Feminism and Religion

Transcendence, Immanence, and the Sixth Great Extinction by Carol P. Christ

In my recent blog “The Flourishing of Life and Feminist Theology” I discussed Grace Jantzen’s view that theology should focus on “natality” or birth and life, rather than life after death or life apart from this world. This week Tikkun magazine published its summer issue with a feature called “Thinking Anew about God.” In it two male thinkers, one Buddhist and one Christian, argue for a similar turn toward the world in their traditions. Their calls for religions to focus on this world were published the same week scientists warned that the world stands on the brink of the sixth great extinction.

I have come to believe that any religion espousing cosmological dualism (devaluing this world in favor of a superior reality such as heaven) and individual salvation (the idea that what ultimately happens to me is disconnected from what ultimately happens to you) is contributing to our world’s problems rather than offering a solution. … [Religions should] stop emphasizing the hereafter and focus instead on how to overcome the illusion that we are separate from this precious, endangered earth. –David Loy, Buddhist, writing in Tikkun Summer 2014

My aim in this regard is to reawaken in each of us an emotionally felt and primordial sense of spiritual belonging within the wider natural world. In turn, my hope is that this deep sense of belonging to the earth — to God’s body, as it were — will en-flame our hearts and empower our wills to commit us to healing and saving the earth.—Mark I. Wallace, Christian, writing in Tikkun Summer 2014 Continue reading “Transcendence, Immanence, and the Sixth Great Extinction by Carol P. Christ”

Feeling it in Bones & Water: Practicing Somatic Spirituality

There is a phrase I’ve heard here and there while living in Australia that I love for the sense that it evokes– “I can feel it in my water.” The usage is similar to the American phrase to “feel it in my bones.” It is that sense of knowing through the body that something is happening or about to happen. There are different explanations that posit to what “water” the phrase refers. I’ve been told it means urine in the bladder or it refers to the fact that the human body is truly mostly water. But, admittedly, my favorite explanation is that it points to the water of the womb. People of all shapes and sorts may use the phrase. But to date, I’ve only ever heard it from women, which gives some anecdotal credence to the womb theory. Any way you look at it, if you feel it in your water or your bones, you are connecting with the deep wisdom of the body.

I feel this somatic wisdom, this feeling of the bones & water, is something, as a group of modern Western cultures, we do not engage as often as we could. We have a tendency to see the body as a means to an end. It gets us from one place to another, yes. But it also seems so high maintenance some times. If only we didn’t have to sleep so much, or eat & drink at regular intervals, we could get more done. If only we didn’t get sick. If only we didn’t have to take time out of our busy lives to exercise & stay healthy. If only our bodies would get with the program, so our minds and spirits could achieve their lofty goals and be even more productive. For women, this is further compounded by layer after layer of patriarchal programming about what we should or should not do with said body. We have national debates in the public forum over and over again pertaining to this. We struggle in private with the intimate relationship between body & other parts of self. Continue reading “Feeling it in Bones & Water: Practicing Somatic Spirituality”

Uppity Women Unite by Barbara Ardinger

I have a poster on my wall: UPPITY WOMEN UNITE. In big, red, capital letters. I don’t remember where I got this poster, but I know I’ve had it since the late 70s or early 80s. I’m sure it comes from the raggedy late 60s, when second-wave feminism got up a head of steam and uppity women began getting our attention. That’s when Betty Friedan said being a proper 50s housewife was like having a mental illness. It’s when Gloria Steinem founded Ms. Magazine, which (oh, horrors!) did not give us recipes or home-making tips and did not tell us how to dress to lure our men into bed. It’s when Mary Daly started giving us a whole new, original take on the English language. Ahhh, yes, those were the good ol’ days. And the bad ol’ days, too, when the Equal Rights Amendment was not ratified.

