Feminist Films by Caroline Kline

My semester is nearly over, my papers will be done in a couple of weeks, and my Netflix account has been sorely underused for the last four months. It’s time for me to find some good feminist movies to watch during the holiday break.

Some of my favorite feminist films deal overtly with gender roles and pushing up against patriarchal norms.

Women Blogging Thealogy By Gina Messina-Dysert

In Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality, Carol Christ offers a thealogy that is grounded in embodied thinking and begins with personal experience. She explains that experience is “embodied, relational, communal, social, and historical” (p. 37),  and that experiences of the Goddess are shaped and inspired by the experiences of others. Consequently her thealogy, in addition to being personal, is also communal.

According to Christ, the “voices of women are a lifeline” (Rebirth of the Goddess, p. 41), a sentiment that has been loudly echoed by women in blogging communities. Although some may claim that a blog is nothing more than an online diary, it is a powerful tool that offers individuals the opportunity to express their thoughts and experiences in a public forum; blogging gives a voice to anyone who wants it. Recent statistics have Continue reading “Women Blogging Thealogy By Gina Messina-Dysert”

Progressive Religion to the Rescue By Mary E. Hunt

The happy hoopla surrounding the lifting of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had a shadow side. Close inspection revealed a lot of partners and spouses of LGBTIQ military people who had been cloaked in secrecy and euphemism (“Meet my cousin”) for years. Now they, too, can come out. But they remain second-class citizens whose marriages don’t count because of the Defense of Marriage Act. They are not eligible for health care and other benefits routinely provided for dependents of military members. This injustice is a new and important front in the struggle for full human rights, one that has a unique religious twist that bears watching.

In late September, I attended a moving celebration hosted by the Military Partners and Families Coalition called “Beyond 61.” It was a celebration of the new lease on life that these folks experienced after the 60-day waiting period following the repeal of DADT. It took place at Arlington Cemetery, fittingly at the Women in Military Service Memorial, since women have a long history of unequal treatment in the military, as well.

Unaccustomed as I am to military anything (I continue to serve my country in the peace movement), I was impressed by the diversity among the participants and their singular commitment to justice. I was alarmed by the fact that, after decades of struggle, today’s young people are still subject to indignities due to their sexuality even when they enlist for military service. Given the current economic situation, their options for education and other kinds of work are limited. This only makes discrimination against the queer ones nastier. Continue reading “Progressive Religion to the Rescue By Mary E. Hunt”

In the Web of Life — No Exceptions By Carol P. Christ

Carol P. Christ is a founding mother in the study of women and religion, feminist theology, women’s spirituality, and the Goddess movement.  She teaches in the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS and through Ariadne Institute offers Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.

Does God love me more than She loves my doggies? Does She love animals more than She loves trees and flowers? Does She love trees and flowers more than She loved the first cells that formed in the waters of our planet? Did She not also love the atoms and particles of atoms that coalesced to form the earth?

In her books Sacred Gaia and Gaia’s Gift Anne Primavesi questions the notion that the dialogue between God and the world began with “our entry onto the scene.”  Primavesi argues that “human exceptionalism,” the view that the world exists for us, and that we are an “exception” to the world, has been and is the predominant Christian view.  In the stories of Adam and Noah, God gives dominion over the creatures of the earth to man.  Theologians asserted that of all the creatures that inhabit the earth, only man is in the image of God, and the image of God in man is found in his rational intelligence, which is shared with no other creature.  Because he is in the image of God, man will escape death, which is the lot of every other living thing.  Rather than challenging human exceptionalism, modern science furthered it, asserting that “matter” was “dead,” and that therefore it was right and just for man to subdue “nature” through technology and to harness it for his needs.   Continue reading “In the Web of Life — No Exceptions By Carol P. Christ”

A Reflection of What Influences and Controls My Ideologies: An Examination Of Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus By Michele Stopera Freyhauf

 Michele Stopera Freyhauf:  Feminist scholar, activist, and graduate student in religion and biblical studies at John Carroll University, Michele is the student representative on the Board for Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society (EGLBS) and author of several articles including “Hagia Sophia: Political and Religious Symbolism in Stones and Spolia.”  Her research interests involve Feminism, Sexuality, the influence of Goddess imagery, Myth, and Rhetoric especially in the Old Testament, Ancient Egypt and Early Christianity.  She also focuses her research in feminism, migration studies, and genocide as it relates to women, especially in the Middle East and Latin America.

Exploring the new world of historiography this semester has been an adventure.  In my studies, I came across an interesting person named Louis Pierre Althusser.  He is considered a structuralist Marxist and in 1970, he wrote an essay titled Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation).  The basis of his argument explores how various institutions control the working class.  We have our ideas taken from or given to us because we were essentially molded by various institutions that are being controlled by an agency of power, like government or church.  Someone has told us what it is to be moral and ingrained that definition.  Someone has influenced our idea of what it means once you graduate from high school then college.  Someone else has defined the benchmark for wealth and happiness or when we have enough “stuff.”  Ideologically we are controlled by so many outside factors.  It is this point that I want to reflect an explore as a Feminist, a mother, a graduate student, and part of the proverbial 99%. Continue reading “A Reflection of What Influences and Controls My Ideologies: An Examination Of Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus By Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Running for the President of the American Academy of Religion By Kwok Pui Lan

Dr. Kwok Pui-Lan is an internationally recognized scholar and pioneer in Asian feminist and postcolonial theology. She teaches at the Episcopal Divinity School and is the 2011 president of the American Academy of Religion. Dr. Kwok has published extensively and is the co-editor of two volumes Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion and Theology (Westminster) and Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians (Fortress). Her other publications include Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Westminster), Discovering the Bible in the Non-Biblical World (Orbis), and Introducing Asian Feminist Theology (Pilgrim).

“Pui Lan, would you be willing to run for the Vice-President of AAR?” the chair of the Nominations Committee of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) called and asked me back in April 2008.

The AAR, with 10,000 members, is the world’s largest professional organization of scholars in religion. The majority of its members are from the U.S., but approximately 17 percent are international scholars from over 70 countries.

It was a great honor to have been nominated—for the Vice-President would be in line to become the President in 2011. The problem was that there would be an election and I would have to compete with another candidate, who happened to be a professor at Harvard University.

I thought, “If I win, that’s good. But what happens if I lose?”  Continue reading “Running for the President of the American Academy of Religion By Kwok Pui Lan”

ADI SHAKTI! : A MEDITATION ON A MANTRA BY Sara Frykenberg, Ph.D.

Aaadee shaktee, namo, namo: I bow to the primal power (which is female and divine).

My Kundalini yoga teacher training required that each student complete a 30 minute daily meditation for forty days straight at some point during our course.  Great!  No problem.  After all, I signed up for teacher training partially because I believed in the physical-spiritual-mental healing powers of meditation.  I chose the Adi Shakti meditation specifically, so I might better understand and embrace myself as a woman and creative being.  My own self-definition of womanhood had been very wounded in my past, so I aimed to embrace this fantastic opportunity.

Aadee shaktee, namo namo—I will bow to the primal female power that I have within me!  I was excited!  I was even eager to do this meditation; but somewhere along the way I discovered that I had underestimated how painful this process would be.  I underestimated my scars and I ultimately found this meditative experience somewhat excruciating.

Aadee Shaktee, namo, namo: I am humbled by her power.

Sarab shaktee, namo, namo: I bow to the all Encompassing Power and Energy.

My initial meditations were fun, exciting and led me to contemplate my sister’s pregnancy.  I enjoyed the mantra and the physical movements the meditation involved.  Very quickly, however, the movement itself became increasingly uncomfortable.  I was sore.  I joked in my journal, “no wonder the mantra engages female creative power; it really targets the abdomen and hips.”  I expected this, as many meditative postures are not exactly “comfortable.”  My response was normal. Continue reading “ADI SHAKTI! : A MEDITATION ON A MANTRA BY Sara Frykenberg, Ph.D.”

ADVENT: THE ACTIVE-WAIT, PART II, By Cynthia Garrity-Bond

On Nov. 14 I posted Part 1 of Advent: The Active-Wait. What follows (in Part II) is a rereading or exegesis of Mary’s encounter with her cousin Elizabeth as an Advent waiting with hope, anticipation and trust, but also with action.

The second form of waiting, illustrated in verse Luke 1: 39, reads: “In those days, Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.”  The verse before this has Mary in complete surrender,  “Here I am” Mary proclaims, “the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your Word.”  Continue reading “ADVENT: THE ACTIVE-WAIT, PART II, By Cynthia Garrity-Bond”

Birthing God at the Edges of Life, Death, and Beyond: Reflections on Mary, Motherhood, and Kali Part III By Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier

Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. She teaches and researches in the areas of women and religion, interreligious dialogue, comparative theology, Asian and Asian American theology, and Hindu-Christian studies. Tracy also co-chairs the Los Angeles Hindu-Catholic Dialogue.

When I began my studies of Hinduism, I marveled in a dizzying array of gods and goddesses. While non-Hindus assume that Hinduism is polytheistic because of the multitude of gods and goddesses, the reality is far more interesting and complex. Hinduism really isn’t one religion, but a cluster of them. For some, there is one personal, divine God or Goddess, and all other gods and goddesses are either different forms of the ultimate divine or are lower, created beings (like angels). For others, there is one divine reality, but it isn’t a personal God or Goddess. For them, the different deities illustrate or symbolize different aspects of the divine, but are not themselves the one Ultimate Reality. What all Hindus recognize, however, is that there is one Ultimate, Divine Reality and that that divinity pervades all things. But that divine Oneness is so profound, so deep, so real, that no one image can capture the divine essence. Thus, even as Hindus are more monotheists than polytheists, they resolutely celebrate the multiplicity that inevitably comes when finite humans imagine the infinite divine. Continue reading “Birthing God at the Edges of Life, Death, and Beyond: Reflections on Mary, Motherhood, and Kali Part III By Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier”

Birthing God at the Edges of Life, Death, and Beyond: Reflections on Mary, Motherhood, and Kali Part II By Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier

Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. She teaches and researches in the areas of women and religion, interreligious dialogue, comparative theology, Asian and Asian American theology, and Hindu-Christian studies. Tracy also co-chairs the Los Angeles Hindu-Catholic Dialogue.

Mary, her purity, and her role as Virgin Mother have become the primary language for talking about women and women’s place in the Church. The late Pope John Paul II held up Mary, both virgin and mother, as the perfect model for women. For the Pope, women’s sexuality and spirituality are united in a vision of woman’s personhood as that of nurturing self-gift. The calling of physical and spiritual motherhood is connected to women’s more receptive and nurturing nature. Men lead the Church, as Christ did, while women receive Christ and others in their homes and in the world, as Mary did. Mary’s receptive openness to God is manifest from the beginning in her consent to Jesus’ conception. Such receptivity is both biologically natural and spiritually essential. Mary as Virgin Mother shows both women and men the value and depth of the receptive, self-giving reality of womanhood. Continue reading “Birthing God at the Edges of Life, Death, and Beyond: Reflections on Mary, Motherhood, and Kali Part II By Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier”