It is quite common, I think, for Jewish feminists to gravitate to the first creation story of Genesis/Bereshit as an example of human equality but struggle to claim this same passage as an example of the goodness of embodiment. Genesis/Bereshit… Read More ›
As my life ambles along, some things change, some things are surprisingly persistent. As a young person, the last thing I would have predicted about my future would have been developing even a mild interest in sports, but now I… Read More ›
Today I am publishing an early work on female language for God that I wrote with Emma Trout at the first Conference of Women Theologians in 1971. Highly contested at the conference, this essay is a foreshadowing of my subsequent… Read More ›
When Merlin Stone’s book, When God Was a Woman, was published in 1976, it was a lightning bolt of feminist scholarship that told the world that before there was a Judeo-Christian god there were goddesses, and before there were goddesses, there… Read More ›
Most days I am not certain that anyone really cares about what happens to girls. As a mother of a soon-9-year-old daughter, this burns me. Because I also have a 12-year-old son, I often end up watching movies I wouldn’t… Read More ›
The end of my Ph.D. program is in sight. Originally, in 2004, I came to Boston University School of Theology (BU STH) from Los Angeles for a two-year masters program. Along the way I switched to a three-year masters program,… Read More ›
If you’ve read any of my posts here (or my books), you know that I’m not a friend of the fellow I call the standard-brand god. This is the “man upstairs” who goes by such names (in alphabetical order) as… Read More ›
We’re no longer shocked, albeit still horrified and sickened, by the images of violence that come at us daily from all around the globe. I’ve come to expect it. Beheadings. Burning people in cages. Shootings–“execution-style.” Bombings of all kinds–including drones… Read More ›
When I first began to think about female language and images for God I imagined that changing God-He to God-She and speaking of God as Mother some of the time would be a widespread practice in churches and synagogues by… Read More ›
Conscious Femininity was the first book by Marion Woodman that I read August 2010; it is a collection of interviews with Woodman from 1985 to 1992. Marion Woodman was eye-opening to me – I started seeing a connection between the… Read More ›
A revolution is happening through Divine Feminine rituals! More and more faith communities are reclaiming the power of the Divine Feminine in sacred rituals. Rituals move feminist theory and theology/thealogy from the head to the heart. Words and visual symbols… Read More ›
I admit I had the fortune of loving my father, the late Reverend Teasley, and feeling loved by him. I also date my fascination with the divine back to my father. There are many ways this fascination could have taken… Read More ›
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… Read More ›
The suicide death of Robin Williams prompted me to reflect again on my own experience with depression and to share my story in the hope that it can help others. In my twenties, thirties, and forties, I suffered severe intermittent… Read More ›
Change takes time. If society takes years to change, religious institutions seem to take decades, maybe centuries. That ubiquitous intersection of religion and feminism seems neck high in mud and muck. Some religious institutions claim divine inspiration for keeping their… Read More ›
Throughout my “bible-thumping, smitten with God” years, I scribbled countless thoughts and prayers in four devotional journals. Recently I came across these journals, wiping away the years of dust accumulated. As I have been detaching from the Pentecostal god, it… Read More ›
A few days ago I had the pleasure of giving a talk at the Secular Student Alliance Conference on how non-believing persons can work with Churches. Amidst the chaos of conferences–managing your time, deciding which talks to attend, and making… Read More ›
“The error of anthropomorphism” is defined as the fallacy of attributing human or human-like qualities to divinity. Recent conversations with friends have provoked me to ask in what sense anthropomorphism is an error. The Greek philosophers may have been the… Read More ›
In my previous post, I shared some of the ways in which I’ve been wrestling with gendered imagery for God, the first person of the Christian Trinity often referred to as God the Father. In this entry, I’d like to… Read More ›
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… Read More ›
In recent years monotheism has been attacked as a “totalizing discourse” that justifies the domination of others in the name of a universal truth. In addition, from the Bible to the present day some have used their own definitions of… Read More ›
Theology is faith seeking understanding. Faith is that ineffable, intangible spiritual apparatus that keeps us in relationship to a transcendent, infinite god. It is, for Christians, the core of their relationship with the god of Jesus Christ. Yet, as Karen… Read More ›
A rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth taught that you should “love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.” Charles Hartshorne, philosopher of relationship and a twentieth century advocate of the “two great commandments,” added that it should… Read More ›
A few weeks ago, after delivering a sermon, a young woman approached me and said she had a question about my sermon. I of course braced myself for the question as I ran my sermon back over in my head… Read More ›
Jesus loved sinners and Jesus would rather be dancing with me in West Hollywood on a Friday night than lugging through a swamp luring ducks into a trap with a duck caller made by a clan who think that my sexual actions are similar to that of an individual having sex with an animal.
It matters that he consistently affirmed, empowered, and befriended those who were the outcast, marginalized, oppressed, and rejected of his day—such as Samaritans and women. A firestorm has been set off recently concerning the self-assured observations by Fox News anchor… Read More ›
Breaking up with your first love can be an excruciating process; especially when it happens to be completely entangled with your being. God was my first love and he stayed for a long while. We had many exhilarating times together,… Read More ›
In the second season of the television show Buffy, the Vampire Slayer [spoiler alert!], Buffy is faced with an agonizing dilemma. She is condemned to save the world “again.” Buffy’s former lover is the evil Angelus. Angelus – once the… Read More ›
when god was a girl she loved to play dress up with hydrogen and nitrogen, she wiggled her hips and blew kisses from her voluptuous lips and wiggled her fingers to toss the stars~ she juggled them and tied ribbons… Read More ›
I never gave much credence to religion but through my mother, I met G-d, and through her I understood that I’m not a feminist because of the books I’ve read but rather because of the woman I call mom.
