I'm starting to feel kind of lonely out here in cyberspace, with days going by since the last time anyone posted a comment. Where's Viola? Rebecca and Mashadi? Someone from CoCo? It's kind of like being the kid who came to school when all the others were out with the flu. But, "Anonymous" (you and I both know who you are), don't take this as an open invitation.

Yesterday was great-- I had conversations with two groups here in Kansas, one at the University of Kansas and one at Kansas State. Both sets talked specifically about feminism, a topic that I've found particularly intriguing to talk about with students since my trip to Thailand.

At KU, I met with a mixed group of younger and older women and men at the Ecumenical Christian Ministries. Now, ECM and its campus minister, Thad Holcombe, have been with NNPCW literally since the beginning-- they were one of the original 30 pilot project schools back in the early 1990s. We started out be defining the word "feminism" on a notecard, and the group took off from there. As people talked, they found that second wave feminists had been particularly concerned with equality in the workplace. The younger women, by contrast, talked much more about the overarching nature of inequality that extended beyond sexism, and also focused more on personal safety-- the desire to be free from the violence against women that restricts our daily lives. When we turned the discussion to religion, it became clear that it hadn't been kind to many of the women there... but none of them had seemed to give up on the church, which was encouraging.

At K-State, I had a bit different group. These were peers in age, but this group had several more men in it. To their credit, the men were very good about listening to the opinions of the women in the group when we started talking about feminism. And to their credit, the women in the group were honest about what they thought. Like the KU folks, the people at K-State felt that equality among all people was a good thing, something that was ultimately compatible with Christian faith. Some had problems with, though, those feminists who seemed to indicate that feminism was about women's superiority to men. Others argued that if feminism was really about equality for all marginalized groups, then why were we calling it "feminism" and labeling it only in relation to women? And we did get into the Biblical passages enjoining women to be silent in the churches, talking about their historical context and all the other prominent women mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments as leaders of the faith (Deborah, Mary Magdalene, Lydia, Phoebe...). It was a really well-balanced discussion.

I like these Kansas folks.

"'Martha, Martha,' the Lord answered, 'you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.'" --Luke 10:41-42

Kelsey

Hi Kelsey,
I have been reading your blog I just haven't had time to write. I am doing some extra research for a paper I want to write. It is on feminism but also on Wicca and feminist spirituality. I use to think that Wicca had influenced radical feminism, but with a great deal of reading and going back over some of my notes from my Masters Thesis I now realize that there was, some time in the 70s, a radical feminist spirituality movement that affected both Wicca and various women's groups including women in the denominational churches. I have asked this question about influence several times for instance when I discover words like "crone" discribing older women in "Horizons." That is a Wicca discription so how did it get in a Christian women's magazine? Interesting enough some Wicca groups resent the influence of feminist spirituality on their belief system, but not all of course. But that is not my main interest. It is various "myths" that have filtered into some feminist teaching through the radical feminist spirituality movement. Here I am thinking of myths like a past golden age of women's rule which was really picked up by such persons as Matilda Joslyn Gage in the 19th century and passed on through such people as Mary Daley and now Sue Monk Kidd in "The Dance of the Dissident Daughter."
Anyway that is what is keeping my mind very busy these days. I am reading books, like, "Goddesses and the Divine Feminine," by Rosemary Radford Ruether, "Keepers of the Flame: Interviews with Elders of Traditional Witchcraft in America," by Morganna Davies & Aradia Lynch, and "Living in the Lap of the Goddess: the Feminist Spirituality Movement in America," by Cynthia Eller.
I am glad you got home safely from Thailand. I read your experiences with great interest since I have friends who have been missionaries there all of their adult life. They have a ministry that extends to many areas in South East Asia, and care for peoples and pastors who suffer great persecution as well as poverty.
Blessings in Jesus Christ,
Viola