Welcome to the Winter-Early Spring, 2009 edition of Web Explorations for Christian Feminists. Here you’ll find links to a new list of websites and web pages that I’ve found, with my comments about each one.  If you're like me, you like to keep informed on many different topics, so the links I've listed call attention to a wide variety of subjects—subjects that I think we, as Christian feminists, along with our sisters and brothers of other faiths, will want to learn more about.  But please keep in mind that the links in Web Explorations take you to sites outside eewc.com, and thus EEWC can’t be responsible for any content they may display. Nor does the inclusion of a link mean that a particular website or article necessarily represents the views of EEWC. The links simply take you to a number of the sites I’ve discovered recently and think you’ll find worth visiting, too. Probably some of the topics will be of greater personal interest to you than other sites, but take some time to scroll through the list, and just click on those that interest you most. I hope you’ll return to visit some of the others later.

Some articles and websites that have grabbed my attention

"Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired"
"Religious texts can now be searched, hyper-linked, downloaded, spliced, copied, truncated, e-mailed, text-messaged, recited with video accompaniment, chanted on iPod, and piped from watches into earplugs," writes religion professor Rachel Wagner as she explores the implications of this phenomenon.
—From Religion Dispatches.

Feminist Theologian Defies the Vatican Agenda
This article will be of special interest to members of EEWC who appreciated feminist theologian Rosemary Ruether's speech at our 2004 EEWC Conference in Claremont, California.  In the summer of  2008, after the Catholic University of San Diego withdrew its invitation to Rosemary Ruether to teach a semester of ecological theology after a conservative group protested, Dr.Ruether expressed concern about the loss of intellectual freedom in Catholic universities.   Journalist Rosemary Ganley, reviewing Ruether's new book, Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican, says, "Rosemary Ruether's response to small-mindedness is to write another bestselling book."  Writes Ganley: "In just 142 pages, six chapters, with not a wasted word, Ruether lays out once again her critique of ecclesial patriarchy as life-denying and institution-killing."  
—From Religion Dispatches.

Women's gains and losses in 2008.

This end-of-the-year summary from Women's e-News shows what has been happening with regard to laws, customs, and women around the world.

If you ever find yourself thinking that our work as feminists is finished, that we're in a post-feminist time, and that nothing more needs to be done to raise consciousness and protect girls and women, read these stories about the sexual harassment of a kindergartner (from Women's E-News) and the beginnings of overturning unjust practices of denying women equal pay for equal work and how much work remains to be done.
—From The American Prospect

How religious laws and traditions affect both Muslim and Christian Women.
In Syria and Jordon, Christian and Muslim women are finding they have much in common in the way religious laws and customs are affecting their lives.
—From Women's e-News

Religion Link
This website provides resources for journalists "when they encounter religion in stories about government, politics, education, social services, science and other areas of public life." Writers may find the online style book especially helpful.  General readers may enjoy checking over the website, too.

Women's Liberation through Submission: An Evangelical Anti-Feminism Is Born
Kathryn Joyce, author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement  (Beacon, 2009), writes about the True Woman Conference and the "True Woman Manifesto." 
—From Religion Dispatches

How Sarah Palin helped feminism
Writing in The Nation, Katha Pollitt lists four ways Sarah Palin was good for feminism.  In a similar vein, Caryl Rivers, a commentator for Women's e-news, shows how the examples of both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin on the 2008 presidential campaign helped spread a "change virus" with regard to women's roles. And sociologist Abby Scher, writing in AlterNet suggests that younger conservative women who follow a version of "Sarah Palin Feminism" appear to be aiming to "open a new front in the culture wars." They are expanding the definition of traditional woman to include "free-market feminists" (like Palin) in contrast to both the conventional "biblical womanhood" models (which insist a woman's place is in the home, not the work force) and the feminist movement (with its emphasis on the full development and exercise of women's talents and the promotion of total equality between women and men, not only through individual efforts but also through education, governmental actions, and just laws.

Women, men, and contrasting attitudes and actions in the workforce
Tana Ganeva, writing for AlterNet, highlights data from studies showing how the behavior of men and women differs on the job.

Role Reversal after economic downturn
In some families, lay-offs have forced primary-breadwinner husbands to become stay-at-home dads, while their wives become the sole income providers.  Traditional gender-role socialization may make the adjustment difficult for some couples.
—From Women's eNews

"Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome: Christian Women and Domestic Violence."

