Tag: Christian Feminists
Rosemary Radford Ruether
Most Christian feminists can tell a story of how something Rosemary did, said, or wrote changed them. It's not many people who end up having such influence over an entire movement.
Jesus and Women: Beyond Feminism
"It’s argued by theologians that equal participation by women in church masses and services resulted from Jesus’s revolutionary treatment of them and worked its way outward into secular Christian societies, eventually resulting in the gaining of female secular rights and freedoms."
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, My Coauthor, My Friend: A Special Remembrance
"I remember feeling so thrilled to have such an intellectual friend whose memory could always pull up just the right quote at the right time. And once again I felt the same awe and admiration I had felt when I first began reading her books years before. "
Feeling Good and Healing with Tiana Marquez
"Sometimes you need a strong, positive message—repeated with an insistent beat. That’s what the title song on Tiana Marquez’s latest album brings. “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me, and I’m feelin’ good.”
Tender Songs for Tough Times by Mary Ann V
"'Be Kind to Strangers' begins with an upbeat rhythm followed by three notes... which echo later after the words “Be kind” in the chorus. What better message for times like these, even as we interact behind masks?"
Rev. Courtney Pace, Ph.D., Interview
"Opposing systemic racism, sexism, and classism are moral issues, and it is appropriate and good for people of faith to participate in liberation movements. It is also appropriate and good for people of faith to share their concerns about contemporary moral issues within their communities of faith."
Christian Feminism in the News
September 5, 2019
As active readers of the Christian Feminism Today website the majority of us wouldn't be surprised to find out that feminists can...
Pride Month Interviews with LGBTQ+ Clergy
"Pride is a time when I actively work to amplify the perspectives of my LGBTQ kin loudest because lack of access, lack of resources, and systemic harm still persist today."
Rachel Held Evans — Reaching Across Generations
Rachel Held Evans "had doubts and questions that many in that religious subculture appeared not to think about or wouldn’t admit because of where such thinking might lead and how others would regard them."
An Interview with Ashley Easter
"... forgiveness is more about getting to a place where the abuse no longer controls your life. Pastors and church leaders often advise to 'forgive and forget.' You can never forget. Being a Christian doesn’t give you selective amnesia; you never forget. "
An Interview with Tara J. Hannah
“I work in the medical field and I teach yoga. This book was something that I felt called to do; actually, I couldn't sleep if I didn't do it. I knew I couldn’t get that kind of information and not share it with the world.”
Remembering the Work of Rachel Held Evans
May 7, 2019
Like all Christian feminists across the globe, CFT members mourn the passing of author and speaker Rachel Held Evans, who died on...
An Interview with Susan Cottrell
“When you walk in love—and that includes self-love, which we don’t do as well as we need to—when you walk in love, then you are an open place for people to be with you.”
Why Religion?: A Personal Story
"Why Religion?" should be of interest to people who are ready to give up on religion, wonder if, or why, religion matters, or, due to changing life experiences, seek new pathways, processes, or interpretations to sustain or renew their spiritual and religious practice.
An Interview with Letha Dawson Scanzoni
I think God doesn't waste, and the church shouldn’t be wasting talent and blessing. If a woman has an ability to preach or teach and the Holy Spirit has given her a gift for that and yet the church leaders say, “No, no, you can't use that,” that’s ridiculous!
An Interview with Cindy Wang Brandt
I don't feel like people give parents enough credit and an important enough of a role. Parents are critical to every social justice movement, because they have kids and children are radical, radical hope.
An Interview with Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D.
Some people would like it to be the case that all of the horror of individual specific biblical passages disappears if you just translate them well enough, or interpret them well enough, or use the right hermeneutics. But sometimes the text is itself horrifying. And that doesn't go away with anybody's culturally-cued hermeneutic.
Outside the Lines: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith
Instead of regarding friendship as superficial and unimportant compared to marriage, we might find that the sharing of values which friendship develops provides a far stronger basis for loving one fellow human being than the marital promise to “leave all others” (p. 129).
What to Do with All Those Purity Rings?
December 1, 2018
Wondering what can be done with that purity ring just lying there in the drawer after your feminist awakening?
The always shy and retiring pastor, Nadia...
Mourning the Loss of Dr. Katie Cannon, Womanist Theologian
August 17, 2018
"Dr. Cannon was a foundational voice in womanist theology, which seeks to escape the white- and male-centered views of religion and ethics...
Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith
Out of Sorts is not only a deeper exploration of Sarah Bessey’s life, struggles, and joys but, at times, is also a journey into the spiritual angst of those of us who feel deeply about our families, communities, and, like Sarah, a closer relationship with Jesus.
Building Bridges: Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Friends
And claw her way up, hand-in-hand with others, is exactly what Letha Dawson Scanzoni has done, empowered by her expansive love of neighbor and by her enduring love for the One who forever sets the prisoners free.
She Flies On: A White Southern Christian Debutante Wakes Up
Carter Heyward uses the brilliant tactic of discussing Trinitarian language to illustrate the effects of patriarchy on one individual female life and collective humanity. God is defined throughout as “the Spirit moving within us with an impulse to connect.”
