#interfaith study

[mibeau]

[Book Review] CHRISTIANITY ACCORDING TO ISLAMIC BELIEFS - Dr Waffie Mohammed

SCORE: 3.65/5.0

The book is structured and straightforward. Easy to navigate. Good for a general understanding of today’s concept of Christianity.

“How can the blood and flesh of one man compensate for the sins committed by all humanity?” - page 80.

The writing on crucifixion is good. Jesus was “sacrificed to cleanse the believers' sins”. I mean, logically speaking, why would we want somebody we RESPECT, ADMIRE & LOVE to suffer for us? We should be responsible for our sins and seek God’s mercy instead, Allahu Rahim! I used to tear up when I read or see “performance” on Good Friday. Today I find that concept of atonement ridiculous.

I appreciate the author’s writings on the following topics:

- The Theories of Inspirations

- Atonement

- Who is Christ? (Paul’s contribution)

- Everything regarding today’s Doctrines.

Good attempt, but the author has biased and weak arguments whenever he tries to “compare & convince” the audience.

He does know the basic concept of Christianity, and he compared it with his Islamic knowledge. But, that’s all. It is not convincing that the author is well-versed and eloquent in this interfaith study.

He may convince those so-called “conservative Muslims”, but not the agnostics and atheists. If he could just present Christianity concepts, and only countered them with Islamic statements, as he did in later parts of the book, is much better. Because of his initial “single-minded” statements, people might find him slightly unreliable afterwards. Especially for truth seekers that are on a spiritual journey and prefer to think critically.

I personally believe that the Bible is a sort of hadith collection and not exactly words of God. Just like a hadith, it can be saheeh, it can be daif, it can be munkar! That is why the Bible contained a lot of contradictions. I am grateful for our Hafeez & Hafeezah, Ahli Tafsir & Ahli Hadith, barakallahu feekum!

Take the example on point #2 under the topic of ‘Contradiction in The Bible’. 👉In Matthew 1:18, Jesus is the child of the Holy Ghost. 👉In John 3:16, it is mentioned that Jesus is the Son of God.

Please bear with me, I want to address what I presume, causing the confusion in Christianity. Read Surah Maryam 19: 16 - 32. This portion of Surah Maryam told the event from how Maryam got pregnant till she gave birth to Jesus. To compare specifically, 👉In verse 17, where Allah SWT said, “… whereupon We sent her Our Spirit…”, The Spirit mentioned is Malaikat Jibreel.

Allah sent Jibreel to bear the news to Maryam that she was pregnant -- verse 19.

So, yeah. The Bible today is tampered with, a distortion of the truth.

Dear Christian fellows, I recommend you read the translation of Surah Maryam with footnotes. I prefer the one from; The Interpretation of the Meanings of the Noble Quran in the English Language by Dr Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilli & Dr Muhammad Muhsin Khan. The abridged version of Tafhum al Quran published by The Islamic Foundation, is good too.

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■ Buy Preloved at

■ Buy New Copy from

[synderesis08]

Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian narrates how esteemed theologian, Paul F. Knitter overcame a crisis of faith by looking to Buddhism for inspiration. From prayer to how Christianity views life after death, Knitter argues that a Buddhist standpoint can encourage a more person-centered conception of Christianity, where individual religious experience comes first, and liturgy and tradition second. Moving and revolutionary, this book will inspire Christians everywhere. via Amazon

[jewish-microwave-laser]

In Judaism, there is one sin for which not even the fast of Yom Kippur can atone: desecrating G[-]d's Name. Only a religious person, misusing or acting unjustly in the Name of G[-]d, can be guilty of that offense. The interfaith encounter, I believe, sanctifies G[d]'s Name. Interacting with believers of different faiths creates religious humility, recognition that truth and holiness aren't confined to any one path. I cherish Judaism as my language of intimacy with G[-]d; but G[-]d speaks many languages.

from "The Wall between Us" in Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi

[bijoumikhawal]

collecting quotes from my Magdalene book about menstruation since that's what I got it for, and giving my commentary

According to Dana and her followers, menstrual blood and women’s reproductive organs were the place where woman’s greatest power, her creativity, was held. By honoring her own blood a woman honors her power and herself. She should always keep in mind that she did not have to use this power to create children, but could employ it in her work or in her home. Again there is continuity with ancient times and with contemporaries considered the guardians of old traditions: indigenous women. As we have seen, Magdalene pilgrims tended to have a pan-Indian conception of Native Americans, talking about them as if they had a common set of beliefs and ritual practices. Th ey had a romantic and Rousseauian notion of American natives, held to be the guard-ians of the ancient wisdom of Mother Earth and of rituals that were similar to those we once supposedly had.

