authoritarian mindset – Feminism and Religion

#SHARE THEIR STORIES by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I was walking along the street the other day thinking about the comforts I find at home, my favorite tee-shirt, the three or four books I’m reading at a time, photos of loved ones. Around that time, I heard the news that Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts who was whisked off the street by ICE agents in Massachusetts. She disappeared into the system until she showed up in detention in Louisiana. This is the facility that has been called “a black hole” by civil rights groups. So many have been swept off the street, how do we keep track? Ozturk had a valid student visa until the State department revoked it without notice nor telling her. She was on her way to break her Ramadan fast with friends. After her arrest she asked for food, not having eaten for 13 hours. She was given snacks. She still hadn’t eaten a meal by the next day and was feeling faint. She was given more snacks.

I began thinking, who are her friends? What was she going to eat? In fact, what are her favorite foods? In other words, who is she as a person. Her name is foreign, she comes from another country so it might be too easy to dismiss her as one of many. But if we know her story, if we humanize her, her story becomes harder to dismiss. The first step in the authoritarian playbook is to dehumanize people for some feature of who they are. When someone is dehumanized, it is far easier to do hateful things.

The antidote is to know their stories, share their stories, speak their stories.

Uprising! by Beth Bartlett

“ . . . the uprising of [our] nature is but the effort to give to [our] whole being the opportunity to expand into all [our] essential nobility.” – Sarah Grimké [i]

It wasn’t the first time I had stood in protest on that street corner. I’m sure it won’t be the last. But the gathered crowd was by far the largest I’d been a part of there, covering not just the plaza on the western corner of Lake Avenue and Superior Street, but all the other corners as well, and up and down the sidewalks for half a block. We were a motley crew, from young people perhaps at their first protest to the many well-seasoned grey-haired. Though I met a few indigenous friends there, I was struck by the overwhelming perceived whiteness of the crowd. I imagine Black and Brown people were more reluctant to join a street protest where they might be targeted. Indeed, on my way home I heard a report that the number of “driving while Black and Brown” traffic stops has increased in recent days.

Standing in the wet snow, chanting, “This is what democracy looks like!” and “What do we want? Democracy! When do we want it? Now!,” the atmosphere was more of a party than of a wake.[ii] Yet, when the chants began, I found myself near tears, wanting to sob rather than shout. As some report seeing their lives flash before their eyes when facing imminent death, I saw my protest life flashing before my eyes – all the anti-war marches – from Vietnam to Iraq to the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, the marches for the ERA, the Take Back the Night marches, the MMIW marches, the Standing Rock and Line 3 protests, the Women’s Marches, the march for science, the vigils after school shootings and nightclub shootings and the murder of George Floyd, the rallies to protect trans rights, . . . the list goes on and on. And I felt like weeping, for all these efforts to bring peace and justice and equality to this land were being trampled on and were under threat of being destroyed.

We’ve Seen This Playbook Before by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

ICE has been doing mass round-ups of anyone who looks like “the other.” The people cheered. “This is my country,” they shouted to the deportees. “Go back where you came from.” The people are flush with excitement thinking this is what we voted for, meanwhile ignoring that they came from someplace too. We know this is a publicity stunt. How? Dr. Phil tagged along on one of round-ups. Newly minted secretary Kristi Noem also took her role in the spotlight attending one in NYC and saying dehumanizing words I will not repeat here.

We’ve seen this playbook before. Creating chaos, disorientation and suffering for political points, TV or other publicity ratings. It doesn’t end well – EVER!

The NY Times had a report of how deportees were treated in a dehumanizing manner, being held on a broken plane in the Amazonian heat with no AC, people shackled, children were on board. There are always people available to treat other people as less than human. “I was just doing my job.” “I was only following orders.”

We’ve seen this playbook before. It doesn’t end well – EVER!

Do All Religions Teach Love and Justice? Or Do Some Religions Teach Domination? by Carol P. Christ

Recently at a discussion of Goddess and God in the World, Judith Plaskow and I were asked if the dialogue across religious difference we embody and advocate in our book is a “liberal thing.” Can it, the questioner wondered, occur with those who do not have a liberal view of religion and religious meaning?

I answered that Judith and I identified two principles that made our dialogue possible. The first and most important is that we share the conviction that individuals and communities always interpret their texts and traditions from particular standpoints, deciding with aspects of text or tradition they will make central and which they will criticize or ignore.

For example, those who advocate Lev. 18:22’s injunction that “you shall not lie with a male as with a woman” (NRSV) generally expand its meaning to include female as well as male homosexuality. They ignore the fact that extending this text to a prohibition of lesbianism is an “interpretation” not found in the original Hebrew. At the same time, they ignore other provisions in the text–including that it condones slavery under certain conditions as the notorious letter to Dr. Laura “Why Can’t I Own a Canadian?” attests. Continue reading “Do All Religions Teach Love and Justice? Or Do Some Religions Teach Domination? by Carol P. Christ”