“Uppity” can be a troublesome word. In the olden days, if someone called you uppity, it means you were inferior to them and weren’t staying in what they thought was your proper place. If you were a black person, for example, and if you didn’t step off the sidewalk when white men were coming, you were uppity. If you were a woman who wanted equal pay for doing the same work a man did, you were uppity. Those women in the 1980 movie, 9 to 5, were majorly uppity. And they won the battle.

Uppity women didn’t stay in the kitchen or the bedroom. They used—oh, horrors—the Pill. They marched to Take Back the Night. They got up on stage and played their own drums and guitars and didn’t sing like proper ladies should. They shouted. And they got into politics. Bella Abzug said that a woman’s place is in the House. Shirley Chisolm became the first black female member of congress in 1968 and in 1972 ran for president. (And I voted for her.)

The English teacher in me wants to get in a word or two here. Look at the phrase “uppity women unite.” It might be a front page headline that says strong women who won’t stay on the bottom are getting together. Or maybe it’s a simple declarative sentence. But add punctuation and we get more punch. “Uppity women, unite.” Now the verb is imperative. We must unite. Let’s make it stronger: “Uppity women—unite!” Now it’s a command.

So, uppity sisters, and uppity brothers, too, you know how to multitask. Push the on button in your corpus callosum and let your imagination run while you read this. Let’s consider what the planet might look like if we had equal rights (and rites) in all things. Please understand that I’m not saying women should be the ones on top. I’m not talking about “power over,” but about what Starhawk calls “power with.” That’s shared power, which leads to shared magic.

Imagine yourself as one of a huge crowd of flying people joined as points of light above the earth. Float peacefully up there for a few minutes. Think about the power of people joined together, the energy of people working together. Now let’s get down to earth. Floaty energy is fun, but it doesn’t get much done. Imagine yourself as a member of a group with a goal. Touch down. Stand on the earth and consider the fact that everything on the planet is alive—not just people and animals and plants, but rocks, too. Even things we constructed have some life force. Embrace panentheism for a little while. Now here’s something to do: Find a church that doesn’t accept uppity women or uppity brothers. You’re united. As united, uppity people, go to that church and stand in a circle around it. Send friendly but firm energy into that church so that, even if a whole denomination or religion won’t change right now, that individual church might change. The next time you go to that church, radiate the same energy when you go inside.

You can also find a church that appreciates uppity folks. Send grateful energy to the church and all the people in it.

UPPITY WOMEN UNITE. If enough of us uppity women and our uppity brothers get together, we will eventually build up to a critical mass. A critical mass can lead to an explosion. I’d prefer to see a spiritual, peaceful explosion. What do you want to see?

Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. (www.barbaraardinger.com), is a published author and freelance editor. Her newest book is Secret Lives, a novel about grandmothers who do magic. Her earlier nonfiction books include the daybook Pagan Every Day, Finding New Goddesses (a pun-filled parody of goddess encyclopedias), and Goddess Meditations. When she can get away from the computer, she goes to the theater as often as possible—she loves musical theater and movies in which people sing and dance. She is also an active CERT (Community Emergency Rescue Team) volunteer and a member (and occasional secretary pro-tem) of a neighborhood organization that focuses on code enforcement and safety for citizens. She has been an AIDS emotional support volunteer and a literacy volunteer. She is an active member of the neopagan community and is well known for the rituals she creates and leads.

Using the Listening Guide to Leave Oneself Open to Discovery by Xochitl Alvizo

I am deep in the throes of writing my dissertation. Writing started in earnest, in its most recent stretch, in mid-July when I came out to write in isolation in my home city of Los Angeles.* If all goes as scheduled (so far, so good), I will be submitting the first chapter to my editor today, the same date of publication as this blog post. Of course, after my editor’s suggestions, the chapter then goes to my advisor and will inevitably have a life of its own after that. For now, I am enjoying the moment of being on the cusp of completing my very first chapter. I’m a big believer in celebrating every moment of success!

