Women in the Church – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

Seasons in Church and Life in the Company of Women by Elise M. Edwards

This week, the Christian season of Lent began. Ugh. Lent can be so somber and serious and gloomy. Last year, I didn’t want to place myself in that frame of mind. I was experiencing grief and self-doubt and loneliness, and felt that an extended period of reflection about self-denial, Christ’s suffering, and the sinful condition of humanity might pull me into an unhealthy depression. Also, I questioned why I should seek silence and solitude when I was already experiencing too much of it. I felt isolated.

This year is different for me. Once again, I’m entering the season with a grieving heart. I’m mourning the death of my cousin. But I do not feel isolated. I am not self-doubting. This January, I spent four continuous days with mentors and peers in academia who poured love and wisdom and inspiration into me. The women in our group sought each other out and had honest and authentic conversations about the successes and struggles in our lives. We affirmed self-care. We affirmed milestone birthdays. We affirmed our bodies, despite the physical limitations we sometimes feel. We affirmed the tough decisions some had made, the transformations some were pursuing, and the exciting opportunities that had developed for others since we last met over the summer.

It was a powerful experience, but there was pain, too. We confronted fear, rejection, anxiety, exhaustion, and frustration. I felt blessed—divinely gifted—to have an opportunity to speak honestly with my sisters in the spirit about the people and issues on our hearts: challenges with students, systemic racism and sexism, menopause, children, research questions, financial decisions, romance, and health.

I was on an emotional high from the power that comes from being truly known and loved and I was reveling in the power of that love. Continue reading “Seasons in Church and Life in the Company of Women by Elise M. Edwards”

Has the Vatican Discovered that Women Should Be Running the World? by Carol P. Christ

So it is a [female] generativity that .. is … giving life to social, cultural and economic structures that are inspired by values, ideas, principles and practices oriented to the common good …

The above statement from the Pontifical Council’s document on “Women’s Cultures: Equality and Diffference” is a response to Pope Francis’s call for a discussion of “feminine genius” and its role in the Church. If in fact women are “oriented to the common good,” then this is the best reason I can think of to elect a woman pope. And if a women are in fact hard-wired to think about the good of all, wouldn’t a woman pope’s first act be to dissolve the hierarchy that elected her? Is this why the Vatican is so afraid of the power of women?

From February 4-7, 2015 the Pontifical Council on Culture made up of 32 voting members (29 male clerics and 3 laymen) with the advice of non-voting Consultors (28 men and 7 women), discussed the role and place of women in the church and the world in relation to the preliminary document said to have been prepared by a group of unnamed women cherry-picked by the Vatican. Continue reading “Has the Vatican Discovered that Women Should Be Running the World? by Carol P. Christ”

Faith Doesn’t Need Walls: A Conversation with Kate Kelly by Kate Stoltzfus

Kate.Stoltzfus-1 When Kate Kelly faced excommunication from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in June 2014, much of the world took notice. The D.C.-based human rights lawyer garnered wide-spread attention for founding Ordain Women, a movement to push for advocacy of female ordination in her Mormon faith. A ripple of press from The New York Times to The Huffington Post chronicled Kelly’s waves of activism and its subsequent consequences: excommunication in absentia on June 23 by her former church leaders in Virginia.

While the press has since died down, the momentum remains. Church leaders denied Kelly’s first appeal against the charge in October 2014, but Kelly remained hopeful of her plan to appeal a second time to the church’s First Presidency when she spoke to WATER (Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual) a month later. Continue reading “Faith Doesn’t Need Walls: A Conversation with Kate Kelly by Kate Stoltzfus”

The Nuns Jumped Over the Wall by Dawn Morais Webster

One of the most prized dishes in Chinese cuisine is called “The Monk Jumped Over the Wall.” The name comes from the folk belief that the monk was unable to resist the aroma of this delicious dish and jumped the wall in search of it.

Reading Jo Piazza’s If Nuns Ruled The World: Ten Sisters on a Mission, it is clear that these nuns, and others like them, have been drawn by people’s needs, to jump the walls of patriarchy and prejudice.

And there’s no putting them back behind those walls.

Just ask media maven, Sr. Maureen Fiedler: “After all, Jesus was a feminist, and we claim to follow him.”

One nun, though, has accepted being put behind bars for literally breaking through the fences around the nuclear facility in Oak Ridge,Tennessee. Sr. Megan Rice is unfazed by clerical disapproval.

