feminism and religion – Page 43 – Feminism and Religion

Sexuality and Spirituality: Convergence or Alienation? by Stephanie Arel

stephanie-arel I just finished reading for review The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality, edited by Donald L. Boisvert and Carly Daniel-Hughes. Targeting an undergraduate audience, the text explores ways that religion, gender, and sexuality intersect and interact in a variety of religious traditions.

The book’s essays traverse a wide sampling of religious inheritance including indigenous traditions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and various Asian religions. The topics examined range from the culture of male love in Japanese Buddhism to various themes of love in Haitian Voodoo, from sexual desire in Beguine communities to Gandhi’s experiments in sexual chastity, and from the passion of St. Pelagius to the transgender performance characteristic of the Hijra identity in India. Among other things, the book offers a wide array of interpretations regarding how sexuality emerges in particular traditions and contexts. One is left with a feeling that nearly anything goes depending on which set of rules or religious mores a particular group of people follow. The variations presented in each chapter related to the interpretation of sexuality’s embeddedness in spiritual expression problematize the notion of the “normal” emerging in sexual desire and expression. Continue reading “Sexuality and Spirituality: Convergence or Alienation? by Stephanie Arel”

Beginning with Death on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete by Carol P. Christ

Our first ritual on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete is a death ritual in which we honor the memory of those who have gone before us. Like so many things on the pilgrimage, the death ritual evolved. I did not consciously plan to begin with death. Rather, the death ritual inserted itself at the beginning of the tour. Now I understand that the timing is right.

As we begin our pilgrimage, seeking new insight about the meaning of our lives, about the meaning of life and death, we pause to remember those who have gone before us.

Before the ritual begins, I discuss the communal burials in round tombs of the ancient Cretans, sharing my belief that the purpose of their rituals was not to secure immortality or eternal life for the individual, but rather to affirm and ensure the regeneration of life in the community and in nature. I add that though I have no desire for personal life after death, I care deeply about the continued flourishing of life for human and other than human beings.

I like to keep rituals simple. First, we create an altar. Two stones mark the place. We decorate them with flowers and fruits from our Mother Earth and small images of the Goddess. Continue reading “Beginning with Death on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete by Carol P. Christ”

Moonlight Reflections by Elise M. Edwards

As I post this, May 10, a full moon, known as the “Bright Moon” or “Flower Moon” is in the sky. This full moon occurs during a season of transition when living thing things renew and bloom. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s spring, but another transition is already underway. For many of us, spring is nearing close to summer in temperatures; in plant, animal, and insect life; and in our schedules. I am concluding a long, demanding spring semester and yearning for summer. Even though I welcome the transition, I know that like all change, it holds both opportunity and challenge. The full moon prompts me to look at the upcoming summer with clear, examining eyes

It’s strange–perhaps downright heretical–for a Christian to talk about the power of the moon. Continue reading “Moonlight Reflections by Elise M. Edwards”

“He Owes Us Nothing”: A Very Bad and Very Sad Theology by Carol P. Christ

While waiting to get off a plane last week, I overheard a serious young woman explaining a recent theological insight to her half-asleep and equally young husband. “You see,” she began, “what I just learned is that though He owes us nothing and does not reward us for our good deeds, nonetheless, He takes pleasure in them.”

As the flight was from Mytilene, Lesbos to Athens, I guessed that the young couple had come from the United States to my island to assist the refugees. I imagined that the young woman wanted to do good deeds, to help others, and to please her God. At the same time, she seemed to be struggling with Lutheran, Calvinist, or Anabaptist doctrines of justification by faith alone and predestination. I suspected that she had been told she must accept the teachings of church authorities on faith as the correct interpretation of the word of God. Her new insight was attributed to someone else. Continue reading ““He Owes Us Nothing”: A Very Bad and Very Sad Theology by Carol P. Christ”

Encountering and Countering Self-Disgust by Stephanie N. Arel

In my last post, Trump’s Misogyny – A Case for the Contempt-Oriented Personality, I wrote about disgust, claiming that media diagnosticians failed to identify disgust- contempt as part of Donald Trump’s psychological profile. At the end of the piece, I said that the statement “Make America Great Again” was misogynistic. I maintain this claim but now want to consider disgust a little more closely – particularly when it constitutes self-disgust underlying or complicit in misogyny. Confronting and ameliorating self-disgust provides an entrance into combating misogyny.

Self-disgust interferes with self-love. As a result, self-disgust impedes connection and empathy in human relationships. Self-disgust also attenuates intimacy –self and other directed. Self- disgust manifests in multiple ways – in withdrawal, refusal to engage, self and other directed violence, addictions (including those to negative affect), etc.: the list is a long one. Self-disgust which manifests as hubris motivates the projection of disgust onto others, so that the other becomes the source of disgust; the abject unwanted object present in the self – rejected and discarded –becomes transported, launched to rest on the back of another.