Is spousal abuse ever a reason for divorce?  Some biblical literalists think not.

A report by Kathryn Joyce for Religion Dispatches.  For further commentary on a recent statement by a Saddleback Church teaching pastor about there only being two biblical reasons for divorce (and abuse is not one of them), see this essay by Rev. Marie Fortune , one of the foremost authorities on dealing with domestic and sexual violence.  See also "My abusive 'Christian' Marriage," an account in Today's Christian Woman by a wife who was not persuaded that God wants women to suffer physical and emotional violence.

"Cell Phones and Congo's war against women"

You may be surprised to learn how the two are connected.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff, who has often written about the despicable industry of sex trafficking around the world, asks, "If This Isn't Slavery, What Is?"  

In a related article, he reports on the way young women in some countries are being kidnapped and horribly tortured as sex slaves.  See his article, "The Evil Behind the Smiles."

Women and Islam: Pushes and Pulls from All Directions
The Women's eNews series on "how Muslim women manage customs, religious practices and women's rights."  

New hope for the world's women
Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen reflects on a speech Hillary Clinton gave at the 1995 UN Conference on Women, held in Beijing, and the hope the new administration offers the world's women today.

"Sasha and Malia Enhance the Horizon for World's Girls"
Writing for Women's e-News, Rita Sharma says, "As a cocoa-complexioned girl who grew up in ethnically diverse Arizona, I never imagined anyone who looked like me would have sleepovers in the Lincoln bedroom. It was never said out loud, but always understood, that perhaps someday a woman would be in the White House, but not a president (with a family) of color."

"Why Churches Fear Gay Marriage "
This is an excellent analysis by Richard Rodriguez, whose commentaries are often featured on the PBS NewsHour.  In this article from Salon, Rodriguez says anxieties about same-sex marriage are really not so much about homosexuality as they are about fears of heterosexual family breakdown and about the changing roles of women.

What one church is doing about marriage equality
Connie Schultz,who writes for The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), is one of my favorite newspaper columnists. In this article, she shares her feelings about a recent decision made by the church where she and her husband were married five years ago.  The church has now resolved to discontinue signing state marriage licenses until Ohio permits gays to marry, too.

Bullteproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians   In explaining why she wrote a book with this title, author Candace Chellow-Hodge writes, "I heard from so many LGBT readers that they didn’t know how to respond to people who told them they couldn’t be both LGBT and Christian. I wanted to find a way to help them respond without becoming angry or becoming depressed by all the opposition around them." Candace Chellow-Hodge is also the founder of Whosoever, an online magazine for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians.
—From Religion Dispatches

Lesbian sues hospital after being denied access to her dying partner
In a nightmare scenario feared by many same-sex couples, a 39-year old lesbian, vacationing with her partner and their adopted children, had a sudden heart attack while their cruise ship was docked in Florida.  In spite of the legal documents the partner carried, including a properly drawn-up medical power of attorney, the partner was not allowed to visit her dying loved one because the hospital permitted only visits from "spouses and immediate family," and the hospital considered the women's relationship to be neither.
—From the Miami Herald

Need something explained?
If something you read in the news triggers a question in your mind, check out Slate's "Explainer."   You might find just the answer you're seeking. For example, if you read about the recent birth of octuplets and wondered how many babies can fit inside a woman, the Explainer, in consultation with experts, provides the answer.  Sometimes the questions are religious, for example,how common was the name, Jesus, in the first century?

And speaking of questions—after reading that the mother of the octuplets said she plans to breastfeed all of the babies, New York Times writer Lisa Belkin asks, How can a woman breastfeed octuplets?   Some interesting logistics were provided by a certified lactation counselor.

Blogs by some of our own EEWC members, writers, and friends:

Susan Campbell's blog, Dating Jesus, is written in connection with her new book by the same title. It's a place where Susan shares thoughts—some serious, some humorous, some rather offbeat—on a variety of topics, with Susan's unique personality always shining through. Susan also writes another blog in connection with her work as a columnist for the Hartford Courant, the nation's oldest continuously published newspaper.

The theme of Anne Eggebroten's blog, Martha y Maria: Women's Lives, Women's Rights, is summed up in its subtitle.  Check out her two other blogs, too. Doing Dementia is an honest, from-the-heart journal of Anne's days of caring for her aging mother from the time her mother was diagnosed with a form of dementia until her death—and even afterward.  Anyone who has cared for an aging loved one will appreciate this blog.  Anne's third blog, Beach Walking in Santa Monica provides stunning photographs and shared thoughts from Anne's heart as she walks and jogs on the beaches near her California home.

Marie Fortune's blog
Here you'll find thoughtful analysis about what is happening in our world, particularly in relation to domestic violence and violence against women, written by the founder of FaithTrust Institute, a multi-faith training and educational organization, formerly called the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence.

Kimberly George's blogs.
In addition to coauthoring 72-27 with me (a part of this EEWC website), Kimberly writes two other blogs: Faith and Gender: A Necessary Conversation and Shaft of Sunlight .

"Pastor Becky" (Becky Kiser) calls her blog, The Other Day in the Garden and offers spiritual and ecological insights gained through working in the community garden she started in Norfolk, Virginia.

Online Audio and video

On this EEWC website, we recently featured three Christian Feminism Today articles by Anne Eggebroten and Sharon Gallagher about Frank Schaeffer's 2008 book, Crazy for God.  Readers may want to follow up their reading of those articles by listening to an interview with Frank Schaeffer conducted by Terry Gross on National Public Radio's Fresh Air program. 

Program on Thomas Merton
This November 2008 program, produced by PBS's Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly, commemorates the 40th anniversary of the death of Thomas Merton, the Trappist Monk whose writings on spirituality have inspired so many.   Be sure to note the sidebar on the Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly website, with suggested additional reading and online resources for further exploration of Merton's life and writings.

Interracial Churches
Why churches are not more diverse and what some churches are doing to change things. Another feature from the PBS Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly program.

"Barbie Turns Fifty"
Feminists have had a lot to say about Barbie dolls.  Listen to this National Public Radio On Point broadcast, as host Tom Ashbrook explores the story behind the Barbie phenomenon with Robin Gerber, author of  the 2009 book, Barbie and Ruth: The  Story of the World’s Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her.

Movies and DVD Suggestions

Here are some films I think you'll find worth viewing.  Some are still being shown exclusively in theaters, and some are already on DVD.  Some are recent and some have been around for a few years. They are the kinds of films that you'll want to see with friends and then discuss together afterwards.  Although not all are overtly "religious" (in the usual way that word is used), all of them have something important to say to us and are likely to make us ponder spiritual issues—especially if they are watched through the eyes of both our faith and our feminism.  The links will take you to the official pages and/or trailers for each of them, and I've provided my personal commentary on each one.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
This story shows the horrors of the Holocaust from the perspective of small children, who, caught up in the unspeakable circumstances generated by Nazi hatred in the name of country loyalty, try to build a friendship across the barbed wire.  The film is gripping, yet it is not an easy one to watch, and it will tear your heart out and haunt you long afterward.  In addition to watching the trailer, I suggest you read Roger Ebert's review from the Chicago Sun-Times, which not only discusses the direct and powerful message of the film itself and the incomprehensible matter-of-fact, business-as-usual way the Nazis went about their gruesome business of destroying human lives without a shred of conscience, but also relates it to evils perpetuated today.  Ebert includes not only the terrible destruction of human lives through genocides but also evil attitudes that beget evil practices in our own country, such as Enron and the Wall Street Crash, which have brought about losses of jobs, pensions, homes, life savings, health care, and the destruction of lives through greed and deceptive practices. (Had he been writing in recent weeks, he would have added the Madoff Ponzi scheme and similar ones to his list.)  "Whenever loyalty to the enterprise becomes more important than simple morality, you will find evil functioning smoothly," writes Ebert.

Yesterday
Award-winning film from South Africa.  A story of love, courage, and friendship, centered around a devoted mother, who, though terminally ill with AIDS, is determined to stay alive long enough to provide for her young daughter and make sure the girl will be cared for against incredible odds.  This mother's loving dedication to her family, including the husband who had mistreated her, is nothing short of amazing.

Frozen River
Melissa Leo was nominated for "best actress in a leading role" for her portrayal in this film.  She plays a low-wage working mother living in a trailer who is desperately struggling to provide for her two children after her gambling-addicted husband has deserted the family. You will feel you're right there with this mother as she copes with economic hardship, trying to find a better life for her sons while constantly running up against obstacles.  And you'll come to understand how this strapped-for-cash mother and a young Mohawk woman formed an unlikely friendship and became involved in smuggling illegal immigrants across the border between Canada and New York. Several critics have pointed out how seldom we see such a realistic and sympathetic movie portrayal of people living at or near the poverty line and courageously trying to survive, while facing enormous challenges in a largely uncaring world.

