Feminism and Religion

Learning Compassion from Inmate Number 74799 by Cynthia Garrity-Bond

Technically I was employed as a lab assistant at our community hospital. This position entailed multiple responsibilities, from receptionist to actual bench work within the laboratory. The task I dreaded most was my assistance at autopsies. Beyond a strong constitution, it required no measurable skill set. This job was not the high-tech, immaculate setting of any of the CSI programs of today; instead the morgue was a stark, condensed room with two pullout refrigerators for the deceased, a stainless steel table the autopsy was performed on, and the necessary instruments and accouterments, some suspended from what appeared thin air. These tools of the trade ranged from the expected scalpels and retractors to saws and garden-like shears.

Fast-forward fifteen years. It is the morning of July 11, 1991. Prisoner number 74799 has just been transferred from the Department of Corrections, Arizona State Prison in Florence to Tucson County General Hospital in critical condition. Eight months prior to his admittance to the prison hospital, Prisoner 74799 was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. While considered inoperable, he was administered the customary chemotherapy treatments until four months later when the cancer spread to his brain, taking most if not all of his cognitive abilities away. Within one hour of his transport, Prisoner 74799, my brother, Michael Paul, died at the age of thirty-nine.

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Rape, Community and Healing by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

During my last months in Cape Town I have been facilitating a series of workshops on Rape, Gender Justice and Culture of Consent. I am blissful for the opportunity to teach and learn with a group of people with whom we have navigated in the approach of Rape and Sexual Assault in their different perspectives, from the socio-political to the intimate tenets.

This has been an exciting journey of healing and soul blooming. I have realized the critical role that Cape Town has played in pushing me towards empowerment and thriving, enhancing my taking back ownership of my body and all the experiences happening through it.

This journey started few years ago when I decided to come out of the closet as a rape survivor. I wrote about it on Feminism and Religion. This was the first step of my breakthrough. Little by little I became confident and shameless about saying: “Yes, I was raped”.

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Family, Interdependence, and Mutual Support by Chris Ash

Christy Croft Over the past few months, a precious person has come closer into my family’s life in such a way that their presence in my home, among my loved ones, has come to feel natural and easy. This is someone I love, someone who adores my children and appreciates my partner of 18 years and whose sweet spirit and vibrant laughter have added joy and mirth to our family home.

Yesterday, they rode with me to drop my freshly-mohawked teenager off at a farm to help with preparations for an upcoming arts camp. I introduced them by name to the camp assistant and walked over to chat with the camp director for a bit. Later, as we got back into the car to head to lunch, I asked what they thought of the farm.

“It was nice,” they said. “I’m glad your children have a place like that. Also, while I was chatting with the camp assistant, she asked if I was family.”

“What did you say?”

“I said yes.”

They weren’t wrong.

The meaning the word “family” holds for me is something I’ve given much consideration over the years. For generations, many of us have been expected to turn a blind eye to the ways patriarchal domination of women’s and children’s bodies perpetuates abuse in our own family systems. My inability to sweep these abuses under the carpet, to keep silence and pretend all is well, has led to my estrangement from one entire side of my family. It’s an estrangement I feel will be permanent, and while I grieve the loss of an ideal I never had, I welcome the opportunity to live authentically and boldly, confident in my dedication to my ideals, which include honesty, justice, and the unconditional protection of children and vulnerable populations.

For a while, I sat with the gap this estrangement created in my life, unwilling to fill it with harmful relationships with those to whom I am blood-related, yet hesitant to broadly redefine it in a way that negates the importance of those who have chosen to love and raise up a child, however imperfectly. Continue reading “Family, Interdependence, and Mutual Support by Chris Ash”

The Intersections of Faith and Reproductive Justice by Katey Zeh

The Intersections of Faith & Reproductive Justice

Last week I participated in a panel discussion hosted by the Center for American Progress (CAP) on the intersections of faith and reproductive justice. These conversations are critically important, particularly in these political times when threats to our bodily autonomy and right of conscience are sanctioned by our current administration, Congress, and many state legislatures.

The framing of these public discussions is always interesting and somewhat troubling to me. Often progressive spaces like these do recognize that many people of faith support reproductive health care, but with that understanding is the assumption that supporting the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare, including access to safe abortion care, necessitates some kind of moral reckoning for religious people.

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Another One Bites the Dust: Orthodox Priest Defrocked for Declaring God Our Mother and Father Is Love by Carol P. Christ

While trying to find a topic for today’s blog, I came across a facebook post from July 10 by former Orthodox priest Christoforos Schuff in which he announced:

After reaffirming my beliefs on gender, sexuality, faith and the Church…and sharing my declaration of faith with His Eminence Jean, Archbishop of the Rue Daru Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, I was asked kindly and respectfully to remove my cassock and cross. It is finished…with love, peace and mutual respect. May the Divine enlighten our minds and hearts!

