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“It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal.” So begins a recent article in the New York Times. According to a new report, more than half of births to women under the age of 30 now occur outside of marriage. Of course, the story is more complicated with birth rates ranging widely by […]
Feminist studies in religion are a hot commodity in the current political turmoil. So-called women’s issues are front and center in the debates. The long settled question of contraception has been snatched from mothballs for conservatives’ purposes. But there is such a dearth of feminist religious voices, so little room in masculinist journalist and clerical […]
In the initial wake of coverage related to the healthcare mandate to cover contraception, media outlets concentrated on “religious communities” opposition to the requirement. From a theological and doctrinal perspective, the only major Christian denomination to oppose use of contraception is the Roman Catholic Church. Other conservative religious leaders chimed in to support what they […]
Making new year’s resolutions and writing them down in my diary was one of the joys I cherished while growing up. I stopped making new year’s resolutions after going through two major surgeries (open heart and brain) in my late twenties because it seemed pointless to make yearly resolutions in the face of what I […]
What does it mean to be a feminist parent? In a JFSR roundtable last fall, a group of feminist scholars in religion addressed this question from a range of perspectives. The complexity of raising a son as a feminist parent was made evident in essays by Judith Plaskow, Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, Fawzia Ahmad, Kate Ott, […]
I have long agonized over how to live out my feminist values with respect to my vocation. Imagine those cartoons with the angel on shoulder and the devil on the other . . . the two arguing sides are not archetypal opposites in my story, though at times they feel that way. On one shoulder […]
On January 8, 1992, former “comfort women,” concerned individuals, and human rights and feminist activists from various organizations held a protest in Seoul, the capital city of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), during the state visit of Japan’s prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa. They demanded the Japanese government’s official apology to victims-survivors for Japan’s military […]
The recent Supreme Court ruling on ministerial exception potentially legalizes all manner of bad behavior on the part of religious institutions whose understanding of “all God’s children” is narrow, particular, and biased. First, by defining “minister” so broadly, the court allows religious institutions to declare any person who works within it’s doors and/or ministries as […]
From June 5 to 14, 2012, Harvard Divinity School will host the Seminar on Debates about Religion and Sexuality. This seminar is for scholars, other writers, religious leaders, and public advocates who are working on a first large project in which they hope to change the terms of current debates around religions and sexuality. For […]
Writing for a blog is just like writing an article, a book, or a dissertation except that it isn’t. The act of putting words on a screen (we used to say putting words on paper) is the same, but there the similarities end. Blogging is a unique approach to communication for which graduate school skills […]