Doubt
Based on a highly praised stage play about events at a Roman Catholic boys' school, this film raises questions about faith and doubt and certainty, asking how we can be sure that what we think is actually true or is only what we imagine to be true. Four of the film's actors have been nominated for Academy Awards for their outstanding performances in this film.

Look Both Ways
This is a moving, funny, quirky, and yet at the same time serious film from Australia about a serious subject—death.  Again I want to quote Roger Ebert (who, by now, you know is one of my favorite movie reviewers): "I watched the movie in a kind of fascination," says Ebert. "It is poetic and unforgiving, romantic and stark. Death is the subject we edge around. If it is on the sidewalk, we step into the street. If it is on the telephone, we hang up. We don't open its letters. To know that we will die is such a final and unanswerable rebuke. And yet without death, we'd all be bored out of our minds . . . ."    The film tells several intersecting stories at the same time, with brief, sudden animation scenes flashing before our eyes to show the thoughts (usually frightening ones from an overactive imagination) occurring in the main character's mind.  I watched the DVD twice to get the full impact.  There is one brief reference to God and some other comments implying an attitude of fatalism, but at the same time, the film affirms and celebrates life.  Reading about a tragic train accident, watching a single death in another accident, dealing with a parent's death, hearing a diagnosis of testicular cancer—all give the characters pause and make the audience think as well.  In an ironic twist, Sarah Watt, the writer and director of Look Both Ways was herself diagnosed with breast cancer while working on the film and chose at first to keep it secret so that she could finish the film without interruption.

Arranged
This independently produced movie shows us that "friendship has no religion."  It's the story of two women, one Orthodox Jewish and the other a Muslim, who teach in the same school and find how much they have in common—especially in the way both of their families are working to find them husbands so that they can enter into arranged marriages, which is not something either of them wants!

Disfigured—a movie about women and weight
Another independent film, this one focusing on our society's obsession with weight and the tendency to confuse human worth with the numbers on a scale.  It is a sympathetic portrayal of the pain caused by the prejudice displayed toward overweight people. It is also the story of an unusual friendship between two women that began when a lonely anorexic tried to join a fat acceptance group and was told she didn't belong—even though in her mind, she was "fat" and trying to learn to accept herself. The film is sensitive to the feelings of those whose large body size often means they are passed over for jobs, insulted and and ridiculed in the streets, and harassed by total strangers who peer disapprovingly into their supermarket shopping carts, thinking they have the right to reach in and take out a high calorie item, declaring, "You don't need that."  The film doesn't attempt to provide all the answers, and it does not ignore health concerns.  But both the anorexic woman and the plus-size woman are dealing with two sides of the same coin.    In society's eyes, there is a certain desirable body shape, achieved by only a few.  Others are considered to have the wrong figure, hence the title—DIS-figured.  There are extra features with the DVD, including a conversation with counselors who work with weight issues and who are honest in their assessment of various parts of the film. The director asserts that, being neither a woman nor a person with an eating disorder, he produced the film simply because he cares about the universality of "our complicated relationships to our own bodies."   He says he became aware of the issues discussed in his film through the experiences of his wife whom he described as "beautiful, graceful, stylish, and—according to popular culture—fat."  And he has seen the way she has been treated at different sizes: "ashamed to go to an exercise class at a size 22, accepted among dancers at a size 16, and rejected in boutiques at size 12."  It is a film designed to elicit honest, open conversation about the struggles we all—especially women—have over body image.

Milk
This film is about social justice.  It tells the story of Harvey Milk, who served on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors and was America's first openly gay public official.  Milk was dedicated to bringing to an end the unjust treatment and harassment of gay and lesbian people, insisting that all people were created equal and deserving of full civil rights as part of what America is all about.  The film has been nominated for numerous Academy Awards, including the outstanding acting of Sean Penn in the role of Harvey Milk.  Chicago Sun-Times reviewer Roger Ebert  writes that Sean Penn "never tries to show Harvey Milk as a hero, and never needs to. . . . Milk was the right person in the right place at the right time, and he rose to the occasion. So was Rosa Parks. Sometimes, at a precise moment in history, all it takes is for one person to stand up. Or sit down."

