Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: No Hope, No Problem: Reflections on Pesach, Time and Paradox.

Author’s note: This post was originally published on April 19, 2019.

In “Time Telling in Feminist Theory,” Rita Felski suggests that there are four main ways feminists discuss and use time: redemption, regression, repetition and rupture. They are aptly named as they behave similar to their labels. Redemption is the linear march of time, hopefully progressing step by step towards a redeemed, or at least better, future even if sometimes things get momentarily worse. Regression is the want to go back in time or at least return to idyllic and/or imagined pasts: to matriarchy or to a time before patriarchy’s violent arrival. Repetition is a focus on the cyclical nature of time in bodies, in daily chores, in seasons and so on. Rupture posits a break in time in a way what was before no longer makes sense or doesn’t exist. Think utopia or dystopia.

From the Archives: The Hunger Games, Holy Week, and Re-imaging Ritual by Xochitl Alvizo

This was originally posted on April 3, 2012 and serves as a nice follow up to my recent posts, and to the Christian holy days being celebrated this week.

Being passive spectators of violence and injustice, even if mournfully so, is not just a thing of Panem, it is our everyday reality.

In The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins takes the reality of an unjust society and gives it an imaginative makeover. In Panem, most people are kept at such extreme levels of hunger that even when they do eat they cannot fill the hollowness that has settled in their stomachs, while others are deciding on the next cosmetic alteration they will undertake – whiskers, jewel implants, or green-tone skin color? The disparate conditions between the rich and the poor, the few and the many are absurdly and starkly portrayed but done so in a way that we can still recognize our world in theirs. And at the center of this world is the state imposed ritual of punishment and control, the yearly Hunger Games – a nationally televised competition that all the people of Panem are required to watch. The 12 districts watch mournfully as two kids from each of their districts compete to the death, and the wealthy watch gleefully, for the games are the height of their excesses and entertainment. The yearly Games conclude when one kid, the lone ‘victor’, is left standing. All while the nation watches.

Boundaries: A Poem Drawn from the Well of Jacob by Marcia Mount Shoop

kikuchi valley, waterfall and light lay in the forest, kikuchi, kumamoto, japan

Today is the day in the Christian church year that we remember Jesus’ last supper with his friends/chosen family before he was betrayed by some of those same friends/chosen family. He talked to his beloved circle that night about many things, including betrayal and their capacity to embody Divine Love in a broken world after his death. Just a few days later he was executed by the Roman government because his prophetic and compassionate life was a threat to the powers that be of his day–both governmental and religious. In honor of this day in my faith tradition, I share a poem I wrote about one of the women in Jesus’ life before he was executed by Empire. Since Jesus’ death, he was kidnapped again by multiple Empires who have used him to put an ecclesial and even divine seal of approval on systems of oppression and genocide. The woman at the well gives us a window into Jesus the liberator. May we have space to remember him today as another Easter Sunday approaches for Christians around the world.

Rethinking Church from the Ground Up by Xochitl Alvizo

In the last post about rethinking church communally, I ended with reference to the fact that those who do not identify with an organized religion – nearly 70% of the religiously unaffiliated – think that churches “focus too much on rules,” “are too concerned with money and power,” and “are too involved in politics.”

I found this to be the case also among participants of “Emerging Church” congregations, which I researched for my dissertation. Many participants of the congregations I visited had previous negative and damaging experiences of church – experiences that caused them to become unaffiliated from church and Christianity all together. But, when discovering or happening upon an “emerging” congregation, some were pleasantly surprised by the experience of an open, welcoming, and justice-oriented community of faith that was creative in form and ritual, and egalitarian in leadership.

Resurrection by Sara Wright

Experts quiped
you would
not rise
Too old
they said
Abandoned
Pink and Rose
No one
imagined
resilience,
pattern
birthing
form
to vine.
Gray green
veins
swell,
pulse,
pump
sugars
skyward,
powered
by a
single root.
Bowed blade
circles
round to
Beginning
Buried deep.
Spiral loosens,
ascends
seeking sun
star heat.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: SHEELA-NA-GIG

On a trip to Ireland several years ago, I was fortunate to have been able to see the Sheela-na-gigs in the National Museum of Dublin. Two of these Sheelas including the one removed from the Seir Kieran Church of County Offaly, pictured below, are currently on display. They stand at the doorway of a room dedicated to items from the medieval period and easily missed. As there was little interest in them and they are not in cases, I was able to silently commune without interruption.

Goddess Lost: How the Downfall of Female Deities Degraded Women’s Status in World Cultures by Rachel McCoppin, Ph.D

In this blog post, I would like to take the opportunity to promote my new book, entitled: Goddess Lost: How the Downfall of Female Deities Degraded Women’s Status in World Cultures. This book makes the assertion that women must be educated about the history of goddess worship around the world in order to adopt a comprehensive spirituality that fits what it means to be a woman.

Life Still Shaped by the Witch Hunts? by Eline Kieft

In this article I reframe my understanding of feminism through the lens of Mona Chollet’s In Defence of Witches, and reflect on how my psyche as a woman today is still deeply influenced by the effects of the witch hunts in mediaeval times.

The Patriarchy Strikes Back by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I suppose no one is all that surprised but it is still stunning how quickly certain politicians are rushing to pull back women’s rights. It’s become a race to regulate women’s bodies of with draconian and cruel laws.

Each law is more extreme than the next. In South Carolina it has even been proposed to make abortion a crime subject to the death penalty.

Commentators say the bill isn’t going anywhere. But it was still proposed. It is now in the eco-system of abortion politics. It is being imagined and that opens up all possibilities of where it can go from here. We never thought, after all, that Roe would be overturned.

Breath, part 2 by Beth Bartlett

You can read part 1 here.

Much has been written about the last breath, but not much about the first. Recently, I happened to listen to a re-broadcast of an episode of NPR’s Radiolab on “Breath.” It began with an explanation of the ingenious, miraculous first breath in which we transition from water-dwelling beings in the watery womb to air-dwelling beings outside in the world. In the water-dwelling fetus, the lungs have no function. Instead, the fetus gets its oxygen from its mother through the placenta and umbilical cord, the oxygenated blood flowing directly from the right to the left chambers of the heart through a hole — the patent foramen ovale — bypassing the lungs that in fetuses are filled with water. But in the split second of that first breath, the umbilical cord shuts down the flow of oxygenated blood and the patent foramen ovale closes, requiring that the once water-filled lungs now be filled with air. The right and left sides now forever closed off from each other, from now on, the oxygen-deprived blood that flows into the right side of the heart must be pumped out of the heart into the lungs where it is enriched with oxygen, and then returns to the left chambers of the heart where it is then pumped to every tissue in our bodies. That first breath enables the continual flow of in-breath and out-breath, for most of us, about 500 million times in our lifetimes. I will never forget that first breath of my own child as he came in to the air-breathing world. That first cry remains, and always will, the sweetest sound I have ever heard. Aware now of all that happens with that first breath, I am filled with an even deeper awe.