Interview with Author Monica Coleman
May 29, 2017
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and here on the Link of the Day blog we are featuring relevant content.
Monica Coleman is...
2017 #GCNConf Rev. Janet Edwards Interview, Part 3
There are lots of reasons for women to leave parish ministry, I’d say. Complicated family circumstances and fewer openings because of the implosion of the American church experienced first in the mainline but followed now by the evangelical church, as well, to name two. The bias that blights women’s service is one among them, in my experience.
2017 #GCNConf Rev. Janet Edwards Interview, Part 2
... the PC(USA) cannot confess sin against LGBTQ people with any integrity. First, this action would not include those Presbyterians who do not feel that they are sinning when they judge the LGBTQ person. Second, people with these judgments are still hurting LGBTQ people in the PC(USA). We are not of one mind in the PC(USA).
2017 #GCNConf Rev. Janet Edwards Interview, Part 1
My tradition is Reformed, always being Reformed (which is why we tend to protest what is traditional). Coming to a more expansive understanding of marriage is our generation’s experience of reforming our grasp of God and God’s will for us.
Joan Chittister: Her Journey from Certainty to Faith
This book serves as a useful introduction to an important spiritual figure. It also works to deepen her readers’ perspectives on her life, and to whet the appetite for seeing how the octogenarian feminist religious leader and her cohort continue to shape the monastic tradition in postmodern relief.
2016 #GCNConf — “weconnect” Emmy Kegler Interview
I believe the church at its core can also be a place of healing (and it breaks me when it's a place of trauma). We have confession and forgiveness, peacemaking and reconciliation, prayer and offering going back to the earliest days of Christianity. Self-examination and self-giving isn't something we can do without community...
2016 #GCNConf – “weconnect” Featured Speaker Emmy Kegler
She connected deeply to the true good news of Christianity’s two-thousand-year-old story. Over and over, she witnessed both the church’s capacity to wound and to heal, and she grew more convinced that she had to be a part of the transformation and recommunication of God’s love as shown in Jesus.
Joan Chittister—Light and Wisdom
To live as a prophet is what we are called to be, and to do so, this is our handbook. This collection of Sister Joan’s writings is an absolute must to keep on hand as a reminder of what it means to be a follower of Christ and a faithful and honest part of the church in our criticisms and our supports.
Feminist Faith-Based Social Justice
Backlash is a subtle thing. It can result in even the bravest of us stepping back from what we know to be right because the cost is so high—the loss of a job, perhaps, because of principles, or some dreaded implication for our children, who can become pawns and/or casualties in social justice skirmishes.
Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint
She wrote this book for people like me, the unchurched, those who are too damaged, scarred, scared or pissed to return to a pew — people who are not traditionally religious, who, as she says, maybe listen to “This American Life,” who have more education than money, who for all our preciousness still want some kind of transcendent moment in our lives.
Rachel Held Evans and The Nines
Strong female leaders of faith are making great, great strides. At this point, we need more male leaders to act in concert with our efforts. Perhaps after so few women accepted Rhoades’ invitation, he should have done as some have suggested—cancelled this year’s event and said, “we can’t go forward without a stronger, more representative line up.”
Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women
Iif you spend time looking at what Sarah is doing with all of her personal expression, not just in her book, you'll find that she is managing to not only portray the kindness, compassion, and love of her Jesus in the world, but also create a virtual community of people united around that concept.
Wild Goose Festival 2013 – Teresa B. Pasquale
Teresa's book was excellent. It was one of those books where I kept highlighting passages in the text because difficult concepts were so well illuminated. It's a casual distillation of a type of spiritual journey that is almost always portrayed with needless drama, and the simplicity makes it all the more powerful.
Jann Aldredge-Clanton Interview
In Changing Church I tried to reflect not only racial and ethnic diversity, but also diversity in sexual orientation and Christian denominations. To pursue their calling some of these ministers have overcome obstacles not only of sexism but also of racism and/or heterosexism.
A People’s History of Christianity
Providing a nuanced work, including persons (often women) usually overlooked and dismissed, Bass brings to light the ways in which these previously disregarded people were important shapers of Christian history and tradition.
Engaging the Bible: Critical Readings from Contemporary Women
The purpose shared by the authors and editors of this volume is to “illustrate how we can better equip ourselves, our churches, and our communities to raise multicultural consciousness and to broaden and enrich the interpretive strategies by which we bring our own struggles and experiences into dialogue with biblical traditions.”
God the What? What Our Metaphors for God Reveal About Our Beliefs in God
Bringing the examination of God's power and will into the discussion, Bohler discusses how in many life crises and natural disasters, what we perceive about God's power, ability and willingness to control events, and how we perceive God's care for us in that crisis, affects what we pray, how we pray, and whether we feel God answers or even cares.
Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation
I wish I had created a reading group to discuss the book, so that we could work together through the reflection exercises and writing prompts at the end of each chapter. Fiorenza calls this creating the circle--making a space to dance together in the "ekklesia of wo/men," her term for the radical democratic assembly of the daughters of God.
