Feminism and Religion

Masculine: Aggressive/Feminine: Passive: Can We Imagine Alternatives? by Carol P. Christ

Today a couple of friends and I were discussing egalitarian matriarchal values. I stated that in these societies there is no great difference in male and female personalities because both males and females are expected to be as kind and loving and generous as their own mothers. “Oh no I would not want that,” the other woman responded. “I want my man to be masculine–not wishy washy or namby pamby.” This woman soon acknowledged that she did not want her man to be dominant or aggressive. Yet her first reaction was to reject the idea that men might do well to emulate the values of their mothers.

This conversation illustrates the difficulty we have in conceiving alternatives to the way we assign gender roles. Masculine: assertive and aggressive. Feminine: weak and passive.

In fact. being as kind, loving, and generous as mothers in egalitarian matriarchies has nothing to do with these familiar gender binaries. Mothers in egalitarian matriarchies are assertive, but not aggressive, and there is nothing weak or passive about them. Love, kindness, and generosity are not about standing back and letting others walk over you. Instead they are active values that require intelligence, reflection, and strength. Continue reading “Masculine: Aggressive/Feminine: Passive: Can We Imagine Alternatives? by Carol P. Christ”

Hagar, the Divine Witness, and the New Year by Jill Hammer

The Torah reading for the first day of Rosh haShanah, the Jewish new year, is not, as one might expect, the creation of the world (Rosh haShanah was Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, 9/18-9/20). Instead, the set reading is Genesis 21, the story of how Sarah, wife of Abraham, gives birth to Isaac—a joyous occasion indeed, given that she is ninety years old. But then Sarah becomes anxious that her husband’s other wife, Hagar, also has a son, Ishmael, who could inherit from Abraham, and demands that Hagar and Ishmael be expelled from the household. This year, reading this tale, I am seeing a story that shows how when we think about success, abundance, and consequences, we include some people in our consideration but not others. In this tale, the Divine includes the perspectives of the unwitnessed even when we do not.

In Genesis 16, it is Sarah (originally called Sarai) who first arranges a sexual relationship between Hagar, an Egyptian woman enslaved to her, and her husband Avraham, who has been called by God to create a new nation. God has promised her husband Avraham a great posterity, but they do not have even one child. Sarah gives Hagar to Avraham in order to produce an heir (no consent on Hagar’s part is recorded). When Hagar becomes pregnant, the text suggests that Sarah has become “light” or “diminished” in Hagar’s eyes. In other words, Hagar no longer treats Sarah as her owner. Sarah complains to Avraham, and Abraham gives Sarah permission to do whatever she wants with Hagar. Sarah abuses Hagar, and Hagar runs away. An angel arrives while Hagar is sitting by a well, and directs Hagar to return, for she is to give birth to a child who will give rise to uncountable numbers of offspring. During this encounter, Hagar gives God a name: El Ro’I, the God who sees me. Continue reading “Hagar, the Divine Witness, and the New Year by Jill Hammer”

Mourning with the Goddesses, Now More than Ever by Carolyn Lee Boyd

We may all remember 2020 as the year when we could no longer look away from death. Our western culture has hidden death away in hospitals and funeral homes for generations. However, in these past months we have all been inundated with daily images of COVID-19 patients dying alone in ICUs, terrified people and wildlife consumed by flames or flood, televised funerals of victims of racial violence, children starving due to droughts, the loss of icons of courage and compassion like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elijah Cummings, and John Lewis, and so much more. Even as we seem to be surrounded by death, we risk being inured to its tragedy by the sheer numbers of dead from these and other causes.

How we survive this time as individuals and a society may depend in part on how we are able to answer the question “Were we able to mourn each life lost – human or non-human — as a sacred being, unique and irreplaceable? Did we ignore the suffering of others or did we find deeper compassion?”

