Women’s Voices – Feminism and Religion

Medieval Bhakti Women Saints: Early Voices of Feminism by Sonal Jakhar

Long before the first wave of feminism in the mid-nineteenth century had its initial launch, a well-established religious movement sparked a socio-political awakening in India. The processes of social and cultural integration in the bhakti tradition have significantly reshaped medieval Indian society. To understand the reclamation inherent in the bhakti movement, one must first acknowledge the ‘dominant power structure’ that prevailed.

The orthodox Brahmanical hierarchy (the priestly class) enforced a strict monopoly over religious ceremonies, temple access, and sacred texts. On the other hand, spiritual knowledge was bound within Sanskrit, a language only upper-class men could learn. The bhakti movement arose from a desire for a direct relationship with God while rejecting society’s rules and rituals. Women and marginalised castes were heavily oppressed and restricted from public spheres. Since religious space was the only space available to women in the early medieval period, many women embraced bhakti (devotion), and it eventually provided them space to define their own voices that revised society, relationships and religions.

The bhakti movement, since its emergence in the 7^th century in South India, had a seismic impact on women and marginalised groups. Ideas of inclusivity, accessibility, and connectivity were running through reforms and resistance. A small but steadily growing group of thinkers called for the democratisation of the Divine against the social hierarchy in religious practises. Many women supported this reform with resilience, as they knew that change, whether conservative or revolutionary, would inevitably shape gender relations and advance women’s rights.

Maiden, Mother, Crone: The Anthology by Madeleine White

Introduction: When I last wrote for Feminism and Religion, I shared some of the experiences that led me to write Maiden Mother Crone, a memoir in verse exploring trauma, motherhood, addiction, recovery, hope and the search for more inclusive forms of spiritual expression.

That personal journey has now opened into a wider conversation.

Maiden Mother Crone: The Anthology, published by Sea Crow Press and co-edited by me and Sea Crow Press founder and publisher Mary Petiet, is the third and culminating volume in my Crossing Places series. Drawn from around 150 submissions and developed through workshops in the UK and internationally, it brings together poets from across cultures, generations and geographies to explore body, memory, land, love, loss, motherhood, daughterhood, ageing, renewal, courage and hope.

While responding to Mary’s questions about the anthology, I found myself returning to Bosorka, a statue I encountered recently in Bratislava. Created in memory of the women and men persecuted and killed after being accused of witchcraft, she seemed to embody many of the questions at the heart of the collection: whose voices are heard, whose experiences are mistrusted or erased, and how poetry and storytelling can help us remember, bear witness and create connection.

THE COURAGE TO BE HATED by Esther Nelson

Carla Power, a prolific journalist, has written a long-awaited, insightful biography of amina wadud (b. 1952) titled THE LADY IMAM HOW AMINA WADUD’S LIFE AND FAITH CHANGED THE WORLD (One World 2026). (Because the Arabic alphabet uses no capital lettering, amina chooses to be consistent with that script by not capitalizing her name.)

amina and I were colleagues from the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, where she was a Professor of Islamic Studies. In this essay, I want to highlight some anecdotes from Carla’s book as well as offer some of my own reflections about amina. This essay is not intended to be a book review, but a tribute to someone who learned to navigate her life with grace in spite of myriad difficulties which included diagnoses of bipolar disorder and ADD/ADHD.

Notwithstanding the many words written and videos made about amina, she herself (in addition to chapters in books and essays) has written the following two books:

QUR’AN AND WOMAN REREADING THE SACRED TEXT FROM A WOMAN’S PERSPECTIVE, Oxford University Press 1999.

INSIDE THE GENDER JIHAD: WOMEN’S REFORM IN ISLAM, a book that demonstrates that “jihad” (to struggle) encompasses something well beyond the popular understanding of “holy war.” Oxford: Oneworld, 2006.

Soul-Fully Scripting Flesh: Poetic Justice & Joy by Margot Van Sluytman

Ours is a city of abundant tattoo shops. Places, I was to learn, where art and heart are rife. Places in which rich conversations occur. Conversations that linger long after the ink has begun to settle.

Wending my way to find the place to begin the process of scripting my skin, I spoke with a young man. His back was bent as he focussed on his animal friend and for a short while, before approaching him with my questions, I read the ink that covered his arms and legs. So many designs, descriptors, expressive strokes of thought and meaning known only to him. Hieroglyphs wherein his voice, his many selves, were revealed, yet hidden unless conversation were struck and desire to speak forthcoming. Wherefrom grew his choices?