...

In her study about feminist spirituality, Eller emphasizes the importance attributed to menstruation and describes theories similar to those shared by Dana and her pilgrims. She refers to Anne Cameron’s book as a central source and describes Brooke Medicine Eagle as “the woman most instrumental in turning spiritual feminist attention to the sanctif i cation of menstruation through the moon lodge” and in modifying “the moon lodge concept” to the needs of contemporary Western women. Citing Diane Stein, one of the authors who most influenced Dana, Eller also observes that some feminist spiritualists consider war “patriarchy’s parody of women’s monthly bloodshed,” and a male menstrual ritual that now threatens the survival of the planet.

Like other menstrual activists, most of Dana’s pilgrims dismissed mainstream feminism as denying the female’s body sacrality. In the previously mentioned article Susan Roberts wrote: “Ironically, mainstream feminism, in its quest to minimize the differences between the sexes, has only added to this prejudice. [Tamara] Slayton and others in the emerging menstrual-awareness movement are offering a new type of feminism, one based unabashedly on the body...

A few months later, I had the opportunity to ask Nuria why she considered feminism to be something that should disappear. She told me that feminists wanted to have the same rights as men and tried to attain this through being like men. According to her, this had led feminists and women influenced by them to deny their femininity and this was not the right way to go.

Even though the women of Dana’s group did not share this extreme interpretation of and attitude toward feminism, many believed that feminists had missed the point in many areas, particularly relating to spirituality and that, as Estrella had said, there had not yet been a spiritual feminist revolution.

149-152, Looking for Mary Magdalene by Anna Fedele

Comments: I'll address the Pan-Indianism and appropriation in a bit, because it gets even more annoying and offensive. The theme of this bit here is women "unsexing" and masculinzing themselves being seen as bad by the pilgrims. On one hand, I get what they're getting at; throughout the book the topic of women feeling ashamed or disgusted by themselves comes up a lot, and from a perspective 20 years out from these pilgrimages, I can kind of get where "becoming like men" leads- we see it with the whole "they say the next bomb dropped on our heads will be done by a woman!" thing, an assimilation into patriarchal structures, but I also don't feel that's what Nuria was getting at. I can also understand it from a personal perspective, as i sometimes jokingly call my mom a toxic man who happens to be a woman, as she unironically calls herself an alpha and engages in some of the behavior you'd expect as a result, and expresses controlling patriarchal attitudes toward me.

I think these pilgrims are primarily concerned with women "not being feminine" and conflating women's lack of femininity with self hate. The idea of women's self hate is, for example, blamed as why a woman has painful periods or may develop uterine diseases. One of the pilgrims herself believes that to be why she struggles with those problems, and I'm glad it helps her, but it's a very cruel line of thinking to me. Many women who have endometriosis have period pain, and also have higher testosterone levels- they cannot help this, and this logic supposes those is something they must "fix" about themselves, which is even more harmful when you consider that some people consider endometriosis to be an intersex variation. The truth is, there IS very little difference between the sexes, and biological sex is malleable; I, and millions of others, are living proof of it. Discomfort with menstruation in feminism isn't happening because that's acknowledged, it's not because of masculine women, it's because even if you believe in feminism, it's not an identity, it's an ideology, and you have a constant inner war to combat patriarchal thinking.

And while these pilgrims all emphasized men connecting to their femininity, it's kind of gross that women being connected to masculinity is portrayed so badly. It's also pretty obvious in subtext that there is definitely a line at which a man is "too feminine" for some or all of these pilgrims. While the Goddess Wood group adapted the menstrual rituals for menopausal and HIV+ participation, I shudder to think how they'd react to a trans woman in their space. A balance between recognizing menstruation as not bad needs to be struck with not being a bioessentialist. My way of doing this is partly by regarding menstruation blood as equivalent to other bodily fluids, which has some basis in Judaism (both menstruation and seminal emission require one to give through a "cleansing period"). The texts the pilgrims always familiar with also do something similar, equating menstrual blood and semen.

Further, the actual issues you can ascribe to "being like men" (warmongering and adopting abusive ideas and behaviors) are absolutely not the problem of feminism, they are a failing of people with only partial commitment to feminism, or who have an additional allegiance (say, to capitalism). I do sympathize with the desire for a spiritual revolution, but again, I find the pinning of blame that one hasn't exploded onto feminism to be short sighted.

