Feminism and Religion

You Can’t Debate Mutuality by Sara Frykenberg

I use words like “mutuality,” “listening,” and “love,” here as I discuss my understanding of feminist justice-making and eschew debate…I want to make it abundantly clear: I see these as powerful, often forceful and even angry tools. We listen to what oppressors say so that they cannot deceive with their “alternative facts.” We love forcefully…We counter violence—we do not debate it—with anger, humor, creativity and power, in order to redirect its energies into more mutual possibilities.

Sara Frykenberg Participating in the Women’s March on Jan. 21^st in Los Angeles fed my soul deeply. I didn’t realize how much I needed to protest in this way, how stuck I had been in grief and despair after the election, and the way that coming together as a community would help me to mourn. There’s nothing quite like standing together with hundreds of thousands of people who also care deeply with hope, humor, and real power. Marching helped me to find the energy to fight back. It refilled a reservoir, so depleted in 2016, much as the badly needed winter rain in my home state of California has helped to abate the severe drought. Continue reading “You Can’t Debate Mutuality by Sara Frykenberg”

This Is How Liberal Democracy Dies: Will We Let It? by Carol P. Christ

“This is apparently how liberal democracy dies. It vanishes very quickly with an Executive Order.”– Ska Keller

In a powerful yet softly-spoken speech to the European Parliament, Green Party Germany Representative Ska Keller explained that rights and liberties we we take “for granted” and consider “natural,” “normal,” and “guaranteed” can be taken from us in an instant. The America we took for granted, an America built on respect for immigrants and religious freedom, has vanished before our eyes. With the stroke of a pen, the President of the United States revoked it.

carol-green-party-2017 — Carol telling the Green Party Greece the US President is a malignant narcissist.

Like many others, I am in a state of shock. Has the dream of liberal democracy died in America? Will we be able to repair and reinstate it? Ska Keller reminds us that freedom can never be taken for granted, but must be fought for and defended every day. Thousands of Americans have taken to the streets and are flooding the phone lines of congress trying to do just that. Will we succeed? At this point the outcome is unknown. In recent days, I often feel frozen in place, waiting for the next piece of horrible news, taking heart from stories of resistance, and hoping against hope that the tide will turn. Continue reading “This Is How Liberal Democracy Dies: Will We Let It? by Carol P. Christ”

A Light Story by Barbara Ardinger

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

raven —first there was a dark eye at the window. Then a tap-tap-tapping. Then a long black beak came around the edge of the slightly open window. Then the raven hopped inside. “Oh, goody,” said a gravelly voice. “Eyeballs! I dearly love a tender, juicy eyeball.”

The wicked witch looked up from the quaint and curious volume she was perusing. “Oh, Kahlil,” she said, “those are grapes. And,” she added, “do come in.”

Already in, the raven speared a grape. “Pfui! I hate grapes! Back in the city,” he added, “there’s so many dead bodies lying in the streets all the scavengers think it’s a feast day everyday.” He paused and dropped the grape on the floor of the tiny room. “It’s awful in the city. It’s awful everywhere. No sign of yer husband, either. Witchie-pooh, how ya doin’ out here in the country?”

She sighed and pushed the book aside. “Not well. Not well at all. There’s no more room in my house for refugees, and yet they keep coming. The storehouse is nearly empty, and we need to find new seed to plant. I’ve put some of the men in charge of the farming. They’re waiting for the season to change.” She waved one hand over the table. “And I’ve still trying to learn how to be properly wicked. I’ve got all the books I can find. I’m looking for a spell that works. One that will bind el presidente. And his army. Kahlil, has it ever been this dark?”

oil-lamp The raven looked around. The tiny room at the top of the tiny wooden house was filled with books and papers written in a dozen ancient languages, which the wicked witch was reading by the light of a sputtering oil lamp with a nearly empty reservoir. “Well,” he told her, “we’re only six weeks past the solstice. Yeah. It’s dark all over. Girlfriend, you could do with a little more light—” Continue reading “A Light Story by Barbara Ardinger”

Feminists of Faith, It Is Time to Light Our Lamps by Laura Shannon

3500 — Banner at JFK Protests Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Last Saturday morning I boarded a plane at London’s Heathrow Airport. During the ten-hour flight to Miami, I got up several times to ease my back and stretch my legs, observing my fellow passengers with interest and curiosity. I chatted with a Brazilian woman who has lived for 20 years in Switzerland, on her way back to Manaus for a few weeks to help her mother through an operation. I observed the tender care with which a well-dressed woman my age assisted an elegant older lady I took to be her mother, both in neatly pinned headscarves. I enjoyed the mixture of different accents and language I overheard as I strolled around the cabin, flowing like the gentle murmuring of a brook. Here were passengers from India, from Asia, from Africa, from numerous European countries, of all ethnicities, nationalities, religions and colours. This is the melting-pot planet I love to live on.

