Social Justice – Page 7 – Feminism and Religion

Moving Forward and into a New Season by Elise M. Edwards

It’s only been a month and I am still reeling from the US presidential election. I feel like I’m just beginning to emerge from the sense of loss and futility that has cloaked me. But I am beginning to move forward.

I don’t feel better. I’m still confused and discouraged about why people voted for Donald Trump. I’m very concerned about his cabinet picks and his proposed policies. But I am actively seeking a path forward and a path of resistance. I’m finding support in my spiritual practices and communities.

In the Christian calendar, we are in the season of Advent. Advent carries profound symbolism, and this year it is especially poignant for me. The word advent bears meanings of arrival, birth, and emergence. It’s the beginning of the Christian year, which is patterned on the life of Christ, but the year does not begin Jesus’ birth. That celebration is observed at Christmas, four weeks into the church year. The weeks preceding Christmas are a time of preparation and reflection on the need for the Incarnation. The Incarnation of God in the Christ Child may be a distinctly Christian doctrine, but I believe the need for it–even the idea of it–is found in other spiritual and religious teachings.

Continue reading “Moving Forward and into a New Season by Elise M. Edwards”

Divine Physics: A Poetic Reflection on Ecclesiastes 3:14 by Lori Stewart

Ecclesiastes 3:14 – I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all that should stand in awe before him.

Nothing can be added or
taken away…
… then why does it feel like everything is lost?

You haul away the bodies while
we watch
— linking arms
— standing fast
against the tide of
grief that churns until
we can find
a distraction that makes us believe
life will return to
normal

Nothing can be added or
taken away, you say…
Really?
You take away innocence at
the marketplace
— the prices vary by age
— virgins to the highest bidder
Surely, El-roi, you see
— the pain
— the suffering Continue reading “Divine Physics: A Poetic Reflection on Ecclesiastes 3:14 by Lori Stewart”

Keepin’ On Keepin’ On by Carol P. Christ

It is now Monday morning, five days after the new President was elected, despite losing the popular vote.

For many of us, and for me too, losing this election feels like losing everything we have worked to achieve during our whole lives. One of my friends wrote, “I am totally distraught and unable to focus.” My cousin said, “I feel like I am in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.”

I have been scouring the internet to try to figure out what we can still do to try to create a world that guarantees liberty and justice to all people and all beings in the web of life.

There is much to fear. Continue reading “Keepin’ On Keepin’ On by Carol P. Christ”

My Reaction to the Election Results by Elise M. Edwards

I wanted to stay in bed yesterday morning. I wanted to stay in bed for the whole day. When I heard that Trump won the US Presidential election, I didn’t know how to deal with it. How can I accept this reality? I still don’t have an adequate answer.

Turn to prayer? Yes. Do some writing? Ok. I’ll also take every hug and kind word that’s offered to me. And still, my emotions will be raw for a long time. I cry at random moments. My voice catches unexpectedly. I feel that so many Americans embraced a vision of the country that is intensely hostile to people like me (women, African-Americans, Black Lives Matter sympathizers, liberals, intellectuals). How can I not take that personally? Dismissing the harm of Trump’s open hostility or accepting it in deference to some supposedly higher goal feels like rejection too. It justifies and legitimizes his contempt and denies the seriousness of it. Do we really accept a man who speaks so openly of sexual assault because he promises to bring jobs back? That denigrates women and all assault victims. The hatred directed at immigrants, Muslims, and LGBTQA persons is even more unrestrained and horrifying!

Continue reading “My Reaction to the Election Results by Elise M. Edwards”

What My Mothers and Mentors Taught Me about Self-Care by Elise M. Edwards

During another week of killings, war, protests, and debates about whether Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, I’m concerned about the toll it takes on those who are witnessing the violence and fighting for justice.

I’m not on the front lines of these battles, but I can feel my energy draining, nonetheless. Over the past few days, while I’ve stayed informed about the latest tragedies and conflicts, I’ve intentionally limited my exposure to most news and social media outlets. I’ve begun preparing for a contemplative retreat with other women who also care about justice. For me to continue to participate in any effort of transforming society, culture, or the church, I must nurture my mind, spirit, and body.

Audre Lorde put it like this:

“Caring for myself Is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

Self-care is a radical practice of self-love. It is absolutely necessary when engaged in conflict against those who do not show love to you, or worse, those who seek to destroy you. Your survival and your flourishing are defiantly brave. Self-care honors the God who created you, the One who loves you, and the Spirit who sustains you. Continue reading “What My Mothers and Mentors Taught Me about Self-Care by Elise M. Edwards”

Living Out the Tension: Spirituality, Self-Care, & Activism in Action by Chris Ash

“Great art is not a matter of presenting one side or another,
but presenting a picture so full of the contradictions, tragedies, [and] insights of the period
that the impact is at once disturbing and satisfying.” – Pauli Murray

My spirituality is inherently creative. Deep in the creative process, I open more fully to awareness of what is flowing around and in and through me. When I can get there – to that place of fully giving myself over to Spirit as a channel, vessel, and embodiment – creation itself becomes an act of prayer, of devotion, of intense ecstatic ritual to honor, grieve with, or celebrate the Ground of Being behind all expression. I craft, dig, carve, build, dance, drum, and sing. Mostly, my art involves words – spoken and written – to create moments, spark feelings, paint pictures, or shape ideas. Words carry tremendous meaning, unconsciously as well as when we use them consciously, with intention.