Christianity for the Rest of Us
Although we’re of different generations, Diana and I had similar experiences of attending “Rotary Club”-type mainline churches that left us spiritually unsatisfied in our early years, leading us to turn to evangelicalism on our own as teenagers. There we found a more lively form of Christianity and an exciting emphasis on a personal relationship with Christ.
The Work is Not Done
For all of us who are feminists and claim faith—whether we are 27 or 72— there still remains the most profound work of all: the work of hope. Together, we are called to seize hope and imagine the beauty for which we long.
Kathryn Christian: Mysticism, Music, Marriage, and Ministry
One day I profoundly needed comforting by God, and I needed to be sung a lullaby like a mother and child. So I started strumming around with lullabies in three-quarter time, and then I was thinking of images of God as my Mother, caring for me.
Finding Colleen Fulmer
by Letha Dawson Scanzoni, EEWC Update editor
Known for her social justice/feminist Christian music in the 1980s and early 1990s, Colleen Fulmer seemed to have...
The Life and Ministry of Nancy A. Hardesty
This past spring, EEWC-Christian Feminism Today was deeply saddened by the passing of one of our organization's founders, Dr. Nancy A. Hardesty, who died on April 8, 2011. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years earlier and was 69 years old at the time of her death. We want to share with you some of the highlights of her life and career.
Come to the Table
We live in times that need women and men of spirit to be willing to be changed by the table Christ prepares for us. May you return from this conference, from this event, ready to live into that change — for Jesus’ sake and the sake of all who need the realm of God to be embodied on earth.
Remembering Mary Daly
My personal story points to the internal conflict many biblical feminists might have felt upon the passing of Mary Daly, the blazingly brilliant woman who moved further and further away from our theological territory with each book she published.
Carolyn Bohler: One God, Many Metaphors
She writes, “God is like a Father, a Daddy, Abba Mia, My Daddy, ”but only in the same sense that God is like a Nursing Mother or Shepherd or a nonparental image such as Intimate Friend, or Guide or Rock or Light. “
Great Women in Church History
Central to all of these women's lives was their love for God, their devotion to Christ, and their compassion for others. Love. Christ commanded that we love God with all our heart. These women did so, often with an intensity and selflessness that affronts us the the post-Freudian, narcissistic world in which we live.
In Memory: Margo Goldsmith, June 3, 1919 – August 24, 2010
Throughout her life, Margo Goldsmith served as a role model in demonstrating what women can achieve and how they can use their achievements to make the world a better place.
Martha Ann Kirk, Th.D.-Embodying Christ to the World
“Peace is built as men and women learn to have historical perspectives. Uncovering and recovering women’s stories can contribute to a more egalitarian, less domineering world. Stories of ancient women travelers give people today courage to travel. Women’s history is as important for men as for women”
My Fifty Year Journey with Women and Ministry…
The Pauline (as one of my students once said: “I have had enough of Paul; I want to meet Pauline!”) vision of Galatians 3:28— the text used in the ordination sermon of Antoinette Brown in 1853, the first woman ordained in the USA in a recognized denomination—continues to be a critical beacon light of and for the gospel.
Clarina Nichols: Godly Woman – Revolutionary Voice
While some of the other women's rights leaders gave up on organized religion, Nichols did not, for she knew that many women would not support women's rights if they thought the Bible said otherwise.
The Singer and the Song: An Autobiography of the Spirit
But even as I finished the book, I sensed I was only touching the edges of it — the tassels on her magic carpet. MT's largeness of heart and ability to see and relate to Mystery goes beyond anything I can really apprehend. Yes, I understand something of the world of the Spirit, but I am too rational, too linear, too controlled to dive in with M.T.'s abandon.
An Altar in the World
Taylor has an extraordinary gift of sharing with readers ways of encountering the Divine in the most ordinary events of our daily life—a walk in the park, recycling our clutter, getting lost by turning off the GPS and taking a different route home, having a short chat with the cashier at the grocery, really observing a dog, a cat, a butterfly.
A Profile of Writer Susan Campbell
“I think today’s girls are given a great advantage for understanding the sky’s the limit,” she says. “Now if we could only tailor our appetites in the media to reflect more on the beauty of the girl inside, rather than the surface nonsense that gets in the way….”
Keepsake — Women’s Voices Blending in Song
This is singable, listenable hymnody that would be appropriate in traditional or contemporary worship services as much as in women's spirituality gatherings. The language and images are inclusive; the melodies are delightful, and the harmonies rich.
The Message of EWC’s 1980 Saratoga Conference: Love + Justice = Reconciliation
Attenders of EWC's fourth plenary conference, "Women and the Ministry of Reconciliation," heard a strong, repeated challenge to demonstrate their Christian faith by working for justice in a world filled with injustices.
Latest Posts on CFT
Delilah in Gaza
March 2023 Poetry Selection
You have heard of Samson and the wreckage of pillars.
Listen to me. Samson had the strength of a giant and the soul of a brute...
You have heard of Samson and the wreckage of pillars.
Listen to me. Samson had the strength of a giant and the soul of a brute...