“I don’t believe in excommunication,” she says, “because I don’t see the institutional Church as the real Church.” Continue reading “The Nuns Jumped Over the Wall by Dawn Morais Webster”

Woman – The Essential Other by Natalie Weaver

I am writing from Oxford, England, where I am privileged to be staying this summer while attending an institute on the theme of “Otherness” in medieval Judaism. Our readings have focused on a variety of topics, including: the development of Christian anti-Jewish polemics; the development of Jewish anti-Christian polemics; the development of medieval Christian visual representations of Jews; and the European medieval expulsions of Jews. The well-planned program, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, has been illuminating for all – speakers and participants alike, I think. It has also been, at least for me, an occasion of intellectual sadness. It is not that I am surprised by how ugly polemics, pictures, and history can be. It is that I feel myself coming to a deeper appreciation of the dangerous power dynamics in religion, driven by political and economic aims, that strike me as the underlying cause of practical conflict, yet cloaked as principally theological tensions.

If it were not manifestly obvious that procurement and retention of resources, goods, and position drive personal/familial commitments and tribalistic frameworks for meaning and ultimacy, one of the clues – at least for me – has been the repetition of charges and accusations across polemical perspectives. And, what is more, one unmistakable commonality in the charges and indictments seems to be the accusation of effeminacy. This accusation need not be directly stated, such as, “Your people think like women,” or the like. It comes across in the overlap, speaking specifically concerning Christian writings, between discussions of women and discussions of Jews. The phenomenon, though, is not unilaterally Christian. Continue reading “Woman – The Essential Other by Natalie Weaver”

Movement Within the Catholic Church – Time for Receptive Ecumenism? by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

When I originally learned about the concept of receptive ecumenism and the movement to more fully reach across lines of faith traditions as a means of ecclesiastical growth, my first reaction was to ask the question – what about women in the pews?

Dr. Paul Murray from Durham University conceived of the idea of receptive ecumenism, which had three international conferences of church leaders and theologians working together in a way that looks to learn from each other. The focus is not that our religion is better than yours, rather what can we learn from your faith tradition that could enrich ours without compromising our tradition. With this final conference and after years of lectures, meetings, and publications, Dr. Murray sent this concept out into the world to see if it had legs – and it really does. Pope Francis embraced this concept, so has the Anglican Church. The movement is also thriving in Australia to the point that eighteen delegates were present at June’s meeting in Fairfield, Connecticut. For my part, I raised the question whether or not the Catholic Church was postured to engage fully in this dialogue. Essentially, it boils down to this, how can we have an inter-faith dialogue when we are unwilling, as a church, to have an intra-faith dialogue that includes all voices. The teachings of the Second Vatican Council laid the groundwork for ecumenical dialogue to occur at a multilateral levels. The council mandated us to look inward as well. Continue reading “Movement Within the Catholic Church – Time for Receptive Ecumenism? by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

The Case for a Woman Pope: Mary Magdalene by Frank Shapiro

There’s a lot of hullabaloo these days about belief in God, atheism, separation of religion and state. However, like it or not, Western civilization is a Christian one.

Ever since the Roman Empire officially became Christian in the 4^th century Christianity has formed an integral part of the Greco-Roman culture, forging the West’s crystallization.

And within this religious-political-cultural matrix, women have been striving for equality of power in virtually every field. Most of the time men had the upper hand.

Yet in Christianity’s early maturation period an egalitarian approach to the gender issue was the accepted norm. Following a good start in gender power sharing in the Early Christian Church, this enlightened approach gradually changed for the worse. In the early 6^th century women found themselves stigmatized and demoted from almost all the major roles in church service and liturgy.

So what went wrong? Continue reading “The Case for a Woman Pope: Mary Magdalene by Frank Shapiro”

Anne Hutchinson, Sor Juana, and Kate Kelly: Reflections on Equality and Excommunication by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

On June 11, 2014 the New York Times made waves in the world of Mormondom with their breaking news that two members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) are facing excommunication on the grounds of apostasy. Active Church members Kate Kelly and John P. Dehlin both received letters from their local church officials in early June summoning them to participate in scheduled Church hearings to discuss their so-called heretical public activism. By many accounts, this appears to be Dehlin’s first notice of formal disciplinary action for his faith-mending work with Mormon Stories, but Kelly has been under official fire from the LDS Church since late May for her efforts in founding and operating Ordain Women (OW)—a pro-women’s ordination group of active believers—more than a year prior. The excommunication threats came on the heels of a church-wide trend that preaches acceptance and diversity among members and beyond, but sends a mixed message to those who, like Kate Kelly, find themselves asking sincere questions only to be either silenced or rejected by their Church and cut off from communal worship of their God.

