The Biblical Vision of Ecojustice By Rosemary Radford Ruether

“The earth mourns and withers, the world languishes and withers, the heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants, for   they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes,  broken the everlasting covenants. Therefore a curse devours the earth and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt.” Isaiah 24: 4-6a.

“They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain for the earth shall be full of  knowledge of the Lord,” Isaiah 11: 9.

The 1970’s until today has been a time of an increasing recognition that the western industrial style of industrial development is unsustainable, although this has yet to be acknowledged by leaders of corporate growth. This system of development, based on an affluent minority using a disproportionate share of the world’s natural resources, is fast depleting the base upon which it rests. To expand this type of industrialization is accelerating the coming debacle. We need an entirely new way of organizing human production and consumption in relation to natural resources, one that both distributes the means of life more justly among all earth’s people and also uses resources in a way that renews them from generation to generation.  Continue reading “The Biblical Vision of Ecojustice By Rosemary Radford Ruether”

Hearing Each Other to Speech in the Academy By Xochitl Alvizo

Sometimes when I write, especially when I am writing an academic paper but even when I am writing for this blog, I imagine that I am writing it to my feminist peer-group.  I am part of a group of four feminist women who have intentionally decided to stay involved in our religious traditions.  We are Unitarian Universalist, American Baptist, Presbyterian, and Disciples of Christ, and we started our peer-group in order to enCourage, support, and inspire each other as we participate in our churches with our full feminism selves. We get together regularly and we listen deeply to each other, we celebrate, we cry, we mourn, we rage, we laugh, and, of course, we eat together. On many occasions we have each expressed that we are better versions of ourselves because we are part of each others lives.

One of the reasons it is easier for me to write to my peer-group instead of my academic audience is because I know that my peer-group is invested in my empowerment, my liberation, and my continual be-coming – they understand that my well-being contributes to theirs, and vice versa. Thus, when I write for them, I do not fear; I trust that my peer-group will truly hear me and encourage me, and that when they raise questions and point out weaknesses in my writing, they do so not in an attempt to tear down my work but in order to strengthen it and build on it.

My peer-group

My peer-group, while being able to point out the blind spots and shortcomings on my work, never fail to recognize, honor, and express appreciation for my contribution as well. They hear me to speech and understand the importance of that for bringing out my academic best. Continue reading “Hearing Each Other to Speech in the Academy By Xochitl Alvizo”

M’rahemet Shel Olam: The Emwomber of the Universe By Theresa Yugar

The following is a guest post written by Theresa A. Yugar, Ph.D. Candidate in women studies in religion at Claremont Graduate University.

This poem was written modeled on a Hebrew understanding of the world and God. In contrast to an Occidental or Western understanding of God, which elevates the noun of a sentence, a Semitic understanding of God highlights the “verb” of a sentence. In this way, God is a more active presence in the creation of a more just world.

M’rahemet  Shel Olam: The Emwomber of the Universe

In the beginning the primal womb gave birth to all living creatures . . .

She gave birth to us . . . her daughters and her sons.

She is the great mother. Continue reading “M’rahemet Shel Olam: The Emwomber of the Universe By Theresa Yugar”

Charlene Spretnak’s “Relational Reality”: An Illuminating Read By Gina Messina-Dysert

I have long been interested in the work of women’s spirituality movement’s founding mother Charlene Spretnak; thus when her newest book, Relational Reality: New Discoveries of Interrelatedness that are Transforming the Modern World, was released I was anxious to read it.  To no surprise, I found it a brilliant, stimulating, and vital work.

