Feminism and Religion

THERE’S ONLY LOVE by Esther Nelson

Charlie Kirk embodied characteristics lauded by people I remember from my fundamentalist, Christian upbringing. Confident “believer” who knew the absolute “truth,” a willingness to proselytize (or better known in fundamentalist circles as spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ), and a pugnacious personality essential to fight Satan and his minions in this “ungodly” world.

In a New York Times article titled “We Need to Think Straight about God and Politics” (9/25/25), David Brooks writes: “As people eulogized Kirk, it was rarely clear if they were talking about the man who was trying to evangelize for Jesus or the one trying to elect Republicans.” A spokesperson at Turning Point USA said, “He [Kirk] confronted evil and proclaimed the truth and called us to repent and be saved.” Brooks asks, “Is that what Kirk was doing when arguing with college kids about tariffs?”

I want to focus here on some of the brilliantly choreographed, yet deceptively cruel imagery present at Kirk’s memorial service, showing how the MAGA movement uses a religious group’s theology to foment hatred—with the goal of gaining/retaining political power.

Fire and Ice by Beth Bartlett

As I paddled the lake this morning, I found myself thinking this is what the end of the world looks like. The sun was rising red through smoke from Canadian wildfires and a smoky haze engulfed the lake to the point I could barely see the not-too-distant opposite shore. I was paddling by the state forest, where the March ice storm had stripped the tall pines of their upper branches, bent the birches, and uprooted and sent out to sea the largest of the trees. The camping spot at the spring was inaccessible so covered was it by downed trees and branches. All was bent, broken, and dying and the forest itself appeared to be weeping. Adding to the surreal aspect of this moment was the plethora of motorboats pulling skiers and jet skis bouncing along on what would otherwise be a quiet, calm lake – oblivious to or simply not caring that they were frivolously burning the very fossil fuels that had fueled this environmental crisis and catastrophe. It was as if I were watching an Octavia Butler dystopia play out with the rich and privileged burning up the last of the fossil fuels with disregard for the earth and disdain for earth’s advocates.

I began going to this lake in northern Michigan when I was two. Every year my mother would comment on how blue the sky was, how clear the air – such a contrast to northeast Ohio where we lived with its rubber factories, making the sky a hazy gray, even on the sunniest of days. We would marvel at the depth of the blue. This visit I never once saw a blue sky, nor even across the lake. I have hundreds of photos of the beautiful vista from the hill upon which our cabin sits, simply because of the stunning blues, but this year I took not a one.

Autumn Equinox 25: The Cutting Away and the Gathering In by Sara Wright

There is something very special about ‘the cutting away and gathering in’ … my very wild gardens are flattened, my wildflower field has just been mowed, trees are turning, and I am possessed by joy.

It’s at this time of year that the sky opens into a field of dreams. I walk down through the pines to watch the stars appear at dusk – the open field widens my vision. The Great Bear circumnavigates the sky and as other constellations crystalize, I can imagine that it’s possible to re- imagine, to re- weave the threads around the cross-cultural web that is broken. Ordinary perception fails.

I am also reminded that everything changes, and that the seasonal round is the foundation of life.

In this same field during daylight hours birds feast on thousands of scattered seeds that have been baked in summer heat.

I’m amazed by an illumination.

At both equinoxes near and far meet.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Segregation

This post was originally published on March 17th, 2014.

As I think about the incarceration of young black men for relatively minor drug crimes, and the murders of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, I cannot help but compare the astonishing progress that Americans have made in overcoming prejudice against gays and lesbians to the astounding lack of progress we have made in overcoming prejudice against black Americans.

It is often repeated that the reason for changes in attitudes about gays and lesbians is the process of coming out—most people in America now know a lesbian or gay family member, friend, or co-worker. On the other hand, I would dare to speculate that many—perhaps most—Americans who are not African-American do not know a boy like Trayon Martin or Jordan Davis. If you do—count yourself lucky! Our society remains divided by race and class divisions (many of them a legacy of racism) that prevent many non-black Americans from knowing a single young black man. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Segregation”

FAMISHED—ON FOOD, SEX, AND GROWING UP AS A GOOD GIRL by Anna Rollins: Book Review by Esther Nelson, part 2

Part 1 was posted yesterday.

MARRIAGE

“He looked at me without judgment. With him, I didn’t feel the need to perform.” Both her future husband (first year medical resident) and she (now studying applied linguistics) disliked fundamentalism’s legalism, but they were still committed to Christianity. Both were “devoted to [sexual] abstinence.” Sex did not even happen on their wedding night, but when it did, it hurt. For years, the pain continued. Vaginismus. “I didn’t know there was a name for it. I didn’t know that…it was twice as common for those who had grown up in religiously conservative households.” It took years to get through the pain. “It’s not until we can believe that our bodies are inherently good and worthy of pleasure and joy that we can begin to heal.”

