Religion

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 5

Posted onThursday 4 July 2013Wednesday 3 July 2013

So, a quick concluding bit, since I wrote part 4 yesterday while struggling with my brain overheating, in the last hour before the blog was supposed to update — and I’m not sure I was as clear as I could have been… and also because this is the 4th of July, and I feel the…

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 4

Posted onWednesday 3 July 2013Thursday 4 July 2013

Okay, so now we know who doesn’t fit into Scandinavian society: those (usually) men who are heavily invested in patriarchal hierarchies. However, we also know similar types of men did very poorly when Eastern Europe broke away from the Communist bloc — yet Europe as a whole is certainly not dispensing with patriarchy. So obviously…

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 3

Posted onTuesday 2 July 2013Monday 1 July 2013

What Is Patriarchy? In yesterday’s post I stated that the growing lack of interest in organized, patriarchal religion in Scandinavia is not some simple, casual social cause-and-effect, but rather the unplanned byproduct of the social elimination of patriarchy. This may sound startling, but I have a number of excellent reasons for this statement. First, though,…

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 2

Posted onMonday 1 July 2013Sunday 30 June 2013

Zuckerman writes a fascinating book with a great deal of startling information in it, and I greatly enjoyed reading it. However, after pondering the book for some time, I believe the author has missed the true revelation which his data offers. He considers himself a nonbeliever/agnostic (7-8), and so this Scandinavian lack of religiosity appears…

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 1

Posted onFriday 28 June 2013Saturday 29 June 2013

(all the numbers in brackets within this posting are citations which reference the stated page numbers within the book Society Without God by Phil Zuckerman) A common trope amongst the devout is that morality is derived from religion, and therefore a society lacking strong religious beliefs would be an utterly immoral, un-free, irrational society which…

Two fascinating examples of women’s resistance to oppression

Posted onSaturday 15 June 2013Monday 10 June 2013

An excellent historical example of increasing patriarchal domination of women, and their ensuing resistance, is feminist historian and professor Ulrike Strasser’s “Bones of Contention: Catholic Nuns Resist their Enclosure.” The Pütrich nuns of Munich were established in the 13th century. Like all nuns at that time, they were not cloistered and therefore served extensively in…

The pain behind Fire Eyes

Posted onFriday 14 June 2013Monday 10 June 2013

Trigger warning: this documentary review covers female genital mutilation. Don’t read further if you are easily squicked, please. ~ * ~ *~ *~ *~ * ~ We see activism as it happens in Soraya Miré’s short 1994 documentary film Fire Eyes. As a victim of the practice who has chosen to become a survivor, her…

To Tend and Befriend, part 1

Posted onFriday 7 June 2013Friday 7 June 2013

It’s summertime for me now, and I’m gleefully starting my readings for Fall semester, which doesn’t start for another three or so months — this time I won’t get caught short on time! I’m going to try reading all the books that really interest me first, so I have plenty of time to ponder them….

Women & World Religions comps booklist

Posted onThursday 6 June 2013Tuesday 10 September 2013

Later edit: This bibliography has been seriously revised and updated due to professorial input. Check out the new version here. There! That’s all the reviews of all the books on my booklist for last semester’s Ecofeminism comps class. I figured posting the original versions, before they were edited down to fit into the comps…

Two by Carol Christ & one by Susan Sered

Posted onSaturday 1 June 2013Wednesday 29 May 2013

In 1998, ecofeminist thealogian Carol P. Christ’s Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality presents a living and embodied, woman-centered thealogy of Goddess based equally in philosophical reflection, academic historical research, and personal experience. Christ, one of feminist spirituality’s founding mothers, espouses deliberately eschewing modern society’s dependence on classical dualism, asserting that Goddess…