Carol P. Christ – Page 54 – Feminism and Religion

June 25th or “June Unteenth”: A Sad Day For All Americans

Kelly Brown Douglas wrote recently on Feminism and Religion about the celebrations in black communities on Juneteeth when the emancipation of slaves became a reality in the formerly Confederate states. Sadly, on June 25^th 2013 the Supreme Court announced its decision striking down section 4 of the Voting Rights act of 1965, the most important Civil Rights legislation of the 20^th century. The Supreme Court gave a “green light” to states with previous and on-going records of introducing laws with the effect of preventing minority voters from voting to “proceed straight ahead.” I name this day June Unteenth and call on all Americans to mourn it in sackcloth and ashes.

For every American concerned with Civil Rights this indeed is a sad day. It means states and municipalities—particularly those in the former Confederacy—will in the days following the decision be introducing new legislation which will have the effect of disenfranchising black voters. Those of us who consider the right to vote fundamental in a democracy must rise up, with time, with money, and if necessary with our bodies in peaceful protest.

This is not only a sad day for black Americans. It is a sad day for white Americans as well. June Unteenth is the day 4 white Americans joined by 1 black American (who was hand-picked by white Americans) announced their decision to deny voting rights to large numbers of black Americans. This decision may not affect the right to vote of large numbers of white Americans.

So why should we be mourning June Unteenth? One good reason is that this is a day to be ashamed of our membership in the “white race.” Continue reading “June 25th or “June Unteenth”: A Sad Day For All Americans”

Staying In or Leaving the Religious Community of Your Birth: The Dialogue Continues by Carol P. Christ

This blog is part of an on-going discussion between me and my friend Jewish feminist theologian Judith Plaskow about the differences in our choices to stay in and leave traditional religious communities, which is part of our forthcoming book Goddess and God since Feminism: Body, Nature, and Power.

When you (Judith) discuss the reasons I left Christianity while you stayed Jewish, I think you hit upon a crucial difference between us when you say that I am more “idealistic” than you are. I agree that this does not mean that I am more ethical than you are. When you say that I require more “purity of thought” or perhaps more accurately more “purity of ritual symbolism” than you, I think you have hit the nail on the head. I simply cannot participate in a religious symbol system that I feel has done and continues to do great harm in the world.

I reiterate that for me this “problem” is not limited to the ways in which the maleness of God justifies male domination—including violence against and rape of women. Equally important to me are the ways that religious symbolisms justify the violence of warfare and conquest. I simply will not and cannot participate in religious rituals that justify domination and violence in the name of “God.” If that makes me a “purist” or an “idealist,” I am willing to accept those terms. Continue reading “Staying In or Leaving the Religious Community of Your Birth: The Dialogue Continues by Carol P. Christ”

RAPE CULTURE IN THE MILITARY AND “TURNING BOYS INTO MEN” by Carol P. Christ

Rape is not something that “just happens” in the military. It is an inevitable product of military training. Unless and until we understand this and change the way soldiers are trained, we will never be able to stop rape in the US military or any other military system.

The right to rape women of the enemy has been considered one of the “prerogatives” of warriors since the beginning of warfare. Could “military training” which “turns boys into men” by calling them “girls” or “women” or “gay” in order to break down their self-esteem and remold their “character” as soldiers be one of the reasons rape is such a pervasive problem in the military? Are “boys” being taught that the only way to “prove” their “manhood” is to replace “identification” with women—their mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives—with a new “identity” as a “dominant male” who “dominates” women and weaker men? I fear that if we fail to address the “core issue” of “military training,” we will never get to the root of the rape culture that pervades the military.

Unfortunately the model of training boys to be men by humiliating them with taunts that they are “girls” or “gay” is not limited to the military but is also a regular part of sports training. In both the military and sports, terms like “sissy,” “wuss,” “pussy,” “faggot”–and worse–are regularly used by male authority figures in order to “spur” boys “on” to feats of “physical achievement” that require “punishing” their own bodies and the bodies of others. The use of these epithets in the context of humiliation makes it clear that “a man” is not “a woman” or “a gay”: “a man” is someone who has eradicated all of his “feminine” qualities while learning to dominate and humiliate women and effeminate men.

Is it any surprise that rape of women and effeminate or gay men is pervasive in the military and in sports culture? Continue reading “RAPE CULTURE IN THE MILITARY AND “TURNING BOYS INTO MEN” by Carol P. Christ”

The Morning After Pill and Obama’s Daughters by Carol P. Christ

By now it should be clear to feminists that when Barack Obama thinks about women, he does not view us as independent individuals, but rather as he said in his 2^nd term inauguration address–to my consternation—as “our” mothers, wives, and daughters. Obama does not address us–he addresses the men he expects to make decisions for us. I almost wrote a blog on this egregious error in perception and judgment on the part of the President in January, but in order not to be seen as nit-picking, I held my tongue. The recent decision of the White House to continue to restrict the availability of the Plan B , brings this question to the fore again.