Continue reading “Mourning with the Goddesses, Now More than Ever by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Subversive Sister Saints by Angela Yarber

As the American Embassy was bombed in 1999, I was hunkered in a Russian Orthodox Church, gazing at the brooding, whitewashed faces of icons, hands raised in endlessly frightening benediction. Hundreds of men met my eye, as I found myself asking, “Where are all the women?” In 2005, the sun peaked over the horizon on Mount Sanai as I entered the chapel at Saint Catherine’s Monastery, which houses the oldest collection of Christian orthodox icons in the world. As a sensory overload accosted my eyes, ears, and nose, I scanned the scene to find only two women crammed among all the icons; one was a nameless daughter sacrificed by her own father. Where were all the women? A few years later, I knelt at the Temple of 1,000 Buddhas in Thailand. Not a woman could be found. Where are all the women?

For over a decade, I’ve painted folk-feminist icons of revolutionary women from history and mythology, a subversively artistic attempt to answer my own question by painting the women who have been ignored, excluded, or strategically erased. From Pauli Murray to Sarasvati, Gloria Anzaldua to Papahanoumoku, this work continues to be a gift, joy, and a tremendous part of the mission of my non-profit, the Tehom Center, which empowers marginalized women by teaching about revolutionary women through art, writing, retreats, and academic courses. Continue reading “Subversive Sister Saints by Angela Yarber”

My Brother John—1949-2020 by Esther Nelson

My 70-year-old brother, John, died recently. As far as we know, he had not been ill although the death certificate listed “hypertensive cardiovascular disease” as the primary cause of death—something that doesn’t happen all of a sudden. He shied away from doctors. His obituary is linked here.

This picture was taken in January 2017 when he drove a bus, filled with activists, to the Women’s March in Washington DC. Some of the women presented him with a pussy hat, something he immediately donned and wore with pride. Continue reading “My Brother John—1949-2020 by Esther Nelson”

Doe – A Gentle Being by Judith Shaw

A magical moment occurs when in the dappled light of forest trees you spot a gentle doe staring at you with her deep, dark, liquid eyes. We all feel the grace and peace she bestows – awestruck by an instant of unity.

Continue reading “Doe – A Gentle Being by Judith Shaw”

May Her Memory Be A Revolution by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

On the eve of the Jewish Sabbath and the start of Rosh Hashanah, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg breathed her last breath. She was 87. She fought so hard for so long. She is an American patriot, hero, champion for women’s rights, and for many she was the stalwart bastion of justice and ‘liberal’ rulings. She was a Supreme Court Justice for 27 years. Her life has been put into books, a movie, and the most notorious memes around. She became known for elaborate collars over her Justice robes. We mourn the lost of her, we celebrate her memory, and we must pull up our boots and continue the fight.

The Silence of the Girls: A Reflection on War by Carol P. Christ

Suppose, suppose just once, once in all these centuries, the slippery gods keep their word and Achilles is granted eternal glory for his early death under the walls of Troy. . .? What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won’t want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won’t want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won’t want to know that we were living in a rape camp. (324)

In The Silence of the Girls Pat Barker retells the story of the siege of Troy from the perspective of Breseis, a captured Trojan princess who became the slave and concubine of Achilles and Agamemnon. She was among the “spoils of war” allotted to the “great heroes” to “honor” their success as killers in war. Breseis does not tell her story of terror in The Iliad, but despite her not speaking, her story and that of the other captured and raped women—many of whom fared much worse that she did–is there is plain sight.

The problem is not that we who have read The Iliad don’t know these women were living in a rape camp. The problem is not that we have read The Iliad do not know that the heroes of the Trojan war were awarded women and loot as a reward for good fighting. Nor is the problem that we do not know that in the times of the Trojan war a man’s “honor” was everything to him and that it was defined by the prizes (women and loot) that he commanded, as well as by the respect of other men his deeds and property inspired.

When I first taught The Iliad in 1972, I was appalled by the women’s story. While my colleagues spoke of the “spear captive” who was the focus of the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, I urged them to call her a “rape victim.” Needless to say, I was summarily silenced. “That is not the point of the story,” I was told. “This is a story about men, their glorious deeds, and the honor due to warriors. This story speaks of the origin of culture.” A few guffaws signaling agreement followed. And that was the end of the discussion.

