Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
“Tell me why it can’t be that simple,” I plead with my husband. “He needs a bed. We have a guest room.”
I am desperate for an answer that will assuage my guilt and brighten my mood. It’s more than that, though. I want an answer that will fix the problem of Michael’s homelessness, one that will ease both his pain and mine. Continue reading “Smells Like Homeness by Erin Lane”
As a Catholic feminist theologian, activist, teacher, and writer Mary Hunt has made a massive impact in the field of feminism and religion. Following the completion of her graduate education (MA, Harvard Divinity School, M.Div., Jesuit School of Theology, Ph.D., Graduate Theological Union), Mary recognized a strong need for theological, liturgical, and ethical development by and for women and responded by co-founding WATER (The Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Water) in 1983. Over the last 3+ decades, she has been instrumental in addressing social injustice and creating change in religion and community. Continue reading “Monthly Highlight: Mary E. Hunt”
The Gospel of “Jesus’ Wife” is certainly at the center of a battle that was last seen when questions of authenticity were raised about the James (Jesus’ brother) ossuary. In a New York Times article, September 30th, Judith Levitt states that this document adds weight to theological and historical flaws surrounding the issue of the ordination of women. The Vatican believes that their theology is still sound, calling the document a forgery.
Nor do we need this document to show that the standing from the Vatican’s point of view of ordaining women is theologically and historically flawed.
“In 1976, experts of the Pontifical Biblical Commission determined that there were no scriptural reasons preventing women’s ordination. The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith overturned the commission’s judgment and instead wrote its own statement (Inter Insigniores, 1976) stating that women do not image Jesus who was a man; and therefore only male priests can adequately represent Christ.” – Women’s Ordination Conference
John Ortberg, in the Huffington Post, addressed a bigger issue surrounding female leadership in the Church brilliantly:
“perhaps what matters most in this discussion is the impact Jesus had — not on one woman — but on the status of women as a whole.”
A case brought forth by a mining company challenging the required coverage of contraception without a copay by employer health care plans was dismissed Friday in a Missouri court. The mining company argued that the requirement was conflicting with its owners religious beliefs. Continue reading “IN THE NEWS: Health Care, Contraception, and Religion”
Rage, for me, feels intrinsically connected to instinct, like an uncontrollable urge to fight and fly all at the same time but with no place to flee and a need to literally, physically restrain myself from the “FIGHT,” or violence I don’t want to create.
Many feminist theorists talk about the value of anger and particularly, “women’s (diverse experiences of) anger” for consciousness raising, community building and healing. I remember considering this concept for the first time early in graduate school. I was both scared because I associated anger with abusive control; and curious, as I was finally learning to express this “bad” emotion. Overall, embracing anger taught me to speak up and break out of abusive spaces. But sharing this concept with students last semester and discussing the Bible’s descriptions of “God’s Wrath” this semester, I find myself considering levels of anger. When is or is rage appropriate? Some of the feminist theology I have read definitely advocates for a constructive relationship to rage. But many of my students, who can embrace the creative space of anger, had difficulty embracing this positive valuation of rage (even understanding that it is ‘what we do with our anger’ that counts). I have recently found myself facing my own rage… And I am not sure what to think.
I often consider anger a teacher. It shows me where my boundaries are being crossed or where injustices are rising. I have experienced mild anger that, when mediated through humor, has helped me laugh at life and struggle. I have experienced white-hot anger that left me unable to sleep or function “normally.” Betrayals have dragged me out of my bed early in the morning, seeking to run/ walk so that I could breathe and think at a pace that matched the beating of my heart. Continue reading “Impotent* Rage by Sara Frykenberg”
What is a Goddess Pilgrimage and why are so many US, Canadian, and Australian women making pilgrimages to ancient holy places in Europe and Asia? The simple answer is that women are seeking to connect themselves to sources of female spiritual power that they do not find at home.
Traditionally pilgrims leave home in order to journey to a place associated with spiritual power. “Leaving home” means leaving familiar physical spaces, interrupting the routines of work and daily life, and leaving friends and family behind. For the pilgrim, “home” is a place that has provided both comfort and a degree of discomfort that provokes the desire to embark on a journey. The space of pilgrimage is a “liminal” or threshold space in which the supports systems of ordinary life are suspended, as Victor Turner said. A pilgrim chooses to leave the familiar behind in order to open herself to the unfamiliar—in hopes that she will return with new insight into the meaning of her life. Continue reading “Why a Goddess Pilgrimage? by Carol P. Christ”
No matter which or how many gods we believe in, thinking about what we’ve done wrong and how we can set it straight is useful. The Day of Atonement, the Talmud says, “absolves from sins against God, but not from sins against a fellow man unless the pardon of the offended person is secured.”
Back in the Stone Age, otherwise known as the early 1980s, I had jobs as a technical writer and editor in five different industries, including aerospace and computer development. Hey, I was trained as a Shakespearean scholar, but in those days—pretty much like today—there were almost no jobs in the academy for newly-hatched Ph.D’s. So I tried technical writing. At one of the aerospace jobs, I sat in the “bullpen”—me and nineteen middle-aged white guys—whereas all the other women slaved—on typewriters in that pre-computer age—in the typing pool. There was a major class distinction in that aerospace firm, and I was glad to be with the guys. (Yes, shame on me.) Those were the days of 9 to 5. As far as I’m concerned, that movie is nonfiction. Continue reading “Yom Kippur as Seen (With Respect) by a Pagan By Barbara Ardinger”
I do feel Her presence directly in my life—call it an energy, call it the sacred feminine, call it the divine, call it source, call it soul, call it spirit, call it the great mystery…I perceive a web of relatedness and love within the world and I choose to put a feminine form to that energy—to name it and know it as Goddess.
To me, Goddess is found in the act of specifically naming that ineffable sense of the sacred that we all, universally, experience or perceive at some point during our lives. Whether it be in gazing at the ocean or in climbing a mountain, in the births of our children or the hatching of a baby chick, almost all humans experience transcendent moments of mystery, meaning, wonder, and awe. We can call these experiences by different names and I feel that the Goddess arises when we have the courage and capacity to name Her as such, rather than stay hazy, generic, or afraid. In my own life, I call these numinous experiences Goddess and through this I know She exists in, of, around, and through the world that I live in. It is in these experiences that I touch Her directly. Continue reading “Who is She? The Existence of an Ontological Goddess By Molly”
I remember 9/11. I was having phone sex with a woman from Chicago that I was seeing and I had just come back from Chicago to Los Angeles the night before. I was on the phone with her…and we were doing what people do…we were doing what we do when we are in love long distance…and then she said to me, “Turn on the T.V…” and I did. And the towers were collapsing. Jesus.
Days later I remember all of us lighting candles all across the city and coming together…it was such an incredible time of coming together and then it got ugly and full of war.
I remember all these images of people at first “being there” for us in the U.S.—even Native Islanders in Papua New Guinea singing and playing I think a conch shell and then it got ugly and full of war. Continue reading “Remembering 9/11 and Doing What We Do by Marie Cartier”
“Ooh, Ohh there’s something going all wrong”, Ma Rainey sang. There is indeed something going all wrong in the black church. This church, which is born out of the commitment to safeguard the life and freedom of all black people, has gained a reputation for repudiating if not demonizing certain black bodies, namely LGBT bodies. While there are certainly significant black church leaders who have vigorously defended LGBTQ person’s struggle for justice and equal treatment under the law, including support of marriage equality, those black church voices against LGBTQ rights have been vociferous and unrelenting. Continue reading “The Black Church, the Blues, and Black Bodies by Kelly Brown Douglas”
Feminism and Religion 