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Preying on Victims: Radical Christianity and Exploitation of Tragedy in the Name of God By Michele Stopera Freyhauf

It is our moral responsibility, whether we identify as Christians or not, to pray for not prey on the victims of tragedies.

Over the last month, dare I say years, society has witnessed or been subjected to an all out war from radical Christians across America deploying the wrath of God and reveling in the tragedy of others to perpetuate their apocalyptic message of rhetoric and terror. As I hear the news over the last few months, an old Billy Joel song starts to play in my head “We didn’t start the fire.” Whether we started the fire or not, we should not feed the flames of hatred but figure out a way to extinguish it.

Here is a brief synopsis of current events that reflect this hatred and radicalism perpetuated in the name of God – examples of Christianity terrorizing or preying on victims through their actions.

The Westboro Southern Baptist Church: Preying on Victims at Funerals and Thanking God for their Tragic Deaths

Their web address says it all: www.godhatesfags.com. This group, which one cannot call Christian but rather “hate-mongers,” threatened to burn the Qur’an, was banned from Facebook for spreading hatred against homosexuals, and recently had the audacity to picket funerals of Americans killed in natural disasters, most recently, a teen-age shooting victim, Daniel Parmertor (age 16), from Chardon, Ohio. Thankfully, volunteers across Ohio and a local group of bikers formed a human barricade to keep these people away from the funeral and grieving family and community.

This group preys on tragedy. They “praise God for sending a shooter to a High School in Ohio.” They “praise God for killing a coast guard member.’ They praise God for killing UK Singer Davy Jones.” They also picketed the funerals of the Arizona shooting victims where Congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords was shot and six others, including federal Judge John M. Roll was killed stating, “God sent the shooter to shoot you! And He’s sitting in Heaven laughing at you!” The article goes on into quite graphic detail, which you can read for yourself but concludes with the statement “Thank God for his Righteous Judgments!” This group picketed over 47,500 funerals and events to date. One has to wonder what bible they are reading and what God they are praying to. Continue reading “Preying on Victims: Radical Christianity and Exploitation of Tragedy in the Name of God By Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

FORGIVENESS or TRUTH: WHICH IS THE BEST REMEDY? by Carol P. Christ

What happened to you really was bad. This should not happen to any child. It should not have happened to you.

In our culture there is often a rush to forgiveness that precedes acknowledging the harm that has been done. When I was a child and my father yelled at me or withheld love, I was told by mother, “He really does love you. He just does not know how to show it.” She sometimes added, “Even though he will never say he is sorry, you should forgive your father, because he did not really mean what he said.”

As a child I “learned my lesson well.” I came to the conclusion that women must “read between the lines” of the behavior and words of men, because men cannot and do not express their true feelings. This “lesson” did not serve me well in my life. Quite the opposite. When I loved a man and he did not treat me well, I remembered my mother’s words. “He does love me,” I told myself, “he just doesn’t know how to show it.” My mother passed on a very good recipe for accepting abuse.

“Hold on,” I can hear you thinking, “Your mother was only trying to protect you.” Of course she was, but her words had exactly the opposite effect. Instead of helping me to deal with life, my mother’s words confused me. My mother taught me that where men are concerned the word “love” does not have its ordinary meaning, the one I learned from her love for me. Where men are concerned “love” is complicated and mysterious: what does not look or feel like love really is love. Sorry Mom, but that was bullshit! I know you wanted me to find love and happiness and were often puzzled when I didn’t. You wondered if it was anything you did. Despite your best intentions, it was something you did. Continue reading “FORGIVENESS or TRUTH: WHICH IS THE BEST REMEDY? by Carol P. Christ”

A CLASH OF CULTURES IN OUR GENES by Carol P. Christ

I carry the exact replica of MDNA handed down from mother to daughter since the depths of the last Ice Age 17,000 years ago. My father carries the YDNA of the Indo-Europeans handed down from father to son since the time when his male ancestors invaded Europe about 5000 years ago.

