Arwa Mahdawi on the White Female (Republican) Elephant in the Room as Americans Vote

Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields, The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics (NY: Oxford UP, 2019), p. 9

Arwa Mahdawi comments on polling showing white suburban women trending strongly Republican in these final days before the election:

Centering Religion on Possession or Lack of a Penis Seems to Have Some Significant Downsides

Tina Beattie, "A 'frozen idea of the feminine," The Tablet, 20 Feb. 2020

I think this morning of three famous men in the world of religion I met while I was active in the religion academy as a scholar and teacher. One was a theologian whose work has been very influential in the area of peace studies, especially in his Protestant world.

Tara Westover's Educated: "What my father wanted to cast from me wasn't a demon: it was me."

Having finished reading Tara Westover's Educated several weeks ago, I've been thinking about what I'd like to say as a concluding statement about it. I've blogged about Educated previously — here and here — noting that Westover grew up in a survivalist Mormon family in Idaho. Educated recounts the story of her attempt over the course of years to emerge from the prison in which her upbringing put her. It tells us about her father's wild delusions of grandeur, his belief that he was directly guided by God and watched over by angels — and of his danger-courting and relentless attempts to control his daughter with threats of damnation when she sought to move beyond his control.

"Good, Conservative People Who Reject Liberalism": White Southern Evangelical Attack on Social Contract & Why We Are Where We Are Now

John Sharp, "Alabama just elected 'one of the most conservative governments we've ever had'":

Important Statement from Catholic Women Speak re: "Letter to Pope Francis from Catholic Women": Who's Promoting It and Why

This is an important statement from Catholic Women Speak in response to the "Letter to Pope Francis from Catholic Women" being pushed by EWTN and other hard-right homophobic Catholic media outlets and websites:

"In Every Case, 'Wives Submit to Your Husbands' Appears in the Same Context As 'Slaves Obey Your Masters'": A Twitter Conversation for You

In every case, "wives submit to your husbands" appears in the same context as "slaves obey your masters." And yet I'm constantly told we need to consider context & culture with the latter but not the former...

— Rachel Held Evans (@rachelheldevans) May 9, 2018

I don't mean to shortchange this blog, but I sometimes find that, instead of making statements here, I'm using Twitter instead to engage in at-the-moment conversations about the kinds of issues that interest us at this site. 

Friday Photo Essay: Cigars, Phallic Twattery, and Keeping a Woman Out of the White House

Heather Dockray, "Who are these cartoon villains driving around with Rudy Giuliani?" As Dockray reports, the photo of Giuliani and Roger Ailes sporting cigars  is from Twitter, Oct. 2016; she cites a number of tweets with the image, but it's not clear to me who took this photo and was its original Twitter source.

A Friday photo essay for you: what story do you hear these interlocking (to my way of seeing, that is) images telling us?

Mary McAleese on Catholic Church As "Primary Global Carrier of the Virus of Misogyny" and on Theology Denying Ordination to Women as "Pure Codology"

This is really Sarasi's post and not mine. In the past two days, she has provided a wealth of links to commentary about the stellar address former Irish president Mary McAleese gave in her opening address to the Why Women Matter conference in Rome this week. I'm simply passing on to you now links Sarasi has gathered and generously shared.

Trump White House and Rob Porter Story: "Nothing More Important Than a Powerful Man's Word"

Huffington Post U.S. Top Headline, 10 Feb. 2018, 8 A.M. CST

Amanda Terkel, "For Trump, There’s Nothing More Important Than A Powerful Man's Word": 

Trump's reaction is consistent with the way he and his supporters have handled other sexual misconduct allegations against powerful men.

Twitter Chews Over Election Results: "Thoughts and Prayers to all the Republican Politicians Who Lost Their Seats Today"

Thoughts and prayers to all the Republican politicians who lost their seats today. We won't do anything to prevent it from happening again.

— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) November 8, 2017

"People in Control in Gilead Aren't 'Really Interested in Religion; They’re Interested in Power'": Notes on Atwood's Dystopian Handmaid's Tale and Today's News

To complement the notes I have just posted about Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, here are some observations from my news-and-commentary reading in the past day or two:

Some Notes on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Intersectionality: Class Privilege Connects to Racial Privilege Connects to Heterosexism Connects to Misogyny Connects to Religion

A fascinating aspect of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, especially in the Hulu series that we continue watching, is how it weaves together issues of feminism, race, heterosexism-homophobia, class privilege, and religion. If anything, the t.v. series is making the interconnection of these issues even stronger.