Schuff posted the letter to the Archbishop that resulted in his defrocking: Continue reading “Another One Bites the Dust: Orthodox Priest Defrocked for Declaring God Our Mother and Father Is Love by Carol P. Christ”

Who is She? an excerpt (edited for brevity) from the 25th anniversary edition of The Return of the Goddess, A Divine Comedy by Elizabeth Cunningham

Introduction by Maeve: Elizabeth’s July post usually features an excerpt from my Chronicles in honor of my feast day, July 22. This year the excerpt comes from the novel that opened the way for my story. Ever since a playdough figure took shape spontaneously in her hands, Esther, a minister’s wife, has been on a quest to find out Who She Is! Here she encounters the Lady as the Virgin Mary. (For my take on the BVM, aka Ma, the scene stealer, see The Passion of Mary Magdalen and Bright Dark Madonna.)

A kitchen, yes. That’s what a sacristy was: a sacred kitchen, Esther mused as she stood in St. Paul’s sacristy, the light strong but thickened by the plain, stained-glass, lead-fitted windows over the sink—the piscina, if you were high church. The walls, an ancient, graying yellow, did what they could to reflect the filtered light in a gallant effort to create an atmosphere intended to be cheery. Continue reading “Who is She? an excerpt (edited for brevity) from the 25th anniversary edition of The Return of the Goddess, A Divine Comedy by Elizabeth Cunningham”

The Pull of Mara by Oxana Poberejnaia

Recently I need to take a deep breath every time I glance at the news headlines. There are terror attacks and military conflicts. People kill each other and cause each other immense suffering. The worst thing is that so many of these conflicts are between people who have lived side by side for centuries: between related ethnic groups or neighbouring people.

I have found that often, while reading news items about tragedies and injustices, I often take sides. I seem to “naturally” support one warring party. This would depend on ideology, ethnicity, or culture that I share with one of the rivals. This is nothing new. People have been joining their brethren in war for the history of humanity.

However, our time is interesting in that we have access to many opposing views. In my life, every time I take a side, eventually I manage to find information or discover a point of view, which supports the opposite side.

Continue reading “The Pull of Mara by Oxana Poberejnaia”

With Women by Kay Bee

Someone told me the other day that Death Doulas are one of the fastest growing career fields out there right now. As a (currently not practicing) Birth Doula, this does not surprise me. The term Doula came into its modern – predominately American – usage in the early 1970s, in reference to a woman who provided non-medical care for a birthing woman. The word is Greek in origin and depending on who you ask, means “with woman” or “servant woman.”

While I suspect the earlier “servant woman” version is the correct etymology, the romantic in me appreciates the “with woman” version, even in its technical inaccuracy. This is because at its core, the role of the Birth/Postpartum Doula is the formalized return of what I believe in my bones to be an ancient cultural practice of women being with each other as a woman passes through an intense life transition.

Whereas before, when a woman gave birth, the older, multiparous women of the local culture would gather around her to see her through her passage from expectant to postpartum motherhood; now some of us approaching that same rite of passage use the Internet to reach out into the culture to hire a Doula to do that very same thing. How we bring it about has changed, but what we desire has not. We desire to be supported, cared for, & loved by someone who has gone through what we are about to — we desire to be with women.

The number of Birth Doulas in the U.S. and abroad, at this point, has increased dramatically over the last ten years and now it would seem that the Conscious Birth movement has birthed a Conscious Death movement, complete with Death Doulas. Again, how we secure the care we want at birth or at death has changed, but what we desire in those powerful moments of passage has not.

The fundamental physical, emotional, and spiritual craving to be with women at life’s major rites of passage runs incredibly deep within us. It is also something denied to us by the patriarchal structures of most major religious systems, but over the last sixty years or so, we’ve worked hard at taking that back. Continue reading “With Women by Kay Bee”

Mulling over Movies: Moana, Pt. 2 by Elise M. Edwards

Every summer in the US, movie theatres show their newest big budget films, hoping to draw in large audiences. While I appreciate an air-conditioned theatre on a hot day, I love the opportunity to go to an outdoor movie screening. These screenings are usually community-oriented opportunities for social gathering. In my previous post, I talked about Moana, a Disney film I saw at an outdoor screening earlier this summer. I enjoyed watching this movie with my friends and their families and I was delighted by the story itself. It has several religious and spiritual themes and strong female characters. Previously, I spoke of the significance of myths in this movie. Today, I’m focused on depictions of nature in Moana and their remarkable beauty.

Many feminist and womanist theologians and religion scholars have raised concerns about the interrelated dominations of women and nature, as well as the disproportionate hardships women and children are exposed to with increasing climate change and environmental degradation. Our changing environment affects all life on the planet, but it is the people who are most vulnerable (physically, economically, politically) who at most at risk. Obviously, animals and plants are endangered, too. Ethicists like me are interested in finding ways to address these concerns because we are committed the preservation of life. As feminists, there’s more to it, though. We recognize the way nature itself is often feminized (“Mother Nature”), which makes it even more troubling when it is cultivated without respect for the wellbeing of existing ecosystems and the life forces dependent upon them.

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