Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion articles from September 2008

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion archives from September 2008

Editors' introduction.(Editorial)
September 22, 2008... Together with WATER, the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc., the sponsoring organization of this journal, held its first Summer Forum in June 2008. Thirty-five young feminist scholars, graduate...

Womenpriests: radical change or more of the same?(Essay)
September 22, 2008... This article is a critical examination of the Roman Catholic womenpriest movement in the United States. For the article, Moon conducted telephone interviews in 2006 with seven ordained womenpriests and two ordained womendeacons in order to...

In a Different Voice: Hymn 10.(Lyrics)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... In a Different Voice Hymn 10 Her heart was a small bird trembling, though she smelled of good mud and the back leg of the fox. (1) Her locks: long and plaited like wheat. A hank of hair in the gill of a fish,...

In a Different Voice: Hymn 11.(Poem)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... In a Different Voice Hymn 11 Her sorrow: the roots of it; its wide trunk and leavened branches. Her summer limp, heavy with the weight of blossomed things and torn hides. Her breasts full of milk, running...

In a Different Voice: Hymn 20.(Poem)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... In a Different Voice Hymn 20 Goddess has marked the cliffs and high rocks with her own blood and time will not wash it away: it is as shadow or honey. Her sister rubs the soreness from her with a bit of...

In a Different Voice: Hymn 23.(Poem)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... In a Different Voice Hymn 23 Roses of blood: I am on my moons. Lamb of the season. My body a chalice, a shade of Communion. I am of wheat. I am legion. We abide in His mystical body: He is a...

In a Different Voice: Hymn 25.(Poem)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... In a Different Voice Hymn 25 Morning light. But she is off her root: a broken stem and its bloom (she is of summer limp: the weight of blossoms or teats or the sweat of mushrooms). Dusk. She is...

The Moon from the Porch.(Poem)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... The Moon from the Porch Moon has dusks for walls, Octobers days for a floor, crickets for rooms, windy halls. Only one night is her door. When I was thirteen she found me, spiraled into my blood like a hive. ...

Why Orpah returned home and Ruth stayed.(In a Different Voice)(Poem)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... Return home my daughters--journey among gods and mothers of your own. Do not wait for life to happen--for me to have a boy child. You've seen all there is to see here. When she says Go, she means leave her I honor her desire to ...

No-self and the calling given to anyone: the challenge of mysticism.(Roundtable Discussion: MYSTICISM AND FEMINIST SPIRITUALITY)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... One morning as I was making the bed, a sheet of paper fell from the books stacked near my pillow. Picking it up, I read: All the voices of the wood called "Muriel!" but it was soon solved; it was nothing, it was not for me. The...

Embodied embedded mysticism: affirming the self and others in a radically interdependent world.(Roundtable Discussion: Mysticism and Feminist Spirituality)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... I have had a mystical relationship with nature for as long as I can remember. I was brought from the hospital to my grandmother's home and garden that backed onto the Los Angeles County Arboretum. My earliest memory includes peacocks screeching...

Liberating life.(Roundtable Discussion: Mysticism and Feminist Spirituality)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... In this essay, Mary Engel shares her fitful, gradual discovery "that the life of a mystic [is] a liberating life" (152), a truly human way of living, that repudiates false humility, self-abnegation, and isolation. Indeed, Engel charts for us...

Authoring a multiplicity of selves and no-self.(Roundtable Discussion: Mysticism and Feminist Spirituality)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... I deeply appreciate this opportunity to read Mary Engel's provocative, evocative, and honest essay. I hope I can respond in kind: honestly with a mixture of personal and intellectual self-reflexivity. The education I received in North America...

The call, community, and class: feminist frustrations with the language of no-self.(Roundtable Discussion: Mysticism and Feminist Spirituality)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... In this essay, Mary Engel has taken up what I believe to be one of the most difficult tasks in the academic study of religion in her attempt to explain exactly what mystics are talking about when they utilize the language of no-self as they try...

On mysticism, Latinas/os, and the journey: a reflection in conversation with Mary Engel.(Roundtable Discussion: Mysticism and Feminist Spirituality)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... Perhaps for many readers, even most, the question of "no-self" and "the calling" strikes a discordant yet vital cord. Surely, as Susan Ross has argued, "feminist theology's agent-oriented approach could benefit from greater attention to...

Beyond the confines of duality: insights from the spiritual quest of a Tendai Buddhist woman priest.(Roundtable Discussion: Mysticism and Feminist Spirituality)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... Mary Engel has presented us with a challenge regarding mysticism, and I would like to approach it as a feminist scholar of religion who has studied at an American seminary and now teaches sociology of gender at a Japanese university. The reason...

Living it out: Martin Luther King Jr. revisited: a black power feminist pays homage to the king.(Roundtable Discussion: Mysticism and Feminist Spirituality)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... In this part memoir--part historical reflection on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King jr., Gwendolyn Simmons recounts her association with Dr. King during the 1960s--the heyday of the civil rights and Black Power era--as a college student,...

When the Buddha was a woman: reimagining tradition in the Theravada.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... Buddhist women are reclaiming Buddhist textual traditions as one strategy for improving status and opportunities in their communities. In this article, Derris examines one popular narrative from the Theravadin medieval world almost entirely...

Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible for women: the neoliberal turn in contemporary feminist scholarship.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... In this essay, Esther Fuchs analyzes and critiques the resurgence in the past decade of neoliberal feminist recuperations of the Hebrew Bible. This approach is essentialist, ignores the mediation of patriarchal ideology, tends to reauthorize...

Redeeming Indian "Christian" womanhood? Missionaries, dalits, and agency in colonial India.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... 2008 Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza New Scholar Award Winner This study of dalit Christians in colonial North India suggests that women who converted to Christianity in the region often experienced a contraction of the range of their...

The theological challenge of the Juarez-Chihuahua femicides.(A LIVING CALL)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... In this essay, Luevano initiates a theological reflection on the cases of the approximately 250 missing and 500 murdered women of Juarez-Chihuahua, Mexico. The women are victims of femicide, the murder of women by men. Luevano's main purpose is...

Follow that crown: or, rhetoric, rabbis, and women patrons.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... Although the stream of tradition concerning Rabbi Akiba's wife and her support for her husband does not on the surface resemble serious benefaction, this article reexamines these narratives in light of hints that connect her to...

Walking with Latinas in the struggle for justice: a case study of El Centro Mujeres de la Esperanza.(Organization overview)
September 22, 2008... This article focuses on El Centro Mujeres de la Esperanza (Women's Center of Hope, or CME), a faith-based nongovernmental women's organization serving women living along the U. S.-Mexico border in greater El Paso/Ciudad Juarez. The center has...