Feminism and Religion

A Sacred Urban Menstruation Ritual by Elisabeth Schilling

Beach If I had such an opportunity, I would not hesitate to bleed free in a moonlit forest with other women during the flow of blood from our wombs in sacred ritual. This said, I currently take on a nurturing and maternal role for myself, the earth and humanity through the creation and use of my reusable menstruation cloths.

According to Nina Rastogi of slate.com and Elissa Stein and Susan Kim of Flow, the average American menstruating person could accrue about 62,415 pounds of waste in a lifetime. Continue reading “A Sacred Urban Menstruation Ritual by Elisabeth Schilling”

The Fringe is Our Stronghold by Oxana Poberejnaia

oxana Recently I have come across several stories of women’s fringe spiritual movements or practices. This made me think about the role of outsiders’ or minority views in religions and society.

Patriarchy pushes women and their issues to the margins of society and religion. It seems that there women sometimes invent their own spiritual practices. These allow women to stand their own ground in religious matters, to preserve self-respect and to keep the hope of the highest spiritual attainment.

Quite often these beliefs and practices seem shocking in their bizarreness and their stubbornness not to accept orthodox norms.

Continue reading “The Fringe is Our Stronghold by Oxana Poberejnaia”

Planting Roses for Our Daughters: Creating a Community in Time by Carolyn Lee Boyd

carolynlboyd Outside my childhood home grows a yellow rose bush descended from one planted by my great-grandmother, Jennie, a century ago. That bush has given her descendants many gifts of spirit over the years— her love of beauty despite a life of tragedy and constant toil, her deep connection to nature persisting through four generations, her hope for the future inherent in planting anything that will take years to fully develop. When I contemplate my own fall garden and its plants sowing seeds for next year, I ponder the special responsibility we, as spiritual feminists, have for leaving to those who will come after us a legacy of inner resources that they will need to meet the challenges of the planet they will inherit and hopefully make into their own sustainable world of equality, peace and happiness.

In my mind I sit with a circle of spiritual feminists of the future. Around me might be a hairdresser or a President, a doctor, barista, poet, scientist, salesclerk, priestess, or elder. They could be old or young or in-between, from anywhere on Earth, of any spiritual tradition or practice. For one moment of time, I can speak directly to them of what I have distilled from my life that I would like them to know. I say to them: Continue reading “Planting Roses for Our Daughters: Creating a Community in Time by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Honoring St. Mary of Magdala by Gina Messina

Gina Messina-Dysert profile While I am joining the conversation a bit late, I find it necessary to comment on the significance of the “upgrading” of the celebration of St. Mary of Magdala to a feast – on par with the male apostles. While such a day that honors her is quite overdue, I am grateful to Pope Francis for acknowledging this incredible woman and her leadership in the Christian movement.

As we know from the Gospels, it was Mary Magdalene who stood at the foot of the cross with Mary the mother of Jesus, during his crucifixion. When the male apostles ran in fear – and rightfully so – Mary of Magdala stood with Jesus refusing to disavow him and was a face of love for him to see during his darkest moment.

It was Mary of Magdala who was the first witness of Christ’s resurrection. The very first Easter began with her and she was commissioned by Jesus to go and share the good news – to tell the other apostles – and that is why she is known as the apostle to the apostles. Continue reading “Honoring St. Mary of Magdala by Gina Messina”

Gender Jihad and Epistemic Justice by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

women-fighting-demons_web

In previous articles I have developed my personal perspective on Islamic feminism as a third narrative pathway that responds to the two traditional hegemonic discourses that exist on Muslim women, which I call “idealization of inequality” and “demonization of Islam

The search for gender justice within the framework of Islam has been called Gender Jihad is focused on installing a legal and social equality for Muslim women and groups or identities in the otherness, in line with the equality of divine origin established in the Qur’an. I think this socio-political equality begins with unpacking the epistemic violence prevailing in religious narratives that affects the representations and validation of women and persons in the otherness as equals, ie, like people, like men, the discursive and biopolitics referent of what is “Humankind”.

