Antiquitopia

Here is a quick question to everyone out in cyberspace.  This past week I was teaching my "Sex, Gender, and the Bible" course and we were reading Ruth (among other things). One of the things that caught a student's eye (but which did not catch mine) was Ruth 4:17, where the women of Bethlehem proclaim that the baby boy that Ruth gives birth to is Naomi's: "A son has been born to Naomi." So, some thoughts that I had that I think are all wrong: 1. This has something to do with the levirate marriage.  The problem is that the point of the levirate is that the child continues the name of the dead husband (Mahlon); not the name of the living mother-in-law.  One might argue that the levirate law has already been stretched a bit in Ruth (since it is being used for a non-Israelite), but this interpretation seems really pushing it to me. 2. This is adoption.  But the text says that Naomi becomes his nurse - and I am unaware of such "adoptions" occurri...

Christianity has now been with us for two millennia; it clearly has staying power--although as Philip Jenkins book on "The Lost History of Christianity" in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia reminds, religions can die.  But a question I would like to raise is what difference did it make?  This is not a theological question, nor a soteriological one.  It is a historical and social one.  The difference here is not so much concerned with how people have conceived of God or salvation, but how these conceptions have affected daily life and the rhythms of ancient society.  Did conversion to Christianity affect these things?  Did it affect how a villager or urbanite went about their day, how they engaged with the sacred, or even their religious practices (new or just old rites redirected to new deities)? This of course is a big question, bigger than perhaps most of us could capably answer in all its facets, and it is likely impossible to answer in all it...

Two artists, one from Pakistan living in Queens and the other the child of Iranian immigrants living in New Jersey, in a conjoined show grapple with what it means to be Muslim, American, and women through their art. See the somewhat lengthy, but very interesting NYTimes article : In Pakistan Ms. Ahmed Shikoh’s work had been sociopolitical, addressing what she saw as the country’s colonization by American fast-food chains, for instance, with paintings like “The Invasion,” in which swarms of Ronald McDonalds, wearing screaming-red clown wigs, surround a central monument in Karachi. Here, however, her art turned deeply personal as she grappled with her new identity as an immigrant and, having rarely set foot in a mosque back home, as a gradually more observant Muslim. In her first American paintings Ms. Ahmed Shikoh reimagined the Statue of Liberty in her own image: in a Pakistani wedding dress, as a pregnant immigrant and as a regal mother, baby on hip. Next she transformed the subway m...

From Salon : Judge: Women's studies isn't a religion A suit is rejected against Columbia University for offering classes on feminist history. Tracy Clark-Flory Apr. 28, 2009 | Feminist students at Columbia University can breathe a sigh of relief, ready their highlighters and crack the spine of that intimidating Judith Butler tome: A lawsuit against the school for offering women's studies classes has been tossed out. Self-declared antifeminist lawyer Roy Den Hollander argued that the university was violating the first amendment by teaching a "religionist belief system called feminism." He called the program “a bastion of bigotry against men" and argued that nationwide classes about women's history were “spreading prejudice and fostering animosity and distrust toward men with the result of the wholesale violation of men’s rights due to ignorance, falsehoods and malice.” As a graduate of a same-sex college, where I took too many women's studies classes ...

Evidently an Italian priest, Antonio Rungi, wants to break general negative stereotypes of nuns (as elderly, stiff, ruler-holding women) by holding a beauty pageant only open to nuns. It seems he wants to promote a Sofia Loren vision of nuns. It is an online competition, but he hopes that in the future it will be run like other beauty competitions, in person. According to the Times (that's the one in London), The contestants must be aged between 18 and 40, and can be either full members of an order or novices. Father Rungi said that he expected many who applied to be young, attractive — and non-Italian. He said: “Do you really think nuns are all wizened, funereal old ladies? Today it’s not like that any more, thanks to an injection of youth and vitality brought to our country by foreign girls.” He said there were nuns from Africa and Latin America who were “really very, very pretty. The Brazilian girls above all.” See the full article here . Is this attempt to balance inner, spi...

Jillian Tamaki Forty years ago, Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical entitled "Humanae Vitae," which stated the Roman Church's position on Birth Control--an absolute no. The encyclical had its anniversary recently, and now is all over the news...or the "news that's fit to print," the New York Times, which an article here , and letters to the editor in response to the article here . This encyclical has not fared very well. In fact, according to the article, no papal decree has fared so poorly in public opinion and in actual practice: Never before July 25, 1968, however, had opposition been so immediate, so public and so widespread. World-famous theologians called press conferences to rebut the pope’s reasoning. Conferences of Catholic bishops issued statements that all but licensed churchgoers to ignore the encyclical. Pastors openly criticized “Humanae Vitae” from the pulpit. And ignore they have, for the most part. In the West, disagreement with and disregard ...

The following article was in the NY Times and can be found in most newspapers (through the AP). The Vatican has reaffirmed the ban on women becoming priests to the point of excommunicating any woman who undergoes ordination and any clergy who ordain women. Part of the reason given is that Jesus only had male apostles. This conveniently ignores ancient traditions that calls Mary Magdalene the Apostle to the Apostles and in Orthodox tradition as "equal to the apostles" (see the comments by Shades of Gray and Black ). Although Orthodox traditions, too, do not ordain women. This also ignores the prominent role women played in the early Christian movement, being leaders in the community, especially in association with and evidenced by Paul (figures such as Priscilla, Lydia, Euodia, Syntyche, Phoebe, who was a deacon, etc.), before their leadership roles were curtailed in later centuries. The other reason that is often offered is that God is male and, therefore, can only be r...