Dana’s concept of menstrual blood was also linked to what she described as an ancient tradition among indigenous women. And when I asked her why she considered Magdalene as the guardian of menstrual blood, she told me that Magdalene’s similarities with the red dakini of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition had helped her to establish this relation:

The energy of the dakini represents the ever-changing flux of energy in movement. Often dakinis are naked, displaying their sex, and they drink from a cup that is made of a half of a skull... They are usually depicted with the color of blood and this means that blood has a lot to do with these deities... The dakini shows herself when the [meditation] practitioner is ready enough to access another level of consciousness... If [the practitioner] is a woman, a daka [male deity] shows itself, if it is a man then a dakini does. The dakini normally teaches you through means that are not rational, logical or conventional. So this story is a traditional one, telling that a great wise man is about to become enlightened and he meets somebody [a dakini] who takes him, takes his head, puts his mouth to her vagina and forces him to drink her menstrual blood... and when he drinks this the enlightenment comes. (March 3, 2006)

Referring to paintings of Magdalene meditating or sitting beside a skull, Dana emphasized the similarities between the saint and the image she showed me of a dancing red dakini with a long necklace made of small skulls. “So I always found this figure of the dakini very fascinating and I find that Mary Magdalene has many things in common with the dakini: many, many things,” she said. “I mean, for me Mary Magdalene is a dakini. First of all, the skull: Mary Magdalene is often represented with a skull... the cup is also there [in Magdalene’s representations]... So the cup is a cup of blood and she holds the cup of blood that contains the blood of Christ at the moment of his death” (March 3, 2006).

Dana also found many similarities between the legends of Magdalene’s stay at the Sainte-Baume and the spiritual practices of Tibetan Buddhist nuns: Then there is also the description of Magdalene’s life... When she lives in the cave, during these 33 years, legend has it that she does not eat nor drink. And among the female Tibetan practitioners [of Buddhism]... there was an important tradition. There were female pilgrims who traveled on their own and lived in caves or in cemeteries... Many of these women retired to live in caves and followed what they called “practices of the body of light.” These practices involve not eating and drinking for years. (March 3, 2006)

This relationship to Tibetan Buddhism appeared even closer to Dana once she discovered that the spikenard oil used by the Gregorian Magdalene to anoint Jesus came from Tibet: “I mean... I am not saying that Mary Magdalene was Buddhist or anything like that. But I find that there are many energetic similarities if you consider the character, the archetype of the dakini. She initiates the man through sexuality or through [anointment], I mean, when Magdalene anoints Jesus, she is initiating him” (March 3, 2006).

From Dana’s perspective, Magdalene was a teacher of sacred sexuality—that is, of techniques equivalent to or even coinciding with tantric techniques that allowed the attainment of spiritual elevation. Like the red dakini, Magdalene passed on teachings through gestures related to sexuality associated with blood, in her case the blood contained in a cup. For Dana this blood was menstrual blood and its ingestion could have healing power. Lara Owen emphasized the importance of menstrual blood in the Tantric tradition in her book: “In the Tantric tradition men became spiritually powerful by ingesting menstrual blood. Still today in the group rituals of the left-handed Tantric path, menstrual blood is taken along with red wine as a ritual drink.”

Pages 155-156

Susanna knew about the importance of the menstrual cycle from her study of what she identified as Gnosticism. She contrasted an alternative ideology, affirming the power and sacredness of the menstrual cycle, to prevalent ideas about the danger and pollution related to menstrual blood. In Italy there is a popular saying that plants will die if touched by a menstruating women. I myself remember an occasion in the 1990s when my flatmate in Brescia asked me to water the plants for her because she was having her period. In Susanna’s account there is an inversion of the popular beliefs about menstruation in Mediterranean Catholic countries: Menstruation and menstrual blood are not impure; on the contrary, they indicate a state of particular power in women. She also believed the blood offered can heal. Mary Magdalene pilgrims often referred to the Gnostics, as well as the Cathars and the Templars, as historical authority for their beliefs.

...

Today [it is important] for a woman to recognize that during the menstrual period one is more sensitive. That same menstrual period that has been seen as the time of hysteria, you see? But hysteria is [the consequence of] the negation of this sensitivity and [the negation] of the great creativity that takes place during menstruation. The period also fosters the ability to see things from a different perspective, because everything changes on a biological level. Moreover the blood has an extraordinarily therapeutic power; it can cure many kinds of diseases. For women, the time of menstruation is also a time of great sexual arousal. Probably in ancient times menstrual blood was recognized as the blood that could consecrate, that had an initiatory power...

