General – Page 267 – Feminism and Religion

Whose God is it, Anyway? by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson I do not attend church (or any “house of worship”) regularly anymore. However, one hot, humid, Sunday morning this past August, I wended my way to St. Mark’s Episcopal to hear my friend, Dale, preach. He does “pulpit supply” there (his home church) occasionally. Dale earned an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in creative writing after finishing his seminary studies. He’s written a one-man play titled “Jesus Phreak” and has performed it in churches and universities nationwide. Dale and I have been friends for a decade or so. He identifies as a Christian, but he’s not like any Christian I’ve ever known.

Church is familiar to me. I was born to Protestant, missionary parents who “served the Lord” in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after graduating from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. My parents had a “special burden” for Jews and worked to bring them to “the knowledge of Jesus Christ.” In other words, they sought to convert Jews to Christianity–not just any Christianity, but the specific Christianity my parents believed in–a literal, “fundamental” understanding of Scripture made popular by Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899) and Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921).

I was raised on church and Sunday School, attending three services every Sunday for years. Later on, as a young adult in the United States, I added Wednesday night prayer meeting, heeding a pastor’s adage: “Those who love the church come on Sunday morning, those who love the pastor come on Sunday evening, but those who love the Lord come on Wednesday night.” I did not stop my regular church attendance (non-denominational, Baptist, Presbyterian, Reformed Episcopal, and just plain Episcopal–in that order) until well into my 40s. By then, I could no longer contort myself to fit the mold “church” demanded from me. Continue reading “Whose God is it, Anyway? by Esther Nelson”

Reviewing Gender and Career Progression in Theology and Religious Studies by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

Abstract from the Study: The low proportion of women within the subject areas of Theology and Religious Studies has long been observed, and is increasingly recognised as a serious problem for staff and students. In this new study, Mathew Guest, Sonya Sharma and Robert Song chart patterns of gender imbalance among staff and students across UK Theology and Religious Studies departments, exploring why such patterns remain so persistent. Drawing on interviews with Theology and Religious Studies academics across the country, the report examines the professional life of female university staff, and makes recommendations for how universities might address the inequalities of opportunity and practice that emerge.

The Report can be found at this link: http://trs.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Gender-in-TRS-Project-Report-Final.pdf

While this report focused on UK institutions, it is an important study for this field of study and did garner feedback outside of the U.K. Some of the findings that may be of interest:

Females outnumber males at the undergraduate level in theology and religious studies (60/40). When moving to the taught post-graduate level, the proportion of female students drop to 42%, and at the post-graduate research level (Ph.D. program) another drop to 33%.
Women make up 29% of academic staff in the field of theology and religious studies. 37% amount early career academics and lecturers, 34% senior lecturers, and only 16% amount professors.
Comparing the field of theology and religious studies to other disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences reflect the same trajectory of gradual female withdrawal in tandem with academic progression. The drop-out rate seems to be more dramatic in theology and religious studies, especially between the undergraduate and taught postgraduate levels.
Structural factors influencing this pattern include the tendency of theology and religious studies departments to recruit postgraduates from international contexts in which a form of Christianity that favors the authority of men is prominent.
Interviews with academics in the field reveal additional factors which include entrenched connections to Christianity and Christian churches, the gendered style of academic engagement in some of the sub-discipllines, and the up-hill struggle to develop the confidence to succeed in a male-dominated environment.
Generic issues include poor allowance for childcare and family responsibilities as well as bullying.
Advisors have a profound effect as well as interaction with the faculty.
Often, women are pressured to perform better than their male counterparts in order to stand out from the other female candidates.
Gender stereotypes that work against “women’s entrance and mobility” in academic jobs, especially those related to leadership positions.
Collegiality focused on “male sociability”whereby women’s ideas are suppressed or they find themselves on the margins within their departments.
Being the lone voice or scapegoat in the department for “women’s issues.”
Studying stereotypical topics and migrating away from traditional “male” disciplines.

Continue reading “Reviewing Gender and Career Progression in Theology and Religious Studies by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Are You Ready for Some Football? by John Erickson

Although putting women in charge of drafting new policies that address the “woman problem” currently facing the NFL, it too reeks of the similar dismissive and patronizing actions women face when trying to obtain leadership roles in their religious traditions. Supercilious progress for the sake of progress isn’t progress and progress under the guise of silence is still misogyny. We need women in positions of leadership in both the NFL as well as in religious traditions. The culture of violence and silence will only continue, albeit with a Band-Aid firmly in place, holding the painful experiences and histories of women, long forgotten and often overlooked, until society values their rights just as much as the men leading the prayers and those that are being prayed for on Sundays across America.