Plan B is a brand name for the “morning after pill.” If taken within 3 days of unprotected intercourse, it will prevent conception. There is now a much cheaper generic version as well.

After reviewing the effects and side effects of Plan B, the Federal Drug Administration found it safe and reliable and advised the US Department of Health and Human Services that it should be made available without prescription or age restrictions. In late 2011, the Obama administration and Kathleen Sibelius made the unprecedented decision to overturn the recommendations of the FDA and to allow Plan B to be purchased without prescription only by women age 17 or older. Just over a month ago, US District Court Justice Edward Korman of New York ruled that the Plan B and the generic alternatives should be made available without restriction. Before the ruling could take effect, the Obama administration lowered the age restriction to 15, while announcing that it would appeal Justice Korman’s decision to make the morning after pill as available as aspirin.

“Current and former White House aides said Obama’s approach to the issue has been heavily influenced by his experience as the father of two school-age daughters.” Continue reading “The Morning After Pill and Obama’s Daughters by Carol P. Christ”

Rituals Of Spring and Greek Easter by Carol P. Christ

Though I am not a Christian any more, I don’t want to sit home alone on Easter Day. Besides being a Christian ritual, Greek Easter is a time to eat lamb with family and friends, and to celebrate the coming of spring by feasting out-of-doors in flowering fields or in a garden filled with flowers, bees, butterflies, and birds. Such rituals have been celebrated from time immemorial.

Greek Easter came late this year, only yesterday, May 5. I prepared for an Easter party in my garden for weeks. My garden is planted with herbs and aromatics—lavender, thyme, oregano, rosemary, curry plant, rue, sage, cistus, rose-scented geranium, sweet william, cat mint and several other kinds of mint, bee balm, and roses and fruit trees, including lemon, bitter orange, pomegranate, olive, quince, and cherry. Everything blossoms in spring, attracting bees and butterflies.

I began weeding and pruning about 6 weeks ago. This year I had to remove many overgrown lavender plants. For the last 3 weeks in addition to ongoing weeding and pruning, I have been replanting lavender which I have promised myself to prune “way back” in the fall, along with purple sage, blue daisies, and thyme. Though there is bare ground in some parts of the garden, in other parts mature plants and trees are in full flower. Continue reading “Rituals Of Spring and Greek Easter by Carol P. Christ”

Deciding To Leave the Religion of Your Birth–Or Not by Carol P. Christ

What factors are most important in the decisions of spiritual feminists to leave or to stay affiliated with traditional religions? My friend Jewish feminist theologian Judith Plaskow and I discuss these questions in our forthcoming book, Goddess and God in the World. In this excerpt I speak to Judith about our different choices.

For me no longer identifying with Christian tradition had a great deal to do with belief. At some point I came to the conclusion that I did not believe in Christianity’s “core doctrines” of Trinity, incarnation, and salvation through Christ. Yet these doctrines are expressed in the Nicene Creed, which is accepted by all Christians. In an interview at a Christian seminary early on in my career, I was asked to define and defend my Christology or theory of salvation through Jesus Christ. My answer that feminism had put a question mark over all doctrines for me was not considered acceptable.

Judaism, on the other hand, is not a religion that stresses belief. Indeed your husband Robert used to love to shock me and other Christians by saying that for a Jew belief in God was not required as long as he or she followed the law. Understanding this difference between Judaism and Christianity helped me to understand that the question of belief in “core doctrines” simply was not as central for you as a Jewish theologian as it would necessarily be for me as a Christian theologian.

However, my reasons for leaving Christianity did not only have to do with my lack of belief in its core doctrines. For me the issue I call the power of “core symbols” was equally if not more important. Once I began to understand the way in which the “core symbols” of the Bible had influenced people and cultures, “I” simply could not ally “myself” with traditions that continued to promote them in liturgies. Continue reading “Deciding To Leave the Religion of Your Birth–Or Not by Carol P. Christ”

Whose Children Are Our Children? Whose Children Do We Care About? by Carol P. Christ

Melissa Harris-Perry created a media flurry when she stated that if we as a society considered “all children” to be “our children,” we would spend more money on childhood education. Critics at Fox News and other pundits called Melissa Harris-Perry a communist socialist Marxist, accusing her of wanting the state to take children away from their parents.

