Feminism and Religion

Revolution Through Rituals by Jann Aldredge-Clanton

Jann's picture A revolution is happening through Divine Feminine rituals! More and more faith communities are reclaiming the power of the Divine Feminine in sacred rituals.

Rituals move feminist theory and theology/thealogy from the head to the heart. Words and visual symbols in rituals shape our deepest beliefs and values, which drive our actions. Multicultural female divine images in our sacred rituals affirm the sacred value of females throughout the world who continue to suffer from violence, abuse, and discrimination. For feminism to transform our culture, we need Divine Feminine rituals in faith communities. In Women-Church: Theology and Practice, Rosemary Radford Ruether writes: “One needs communities of nurture to guide one through death to the old symbolic order of patriarchy to rebirth into a new community of being and living. One needs not only to engage in rational theoretical discourse about this journey; one also needs deep symbols and symbolic actions to guide and interpret the actual experience of the journey from sexism to liberated humanity” (p. 3).

As I was growing up in the Baptist tradition, hymns were my favorite part of our rituals. One of the hymns I loved singing was “He Lives,” increasing in volume along with the congregation as we came to the refrain which repeated over and over the words “He lives.” Not until many years later could I even imagine singing or saying, “She lives.” I had learned to worship a God who was named and imaged as male. But while studying in a conservative seminary, I was surprised to find Her. I discovered female names and images of Deity in scripture and in Christian history. As an ordained minister, my call has included writing, preaching, and teaching to persuade people that we need multicultural female divine names and images in rituals if we are to have social justice, peace, and equality. My call expanded to writing Divine Feminine rituals, including lyrics to familiar hymn tunes. Continue reading “Revolution Through Rituals by Jann Aldredge-Clanton”

Awake! Awake! A Reflection on the Awakening of Conscience and Advent by Elise M. Edwards

‘Tis the season to be…?

For me, this has not been a season to be jolly. I teach at a university, and again, I’m in the midst of the most hectic time of year of grading and exams and wrapping up projects due at the end of the calendar year. There have been moments of joy and rest. But I’ve been more reflective and sorrowful. This year, my heart and mind and soul have been opened up in new ways and I feel more urgency and need for social change. I’ve been experiencing “conscientization” during the time of year many Christians refer to as Advent.

I was introduced to the concept of conscientization in the work of Christian feminist and womanist ethicists like Beverly Wildung Harrison and Stacey Floyd-Thomas. Other feminist and liberationist thinkers had already convinced me of the vital role that critical thinking, consciousness-raising, and action occupy in ethical reflection and social change. In a chapter on “Feminist Liberative Ethics” in a textbook on liberative approaches to ethics, Michelle Tooley explains the meaning of conscientization:

“Activists speak of conscientization as waking up to the injustice in the world—or seeing it for the first time. It is not that the injustice is beginning; it is that you encounter oppression, injustice, violence yourself or you see it in a person or situation. You may have seen the same situation many times before, but for some reason you begin to connect the event with a deeper recognition that the injustice is wrong.”

(p. 185, Ethics: A Liberative Approach, Miguel A. De La Torre, Editor)

I was conscientized the night I heard that a grand jury did not indict Darren Wilson for killing Mike Brown, an unarmed black man. I was horrified to learn that this police officer doesn’t even have to stand trial for his violent and deadly act. Now it wasn’t like before grand jury’s decision I thought that black lives were given equal value in the US justice system. After all, for months I have been researching and preparing a paper called “When the Law does not Secure Justice or Peace” about artistic and religious responses to the dishonoring of black male personhood. I have been mourning the loss of Trayvon Martin and others as I write. But this decision left me sobbing in a hotel room as I watch the events unfold in Ferguson, Missouri. I gained a deeper social awareness about the depths to which the demonization and disregard of the lives of black women, men and children are entrenched in American life and the institutions within it.

I gained deeper self-awareness too. One reason the tragedy of the grand jury’s decision became so palpable to me is that just hours prior, I witnessed former president Jimmy Carter address the American Academy of Religion. He spoke passionately about the proliferation of violence, mistreatment of women, climate change, and other social concerns. To put it plainly, I was floored to see a white man in his 90s who was raised in Georgia and was a Southern Baptist until his 70s state without any qualms that people in power intentionally misinterpret religious texts to support the domination of women and nonwhites because those they do not want to lose their privilege. Yet he also called himself, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a “prisoner of hope.” He believes that things will change, and draws from his Christian convictions to sustain hope and motivate his work to fight injustice.