John Erickson, sports, coming out. There is never a reason for physical violence. There is never a reason to hit your partner or child to the point where they are unconscious or bruised. There is never a reason to inflict violence against someone else, but apparently there are exceptions to these rules if you’re an NFL football player.

In my native state of Wisconsin, watching football on Sunday is synonymous with attending church prior to the game. Watching football on Sunday is a cultural norm in many, if not all, different regions of the country where individuals, whether you like it or not, gather each Sunday to both praise and pray that your team ends up on top.

In Wisconsin, you attend church with your family and head to your desired destination where you gather with friends and family to eat, talk about your life, and of course watch your local football team battle their weekly rival. Although I am not much of a football fan these days, I have very fond memories of attending football games, watching them with my family and talking about the Green Bay Packers’ Super Bowl chances. It was my time to both bond with the men of my family as well as catch up on the gossip the women would whisper back and forth to each other at the dinner table while the men were in the other room screaming at the TV.

Although I’m sure I will watch more games in my future, lately, all I do is cringe when I think about the growing violence that women and children face and have faced in the large shadow of an organization worth north of $9 billion dollars.

The biggest scandal to hit the news waves lately is that of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice’s assault of his wife in an Atlantic City elevator. Although Rice and the various other incidents regarding NFL players and violence is disturbing, the biggest problem facing the NFL isn’t just its treatment of women but its continual commodification of them as a disposable resource emblematic with the culture of violence that it has created.

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If you didn’t know, women make up an estimated 45% of the NFL‘s more than 150 million American fans and have, in recent weeks, become their most valuable resource and source of criticism. However, after a long string of incidents stemming back from NFL teams underpaying cheerleaders to the Ray Rice incident, one needs to ask what the roles of women, if any, are outside of the disturbing images of the abused wife, hypersexualized cheerleader? Is being dragged out of an elevator by your abusive husband the only way to get women’s issues addressed in the NFL by fans, league owners, and the NFL commission?

The roles of women in the NFL and religion have many similarities. Aside from end zone celebrations where players praise God for his apparent direct role in helping them score a winning touchdown or certain players edifications as gods on Earth, women make up the crux of both NFL fandom and attendance but are responsible for the gatherings similar to the ones I, and many others, grew up with.

Ann Braude said it best in her foundational text Sisters and Saints that “if we want to understand the history of American women, we need to examine the religious beliefs and activities that so many have found so meaningful.” Without women, we wouldn’t have many, if not all, of the religions that are present throughout the world today and in case we forget, without women, we too wouldn’t have the millions of little boys who grow up being taken to and from practice by their mothers with the hope that they too could one day become the professional football players that fans scream and pray for.

Without women, there is no NFL and without women, there is no religion. Kelly Brown Douglas said it best on this very blog when she stated, “It is the violence that violence creates.” Although I agree with her, I would only add that while violence does indeed create violence, the real sin isn’t the violence itself but rather the silence that follows.

Let us pray that we will continue to not be silent and that we will rise up and fight for the millions of women (and men) each day who do not live in fear that their significant other’s multimillion dollar contract will not be reinstated but rather that they and their children may not see another day on this Earth.

John Erickson is a Ph.D. Candidate in American Religious History at Claremont Graduate University. He holds a MA in Women’s Studies in Religion; an MA in Applied Women’s Studies; and a BA in Women’s Literature and Women’s Studies. The LGBTQ and women’s rights movements, masculinity studies, gender theory, and the utilization of technology in forming communities and creating new teaching methodologies influence his research interests. His work is inspired by the intersectionality of feminism, queer identity, LGBTQ history, and religious and sexual cultural rhetoric. He is a Non-Fiction Reviewer for Lambda Literary, the leader in LGBT reviews, author interviews, opinions and news since 1989 and the Co-Chair of the Queer Studies in Religion section of the American Academy of Religion’s Western Region, the only regional section of the American Academy of Religion that is dedicated to the exploration of queer studies in religion and other relevant fields in the nation. When he is not working on his dissertation, he can be found at West Hollywood City Hall where he is the City Council Deputy and Chief of Staff to Councilmember Abbe Land. He is the author of the blog From Wisconsin, with Love and can be followed on Twitter @JErickson85

Reciprocity, Empathy, and Reconciliation: The Roots of Human Morality in Our Primate Ancestors by Carol P. Christ

A link to a talk called “Moral Behavior in Animals” by Franz de Waal recently found its way into my email inbox. I am a big fan of Franz de Waal because his findings confirm what I always believed—that animals are intelligent. I followed the link and other suggested links and spent most of the evening listening to de Waal.

