The purpose of this forum is to facilitate communication and mutual support and edification among those who strive toward gender justice in Churches of Christ. If you would like to join the forum, send an e-mail (including your first and last name) from your primary address to forum@gal328.org.
Here's an item from Martin Marty's "Context" paper ("Martin E. Marty on Religion and Culture), April 2004. Marty quotes a letter to the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, with a little intro and a one-line closer in his own voice.
"Is Christianity inherently feminist?
"In an era when biblical writings often get trashed because they derived from and gave impetus to Judaism and Christianity as 'anti-woman' movements, a letter-writer to the Harvard Divinity Bulletin defends them. The correspondent... explains why Christianity 'is a compelling religion for women':
"'In the late antique Roman Empire, the belief was widely held among non-Christian philosphers that the path to Truth and God was accessible -- if accessible, and many believed it was not -- through reason or through esoteric teachings and mystery rituals. Both of these paths had limited access for women, who, because of long-held beliefs in the inferiority of women's minds, had little access to higher education and less to mystery cults.
"'The story of the Annunciation is in stark contrast to these views. Mary, a virgin and owned by no man... is visited by a messenger of God. More remarkably, she is impregnated by the Holy Spirit and carries God in her womb. There is no mediator between her and God in her pregnancy. Indeed, God dwells within her, in the very part of her body that Greeks, Romans, and Jews held to be unclean. Her very flesh is used to incarnate the Divine. No human ever had such contact with Being, itself, as this woman Mary had.
"'This idea that God meets us in the flesh, female as well as male, changed Christian theologians' ideas about women and men. St. Augustine was awed by Mary's experience and preached the salvation of woman as well as man through the Word made flesh. While he, as a typical Roman, believed women inferior in rationality, he reinforced the belief that women had equal access through faith and prayer, for Christ is the teacher who answers all who knock...
"'Christian metaphysics and epistemology empowered women like Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila, and others who proclaimed the knowledge Christ gave them directly as women. Unlike mystics who experience God for their own selves, these women believed they were given knowledge to preach and share with others. They were vessels, like Mary, of the Word of God.
"'Women have every right to claim Christianity as their own terrain, for God has chosen women as well as men for his terrain.'
[Marty's voice again] "Let's hope the whole church notices this."
peace -- Katie
:::posted by Katie on 3/30/2004 04:30:50 PM
Hey y'all,
I just got an email from Linda Benthall, who's in Wuhan, China (where I lived '98-99) and asked her if I could post a couple paragraphs from her last email report:
"I bet you did not know that March 8 is Women’s Day.
When I first learned of this holiday, I assumed it
would be a day of rest for working women. That was
wishful thinking :). Last year, some students invited
me to join in their departmental celebration by
singing a song. Thankfully, my good friends Erica and
Katie agreed to accompany me. We were just one of many
acts. In the middle of these artistic displays, the
girls present played games to see who could sew a
sachet, peel an apple and cut a potato the fastest. I
could hardly believe it. I do not consider myself a
feminist, but this seemed degrading instead of
honoring!
This year’s celebration was much less of a culture
shock. My Chinese colleagues told me a few weeks
before that they had entered me in the Women’s Day
foot race. I immediately started a protest saying that
I was not in race shape anymore. “Of course you are.”
One good friend had even been telling teachers all
over campus that I would be the winner. I felt like I
had to run or I’d loose face. However, I was also
really worried about not winning and loosing face.
The race was held several days before women’s day.
Almost all female faculty and staff were present. I
went dressed to run and was surprised to see most
ladies in their work clothes. They ran around that
track in boots, high-heels, nice pants, hose, skirts,
you name it. There were only a couple of handfuls
dressed in exercise clothes. Though I had been worried
all week about winning this race, it wasn’t so bad
because it was only 1000-meters long for the under 40
and 800-meters long for the over 40. None of the front
runner ran very fast, so I hung with them. In the end,
I received 100 yuan ($12) for finishing first. ~ I’ve
only won two races in my life and they have both been
at this school :). ~ Then they gave everyone two bags
of laundry detergent, a tube of toothpaste and a bar
of soap:). On March 8 our foreign affairs office
brought us a huge bouquet of flowers and a lovely
Chinese wall hanging. I guess Women’s Day isn’t so
bad."