My female ancestors moved with the seasons as they gathered fruits and nuts, roots and greens to feed their families. Some of them may have blown red ochre around their hands to leave their marks in ritual cave-wombs.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed down exclusively from mothers to their children. My MDNA “T2b” was given the name “the clan of Tara” by Bryan Sykes in The Seven Daughters of Eve. According to Sykes the earliest female ancestor with this gene lived about 17,000 years ago, perhaps in Tuscany. Continue reading “A CLASH OF CULTURES IN OUR GENES by Carol P. Christ”

Feminism and the Emerging Church By Xochitl Alvizo

What is emerging in the emerging church will not be faithful, liberative, or just if it continues to perpetuate the erasure of women’s herstory.

There has been on ongoing conversation among Christian identified people for about 20-30 years now. It originally started in the U.K. and Australia before making its impact in the U.S. It has its roots in evangelical Christianity but has since extended more broadly to Christians of all stripes including Catholic ones. This conversation is often referred to as the Emerging Church, the emerging church movement, or, as preferred by many, the Emerging Conversation. Phyllis Tickle has written a book, The Great Emergence, suggesting that this movement represents a much larger historical transformation of Christianity that occurs about every 500 years prompting a kind of house cleaning and rummage sale of the church. Continue reading “Feminism and the Emerging Church By Xochitl Alvizo”

I am Beginning to Understand by Carol P. Christ

Elizabeth Kelly Inglis died in 1927 at age 62 from complications of a stroke. Secondary causes were malnutrition and exhaustion.

When I was a child, my father, though he was very close to his own parents and sister, spoke very little about his ancestors. I knew that both of his parents lost their fathers when they were small children. I was told that the Christs were German and the Inglises were Scottish and Irish. My grandmother Mary Inglis Christ was as Irish as the day is long. She prayed to the blessed Virgin and took me to church with her in the early mornings where she lit candles and whispered the rosary while fingering faceted lavender beads. She voted for Kennedy because he was Irish and Catholic—to the horror of my father and his father who had no use for the Democrats. My grandmother sometimes cried when she showed us photographs of her family, especially when she pointed to her sister Veronica, called Very. I sensed that my grandmother felt sad to have left her family in New York when she moved with her husband and children to California during the depression, but I was too young to understand fully. As far as I know, I never met any of the relatives from her side of the family, even when I moved to “back east.” Continue reading “I am Beginning to Understand by Carol P. Christ”

Catholicism, Contraception, and Conscience: Church Imposed Teaching, God’s Gift of Free Will, and Political Rhetoric by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

Certainly one cannot turn on the news without seeing a story about the feud over the Catholic Church’s stance on forbidding the use of contraception and Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that mandates free contraception to women. In preparing this article, I took the time to review many articles from liberal and conservative news outlets, law professors who are experts on constitutional law, and statements from the USCCB and Bishops. Before asking questions, I want to outline the following points:

In the literature reviewed, only two women, Sr. Carol Keehan and Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, made a statement against this policy stating that the government is interfering with the working of the Church. Most voices heard and shouting the loudest are members of the clergy.
Hospitals considered “Catholic” hire people of all faiths and various beliefs. They also treat patients of all faiths. They are not exclusively “Catholic.”
Catholic identified Colleges hire professors and staff that are not Catholic. Moreover, their student body is not totally Catholic.
Catholic Charities, once again, hire non-Catholics.
Insurance plans currently in place often offer contraception prescriptions at a zero to low co-pay price. These plans are in-force at many Catholic Institutions.
Under HIPAA, healthcare of employees are protected and the Employer, even the Catholic Church cannot violate the privacy of the patient, even if it is an employee.
Birth Control Pills are often prescribed for women with endometriosis or other “female” reproductive disorders and not birth control.
Women pregnant, carrying a dead baby, cannot have surgery due to risks are given medication to induce abortion are given. Continue reading “Catholicism, Contraception, and Conscience: Church Imposed Teaching, God’s Gift of Free Will, and Political Rhetoric by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Football Is a Bad Religion by Barbara Ardinger

As soon as I read Carol Christ’s comments on football, I said, “Yeah! She’s totally right.” I keep asking people I know who watch football games what is enjoyable about watching large millionaires giving each other concussions. I understand that some sports demand skills I don’t possess, but football? What skills? It’s a mystery to me.