A new pastor arrived at Rollins’ church armed with Christian nationalist ideas and fervor. It didn’t set right with her. She was moving toward progressive positions beginning with “my body, my choice.” She adds, “If there’s anything someone who’s struggled with an eating disorder understands, it’s the concept of bodily autonomy.” She began to research the Reformers beginning with Martin Luther who said this about women: “If women become tired, even die, it does not matter. Let them die in childbirth. That’s what they are there for.” Rollins’ husband pushes back, though, quoting Scripture—“there is no male or female…we are all unified in Christ.” Why then, Rollins wonders, does sexism run rampant in the church?

FAMISHED—ON FOOD, SEX, AND GROWING UP AS A GOOD GIRL by Anna Rollins: Book Review by Esther Nelson, part 1

In her Preface, Rollins writes, “Hypercontrolling my food and using exercise compulsively had always been how I coped with life, stress, expectations, and fear.” Many people (usually women) use this coping technique in their day-to-day lives. Controlling your body’s needs and desires allows you to feel powerful. I know. I am one of those people.

Powerful or being in control was not something the author felt able to achieve in any “normal” way given her upbringing “in an Appalachian [West Virginia] church that fully embraced purity culture [sexual abstinence before marriage] and rigid gender roles.” Rollins continues, “…I’d bought into the scripts offered to me by both diet culture [controlling food intake to achieve a better-looking body] and purity culture [controlling your sex drive] … [knowing] that if I controlled my appetites, I could control my world. That if I made myself smaller, I would be better, safer.”

Rollins interviewed scholars, psychologists, and an array of women while writing FAMISHED. She states, “When women worked to heal from body shame, their relationship to religion was intricately involved.”

The author divides her work into three sections: Girlhood, Marriage, and Motherhood.

A Taoist View of Intention (Yi)

Choosing How We Show Up with The Inner Compass of Mind, Eye and Heart

What does it mean, to set an intention? In this piece, I explore the Taoist concept of Yi, the integration of mind, eye and heart as a practice of coming into alignment with life.

This essay invites a nuanced relationship with intention, away from the modern hype around manifestation, and instead rooted in choice, care and conscious participation in life.

Klara Kulikova, Unsplash

A common concern around the word ‘intention’, especially in spiritual or self-help contexts, is its suggestion that thinking the right thoughts or holding the right mindset, will miraculously give you what you want.*) When it doesn’t, the implied message is that you somehow fell short: you weren’t positive enough, not aligned, or evolved enough for it to work. In short, the burden of failing is placed on you, without recognising the complexity of life. Rest assured, that’s not the kind of intention I’m writing about here.

Sauna, Culture, Sweat and Spirituality: On the Architectonics and Cosmology of Sacred Space by Kaarina Kailo: Book Review by Beth Bartlett

Living as I do in the midst of both Finnish immigrant and Anishinaabe cultures, and where the two merge in the many here who identify as “Findians,” I was intrigued by the description of Kaarina Kailo’s book, Sauna, Culture, Sweat and Spirituality, as a comparative exploration of Indigenous sweat lodges — madoodiswan in Anishinaabemowin — and Finnish saunas.[i] As an outsider to both cultures, I have no ancestral or traditional knowledge of either saunas or sweat lodges and I wanted to learn more about both. Kailo’s book did not disappoint. What I hadn’t expected and was delighted to discover was that Kailo connects both with ancient goddess religions, contemporary feminist spiritualities, and ecofeminism.

Kailo’s book is a widely and deeply researched cross-cultural comparative study of the elements, practices, intentions, and spiritualities of sweat cultures ranging far beyond various Native American sweat lodge practices – Delaware Great Houses, Anishinaabe sweat lodges, Pueblo kivas – and the Finnish sauna,to Iberian/Galician saunas, Irish sweathouses, and Old Europe. As Kailo herself says, the value of such cross-cultural studies is the way they help to expand our thinking, enabling us to see things we might not have otherwise. She repeatedly says that she is looking for the “affinities” among these various sweat cultures, rather than focusing on their differences, and she finds many. In the process, she reveals the role of sweat lodges, sweat houses, and saunas as sacred spaces of healing, restorative balance, connection with the spirits, rebirth and regeneration, women-centered spirituality, and Great Bear religions. Infiltrated throughout are her reflections on how reviving the widespread use of sweat cultures and saunas, and the woman and life-centered spiritualities at their heart, would provide an antidote to the current economic, ecological, and political threats to the world.

Feminism – the small and the large of it by Xochitl Alvizo

Feminism’s critical principle is the affirmation and promotion of the full humanity of women; an assertion that must be made in light of a world that diminishes women’s dignity and autonomy thereby authorizing their subjugation. Sexism is the word we use to name the attitudes, prejudices, and actions that work to diminish women’s dignity and autonomy for their subjugation. Patriarchy is the resultant ossified system of those attitudes, prejudices, and actions as they become the norm.