I suppose, now that I think about it, planting trees really wasn't so random...now that I see the alternatives...
Jen
:::posted by Jennifer on 3/29/2004 08:56:33 AM
There are a lot of songs that give me encouragement and the wherewithall to keep forging ahead. However, a particular poem really gets me centered and focused on the kind of woman I want to be, in spite of the obstacles of life and ministry.
It's called Myself, by Edgar Guest.
I have to live with myself, and so,
I want to be fit for myself to know;
I want to be able as days go by,
Always to look myself straight in the eye;
I don't want to stand with the setting sun
and hate myself for the things I've done.
I don't want to keep on a closet shelf
a lot of secrets about myself,
and fool myself as I come and go
Into thinking that nobody else will know
The kind of (wo) man I really am;
I don't want to dress myself up in shame.
I want to deserve all (peoples) respect;
But here in this struggle for fame and pelf,
I want to be able to like myself.
I don't want to think as I come and go
That I'm bluster and bluff, an empty show.
I can never hide myself from me.
I see what others may never see,
I know what others may never know,
I can never fool myself-and so,
Whatever happens, I want to be
Self-respecting and conscience free.
:::posted by Irie on 3/26/2004 12:39:09 AM
Wow...am I the conversation killer? I thought Katie put out a fantastic conversation starter...is anyone out there? grace, julie
:::posted by julie on 3/25/2004 10:26:45 PM
Katie, I already shared with all of you my love of the Indigo Girls...they have pushed me on many times and sustained me when I was ready to give up the battle. Their new cd is great!!!...All That We Let In...you should all give it a listen.
I, too, have been drawn to Just As I Am in the last several years and everyone who plans worship with me knows how much I love another old song...There's a Fountain Free...
There's a fountain free,
tis for you and me:
Let us haste,
O, haste to its brink;
Tis the fount of love from the source above,
And he bids us all freely drink.
Will you come to the fountain free?
Will you come?
tis for you and me;
Thirsty soul,
hear the welcome call:
'Tis a fountain opened for all.
There's a rock that's cleft
and no soul is left,
That may not its pure waters share;
'Tis for you and me,
and its stream I see:
Let us hasten joyfully there.
Will you come to the fountain free?
Will you come?
tis for you and me;
Thirsty soul,
hear the welcome call:
'Tis a fountain opened for all.
grace, Julie
:::posted by julie on 3/23/2004 06:18:03 PM
Is it legal to post pop-song lyrics on a website forum? If not, I'm sure the site editor will take action. I wondered if we could jumpstart a conversation about what inspires us, what keeps us fueled for the struggle we're engaged in together, by sharing the music that keeps us going. In other words, what's on your iPod? Do you have a "gender justice" playlist?
For some, sacred music might do it best -- "Just As I Am" is a new favorite of mine -- but for others, secular music often asks the exact right questions even if it doesn't posit theologically tenable answers. This one, by the band No Doubt, always gets me through the last few minutes of my half-hour run.
peace -- Katie
JUST A GIRL (G. Stefani, T. Dumont)
Take this pink ribbon off my eyes
I'm exposed
And it's no big surprise
Don't you think I know
Exactly where I stand
This world is forcing me
To hold your hand
'Cause I'm just a girl, little ol' me
Don't let me out of your sight
I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite
So don't let me have any rights
Oh... I've had it up to here!
The moment that I step outside
So many reasons
For me to run and hide
I can't do the little things
I hold so dear
'Cause it's all those little things
That I fear
'Cause I'm just a girl,
I'd rather not be
'Cause they won't let me drive
Late at night
I'm just a girl,
Guess I'm some kind of freak
'Cause they all sit and stare
With their eyes
I'm just a girl,
Take a good look at me
Just your typical prototype
Oh... I've had it up to here!