In Relational Reality, Spretnak explains that we have “missed the way the world works” as a result of our cultural tendencies.  “The failure to notice that reality is inherently dynamic and interrelated at all levels – including substance and functioning – has caused a vast range of suffering” (1). Spretnak offers “snapshots” of the various crises we face within education and parenting, health and healthcare, community design and architecture, and the economy with purpose;  to name the suffering and hardship endured within the world and demonstrate that these crises are the result of anti-relational thinking.  She states these problems cannot be corrected until they are acknowledged; “Only then can we grasp the significance of the relational breakthroughs and solutions that are emerging” (20). Continue reading “Charlene Spretnak’s “Relational Reality”: An Illuminating Read By Gina Messina-Dysert”

Immortality: Distinctions and Confluences Between Feminist Theology and Mormonism By Caroline Kline

Kline, CarolineOn the whole, I like the Mormon concept of immortality. I like the idea of being with my family forever. I like the idea of being able to love and live with a child or spouse or parent that might have died too young. I like the idea of being eternally engaged in learning and working with others. I do fully admit, I am put off by the idea that I as woman might be eternally giving birth to spirit babies, and the status of Heavenly Mother – my immortal role model – is angst inducing if I sit down and think about it for very long. But in my positive moments, I have some hope that my husband and I would actually be equals in the next life – that the patriarchy of our Church and of our world is just a natural consequence of the fall and of human fallibility.

So I initially found it a bit jarring to read about Rosemary Radford Ruether’s take on immortality. Continue reading “Immortality: Distinctions and Confluences Between Feminist Theology and Mormonism By Caroline Kline”

Do White Feminists Have Ancestors? 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.

Some years ago when I was speaking on ecofeminism, womanist theologian Karen Baker-Fletcher posed a question that went something like this:  What I am missing in your presentation is reference to ancestors.  For black women, this issue is critical.

Baker-Fletcher’s question provoked a process of thinking that continues to this day.  For example, I began to notice that when black women spoke at the American Academy of Religion, they often began by thanking their foremothers Delores Williams and Katie Cannon for beginning the womanist dialogue.  It is far rarer to hear a white woman thank Valerie Saiving, Mary Daly, Rosemary Radford Ruether, or Marija Gimbutas before her talk.

To the contrary, many white women take great pains to distance themselves from feminist foresisters.  I once heard a white woman Biblical scholar tell women students to do work on women in the Bible or other areas of religion without using the word feminist or placing their work in a female or feminist train of thought– if they wanted to get it published.  She was very proud that she had used this method and succeeded.  In other words, she was following in the footsteps of Mary Daly, Phyllis Trible, and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza but acting as if she had invented the study of women and the Bible herself.  The reason for this, she freely admitted, was that male scholars who held power in her field would not respect her work if she used the “f” word. Continue reading “Do White Feminists Have Ancestors? By Carol P. Christ”

Artemisia Gentileschi: Baroque artist and rape survivor painted strong Biblical women, By Kittredge Cherry

Kittredge Cherry

The following is a guest post written by Rev. Kittredge Cherry, lesbian Christian author and art historian who blogs about LGBT spirituality and the arts at the Jesus in Love Blog.  Her books include “Equal Rites” and “Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More“.

Originally posted at Jesus in Love.

Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi inspires many with her paintings of strong Biblical women — created despite the discrimination and sexual violence that she faced as a woman in 17th-century Italy.

Gentileschi (1593–1652) was successful in her own day, but was mostly written out of art history until the 1970s, when feminist scholars rediscovered her work. Now she is celebrated in many books, films and plays, and her work is widely reproduced. Her greatest paintings include “Judith Beheading Holofernes” and “Susanna and the Elders.”

Many women and queer people can relate to her battles against prejudice and sexual violence, documented in her rape trial in 1612. She could be considered the patron saint of women artists.

"Judith and Her Maidservant" by Artemisia Gentileschi

Although Gentileschi was apparently heterosexual, lesbians have drawn energy from her life and art.

Lesbians who have created tributes to Gentileschi include painter Becki Jayne Harrelson and playwright Carolyn Gage. In the play “Artemisia and Hildegard,” Gage has two of history’s great women artists debate their contrasting survival strategies: Gentileschi battled to achieve in the male-dominated art world while Hildegard of Bingen found support for her art in the women-only community of a medieval German nunnery.

