Racism – Page 6 – Feminism and Religion

Wisdom Fiction (Part 2) by Elise M. Edwards

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

In my previous two posts, I’ve discussed the wisdom that can be found in black women’s literature. Continuing this series, I’m sharing a statement from the most well-known novel written by Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston was an American novelist, folklorist, anthropologist, and cultural critic whose work was first published in the 1920s-1940s. Their Eyes Were Watching God was published in 1937 and has since been reissued and adapted into film.

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” This quote is one that has circled around my mind every New Year and every birthday for many years. These times of year are when I’m likely to reflect on the previous year and wonder what has come from it.

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Truth in Storytelling by Elise M. Edwards

“[Shakespeare] was an alright writer. I did not always understand him, but some things he said were beautiful and he made some things so clear the way he explained people. But one thing he was wrong about. That ‘To be or not to be?’ is not the first question. ‘What is the truth?’ – that is the question! Then ‘To be or not to be?’ is the second question.”

-from “Feeling for Life “ in Some Soul to Keep by J. California Cooper

This past weekend, I taught a lesson for an adult church group about Christian imagination in the short stories of J. California Cooper. The quote above comes from one of her stories. I was invited to teach a lesson as part of a series on exploring God through literature. It was a delight to participate for several reasons.

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Thoughts on Race and Being Jewish by Ivy Helman

When studying the Shoah, it is extremely important for teachers to introduce students to the 1800s concept of race “science,” which is what I have been doing in my classes over the past few weeks. An American and European development, this “science” was deeply connected to the development of racism. Through a “scientific” method, humans were classified based on certain characteristics (i.e. head size, posture, gait, etc.) and traits (i.e. aggression, passivity, even temperament, etc.). Physicality was linked to personalities that were “typical” as well as desirable or undesirable.

Race “science” supported the slave trade, colonialism and the exhibition and exotification of non-European peoples. In the case of the Shoah, race “science” was heavily relied upon by the Nazi Regime in their propaganda, law and ideology. For the Nazis and all nations under their purview, “Jewish” was a racial identity, “scientifically-proven” through measurements and observations and set out by the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, previous and subsequent anti-Semitic decrees and the systematically-planned extermination of 6 million of us.

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You Deserve It: Punishment and Reward in a Patriarchal Society by Ivy Helman

A friend recently told me that I deserve a vacation. I brushed it off and replied that I haven’t been working that hard. Ever since, I’ve been troubled by that comment and have been reflecting on why it bothers me so much. Today I am sharing with you why I’m uneasy about the idea of deserving reward.

Most of the time, in Western society, deserving something centers around actions: either done or not done. For example, a firefighter pulling a colleague out of a burning building is a heroic act that many people think deserves recognition. We would be wrong not to honor that act. At the same time, a drunk driver dies in an automobile accident, and most people think the person got what s/he deserved. A non-smoker is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and people struggle with explaining the actions she or he has done to deserve that fate. Whereas when a smoker is diagnosed, people often jump quickly to blaming the victim. Continue reading “You Deserve It: Punishment and Reward in a Patriarchal Society by Ivy Helman”

Does the Term “Women of Color” Bother You? By Grace Yia-Hei Kao

I recently came back from a weeklong camping retreat for Christian faculty and their families in beautiful Catalina (an island an hour’s boat ride away from the Southern Californian mainland). This year’s conference theme was “Power Revealed: Gifts, Dangers, and Possibilities.” Not surprisingly, the topics of race, race relations, and institutional racism came-up repeatedly in sessions and informal conversations.
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The Whence of the Isms of (the) U(nited)S(tates)… by Marcia Mount Shoop

Thus, when enemies or friends
Are seen to act improperly,
Be calm and call to mind
That everything arises from conditions.
-Shantideva, Bodhicharyāvatāra

The early Indian teacher, Shantideva, calls humanity to a deeper exploration of the people and situations we encounter. While it may sound simple, his invitation can be very difficult for American mentalities. He is asking us to look at something more complicated than the individual who acts; he is pointing us toward the causes and conditions that give rise to every person, to every situation, to every moment. Continue reading “The Whence of the Isms of (the) U(nited)S(tates)… by Marcia Mount Shoop”

Changing the American Story? by Carol P. Christ

In a moving part of Goddess and God in the World, the book Judith Plaskow and I are writing together, Judith describes how the Sabra and Shatila massacre forced her to confront the fact that “her people” are just as capable of perpetrating evil as any other group. Growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust and the pogroms that had scattered her people across the world, Judith was taught to think of the Jewish people as the victims of history rather than as the perpetrators of evil. The willingness of the Israeli army to countenance the outright massacre of up to 3500 people told another story: when in power, Jews too were capable of great evil.