De Waal began his studies of animal behavior at a time when instinctual behaviorism was academic orthodoxy: the idea that animals can think and feel was “poo-pooed” by “scientists.” As de Waal observed ironically, everyone who has a pet knows better than that. But academic researchers continued down this path, expressing contempt for ordinary people who thought their pets were intelligent and the likes of de Waal who suggested that scientists might be colossally wrong.

De Waal’s discovery that chimps almost always “reconcile” after fights by touching hands, hugging each other, grooming, and even kissing, led him down “the garden path” to his discovery that what he calls the “two pillars of morality”—“reciprocity and empathy”– are found in primate social systems and in those of other higher mammals including dolphins and elephants . Continue reading “Reciprocity, Empathy, and Reconciliation: The Roots of Human Morality in Our Primate Ancestors by Carol P. Christ”

Ramakrishna Devotion to Kali-Ma (Part 2 of 3) by Nancy Vedder-Shults

nancymug_3 Ramakrishna was one of the major poets who popularized Kali’s worship in Bengal, the northeasternmost province of India. Born in the early part of the 19th century, he was a Hindu saint in a tradition known as bhakti, where devotees lovingly surrender their hearts, minds and spirits to their chosen deity in a practice which leads to ecstatic union with the divine. Such devotion is easier for us in the West to imagine when the beloved is the playful Krishna with his sublime flute-playing and sacred lovemaking. But in Ramakrishna’s case, the object of his devotion was the fierce Kali, the wild and uncontrollable aspects of the sacred, to whom he devoted himself as a child would to its mother.

Kali with baby — Kali as the mother of Shiva

In his best-known evocation of the Goddess, Ramakrishna observes her as a graceful young woman sinuously emerging from the waters of the Ganges. As her belly breaks forth from the waves, we realize that she is late in pregnancy, coming to dry land to deliver her child. When she reaches the shore, she gives birth to a beautiful baby whom she fondles affectionately and lifts to her breast, where the child suckles until it is content. Holding her baby once more in her arms, the woman becomes the Kali we are more familiar with, a frightening old hag, gaunt with age and hunger. In her ferocious aspect, Kali then lifts the infant to her mouth, crushes it between her teeth and swallows the baby whole. Without a backward glance, she returns to the waters from which she emerged, disappearing again from view. Continue reading “Ramakrishna Devotion to Kali-Ma (Part 2 of 3) by Nancy Vedder-Shults”

LGBTQI Muslims and International Movements for Empowerment by amina wadud

amina 2014 - cropped I am currently in Cape Town South Africa at a Queer Muslim International Retreat. Next month I will go to Jakarta Indonesia for a workshop focused on the same agenda: reform in Muslim communities towards the lives of dignity for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, Queer and Intersex Muslims. It has been a long road and the end of the struggle is nowhere in sight. Still, there are important developments worth noting.

I am the fifth of eight children. My brother, just older than me, is gay. Although we are both in our 60’s now, it was evident that his sexual orientation was not normative heterosexual from very early. My first nephew, son of my older sister is also gay. Now in his mid-40’s his was also not a question of lifestyle choice. I love these two men and always have. That did not mean I was devoid of homophobic tendencies and subtle acts of discrimination against queer people. I wasn’t against them, but I did not see why I, who lived as a straight heterosexual woman, should have to pay any attention to the particularities of their life struggle. It was their problem and I could ignore it. So I did.

I was never guilty of vicious acts – teasing, name calling or bullying; I just put it out of my mind. As a Muslim, I would come to encounter a much greater awareness how the convenience of sitting on the fence was inadvertently a tacit approval of gross homophobic violations and that all I believed about a Merciful and Compassionate Creator of Justice required me to support the struggles to establish that divine justice and cosmic harmony and beauty everywhere and for everyone. Continue reading “LGBTQI Muslims and International Movements for Empowerment by amina wadud”

My Take On “Feminist Theology: Four Perspectives” by Grace Yia-Hei Kao

I recently had the honor of serving on a panel entitled “Feminist Theology: Four Perspectives” with three of my faculty colleagues: Rosemary Radford Ruether, Monica A. Coleman, and Najeeba Syeed. It had been organized by the Claremont School of Theology Alumni/ae Association in partnership with the La Plaza United Methodist Church and the Los Angeles United Methodist Museum of Social Justice (where the event had taken place).