Some commentators framed their critique of Harris-Perry using the model of “ownership,” insisting that parents own their children, not the state. To this charge Harris-Perry responded by quoting Kalil Gibran’s poem which rejects the idea that parents and by extension anyone else can “own” children:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

The poem continues:

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.

This makes it clear that Gibran is telling parents that children have their own minds and individualities and will make their own choices. Children do not exist to fulfill the needs and wishes of their parents.

While in my opinion Gibran’s statement is true, this is not the main point Harris-Perry was making when she asked us to consider all children as “our children.” Harris-Perry was asking us whose children we care about. She was asking us to care for all children–not only the children in our own families and not only the children that look like them.

I saw this as a “teaching moment” in which process philosophy comes to the rescue—providing a way beyond a dead-end in the thinking that shapes US political debates and discussions. Continue reading “Whose Children Are Our Children? Whose Children Do We Care About? by Carol P. Christ”

A Gift Economy: Could It Be Better To Give Than To Receive? by Carol P. Christ

In a gift economy inequalities are balanced out by the cultural practice of gift-giving. If you have more, then you give more, if you have little, you still feel it is better to give than to receive. A person who hoards wealth is not viewed positively.

The worldview of a gift-giving economy is so far from our own that we can barely comprehend it.

In Skoteino, Crete, eighty-seven year old Marika awaits eagerly for the arrival of our group. She does not come empty-handed to join us after we have finished a meal lovingly prepared by Christina. Marika brings a bottle of raki and urges us all to join her in downing a small glass of her homemade moonshine. Often she offers us nuts she has cracked or raisins she has prepared as well . She has almost nothing and lives without many modern conveniences, but she would not consider joining us without bringing a gift.

In Zaros, we arrive at our favorite hotel only to be told that the taverna that serves fresh trout is closed because the owner’s son will be getting married in the evening. When I complain that we have come to eat the special trout, our whole group is invited to the wedding. Outside the taverna the grandmothers light fires under massive copper pots where they prepare the food. Over 600 people have been invited to the wedding. We are first served macaroni with virgin olive oil and goat cheese, then lamb, then goat, and salad. When the wine runs out, bottles of raki are brought to the tables. We dance all night long in a kind of a frenzy. Continue reading “A Gift Economy: Could It Be Better To Give Than To Receive? by Carol P. Christ”

“Am I Crazy?” Loving Laura Dern by Carol P. Christ

“Am I crazy?”

“No, just full of hope. You got more hope than most people do. It’s a beautiful thing to have a little hope for the world, you know.”

This question was posed by Amy Jellicoe, played by Laura Dern, at the end of the HBO television series Enlightened. Unemployed, single, and in debt after she was fired for “whistle-blowing” on the corrupt activities of the corporation where she worked, Amy wondered if she had done the right thing. The answer of her ex-husband Levi brought tears to my eyes.

In many ways, I am Amy.

Let’s begin with the obvious. When I was young, I was slender and pretty and exceedingly tall, with long blonde hair—I imagine I looked like Amy. I couldn’t take my eyes off Laura Dern. There just aren’t many women in the world as tall as I am. Because of that I don’t know what I look like to others. In the series, Laura Dern is taller than just about everyone else, including the men, and she seems not to care, because she often wears high heels. Continue reading ““Am I Crazy?” Loving Laura Dern by Carol P. Christ”

What Might It Be Like To Live In A Matriarchal Society Of Peace? Can You Imagine? by Carol P. Christ

There are many reasons for women, slaves, and the poor to rebel against domination and unjust authorities in patriarchal societies. But we should not assume that there are any reasons to rebel against domination where no domination exists or to rebel against unjust authority in societies where there are no unjust authorities.

In response to my recent series of blogs on patriarchy as a system of male dominance created at the intersection of the control of female sexuality, private property, and war (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), I was asked if there is an injustice inherent in matriarchal societies that caused men to rebel and create patriarchy.

The assumption behind this question is that if women are dominated by men in patriarchal societies, then men must have been dominated by women pre-patriarchal societies. Lurking behind the question is the further assumption that there must have been “a good reason” for the development of patriarchy. The idea that there is “no good reason” for patriarchy to exist–if “good” means fair and just–is just too painful for many of us to want to consider it.

The missing link is our inability to imagine societies without domination.

According to Heidi Goettner-Abendroth “matriarchal societies” are “societies of peace” in which neither sex dominates the other.

Continue reading “What Might It Be Like To Live In A Matriarchal Society Of Peace? Can You Imagine? by Carol P. Christ”