The daughter of a painter, Gentileschi was born in Rome and trained as a painter in her father’s workshop there. She was refused admission to the art academy because she was a woman, so her father arranged for her to have a private painting teacher — who raped her when she was about 19. Gentileschi herself was tortured by thumbscrews during the seven-month rape trial, but she stuck to her testimony. The teacher was convicted, but received a suspended sentence. Continue reading “Artemisia Gentileschi: Baroque artist and rape survivor painted strong Biblical women, By Kittredge Cherry”

Is it Right to Intentionally Lie Because the Church Says to? The Case of Fr. Roy’s Assertion of Conscience Over Vatican’s Mandate to Lie By Michele Stopera Freyhauf

Fr. Roy Bourgeois has many titles: Nobel Peace Prize winner, purple heart recipient, former missionary, member of the Maryknoll Fathers for 44 years, and ordained priest for 38 years.  He has long been associated with social justice and helping the oppressed and marginalized.  He was a peace activist during the Vietnam War and founded the School of Americas Watch.  He is found often marching and protesting in front of the School of Americas (now WHINSEC ), a terror training camp at Ft. Benning  where soldiers are trained in devices of torture.  This is where soldiers that were members of the death squads that existed in Latin America, especially in El Salvadorwere trained. This is also where the soldiers who killed the Jesuits, their maid, and her child as well as Monsignor Romero were trained.

Fr. Roy is and continues to be an important activist for peace and justice and a champion for the poor.   At the risk of being defrocked, Fr. Roy is also an advocate on behalf of another oppressed group – women in the Catholic Church. Fr. Roy, through his actions, is now among the group of the oppressed and stands in punishment of a crime considered “delicta gravioria” by the Vatican.  The brevity of his crime defined as “delicta gravioria” is shared with other offenders such as John Geoghan, John Birmingham, Paul Desilets, Robert V. Gale, and others found guilty of pedophilia in the Sex Abuse Scandal that rocked the United States.  However Fr. Roy’s crime is not pedophilia; it is the public support of ordaining women. Continue reading “Is it Right to Intentionally Lie Because the Church Says to? The Case of Fr. Roy’s Assertion of Conscience Over Vatican’s Mandate to Lie By Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Love, Loss and Longing: The Rebooting of a Feminist Heart By Cynthia Garrity-Bond

It has been said time heals all wounds, I do not agree.  The wounds remain, in time the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.  Rose Kennedy

 This past Saturday, August 6, would have been my 34th wedding anniversary.  Next Saturday, August 13 will be the wedding of my once fiancé.  The former lasted 20 years, the latter 10.  I have recently begun the delicate dance of getting to know another man; continuing to second-guess myself as if I’m a schoolgirl with her first crush, only I’m not.  I’m a woman drawing upon 30 years of the good, the bad, and the ugly.    Without sounding like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and The City, I am asking myself what does a feminist relationship look like as it unfolds?  How do I trust another with a heart that is held together by Elmer’s glue?  And more importantly, how do I make myself present to another without past wounds surfacing and then projected onto the innocent?

In a recent post, XochitlAlvizo wrote on the difference, as she understands it, between sacrifice and love. All too often, argues Xochitl, we confuse the two, believing our sacrifice is what redeems us and others, when in reality, it is always love.  The distinction, while at times difficult to discern, is what can bring life to a healthy, loving relationship.  I can’t imagine not being steeped in a committed relationship without some sacrifice on my part.  But when does this practice of sacrifice become the support system for sustaining love?  How do I hold the balance of love and at times sacrifice for another without losing love of self? Continue reading “Love, Loss and Longing: The Rebooting of a Feminist Heart By Cynthia Garrity-Bond”

Feminism and Process Theology By Jeremy Fackenthal

The following is a guest post written by Jeremy Fackenthal, Ph.D. candidate in the philosophy of religion program at Claremont Graduate University.  His work focuses on process theology and philosophy, critical theory, and post-Holocaust thought.

One of my good friends taught an undergrad course on feminism in religion several years ago and assigned a book of John Cobb’s.  The class read it, loved it, and began a conversation about whether or not men could be feminists.  They decided that they could and that John Cobb surely must be a feminist.  And so they sent him one of the “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts, which he happily received and reportedly still has to this day.  I tell this story not only to demonstrate that John Cobb is a feminist and cares deeply about feminist issues, but also as a way of pointing out that the process theology that Cobb has been so instrumental in developing and that has become his academic trademark is itself strongly supportive of and compatible with feminist thought.

Continue reading “Feminism and Process Theology By Jeremy Fackenthal”