I tell this story because I believe the lesson Judith learned is a lesson that Americans as a group still need to learn. I am thinking about this in the days following the heated debate that led to the removal of the Confederate flag from the Capitol of North Carolina.

In a brave and impassioned speech, Jenny Horne explained that though she is a descendant of Jefferson Davis, she was speaking against the display of the Confederate flag because it is a symbol of the harm that has been done and continues to be done to slaves and descendants of slaves in her state. Jenny Horne was rejecting the story she had been told about what it is to be an American in South Carolina. Continue reading “Changing the American Story? by Carol P. Christ”

A Christian Response to Racism, Sexism, & the Rise of American Terrorism by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Trelawney bio picture As our country reels in horror at the brutal massacre of nine worshipers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one particularly important detail has emerged: the young man who killed those nine people entered the world of white supremacism after the object of his romantic interest rejected him and dated a black man.

According to his cousin, the experience dramatically changed the young man, led to his obsession with racist hatred, and motivated him to commit the atrocity. In some ways, the event resembles the 2014 Santa Barbara massacre, in which a young white man with strong racist tendencies massacred young women because he felt angry that women generally did not respond favorably to his romantic advances. Other mass murderers have also exhibited violent misogyny. Moreover, our country has begun to notice that most mass shootings are carried out by white males, and to point out that white masculinity may lead young men into feeling like failures if they do not achieve all the trappings of their supposedly superior race and gender identity.

My questions are: how did we, as a society, fail these young men? And how have we, as a church, failed society? And, most important, how can we help heal these diseases that are killing us? Continue reading “A Christian Response to Racism, Sexism, & the Rise of American Terrorism by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Feminism, Race, and Religion: An Interview with Sikivu Hutchinson by Kile Jones

While black Churches are burning, and black children are being gunned down by police, I felt it important to speak with someone who is involved in raising awareness on the role of racism and cultural imperialism in American society. I am honored to present to you all, Sikivu Hutchinson.

As a woman of color, and an atheist, how do you respond to the invocation of God in the Charleston tragedy?

It frustrates me but the invocation of God in crisis is a significant part of African American cultural and social history. As I wrote recently in an article entitled “Pushing Back on ‘God’ in Charleston”: “Radical black humanists, most notably Frederick Douglass and A. Philip Randolph, have challenged black religiosity under slavery while acknowledging the crucial role activist churches played in black self-determination.

Randolph’s critique of organized religion and the god concept was always coupled with a critique of capital and the imperialist occupation of black bodies and African countries. Churches dominated black communities because of the nexus of racial apartheid and capitalism.”

Organized religion and God belief continue to dominate African American communities because of these legacies. That said, clearly no loving god would allow a twenty six year-old in the prime of his life to be cut down in cold blood, nor abide by a five year-old having to play dead to avoid being murdered. And no moral god would demand forgiveness for a crime for which there has never—since the first African was stolen, chained, exploited and “imported”—been any reparations. Continue reading “Feminism, Race, and Religion: An Interview with Sikivu Hutchinson by Kile Jones”

In Praise of Darkness by Adam F. Braun

Adam Braun Twitter4f6abe6_jpg This reflection was initially a part of an attempt to create radical liturgies that might connect the frequent theological bias towards ‘light’ and the implicit White Supremacy that such theologies perpetuate. In addition, this particular reflection was inspired by a friend’s resistance to societal gender norms.

In Praise of Darkness

Bless the Darkness, o my soul,
that part of me that is hidden from the light
The darkness holds me before I am born.
And the moment the light hits, I want to return,
to the darkness.
In the light, I am ever analyzed
every part of me is laid bare
to identify
to categorize
to be understood
Under the light, I am but a mere object to be synthesized
into someone else’s meaning,
into a supporting role in someone else’s story.

There is no light of truth.
The light only manufactures facts and knowledge.
Damn you, light,
I do not want to be understood.

Only in darkness is there truth,
There we are forced to pay attention to that which we cannot see
And there’s nothing like SEEING to distract from truth.

In the light, I am individual. Separate and compartmentalized.
But in the darkness, I am and we are more.
In the darkness, we rest.
In the darkness, we transgress the gaze of the Big Other.
In the darkness, we celebrate life.

The darkness is a messianic web,
for in It I do not know where you end and I begin.

Adam F. Braun is a PhD candidate in New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. Previously, he has worked in Emergent communities: a small congregation in NC, a Campus Ministry in Chicago, and most recently as co-facilitator of Boston Pub Church. His interests are in the Narrativity of Religions, Materialist readings of the Gospels and Paul, and the Deconstruction of Theism within the Christian tradition. He is completing his dissertation on a deconstruction of “Kingdom” in Luke’s Parable of the Minas.