gross

From my earliest memories, I saw things that others didn’t see and knew things I had no business knowing. But at the time, I didn’t realize that others didn’t witness the dance of light around their bodies or the life forms at the base of trees. I didn’t know that the insights I had into people’s emotions were not universally shared. My curiosity led me to ask questions about these things… until my grandmother, Savta (Heb), took me into the kitchen (where everything important happened), closed the doors, and told me never to talk about these things with anyone except her. And so, my training began.

Savta was gifted in ways different from mine. She had grown up in a circle of women and their daughters, a circle where women educated each other, shared their unique gifts and insights, and passed down a legacy of wisdom.

The wisdom she shared with me was as ancient as the land on which we lived. We began with reverence for the Earth and all her elements—pre-patriarchal Goddess wisdom. We explored what it means to be intimately connected to all aspects of Creation, understanding that we are interdependent. Harm to a tree, an insect, or the water harms us. We learned that the respect we wish to receive from others must first be shown by us. I learned to never pick up a beautiful stone that caught my attention without first asking permission to remove it from its resting place. When harvesting fruit from one of the many trees in my grandparent’ yard, I expressed deep gratitude to the mother-tree whose body nurtured that fruit to ripeness.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Home for the Holidays

This post was originally published on Dec. 16th, 2011

Yesterday I was watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy in which George’s father said to him, “you’re not like us, you’re a surgeon.” “And,” George’s father added, “you don’t like to do the things we like to do.” It is not easy not being like your family and not liking the things they like. When my mother was alive, she was the glue that held us together. Since then, my sheer presence in the lives of my father and my brothers and their families is disruptive. No matter that I try not to make waves, I make them all the same. I do keep my mouth shut about politics and religion and feminism. Even so, the last time I was home for the holidays my father asked me to stay in a hotel because having me in the house made him nervous and uncomfortable. To be fair, how would you feel if your daughter was 6 feet tall and you weren’t, she had a PhD and you didn’t, and even if she didn’t open her mouth at all, you knew that she didn’t agree with your political views or your everyday assumption that men make the final decisions on all important matters? Or if you were my brother who does not have a college education and who feels that women and minorities and gays have taken something from him? Or if you were my Mormon brother who is trying to keep his three daughters on the straight and narrow and not on the path chosen by their aunt? On the last Christmas day I spent at my brother’s house, I did not mention any of the obvious things, but it was hard to hide being astonished by the number of presents and the amount of money spent on them, and I simply could not force myself to watch football. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Home for the Holidays”

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Forty Years and Counting: Women and Religion in the Academy

This post was originally published on Oct. 21st, 2011

Carol P. Christ is a founding mother in the study of women and religion, feminist theology, women’s spirituality, and the Goddess movement. She teaches in the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS and through Ariadne Institute offers Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.

The receipt of an invitation to the Fortieth Anniversary Celebration of the Women’s Caucus in the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature this week, takes me back to the summer of 1971. At the first meeting of Women Theologians at Alverno College (which was followed up at Grailville in succeeding years), I proposed that we form a feminist caucus in the field of religion, as had already been done by feminists in several other fields.

Since I was one of the few women at Alverno who had attended the annual meetings in the field of religion, I was delegated to call Harry Buck, then director of the AAR, to ask for space on the program. Harry, who continued to support the work of women in the field through lecture series at Wilson College and the magazine Anima which he founded, offered not only space at the meetings, but a print-out of the names and addresses of all of the members of the AAR who were not obviously male. I invited all of them to come to a feminist meeting at the AAR in Atlanta. It is hard to imagine now, but before 1971, the women who attended the AAR in any given year could probably have been counted on one hand. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Forty Years and Counting: Women and Religion in the Academy”

The Ones You Love, Poetry and Prose 1968-2024 by Harriet Ann Ellenberger (aka Harriet Desmoines), Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd

The Ones You Love, Poetry and Prose 1968-2024 is a half-century retrospective love letter from Harriet Ann Ellenberger to friends, family, and lovers; lesbian and overall feminism; lesbian feminist literature and theater; Nature; and those who have been victimized by war. Infusing the book is her overarching love of freedom, not only for herself, but for women, for humanity, and for the Earth. Harriet has been using her authorial and editorial gifts for her entire adult life to move our planet away from extinction into new ways of being, and has now collected her best writings, both prose and poetry, into a single volume. The book is both a brilliant, truthful, unglossed portrait of herself as well as a glimpse into feminism, and lesbian feminism in particular, over decades through one woman’s experience. She often notes in introductions to various pieces that she no longer completely agrees with what she wrote so long ago, but she does not edit out these views, (speaking of her “younger fiery-feminist self,” she says “I’m proud of her courage and proud of the work she undertook” (11)) which offers us a better understanding of both her own progression of thoughts and ideas as well as what issues and points of view were of concern at the time.

Of her most well-known achievement, she writes, “On July 4, 1976, the 200th anniversary of the American Revolution, Catherine Nicholson and I published the first issue of Sinister Wisdom, which has since become the longest-lived lesbian literature and arts journal in the world” (11). She explains the journal’s expansive perspective: “We exist in the interface between a death culture and the faint beginnings of a culture of — not humans — but life-lovers, a culture that embraces animals, plants, stars and those women who choose the future at the risk of their ‘sanity’ and security” (17). This is a vision she has carried with her ever since.