In a recent post I wrote about finding God in music. I confess, I cannot remember the last time I set foot in a church. As a woman, I continually grapple with the foundational messages of Jesus and Catholic Social… Read More ›
Power relations
Insect Conversations by Barbara Ardinger
“She’s doing it again,” Mrs. Cockroach is saying to her friend Old Mrs. Spider. “You know? The giant? She’s been blowing on me and telling me to live somewhere else. Like, I’d leave a good home?” … Read More ›
Rejecting TMT: Protecting and Protesting the Sacred for Mauna Kea and for all by Anjeanette LeBoeuf
Roughly 3 ½ years ago my FAR post was about the struggle that the Hawaiian people were facing with the proposed building of a Thirty Meter Telescope on the most sacred mountain in the Hawaiian Islands, Mauna Kea. When that… Read More ›
Greenness, Whiteness, Blackness, and the Nature of the World by Marisa Goudy
There’s magic in hiking alone, but as women, we’ve been taught to worry about venturing far on our own. In fact, we’ve been taught to worry about a lot more than that. Though once I merely shrugged off the warnings… Read More ›
Coming to Terms with Privilege: A Personal Reflection by Elise M. Edwards
In my two previous posts, I shared my recent experience talking about privilege at a church near me. Today, I will wrap up this short series with a more personal reflection about privilege from a Christian perspective. Last month, I… Read More ›
What Can We Do to Weaken Privilege? by Elise M. Edwards
In my previous post, I talked about discussing the concept of privilege (male privilege, white privilege, and class privilege) with nuance. Earlier that week, I had led a workshop at a local church on “Fine-tuning Privilege,” using Peggy McIntosh’s 1989… Read More ›
Talking about Privilege with Nuance by Elise M. Edwards
Yesterday evening, I led a seminar at a local church as part of their series on “Unpacking Privilege.” Once before, I’d been invited to this church, Lake Shore Baptist Church, to speak about intersectional feminism with one of my colleagues,… Read More ›
The Modern Problematic Nature of the Sabarimala Temple, Part 2 by Anjeanette LeBoeuf
The Sabarimala Temple has received an influx of global attention since last October. In my last FAR post, I researched the origin story of the Sabarimala Temple and its dedicated deity, Ayyappan. Ayyappan’s unusual parentage and chosen attributes and patronage… Read More ›
Exercising Women’s Religious Voice and Authority – Why is this Still an Issue? by Elise M. Edwards
Over the past few days, I’ve been spending time at a church in Alexandria, Virginia conducting oral history interviews. I’m doing research for a project about the arts and the church that has me diving deep into the church’s congregants’… Read More ›
Part One: The God Ayyappan and The Sabarimala Temple by Anjeanette LeBoeuf
The Sabarimala Temple in Kerala, India has been recently thrown into the news. It has made world news due to the two centuries long tradition of denying females from the age of 10-50 entrance into the Temple. As of September… Read More ›
Men Just “Know Things” by Esther Nelson
One of my Facebook friends, a young woman academic, recently posed a question, inviting discussion. (I’ve abbreviated her post for the sake of space.) “What is it about white male liberals that just MUST have me buy [into] their ideas… Read More ›
Navigating Social Space as Power-Struggle, Pt. 1 by Lache S.
The space we take up by our bodies is an element of the sacred. As we move from bed in waking, through our houses and then out into the world, if any of that movement places a woman in close… Read More ›
Open Letter to the Pope and all the King’s Men by Natalie Weaver
Dear Sirs, It breaks me down. My anger, my revulsion, my powerlessness. I have been searching for the way since I was a child old enough to remember my mind. For a time, I thought Jesus was a white guy knocking on my… Read More ›
I Was Brainwashed to Believe I Wasn’t Human. Now I’m on a Mission Against that Cult – Part 1 by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir
Trigger warning: child sexual abuse, domestic abuse I was so thoroughly brainwashed that my voice changed without me realizing it. My appearance changed so much that close family members did not recognize me. Multiple therapists told me that I had… Read More ›
Some Thoughts from Experience by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente
I am a woman, a feminist, a Muslim. These three things are me, they are things that I have become, in that order. One is born with feminine sex, but it is only a biological determinism. I was born female… Read More ›
Beyond Human Rights by Esther Nelson
For way too long, the only meaning I found in my life happened when peering through one specific, religious prism. Then I discovered what’s called the academic study of religion. Observing the many ways people find meaning through their own… Read More ›
My Heroine’s Journey: Writing Women Back in History by Mary Sharratt
We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust. This is not your fault or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was… Read More ›
Is God Breathing? by Karen Leslie Hernandez
Another mass shooting. Syria. #MeToo. Hunger. Animal extinction. Iraq. Climate change. Deportation. Slavery. Central African Republic. Hate crimes. Rape. Animal cruelty. Oppression. Accidental nuclear war alerts. Homeless encampments. “Illegal immigrants.” Afghanistan. More mass shootings. Sex robots. Trafficking. Russian bots. Racism…. Read More ›
Questions that Matter: What is Feminism? by Elise M. Edwards
It certainly is a busy time of year for me, but I’m fortunate that many of the events I am participating in offer a chance to share what is important to me. Next week, I’ll be speaking to a group… Read More ›
Difficult Dialogues by John Erickson
Let’s have a conversation about men and feminism and how we can continue to abolish the patriarchy together rather than writing mean, hurtful comments online.
High Stakes for Women in Leadership: A Reflection and a Prayer by Elise M. Edwards
A few weeks ago, I was asked to give the invocation for a luncheon at my university. Baylor University was celebrating our presidential inauguration and there were several events leading up to the installation of the university’s 15th president. The… Read More ›
Tonight Is Guy Fawkes Night by Barbara Ardinger
Mark Twain is reported to have said that while history does not repeat itself, it often rhymes. Let’s see what rhymes we can find in Tudor and Jacobean England and Trumpean America. Here’s the history lesson. What has changed in… Read More ›
An Algorithm for Capturing White Heteropatriarchy: The Woman Caught in Adultery and the Failure of the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements to Embrace Intersectionality by Blanche Cook
The church occasioned one of my first conscious experiences with inequality — Sunday school to be exact. I was nine and bedecked in black platform shoes and a bright pink polyester suit. It was the 70s, a moment in… Read More ›
Traveling Sexism by Anjeanette LeBoeuf
This summer I traveled quite a lot domestically. While I was in airports, on trains, waiting in lines, and going about my summer I kept coming across certain patterns and experiences which were becoming all too common and too significant… Read More ›
A Middle: Understanding the Relationship between Violence and Power by Katie M. Deaver
In my last post here on Feminism and Religion I unpacked the three primary understandings of atonement theology as well as some of the feminist critiques of those understandings. In this post I’d like to focus a bit more on… Read More ›
Rape, Community and Healing by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente
During my last months in Cape Town I have been facilitating a series of workshops on Rape, Gender Justice and Culture of Consent. I am blissful for the opportunity to teach and learn with a group of people with whom… Read More ›
The Intersections of Faith and Reproductive Justice by Katey Zeh
Last week I participated in a panel discussion hosted by the Center for American Progress (CAP) on the intersections of faith and reproductive justice. These conversations are critically important, particularly in these political times when threats to our bodily autonomy… Read More ›
It’s About More Than Just The Ariana Grande Concert by Karen Leslie Hernandez
Manchester. It’s not just about this one act of violence. It is horrific, there is no doubt, and I am in no way belittling this act of terror, but, I am always perplexed when these things happen, and how it… Read More ›
What is the Most Dangerous Breed? by Karen Leslie Hernandez
As I wrote in November, I am currently working at the San Francisco SPCA. I took the job to bring something different in to my life as I do the heavy work involved with my Doctor of Ministry. I LOVE… Read More ›
A Gift Offered in Faith and Love by Elise M. Edwards
“The day begins with the sun and ends with the moon and stars; what you do in between is your gift to the world.” – Reyna Craig The new year has begun, and many of us take this marking of… Read More ›
