Women’s Voices – Page 2 – Feminism and Religion

Of Resistance and Risk, Community and Kin: A Thanksgiving Reflection by Beth Bartlett

At the No Kings rally on October 18^th, Anishinaabe elder Ricky DeFoe affirmed to the gathered crowd that “the natural response to oppression, ignorance, evil, and mystification is wide-awake resistance.” Such resistance, he claimed, calls for an “ethic of risk.” I was immediately struck by his use of the term, paralleling feminist theologian Susan Welch’s A Feminist Ethic of Risk.[i]Returning home, I picked up my copy and found many of the same points DeFoe had articulated.[ii] Both asserted that an ethic of risk recognizes that “to stop resisting, even when success is unimaginable, is to die,” and by this they meant not only the threat of physical death, but also “the death of the imagination, the death of the ability to care.”[iii]

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850): A Thanksgiving Revelation by Maria 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 November 19, 2024. You can see more of their posts here.

As the Thanksgiving holiday rolls around, I am reminded of Margaret Fuller’s Thanksgiving revelation, one she later wrote about in her journal. This revelation resonates annually for its gentle reminder of the value of being willingly and patiently engaged, of releasing resistance in the face of what cannot readily be altered.

Joy Harjo, American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as 23rd US Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. (Wikipedia) Learn more at joyharjo.com.

As I re-read Fuller’s account, I think about something former US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo said when she joined us a few years back at Flagler College in St Augustine, Florida for a virtual event. I don’t remember the exact question one of the listeners asked, but I’ll never forget Harjo’s response. She answered, “Every job is a service job.”

The truth in this statement struck me. I’d never considered my many jobs over the years, both inside and outside the home, as service jobs, but indeed they were.

Female Wisdom in Eden: A Guide for Faith-Formed Feminists By Susie Austin

If you were taught that “men lead” is God’s design, this is your permission slip to ask a harder question: what if that teaching was never Eden’s plan — but a wound the world mistook for a rule?

Many of us grew up inside churches that loved us, baptized us, and gave us language for hope—while also wrapping womanhood in shrinking instructions: be agreeable, be modest, be quiet, be helpful. We learned to make ourselves small so that men could feel large. We learned to translate our leadership as “support,” our wisdom as “intuition,” and our authority as “being difficult.” We learned to carry the room’s temperature without ever touching the thermostat.

Feminism — and the women who lived it before it had a name — has always asked religion to remember itself. Not to abandon Scripture or tradition, but to recover what was true before fear called itself theology. Before we rewrite our lives, let’s reread the beginning.

A forgotten reading of the oldest story

Look again at Genesis: the woman sees that the fruit is “desirable to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6). In Scripture’s own poetry, Wisdom is feminine—personified as Lady Wisdom (Hebrew: Chokma) calling us to life (Prov. 8:1-4, 22-31). And Genesis 3:6 ends with four words we usually skip: “who was with her.” Translation: she leads; he lingers.

Stick It to the Man and Black OUT Friday by Caryn MacGrandle

Before I go any farther, I want to clarify that I am not speaking of all men. There are a lot of good, strong, protector-type, kind, compassionate men out there.

But I am speaking of THE MAN – an archetypal dominator who has held the purse strings and the control the past few thousand years.

THE MAN who puts the almighty dollar above all else and doesn’t care who he has to step on in order to do so.

I’m sure you can think about quite a few. I would also include some women who behave like THE [DOMINATOR] MAN. The prevalence of this thinking has led to the spot we currently find ourselves in.

Black Friday is one of the most crucial sales periods for many retailers, with some earning a significant portion of their annual revenue during the holiday season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 alone generated billions of dollars in online sales.

tough shit – a few words by Arianne MacBean

Before I knew what form my self-reflection and somatic journal for women would take, I knew what its title had to be. Through my work as a somatic psychotherapist, I understand how repressed anger, fear, sadness and hurt affects the psyche and the body. At best, suppressed emotional pain can show up as sensations that limit pleasure in daily life. At worst, unprocessed trauma can lead to chronic and debilitating illness. I wanted to create a journal that was not only anti-oppressive but also subverted the misnomer that divisive feelings are negative and should be stifled. Mostly, I wanted to expose how emotional censorship has its roots in its chief proponent: patriarchy.

Tough Shit. – the angry woman’s guide to embodying change is a journal that supports consciously tracing difficult feelings to understand one’s true self and make positive change. The title isn’t about being provocative or crass. I chose it because the phrase “tough shit” has a long history related to gender stereotyping and dominance—all of which my journal actively challenges. But the phrase is not just cultural; it’s personal. An iteration of this phrase was used against me growing up. As the concept of the journal became clearer, I felt my body insist on throwing “tough shit” back out, not as a degrading echo, but as a reclamation—a fierce refusal to silence valid emotional pain.

The Gospel of Salome by Kaethe Schwehn, Book Review by Michelle Bodle

What would happen if you were a disciple of Jesus and you had an encounter with someone who told you a different narrative than what you had heard in the past? How would you react? What would you preserve? How would you reconcile the stories you have been told and have told others as an apostle with what someone is now proclaiming?

The Gospel of Salome is a work of Biblical fiction focused on Salome, a character who we hear of being present at the crucifixion and the empty tomb in the Gospel of Mark. Some scholars have connected her with “the mother of Zebedee’s children” in the Gospel of Matthew or “his mother’s sister” (i.e. Mary’s sister) in the Gospel of John. Schwehn takes a different approach, portraying Salome as a woman who was sought out for her skills in medicine, finds herself in the presence of John Mark, one of Jesus’s disciples who has come to Alexandria.

Going back and forth between speaking to John Mark in the present and living in her memories of the past, Salome tells the apostle that she is the true mother of Jesus. However, there is another factor to consider in her proclamation – Salome’s dementia, which is threatening to steal her memories. Memories about Salome’s agreements with Mary about Jesus’s desire to learn how to heal or Mary asking Salome to not be present in Jesus’s life. Memories of being at the cross and the empty tomb.

How Women Construct And Are Formed By Spirit: She Who Is Everywhere In Women’s Voices, part 2 By D’vorah Grenn, PhD

part 1 was posted yesterday

How God is Constructed

During my doctoral research, I worked in the field with a Lemba co-
Researcher who remains a good friend, Dr. L. Rudo Mathivha of Johannesburg and the Northern Province. When we sat with the women in the village of Hamangilasi, we asked Hanna Motenda, one of the interpreters and a retired schoolteacher, about the women’s concept of God. Throughout the interviews, the women’s conversations both in this village and elsewhere reflected God imaged as male.
I also asked whether the women imagine God as an external force, living in Nature or in Heaven, or as something living within themselves.

Hanna Motenda: Ourselves. God is in us. They say God is everywhere.
Even in Nature, when we look at anything, we see God. Quoting others, she
added, “God is like the wind, He’s everywhere and wherever I am, He’s
there.”

How Women Construct And Are Formed By Spirit: She Who Is Everywhere In Women’s Voices, part 1 By D’vorah Grenn, PhD

I dedicate this article, an excerpt from my dissertation to Rita Rosalind Kolb Grenn, Hanna Eule, Verena La Mar Grenn & their mothers,
Franziska Silberstein, Kaye Schuman and Regina Possony,
and to the Kolb, Berlstein, Bernstein, Mathivha, Sabath, Gruenbaum,
Silberstein, Lawler and Scott female ancestors.

“She is Creator of the Universe, and of Mankind…She is Creator Woman”
– Meshack Raphalalani, Venda artist describing his sculpture, 2001

“The Shekhinah1 is considered an alternative way of thinking about God in the orthodox community… not the major way of thinking about God…
but not heresy at all. It’s right there in the tradition.“
– Blu Greenberg, co-founder, Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, interview, 2001

“He created me in his image so he’s inside, within me.“
– Hanna Motenda, Lemba translator at Hamangilasi village, 2001

God is a Midwife by Halley Kim

It was four in the morning in the north Georgia mountains. A woman labored quietly but powerfully in her home, with her partner at her side. Her watchful midwife hovered nearby. I was a nursing student and a zealous “birth junkie,” tickled pink by the invitation to observe childbirth. At just the right time, the mother delivered her child from her womb to the world. The sun rose with a new soul suddenly among us, and I knew I would never be the same.

Feminist theology has long-invoked the image of God as a laboring mother, and progressive theologian Marcus Borg suggested that humanity is God’s midwife. But less has been written about the opposite metaphor. Imagine that we are in labor, in pain, and God is our midwife.

The word “midwife” means “with woman,” and that’s what midwives do: they are with birthing people through it all. They empower and guide, safeguard and witness, but they do not save. Midwives facilitate the birth process, but they don’t—they can’t—take the pain away. They don’t deliver babies; that honor belongs to their clients. Like physicians, they monitor the health of parent and baby, and can deftly manage a cord around a baby’s neck or stop a postpartum hemorrhage. But they mostly rely on the power of presence to bring babies earth-side.

Of Cruelty and Compassion: Jane Goodall: Messenger of Hope by Beth Bartlett

During the last week of September I had the opportunity to spend a few days in solitude in a place that is my soul’s home. I spent part of my time reflecting on questions posed by ecotheologian Mary DeJong to mark the autumnal equinox. The first question was “What is a desire you carry into the autumn season? What are you seeking?” After much contemplation, the words that came were, “I wish for a change in government – to be rid of Trump and company – for freedom, equality, respect, for the dignity of all, for an end to the suffering in Gaza and the reign of terror of ICE in this country – the horrors of those being abducted and imprisoned – for an end to cruelty. Yes, for an end to cruelty everywhere. Why is this country so cruel? I do not understand cruelty. Where does it come from? Why would anyone want to be cruel? How could anyone even stomach the suffering of another? How does that happen? Yes, I desire an end to cruelty.”

A few days after writing those words, on October 1^st, scientist, environmentalist, and humanitarian Jane Goodall passed away in her sleep, prompting me to re-read her book, Reason for Hope. There I found her words echoing my own, “To me, cruelty is the worst of human sins. . . “[i] And while she had not set out to study human cruelty, how we become cruel and how we might move beyond our worst impulses, her work with chimpanzees eventually would lead her to this.