The characters in my new novel, Secret Lives, agree with Carol and me about the Super Bowl. The following excerpt comes from Chapter 21, “A World at War.” The Norns, in disguise as the Wintergreen Sisters, have come to town with the intention of taking power over the heras of the novel, the grandmothers who live in Long Beach, CA, and do magic. Our crones, however, have no intention of being taken over, or even seduced by promises of power, but when they meet on Super Bowl Sunday, 1990, they don’t yet know that the war on TV will be only a tiny fragment of the larger war that the Norns will soon wage against them using gigantic ravens and thunderstorms as their weapons.

Let’s listen in on “the girls.” (Madame Blavatsky is the circle’s familiar, a talking cat.) Continue reading “Football Is a Bad Religion by Barbara Ardinger”

Why I Thrift (and How I Got Started) by Grace Yia-Hei Kao

“Thrifting fits the ‘reduce-reuse-recycle’ mantra so well…Thrifting may not be the most efficient way to shop, but I love how it encourages me to see the value in old things…”

Continue reading “Why I Thrift (and How I Got Started) by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”

RE-SOULING ON SHABBAT BY IVY HELMAN

I attended a service at Congregation Shalom in Chelmsford, MA two Fridays ago. During the service, Rabbi Shoshana Perry spent a few minutes addressing the last word of a Hebrew prayer found in the Reform siddur, Mishkan T’filah. It was translated in the siddur as “God rested” but the Hebrew word used was vayinafash, which comes from the word nefesh, or soul. The prayer emphasizes on the seventh day that God did not rest as much as God took time out to re-soul. Rabbi Perry believes that our Shabbat should be spent doing things that help us also re-soul.

Initially, I spent quite a long time considering why God would need to re-soul and what exactly God would do to re-soul. When I realized the futility of trying to sort that out, I moved a little closer to home: what do I do on Shabbat to re-soul? I was quite overwhelmed trying to answer this question as well.

Traditionally, Shabbat is about study, rest, prayer and family among other things. In fact, many Jews avoid creative processes like writing, cooking, painting, driving and working because God rested from creative work on the seventh day. (Incidentally, our creativity is also how we are considered to be made in the image of God). Part of the reason this idea struck me so deeply is because I often find painting, cooking and writing rejuvenating. Continue reading “RE-SOULING ON SHABBAT BY IVY HELMAN”

Hagar: A Portrait of a Victim of Domestic Violence and Rape

This week Twitter has been a flurry with information for victims of domestic violence and rape. This ranges from the U.S. redefinition of rape to include men to Nigeria’s first anti-rape toll free hotline for women. There is even a male movement to stand against rape. This problem is an ongoing issue, one that shows no sign of diminishing or going away. According to Amnesty International, one in three women worldwide have been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused and their abuser is normally someone they know. As I contemplate this very difficult issue, I am reminded of the Biblical Hagar in Genesis 16. The story of Hagar and Sarai is abundant

Men Can Stop Rape (http://www.mencanstoprape.org/)

in ethical situations that draw in the reader and presents complex issues that can be very troublesome. If you take the text hermeneutically, through an ideological examination in its English translation, we have an Egyptian woman, who is also referred to as slave or concubine, forced to engage into sex with her owner’s husband for producing an heir. Here the abuser is a woman with a docile and obedient husband portrayed by Abram. What can we glean from such a story for today’s battered women? Hope or horrific defeat? Continue reading “Hagar: A Portrait of a Victim of Domestic Violence and Rape”