Last month I was in the throes of data analysis. My dissertation involves qualitative research with twelve Emerging Church congregations across the United States. From that research I ended up with 40 audio -hours of transcriptions from the interviews I conducted. I spent the whole month of June – again, in isolation –in San Diego at Point Loma Nazarene University* focusing on the task at hand. Analyzing data is a completely different challenge than writing, and finding the best method of analysis based on one’s own commitments particularly so. Luckily, I found a method of analysis that allowed me to ‘listen deeply’ to my data and leave myself open to discovery.

I have written before about Nelle Morton’s feminist principle of ‘hearing each other to speech’, its importance in my own life, and how valuable I think it could be for those of us in academentia and for the way we do our work. There is a logic that sometimes dominates in the academy of finding the fault in the argument of the other and building one’s own argument in opposition to it. That is not, however, the manner in which I want to do my own work. Nelle Morton proposes a model of engaging one another in which we commit to ‘hearing all the way’, to “depth hearing.” The practice is of a kind of hearing that engages the whole self to the point that you might find yourself holding your breath in order to allow the coherence of someone else’s story to form and come together. Her claim is that this kind of hearing evokes “a new speech – a new creation” because it enables the speaker to be heard to their own story, thereby creating the possibility for new imagining, an imagining that contributes to the mutual empowerment and transformation of both hearer and speaker. Continue reading “Using the Listening Guide to Leave Oneself Open to Discovery by Xochitl Alvizo”

Branwen, Welsh Goddess of Love and Beauty by Judith Shaw

Branwen, Goddess of Love and Beauty, daughter of Penardim and Llyr, sister of Bran the Blessed, King over all the Island of the Mighty, was loved by her people for her gentleness, compassion and beauty. As Mother of the king to come in the tradition of the Old Tribes of the British Isles, she is the embodiment of Sovereignty. She is the Center from which all life emerges. She rules over the Land, both its spirit and its manifestation. Her vision is long, seeing the whole, the greater scheme of things. Sometimes this knowledge can be too much to bear.

Branwen (“white raven”), is most likely an ancient Goddess whose sacred spot is Cadair Bronwen (Branwen’s Seat), a mountain peak in the Berwyn range of Wales. Cadair Bronwen is topped with a cairn that resembles a nipple from afar.

Continue reading “Branwen, Welsh Goddess of Love and Beauty by Judith Shaw”

Feminist Questions by Marcia W. Mount Shoop

“Do sports depend on gender stereotypes that prop up particular expressions of masculinity?”

This question is just one of the defining quandaries of my new book, Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs of Apocalypse: Lifting the Veil on Big-Time Sports, just released from Cascade Books (an imprint of Wipf & Stock) a few days ago. The quote above comes from my chapter on gender entitled “Man Up.”

My proximity to the world of football as the wife of a coach, who has coached for well over twenty years in both the National Football League (NFL) and Division I College, has long been a curiosity, and sometimes a demerit against me, among my feminist friends and colleagues. In fact, as I share in the introduction of the book, one of my professors in Divinity school (a prominent feminist theologian who shall remain nameless) expressed her disappointment in no uncertain terms when I shared the news that John and I were engaged while I was one of her students. She said, to my great consternation, that she was “very disappointed.” Her next sentence was something to the effect of what a waste this was—she had thought I was headed toward great things, and now, instead, my life was going to be consumed by football. Continue reading “Feminist Questions by Marcia W. Mount Shoop”

The Flourishing of Life and Feminist Theology by Carol P. Christ

I first encountered the image and concept of “flourishing” in Grace M. Jatzen’s feminist philosophy of religion, Becoming Divine. For Jantzen “flourishing” is a symbol of a theology of “natality” or birth and life, which she contrasts to the focus on death and life after death in traditional Christian theologies.

Jantzen argues that the focus on death and life after death is a rejection of birth. Birth is rejected because birth through a body into a body implies finitude. Birth ends in death. Jantzen argues that embracing natality means embracing finitude and death.

Jantzen is not arguing that motherhood is the highest calling or saying that all women must be mothers. Rather she is calling us—women and men—to embrace finite life in the body and the material world as the final and only location for spirituality. Defending pantheism as an alternative to transcendent theism, she argues further that divinity is to be found “in” the physical and material world—and nowhere else. Though she speaks of natality, Jantzen is no essentialist. Rather she is a metaphysician making claims about the nature of life. Continue reading “The Flourishing of Life and Feminist Theology by Carol P. Christ”

Putting Faith in Interfaith Dialogue by Esther Nelson

Why do it? Sit around a table with people who profess a faith tradition different from our own, drink coffee, nibble on snacks, and talk. What’s the point? No doubt the reasons vary depending on the particular people getting together. Nevertheless, there is the sense that if we “sit down together and talk together about our faiths,” we’ll “break down barriers,” and….then what? Do we think (or hope) that those on the other side of the table will eventually “come around?” Is conversion a goal? Or, perhaps we just want to become more “tolerant” of other faiths.

So, for example, if Muslims share facts with Christians about the history of Prophet Muhammad, the Sunni/Shi’a division, and Shari’a law, will that help Christians tolerate Muslims? Books on the history of religions abound. Yet, religion-based violence flares around our globe. Would learning about doctrinal beliefs–“truths” based on (usually male) interpretation of scriptural narrative–be helpful? Christians understand Jesus to be God incarnate. Muslims reject any doctrine that compromises the oneness of God. Now what? Are barriers broken down? Are we more tolerant? Continue reading “Putting Faith in Interfaith Dialogue by Esther Nelson”

Feminism: My New Religion by Michele Buscher

My journey to becoming a religious feminist has been long. The two most significant experiences have been my time as a Religious Studies graduate student and the uniquely female health struggles I have experienced in the past four years. The issues I have encountered over the past four years have occurred simultaneously, encouraging me to declare Feminism as my new Religion.

I really hadn’t been exposed to Feminism as an academic discipline until my time at the Union Theological Seminary. Studying alongside feminist foresisters like Chung Hyun Kyung and Joan Chittister, and researching feminist liberation theology and other “radical” liberation theologies, fueled my passion. For my master’s thesis I examined how Catholicism and martyrdom should be perceived in modern times. I relied on the examples of two men: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Pope John Paul II. Not a bad topic, not bad case studies, but interesting when I reflect on the choice to focus solely on men and martyrdom when really the face of modern martyrdom should be represented by women and the enormous sacrifices women make every day for the betterment of their Church or their families or their bodily health and integrity. In other words, I didn’t quite get it yet!

Nonetheless, my doctoral studies continued a focus on feminism and working along side Rosemary Radford Ruether guided me to my new feminist religious identity. At that time I did not realize how much I would come to rely on her support and encouragement, along with the support and encouragement of many other female faculty members.
Continue reading “Feminism: My New Religion by Michele Buscher”

Old and Gay – Dying Alone and Rae’s Friends by Marie Cartier

A dear friend of mine is dying. Yes, the saying might be true—we all die alone. But we all are not necessarily lonely when we die. How can we die happy…with our self-respect intact?

We are all alone, born alone, die alone …I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness. —Hunter S. Thompson

Many of the women that I interviewed in my book Baby, You Are my Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall lived a closeted gay life. Their respect for their gay self had to be hidden in order to survive. It was how they respected the gay inner self—it is how they protected that self’s very survival.

Many of them, as many of us do, had friends that affirmed their inner identity even as it was hidden to a majority of the outside world. As they grew older, their friends (as many of our friends will do) died. That meant that the friends they had in the gay bars died holding the secret of their gay lives. Many of these women grew up into adulthood without the benefit of a community. For them “gay pride,” “coming out,” and even the word “lesbian” were not words they would ever use in their common conversation. Continue reading “Old and Gay – Dying Alone and Rae’s Friends by Marie Cartier”