As your Web Explorations guide, I want to ask your indulgence as I digress here and take the liberty of inserting a personal note.  I had the privilege of meeting Harvey Milk just five months before he and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated in November, 1978. So watching this movie had a special impact on me.  The times portrayed in the movie were times of great turmoil, with singer Anita Bryant mobilizing evangelical Christians to deny rights to gay and lesbian people in Florida and elsewhere. And John Briggs, also under the banner of born-again Christianity, had succeeded in getting Proposition 6 on the 1978 California ballot. This was an amendment intended to ban all gay and lesbian persons (most of whom were closeted at the time) from teaching in public schools.

It was such a time of fear, anger, and unrest—and so much pain was being inflicted on homosexual persons in the name of Christianity. And somehow I ended up in the midst of it, even though in some ways I, as an evangelical Christian wife and mother from Indiana who wrote books on marriage and family issues, probably seemed a most unlikely person to become involved in these hotly debated gay rights controversies of the mid 1970s. By 1978, the controversies had heated to a boil.   It was that year that I met Harvey Milk.  Here's how it happened.

In April, 1978, Harper & Row (now HarperCollins) had published a book that Dr. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott and I had coauthored, titled, Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? Another Christian View.  (The 1994 revised edition, has a new tag line after the question that makes up the title—Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? A Positive Christian Response.)  The preface of the 1994 edition tells the story of how Virginia and I came to write this book in the first place.  Our book was based on the the point made by Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan, which Jesus told in response to the question, "Who is my neighbor?"  We wanted to emphasize that Scripture teaches that everyone is our neighbor, and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Denying gay and lesbian people their civil rights was not showing neighbor-love.

In June 1978, Virginia and I were both on the program of the national conference of the Evangelical Women's Caucus (EWC, before the second E for Ecumenical was added to the name and it became EEWC).  The conference was held that year in Pasadena, California . After the conference ended, Harper & Row had arranged for us to fly from Pasadena to San Francisco for a special press conference and luncheon at the St Francis Hotel to launch our book by bringing together members of the press, the gay community, and the religious community to meet us, the authors.  Among the invited guests who attended were Harvey Milk and also an assistant of Mayor Moscone, whom George Moscone had sent in his place since the mayor was unable to attend personally. Clayton Carlson, the publisher of Harper & Row's San Francisco division gave a speech in which he said he hoped this gathering would be "a forum for open discussion between those who take their religion seriously—be they gay or straight—and members of the gay community—some of whom may see religion as the scourge and others who may see religion as a potential liberating force."

He went on to say that bringing about dialogue would not be easy. "The times and recent events are pressing upon us the view that the two camps are of necessity natural enemies, with true dialogue an impossibility. The book which we are launching this afternoon denies that such is the case."  [The events he was referring to were the events now shown on the screen 30 years later in the movie Milk—some of which were taking place the very week Virginia and I were there.]  Clayton Carlson told the audience that he was aware the view expressed in our book was not a popular one. "In publishing lingo," he said that day in 1978, "this book is a counter-market publication," especially since he had just learned that "some 16 different titles are currently being published on the topic of evangelical Christianity and homosexuality—with the Scanzoni and Mollenkott volume being the only one which takes a positive stand."  He said the smart money would have been "to let each of the two worlds go their own way and give each of the markets what they want to hear." Instead, he said, Harper & Row was joining with us authors "in giving a resounding 'NO'" to that idea.  Rather than a standoff between the gay community and the religious community, he said it was "time for a word of healing and informed understanding."

Clayton Carlson continued with these powerful words:

"To use the Bible as an instrument of brutality rather than as an expression of God's grace and his love cannot go unchallenged, especially by those who take the Bible most seriously. If one Christian gay person, because of this book, experiences a new sense of self respect and self acceptance, a sense of his or her acceptability in the eyes of God, then the book will have been worth publishing.  If one Christian straight gains a new perspective, a fading of old prejudices based on misinformation, and a stronger sense of human solidarity under God, then the book is not in vain.  We are frankly proud to be the publisher of Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?" (June 20, 1978)

I think that's a good note on which to end this edition of "Web Explorations." I hope you've enjoyed exploring some of these links and will come back again to explore other links at a later time. Until then, happy surfing!

Your Web Explorations Guide
Letha Dawson Scanzoni

© 2009 Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus