Feminism and Religion

Awakening to the Mystery of Absolute Beginnings by Carolyn Lee Boyd

carolyn portrait

As I rise at 5:30 each morning, my spirit reawakens in a between-the-worlds realm of absolute beginnings. For those few minutes of quiet and slowly revealing dawn light, I revel in mystical newness, endless possibility, a horizon that is only the future. By 7 am, when I can hear cars on the road and see television screens through windows as I walk to work, normal, plodding space-time has taken over, leaving just a shimmer to linger in my memory.

I remember living all day with this feeling of being at the very beginning of my world when I was a young child and everything that I did and thought was for the first time. I believed this sense was lost forever when I was later taught by society, as so many of us are, that I was only the tiniest, most ordinary mite in a world already built many eons ago by people with a much brighter genius than me. Continue reading

Brigid, Goddess of Healing, Poetry, and Smithcraft by Judith Shaw

Brigid, the Celtic Goddess of Healing, Poetry, and Smithcraft, begins her reign on Imbolic, February 2, the midpoint between winter solstice and spring equinox. On this day the ancient Celts held their Fire Festival in honor of Brigid and the growing light. In Scotland, as recently as the mid-twentieth century, houses were cleaned and the hearth fires rekindled on February 2, to welcome in Brigid. Remnants of this festival are found in America today on Groundhog Day.

Like the Cailleach, She existed in many places and was known by many names. The Irish called her Brighde; she was Bride in Scotland, Brigantia in Northern Britain, and Brigandu in France. Some called her Brid, Brig or Brighid. Later she was transformed by Christianity into Saint Bridget. Her older name was BREO SAIGHEAD. Her name has various interpretations, many relating to fire – “Power,” “Renown” “Fiery Arrow of Power ” “Bright Arrow”, “The Bright One”, “The Powerful One”, “The High One” and “The Exalted One”.

Continue reading “Brigid, Goddess of Healing, Poetry, and Smithcraft by Judith Shaw”

Sustaining Feminist Spiritualities in the Seeming Absence of Community by Elisabeth Schilling

The spirituality I cultivated during my teens through evangelistic Pentecostal Christianity was based on possession, hierarchy, and exclusivity, although I would not have said that at the time.

As I gradually moved away from that faith community in my mid-20s, no longer wanting to equate a rewarded closeness to God with being set apart from others, I began finding myself participating in quiet conversations with the readings of Thomas Merton, Elaine Pagels, and with poetry by writers such as Olga Broumas. The words I was drawn to might not have been expressly or consistently religious, but they offered spiritual nourishment in their eroticism, earthiness, and sacred metaphor.

It was also around that time when I decided that feminist theologies were healing in their questions and re-visions of God and concepts of salvation and sin. To understand that being a spiritual and/or religious person could mean being aware of and pursuing my desires and connections to other people instead of being a gatekeeper was redemptive. Continue reading “Sustaining Feminist Spiritualities in the Seeming Absence of Community by Elisabeth Schilling”

Truth and Consequences–This Feminist’s Perspective? by Marcia Mount Shoop

In John’s Gospel, Pilate’s response to Jesus’ self-identification as the one who “came into the world to testify to the truth” is a simple question: “What is truth?” His question hangs in the air as he moves from that conversation to the throngs he sought to please. Pilate took the temperature of that crowd to decide Jesus’ fate even though he, himself, found no reason to charge Jesus with a crime. Pilate asks the question from a position of power—literally holding life and death in the ambivalence and maybe even in the sincerity of his words.

The “t” word has been center stage in our collective conversation of late with Lance Armstrong’s Oprah-event confession and the Manti Te‘o girlfriend-dying-of-cancer hoax at Notre Dame . The Internet is abuzz with reactions to both confessional moments. Lance Armstrong’s confession apparently didn’t play well with the general public. And people are weighing in about whether Manti Te‘o could really be so naïve or if he just didn’t know how to tell everyone the truth when the story got out of hand. Continue reading “Truth and Consequences–This Feminist’s Perspective? by Marcia Mount Shoop”

Miracles Of The Great Mother by Jassy Watson

I was brought up in a household where attitudes to God and church were quite negative. My Nanna, however, was deeply religious, and I can still remember sitting in her dining room as a very young child staring up in awe at a painting of ‘The Last Supper.’ I was completely mesmerised, there was something haunting about that painting that left a lifelong impression. Art became a passion very early on in life, and whenever I came into contact with images of a religious nature emotions stirred. I was spellbound by divine mystery. The most profound feelings were engendered when I met with images of Mother Mary and the infant Jesus. Continue reading “Miracles Of The Great Mother by Jassy Watson”

What Happens When Women Are Not Ordained? by Meagen Farrell

What is a vocation to the Christian clergy? A woman or man feels a calling from God, and that spirit is tested in the community of believers. After discernment through study, prayer, and service that person submits herself for ordination. Simple, right?

Of course, as readers of the F-word blog, you know it is not that simple. Though women’s ordination is a common practice in many Christian denominations, it is far from universal. The issue has caused division within the Anglican Communion and dissension in the Roman Catholic Church. Despite the controversy, the number of women in discernment (contemplating or preparing for ordination) and the denominations ordaining them continue to grow. Continue reading “What Happens When Women Are Not Ordained? by Meagen Farrell”

Epona, Celtic Horse Goddess by Judith Shaw

Epona, Celtic Horse Goddess was worshipped by the Gauls (the Celtic French). Her worship spread to Britain and Rome from Western Europe. Hundreds of statues and shrines dating from between the first and third centuries CE have been found in France alone.

Today we can understand Epona mainly from her images, as few stories of her have survived. She is often shown either riding a white horse side saddle or standing or sitting between two horses. Many images show her feeding mares and foals from a cornucopia or a basket of fruit.

Continue reading “Epona, Celtic Horse Goddess by Judith Shaw”

Bringing African American Churches into Reproductive Justice by Mariam Williams

I don’t expect to hear anything in church about the 40^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade during the month of January, the month marking 40 years since the U.S. Supreme Court made the decision to legalize abortion in this country. This is for a number of reasons: 1) it’s January, and at my church the pastor always starts off the year with a series of sermons that illustrate the church’s mission statement, and women’s choice may be off the subject; 2) Martin Luther King Jr. Day is this month, and if a black church is going to honor something or someone besides Jesus in the month of January, it should probably be MLK; and 3) I haven’t heard anything about abortion from the pulpit in a long time.

A local pro-choice movement leader asked me recently about how black churchgoers feel about abortion. I didn’t know what to say. The last time I heard it mentioned was in a Sunday School class in which a woman said that she almost aborted her daughter. It wasn’t a big confessional moment, just part of a longer testimony as to why she was happy her daughter was around, and it wasn’t received with any shock or fanfare. I can remember hearing once from the pulpit of my current church that while abortion might be wrong, the law shouldn’t interfere with what a woman chooses to do with her own body. Many years before that, in the church I grew up in, a preacher said that we would never find a cure for AIDS because the person who would have grown up to discover the cure was aborted. (What made him so sure of that? Who knows.) Continue reading “Bringing African American Churches into Reproductive Justice by Mariam Williams”

The Next Liberal Prophet: What Will She Look Like? By Amy Levin

This past Martin Luther King, Jr. day, I was privileged enough to attend the 57^th presidential inauguration at the U.S. Capitol. Spirits were high and it seemed as if we were breathing recycled air infused with the hope of four years past. As the President approached the stage, he appeared with the confidence of a second term sage, and yet there was a newer, fresher quality about him – purified and politically born-again. As he began to speak, the religious undertones leaped out into the pews. Beautifully crafted in diction, rhetoric, and reference, Obama pleased and inspired his dedicated supporters. Guiding us historically through Seneca, Selma, and Stonewall, we understood the meaningful tributes toward women, African Americans, and the LGBT communities. But there was an excess – another constituent represented – God had entered the stage.

Continue reading “The Next Liberal Prophet: What Will She Look Like? By Amy Levin”

From Bihar, India—The Thirteenth Sakyadhita Conference by Rita M. Gross

Above and all around us is a blue and white stripped fabric tent, as, about 250 strong, we participants in Sakyadhita’s Thirteenth Conference on Buddhist Women, shiver in the cold, listening to a wide variety of papers about women and Buddhism. We are meeting in Vaishali, in Bihar, India, at a Vietnamese nunnery that was recently founded at the place where Mahaprajapati, the first Buddhist nun, was ordained. She is a great hero to many Buddhist women for her persistence about receiving formal ordination as a nun, thus founding an institution that has endured for some 2,500 years in various parts of Asia, and now in the West as well, so it is fitting that we should meet here. The nunnery complex is still incomplete and under construction, which is one reason why we are meeting, essentially, in the outdoors. The thin fabric walls over little protection from the coldest winter in north India in forty years. That was not part of the planning for this event! So everyone, speakers and participants alike, wear all the layers of clothing we have, and cheerfully practice patience. It is quite a sight! Continue reading “From Bihar, India—The Thirteenth Sakyadhita Conference by Rita M. Gross”