I decided to cross the street and to ask him the meaning of some of his tattoos, the ones that spoke most vocally to me. As I moved closer, I spotted the script on his wrist. Script among an array of the colours and images. That script struck me. A fragment from The Tempest. Caliban’s words.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of
noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give
delight and hurt not.

She Changes Everything She Touches: A Reflection on Love and Loss, part 2 by Sara Wright

part 1 was posted last week, you can read it here.

How much I like clipping by hand. Surprised by this realization I feel satisfaction rising. I was bored by this task as a child. I am delighted to meet a bevy of fat nubbly toads who appear out of the overgrown ground covers and in between sun warmed stones. Both child and ‘old woman’ feel happy that none will get mowed down by a polluting gas guzzling machine. The Peace of this Land that we belong to steals over us. Less is more. I’ll tackle the patch of bracken later, or maybe not until tomorrow. In this weather accomplishing one simple chore a day is enough.

Well not quite. I am creating a serpentine path of fieldstone that stretches from my front door to meet the path that climbs the hill. My original intention was to have someone ‘more professional’ do the work, but they were too busy so here I am, an almost eighty-one-year-old woman, creating a mosaic out of cracked stone! ‘I am the artist’ I say, as I carry a few more irregular rocks down from the huge pile sitting in front of the garage eyeing the mosaic for the perfect fit. Illumination strikes when wind hits the stones. Blowing seeds, withered crabapple bits, pine needles and leaves into the cracks I see what is happening. Small plants like violets, creeping charlie, ground ivy, and catmint will find niches in the soil that is being created before my eyes. Mosses will follow in the shade. Ah, Nature is going to help me craft a unique and imaginative fieldstone floor. Each time it rains the stones flatten out becoming more stable. That same feeling of satisfaction steals over me again. Vaguely I think that I may be doing something else besides laying stones in an artistic way and trusting that Nature will fill in the cracks, but I am not clear just what this might be. All I know is that it doesn’t matter how long this project takes. Process has taken precedence. This much feels just right.

Grief, Grace, and the Eco-Feminist Legacy of Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, part 2 by Elanur Williams

Part 1 was posted yesterday.

The Fridging Paradox

Jesse and Leslie’s autonomy is structurally threatened by the narrative’s conclusion, and Leslie’s sudden death invites a critique of the “fridging” trope, a term derived from the comic book industry describing the practice of injuring or killing a female character primarily to serve as a plot device for a male character’s emotional development. Named after a 1994 comic book scene in The Green Lantern where a hero discovers his murdered girlfriend in a refrigerator, the term critiques the tendency in fiction to treat female characters as disposable tools for male growth rather than as autonomous individuals with their own arcs.

In Bridge to Terabithia, this sacrifice unfolds in three critical movements:

The Intersection of the Boundary: When the narrative notes, “The rain had been falling all night… the creek would be angry,” it signals the reassertion of the physical world. The creek acts as the boundary between the wild sanctuary and the dangerous, restrictive reality. By having the creek kill her, the text suggests that the “wild” or “feminine” space is inherently dangerous and incompatible with long-term survival.

The Reduction to Catalyst: In the aftermath, the text frames Leslie’s existence through her utility to Jesse. He realizes “it was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.” This is the core of the “fridging” critique; Leslie is explicitly framed as a “loaned” object, and as a resource for Jesse, rather than a person with her own trajectory.
The Post-Death Domesticization: Finally, Jesse assumes control: “He had to teach May Belle, for he was the king of Terabithia, and it was his duty to pass on the crown.” This shift in language marks the institutionalization of their anarchic space. By bringing May Belle in, Jesse settles the “frontier,” turning a radical, feminist space into a legacy for the next generation, effectively cementing Leslie as a relic of the past.

This tension is most visible in how the forest is described. When Leslie is alive, the forest is an active, creative force. Paterson describes how “Leslie had turned into a beautiful wild creature.” Yet, after she is dead, the forest becomes a site of mourning and memory, described as “still, and the creek was clear and cool.”

Would the novel have been more or less feminist if Leslie had lived? Does her death (within the context of a 1970s children’s book) actually provide the only way for a “non-conforming” girl to be fully accepted by the patriarchal structures of Lark Creek?

