Christian Feminist Theology and the Arts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ursic
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Feminist Theology ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Female Leaders ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Inclusive Language ◽  
The Arts ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The 1960S

Christian theology is the study of God and religious belief based on the Christian Bible and tradition. For over 2,000 years, Christian theologians have been primarily men writing from men’s perspectives and experiences. In the 1960s, women began to study to become theologians when the women’s rights movement opened doors to higher education for women. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, female theologians developed Christian feminist theology with a focus on women’s perspectives and experiences. Christian feminist theology seeks to empower women through their Christian faith and supports the equality of women and men based on Christian scripture. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). The arts have an important role in Christian feminist theology because a significant way Christians learn about their faith is through the arts, and Christians engage the arts in the practice of their faith. Christian feminist theology in the visual arts can be found in paintings, sculptures, icons, and liturgical items such as processional crosses. Themes in visual expression include female and feminine imagery of God from the Bible as well as female leaders in the scriptures. Christian feminist theology in performing arts can be found in hymns, prayers, music, liturgies, and rituals. Performative expressions include inclusive language for humanity and God as well as expressions that celebrate Christian women and address women’s life experiences. The field of Christian feminist theology and the arts is vast in terms of types of arts represented and the variety of ways Christianity is practiced around the world. Representing Christian feminist theology with art serves to communicate both visually and performatively that all are one in Christ.

Feminist theology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Suchocki
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theology ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Social Location ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Critical Elements ◽  
Inclusive Language ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theological Thought ◽  
Theological Thinking

Feminist theology began as a reaction to the exclusion of women and women’s concerns from traditional Christian theology, but it soon incorporated constructive as well as critical elements. Originating ‘from the margins’ of women’s exclusion, it now is a major force within Christian theological thought. The issue it raised initially was the cultural and social suppositions that inform all theological thinking and that enter into theologies as ‘universals’. In response to such universals, a feminist ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ seeks out the hidden norms and biases within religious texts. Feminist theology is diverse, but it is characterized by pervasive themes. Immanence is valued over transcendence, relation over substance, change over immutability, liberation over salvation, and ecological concerns over traditional Christian eschatological concerns. As could be expected from its hermeneutic of suspicion, feminist theology is also characterized by its insistence on the social location of all thinking. Feminist theologians uniformly use gender-inclusive language not only in reference to humanity, but also in reference to God. Finally, all feminist theologians manifest a concern for liberation from every type of oppression, environmental as well as social, and not just liberation from the oppression women have experienced.

‘But I Still Read The Bible!’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Llewellyn
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theology ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
Reading Processes ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
Spiritual Reading ◽  
Spiritual Resource ◽  
Made In

While it might be assumed that post-Christian women have rejected the sacred texts of Christianity, this chapter highlights their continued use of the Bible to resource their spiritual lives, and in doing so raises two questions for gendered religious reading practices. First, post-Christian women’s biblicalism crosses the distinction between sacred and secular literatures, and reading processes sometimes made in religious feminisms. Second, despite the emphasis on ‘women’s experience’, feminist theology has focused on the text to the extent that actual readers and their spiritual reading practices are often overlooked. Yet, qualitatively interviewing post-Christian women reveals the biblical reading and the ‘filtering’ strategies they employ to monitor their use of the Bile. This questions the assumption that women who use literature as a spiritual resource are doing so because they have found the Christian testaments lacking in opportunities to access the divine and have therefore excluded them from their personal collections of spiritual texts. While post-Christian women readers in this study are critical of scripture and question its relevancy, they are still reading the Bible.

Mathematical Lens: Woodstock Revisited

2009 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 246-249
Author(s):  
Mary Zanetti
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Sullivan County ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The 1960S

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts is a performing arts venue that includes the Woodstock Festival grounds in Sullivan County, New York. The center is adjacent to the original preserved site where visitors can see the historic field where hundreds of thousands of rock music lovers gathered in August 1969. In addition, they can visit a museum dedicated to the Woodstock experience and the events of the 1960s as well as attend concerts featuring all types of music in various settings.

scholarly journals Creative and cultural industries in Europe – case study of the performing arts in Romania

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 216-226
Author(s):  
Iuliana Cetină ◽  
Andrei L. Bădin
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Marketing Tactics ◽  
Cultural Goods ◽  
Cultural Services ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Cultural Sites ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Cultural Marketing

Abstract Culture is one of the most important aspects of being human alongside education. A very interesting way of approaching the issue of culture is understanding the importance of the art in everyday life. Alan Peacock, one the first pioneers of the term cultural economy, was a man of the arts who understood the importance of culture, not only in life, but in economy. Many writers in the 1960s identified some opportunities in engaging in the cultural and arts industries. As we know, cultural goods have an economic value and an artistic value. The evaluation of artistic goods or products is made only after it is consumed by clients or customers. The world of cultural services is large and forgiving with non-professionals. The use of cultural policies in today’s European Union, United States of America and Asia is very important because of the positive spillover it causes. Creating cultural policies and dedicating funds specifically for this started in the 1980s with the implication of UNESCO. Cultural policies not only help preserve cultural sites and heritage, but offers a broader strategy that envelops both cultural goods and cultural services. The cultural marketing concept refers to the art of using marketing tactics and strategies in order to promote and develop the cultural and artistic industries or sectors. The same instruments are used but the way in which they are used is very different. The performing arts sector is ever changing and it needs a new marketing mix approach to connect to new audiences. Artists need to work closely with business and management professionals in order to have the best representation off stage.

Miss-Iology Meets Ms-Theology

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-173
Author(s):  
Judi Long
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Feminist Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Contemporary Christian

AbstractMissiology and feminist theology are becoming recognized as significant voices in contemporary Christian theology, both seeking to add other dimensions to the traditional elements of theology. Missiology seeks to bring mission back into the mainstream of Christian life and thought. While there is no one feminist theology but rather a diverse range of feminist theologies, these all seek to have the perspectives of women taken seriously in all aspects of theology. Both feminist theologies and missiology have areas that the other can critique. However, most importantly, they also have areas that can be enriched by engagement with each other. Missiology like much theology, has tended to be written by men, and focuses largely on the activities and priorities of men. It can benefit from the recognition of the role of women in mission both as missionaries, and as the missionised. Women have played a crucial role in mission that is only recently being recognized and affirmed. Feminist theologies have not tended to address issues of mission with the exception of the criticism of patriarchal missionary methods and their impact upon women. Missiology challenges feminist theologies to take seriously the core truths of the gospel and how these relate to world in which we live. The creative interaction between feminist theologies and missiology will have implications for our whole understanding of God, for our view of the Bible, and for how the gospel relates to a postmodern society. Both missiology and feminist theologies have challenges to bring to traditional theology. As they engage with each other, new and exciting aspects of both feminist theologies and missiology emerge that can be developed and explored.

Emerging patterns of artistic organizations in Portugal: A three case studies analysis

2020 ◽  
pp. 84-107
Author(s):  
Vera Borges ◽  
Luísa Veloso
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Work Organization ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Emerging Patterns ◽  
New Models ◽  
Organizational Patterns ◽  
New Forms Of Work ◽  
Anal Yses

In the wake of the 2008 global financial and economic crisis, new forms of work organization emerged in Europe. Following this trend, Portugal has undergone a reconfiguration of its artistic organizations. In the performing arts, some organiza-tions seem to have crystalized and others are reinventing their artistic mission. They follow a plurality of organizational patterns and resilient profiles framed by cyclical, structural and occupational changes. Artistic organizations have had to adopt new models of work and seek new opportunities to try out alternatives in order to deal, namely, with the constraints of the labour market. The article anal-yses some of the restructuring processes taking place in three Portuguese artistic organizations, focusing on their contexts, individual trajectories and collective missions for adapting to contemporary challenges of work in the arts. We conclude that organizations are a key domain for understanding the changes taking place.

Sigurðr, Þórr and Ragnarök and their Christian Counterparts

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
Manu Braithwaite-Westoby
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
The Bible ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Stone Sculpture ◽  
Popular Subject ◽  
New Religion

Few scholars would deny that some Old Norse myths have Christian counterparts, a phenomenon first noticed by nineteenth-century archaeologists and antiquarians in their observations of Anglo-Scandinavian stone sculpture in northern England. It is strange, therefore, that despite this long tradition, there is no systematic study on the topic. While this ambition is unfortunately outside the scope of this article, it does seek to address a number of Old Norse myths/legends and place them in conjunction with their Christian counterparts. One of the most important myths for Anglo-Scandinavian craftsmen was probably Sigurðr, who has an obvious parallel in Christ. The apocalyptic narrative in Voluspa known as Ragnarök was also a very popular subject and has a clear cognate in the apocalyptic sections of the Bible. Þórr and the Miðgarðsormr, though less appealing to artists, strongly recalls accounts of the conflict between Christ and Satan or Leviathan. This article uses a theoretical methodology called ‘figural interpretation’ to examine the Old Norse myths and explore how they reflect certain myths from the new religion. While distinctly art historical in approach, this article also invokes some Old Norse texts where relevant, which may themselves have been influenced by Christian thinking.