Celso’s theories were similar to those of Dana and Lara Owen; he also observed that it was important for men as well as for women to recognize the power of menstrual blood: “Recognizing this power of the feminine means the man freeing himself from the need to deny or imitate it.” When I asked him why he had chosen the cave of the Sainte-Baume for the offering, Celso answered: “Because it is the cave of the Magdalene. Menstrual blood gushes from the womb and the caves are representations of the womb. Magdalene is also a therapist; she is not only a teacher, she also is a woman that cures. For this reason, it is important to recover an essential instrument of the therapeutic abilities of the feminine. Moreover, [during the offering in the cave] the men [in the group] also honored this [feminine] principle” (February 16, 2006).

Pages 158-160

Comment: like I said before, there's this idea that men need to recognize the power of femininity, but not "imitate it", mirroring the denigrating of insufficiently feminine women. The "imitation" is placed on the same level as denying the unique power of femininity. It's very obvious how this can become dangerous. Some of these ideas are empowering to the group, as they have been forced into denying themselves and fitting into roles in order to survive and be taken seriously, but you can reclaim your femininity while respecting not every woman is feminine like you...

I do find the discussion of the power of blood in these two passages interesting

Puri explained to the assembly of women that the blood of all the women would be mixed together in a solution of water and alcohol inside the chalice, in this way creating a unif i ed “mother tincture.” Following principles adapted from homeopathy, this tincture was diluted by putting a single drop in a thirty-milliliter bottle of water and alcohol. This dilution excluded any health risk, augmented the power of the original tincture and transformed the information contained in each woman’s blood, making it more subtle. In Puri’s terms, the information in the mother tincture, contained in the form of energy, was very dense, as it consisted of undiluted blood. Th e dilution allowed the extraction of the key information (stored in the blood’s DNA) leaving behind the more physical, dense and therefore lower energy. Puri explained that the more diluted the blood mixture, the more powerful its energy. As in homeopathy, a higher dilution of the same ingredient had a stronger effect than a lower dilution, because the curative effect does not depend on the physical presence of the element (which often cannot even be traced back), but on the information of the element transported and transmitted by alcohol or lactose...

Pilgrims would offer their blood to Mother Earth as women in ancient times did when they ploughed the fields, letting their menstrual outflow fall into the furrow they had created. Maybe, she added, menstrual blood, which women had once offered to Mother Earth, had been replaced by the bloodshed of today’s wars. Mother Earth was seen in this context as a divine being with a complex personality. Usually described as a caring and loving being, but now threatened by brutal human exploitation, she could be nurtured with menstrual blood, whose rich components served as a fertilizer. Nevertheless, Mother Earth had a destructive side, a necessary counterbalance to her creative and nurturing part, which emerged, for instance, during natural catastrophes. Menstrual blood was considered the only kind of blood that flowed without wounding, as opposed to bloodshed in war or natural disasters.

Not all women felt comfortable with the idea that they should offer their blood in order to prevent further bloodshed. Carme, one of the younger pilgrims working as a teacher, commented to me about the offering of blood: I see it as an act of thanksgiving [un acto de gracias]. I mean... I eat fruit that comes from Her [Mother Earth] that She has plenty of and does not need. So, in the same way as I eat from Her, I offer Her something that comes out of me as a gift to Her, because there are few things we create ourselves, so it is something that comes out of me, something very intimate and very nice. I give it as an offering, as a present for Her... As for the matter about the shedding of blood onto the Earth during wars and massacres, it seems that in other cultures it was thought that you had to give a certain amount of blood to the Earth because otherwise She would ask for blood. You know, the Maya culture, human sacrifices... I never saw it in this way or thought that “Aahh, I have to give so that the Earth does not provoke an earthquake and bloodshed.” I saw it as a thanks-giving, an offering for Her. (March 11, 2005)

Talking about the offering of menstrual blood Dana invited women not to throw their used sanitary napkins in the garbage, but to dissolve the blood in water and give it to plants or use it to mark the boundaries of their houses. Women could also create a homeopathic dilution of their blood, so that they could conserve it even after their menopause.

...

While the whole group was singing, Dana was the first to offer her blood, thereby showing how to do it. Each woman in turn approached the altar, knelt before it and passed a small piece of the dried blood through the smoke of the copal, tracing Conchero symbols in the air: first a cross and then the symbol of the infinite. After purifying and blessing the blood with the copal, each woman moved toward the chalice on her knees and put the blood into the chalice, moved back to the sahumador on her knees, bounced forward to conclude the offering and give thanks, then stood up and went back to sit in the circle.