That flight left at 9 am. If it had departed a few hours later, very likely some of those travellers would have been prevented from boarding or removed from the plane, as happened all over the world after Trump signed his executive order banning travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Syria – from entering the United States. The ban applies even to valid visa holders, workers with green cards, dual nationals and legal residents as well as refugees who had gone through the arduous 2-year vetting process and had already been approved. Continue reading “Feminists of Faith, It Is Time to Light Our Lamps by Laura Shannon”

I Never Thought That I Would Need to Be a Part of History by K.M. Deaver

Suffragists parade down Fifth Avenue, 1917 -- The New York Times Photo Archives — Suffragists parade down Fifth Avenue, 1917 — The New York Times Photo Archives

I never thought that I would need to be a part of history. Don’t get me wrong, I know that each generation does indeed end up in a history book for a handful of headlining events that mark the course of their lifetimes, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined that the women in those old black and white photos, the women marching in the streets, the women burned at the stake might actually need to be me.

There were a few brief months where I truly believed that I would see the election of the first female President of the United States, but as we continue to be horrifyingly reminded each day, that version of history did not come to be. In connection with many of the articles from the last few weeks I continue to be perplexed and deeply concerned by the response of white Christians to the events of the last few months. Continue reading “I Never Thought That I Would Need to Be a Part of History by K.M. Deaver”

On Being an Occasion of Joy by Chris Ash

Christy Croft When I was 19, I fell hard into the kind of deep depression that hits college kids whose unstable upbringings, rife with inconsistency and trauma, left them ill-prepared to face the self-direction and responsibility of independence. I didn’t grow up religious despite my father’s attempts to turn visitation weeks into conversions, but had started attending the local Episcopal cathedral months earlier after seeing its stunningly beautiful windows on a historic tour. Having taken basic stained glass courses when I was 18, I’d been mesmerized by the artistry and would sit in a different pew each week, drifting into and out of awareness of the service, eyes trained on the nearest window, lost in contemplation, love pouring in.

When the darkness became too much and I sought more of that love through spiritual care and reflection, I walked into the church library and thumbed through the directory looking for resources, and was hopeful to discover that the Episcopal Church had convents. That afternoon, I dialed the number for the nearest convent, and in that especially dramatic way of depressed 19-year-old artist types with backgrounds in theater, I declared that I couldn’t handle life in the world anymore and that I might want to become a nun. Sister Ann told me that their order was less an escape from the world than a new way of being fully present in it, but invited me to spend Christmas at the convent.

Decorating the tree in the convent's guest house — Decorating the tree in the guest house

What started out as a holiday visit became several months of me spending every day that I wasn’t in class or at work at the convent, living in the guest house, attending five services a day, helping with maintaining the grounds, and spending as many waking hours as I could in the library, face buried in the works of medieval women mystics. Over the coming years, I’d spend many long weekends in retreat at the convent, and the sisters became my second family. I visited with women I was dating and later with a Muslim boyfriend, and everyone was always welcomed with love. When my first child almost died as a newborn and I called to ask for prayer, two sisters drove to be with me in the hospital. I still cry now, twenty years later, when I tell people the story of a parish priest leading the small group gathered in my hospital room in prayer after my son’s first surgery, and how my heart swelled when halfway through the Lord’s Prayer, teary eyes closed, I began to hear the familiar lilt of women’s chanting over our soft-speaking voices. Continue reading “On Being an Occasion of Joy by Chris Ash”

Women Made of Fire by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

climbing-mountains-with-children_web This was going to be a post about my new life in South Africa; to say what it means for me the return to this country full of wonderful things to do, after an intense and grievous experience in 2015 that pushed me towards a totally introspective period in my life; I was willing to tell you how I managed to put myself together, come back, go out there to face my fears, gather the courage to speak my truth, look for clearance and healing in the same place and with the same people where I was wounded.

But that will be in the next post. Let me talk about my country.

I come from Chile, a country in the southern south of the world, poor in resources and rich in poets. I am Chilean by birth, and I took my first steps on shaking ground. I have survived 3 earthquakes, countless floods, a tsunami and a dictatorship.

I survived to be stronger, more faithful, more free and unbeatably resilient.

During the past 12 days, I have seen, as a distant and impotent witness, my country burning, overwhelmed by fire, in the greatest catastrophe of its kind in the history of the nation.

The fire has advanced more than 700 kilometers away from the first point of ignition, swallowing whole villages, with their houses, public buildings, animals and agricultural land.

I’ve spent these days with tight lips and enclosed in my thoughts, reading news on the Internet, thinking about my family, receiving audios that my sister records for me. My brother was injured protecting his house from the fire, my family is in the area of greatest catastrophe, currently declared “Area Zero.” My concern is huge because the fire is advancing over the city and the assistance seems to go three steps back … I believe in the power of prayer, but I also know the ferocity of nature because as a Chilean I am always expecting to deal with it. Continue reading “Women Made of Fire by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

Do You Know Why We Are Marching? by Marcia Mount Shoop

When we got into the car to go, I asked my twelve-year-old daughter, “Do you know why we are marching today?”

“To protest Donald Trump?” she replied.

I explained that some people may be going for that reason, but that was not the reason I was going.

“Are there any positive reasons you can think of for why we are marching?” I asked her.

She went on to name several things Donald Trump had said about women. “I guess those are all still anti-Trump things,” she said.

“I am marching because I am a mother, I am a sister, I am a daughter, I am a wife, and I am a survivor. That’s what I am saying if anyone asks me,” I told her.

10000-strong-in-asheville-january-2017

I had already thought through this question. As a pastor of a church with people who have diverse political affiliations I am committed to being able to minister to everyone in my congregation. I have served churches in which my political views are in the minority and I have served churches in which my political views are in the majority. Both have challenging aspects, but nothing that I have experienced previously in terms of partisanship feels like it relates to what is happening in the United States right now. Those old partisan dynamics were difficult to navigate—it took discipline, but not one ounce of moral compromise.

The decision to march was not a partisan one, it was a moral one, and it was a spiritual one. If I didn’t march it I would be listening to a frightening interlocutor—and his name is despair.

Party affiliations are not creating the alienation at the root of what is happening. The challenges are much more painful—and if I stay silent or still in the face of this situation I would not be doing my job as a pastor or a mother. Continue reading “Do You Know Why We Are Marching? by Marcia Mount Shoop”

“Girl . . . You’re Gonna Make It” by Carol P. Christ

https://vimeo.com/82884853

Why did this song,* this program, this woman mean so much to Oprah and Michelle, to you, to me?

Because Mary Tyler Moore was one of our first role models of cheerful independent womanhood.

Why does this song still bring tears to my eyes?

Because I had never learned that a girl could make it on her own.

Because I feared that I couldn’t and hoped that I would.

And guess what, I did.

Lots of us did.

With help from our friends.

Mary showed us that too.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show was broadcast on Saturday nights.

Many of us were home alone, watching faithfully.

We do not forget.

*The above version of the song is from the first season, the words “you’re gonna make it after all” were changed to “you’re gonna make it on your own” in season two.

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In Memoriam: Katelyn Nicole Davis by Stephanie Arel

On December 30, 2016, Katelyn Nicole Davis, a 12-year-old girl from Cedartown, Georgia filmed her suicide by hanging from a tree in her front yard. Recorded live, the video has gone viral. Alarmingly, a young girl’s succumbing to death logged on the Internet clamors recognition of an existence she felt helpless to bear alone. Reported in her blog, abuse and sexual assault tainted her young existence. As a result, her perception of her own isolation, her articulated sense of worthlessness, and her shame motivated a trajectory toward death, demonstrating what is at stake when these crimes go unrecognized.

Much effort has been made to remove Katelyn’s suicide video from on-line circulation, but the electronic footprint she left on cyber-world proves nearly impossible to erase. The recording corroborates experiences detailed in her hauntingly designated blog “Diary of a Broken Doll.” Suggesting the core of how she understood her place in the world, the chilling description of her self as a broken body employed as a toy echoes a life framed by abuse and sexual assault.

Hoping for connection and healing, Katelyn reached out for and found witnesses, but they failed to attend to her wounds. The platform on which she chose to make human bonds established an inviolable boundary where Katelyn became an identifiable sufferer who could not be saved. The result was a plunge into shame that left a child unable to find value in her life or in herself. The shame, initiated by abuse, perpetuated itself and led to her death. Continue reading “In Memoriam: Katelyn Nicole Davis by Stephanie Arel”