Speaking of Faith: Days of Awe
Krista Tippett’s weekly radio show (available in podcast) Speaking of Faith integrates a wide variety of perspectives on religion, spirituality, mystery, hope and culture. I often appreciate Krista Tippett’s interviews, and was particularly moved by the words of Rabbi Sharon Brous on Thursday’s show Days of Awe. Here is a clip of one of my favorite parts, and one that is particularly insightful for any woman wrestling with patriarchal religion:
Rabbi Sharon Brous, speaking about her relationship with Jewish texts krista-tippett-sharon-brous1.mp3
Of course, the relationship metaphor works so well in this context because (generally speaking) husbands have been able to inflict such pain upon their wives and wives have not had options for resistance. It is dangerous to romanticize being in love with a damaging tradition or person.
How do women (and men) in these patriarchal religious traditions resist powerfully and constructively?
How is the metaphor of tradition as husband or partner helpful and harmful?
Filed under: radio on September 29th, 2008 by Anna Lisa
In earlier eras of church history, the church was seen as a woman to whom celibate priests were married. This of course added layers to the relationship of clergy and parishioners. Seen as a healthy relationship, priest & church could potentially have a mutually caring relationship. But if I had to guess, I would say this view helped the male priests much more than it did the people of the church, over whom the priest had immense power.
Another view that had more positive impact on the church was the belief that Jesus Christ was spouse to women who were “cosmically married” to him. I say this was positive because it very often allowed women to escape poverty and potentially abusive marriages by joining a nurturing community of women (where romantic relationships between women were not unheard of, by the way). This was actually pretty subversive.
These obviously didn’t work out this well in every instance, but the precedent for positive, nurturing spiritual relationships is certainly there.