Oh... am I making myself clear?
I'm just a girl
I'm just a girl in the world...
That's all that you'll let me be!
I'm just a girl, living in captivity
Your rule of thumb
Makes me worry some
I'm just a girl, what's my destiny?
What I've succumbed to
Is making me numb
I'm just a girl, my apologies
What I've become is so burdensome
I'm just a girl, lucky me
Twiddle-dum there's no comparison
Oh... I've had it up to!
Oh... I've had it up to!
Oh... I've had it up to here.
:::posted by Katie on 3/23/2004 04:48:36 PM
Glad you're back, Julie. Sorry we couldn't make it to Bowie for your last praise night, but I was chaperoning teens at a retreat at WAMAVA.
When is your next one? I want to drag as many people as I can down 270 and around the beltway to visit Bowie, to find out that women can speak up between the opening and closing prayer without lightning striking! And the church will be blessed as a result.
-Tom
:::posted by TWD on 3/19/2004 04:24:37 PM
Hi friends, I am back online after being off for about 2 months. I felt so cut off from the world but truly it was a good break. I have caught up reading the forum and you have not been boring. This has been a tough two weeks for me...many personal attacks and finger pointing...of course, at me and it is always so good to come back here and "hear" your voices. Let's keep talking. grace, Julie
:::posted by julie on 3/16/2004 05:38:40 PM
Vicki - I'll flip you for leap year. ;)
Chad
:::posted by Chad on 3/10/2004 12:07:59 PM
Interesting link: http://www.sheepcomics.com/strips/Visible/Visible.htm
-Tom
:::posted by TWD on 3/10/2004 09:11:12 AM
Thanks for the link, Lance.
I feel much better knowing there is an International 364-day Day for Men. Wouldn't want anyone to feel slighted.
:::posted by Vicki on 3/09/2004 11:42:47 PM
Happy "International Day of Men" everyone! The International Day of Men is celebrated every day from March 9th, through March 7th of the following year.
Seriously folks, I found some good info on this at the United Nations site.
:::posted by Lance on 3/09/2004 02:12:27 PM
Oh, I love planting trees. I didn't know it was labor!
Celebrating such a day in China where they've just announced a shortage of women? Twisted humor, doncha think?
BTW, I didn't know until yesterday when I read the post that there was an Int'l. Women's Day, either. What is the significance?
:::posted by Vicki on 3/09/2004 09:56:34 AM
First Int'l Women's Day I ever celebrated was 1999 in Wuhan, China. For some reason all the female foreign teachers were bussed out to the countryside and filmed planting trees. I never figured out the connection, but it was a nice day nonetheless. What I find really fascinating is the seriousness with which all of this was taken. No one really believed me when I said I'd never heard of Int'l Women's Day before. Like so many other experiences in China, this one was punctuated with a definite sense of irony: the "enlightened American" ignorant of the holiday...being honored by being treated to a round of symbolic physical labor...and so on...
Jen
:::posted by Jennifer on 3/09/2004 12:06:59 AM
Congratulations to all on the International Day of Women!! (March 8th)
kevin
:::posted by Kevin Wells on 3/08/2004 07:00:09 PM
Chad--I meant perceived wackiness. For example, all of the people I refer to this website reading this and saying, "Yup, I knew only wackos like Indie believed that gender justice stuff."
:::posted by Indie on 3/07/2004 06:40:56 PM
By the way - Indie, my apologies for adding to the wackoness, real or perceived. I'm done.
Jen - I appreciated your comments, and yes, most universalizing tendencies make me nervous.
Peace,
Chad
:::posted by Chad on 3/05/2004 10:24:25 PM
Carmen, well, now at least I better understand the extent of and reasons for our disagreements.
There are a couple of interesting stories that Flinders tells here (and we should at the least expect a good story from a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature). One is a very nifty retelling of the Noble Savage myth made most famous in the 18th-century Enlightenment (Rousseau's telling is probably the best example). But instead of positing the Native American tribes or other indigeneous groups as the Noble Savage, we now have prehistoric hunter-gather types. (I must say I am impressed with this move.) This of course avoids the nasty incovenience faced by Rousseau when it turned out that the Native Americans weren't the pristine examples of moral purity he thought them to be from way across the Atlantic (Pontiac going on the warpath sure messed up this idea). At least with hunter-gathers we can speculate and pretend to speak with scientific certainty.
Along with the Noble Savage is the story of the Golden Age. Ah, back when everything was perfect, when we all "belonged" in hunter-gatherer society, picking berries and throwing rocks at tigers...you can hear Archie Bunker singing, "Those were the days..." And the Golden Age always has a corresponding philosophy of history - that of the Great Pit. Once upon a time, everything was great, then....crash! The apostles died out, the Christians toppled the Roman Empire, the Barbarians sent us into the Dark Ages, the pope became the Vicar of Christ, and it all went to hell in a handbasket and here we are. Only in this version, "enterprise values" are the original sins and we need to get back to the "age of Belonging." Sound familiar? If only we went back to the Bible we could restore the 1st-century church. If only we replicated the forms of art and language of Classical Greece and Rome then we'd move out of the Dark Ages. (Funny how the Renaissance humanists discovered that - horrors! - their Latin was occasionally better than their ancient teachers!) If only we'd...you can fill in the blank.
As the Church Lady might say to all this, "Well idn't that special!"
What is deliciously ironic about Flinders' tales is how captive she is to the particular Western "master narrative" (of which there is more than one, by the way) she supposedly thinks she's overturning. She's still caught in the logic of binary opposition, which is to be expected of someone who didn't bother to read her Derrida more carefully and used a so-called deconstruction of an inconvenient narrative merely as a pretext to achieve a desired socio-political end, a common occurence with American literary theorists since the late '60s.
Another funny thing...for most of recorded history it was actually men that were theorized to have the values of Belonging. "Self-restraint, generosity, mutuality, balance" - all these were posited as the traits of men because they were ascribed as capacities of Reason, which only men were capable of (of course this is all according to men, mind you). As Thomas Laquer notes, "The commonplace of much contemporary psychology - that men want sex while women want relationships - is the precise inversion of pre-Enlightenment notions that, extending back to antiquity, equated friendship with men and fleshliness with women" (Making Sex, pp. 3-4). (By the way ladies, this book is an especially good read on how the female orgasm "disappeared" after the Enlightenment; before then, female orgasm was deemed necessary for conception to take place! How 'bout that!!) If we had all lived in the ancient world, every one of us might have considered all this and many other then-reasonable ideas as the gospel truth. So let's make a distinction between being wrong and being blameworthy. One can be wrong that the world is flat, but in the 1st century not be blameworthy. The conditions of knowledge were different. Today is another story.
The New Age-y stories Flinders tells are just a couple of the possibilities you get when you mix the literary Romantic revolt against reason and industry with an agressive capitalist economy that plunders all cultural artifacts for new products. I think I see enough reasons to believe some other stories.
Despite the injustices we face, despite their complex origins and manifestations, I'd rather be alive now than fending off tigers or picking berries (all without air conditioning and toilets, of course) like our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who were doing the best they could when they invented better ways of protecting each other and growing food.
:::posted by Chad on 3/05/2004 08:51:28 PM
This comes from Carol Lee Flinders' personal website (http://www.tworock.org/Values%20of%20Belonging.htm), describing the book Carmen mentions. I will comment in my next post:
"The “gender wars” of the past thirty years, Carol Lee Flinders argues, have not really been about gender after all, but values: two sets of values, so radically different from one another that they would seem to be mutually exclusive.
Before we can get to the bottom of this conflict, she believes, we must re-visit and question the “master narrative” of human history that most of us absorbed in school. The full meaning of our pre-agricultural past, for example, has never been given the weight it deserves. It is time we picked up the marker that conventionally separates history from prehistory and moved it way, way back.
Throughout the eons that preceded the agricultural revolution, Flinders notes, our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. Certain values are intrinsic to that way of life wherever it is lived. Self-restraint, generosity, mutuality, balance, and a warmly reverent connection to the earth and other creatures are all adaptive to a nomadic, foraging existence. They are the values of Belonging, and they defined the human condition for so long they exist still – in longing, in faint memory -- as an indestructible stratum in consciousness itself.
With the rise of agriculture and city-states, beginning just ten thousand years ago, a new set of values became adaptive: irreverence, willingness to exploit the natural world for profit; acquisitiveness, aggression, and competitiveness. The values of Enterprise .
Given world enough and time, our ancestors might have managed to integrate those two sets of values, and build institutions that reflected that integration. But things were moving swiftly, and they did not, and the full cost of that failure is upon us today.
The values of Belonging are no more inherently feminine than the values of Enterprise are innately masculine, but for a variety of reasons, things played out as if they were. Women were by some wordless arrangement assigned to sustain the values of Belonging. Men would live out the values of Enterprise and build a civilization that was pre-eminently a culture of Enterprise : Separate gender spheres, and a horror of contact.
The Agricultural Revolution turned women into a permanent underclass. But women were not the only casualty. In cultures of Belonging, there is typically no word for “religion,” and yet the whole of life is imbued with religious significance. God is immanent, fluid, and everywhere, within reach of every human being. In Enterprise cultures, on the other hand, God is transcendent, singular, and distant, accessible only through priestly intervention. The same massive cultural shift that silenced women, that is, and enclosed them, redefined the human being’s relationship with the sacred as well.
But women are phenomenally resilient, and so is the understanding that God is, as a Sufi poet said, “nearer to me than my jugular vein.” Today, even as women reclaim their rightful place in the scheme of all things, the idea of God as celestial autocrat is losing favor. The values of Belonging, meanwhile, are reasserting themselves in every area of life.
At the heart of the crises we face – ecological, economic, political, religious – there is, indeed, Flinders concedes, a gender knot. But it is more accurately seen as a spiritual knot -- one that can only be untied by women and men committed to reclaiming balance, mutuality, intuition, and wholeness together."
:::posted by Chad on 3/05/2004 02:55:47 PM
Carmen--What I was interested in your post was the connection between the bodily functions (childbirth, etc.) and sexism because I think a case can be made for this, but I don't think there is a connection between it and racism and I certainly don't think racism came from this. Maybe I'll contact you sometime when I have more than two minutes to think (maybe when Madeira goes off to school--only four more years).
Everyone--Maybe we can come up with a new topic to discuss as this disscussion is obviously going nowhere. Our lurkers must be thinking that we are a bunch of wackos.
:::posted by Indie on 3/05/2004 12:48:47 PM
This is helpful, Jennifer.
Just to be clear, however, what gets me about Carmen’s position is not the universalizing tendency (which probably should be critiqued for the sake of intellectual rigor), but the hierarchicalizing (new word) tendency (which must be critiqued for pastoral reasons). I find it unhelpful and unconvincing and sloppy to claim that sexism and racism are more or less the same thing. But I won’t tolerate the repeated implication that sexism is the foundation and origin of all human injustice, and racism must be content to understand itself as a late-coming derivation of a deeper and more profound injustice.
It’s one thing to say, as she recently did in retreat, that:…all injustice could be of the same substance and the sexism, racial and class aspects like pigments added to a base product.It’s a completely different matter to say, as she did in the beginning:…it is my opinion that all oppression and injustice toward people of color, different religions, children, the mentally and physically handicapped, the elderly, is a transferrence [sic] of misogyny.Or to say, as she did recently concerning a forum on racial integration at the ACU lectures:…repression is what women of every color have been dealing with for millenia [sic] and…racism is a reproduction or recycling of that.Pastorally, even if any of this were true (it is not), it is inconceivable to me that Carmen would find it appropriate to solicit agreement on a point like this from, for example, Irie.
Carmen, I hate to keep saying stuff like this, but you keep making it necessary.
:::posted by Lance on 3/05/2004 08:55:24 AM
...Maybe this will seem wildly out of place. I don't know. I've just finished writing a paper on the evolution of morality, and reviewing a paper on paleoanthropology and its implications for theological anthropology...so if I seem like I'm coming out of nowhere, well, now you know why. But it sounds to me like Carmen is working out of a framework that takes seriously this kind of information (and the theoretical speculation that accompanies it) about human origins. This is pretty new stuff for me. I'm trying to figure out why I'm writing this. If I don't get that worked out soon I'll delete instead of posting...Oh, but the issue of origins--it sortof begs for a universal thematizing, doesn't it? Human origins, societal origins, morality's origins, it seems like these things are so basic that universality is almost a requirement for an explanation of them. And, therefore, the problems of society, moral problems, as a subset of these categories, receives a universal explanation too. So if it were possible to explain the kinds of social injustice we're discussing through some kind of understanding of the origins of human society, then presumably explaining one "ism" would explain them all. This is the sense in which I am understanding Carmen's statement that "one is the other."
I get the sense from Chad that he is extremely uncomfortable with this kind of universalizing impulse. Truthfully, so am I. Even if there were some kind of defendable hypothesis--and what do I know, there may well be--about the origins of all injustice along those lines, I don't think that its explanatory power would encompass the reality of today's specific injustices, precisely because universalizing "injustice" as a concept strips it of what makes it offensive. Injustice is always particularized--it has to be, because it is all about denying something to a person on the basis of something particular about that particular person. It's almost like you have to give up talking in the abstract about it in order to really talk about it at all.
I'm in a philosophy class this semester with a charming Australian classmate who every so often will wrinkle his brow and say in bewilderment: "So...where are we dialectically?" I think there is a relevant distinction to be made here about the ultimate origins of injustice (whatever they may be, which is a subject for speculation) and the immediate experience of injustice in all of its current forms.
Jen
:::posted by Jennifer on 3/04/2004 11:13:16 PM
Thank you Lance.
Blessings,
Irie
:::posted by Irie on 3/04/2004 03:52:27 PM
Carmen, the existence of Jerusalem Syndrome doesn’t strike me as even mildly implausible, much less inconceivable. What I find inconceivable (i.e. “impossible to imagine or think of”) is the connection between your “black comedy” and the preceding discussion. What I find inconceivable (i.e. “extremely unlikely”) is your unsupported/unsupportable claim that all injustice--the injustice in question was racism--is somehow derivative of sexism. It’s been hinted at several times, but I’m just going to go ahead and say it: What I find inconceivable (Vizzini’s definition this time: “deeply and repeatedly troubling and unexpected”) is your inability to see how self-serving such a claim appears, especially in the absence of any evidence to support it.
Thinking in images and using intuition doesn’t obviate the need to make sense. If making sense in writing is not your thing, we can hardly be faulted for criticizing sweeping, implausible claims presented here in writing. If I ever insist on performing a--dramatically speaking--senseless play on your stage, I’ll accept your criticism graciously.
As for the suggestion that we are giving you a hard time because you are a woman with yellow hair, I deny it. I would, however, be willing to entertain the possibility that the unjust stereotype against blonde women probably is derivative of sexism. Perhaps we could just agree on that and move on?
:::posted by Lance on 3/04/2004 03:48:15 PM
Hmm...maybe how to lose friends and alienate church people? ;-D
At the very least it's to control the legitimate use of Princess Bride quotations!
HA!
:::posted by Chad on 3/04/2004 09:59:56 AM
Doh! I can't believe I blew my Princess Bride cred like that. BTW, can anyone remember what this forum is about?
:::posted by Lance on 3/04/2004 09:47:32 AM
Lance,
"As everybody knows," it's Vizzini. We must go back to the beginning.
I'd write more, but I've been mostly dead all day. I think I need a miracle pill.
:::posted by Chad on 3/03/2004 11:21:23 PM
Fezzini: Inconceivable!
Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
_____________________________
in·con·ceiv·a·ble (adj)
1 impossible to imagine or think of
2 extremely unlikely
:::posted by Lance on 3/03/2004 10:04:37 PM
Ok Carmen, your last post made a little more sense (I think I have some clue what you are talking about). But what makes you attribute this to "the dawn of agriculture". I am interested in how you are relating the bodily functions (especially childbirth) to racism and sexism. I guess I'm not making the connection.
Chad--I'm one of those weird people who hasn't seen Princess Bride often enough to quote it. I guess I'm too busy being domesticated :) But since Madeira is actually napping for once I thought I'd post.
:::posted by Indie on 3/03/2004 03:20:34 PM
Carmen - if I may regress to Princess Bride mode: "You keep using these words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean." :-)
It's riotously funny that you think I'm a specialist, because in academic settings (where real specialists exist) I evade such a narrow characterization. I just think you don't really understand what you're talking about. I don't mean that unkindly, it's just that you don't appear to fathom the meanings of the sentences(?) you write, and you make assertions, of a frankly strange nature, about what has happened over the course of human history without displaying much actual knowledge about what has happened over the course of human history. In other words, you tell stories about the world, about men and women, that, if they are true, you give us no reason to believe. Give us some coherent reasons why you think what you believe you think, and maybe we (or at least me) would take you seriously.
:::posted by Chad on 3/03/2004 03:04:00 PM
Carmen,
You write: "But, in my view, though the distinctions between racism and sexism in the church may be muted by the context of history they are not opposing and are embedded in one another. One can't trump the other. Each one is the other."
This will probably surprise nobody who's followed this forum for any length of time - but what are you trying to say?! Your comment that "each one is the other" obliterates all distinctions of time and place. Each one is NOT the other; that's why we have different words - "sexism" and "racism." Two different things. Similar, yes in certain ways, but not in all.
That kind of obliteration completely fails to account for the ways in which social, economic, political, cultural (etc) factors all shape the experience of actual women and men. Sexism in the first century is different than the 21st. Same for racism. There are different legacies, different contexts, different people. Yes, there are similarities, but the key is to carefully sift what is similar and what is different. Usually "ideas" have a lot less causal importance than people assume they do. Lance will have to forgive my inner Marxist, but relations of production, i.e. the structures of economic life, are arguably more influential in the lives women live than what some philosopher wrote in some book back in the 2nd, 4th, or 12th century, BC or AD. And those relations have changed at various points in history - some of those changes would seem beneficial, others harmful, some neutral.
If you're getting your ideas from your reading, maybe try reading something new?! Try Natalie Zemon Davis, Carolyn Walker Bynum, Mary Beth Norton, or Mary Louise Roberts - all feminist historians of gender and/or religion, all careful researchers, all excellent writers. And they will all problematize your universalizing tendencies.
Chad
:::posted by Chad on 3/03/2004 10:54:57 AM
Carmen,
You and I are in the same boat in terms of not seeking pulpit ministry. However, I'm open to whereever the Lord leads. I have had the occasion to preach in other denominations for various events, which I do enjoy, but to actually be the Senior Pastor is of no interest to me. I could see myself as a co-pastor if I were able to perform outreach and pastoral care functions. My first love is really teaching and pastoral care.
I think we are all on the right track! The bottom line is injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere - however, the way it may play itself out in the lives of those affected may be different. As an African-Amercian women, I have two battles to fight, both racism and sexism. The good news for me, is that there are women like each of you, who seem willing to get on the battlefield with me, so we can fight together!
Blessings,
Irie
:::posted by Irie on 3/02/2004 03:52:36 PM
Jennifer and all,
I now have Irie's paper titled "Woman, Thou Art Loosed" on my web site at http://www.clarksons.org/articles/womanthouartloosed.html. This is the html version. I will also have it in pdf later today.
:::posted by Wiley on 3/02/2004 08:45:43 AM
Irie,
Would you feel comfortable with sending me a copy of the paper you mentioned? My email is jennifer.thweatt@ptsem.edu.
Jennifer
:::posted by Jennifer on 3/01/2004 09:32:07 AM
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