General – Page 275 – Feminism and Religion

Meditating on Oneness by Amy Wright Glenn

At the age of fourteen, I began to question the Mormon faith of my family. I embarked on a life long personal and scholarly quest for truth. While teaching comparative religion and philosophy, I was drawn to the work of supporting women through labor and holding compassionate space for the dying.

In my book, “Birth, Breath, and Death,” I share moving tales of birth and death while drawing on my work as a doula, hospital chaplain, and mother. I weave together these stories with philosophical reflections on truth, meaning, and Spirit.

This is an excerpt taken from the first chapter entitled “Search.”

I spent much of my early twenties traveling throughout The Middle East and India. I lost track of time gazing at an ancient copy of Homer’s Iliad at a museum in Cairo. I remember sleeping through a freezing cold night on Mt. Sinai and awakening to a brilliant sunrise over the Arabian Peninsula. I climbed the pyramids in Egypt and protested the Israeli occupation of the West Bank with Arab and Jewish women peace activists. For a year, I studied in Jerusalem. Later, I dedicated myself to the practice of meditation at an ashram in the Himalayas.

A lively mix of debate and discussion characterized my Hebrew University days. In the evenings, I worked illegally as a waitress in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Adorned in Roman attire, I served fantastic platters of Middle Eastern cuisine and performed folk songs and dance routines for photo-snapping tourists. I was nineteen and living in Jerusalem, a place saturated in religious symbolism. Known as Al-Quds in Arabic and Yerushalim in Hebrew, Jerusalem is a city renewed and ravaged due to contested paradigms of poetry and politics. Continue reading “Meditating on Oneness by Amy Wright Glenn”

In Memoriam – God Hates Fags

Phelps didn’t just live a life filled with hate but he also embodied the very reasoning why so many communities cannot cross that proverbial bridge to work together to see past their differences and maybe never will. In the case of Phelps, sticks and stones may break our bones, but words really do hurt.

Fred Phelps, an American Pastor who headed the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas died at the age of 84 on March 19, 2014. While some individuals leave behind legacies of their good deeds and loving memories, the only thing Phelps left behind was a family and church founded on the principle of hate.

A frequent eyesore at various events ranging from military funerals and gay pride gatherings to mainstream events that captured the attention of our pop-culture obsessed society, Fred Phelps and his clan believed it was their sacred duty to warn others of God’s anger over the growing acceptance of not only modernity in general but also issues like gay rights and abortion. From slogans and signs such as ‘God Hates Fags’ to ‘Thank God for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), Phelps has caused many controversies both during his lifetime and after his death.

Continue reading “In Memoriam – God Hates Fags”

Women’s Ritual Dances: The Dancing Priestess of the Living Goddess by Laura Shannon

Kyria Loulouda calls to her sister to help her wind the yards of woven girdle around and around my waist. Kyria Stella’s aged fingers, still strong, tuck the sash ends in tightly, smoothing down the fabric she and Loulouda wove themselves. The snug embrace of the sash supports my back and encourages me to stand proudly upright. As they help me with the intricate tucks and pleats of the festival dress, and the careful tying of the flowered headscarf, I see their tired, careworn faces come alight with joy and expectation. When they are satisfied, they turn me towards the mirror, smiling.

We gaze at ourselves, a row of three women, dressed alike. Like the butterflies embroidered in bright silks on the dark cloth of the bodice, we too are transformed. The food is prepared, the housework is done, the animals taken care of for the night; the other women await us in the square where, by tradition, they will open the dance with their own singing as they have done countless times throughout their lives. We are in the village of Pentalofos in Greek Thrace in the early twenty-first century, living a timeless scene which has been repeated through the generations for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Continue reading “Women’s Ritual Dances: The Dancing Priestess of the Living Goddess by Laura Shannon”

Our Loss of Od by Deanne Quarrie

Freyja is an Old Icelandic goddess of the Earth, fertility, and beauty. Her name means “Lady.” Freyja is known to be very beautiful and sexual. It is thought that Freyja was first in union with Od. This union represented what is known in Old Icelandic as sam-vit, a state of united consciousness. In other words, consciousness that reflects a state of being united, integrated, or whole. Od had vanished from Her life causing her to weep for his loss. Where her tears fell on the land, they turned to amber and where they fell in the Sea they became gold. Amber and gold are both sacred to Freyja. From the time he left, she continued to travel and search for him. Continue reading “Our Loss of Od by Deanne Quarrie”