To view Leslie solely as a plot device is to overlook the novel’s sophisticated, often brutal, exploration of grief as a catalyst for moral maturity. While the “fridging” critique highlights a structural reliance on her death, one might argue Paterson is engaging in a deeper inquiry regarding the necessity of loss in the formation of the self. In this light, Leslie’s death serves not to diminish her agency, but to transition the novel from a fantasy of escapism into a somber, realistic lesson on the burden of growth. She is not merely a tool for Jesse’s development; rather, her death forces the permanent integration of her radical, imaginative spirit into the “real” world. By “loaning” him her vision, Leslie ensures her feminist influence survives her physical body, compelling Jesse to carry that disruptive, egalitarian force into a resistant, patriarchal landscape. She becomes an internalized mentor, suggesting that a true feminist impact is measured by how deeply one’s vision survives in those who remain. Terabithia ceases to be a secret getaway and becomes a foundation for the transformation of others.

It’s also important to keep in mind Paterson writes from a place of deep, personal vulnerability. She began the novel to help her son process the sudden death of his best friend. When we realize this, the “fridging” trope takes on a different hue. While the structural critique holds, it is also an attempt by an author to offer healing for her son.

The Secular Saint: Aesthetic Grace and Mentorship

Some may argue Miss Edmunds serves as the narrative’s secular saint of aesthetic grace. By treating Jesse’s art with profound respect, she acts as a bridge to a wider world, a living testament that one can exist within a rural community without being confined by its rigid gendered expectations. She provides institutional permission for Jesse to value his own sensitivity, effectively acting as the precursor to the creative sanctuary he will later build. While Leslie represents the collaborative, anarchic spirit of childhood, Miss Edmunds offers a glimpse of that same autonomy realized in adulthood. She is the professional, self-actualized woman of the story, and her presence proves to Jesse there is an alternative way to be, an existence defined by the pursuit of beauty and individual purpose.

Looking back, I can see how Leslie’s golden room and her expansive approach to faith taught me one of my first lessons in feminism, religion, and spirituality. It showed me that the borders we build, whether between countries, genders, or theological doctrines, are often artificial. Although the narrative’s reliance on “fridging” reveals a patriarchal constraint, the legacy of Leslie’s vision remains, and continues to inspire.

This piece is part of a series of explorations on children’s literature, spirituality and feminism by Elanur Williams. FAR has posted several of them.
Two pieces on The Chronicles of Narnia which you can read here and here.
Anne of Green Gables which you can read here.

Bibliography and Recommended Reading:

Escaping to Nature: Ecofeminism in the Children’s Book Bridge to Terabithia, by Anandayu Suri Ardini (2023):

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372862789_Escaping_to_Nature_Ecofeminism_in_the_Children’s_Book_Bridge_to_Terabithia

BIO: Elanur Williams writes from Dublin, Ireland. She holds an MPhil in Children’s Literature and a MS Ed in Literacy Studies. She is a teacher who specializes in reading and writing instruction, as well as a poet whose work has appeared in Eunoia Review, the Ekphrastic Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Cosmic Daffodil, among others. Above all, she is inspired daily by her daughter, whose presence imbues her life with joy, magic, and a sense of limitless possibility.

Grief, Grace, and the Eco-Feminist Legacy of Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, part 1 by Elanur Williams

Bridge to Terabithia, First Edition (1977), by Katherine Paterson. Illustrated by Donna Diamond.

There are stories that define our childhoods, and then there are the rare narratives that teach us how to survive the contradictions of adulthood. When my family relocated from Istanbul to a Philadelphia suburb during my elementary school years, I remember feeling suspended between two universes. My efforts to map suburbia onto the vibrant textures of the home I had left behind corresponded with my encounter with Katherine Paterson’s classic novel, Bridge to Terabithia, and its sibling text, Jacob Have I Loved. I remember being completely mesmerized by Leslie Burke’s house, specifically the room she and her parents painted gold. To a child who felt uprooted and out of place, that golden room was a sanctuary of pure possibility. The book was also one of the first I’d encountered that dared to tackle the complexities of grief.

Published in 1977, Bridge to Terabithia reflects the burgeoning spirit of Second-Wave Feminism, a movement that championed the personal as political and sought to dismantle the rigid gender roles of the post-war era. Leslie’s rebellion, however, carries a bittersweet resonance for the modern reader; while her struggle fits the Second-Wave pursuit of liberation, her eventual “fridging” reflects the persistent literary habit of the era to treat female autonomy as a temporary, tragic catalyst for the male hero’s journey.