Ever since the New York Times story broke, the web has seen a swarm of responses in the form of news, interviews, blog posts, and social media discussion; watching everything unfold has been a fascinating study in feminist thought. Kelly herself responded publicly to her disciplinary letter here, saying that she had been transparent about Ordain Women with her bishop from the group’s inception and that not once had she been called in to discuss her work. The formal letter came only after Kelly had moved across the country, and the disciplinary hearing is scheduled to occur with or without her on June 22, 2014. On June 23, Kelly received the word that the trial had resulted in her excommunication.

As I’ve read through the slew of ideas and arguments surrounding what amounts to Kate Kelly’s spiritual fate, I can’t help but notice a strong underlying theme of patriarchy at work in squelching what Kelly believes are sincere questions about the lives of Mormon women. Commentators have tried hard—in classic anti-feminist fashion—to discredit Kelly’s work with Ordain Women, making certain that readers see her as a disingenuous religious deviant worthy of silencing. Throughout the spill of voices about Kelly’s Church standing the underlying point seems to be that as a Latter-day Saint she has no right to contest her Church’s doctrine or its patriarchy, that she is imagining inequality into the Church, that the Church’s discipline will be for her own spiritual good, and even that her group, Ordain Women, is lying in its claims about inequality. Continue reading “Anne Hutchinson, Sor Juana, and Kate Kelly: Reflections on Equality and Excommunication by Erin Seaward-Hiatt”

Confession by Darlena Cunha

Good afternoon, Fr. John. I’m here for confession. No, I’d like the curtain back, please. I want you to see my face. I really need to talk to you, get my bearings. But this confession will not be solely about my sins, for, unfortunately, I am not sure I will ever change my ways.

Does that exclude me? Is Catholicism a club? Should my twin daughters, five years old, be subjected to scorn and pity that their mother is a sinner? That they were born in sin? They don’t look like sin, to me. They are light, and love, and happiness. They have shaped me, taught me, brought me into the woman I was meant to be. Is it wrong of me to want to do the same for them? Is it better to turn me out and lose two potentially pure beings who will make their own choices in their religion and could be devout Catholics, or put up with me in the hopes that my children will be more worthy?

I’m here because I like you, you know. I like Catholicism. It’s in my blood, my heritage, my family. And where I’m from, everyone belongs.

I was baptized, received communion, was confirmed, attended youth group. I went to an all-girls Catholic college my freshman year. Full-ride because I’m fairly smart, and I work hard. That’s where I lost Him, you see. I don’t know how, or why, but one early fall day when the leaves were crisp and bright but not yet falling, I looked up at the chapel on campus, and He was gone. Or He seemed gone. Continue reading “Confession by Darlena Cunha”

Christian Sex Ain’t So Vanilla by Andreea Nica

My recent literary digests have included memoirs and nonfiction audiobooks on sex, relationships, and non-monogamy. A recent listen, Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage by feminist activist Jenny Block, provides insight into the paradigmatic features of open marriage drawing on the personal experiences of a bisexual woman. Currently, I’m musing over my latest read: The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures written by psychotherapist Dossie Easton and author and sex educator Janet W. Hardy. Through my literary adventures, I can’t help but reflect on my own sexual conditioning and upbringing in the Pentecostal church.

The authors of these feminist-friendly, sex-positive books and social movements did not exist in the church I grew up in, and I feel quite saddened by this. While my sexual conditioning in the church was far from liberating, these reads have helped me realize that the religious community wasn’t as mundane as I thought. My early sex education which was conservative consisted of the anatomical and biological basics (Arizona education system, need I say more?) and early conditioning of sex morals and ethics in the church. The latter was more influential to my perception of sex, gender, and relationships. Of course the media and my peers constructed my views of sexual culture and gender norms, but the church had the greatest impact during my childhood and adolescence. Continue reading “Christian Sex Ain’t So Vanilla by Andreea Nica”