Donald Trump – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

Hate Trumps Love? by Gina Messina

Gina Messina-Dysert profile This election cycle has left many of us in a serious state of mourning. The idea that Donald Trump could be elected president following the many bigoted, xenophobic, and sexist statements he has made seemed impossible, and yet it has happened. Our nation has been left divided with various reactions to our President Elect. Likewise, I have been wondering if hell has frozen over, because for the first time ever, Glenn Beck and liberals agree.

On the Trump side we have seen racist acts of violence across the nation. Signs that say “white power” or “make America white again” have been showing up on church lawns, schools, and more. And let’s not forget how many women have been told they are going to be grabbed by the pussy. If President Elect Trump can do it, why can’t they? Continue reading “Hate Trumps Love? by Gina Messina”

A Lament for My Daughter by Katey Zeh

I wrote this the morning after the Presidential Election. While there will be time for hard work, there must also be space for the sacred work of lament. This is mine.

Last night I dressed you in the Hillary shirt I ordered the morning after the first Presidential debate. As I placed you in your crib, I kissed your sweet face and turned on the noise machine to block out the celebratory cheers that I knew would be coming in a few hours. We wouldn’t want to wake you.

As you drifted off to sleep, downstairs in the kitchen your dad was cooking shells for taco salads. The champagne was chilling in the bottom of the fridge. The news was streaming, filling our home with words of “too close to call.” I said, “Let’s mute it for now while we eat. Let’s enjoy.” I painstakingly created an “H” out of shredded cheese and snapped a picture to post on Instagram.

Last night I sported my “I voted” sticker on the collar of the white pant suit I’d proudly worn to the polls to cast my vote for the first woman President. White, the color of women’s suffrage. White, the color of supremacy and oppression, a legacy of racism that awards me and you undeserved, boundless privilege.

Through the night I watched in horror as these United States turned redder and redder. The color of rage, of blood. “Have another glass of wine, Katey. You’ll feel better.”

No, I need to feel this. Every ounce of this pain. The pain that I often choose to not see, now staring me in the face. I couldn’t look away.

I took as much as I could bear. At midnight we part ways with our guests. Take the champagne with you.

I swallowed one of the bitter yellow pills my doctor had prescribed me earlier that day when I told him I couldn’t block out the noise: the gun shots, the threats, the gleeful cheers of white supremacy and sexism and homophobia and Islamaphobia and transphobia, and the sinful silence from people like me in response to these horrors. The pill dragged me into dreamless sleep for a few short hours.

And then you woke up, singing sweet songs in your crib. Happily oblivious. Cocooned. I envied you. For the first time in your life I wished that I could pull you back inside of me and keep you there forever, the amniotic fluid muffling out the horrors of the world outside.

But instead I didn’t hide my red swollen eyes from you. I let you see my tears, even though you can’t yet understand their source. I want you to see. I won’t–can’t–shelter you from my pain, from my fear for you. For all our babies.

Today I feel my heart breaking open, wider and wider. Creating more excruciating pain, yes, but also creating exponentially more room within me for love.

Love wins. I do not know how. But love wins.

Katey Zeh, M.Div is a thought leader, strategist, and connector who inspires intentional communities to create a more just, compassionate world through building connection, sacred truth telling, and striving for the common good. She has written for outlets including Huffington Post, Sojourners, Religion Dispatches, Response magazine, the Good Mother Project, the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion, and the United Methodist News Service. Her book Women Rising will be published by the FAR Press in 2017. Find her on Twitter at @kateyzeh or on her website kateyzeh.com.

Parenting Lessons from the Past Week by Ivy Helman

me-hugging-tree Last week, Lech Lecha was the parshah, Isaiah 40:27-41, the haftarah. It was also the anniversary of Kristallnacht and the fall of the Berlin Wall. And, if you hadn’t heard, the United States elected Donald Trump. Interestingly all four of these occurred not just on the same week, but also all on the same day. What lessons might we pull from this coincidence?

It is already clear the reasons why electing Donald Trump was a tragedy. Many blogs and news articles exist explaining what is wrong with him; he is sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic, anti-immigration and makes fun of handicapped people. This privileged white, heterosexual, rich capitalist man denies also global warming. So, not only will women and minorities of all different kinds potentially and most likely suffer under his presidency, his environmental policies may have devastating long-term, perhaps permanent, effects on all beings.

Continue reading “Parenting Lessons from the Past Week by Ivy Helman”

My Reaction to the Election Results by Elise M. Edwards

I wanted to stay in bed yesterday morning. I wanted to stay in bed for the whole day. When I heard that Trump won the US Presidential election, I didn’t know how to deal with it. How can I accept this reality? I still don’t have an adequate answer.

Turn to prayer? Yes. Do some writing? Ok. I’ll also take every hug and kind word that’s offered to me. And still, my emotions will be raw for a long time. I cry at random moments. My voice catches unexpectedly. I feel that so many Americans embraced a vision of the country that is intensely hostile to people like me (women, African-Americans, Black Lives Matter sympathizers, liberals, intellectuals). How can I not take that personally? Dismissing the harm of Trump’s open hostility or accepting it in deference to some supposedly higher goal feels like rejection too. It justifies and legitimizes his contempt and denies the seriousness of it. Do we really accept a man who speaks so openly of sexual assault because he promises to bring jobs back? That denigrates women and all assault victims. The hatred directed at immigrants, Muslims, and LGBTQA persons is even more unrestrained and horrifying!