The simple way to describe this mechanism emerges in self-help literature that suggests that the thing that one dislikes most in others is that which one cannot tolerate in oneself. This negatively perceived part of self can also be conceptualized in terms of Carl Jung’s notion of the shadow – the unknown dark side of the personality which we all carry but whose integration into conscious life defines its denseness, or the weight of its impact. The more conscious we are of our shadow, the more we are able to identify that what we recognize as a deficiency in another is actually what we understand as a personal inferiority. Continue reading “Encountering and Countering Self-Disgust by Stephanie N. Arel”

The Nature of Communal Pondering by Elise M. Edwards

Last week, I listened to an episode of Krista Tippett’s series On Being that featured an interview with poet Marilyn Nelson. I am not very knowledgeable about the world of modern poetry, but I am familiar with Nelson’s work. A couple years ago, I wrote about Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem, Nelson’s poetic composition about Fortune, an enslaved man whose owner rendered his body into a skeleton for medical training. Fortune’s identity and history had been erased across centuries as his remains were displayed. Community concerns eventually led to a multi-disciplinary academic, artistic, and community effort to honor the man and, in 2013, put his bones to rest. Isaye M. Barnwell, a musician formerly of Sweet Honey in the Rock, developed a cantata and choral work for Fortune’s Bones. These developed into a series of artistic performances and community events that demonstrate the power of art to speak through and for those who are marginalized—even in death. Disparate communities joined together to ponder Fortune’s life, and it was powerful.

In the On Being interview, Nelson spoke about “communal pondering,” and I’ve been repeating this phrase to myself since then. It identifies a form of creative activity and a spiritual way of being that I am deeply committed to, and have not been able to name. Communal pondering occurs when a group of people are listening together and are opening up new paths for discourse and action by the engaged reflection that takes place within that listening.

Continue reading “The Nature of Communal Pondering by Elise M. Edwards”

Doctrine and Fidelity by Elise M. Edwards

This past week, I was listening to Krista Tippett’s podcast On Being as she spoke with Pádraig Ó Tuama. He is a poet, theologian, and leader in the Corrymeela community of Northern Ireland. As he spoke about several things related to the challenges of belonging, reconciliation, and fractured communities, he said, ”The measure of Christian fidelity is more than the positions we take.”

I agree. I interpreted his statement as a condemnation of the ways Christian doctrines and moral positions too often take priority over other matters of faith.

Continue reading “Doctrine and Fidelity by Elise M. Edwards”

It’s a Small Thing in Relation to Everything Else: Or Is It? by Carol P. Christ

carol-p-christ-photo-michael-bakas Yesterday morning when I learned about the Open Letter to Attorney General Sessions: Join Us In Selma On the Right Side of History, I paused Joy Reid’s interview with William Barber II in order to search for the petition site. The letter’s authors invited the Attorney General to join them in Selma to commemorate the 52^nd anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” when peaceful marchers demanding the right to vote were attacked with billy clubs and tear gas. The Letter also asks the Attorney General, who was born in Selma, to join them in a non-partisan commitment to ensure the right to vote for all Americans. The letter calls upon the Justice Department to restore the protections against voter suppression enshrined in the Voting Rights Act.

I was pleased to sign the Open Letter because I have been thinking about how those who came together in the Women’s March and other marches can channel their energy into registering voters, helping them get the identification required by “voter suppression laws” enacted with the purpose of disenfranchising voters of color and elderly voters in nearly half of all US states. I believe it is imperative to focus a part of our energy on helping people to get the necessary ID’s while at the same time working to throw out every single rascal who voted for these laws. We must take back the state legislatures that have the power to enact voting laws. And we must do what we can to make sure that everyone who wants to vote is able to vote.

While I was adding my name to the petition, I was asked to check if I am a faith leader. Continue reading “It’s a Small Thing in Relation to Everything Else: Or Is It? by Carol P. Christ”

Reflections on Death, Evil, and Divinity by Carol P. Christ

In our book Goddess and God in the World, Judith Plaskow and I discuss and debate our contrasting and conflicting views of the nature of divinity and the cause of evil. In the passage that follows, I respond to Judith’s questions.

This brings us to the major philosophical issue that divides us: the nature of divine power and the relation of divine power to the world. It is fair to say that our major difference in this regard is whether the divine power is personal, conscious, intelligent, loving, and good. You ask, “If all we know of that exists is a mixture of the good and the bad . . . , if our creativity and the creative power that births and sustains the world brings forth both good and evil, then how can the Goddess be less than ambiguous? How can the Goddess be ‘the ground of all being’ if she does not ‘form light and create darkness, make weal and create woe’ (Isa. 45:7)? This question lies at the heart of our differences.

. . .

You ask whether “evil finally has less metaphysical warrant or reality than good” in my worldview. Continue reading “Reflections on Death, Evil, and Divinity by Carol P. Christ”

She is Here by Mary Petiet

Mary Petiet photo On the morning of January 20, 2017, the world watched Donald J. Trump stand on Capitol Hill for inauguration as the 45th president of the United States. He did not stand alone. Timothy Michael Dolan, Catholic cardinal and archbishop of New York, also stood, and he invoked the divine feminine as he opened the inaugural ceremony with a recitation of King Solomon’s prayer from the Book of Wisdom.

As Dolan stood before the capitol building, which houses the US congress, he called upon the divine feminine with the words: “Now with you is wisdom, who knows your will and was there when you made the world, who understands what is pleasing in your eyes, what is conformable with your commands, send her forth from your holy heavens. From your glorious throne, dispatch her that she may be with us and work with us, that we may grasp what is pleasing to you. For she knows and understands all things and will guide us prudently in our affairs and safeguard us by her glory.”

She is here. Continue reading “She is Here by Mary Petiet”