Nicola Denzey's The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women — Book Notes

My last posting was, in some respects, a piece of historiographical commentary. It was a meditation of sorts on how historians might face the challenge of the lacunae, the aporias, the silences (along with the lies and secrets, to echo Adrienne Rich) buried within historical documents, artifacts, texts, etc. My posting pointed you to a recent Salon essay by openly gay Irish novelist Colm Tóibín in which he argues that the pro-marriage equality side prevailed in the Irish referendum about same-sex marriage because gay Irish people — and the families of gay Irish people — chose to make themselves visible in a new way in Irish society, so that many of their fellow citizens could fill in a blank that had not been filled in previously, and recognize that they knew gay people, that they had close ties to families with gay sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers. Tóibín's essay is an excerpt from his foreword to a forthcoming book by Charlie Bird — A Day in May (Dublin: Merrion, June 2016)— about how the marriage equality battle was won in Ireland.

Mr. Trump Plays the Woman Card: Recent Commentary on Issues of Gender and Misogyny in Presidential Campaign

After his recent string of victories in the Northeast, Donald Trump has given us a taste of what's to come as he and Hillary Clinton square off in the 2016 presidential elections: he accused Clinton of playing "the woman card." Whatever that means . . . .

Diarmaid MacCulloch Again, on How Anger of Aggrieved Heterosexual Males Drives Many Christian Churches Today

As I think about the firing of Tony Spence of Catholic News Service this past week and about the underlying heterosexist and male-privileged worldview that the all-male ordained leaders of the Catholic church keep defending as recently as the document Amoris Laetitia, as I look at the wave of hot male anger feeding the campaign of Mr. Trump in the U.S., and as I think about the ugly spate of hateful legislation targeting LGBTQ people now pouring forth in one legislature after another, the following passages from Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (NY: Penguin, 2009), which I've shared with you previously, keep ringing in my ears:

Michael Boyle on North Carolina Bishops' Praise of Anti-LGBTQ Hate Law and Who Really Represents Christianity Adequately Today (and the Connection to Amoris Laetitia)

This is not unrelated to the discussion of Amoris Laetitia that I began in my first two postings this morning: I'd like to recommend to you as a companion piece to that discussion a posting Michael Boyle made yesterday at his Sound of Sheer Silence blog. Michael's responding to the David Gushee essay about which I blogged earlier in the week.

Barbie Latza Nadeau on Amoris Laetitia As No Good News for Women: Denial of Differences Between the Sexes Described As Ideological, But Who Claims That There Are No Differences?

Did I say something earlier today about the pope's "exhortation" on family Amoris Laetitia (still haven't read it, still reading commentary) being all about the assertion of heterosexual male ownership of, well, everything in the world, including the notion of mercy? Did I mention that the exhortation is a gesture demonstrating Pope Francis's determination to keep the Catholic church aligned with the dominance of men over women and the dominance of heterosexual human beings over homosexual ones?

Ruth Krall, A Considered Response to Lambelet and Hamilton: Vis-à-vis the Topic of Being Made Invisible…One More Time

John Howard Yoder (1927-1997)

It's my honor to share with you today an important essay by Ruth Krall responding to a recent report published by National Catholic Reporter regarding the discussion of the legacy of John Howard Yoder in the Mennonite Church. As I've noted repeatedly on this blog,* the work of Ruth Krall, a Mennonite peace-and-justice scholar, and of other Mennonite women, has been critically important in making the Yoder story known to the public, and in forcing Mennonite institutions to come to terms with Yoder's legacy of serial sexual violence towards female students and women he counseled pastorally, even as he represented the church in the public square as its most well-known advocate of non-violence.

More Commentary on Frederick Clarkson's New Essay about Religious Freedom: Patricia Miller and Bill Berkowitz

More valuable commentary today about Frederick Clarkson's report on religious freedom entitled "When Exemption Is the Rule: The Religious Freedom Strategy of the Christian Right":

Leah Mickens: "Reason Why Feminists and LGBT People Get So Much Crap from the Hierarchy and Their Conservotrad Enablers Is Because They Demand Honesty in Sexual Issues"

Brilliant commentary from Leah Mickens of the blog Extra Ecclesiam Est Libertas: Leah's writing in response to my previous posting today, which ends by pointing readers to a surrealistic conversation the blogger who maintains Questions from a Ewe had recently with several African priests about matters of priestly celibacy (they don't necessarily heart it) and the synod and holding the line on the gays and divorced folks (they do heart holding that line).