My spirituality is inherently personal. While I’m a mystical thinker prone to the kind of abstraction that finds beauty in universal connections and layers of thought and cosmos, the questions that always draw me back into Self are these: How does this grow me? What am I learning that helps me be a better person for myself, my family, my community? How does this enhance my well-being, bring me contentment, or give me tools or strength to expand beyond the trauma, grief, and sadness of paying attention – really paying attention – to the world around me? Does this fill me with more to spill out into the world? More love, more beauty, more passion and fight and solidarity?

Canvassing against NC's Amendment One in 2011 — *Canvassing against North Carolina’s Amendment One in 2011*

My spirituality is also inherently political. Continue reading “Living Out the Tension: Spirituality, Self-Care, & Activism in Action by Chris Ash”

Sorrow Filled Solidarity by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

On an unexpected weekend in June, the city of Orlando was rocked with a string of violent attacks that created an earthquake of shock, grief, fear, hurt, and a sadness too terrible to name, that all ends of our globe have felt. It started with the shocking shooting of the young YouTube celebrity, The Voice reality contestant and established musician 22-year-old Christina Grimmie, gunned down by a deranged young man before he in turn killed himself. It ended with the horrific mass shooting at the gay bar Pulse, where 49 men and women lost their lives, and countless more saw their lives forever altered, shaken, and shattered.

Continue reading “Sorrow Filled Solidarity by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

What Will the Faith Response to Zika Be? by Katey Zeh

In the face of the Zika epidemic the World Health Organization (WHO) has issued new recommendations for individuals at risk of contracting the virus either through mosquito bites or through sexual contact with an infected person. If someone has traveled to an area where Zika is present, the WHO recommends abstinence or consistent condom use for at least eight weeks or up to six months if a partner shows symptoms. (Only 20% of people infected with the virus are symptomatic.) But for women of childbearing age living in areas affected by the virus, the WHO urges them to speak with their health providers about possibly delaying pregnancy, presumably indefinitely. The Zika virus has been linked to devastating birth defects including microcephaly.

After issuing the revised guidelines Nyka Alexander, spokesperson for the WHO, clarified that the purpose of them was not to discourage all at-risk couples from conceiving, but rather to ensure that they consider the Zika virus and its potential impacts on the timing of pregnancy. “Whether and when to become pregnant should be a personal choice made on the basis of information and access to affordable, quality health services,” said Alexander.

For pregnancy to be a personal choice, women and men must have access to the tools, information, and resources they need to prevent, delay, or plan it. Worldwide more than 220 million women want to avoid pregnancy but have an unmet need for reliable, safe contraceptive methods. The Zika virus has brought significant attention to what has been a public health crisis and an ethical tragedy for decades: that despite modern medical advances 85 million women experience unintended pregnancies each year. Continue reading “What Will the Faith Response to Zika Be? by Katey Zeh”

Education as Resistance by Dawn Morais Webster

Ivy Helman’s recent commentary (((Israel))) criticizes what she sees as “a new form of anti-Semitism” from organizations such as Jewish Voices for Peace in their advocacy of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement. So I begin this account of a recent visit by two Palestinian students to Hawaii with a reminder that the BDS movement is simply using the tools of nonviolent resistance to pressure Israel into giving Arab-Palestinians what Israel insists on for itself: equality, freedom, peace, justice and access to their homes and properties as stipulated by UN Resolution 194. Israel’s continuing land grabs speak to Israel’s sense of impunity. The two Birzeit University students provided a first hand account of what life under Israeli control means to them and their families. It was the kind of opportunity “to share and learn” that Helman says is necessary. And it only reinforced the importance of the BDS effort.

Mai Hasan and Noor Daghlas, students participating in Birzeit University’s Right to Education (R2E) Tour of American universities have stories to tell that are chilling. Stories that make you wonder why you are still in your seat, instead of running out screaming for someone to do something. To stop the madness that is the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Yet both students speak of their experiences with the matter-of-fact intensity of activists who have come to terms with the fact that their journey is long, and that they have survived, while many have not.

“I am here, not to speak about myself, but to speak for those who are no longer with us,” said Mai Hasan when asked whether she herself might face “administrative detention” after the tour. Since the year 2000, the Israeli government has imprisoned over 7,000 Palestinian youth, many for asserting their right to education. Mai, who graduated shortly after her return home, said without hesitation: “If I am arrested because of the truths I tell about the occupation, I will accept it proudly.”

Both students bear witness to the truth that Freedom is a Constant Struggle, the title of Angela Davis’ latest book. They were at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa recently, with the renowned scholar at the same table, speaking to a packed room. The panel discussion took place just a few hours before Davis delivered her keynote address as the spring 2016 Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals to an overflow crowd at the Kennedy Theater. The two young Palestinian undergraduates talking about their life under siege in their own homeland, in conversation with the lifelong activist in front of an audience in Hawaiʻi, one of the places made American by occupation, was a statement of what Davis calls the “intersectionality of struggles.” As Cynthia Franklin, professor in the English department at UH Mānoa and organizer of the visit, said in introducing the panel, the event could be viewed through the lens of Davis’ own words that “It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.” Continue reading “Education as Resistance by Dawn Morais Webster”

What Traci West Taught Me about Dominant and Excluded Voices by Elise M. Edwards

In my previous post, I mentioned a book I am writing about how theological and ethical considerations in architectural design can define good architecture. In that post and in ones to follow, I am acknowledging the feminists and womanists and mujeristas who have influenced me while also opening up the dialogue to the feminists in this community who continue to inspire and guide me to do my best work.

But today, instead of talking about creativity or architecture, I want to discuss how I arrived at the conviction that community decisions about how we ought to live—whether those are decisions about laws, institutional policies, religious practices or architectural buildings—need to include the voices of the diverse people they directly and indirectly influence. Continue reading “What Traci West Taught Me about Dominant and Excluded Voices by Elise M. Edwards”