I was electrified by his words. I, too, had hope. In the days prior, I had gotten a break from my daily life, connected with friends, and conversed with like minds. I had been thinking about art and love. I had learned strategies for de-centering dominant narratives in the classroom and I was hopeful that I could use them to make a difference in my students’ lives. But mere hours later, while watching the news, the self-awareness I came to is that my hope is more fragile than I wish it to be. Futility consumed my hope.

A few weeks later, I can assert that my faith in God is not shaken, but my hope in humanity’s goodness has as much stability as a house of cards. In my present state of mind, I’m grateful that we are at a point in the church year that provides me with an opportunity to mourn the brokenness of our world. Christmas is approaching, but that doesn’t mean I have to sing merry carols. Advent is a season when Christians reflect on why the world needs God’s miraculous action and what it means to wait for light to emerge in the darkness. In the church calendar, it is a time when Christians re-enact and re-experience the anticipation of Jesus’ coming. Advent songs have a different character than Christmas carols. Many of them have a haunting tone or an eerie, sad, or mysterious sound. The lyrics of these songs place exhortations to “Rejoice!” next to pleas of “O come, o come, Emmanuel!” Emmanuel, also spelled Immanuel, means “God with us.” Christians draw this name from the Hebrew prophecies in Isaiah that are cited in the Gospel of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth. Matthew describes Jesus’ birth as the fulfillment of prophecy.

My conscientization allows me to hear these prophecies anew. They are familiar to me, as they are repeated often this time of year in Christian settings, but I hear them in new ways. I hear Isaiah 9:6 quite differently: For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

“The government will be upon his shoulders” likely means that this child will have authority. But as I hear those words this year, I imagine the Prince of Peace in the choke-hold of a law enforcement officer. I think of a little baby who are welcomed into the world with joy but who grows up only to be killed at a young age by threatened authorities and crowds of supporters. This is the story Christians tell about the God who is with us, the God who is also fully human. And this is the story we tell about Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Alesia Thomas, Aiyana Stanley-Jones and far too many others.

This Advent, I’m making a real effort to hold hope and despair together. I don’t want to become hopeless. I don’t want to think that my work in the classroom, in my church, in my community, on this site and in the printed page have no meaning. Hope is what sustains us to work for justice. I want to believe in that transformation of hearts and minds and souls is possible and immanent even when it emerges through sorrow and struggle. Suffering, sorrow, and killing without consequences must not be acceptable. With my new eyes, I see just how terrible they are.

Elise M. Edwards, PhD is a Lecturer in Christian Ethics at Baylor University and a graduate of Claremont Graduate University. She is also a registered architect in the State of Florida. Her interdisciplinary work examines issues of civic engagement and how beliefs and commitments are expressed publicly. As a black feminist, she primarily focuses on cultural expressions by, for, and about women and marginalized communities. Follow her on twitter, google+ or academia.edu.

Winter Solstice Meditation by Molly

December 2014 022 When the wheel of the year turns towards fall, I always feel the call to retreat, to cocoon, to pull away. I also feel the urge for fall de-cluttering—my eyes cast about the house for things to unload, get rid of, to cast away. I also search my calendar for those things which can be eliminated, trimmed down, cut back on. I think it is the inexorable approach of the winter holiday season that prompts this desire to withdraw, as well as the natural rhythm of the earth which so clearly says: let things go, it is almost time to hibernate.

Late autumn and the shift toward winter is a time of discernment. A time to choose. A time to notice that which has not made it through the summer’s heat and thus needs to be pruned away. In this time of the year, we both recognize the harvest of our labors and that which needs to be released or even sacrificed as we sense the promise of the new year to come. Continue reading “Winter Solstice Meditation by Molly”

Sappho and Ancient India: The Connection and its Implications by Stuart Dean

Stuart WordPress photo Sappho was a metrical virtuoso. Many of her fragments survive because they were quoted solely to illustrate otherwise unattested metrical forms. Indeed, there is no precedent or parallel in the poetry of other ancient Greeks for both the range of meters Sappho used as well as the individual characteristics of certain of such meters. The only obvious precedent is in the meters of the Vedic hymns of the Rsis of ancient India.

That may not seem to be a big deal, but it is. One takeaway is that Sappho represents a very old tradition of poetry. Exactly how old is impossible to say. The similarities between Sappho’s meters and those of the Rsis may reflect a poetic tradition common to each that is even older than their respective traditions.

One Vedic aspect of some of Sappho’s meters is that the first two syllables could be either long or short. Again, this by itself may not seem to be a big deal, especially compared, for example, to the improvisational elements of modern jazz. But it does represent an unusual degree of freedom compared to all other ancient Greek poetry. Continue reading “Sappho and Ancient India: The Connection and its Implications by Stuart Dean”

The Cop on the Beat is Not Ice-T, the Prosecutor Is Not Sam Waterston, and Mariska Hargitay and S. Epatha Merkerson Are Not in Charge, by Carol P. Christ

I have watched every episode of Law and Order and Law and Order SVU, and most of them more than once. Though there is police violence on these programs, it is usually investigated, and viewers are given the sense that it is not OK. Not living in black America or even in the United States, I guess I was under the illusion that police forces are no longer primarily white and male, that police reforms advocated decades ago have had some effect, and that cops cannot get away with murder.

This despite the fact that I knew that inmates in US prisons are far more likely to be black than their numbers in the population warrant, and that I knew that stop and frisk and arresting black men for petty crimes are ordinary police policies.

For readers who don’t watch MSNBC as avidly as I do, stop and frisk, now banned in New York City, is the policy of searching (primarily) young black men hanging around on street corners to see if they have illegal drugs or weapons on their persons. This policy can lead to the incarceration of young black men for having one or two marijuana cigarettes intended for personal use in their pockets. Stop and frisk is not a policy on college campuses, where police are just as likely to find young white men and women in possession of illegal drugs. Why? Because college authorities and parents of white college students simply would not allow it. Continue reading “The Cop on the Beat is Not Ice-T, the Prosecutor Is Not Sam Waterston, and Mariska Hargitay and S. Epatha Merkerson Are Not in Charge, by Carol P. Christ”

An Archaic Trinity of Goddesses? Not Necessarily. by Barbara Ardinger

Barbara Ardinger In her comment following my last post which was about mythology, my friend, Carol Christ, expands on my paragraph about how the so-called “ancient triple goddess” was really invented in 1948 by Robert Graves in his book, The White Goddess. (Thanks, Carol.)

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Goddess movement was just getting up on its feet and our ovular books were being published, the idea arose that if “they” have a holy trinity, “we” have one, too. And ours is older and holier. We see it in the three phases of the moon, new (Virgin), full (Mother), and dark (Crone). Here’s a tiny sample of these books that changed the lives of so many women and men:

Woman’s Mysteries Ancient and Modern by M. Esther Harding (1971, but first published in 1933)
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974) by Marija Gimbutas
When God Was a Woman (1976) by Merlin Stone
Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths (1978) by Charlene Spretnak
The first edition of The Spiral Dance (1979) by Starhawk
The Chalice and the Blade (1987) by Riane Eisler
Laughter of Aphrodite (1987) by Carol P. Christ
The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries (1989) by Z. Budapest
The Reflowering of the Goddess (1990) by Gloria Feman Orenstein
Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990) by Miriam Robbins Dexter

Triple goddess? ’Tain’t so. Our beloved triple goddess is one of our foundational myths. It’s nice and it’s perhaps inspiring, but it’s only a myth. Anyone who looks at a calendar or almanac—or up into the sky every night for a month—can easily see that the moon doesn’t have three phases. It has four: waxing, full, waning, and dark. And since the late 20^th century, women have lived long enough to go through more than three stages of life. Continue reading “An Archaic Trinity of Goddesses? Not Necessarily. by Barbara Ardinger”

Journey into Light by Mary Sharratt

mary sharratt December 7 marks the Second Sunday of Advent.

Here in Northern England, I find myself plunged into the depths of midwinter darkness. It is in this dark womb of stillness that the Light is reborn. Through the ages and across cultures, world faith traditions have marked this sacred passage through the darkness.

In Christian tradition, Advent is a period of expectant waiting, of anticipating the birth of Christ. The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, which means “coming.” This First Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of the Western Christian liturgical year.

Image: “Hildegard’s House of Light,” painting by Elizabeth Erickson

The Advent wreath and Advent calendar are relatively recent innovations. Christmas and Advent celebrations have gone through many permutations throughout history. Continue reading “Journey into Light by Mary Sharratt”

When Baby Girls and Old Crones Ruled by Jeri Studebaker

Jeri Studebaker

The data came as somewhat of a shock to me. I stumbled across it one day in The Civilization of the Goddess, a mammoth book by the late Lithuanian-American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas about what Gimbutas dubbed “Old Europe” – a culture area in southeastern Neolithic Europe that she maintains was centered around female deity.

Until she had the temerity to suggest that people at some point in the past might have worshipped goddesses rather than gods, Gimbutas had a sterling reputation among academics, even being hired to teach at two of the most prestigious of all American archaeology departments, Harvard’s and UCLA’s. After presenting her goddess theory of Old Europe, however, Gimbutas came under attack by a few powerful male archaeologists, after which her reputation among academics began to plummet (see Spretnak 2011 for a good accounting of Gimbutas’ fall from grace).

Before I get to the data that so startled me, I need to tell you a bit about archaeologists. Like the members of many academic disciplines, they disagree with each other – sometimes vehemently (and perhaps even somewhat more vehemently than scholars in other disciplines). One thing however they all agree on is this: the higher the quality and quantity of grave goods buried with an individual, the higher that individual’s status in her or his society. Continue reading “When Baby Girls and Old Crones Ruled by Jeri Studebaker”

Are the Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality? by amina wadud

amina 2014 - cropped This was the title of a two day conference recently held at Columbia University. At one point on the first day, one presenter asked if there was anyone who is not Christian. Two hands went up, sitting side by side: mine and a film maker friend who had been instrumental in getting me invited to present. She is Buddhist and was showing a trailer from her documentary on rape in the Black community.

One problem with my participation was how to introduce another conception of “God” while still engaging the intersection of race and sexuality with only 15 minutes. So I had to talk really fast.

While the easy answer is, “No,” the God in Islam is not afraid of Black sexuality, I still had a lot of ground to cover about the sex-affirming history and spirit of Islamic thought and practice. Because the preference is to marry, which is a contract and not a sacrament. Marriage is not for the purpose of procreation but for the pleasure of sex. Marriage is preferred over celibacy such that no spiritual virtue is applied to the latter. Marriage is the normative example (sunnah) of the Prophet. Continue reading “Are the Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality? by amina wadud”

The Wedding Dress by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited A few weeks back, I was digging around for a picture, and in the process of looking for one picture I uncovered decades worth of memories. Here I was by the pool one Thanksgiving at my old apartment in California. That was where I cooked my first turkey. Here, in another photo, it was Christmas Eve at my mom’s house. I was with my best friend, wearing matching Santa hats. She was so beautiful as a girl. I have become accustomed to her as a woman and had forgotten how much I loved and admired her then as well. Weren’t we supposed to take off and travel the world together? And, then, here were the wedding photos of our Christmas wedding.

I noticed that it was an intimate party. At one point in the service, my father-in-law was holding my flowers since my sister was fixing my veil. He was chided the rest of the night for being my flower girl. I remembered that I did not have my hair professionally coiffed when I saw the backstage image of myself taking out bobby-pinned curls in lingerie before I dressed. Did I look like that? Who took that picture? The flowers were white roses, accented with holly berries and leaves, and my bouquet was a solid bundle of red roses. Oh yes, and, here was our friend from Chicago… with his hair dyed blond? Why was he hanging out with my girlfriends in my room the night before I was married? And, didn’t my mom inadvertently catch his shirt on fire with some incense? Yes, that’s right. Very innocently, smilingly, moving casually, she patted out the near tragedy sparking on his back side, saying in her best southern accent, “Oh, my! We put a little hole in you, didn’t we?” A little disgruntled, he muttered, “That was a new shirt.”

The one great indulgence of the wedding was the dress itself. It was ivory with blush colored roses embroidered on the tulle overlay of the big skirt. I was not concerned that people would think me a non-virgin in ivory, but it was mentioned to me as a consideration. I loved the bustle in the back that was gathered from the generous material of the gown’s train so that I could walk and dance at the reception. The friendly ladies who sold me the dress came to the wedding specifically to make sure the bustle was perfectly drawn. The bodice had a gentle piping, which made the top sort of stand on its own. The same ladies also insisted that I have some extra padding in the top. Come to think of it, they seemed to have been globally concerned with the success of the garment and me in it. I wore a white silk wrap around my shoulders, which made me feel like Grace Kelly. The covering was my favorite part, which I added at the last minute. The photos prompted me to get out the dress once again, for I had not looked at it in the nearly fifteen years since I had it hermetically preserved following the wedding. So far, it had not yellowed. I was surprised to see how funerary it looked through the peep window, sealed up as it was in a box around cardboard shaped like my torso. It made me think that perhaps I should be buried in it some day. This thought has discomfited me with a complexity of sacramentality, morbidity, practicality, humor, despair, love and sorrow that I have yet to comprehend or shirk. Continue reading “The Wedding Dress by Natalie Weaver”