The following is a piece that a friend wrote last year in response to a spate of anti-choice legislation. She and I went to seminary together; she’s now seeking ordination in the United Church of Christ.
I posted it with her permission on Daily Kos last year. It seems pertinent again with the recent open attacks on birth control, and women’s reproductive freedom generally.
For the last three years, I’ve been trying to find my way into an academic job. That’s what I’m trained for. I go through phases where I start to give up that idea and try to sort out what other options are out there. Life is nothing but surprises, so who knows what’s in store. Just yesterday, someone at my church suggested possibilities for teaching overseas.
In any case, I’ve been trying to find my way into a career, trying to balance the things I need to do to continue the gamble of an academic career (which at this point will still involve mostly unpaid work – trying to get articles submitted to academic journals, getting a book contract for my dissertation, which I would then spend a few years revising) with what I need to do keep a roof over my head (take any work I can find). I keep looking for teaching options, but some days I run out of hope.
I didn’t really set out to become a feminist theologian, but with a feminist mother, coming out as a gay man, and an interest in theology, that’s kind of what ended up being the focal point of my CV.
Feminist theology arose out of religious reflection on the Women’s Movement of the 1970s. Crossing institutional religious divides, it interprets religious traditions with emphasis on women’s experience, integration of mind and body, and a “this-worldly” understanding of spirituality. This is a re-posting, with some revisions, of a diary on the subject I posted a couple of years ago over at the Orange place. It has many links to both full-length books (in italics) and shorter essays to explore.
So, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture is hosting a Day of Action: It’s Time to Close a Symbol of Torture in Washington, D.C., with a rally at Lafayette Square at noon, a Human Chain from the White House to Congress at 1:00, and an interfaith service at 3:00. If it’s possible for you to make it there, please put it on your engagement calendar.
In support of that, the Peace and Social Concerns Committee of my Quaker meeting will be hosting a candlelight vigil at the San Francisco Federal Building at 7th and Mission at 5:30. (Same date: January 11). Readers from the Bay Area are entreated to attend.
I am also, personally, learning more by reading Alfred McCoy’s A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. At only 30 pages in, it is bone chilling, and clearly a text every citizen has a responsibility to familiarize her/himself with. I learned of this book through Andrea Giovannoni’s essay on torture from a Catholic perspective in Voices of Feminist Liberation, of which I am a co-editor.
Please use the comments to talk about related events in your neighborhood, ruminate on the issues, and, of course, go off topic.
In a feature, Holiday Homophobia: Is it Christian to Reject Gay Partners? ABC news interviewed Marilyn Bowens, a lesbian African-American minister, who recounts her experiences of exclusion from family events.
“My mom would host a big family gathering with my sister, nieces and nephews – everyone,” said Bowens, now 56 and living in New Haven, Conn. “She always wanted me to come home with my children, but not invite my partner to come.”
Bowens is a lesbian, coming out well into adulthood after a heterosexual marriage that produced two boys, now age 20 and 27.
Today, she ministers to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and challenges the church in her new book, “Ready to Answer: Why ‘Homophobic Church’ is an Oxymoron.”
Another interviewee with more conservative views grapples with moving toward the “loving” part of “love the sinner but hate the sin.” Generally, not always, that movement will lead to a more thorough re-examination of views down the line.
In an earlier missive, So, Like, Are You a Christian?, I expressed my impatience with being pigeonholed into religious categories. In this diary, I’m going to follow up on that photo diary with a more conceptual post on what happens across that slash between “Not” and “Christian.” To do that, the rest of the diary will lay out the arguments of three books that hold Christian and non-Christian perspectives together in exploring religious claims.
The three texts are
* James Cone, Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare
* Kathleen Sands, Escape from Paradise: Evil and Tragedy in Feminist Theology
* Louis Ruprecht, Tragic Posture and Tragic Vision: Against the Modern Failure of Nerve
None of these books treats the distinction between Christian and not-Christian as trivial. Their recasting of the boundaries of theological thought does not move them into a bland homogeneity, where all serious differences melt away into a fake feel-good unity. At the same time, they are all acutely aware of the violence that comes with enforcing the boundaries too rigidly. Each writer, in his or her own way, forges a new dialectic between religious particularity and a larger whole achieved through comparison.
I’m looking forward to the outpouring of solidarity tomorrow, with some apprehension of what the police will be doing when I arrive downtown Oakland tomorrow.
In the meantime, I’m drifting around various thoughts and memories and motivations.
For some reason, which I’ve never fully understood, before I head out for a protest, this tune always goes through my head as emblematic of the kind of freedom I want for the world:
Among much other political work I was involved in at the time, I was active in opposing the Gulf War in 1991. As a naïve 20-year-old, I thought the huge crowds that protested the war would be able to force the government to adopt a more peaceful strategy. It turned out that the planners of the war had already factored popular opposition into their strategy. In the aftermath, I felt disillusioned, kind of stupid, and generally defeated. I started to think, “what is the point of all the political work I’m doing if it’s futile?”
Then I read A Feminist Ethic of Risk.
Kay asked me to post this over here. There’s fuller diary and links over at the Critical Mass Progress diary on the subject.
In the meantime, you can email/fax letters to the GA Board of Pardons & Paroles before Monday morning. Use the salutation “Dear Board Members.”
Email: Clemency_Information@pap.state.ga.us and Webmaster@pap.state.ga.us. Fax: +1 404 651 8502.
No telephone calls will be accepted, so don’t waste time trying to call.
Huffington Post reports Troy Davis Clemency, Religious Leaders Rally for Support
Faitful America also has a petition
So does Amnesty International (editor)
OK, so, like, you know I’m dirkster42. I’ve been here maybe a day or two, and I’m liking it here.
I’m another one of the people who supported the boycott over at DK. Not sure if I’ll drift back on Monday, but enough about that.
So, who is this “dirkster42?” you ask. OK, maybe you didn’t ask, too bad. I will tell you anyway.