Divine Words, Female Voices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerusha Tanner Lamptey
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Feminist Theology ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Women Scholars ◽  
Female Voices ◽  
Divine Words ◽  
Vital Resource

Interreligious feminist engagement is a legitimate and vital resource for Muslim women scholars seeking to articulate egalitarian interpretations of Islamic traditions and practices. Acknowledging very real challenges within interreligious feminist engagement, Divine Words, Female Voices: Muslima Explorations in Comparative Feminist Theology uses the method of comparative feminist theology to skillfully navigate these challenges, avoid impositions of absolute similarity, and propose new, constructive insights in Muslima theology. Divine Words, Female Voices reorients the comparative theological conversation around the two “Divine Words,” around the Qur’an and Jesus Christ, rather than Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ, or the Qur’an and the Bible. Building on this analogical foundation, it engages diverse Muslim and Christian feminist, womanist, and mujerista voices on a variety of central theological themes. Divine Words, Female Voices explores intersections, discontinuities, and resultant insights that arise in relation to divine revelation; textual hermeneutics of the hadith and Bible; Prophet Muhammad and Mary as feminist exemplars; theological anthropology and freedom; and ritual prayer, tradition, and change.

Postcolonial Liberation: Decolonizing Biblical Studies in the South African Postcolony

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald O. West
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The South ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
The Bible ◽  
African Black ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Economics ◽  
The 1960S

Liberation biblical interpretation and postcolonial biblical interpretation have a long history of mutual constitution. This essay analyzes a particular context in which these discourses and their praxis have forged a third conversation partner: decolonial biblical interpretation. African and specifically South African biblical hermeneutics are the focus of reflections in this essay. The South African postcolony is a “special type” of postcolony, as the South African Communist Party argued in the 1960s. The essay charts the characteristics of the South African postcolony and locates decolonial biblical interpretation within the intersections of these features. Race, culture, land, economics, and the Bible are forged in new ways by contemporary social movements, such as #FeesMustFall. South African biblical studies continues to draw deeply on the legacy of South African black theology, thus reimagining African biblical studies as decolonial African biblical studies—a hybrid of African liberation and African postcolonial biblical interpretation.

scholarly journals Lost in Migration – Mirandese at a Crossroads

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 488-495
Author(s):  
Cláudia Martins ◽  
Sérgio Ferreira
Keyword(s):  
Minority Language ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Highly Qualified ◽  
Linguistic Rights ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
The 19Th Century

AbstractThe linguistic rights of Mirandese were enshrined in Portugal in 1999, though its “discovery” dates back to the very end of the 19th century at the hands of Leite de Vasconcellos. For centuries, it was the first or only language spoken by people living in the northeast of Portugal, particularly the district of Miranda do Douro. As a minority language, it has always moved among three dimensions. On the one hand, the need to assert and defend this language and have it acknowledged by the country, which proudly believe(d) in their monolingual history. Unavoidably, this has ensued the action of translation, especially active from the mid of the 20th century onwards, with an emphasis on the translation of the Bible and Portuguese canonical literature, as well as other renowned literary forms (e.g. The Adventures of Asterix). Finally, the third axis lies in migration, either within Portugal or abroad. Between the 1950s and the 1960s, Mirandese people were forced to leave Miranda do Douro and villages in the outskirts in the thousands. They fled not only due to the deeply entrenched poverty, but also the almost complete absence of future prospects, enhanced by the fact that they were regarded as not speaking “good” Portuguese, but rather a “charra” language, and as ignorant backward people. This period coincided with the building of dams on the river Douro and the cultural and linguistic shock that stemmed from this forceful contact, which exacerbated their sense of not belonging and of social shame. Bearing all this in mind, we seek to approach the role that migration played not only in the assertion of Mirandese as a language in its own right, but also in the empowerment of new generations of Mirandese people, highly qualified and politically engaged in the defence of this minority language, some of whom were former migrants. Thus, we aim to depict Mirandese’s political situation before and after the endorsement of the Portuguese Law no. 7/99.

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