We had an incredible time. La Plaza UMC, led by CST alum Rev. Vilma Cruz-Baez (’07), graciously hosted a reception before our panel discussion. As we feasted on hearty Mexican food (my favorite was the watermelon agua fresca), we perused the Exodus exhibition in the Museum of Social Justice, which featured dramatic black and white photographs of migrants and others who had made their lives in Los Angeles (n.b., the Museum is located in the basement of the Church, which is itself located on historic Olvera Street). I was grateful for the warm welcome and short history of the Museum that Director Leonara Barron provided.

Continue reading “My Take On “Feminist Theology: Four Perspectives” by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”

Domestic Violence: The Sin that Sin Created by Kelly Brown Douglas

In these last several weeks, the horror that one out of four women will encounter domestic violence- sometimes referred to as “intimate partner” violence- in their life time has come to the national forefront. Indeed, women are more likely than men to be killed by their “intimate partner:” one in three women who is a victim of homicide is killed by an intimate partner. While sixty percent of domestic violence incidents occur in the home, this is not where domestic violence begins. It is the perhaps inevitable result of a culture of violence against women. It is the violence that violence creates.

This is a culture of violence in which women’s work continues to be grossly undervalued. One third of all women are living in or near poverty, what has been described as “the brink of poverty.” Two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women. The average white woman is paid 77 cents for every dollar her male counterpart man makes; for African American women it is 64 cents and Hispanic women 55 cents for every dollar made by white men. Women devote more than double the hours as men to “unpaid interactive children care.” Women over 65 “are twice as likely as men of the same age” to live in poverty—primarily because they are full or part-time caregivers. A 2013 “State of the World’s Mothers Report” ranked the United States 30^th of the 30 best countries in the world to be a mother, based on indicators such as economic status, political opportunities and universal health care. And what this report makes most clear is that the status of children reflects the status of their mothers. This means that at least 28 million children are living in poverty in the United States.

As for physical violence, one in four college aged women experiences an attemptted or actual date rape. Forty-two percent of women who have been date raped consider suicide. In the Shriver Report, Sister Joan Chittister suggests that in the United States, “rapes in military and rapes on college campuses go unpunished because ‘boys will be boys,’ and winning wars and football games are more important than protecting the integrity of the women who are victims of rape.” These statistics represent nothing less than systemic and cultural violence against women and their children.[i] And, such violence is a sin. Continue reading “Domestic Violence: The Sin that Sin Created by Kelly Brown Douglas”

Essentialism Reconsidered by Carol P. Christ

In my Ecofeminism class we have been discussing essentialism because some feminists have alleged that other feminists, particularly ecofeminists and Goddess feminists, are “essentialists.” They argue that essentialist views reinforce traditional stereotypes including those that designate men as rational and women as emotional. I too find essentialism problematic, but I do not agree that Goddess feminism and ecofeminism are intrinsically essentialist.

Goddess feminists and ecofeminists criticize classical dualism: the traditions of thinking that value reason over emotion and feeling, male over female, man over nature. We argued that the western rational tradition sowed the seeds of the environmental crisis when it separated “man” from “nature.”

Goddess feminists and ecofeminists affirm the connections between women and nature in an environmental worldview that acknowledges the interconnection of all beings in the web of life.

This view has been criticized as essentialist. Is it? Continue reading “Essentialism Reconsidered by Carol P. Christ”

A New Perspective on the Story of Ruth by Ivy Helman

When I think about having returned to the Judaism of my family, I often think about a short phrase that is on almost all of the conversion documents I’ve seen. “Your people shall be my people and your G-d shall be my G-d.” It comes from the Book of Ruth and is a powerful phrase in and of itself. Imagine choosing a journey to a foreign land and being so committed to the person you are traveling with that you are willing to forsake the religion and practices of your people to join hers, even when she extorts you to return to your home. Think about the kind of trust one needs in another to be able to leave everything behind and follow another path. That is ideally what the convert to Judaism has chosen: to leave behind their past, setting out on a new religious path. In fact, it is often frowned upon to ask a convert about their religious past because it is as if it never existed.

Besides these documents, I’ve also encountered the Book of Ruth early in my training as a feminist scholar of religion. I read many commentaries on the story of Ruth, but what I read never spoke to me. Yes, two women were bonded in a deep friendship (perhaps as lovers) struggling to survive and avoid bouts of harassment from men. They also defied patriarchal standards of the day. Sweet and touching, yes. A good example of the importance of friendship between women, definitely! What I didn’t get then that I do now are the values elevated in these two women.

First, what struck me is just how much our pasts are an important part of who we are. In many ways, they help to shape our futures. Ruth’s past built within her the values necessary to make the decision to journey to a foreign land with another woman and without what, could be thought of, as adequate protections.

Continue reading “A New Perspective on the Story of Ruth by Ivy Helman”