In the News – Page 19 – Feminism and Religion

IN THE NEWS: Global Climate Change by Carol P. Christ

Climate change is in the news again due to the devasting storm known as Hurricane Sandy. Scientists, activists, journalists, and politicians are telling us that Sandy is not just another “unpredictable event” brought to us by “Mother Nature.” Will we listen this time?

Hurricane Sandy is a human-made and entirely predictable and sure to be repeated environmental consequence of the use of fossil fuels, especially oil and coal. Burning fossil fuels puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This raises the global temperature in the air, land, and sea. Melting of polar ice caps is a result of the rise in global temperatures. This will cause a 3 foot or more rise in the seas, leading to the permanent flooding of the seacoasts and sea coast constructions, including homes, restaurants and shops, office buildings, and harbors and ports.

The warming of the seas is also producing extreme weather conditions, including high winds and hurricanes, along with colder winters and hotter summers. Extreme weather conditions will lead to regular storm-related flooding of rivers and sea coasts, erosion of hills and mountains in winter, followed by catastrophic fires in summer. Prolonged droughts and unseasonal rains will devastate farms and food production. Wildlife habitats will be destroyed. Places where people live will become too hot, too cold, too wet, and generally unfriendly to life.

Continue reading “IN THE NEWS: Global Climate Change by Carol P. Christ”

IN THE NEWS: Fr. Roy Bourgeois to Speak at CGU

This week on November 1st and 2nd Fr. Roy Bourgeois will be at Claremont Graduate University to offer discussions on the topics of women’s ordination and the School of Americas Watch.

Fr. Roy is a Maryknoll priest, social justice activist, and founder of the School of Americas Watch. Here on FAR we have had many discussions and posts about women’s ordination. However we have had far less about the destruction caused by the School of Americas (SOA) now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

Renamed in 2001, this institution is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers located in Fort Benning, Georgia and has been dubbed “School of Assassins.” Continue reading “IN THE NEWS: Fr. Roy Bourgeois to Speak at CGU”

IN THE NEWS: A Feminism Survey in the U.K.

Over the course of a 24 hour period, a popular parenting website in the U.K., Netmums, recently conducted a survey with 1300 of their users to “find out what feminism means to both girls and women living in the UK in 2012.” The report of their findings has inspired another wave of “feminism is dead” declarations. Nothing new there of course, it resonates with the same old hackneyed stereotypes of what it means to be a feminist. Nonetheless, it reminds us of the continually needed conversation about how to make feminist activism and goals accessible and communicable to more people lest Netmums founder Siobhan Freegard’s statement go uncontested: “The study starkly shows modern women feel traditional Feminism is no longer working for them, as it’s aggressive, divisive and doesn’t take into account their personal circumstances.” Continue reading “IN THE NEWS: A Feminism Survey in the U.K.”

IN THE NEWS: Women’s Ordination in the Catholic Church

On October 6th, the first Catholic women’s ordination in Los Angeles was performed when two women were welcomed as priests into Roman Catholic Women Priests. There are now 143 women ordained worldwide in a movement that has refused to wait for the Vatican to acknowledge women as leaders in the Church.

There has been a great deal of dialogue around the issue of women’s ordination in the Catholic Church. Organizations like Women’s Ordination Conference are focused on the mission of ordaining women in the Catholic Church and argue that women in leadership roles will lead to change in policies that are oppressive to women. However, other movements argue that ordaining women simply continues the hierarchical culture of the Church. Continue reading “IN THE NEWS: Women’s Ordination in the Catholic Church”

IN THE NEWS: To Have Eyes to See

Recently at a symposium on interreligious dialogue one of the Muslim feminist scholars present said, “Just once I would like to be able to have a conversation about Islamic Feminism without automatically having to be put on the defensive.”

When someone is a member of a targeted group it is very hard to have the space to critically reflect on one’s tradition, much less be willing to do so with others. From the get go the person is put in the position of having to defend and speak for the whole. And as feminists, the amount of criticism received for participating in a tradition that others have judged to be irredeemably patriarchal and oppressive, can be downright exhausting, making dialogue all the more difficult. Continue reading “IN THE NEWS: To Have Eyes to See”

IN THE NEWS: Health Care, Contraception, and Religion

A case brought forth by a mining company challenging the required coverage of contraception without a copay by employer health care plans was dismissed Friday in a Missouri court. The mining company argued that the requirement was conflicting with its owners religious beliefs. Continue reading “IN THE NEWS: Health Care, Contraception, and Religion”

IN THE NEWS: Wives – Silent, Hidden, and Unnamed

“Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…'”

It is now public news that there is a fragment of ancient text in which Jesus makes reference to a wife. Based on testing of the papyrus fragment the text is calculated to have been from 150 years after Jesus died, a time when Jesus followers are still discerning how they should live and what practices they will keep. Though scholars all agree that this does not prove Jesus actually had a wife, it does reflect the liveliness of the debate nonetheless: Karen King explains, “This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married…There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.”

The fragment also makes reference to a female disciple. Continue reading “IN THE NEWS: Wives – Silent, Hidden, and Unnamed”

IN THE NEWS: Religious, Atheist, and Political Feminists – Unite?

This post is the first of a new weekly feature on Feminism and Religion that will be published every Wednesday. “In The News” is designed to invite discussion on topics that are showing up in news and media outlets and are relevant to feminism and religion.

Diane Winston recently wrote an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times regarding the role of faith in politics. She comments that recent poll results give the impression that religion is not playing a significant role in the current elections, for how else does one make sense of the fact that the Republican Party’s ticket is made up of a Mormon and a Roman Catholic? However she is quick to point out that although religious labels may be passé, “the religious values that inform who’s taxed, what’s regulated, how jobs are created and when or where we help those in need,” are still very much the driving force behind how people vote and with whom they form coalitions. Thus, in the U.S. seemingly incompatible religions as well as denominations within those religions have come together in an effort to control and legislate women’s bodies and autonomy. As the editors of the Religious Dispatches asserts, “the Moral Majority couldn’t have come together without a big interfaith effort.”

But theirs are not the only religious voices on the scene. Continue reading “IN THE NEWS: Religious, Atheist, and Political Feminists – Unite?”

Is the Republican Party Platform Truly Pro-Life? by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

As many feminists invest their life fighting for women’s rights to be the center of attention – no one could predict the occurrences of this election year. In my previous post “Rape is Not a Political Platform – Rape is a Violent Crime!” Carol P. Christ made a comment about women’s issues and politics:

“I have been waiting all my life for women’s issues to become central in an election campaign, but I guess I should have been more specific in my wish: this is not the format I imagined…”

Christ’s reaction is like so many others in the election; no one could have imagined such a bizarre and backwards slide being lobbied against women’s rights. Issues being bantered around continue to be rooted in a purported pro-life stance. This ranges from trans-vaginal ultrasounds, definitions of “legitimate” rape, and now using an Ob/Gyn’s “best guess” to define the gestational age of a baby from the time of a woman’s last period. This is not a game – this is semantics, this is politics, this rhetoric, and frankly, this needs to stop. Continue reading “Is the Republican Party Platform Truly Pro-Life? by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Hijacking the Nuns? by Kate Conmy

When stuck between a vow of obedience and a hard place known as the Vatican, sisterhood may be our only prayer. Since April 18, 2012, the U.S. nuns have been cast into the headlines as the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) released a harsh assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an umbrella organization, representing 80% of U.S. sisters. Accused of “radical feminist themes,” “corporate dissent,” and among other things, not taking an official stance on some hot Catholic issues, nuns have become frontrunners of a revolution.

The groundswell of support and solidarity pouring forth from faithful Catholics and the media has been unprecedented by all standards; when the secular feminist website Jezebel is calling for Sr. Simone Campbell , executive director for the Catholic lobby group, NETWORK, for president, the issue has clearly gone beyond the choir. The movement has taken on the adage “we are all nuns,” expressing a shared sense of oppression by the Catholic Church. If the second largest religious domination in the U.S. (10%) is “former Catholic,” then this shared sense of betrayal by the Vatican may not be new, but it has found new energy in the conflict between Rome and the American nuns. Continue reading “Hijacking the Nuns? by Kate Conmy”