America – Feminism and Religion

Embodiment as Positive Resistance

I nearly cancelled my recent trip to the United States. The political climate felt tense, the global atmosphere uncertain, and travelling across the Atlantic seemed questionable for several reasons.

Friends encouraged me to go anyway, suggesting that meeting people in person would offer a different perspective from the one shaped by media narratives. And of course, it wasn’t headlines I was meeting, but people, in a human reality that persists beneath larger systems. Thankfully, my trust in relational experience outweighed my hesitation, and I returned from my travels with renewed inspiration.

I’m writing this essay because many people I met spoke with an apologetic tone about being American. They expressed disbelief, embarrassment or anger about their conspicuous yellow haired chief. I just want to acknowledge the warmth, generosity, care and humanity I encountered wherever I went.

The entire experience confirmed what I have long sensed in my work with movement, ritual and community: that embodied presence, especially in uncertain times, is such a remedy for heart and soul. What I encountered was meaningful human contact, even in a politically divided country.

TikTok, Boom: My Ode to The Social Media App by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

Like millions of others, I downloaded a social media app called TikTok during the first few weeks of the Covid-19 Pandemic. I wrote a FAR post about the rising importance and threat that TikTok was back July 2020. And here we are five years later and the United States Government, while incompetent to stop the persistent gun violence, the rising costs of living, the erosion of democracy and personal freedoms, the dumpster fire that is our medical system CAN vote together to ban and remove a social media app used by millions.

From the Archives: America, The Beautiful by Marie Cartier

This was originally posted August, 2018

There is a very white woman in a Lexus.
I could say her license plate number, but does it matter?
She’s that woman you’ve heard about—yelling at a brown woman
holding a sign, “I’ve lost my job. I have two kids. Help.”

The white woman leans out of her Lexus, “Go away! Go away!”
She will not move as other cars pile up behind her and the brown woman
does not “go away.” Where could she go at this point?
She’s surrounded. I watch from my car as I’m about to leave. I
take the yelling white woman’s picture. I get her license plate number. Continue reading “From the Archives: America, The Beautiful by Marie Cartier”

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Thinking About Thanksgiving

This was originally posted on December 3, 2012

Thanksgiving evokes deep memory and raises questions about what we are celebrating, now that we know the stories we were told about the Pilgrims and the Indians are not the whole truth about America’s early history. I thought about all of this as I prepared for Thanksgiving this year and cleaned up for days afterwards.

Although I do not live in America, I have celebrated Thanksgiving with a group of friends in my home in Greece many times during the past twenty years.

An Unwanted Relationship with Gun Violence in America by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

I write this post with the waves of grief from Buffalo, Uvalde, Pittsburgh, Tulsa, the litany that is constantly being added to. After every mass shooting in this nation, I have spent days in despair, in grief, in mourning, in anger, and in rage.

May Her Memory Be A Revolution by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

On the eve of the Jewish Sabbath and the start of Rosh Hashanah, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg breathed her last breath. She was 87. She fought so hard for so long. She is an American patriot, hero, champion for women’s rights, and for many she was the stalwart bastion of justice and ‘liberal’ rulings. She was a Supreme Court Justice for 27 years. Her life has been put into books, a movie, and the most notorious memes around. She became known for elaborate collars over her Justice robes. We mourn the lost of her, we celebrate her memory, and we must pull up our boots and continue the fight.

Unpacking the Midterm Elections by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

Anjeanette

As the dust is settling, with the mixture of finishing counting ballots and races being conceded, the true realities of what happened in the 2018 Midterm Elections is taking concrete form. From the earliest hours of November 6, numbers showed that both Democrats and Republicans, old and new, were taking to the polls, flexing their democratic rights, and showing the political regimes from local, state, and federal levels that the current state of being is not acceptable.

Continue reading “Unpacking the Midterm Elections by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

The Act of Gun Control by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

This month’s post is brought on by dealing with another aftermath of a mass shooting and the responses in the wake of devastation. I write this in ardent hope that this will start a discussion that will hopefully lead to change. That waking up to another massacre will not continue to become the norm. So, upcoming generations will not have gun violence and mass shooting a standard, another headline, another milestone of the highest causality in history. Continue reading “The Act of Gun Control by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

Kneeling as Protest by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

In a previous FAR post, I talked about the newest trend in sports of including women in marketing strategies for American football. Today I have decided to throw my hat into the ring regarding the recent polarizing “Kneeling” protest taking place at NFL games. I started writing this on the morning that the current Vice President walked out of a NFL game due to players ‘taking the knee’ during the National Anthem; a protest which has been reported to cost TAXPAYERS $200,000. Weeks have gone by with the issue getting bigger and bigger. I can no longer stay silent.

This protest started when NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem in August of 2016. He stated he was taking a knee to stand for people that were being oppressed. It has since exploded as a social movement/protest.

It has become a highly sensitive and polemic topic. And it is polarizing bcause the two groups which are opposing each other are actually, talking about two different things. The group that supports the kneeling protests understand that this ‘peaceful, and respectful’ act during the National Anthem is an important way they can voice their solidarity, take a stance, and bring awareness to the violence and injustices that minority groups face, especially African Americans. The group that radically opposes this protest only see it as a disrespecting act of our country, our flag, our troops, and their faith. Thus, the arguments and pseudo-discussions are not getting anywhere. Continue reading “Kneeling as Protest by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

Can Secular Immigrant Assimilation Promote Equality? Pt. 2

I often wonder how my life would have been different if I had undergone a secular immigrant assimilation process. My former faith within Pentecostalism not only shaped my identity, but augmented my ability to assimilate into the American culture. Subsequently, this led me to explore how nonreligious narratives help immigrants better acculturate to western society. Despite my interests originating in personal exploration, emergent studies within religion and sociology show that there are many factors that come into play when considering social and cultural assimilation.

Following up on my most recent post, Liberations of Immigrant Women in Western Religious Conversion, I will draw on a comparative analysis to consider secular immigrant assimilation processes. Women’s experiences during their migration process contribute to their cultural and social identity formation. Many studies point to the established idea that religion is a key variable in influencing immigrant assimilation, particularly among the Latino community. “Faith plays an important role in their lives: 74 percent of Latinos say religion provides a ‘great deal’ or ‘quite a bit’ of guidance for them” (Philanthropy Roundtable). Continue reading “Can Secular Immigrant Assimilation Promote Equality? Pt. 2”