A Tale of Two Conferences (Or Reflections of a Parent Who Occasionally Travels for Work) by Grace Yia-Hei Kao

In the space of twelve days I will have taken two inter-continental and two transcontinental flights to attend two conferences. I will have slept in my own bed in sunny Los Angeles for only four of those nights and been away from my family in either Bochum, Germany or Chicago for the remaining eight. Thank God this kind of travel is far from normal for me. Continue reading “A Tale of Two Conferences (Or Reflections of a Parent Who Occasionally Travels for Work) by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”

Celebration: International Women’s Day 2014 by amina wadud

I’m trying to finish this blog from Chile before I travel by bus over the Andes Mountains in to Buenos Aires. This is me: ticking things off my bucket list. It makes me look forward to what I want to do and back to what I’ve done. Perhaps the right stars aligned in the heavens; the forces of the universe synchronized, or my day is done–but this year, International Women’s Day was one of the happiest days of my life. And I just want to celebrate!

(It didn’t matter that my US Facebook and Twitter friends spent this week chasing down the perpetrator of some misogynist jokes on the occasion of IWD. This could not move me from a
place of joy, my blessed repose and moment of extraordinary grace.) Continue reading “Celebration: International Women’s Day 2014 by amina wadud”

Segregation by Carol P. Christ

As I think about the incarceration of young black men for relatively minor drug crimes, and the murders of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, I cannot help but compare the astonishing progress that Americans have made in overcoming prejudice against gays and lesbians to the astounding lack of progress we have made in overcoming prejudice against black Americans.

It is often repeated that the reason for changes in attitudes about gays and lesbians is the process of coming out—most people in America now know a lesbian or gay family member, friend, or co-worker. On the other hand, I would dare to speculate that many—perhaps most—Americans who are not African-American do not know a boy like Trayon Martin or Jordan Davis. If you do—count yourself lucky! Our society remains divided by race and class divisions (many of them a legacy of racism) that prevent many non-black Americans from knowing a single young black man. Continue reading “Segregation by Carol P. Christ”

Dr. Debbie Downer Discourses on the Lives of Early Pious and Sufi Women by Laury Silvers

I’ve been called a downer because I take what seems like a jaundiced perspective on the early history of pious and Sufi women. There is a tendency in some scholarship, and nearly all contemporary popular treatments of these women’s lives, to over-focus on the positive. They fasten to aspects of their lives that we (post) moderns regard as “positive” or even “liberating,” while ignoring what we find less attractive or troubling. For them, these treatments tell a story of a lost tradition of feminine and egalitarian spirituality representing a golden period that we only need to reclaim to overcome the present state of sexist affairs in our religion. I know these kinds of stories work for women, or they would not keep retelling them. But they don’t work for me. Continue reading “Dr. Debbie Downer Discourses on the Lives of Early Pious and Sufi Women by Laury Silvers”

Gendered Imagery of God (Part 1) by Elise M. Edwards

I have been doing a lot of thinking about gendered imagery and language for God over the past few months. Honestly, a lot of this reflection was provoked by hostile comments I got from my college students at the end of the fall semester because I require gender-neutral language for God and gender-inclusive language when referring to people. The policy in my syllabus is this:

For academic discourse, spoken and written, students are expected to use gender-inclusive language for human beings, and gender-neutral language for God. (e.g. “God” instead of “He;” “God’s” instead of “His;” etc.) This is to prepare students to communicate to the world beyond the Christian university setting. I want to equip you to succeed in graduate school, in the corporate world, and in public communication, all settings in which gender inclusive language for is increasingly expected.

I provide links to websites that discuss the issue, and we talk about it more when we discuss 20^th century feminist issues in my course on the Christian Heritage and when we discuss prejudice and sexism in my ethics class. Some students have thanked me for the policy. But many students are perplexed by it, and I’m perplexed by their confusion. It shocks my system when I hear people refer to “man” for all people; I first became aware of the issue when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and the Girl Scouts changed their pledge because it referred to “mankind.” That was over 30 years ago!

While I’m confused as to why replacing “man” with “people” is such a difficult task, I am more empathetic to the reorientation required to replace “He” with “God.” (And I also acknowledge that the term “God” is not completely genderless either.) I recognize that for many of my students, I might be the first one to challenge their gendered conceptions of God. So I am empathetic, but insistent.

The way discussions about the “gender” of God and Savior are often dismissed as irrelevant, unimportant, silly, or the remote concern of “those feminists” bothers me. Traditional Christian theology asserts that God is a different kind of being than humans are. Therefore, God (the first person of the Trinity) and the Holy Spirit do not have a sex or gender, as sex is a characteristic associated with physical creature-ness and gender is (to simplify) a social construction related to sex. The second person of the Trinity, Jesus, is thought to be male. In the Incarnation, the eternal God became human while also divine, and therefore has a sex and gender in the person of Jesus. But the Trinity as a whole is without sex and has characteristics that we would associate with femininity, masculinity, and genders in between. According to this logic, references to the maleness of God should only be understood metaphoricall,y not literally, and therefore replacing that language with genderless/sexless language should not be inherently problematic.

I’m not saying that the use of any language in reference to God is appropriate or acceptable within the bounds of traditional theology. We (traditionals and non-traditionals alike) should be concerned with how we refer to God, because as Sallie McFague and others remind us, these metaphors/models of God have consequences in the world beyond language. Maleness becomes deified or closer to godliness than femaleness, maleness becomes the model for the priesthood, maleness is the true form of authority, etc. I believe that many of the concerns about feminine imagery for God are based in this same concern: that by associating God with one sex or gender, we claim God’s preference for that sex or gender. In a patriarchal system, this correlation between God and the feminine simply will not do. Feminists who assert feminine qualities of God are merely making projections of themselves, critics claim.

How we conceptualize the being we worship matters. It matters to me, at least. While I acknowledge that there is a danger of simply projecting an image of myself as a deity that I worship, I also think there is great harm in loving and worshiping the divine imaged as those who are at times hostile to me, and historically have been so to my ancestors and kin. So although I know and have good relationships with older, white males, I see no reason why I should image and worship God “the Father” who looks like an old white man. How would that benefit my spiritual practice?

Thank you Carol Christ, for asking me to state my views about this in the comments to my last post. I look forward to more discussions with you and the members of this community. When I read your work years ago, I was convinced about the validity and rightness of affirming feminine forms of divinity. Although the Christian (patriarchal) tradition does not have much room for Goddess language, I am comfortable with it, at least for the first and third persons of the Trinity. In my next post, I’ll talk more about the ways I am considering the gender of the Christ.

Elise M. Edwards, PhD is a Lecturer in Christian Ethics at Baylor University and a graduate of Claremont Graduate University. She is also a registered architect in the State of Florida. Her interdisciplinary work examines issues of civic engagement and how beliefs and commitments are expressed publicly. As a black feminist, she primarily focuses on cultural expressions by, for, and about women and marginalized communities. Follow her on twitter, google+ or academia.edu.

Abortion–the topic that won’t go away–or even morph by Esther Nelson

Recently, I got involved in a conversation about abortion. It happened on Facebook when a relative posted that her heart hurts when she considers her “sweet baby girl” and how the law (Roe v. Wade, 1973) in the United States gave her the choice as to “whether [or not] I would have her killed.” She’s sincere. Many of her friends “liked” her post and, with few exceptions, commented in agreement. I was one of the exceptions.

March celebrates Women’s History Month–a month to remember the accomplishments of our foremothers, noting their work helping to secure for us (their progeny) certain rights, most notably the right to vote (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902) and reproductive rights (Margaret Sanger, 1879-1966). Support for abortion nowadays almost always falls under the rubric of “women’s reproductive rights.” So when we hear, “It’s my body and I’ll decide what I’ll do with my own body,” the speaker is giving voice to what many consider to be a fundamental right–the right to be autonomous and exercise free agency over one’s own person. Continue reading “Abortion–the topic that won’t go away–or even morph by Esther Nelson”