Gender
Most of the speeches at the Democratic National Convention were politically predictable; the same was true on the first night of the Republican National Convention. Sarah Palin's speech tonight will be worth watching, considering all the attention her nomination has received, and of course John McCain's acceptance speech on Thursday night will be very important, just as Barack Obama's was in Denver.
But one thing looked very different on the first night of the Republican [...]
Evangelical women and minorities, it seems, exist on the muted margins of political discourse in America. If a justice revival is to sweep over America once more, from the suburban megachurch to the urban storefront church, then Christians must pursue a vision of the common good for all -- and not the common good of a few.
The public narratives of the media often chronicle the broadening social concerns of white [...]
It was almost 16 years ago that I sat in the debating chamber of Church House in Westminster and voted as a member of the House of Clergy to ordain women to the priesthood in the Church of England. At the time I was one of the youngest members of the House of Clergy, and I was in the first group of women ordained to the priesthood.
On Monday, July 7, the general synod meeting in York, England finished the job. At long [...]
It was almost 16 years ago that I sat in the debating chamber of Church House in Westminster and voted as a member of the House of Clergy to ordain women to the priesthood in the Church of England. At the time I was one of the youngest members of the House of Clergy, and I was in the first group of women ordained to the priesthood.
On Monday, July 7, the general synod meeting in York, England finished the job. At long [...]
It was almost 16 years ago that I sat in the debating chamber of Church House in Westminster and voted as a member of the House of Clergy to ordain women to the priesthood in the Church of England. At the time I was one of the youngest members of the House of Clergy, and I was in the first group of women ordained to the priesthood.
On Monday, July 7, the general synod meeting in York, England finished the job. At long [...]
The fact that an African American and a woman each ran so strongly in the long primary season of this election year speaks very well of the country. Having two "firsts" competing for the presidency, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, makes this a very historic political year. But it was perhaps unfortunate that the two firsts ended up running against each other. After a hard-fought campaign, there inevitably remain some hard feelings among the supporters of both candidates, but [...]
The following is an interview with Abigail Disney, producer of the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which recently won the award for best documentary feature at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.
What sparked your interest in wanting to make a documentary about Liberia?
The fact that the newly [...]
The 40th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination - April 4, 1968 - will soon be upon us. As I remember Dr. King against the backdrop of this 2008 presidential election cycle, I reflect on what a brilliant political strategist he was. He was able to bring corporations to the point of acquiescence without resorting to violence or bribery. He was able to pass legislation that [...]
Who said:
"There still persists a macho mentality that ignores the novelty of Christianity, which recognizes and proclaims the equal dignity and responsibility of women with respect to men. There are certain places and cultures where women are discriminated against and undervalued just for the fact that they are women. In the face of such grave and persistent phenomena the commitment of Christians appears all the more urgent, so that they become everywhere the promoters of a [...]
When I asked a leading progressive biblical scholar who was doing the very best bible work on images of God and gender theology, she didn't hesitate in her answer: Elizabeth Johnson, she said.
Johnson, a Roman Catholic sister in the Congregation of St. Joseph, is interviewed about images of God in the January U.S. Catholic (
During the South Carolina Republican debate, Mike Huckabee garnered greatest applause when defending his views of wifely submission as part of his evangelical faith. The questioner quizzed Huckabee about being one of 131 signers of a 1998 USA Today ad by the Southern Baptist Convention that asserted, "a wife is to graciously submit herself to the servant leadership of her husband." Huckabee responded by saying "I am not the least bit ashamed of my faith." He joked that his own wife [...]
In May, the Institute on Women and Criminal Justice released a report on the growth of the number of women in prison in the U.S.
American Palestinian physician Laila al-Marayati believes that the Quran speaks to women and men in a manner that eliminates the gender issue.
If Kurt Warner is correct, maybe God studies the sports pages and fidgets with the remote control on Sunday afternoons like millions of American men.
Many Americans are treading into the 21st century riddled with spiritual trepidation. Women’s uncertainty is often shaped by gender issues wrought with difficult choices about where to stand in relation to their religious communities: Be silent? Be radical? Be a reformer? Be a dissenter? Mary Farrell Bednarowski argues that women’s ambivalence ought not be seen as negative, but as an emerging religious virtue.
Critics may counter that Bednarowski is putting a positive spin on a deplorable situation created by patriarchal systems of religious thinking resistant to change. By her own account, Bednarowski says many women speak of their traditions as an exercise in "inhaling contradictions" and relate to their communities as both insiders and outsiders. Caught in a web of tension, women describe their traditions as simultaneously life-giving and death-dealing, liberating and imprisoning.
If none of this sounds very virtuous, Bednarowski says that’s because ambivalence in any religious context is seldom seen through that lens. In popular usage, she says, "ambivalence connotes the lukewarm attitude, the wishy-washiness, the holding back from full commitment that religious communities preach against." But she contends that women’s ambivalence might be "cultivated" as a creative choice and, at the very least, looked upon as honorable. Creative ambivalence requires critical distance from one’s religious community, yet an appreciation for its deepest insights, Bednarowski says. Such communities often exclude women from positions of public authority and embrace religious symbols, rituals, and theology steeped in patriarchy. But ambivalence, she says, can summon forth women’s creativity and imagination, leading to new visions and perspectives drawn from tradition, experience, and the culture at large.