Although I enjoyed reading The Silence of the Girls, it did not provide me with any new insights into the horrors of war or the pervasiveness of rape in war. These were stories I already imagined. Indeed, rape, looting, slavery, and the spoils of war are at the heart of my “A New Definition of Patriarchy.”

The question I ask after reading The Silence of the Girls is how western culture managed to “silence” the women whose stories were there in plain sight for anyone who read The Iliad to see. Breseis was forced to have sex with and wait upon the man who killed her four brothers and her husband and who treated her as a possession not as a person. (283) She learned that when Achilles tired of her, she would probably be offered to his favorite men, and when they had their fill of her, she would be sent to live with the women who were at the mercy of the foot soldiers. “But that’s war,” (284) the Trojan king Priam replied when she asked him to help her escape.

There is more than one “conspiracy of silence” at play here. The conspiracy was compounded when the first person who questioned euphemisms such as “spear captive” was ridiculed and when every man or woman who recognized that rape is an ordinary part of war was told to keep silent about that. It was justified by the phrase “that’s war.”

If The Iliad is the origin of western culture, then western culture originated in a rape camp. Let’s not keep silent about that any longer! We must name the atrocities at the origins of so-called “culture” if we wish to create a more just world. These atrocities did not end with the Trojan war. They continue up to the present day. Ask any woman who has been in the path of invading armies. Ask the soldiers what they did and were permitted to do.

Refuse to accept the aeons-old cover-up: “that’s war.” If that is war, it is time to end war.

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist and ecofeminist writer, activist, and educator who lives in Heraklion, Crete. Carol’s recent book is Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Carol has been leading Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete for over twenty years: join her in Crete. Carol’s photo by Michael Honneger.

Listen to Carol’s a-mazing interview with Mary Hynes on CBC’s Tapestry recorded in conjunction with her keynote address to the Parliament of World’s Religions.

Yes, there are Goddesses in the Bible, Part 4 by Janet MaiKa’i Rudolph

This is the 4^th in a series of blog posts about finding goddesses in the bible who had been hidden away through translation or denigration or other means. In my last blog post I discussed Lilith as a Great Goddess symbolized by both tree and bird. You can see it here.

Today I continue with the topic of trees along with an examination of reversals and how many of beautiful, female pagan symbols were changed or removed from the texts. Perhaps the most obvious and pernicious has been that Eve “caused the fall” of humankind through a sinful act. Thus, the logic goes, it was Her action that has created the “grand curse” that we have labored under ever since. As I wrote in my last blog post, Lilith is another example, being portrayed as a demon in order to denigrate her Great Goddess roots. Lilith originally embodied both bird and tree energies. In my last blog post I showed one image of the Goddess in the tree which was a common theme in ancient Levantine cultures. The image today shows the goddess breast in the tree, which is identified as Isis suckling the future pharaoh Tutmose III. These images show the “Goddess in the Tree” as freely bestowing Her gifts and nurturing (not cursing) humankind. Continue reading “Yes, there are Goddesses in the Bible, Part 4 by Janet MaiKa’i Rudolph”

Who Are You to Tell Me I’m Not Really a Catholic? by Jamie Marich

Many opinions are flying around during this election cycle about what makes a Catholic a Catholic. Yes, Joe Biden is a practicing Catholic, only the third Catholic candidate to ever run on a major party nomination in the United States (the first being President Kennedy, the second John Kerry). Yet for conservative Catholics who support President Trump, declarations abound that Joe Biden isn’t really a Catholic, especially due to his support of a woman’s right to choose and full civil rights for LGBTQ+ individuals. In the eyes of such commentators, including many priests, people like me are no better— Feminist Catholics who openly support a Democratic candidate. If you’re reading this piece, maybe you are a confused Catholic who is feeling bullied by your own priest or other American Catholic thought leaders right now. Rest assured, not all Catholics are the same, and how you identify in your faith is truly between you and the God of your understanding. Be cautious of anyone who is promoting a theology of exclusion, making you feel less than for practicing your faith authentically and in a way that lines up with all of your values and points of identity. Continue reading “Who Are You to Tell Me I’m Not Really a Catholic? by Jamie Marich”