Islamic feminism is a narrative that provides answers to the epistemic violence represented by the speeches of idealization and demonization. As Gayatri Spiviak said, such epistemic violence is an orchestrated, widespread and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject, as other. Women in religion are colonized subjects. Epistemic violence leads to epistemic injustice that results in unfair practices such as, for example, considering that the testimony of some people is less credible because they belong to certain gender, based on a distorted image of the other, which dehumanizes the individuals who are giving testimony.

The Gender Jihad posed by Islamic Feminisms seeks to establish a declaratory place that is an authentic expression of the agencies women and people in the otherness in relation to a hegemony with a strong colonial bias, represented for the narratives of idealization and demonization. Gender Jihad is the building of an episteme, understanding the right of Muslim women to enunciate and interpret a reality that challenges them, for and by themselves since, as Amina Wadud says “defining religion is to have power over it.”

This discursive possibility is possible thanks to the Tawhidic paradigm developed by Amina Wadud in the early 90s and in her book “Qur’an and Woman,” a methodology that can decolonize fields of knowledge, bodies and representational policies of the mainstream narrative about Muslim women and Others.

The merit of her paradigm, among many, is to systematize existing concepts in the Muslim cosmogony, in a way that provides a frame for gender analysis from Islamic theology and promoting the empowerment of women through it. Recognizing, on the one hand, the inherent equality of women as human beings, it gives theological support to a legal equality that for centuries have been at the discretion of Muslim scholars. On the other, it enables women, through rescuing Ijtihad, in our enunciation and narrative capacity as religious subjects. If humans are equal before God, then Women and Others are, by divine right, equally able to read, decipher, interpret and convey their perspective on religious matters.

There cannot be any political transformation, without having an equal right to speak, equal freedom to express thoughts, equal entitlement of movement of the body and ideas, equal agency to occupy material and symbolic spaces, without restrictions.

There can be no Gender Jihad without appropriating the readings and discourses on gender, religion and jihad.

Gender Jihad begins with the recovery of the right to say and represent, therefore, is a struggle that could have as a prior aim the acquiring of epistemic justice.

This is relevant because “Who can speak” will mark simultaneously “on what terms that person talk.” What concepts and meanings can be used within the framework of the construction of a particular view of reality? What terms become the lens for discerning reality: development, democracy, gender equality, civil society, religion, social agency, etc. Only and exclusively from the enunciation (the power to speak) and from the ability to define the context in which speaking occurs, can one have a voice, that is, be a subject.

This framework for a new reality, based on the epistemic justice, will allow Muslim women to define their own place and have a voice to counteract epistemic injustice. Wadud offers a system of hermeneutic model that enables a “who can speak” and “on what terms” from an interpretation of the Quran from a gender perspective, which recognizes Muslim women agency to define and interpret religion, to build a speech based in empowerment and to rise as “political individuals of faith,” establishing a mapping for the construction of a reality in which they position themselves as people, beyond stereotypes and myths.

Image: Women Fighting Demons – Caitlin Conolly

Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente is a social communicator, writer, mentor in digital activism and community educator in gender and capacity development. She has led initiatives for grass roots female leaders’s empowerment in Latin America and Africa. She is an intersectional feminist interested in the crossroads between Religion, Power and Sexuality. Her academic work adresses Feminist Hermeneutics in Islam, Muslim Women Representations, Queer Identities and Movement Building. Vanessa is the founder of Mezquita de Mujeres (A Mosque for Women), a social media and educational project based in ICT that aims to explore the links between feminism, knowledge and activism and highlights the voices and perspectives of women from the global south as change makers in their communities.

Taking Risks to Heal Ourselves and Our World by Katey Zeh

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I was in New York having tea with a colleague whose prominence in our field has risen significantly over the last several years. I confessed half-jokingly that had we not known each other before this happened, we probably would not have been sitting there catching up in a coffee shop because I would’ve turned down the invitation. For as long as I can remember I’ve had an aversion to being in close proximity with even moderately well-known people, even if they are known only within our shared professional circles. Continue reading “Taking Risks to Heal Ourselves and Our World by Katey Zeh”

Thinking about Goddess and God by Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ

Goddess and God in the World final cover design

Talking about our deepest beliefs and feelings can be surprisingly intimate. In our new book Goddess and God in the World, we discuss our different theologies and challenge each other’s views. In the conclusion, we consider whether there is any way to judge between our positions. While we believe that theologies are rooted in experience, we also insist that they must make sense of the world we share and provide the orientation we need as we face the social, political, and environmental crises of our time.

Theologically, we disagree on two fundamental issues: whether divinity is personal or impersonal; and whether divinity is good or inclusive of good and evil. Does one of our views meet our criteria for adequacy more fully than other?

Does the notion of a personal or impersonal deity make more sense of our experience of the world? Carol argues that if consciousness and intelligence is a fundamental aspect of human existence and is found in varying degrees throughout the web of life, then it makes sense to think of divinity as also having consciousness and intelligence. Judith responds that the notion of a personal deity seems to her a holdover from the biblical picture of God and that she can find no evidence in her experience or reflection that a divine individual who is conscious and intelligent exists. We seem to be at a standoff here. There is some consolation in recognizing that this is a fundamental divide in the history of religions, but this insight does not resolve our disagreement.

Does one or the other of our views offer better guidance in making moral decisions? Judith argues that her view places moral responsibility firmly in human hands, which is where it belongs. Carol agrees with Judith that humans and other individuals are the ones whose decisions will determine the fate of the world, and she finds recognition of the interdependence in the web of life sufficient grounds for moral decision-making. But she would add that the love and understanding of a divine individual inspires her to love and understand the world and to promote its flourishing. Judith believes that the idea of one divine presence that enlivens and unites the universe is a sufficient basis for ethical action.

Our other major theological difference concerns whether divinity is good or inclusive of good and evil. Judith argues that if divinity is inclusive of the world, it must be inclusive of both good and evil. Carol counters that if divinity is reflective of what is best in ourselves and in other individuals in the world, then divinity must be good, not evil.

Does one of our views provide better moral guidance? Carol argues that a divinity who is good inspires us to try to make the world better. Judith replies that the notion that divinity is good leads us to idealize ourselves and to forget or deny our capacity to do evil. Carol feels that a clear focus on the world is sufficient to remind us of our capacity for evil.

Does one of our views offer a more adequate account of the existence of evil in the world? Judith asserts that the idea that divinity is the ground of both good and evil provides a better answer to the problem of evil: the potential for both good and evil are inherent in the creative process that is the foundation of life. Carol believes that the world is created by a multiplicity of individuals, including the divinity. The capacity for good and evil is inherent in the creative process that structures the world. The divinity is good but not omnipotent. What we call evil is created by individuals other than the divinity. Judith replies that this view does not adequately account for the origin of evil.

Is there any way to choose between our different positions? Each of us is firmly convinced that her view is clear, consistent, coherent, and comprehensive, that it takes full account of the complexity of human experience, and that it provides the moral orientation we seek….Each of us has tried without success to win the other over to her perspective. In the process, we have gained a deeper appreciation of each other’s views and clarified our own. This is as far as we have been able to go. We acknowledge that, in the end, we cannot know which, if either, of our theologies expresses the nature of ultimate reality or provides the crucial ethical guidance we need. Our views have been shaped by our standpoints, including personal, communal, cultural, and historical factors, and this means that they are relative and partial. Because we cannot see into the future, we cannot know the long-term effects of either of our theological worldviews.

At the same time, we are unwilling to throw up our hands and declare that all theological perspectives are of equal value. We firmly reject the fundamentalist insistence that particular texts, traditions, or truths are universally and eternally valid. This position denies that people create and interpret traditions, and it has repeatedly led to intolerance and violence. We continue to insist that the views of divinity we have articulated make more sense of the world as we know it and provide better orientation as we face the problems of our time than the traditional views we have criticized. On the one hand, all theologies—and all worldviews—are relative to experience and limited by human finitude. On the other hand, they can be examined, evaluated, and debated in relation to their understanding of the world and the kind of life they make possible for both the self and others.

Excerpted from Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology–order now. Ask for a review copy (for blog or print) or exam or desk copy. Post a review on Amazon. Share with your friends on social media using the links below.

Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow are co-authors of Goddess and God in the World and co-editors of Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions. Judith wrote the first Jewish feminist theology, Standing Again at Sinai, while Carol wrote the first Goddess feminist theology, Rebirth of the Goddess. Judith is co-founder of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Carol leads the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. Space available on the fall tour!

My Experience at Auschwitz by Ivy Helman

On August 4th, I visited Auschwitz. In the beginning, the reality of the experience did not match my surrealist expectations of it. I expected to walk onto the grounds and get hit over the head with the heaviness of what happened there, to feel a sense of deep connection to the land covered in the ashes of my people, to have the opportunity to mourn the loss of the members of my family I never met and to be utterly speechless as to the twisted systematization and industrialization of murder that took place there. That blow never came. Why?

The day of my visit was out-of-this-world hot. My guided tour, in Czech, started at 2pm. I was early so I wandered among the crowd outside of the site. There were families lounging on the lawns eating ice creams and drinking cokes. There were tourists taking selfies. There were lots of conversations and lots of laughter. I was pretty convinced that I was the only Jew around.

Upon entering the grounds, I was stunned by how green and lush it was. There were many old brick buildings, seemingly orderly, with lanterns and building signs hanging outside the entrances. Among it all, upwards of 500 people clustered in groups walked from place to place.

The tour began with a basic history of the events of the Holocaust with “exhibits” contained within 3 or 4 different buildings. The guide seemed to me to have memorized a script in which we went from one building to another looking at the “exhibits,” most of which consisted of nothing more than one or two oversized pictures and maps. Outwardly, I sensed no sentiment in the guide and no spirit in the exhibitions either. Her voice was monotone, pronouncing the Czech in such a syllable-by-syllable fashion that it was nearly incomprehensible. Most exhibition rooms were sparse, if they had any objects at all other than the black and white pictures and maps. The tour and exhibitions portrayed such a distance from the events it was almost as if they didn’t happen there, in that place.

There were a few buildings with objects all hermetically sealed behind glass once again keeping us at a distance. One room housed a display of used Zyklon B canisters and had an artist’s small scale all-white model of the “process of extermination,” meaning the “changing rooms,” “showers” and crematoriums – with tiny people crammed into the areas and bodies piled on the floors next to the ovens. Two other buildings contained large displays, again behind glass and removed from their context, of what the exhibition called “evidence of the destruction:” piles of hair loosened from the burlaps sacks they had been founded in when the camp was liberated; shoes of the victims and a large (two-story) container filled with the pots and pans the victims had packed and brought with them but never used.

After we finished our tour of Auschwitz 1, we were given a 15 minute break and were instructed to reassemble by the bus that would take us to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Once there, we rushed through the camp at such a pace that we were done in about 45 minutes. In spite of the rush, I did manage to leave two stones on the pillars, which marked where the ashes of the victims were scattered (buried?). We glanced at the memorial at the back of the camp as well as what was left of the bombed-out crematoriums. Returning to the front of the camp, we ducked into a reconstructed dormitory and a reconstructed bathroom building. The guide asked if we had any questions. Silence. The tour was done.

I stood there debating what to do. Do I leave? Do I stay? I was pretty confident that it didn’t feel right to just go. So, I headed back to the memorial. The tour guide had said that each of the smaller stones creating the steps and floor commemorated one of the 1.1 million Jews killed in Auschwitz. Yet, it was unclear as to the meaning of the large stones. After circling the large stones and a futile attempt to make some meaning out of them, I went and sat on the stairs of the memorial and just looked out over the place and the people there.

Still puzzled but needing to catch the train, I made my way to the entrance. In front of me was a group of Israeli Jews wrapped in Israeli flags, looking the Superhero part. Something changed. Maybe I didn’t need the sad, mournful, pit-of-the-stomach experience. Maybe I’ve had it enough, learned about it enough, taught it enough and lived with it enough. Maybe my pilgrimage there as a witness to the horrors was enough.

It was those Israeli Jews that I needed. Walking into Auschwitz was one thing, but they were proud Jews walking out. I followed them. We, Jews, were the lucky ones who got to leave. Isn’t that something!

Ivy Helman, Ph.D. is feminist scholar and faculty member at Charles University and Anglo-American University in Prague, Czech Republic where she teaches a variety of Jewish Studies and Ecofeminist courses. She is an Associate of Merrimack College‘s Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations and spent many years there as an Adjunct Lecturer in the Religious and Theological Studies Department.

Priestess as Shamanic Path – Part 2 by Molly Remer

This is a continuation of Molly’s piece from Wednesday, 10 August 2016. You can read Part 1 here.

After explaining that the homebirth of her second son was her, “first initiation into the Goddess…even though at that time I didn’t consciously know of Her,” Monica Sjoo writing in an anthology of priestess essays called Voices of the Goddess, explains:

The Birthing Woman is the original shaman. She brings the ancestral spirit being into this realm while risking her life doing so. No wonder that the most ancient temples were the sacred birth places and that the priestesses of the Mother were also midwives, healers, astrologers and guides to the souls of the dying. Women bridge the borderline realms between life and death and in the past have therefore always been the oracles, sibyls, mediums and wise women…

…the power of original creation thinking is connected to the power of mothering. Motherhood is ritually powerful and of great spiritual and occult competence because bearing, like bleeding, is a transformative magical act. It is the power of ritual magic, the power of thought or mind, that gives rise to biological organisms as well as to social organizations, cultures and transformations of all kinds… (page unknown).

I have been a childbirth educator since 2006 and I have given birth five times. Each birth brought me the gift of a profound sense of my own inherent worth and value. It was the shamanic journey through the death-birth of my tiny third child, however, that ushered in a new sense of my own spirituality and that involved a profound almost near-death experience for me. After passing through this intense, initiatory crisis, the direction and focus of my life and work changed and deepened. Shortly after the death-birth of my third son, I wrote: Continue reading “Priestess as Shamanic Path – Part 2 by Molly Remer”

20 Tibetan Buddhist Nuns Become Geshemas — An Update by Karen Nelson Villanueva

In the winter of 2013, I went on pilgrimage to Kathmandu, Nepal. While there, I visited the Khachoe Ghakyil Ling (Pure Land of Bliss) Tibetan Buddhist nunnery, the largest in Nepal with about 400 nuns. It’s affiliated with the nearby Kopan monastery where I stayed in the retreat housing. The nuns gave a group of us a tour of the gompa (meditation room), classrooms, workshops, and kitchen. The studies at the nunnery include math, science, and English, Nepali, and Tibetan languages, as well as meditation, debate, ritual arts, and chanting, the same education that the monks receive at the monastery. When not engaged in prayer and education, the nuns produce herbal incense renowned for its healing properties, which clear and uplift the mind. Not surprisingly for their ambitious program, a nun’s average day is 14 hours long.

Young Nuns - Kopan Since I am averse to crowds and rebellious by nature, I ducked out of much of the sight-seeing and instead spent my time engaging with the novitiates, the young nuns who were milling about before dinner because they had completed their classes, daytime prayers, and other duties. We asked each other questions like “What’s your name?” and “Where are you from?” Then I was treated to “Watch me do this!” and “Can you do this?” because the language of children is universal. Yet, what was special about these girls was that they were being given food, shelter, and an education — opportunities that many their ages, especially girls, would never know. Continue reading “20 Tibetan Buddhist Nuns Become Geshemas — An Update by Karen Nelson Villanueva”