Women’s Agency – Page 4 – Feminism and Religion

We Don’t Have to Live Like This by Trista Hendren

A Tribute to Carol P. Christ’s Legacy of Peace

Rawan Anani, The Melody of Freedom, Gaza Palestine

Carol P. Christ was a feminist scholar and thealogian I deeply admired from afar for many years. That changed when I read her post in Feminism and Religion describing “washing wet clothes cast off by refugees who crossed the Sea of Death.”[1]

In that moment, she became a woman I connected with on a soul level. What could be more profound than washing and folding the clothing of tiny dead children? What other metaphor could be more vivid for how desperately we need to change the world?

“A tiny pink long-sleeved shirt with a boat neck, for a girl, size 3 months.

A pair of leggings with feet, grey with pink, orange, brown, white, and blue polka-dots, to be worn over diapers.”

The week before, she asserted that “the only ‘solution’ to the problem of people leaving their homes in fear for their lives is TO END WAR.” She continued, “No one takes this suggestion seriously enough to engage it.”[2]

I remember sitting inside the Idean cave with our Goddess Pilgrimage group when Carol read, “We Need a God Who Bleeds Now” by Ntozake Shange. I knew the poem well, but hearing Carolina read it so forcefully shook something deep inside me.

While I have had the privilege of having several wonderful female pastors, they were never particularly affirming of my womanhood—or my divinity. They certainly never celebrated my period.

The Loving Tree By Janet Maika’i Rudolph

from Egyptian tomb of Pashedu *ca.* 1314-1200 BCE

Once there was a tree who loved two young children, twins, a boy and a girl.

Thay came everyday to play under her canopy.

Gather her leaves and play fairies of the forest.

Climb her trunk and play in her branches

And sleep with their backs against her trunk

They loved the tree and the tree loved them.

Time went by and the twins grew older.

They didn’t come to visit the tree as often.

One day when they did come, the tree asked them to play but they responded they needed money because they wanted to go on dates.

The tree responded, take my apples to sell. But leave enough behind for the squirrels and birds and other animals so they can eat too. Leave enough behind for the seeds.

Kedoshim: On Women, Patriarchy, and Respect.

The Torah portion for today’s blog is Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1-20:27), which was read by Jewish communities yesterday, May 10, 2025. Among scholars, it is part of what is often referred to as the Holiness Code, Leviticus 17-26 (Note 1). Kedoshim covers all manner of topics: from what fabric to wear to how to treat one’s neighbor and from keeping Shabbat to when one can eat the fruit of newly planted trees. These, what I will call prescriptions, all fall under the general reasoning that one does these things so that one can be holy like the deity is holy. In a way, the Holiness Code then is an apt name for this section. But, what can we take from this parshah from a (eco)feminist point of view? To answer this question, I will be using the methodology I have laid out in a previous blog and ask three questions.

33 Years of Wisdom by Chaz J.

As the celestial clock turns towards Sunday, April twenty-seventh, at the luminous hour of 9:12 PM, I shall step into the sacred circle of my thirty-third year. And for a soul who once walked the hallowed halls of the church, as I did, the echoes of a profound resonance surely sound. For Jesus proclaimed his divine lineage and embarked on his earthly ministry around his thirtieth spring, only to ascend three years later, at the very age I now approach?

Thus, this year unfolds as my very own ‘Jesus year,’ a time ripe with potent transformation, reinvention, remembrance, and the blossoming of my inner wisdom. I present this wisdom, aligning it with the seven sacred wheels of energy, the chakras that map the landscape of my being. Each chakra, a vibrant note in the symphony of my soul, accompanied by a song that, for me, hums with the exquisite harmony of its balanced state. This is a profound and poetic offering of the journey I have walked and the radiant being I am becoming.

Presenting Feminine Courage by Cheryl Petersen

Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, to sharecroppers who had been slaves before the American Civil War. Sarah married at age fourteen. Six years later Sarah was a widow with a daughter. For income, Sarah did laundry and cooked. In 1905, she remarried and became Madam C.J. Walker. With little more than a dollar, she began her own line of hair products for African American women and prospered humanity beyond imagination or expectation.

Nearly two decades back, I read “On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker,” by A’Lelia Bundles. The author describes Walker’s journey from desperation to inspiration. The narrative impressed me with an exacting respect for the womanhood that embraces other women.

An Omer Calendar of Biblical Women by Jill Hammer

Right before Passover every year, my wife and I visit a botanical garden to look at the spring flowers: daffodils, tulips, cherry and apple blossoms, magnolia. One year, in 2004 or so, we were on our way there when I had an idea. I grabbed a pen and started scribbling long lists of biblical women.

“What are you doing?” my wife asked.

“Making an Omer Calendar,” I said.

Since biblical times, there is a Jewish practice of counting the forty-nine days between the holiday of Passover (the barley harvest and festival of freedom) and the holiday of Shavuot (the first fruits festival and the season of receiving Torah). These forty-nine days were the time of the barley and wheat harvest and were a fraught time for biblical farmers. According to the Talmud, each day of the Omer must be counted along with a blessing. One must count consecutively each day (usually in the evening) and one loses the right to say the blessing if one misses a full day of the count. The Omer is often understood as a time of semi-mourning because of plagues said to occur during this time, but it is also a joyful season when nature’s abundance is at the forefront. This seven-week period embodies both fear that the harvest will be damaged and gratitude for the harvest.

Blodeuwedd; The Flower that Does Not Bloom and the Transhuman Death Spiral by Kelle Ban Dea

Blodeuwedd is often viewed as a Spring goddess, a personification of flower and bud and bloom. And why not; she is made of flowers after all; flowers and magic. It’s only when you read her original myth in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi that you realise how dark it is.

Of all the famous women – now seen as goddesses by many – in these ancient Celtic legends, Blodeuwedd is the only one who is not a mother, and therefore not seen as an aspect of the mother goddess, Modron. Bloduwedd cannot be a mother, because although she is made of flowers, she is a flower that will never bloom, that cannot reproduce.

In both ancient mythology and in the neopatriarchy we live in today, women who either cannot or will not be mothers (despite these being very different things; one a choice, one a lack of choice) are viewed with suspicion. As the opposite of the nurturing, fecund Mother, Bloduwedd instead brings betrayal and death to the hero of the tale. Yet, it was never Blodeuwedd at fault. She is created by the rapist magician Gwydion and given without her consent to be the wife of Lleu, the king, and our shining ‘hero’ of the story. Lleu has been cursed by his own mother to never have a human wife or children, so Bloduwedd is the best that Gwydion can conjure up, and he is celebrated for this marvellous feat of magic.

No-one, of course, bothers to ask Blodeuwedd what she might want.

Journey to Freedom: Harriet Tubman Still on the Move, part 2 by Maria Dintino

Part 1 appeared yesterday

Additional Developments

Although there’s a significant dearth of statues depicting real women in our country, Tubman’s image and legacy have done much to address this gap and put a serious dent in the bronze ceiling.

There are said to be at least 9 full-figure sculptures of Tubman with others in the works, along with plaques, busts, parks and museums named in her honor. Also, three commemorative coins have been released, each depicting a particular phase in Tubman’s life.

Speaking of currency, the plan to replace President Andrew Jackson’s image with that of Harriet Tubman’s on the twenty-dollar bill is still in the works. It’s an important endeavor that’s taking far too long. Annie Linskey with The Philadelphia Tribune explains:

“There has never been a Black person on the U.S. currency, nor has there been a woman on a bill in the modern era, despite repeated attempts to diversify the currency.”

Journey to Freedom: Harriet Tubman Still on the Move, part 1 by Maria Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This post is brought to you by a collaboration by FAR and Nasty Women Writers written and hosted by Maria and Theresa Dintino. This post originally appeared on their website on Feb. 20,2024. It has been updated to reflect recent events. the post is subtitled: Nasty Women Writers: Breaking the Bronze Ceiling – Statues of Real Women in Public Spaces

It’s quite fitting that the 9-foot bronze statue of Harriet Tubman, named Journey to Freedom is still on the move, as was Tubman for much of her life.

Since 2020, the statue has traveled around the country. It’s currently on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in Historic Mitcheville Freedom Park. The monument will remain on Hilton Head through April 2025 and from there be transported to Vienna, Virginia.

Three Women by Beth Bartlett

In the first ten days of the Trump administration, when his sycophants are purring and praising, private corporate execs are rolling over and doing his bidding, and even many of his opponents in Congress have been somewhat muted in their response to his actions, three women – Phyllis Fong, Judge Loren AliKhan, and Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde — have been audacious in their visible and vocal resistance.

On Friday, January 24^th, just four days after taking office, Trump fired seventeen Inspector Generals, the federal watchdogs over government agencies. Among these was Phyllis Fong, the Inspector General of the US Department of Agriculture. But Ms. Fong refused the firing, citing the position of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency that these firings “’did not comply with the requirements set out in law and therefore are ineffective at this time.’”[i] Having served in the USDA for twenty-two years under four presidents, she returned defiantly to her office on Monday morning, only to be escorted out by federal security agents.