Feminism and Religion

A New Covenant by Joyce Zonana

As the Jewish High Holiday of Passover draws to a close, I have been reflecting on this seasonal ritual so central to collective Jewish identity and so significant to me personally.

The Haggadah, the script for the Seder gathering, enjoins all Jews to experience the Exodus—the liberation of the ancient Hebrews from slavery in Egypt —as if it were happening to each of us in our own time. Because I was born in Cairo to an Arab Jewish family that left Egypt when I was two, I always felt Passover to be mine. No need for “as if”: our Exodus was all too real. Yet, from my parents’ accounts, life in Egypt had been delightful. I could not reconcile the Haggadah’s dreadful representation of ancient Egypt with my family’s treasured memories of contemporary Cairo: I could not understand why we celebrated deliverance from an Egypt we loved.

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Niamh of the Golden Hair by Judith Shaw

judith Shaw photo Niamh (meaning ‘bright’ or ‘radiant’) of the Golden Hair, one of the Tuatha de Danann and daughter of Mannanan mac Lir, Celtic God of the Sea, was Queen in the land of Tír na nÓg (pronounced Tear na Noge), the most famous of the Celtic Otherworlds.

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The Power of Love by Marcia Mount Shoop

Love does not create powerful empires or concentrations of wealth or military might. Love is not what fuels the tanks of commerce or political clout or financial success. Many would say that love slows things down, mires us in complication. Love is not the way the successful and the effective move–it’s not fast enough, it’s not ruthless enough, it’s not excellent enough.

It’s no coincidence that women have often been seen as the carriers of love–the mothers of how we are loved and how we wish to be loved. The domain of women has been traditionally seen as “behind the scenes.” Women are the nurturers, the familiar narrative goes. Women are the ones who provide a soft landing after a hard day, an understanding ear for all the stresses of the world “out there.”

The extended narrative is that women will have to become masculinized to “play the game” of public life. Women will have to learn to be “like men” in order to compete, in order to win, in order to make an impact. Underneath these narratives of nurture and impact are the contours of power in patriarchy. Imprinting women with the responsibility to love in a context where love is secondary or even tertiary to things like aggression and competition, means women will often relegate themselves to the margins of public power. Not because we think we should be powerless, but because that’s where we often feel the most at home. And sometimes ceding public power can feel like the price women pay to truly love–to love ourselves, to love who we love, and to love the world around us. The contours of power in patriarchy can distort not just women’s lives, but everyone’s lives in ways that carry the weight of this distortion of love.

These gendered expectations of how and where love gets to live and move and breathe in this world distorts the power that love brings with it. After almost ten years of life working from the margins of institutions (church and academy) as an independent scholar and “freelance theologian” I have felt the push back about love as a respectable methodology and mode of operation enough to recognize it quickly.

Institutions often answer my invitation to a loving attentiveness to bodies, particularly to traumatized bodies, with legalities and anxieties: the language of “boundaries,” “reporting laws,” and “misconduct” can shut down work or conversation. The patriarchal hyper-sexualizing of love makes it a no-no or at least something to be feared as a slippery slope in institutional life. In ecclesial settings, where love is supposed to define our mode of operation, these conversations rapidly find their way to sin and human failure. Love is “in spite of” who people are, not because of who they are. Love is impossible without lots of grace and patience and overlooking the problematic things that people do. Love is, if we’re honest with ourselves in these contexts, a real chore in this iteration of its nature. And people default into feeling like a burden, not wanting to bother anyone with their problems, and feeling ashamed of who they really are.

Love is about trust: trusting a moment, trusting a space, trusting each other. And love struggles in contexts where spaces, moments, and people are not trustworthy. So many with whom I work in consulting, retreats, spiritual direction, and teaching struggle to trust and to love. They struggle to trust and love anything because they have encountered so many untrustworthy spaces along the way. The competitive intensity of doing good work can translate into a diminishing and demeaning cycle of “never enough” and the need to protect and defend.

It is amazing to witness what happens to people when they realize they can trust a space–even if it is just a temporary space, a pop-up beloved community where you can really be yourself and won’t be judged or scrutinized. The conventional standards of excellence might suggest such settings work from the lowest common denominator and the generated “product” will suffer from a lack of competition or lack of scrutiny. On the contrary, I see over and over again the beautiful things people can be and do and say and feel when they are loved and accepted. Art, poetry, unique insights, oratorical wisdom, powerful music, deep healing, a sense of freedom, clarity, creativity, peace, support, friendship, and good work all emerge in startling and potent ways when people encounter trustworthy love.

The academy and the church define themselves as places where people can learn and grow and find community. These institutions were formed by patriarchy, but are they doomed to reiterate the diminishing returns of patriarchy forever? Their aspiration is to help people find their way in the world in the most constructive ways they can. And in the world today, people need trustworthy love to truly find the music of their soul. The power of love can transform the spaces of enlightenment and ecclesia into truly collaborative, supportive, loving places of work. Far from screeching to a halt, these spaces might finally hit their stride.

Marcia Mount Shoop is an author, theologian, and minister. Her newest book, released from Cascade Books in October 2015, is A Body Broken, A Body Betrayed: Race, Memory, and Eucharist in White-Dominant Churches, co-authored with Mary McClintock Fulkerson. Marcia is also the author of Let the Bones Dance: Embodiment and the Body of Christ (WJKP, 2010) and Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs of Apocalypse: Lifting the Veil on Big-Time Sports (Cascade, 2014). Find out more at www.marciamountshoop.com

A Tale of Two Sisters by Carol P. Christ

When I first returned from my ancestor quest in Germany, I fell ill with a bad cold and cough and had little physical energy. For two weeks I lived in the dreamtime, communicating with the ancestors and trying to make sense of the information about their lives I had discovered. After I got better, I had difficulty returning to daily life. The ancestors wanted to speak through me. Their stories, based on facts, come to me in waking trance.

A happy moment in the life of girl like Agnes — Feeding the ducks

Agnes Lattauer Sweitzer : I was born in Ober-Floerscheim (Hessen Darmstadt) on July 9, 1812. I was the first in a family of five children. Four years after me came Jakob, named after Father, and three years later, Rudolph. It was nice to have brothers, but my dream of a sister came true when Catherina was born a month and a day after my tenth birthday. My mother was busy with Jakob and Rudolph, so I became a second mother to Catherina. I could not nurse her, but I could sing to her and rock her to sleep. I changed her diapers and gave her a bath. It was so wonderful to have a baby to take care of. Three years later little Johanetta was born two days after my thirteenth birthday. Another baby for me and Mother bring up together. I was in heaven. I was both mother and sister to the little girls. When they got older, I took my little sisters to play by the stream, where they giggled and cooed as we fed the ducks and the geese. In the summer, Mother and I brought them with us to the fields where we hoed and planted, weeded and harvested. They tried to pull weeds with their little fingers. It was my job to keep them from pulling up the plants too. Continue reading “A Tale of Two Sisters by Carol P. Christ”

Hamilton Part 1 – “History Has Its Eyes on You” by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

Hamilton The Musical, the newest sensation to hit Broadway is sweeping the nation. It is being touted as a fresh new way to produce a Broadway play, introducing hip hop and rap into the lexicon of musicals. From the very beginnings, Hamilton has been turning heads, moving mountains, and making waves. Its unorthodox lyrics and beats help to give life to key American historical figures. The sick beats of the music are only part of why Hamilton is storming the nation. Of the 10 principle cast members, only one is a white male (in the role of mad King George). Hamilton is a racially diverse cast; one that is very rare amongst the streets of Broadway. Black and Latino actors play key American figures like Hamilton, Washington, Jefferson, Burr, and Madison.

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She Changes Everything She Touches by Deanne Quarrie

Deanne Quarrie She Changes Everything She Touches and …
Everything She Touches Changes….

As a way of entry to this post, I wish to let readers know that this is not a typical kind of post for this blog. It is however, the work of an accomplished priestess and about how she has been reminded of what she knows about manifesting wants and needs in her life. It is personal and it is real. In my professional life I was big on accountability and know that it applies to my magical life as well. This post therefore witnesses my intentions!

I have been feeling horribly scattered lately, almost as though I have acquired ADHD in my old age. Each day is incredibly busy and yet at the end of the day, when I reflect on how busy, I realize I have not gotten anything productive done! I have a lot of irons in the fire and recently have added even more. I added them because they seem important, as they might prove helpful to me for accomplishing some of my goals.

So, I was talking to my friend and fellow Priestess, Letecia Layson, on the phone the other day, lamenting about this as well as other things that I wish to develop in my life that have to do with family and friend connections and spending more time with in-person relationships.

At the end of our conversation, in which my friend used her skills at listening, she remarked, “Bendis, you are a remarkable woman and have accomplished so much in your life. You have shared marvelous things with your students, but in listening to you, I can clearly see that, right now, you are not using what you teach in your own life.” Continue reading “She Changes Everything She Touches by Deanne Quarrie”

Novel Excerpt III: That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier

I have posted selections from my novel in progress before here and here and here…I am again. My last post here at FAR was about women and silence. Silencing women—from the powerful (Hillary Clinton) to the obscure (this girl that in this novel excerpt is now a teenager) women are silenced.

In this novel, as you can read from the previous excerpts a journal is found by a brother who is twin to his sister. The journals he finds are addressed to him after his parents’ house sells. Upon reading them he begins to discover that they are written by his sister when she was younger and in all likelihood she does not now as an adult remember having written them. She does not remember what it looks like happened to her. Incest. What must he do? This grown up person that he now is finding this information out? She has been silenced and he is holding the key to the only voice she had at the time. I have been working on this novel for over ten years and am currently immersed in trying to pull together all of the pieces I have written over the years. What I have posted so far is excerpts from the journals he, Chris, finds. This excerpt continues that story line. Continue reading “Novel Excerpt III: That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier”

Woman Is Not Anonymous by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

Vanessa Rivera Virginia Woolf

Lately I have been reflecting on this quote of Virginia Woolf: “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” Here she points out the deliberate invisibilization of women’s contribution in all areas of human endeavors.

Patriarchy always takes these contributions for granted. For centuries, domestic labor has been invisible and not considered work. It has put beauty over intelligence, even with women of outstanding intelligence. And in terms of knowledge and intellectual production, patriarchy has appropriated women’s ideas and in presenting them as “anonymous,” presents them as it’s own.

Thanks to the feminist reclaiming of history, and proving the accuracy of the premise that “Anonymous is woman,” we have learned of the long list of inventions that were made possible due to women’s ideas who were kept invisible, unnamed, unquoted, and erased; after all, she was “just” a “woman.” Continue reading “Woman Is Not Anonymous by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

Women First, Rivals Later by Vibha Shetiya

Vibah Sita, as many know, is the tragic heroine of the Ramayana who gets discarded by her husband Rama because he doubted she had remained chaste while in his arch enemy Ravana’s captivity. Moreover, she is the “ideal Indian woman” in popular imagination because she remains loyal to Rama no matter how unfair his treatment of her. But there is another female character in the epic who meets perhaps a far more violent fate.

Unlike Sita, however, Shurpanakha gets little sympathy from the readers because she does not stick to her socially assigned roles. I would like to talk about Shurpanakha and how she comes to symbolize all women who transgress societal boundaries, while also stressing the fact that although she is often presented as Sita’s opposite, the two share far more in common as women; both Sita and Shurpanakha deserve our compassion and empathy.

In the traditional Sanskrit text, Valmiki describes Shurpanakha as “maddened with desire” when she first beholds Rama’s beauty. The poet then goes into a rather lengthy description of what she is not by comparing her “unsightly” presence with Rama’s exemplary beauty, thereby affirming the fact that she does not deserve to be visible because of the physicality of her body. Upon his enquiring, Shurpanakha tells Rama that she, who roams the forest alone and according to her own will, is the sister of Ravana (who later kidnaps Sita), and she makes it a point to add that she is more powerful than all her brothers. She then declares her undying love for Rama and asks him to be her husband, after which the two of them could seek adventure amid the forest together. Continue reading “Women First, Rivals Later by Vibha Shetiya”

From Competition to Collaboration: Reflections on Humility, Self-Promotion, and Gender

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“Is self-promotion sinful?” Author Marlena Graves asked this question on Christianity Today’s Her.Meneutics blog back in 2010. Reflecting on her experience of having a manuscript rejected by publishers for being a “no name” and not having a big enough platform, she wrestles with questions like “how much of what we do as Christians and churches is about promoting ourselves?” and “are we using the church as a vehicle to make a name for ourselves?”

Graves never directly answers the question but she imples that most of the time self-promotion is sinful. She concludes that when we are presented with platform-building opportunities, most of the time the most righteous path is to for us to take a step back in order to revaluate and humble ourselves. But, other than turning down opportunities to grow our professional presence, what does humbling ourselves mean? Continue reading “From Competition to Collaboration: Reflections on Humility, Self-Promotion, and Gender”