Continue reading “My Reaction to the Election Results by Elise M. Edwards”

Women’s Bodies—Feeling the Hate by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson Warning friends, the first four paragraphs of this post includes quotes/references of some of Donald Trump’s misogynist rhetoric.

I never bothered to watch Donald Trump’s television show “The Apprentice.” The teasers advertising the TV program were enough to keep me clicking through the channels. Why would I watch his display of pomposity, crudeness, condescension, and entitlement? I don’t understand why anybody watched him and the participants of his “reality show” on TV week after week. Even more baffling to me is why anybody agreed to take part in that show, vying with other candidates to be Trump’s apprentice.

Just based on the coverage the media has given him during this presidential election process, there is no doubt in my mind that Trump is a misogynist. He’s also a bully, a xenophobe, a racist, politically inept, morally bankrupt, rude, and totally unkind. Today, though, I want to focus on misogyny. Continue reading “Women’s Bodies—Feeling the Hate by Esther Nelson”

The Trump (Non)Contrition by Gina Messina

Gina Messina-Dysert profile Regardless of bigotry and hate spewed by the Republican candidate for President of the United States, the American Christian Right has been among his strongest supporters. Following the disturbing video of Donald Trump discussing sexually assaulting women, many Republicans have jumped from the Trump Train and openly condemned his comments. While some supporters continue to cling to the derailing campaign, particularly Evangelicals including Vice Presidential candidate Michael Pence, one must question, what would lead them to disavow this candidate? Many thought a Trump Contrition was coming during the October 9th debate; and it was a true repentance that would allow Christians to overlook his bad behavior. Continue reading “The Trump (Non)Contrition by Gina Messina”

Debating a “Winning” Personality by Sara Frykenberg

Sara Frykenberg I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch the debate between presidential candidates last Tuesday. As John Erikson discussed in his post “The End is Nigh,” one could easily predict Trump’s sexism and misogyny, it was just a question of how his hatred would surface and whether or not he would tip his hat to “how truly dangerous he really is.” So, I compromised: I watched some of the debate, able to shirk part of what I felt was my responsibility to history for a more pressing responsibility, the need to put my daughter to bed. And, of course, Donald Trump delivered what his ‘brand’ promises… (poor) mis/re-direction, lies, bullying and incompetency.

Continue reading “Debating a “Winning” Personality by Sara Frykenberg”

The Emperor’s New Clothes by Barbara Ardinger

On the day the Big Boss decided he wanted to be the Emperor of Everywhere, the first thing he did was pull on his red cap embroidered with the words Make Me Greater Again. He tied the strings under some of his chins and adjusted the earflaps so he could more plainly hear the Spirit of the Cap. The first thing the Spirit of the Cap told him was that an Emperor needed appropriate clothing. The Big Boss pulled out the mail-order catalogue from which he ordered his custom-tailored suits and paged through until he came to the perfect photograph of the perfect Emperor’s New Clothes, which was a royal robe of pure silk the color of peacocks’ tails. “Yesss,” said the Spirit of the Cap. “Order this one.” The Big Boss picked up one of his phones and placed the order. “I want it right now,” he told the operator. “I am very, very important. I always demand very, very immediate service.”

red cap When the Spirit of the Cap upon which were embroidered the words I Am Always Very, Very Great told the Big Boss he needed consultants, the Boss called his posse together and ordered referrals. “I always get what I want very, very quickly,” he told the posse, which consisted of several of his wives and the goodfellas that ran the real estate where Ladies of the Night and their Good Friends gambled the nights away. “I make very, very good deals,” said the Big Boss. “Find me some very, very good advisors. If you don’t, you’re fired.” Continue reading “The Emperor’s New Clothes by Barbara Ardinger”

The End is Nigh by John Erickson

How will the world end? No, it isn’t Lucifer himself coming from hell to bring in the end times, it is someone far worse, and his name is Donald Trump.

John Erickson, sports, coming out. When I was a little boy I was terrified that I would live to experience the end of the world. Whether it was by an asteroid, Y2K, or a zombie plague, I would make myself sick by picturing these horrible things that could befall me and my family. Although I was a precocious child, the crippling fear that would lurch its way up my stomach and into my head would sometimes make it impossible to sleep at night. While I like to think I grew out of that phase, I now sit here feeling that way again. I’m crippled with fear that the end of the world is at hand and there may be nothing we can do to stop it. How will the world end? No, it isn’t Lucifer himself coming from hell to bring in the end times, it is someone far worse, and his name is Donald Trump.

By the time you’re reading this post, the first Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will have occurred and, no matter where you look, the aftermath will haunt us for weeks to come. We will either be sitting here, coaxing in the sunlight that Clinton has, in proper fashion, just goaded Trump into revealing to the 100 or so million viewers that will have chimed in to viewing how completely dangerous he truly is, or will we be scurrying to uncover decade old bunkers that were used during the 1950s and the Cold War to take shelter from the fallout to come should, Donald Trump become the next President of the United States. Continue reading “The End is Nigh by John Erickson”

Politics and Mythology by Sara Frykenberg

Some part of us buys into some part of our common mythology; hence, the importance of recognizing and interrogating the stories in which we (often unconsciously) participate.

Sara Frykenberg This semester I am teaching Myth, Religion and Culture, which is by far one of my favorite courses to teach. On the first day of class, I usually ask my students what they think is the purpose and importance of myth. I receive a wide variety of answers ranging from myth being rather unimportant or only important historically, to myth being necessary for teaching lessons (particularly to children) or even critical as a foundation for society and communication. I then, over the next several weeks, introduce students to many theories of mythology and its significance: Continue reading “Politics and Mythology by Sara Frykenberg”