She Changes Everything She Touches: A Reflection on Love and Loss, part 1 by Sara Wright

I reflect upon this year as the sun star rises in a northeastern sky. ‘He’ has reached the end of his northeastern journey.

Wave after wave – oceans of grief break over me at dawn – tempered by the same cycle during which I have been graced by a most powerful love in the form of a young canine companion. Love and Loss are such intimate companions.

‘She changes everything she touches, changes…’ during cycles of grief S/he changes nothing at all.

As the solstice bears down on us under a hard blue dome so does the fire. It is hard to believe that three weeks ago temperatures hovered in the 40’s. I resist the stifling heat of June coupled with days of torrential rain, cold, and wind that are presently drowning a field of lilies, wild lupine and roses. Fire and Ice. On good days there is the increased noise flow of man-made machines. Slow down please, I plead. Let me listen to the wood thrush, experience this space in between without bouncing between extremes.

I am feeling resentful, cross over the loss of spring and the relentless rains that destroy every flower just as it begins to bloom. I must honor the child who is heartbroken or I will make things worse. Wildflowers bring her the greatest joy and most have been under perpetual siege by inclement weather. Many plants were not pollinated. Too cold for bees.

Toni Cade Bambara: How to Care for Oneself While Healing The All (American Woman Writer 1939-1995), part 2 by Theresa Dintino

Part 1 was posted yesterday

The mud mothers, ancestors, began to make themselves visible to her when she was a girl, in the movie theater, on one of the walls in a cave like indentation, “with enormous teeth painting themselves with long hair brushes, painting pictures on the walls of the cave”( SE 254), at church, and in her attic. “In the attic they came in the mirror once. Ten or more women with mud hair, storing yams in gourds and pebbles in cracked calabash. And tucking babies in hairy hides. They came like a Polaroid. Stepping out of the mouth of the cave, they tried to climb out of the speckled glass, talk to her, tell her what must be done all over again, all over again, all over again. But she hung an old velvet drape over the mirror and smothered them. They were not going to run her off her own place, Not the attic “(SE 255). In church and at the theater she avoided looking at them.

For Velma and for Bambara, it is the spiritual roots of her ancestors and ancestry from Africa that come calling, the mud mothers. In Velma’s town there are mentors and guides and Aunties and godmothers, all levels of support and care available in claiming her gifts that Velma has left behind, rejected. Yet, when the book ends she will return to this, she has agreed to take up the mantle in order to be well.

For African Americans in particular, Bambara believes reconnecting with the ancestors—the ancestors that their ancestors were taken from— is part of the healing wanting to happen. That this was left out of the civil rights movement. That honoring ancestors is part of this lineage and that the ancestors are there and waiting. That slavery often disrupted this connection but it is there, the ancestors are there, for the reconnection if one is willing.

Toni Cade Bambara: How to Care for Oneself While Healing The All (American Woman Writer 1939-1995), part 1 by Theresa Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This piece is in co-operation with The Nasty Women Writers Project, a site dedicated to highlighting and amplifying the voices and visions of powerful women. The site was founded by sisters Theresa and Maria Dintino. To quote Theresa, “by doing this work we are expanding our own writer’s web for nourishment and support.” This was originally posted on their site on August 11th, 2020. You can see more of their posts here.

While reading adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism for #NastyWomenWriters, I was stopped in my tracks by the praise coming forward in that book for black feminist, writer, activist, film maker and mentor Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995).

brown writes:

“Toni Cade Bambara, author of The Salt Eaters, the one to tell us writing was a tool for the revolution, that our task was to make revolution irresistible. Bambara is a main stream in the lineage of pleasure activism, not just because of what she put on the page and into words, but also because of the ways she wove community, the way she supported other writers and organizers, the way she engaged in healing work” (45).

In the chapter “The Sweetness of Salt,” author and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs, archivist and scholar of Bambara’s work, writes about five women who have been instrumental in her life and work: “scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin, filmmaker and activist Aishah Shahidah Simmons, artist and abolitionist Kai Lumumba Barrow, healer and organizer Cara Page, and editor and intellectual activist Cheryll Y. Greene”(46), who were all personally influenced, mentored, “sistered” and “mothered” by Bambara. It was these women’s recounting of their experiences with Bambara that caused me to go find her for myself.