...

Following Dana’s ritual scheme, her pilgrims’ elevation took place by means of the energy of their menstrual blood; like Celso’s pilgrims, they had found an alternative way to release their sins. Curiously, they used the menstrual blood they defined as sacred as the receptacle of their sins that needed to be purified and diluted in order to be ready for the offering. They criticized the Church for labeling menstrual blood as impure, but in some way they treated the blood as something requiring purification themselves...

During the offering Dana organized for the first pilgrimage of the blood in 2002, she had made no dilution; women had used the mother tincture for the offering. This time, more precautions were taken, probably because Dana and the committed members of Goddess Wood knew that two of the women of the group had the HIV virus and had been on medication for years. I myself found out about this only after the pilgrimage, as the two women were treated like anybody else during it. Confronted with the sanitary risks linked to the handling of blood, especially fresh arterial blood extracted from women who had brought no dried menstrual blood, Dana needed to find a strategy that affirmed the sacrality of menstrual blood yet neutralized its potential to spread infection, which she was trying to eliminate from the pilgrims’ minds.

Pages 162-165

Comments: on the one hand I'm glad they found a way to not stigmatize or exclude the HIV+ women, but man does homeopathy being name dropped make my hair stand on end. It's notable to me that while the pilgrims blame feminism for capitulation to masculinity or patriarchy in some way, they themselves capitulate in how they view the blood, Magdalene, women, etc. I've posted other quotes talking about this, but many of the Goddess Wood group unironically call women chatty, less rational, etc, but try to frame it as a positive. They also both denounce the idea of Magdalene as a repentant prostitute, but rely on the details of that version of her story to create their archetype of a priestess who initated their messiah via sex and spikenard. The blood connection is more independent, but its not the only or even primary characteristic of Magdalene to this group or the others.

I am bothered by the way the text discusses other forms of blood sacrifice- elsewhere pilgrims call it a "mockery" of menstruation. I think it speaks time the fact that while all these women talk big about "Indian" practices, they aren't themselves Indigenous and have limited spiritual and communal contact with the Indigenous peoples they spiritually fetishize. You see that here with the invocation of Pre Columbian Maya customs, which included voluntary blood letting done by an individual, as well as sacrifices. I'm very prickly about that subject in particular, and I have straight up blocked people for casually bringing up the idea of Mesoamerican human sacrifice as a way of talking about how brutal it was, because that's genocide justification. This invocation by a pilgrim isn't quite so offensive, but it speaks to the relationship of appropriation and disconnect, as most of these pilgrims take from Indigenous cultures Spain colonized specifically. If these groups were in community with those Indigenous peoples, especially in terms of spirituality and being in tune with a group that resonated with the Magdalene pilgrims focus on blood, I don't think its likely this kind of comment would be made so casually.

The relationship between Jesus’s blood as a sacrifice for humanity and menstrual blood appeared to be crucial for the conceptualization and creation of rituals of menstrual offerings. Describing her findings and feelings during the period of offering her menstrual blood to the Earth, Lara Owen commented: “It was a mixture of things, it was a sacrament; it was recognizing that my blood was fertilizing the earth, that it was useful, that my blood had a use, a purpose, that it wasn’t just something to flush down the toilet, rich in minerals; it was a connection to the earth; it was also a sacrament, I was working with the idea of the blood of Jesus turning into wine and the idea that the original blood was sacrificial blood from animals, but maybe before it was menstrual blood” (May 28, 2005).

...

The decoration of the altar holes began: Each of us lit a candle and an incense stick at the top of our altar hole. I had instinctively dug a round hole, while Estrella had given hers the ovoid shape of a vagina. She put a red silk shawl and several crystals around its rim. Near the candle, she placed the tarot card of the Star, which she associated with Mary Magdalene. It showed a woman pouring water from two jugs, which according to Estrella symbolized the two ovaries. She gave me the card with the icon of Mary Magdalene holding a red egg in her hand, symbolizing women’s ovaries and the process of menstruation. Also on Estrella’s altar were her magic wand and a picture of Amma, a living Indian saint who is believed to incarnate the Divine Mother. After each of us drew a card from a set depicting Native American sacred animals, we put it on our altars. The chosen animal would wisely suggest appropriate changes and teachings during the period up to the next menstruation. Following Estrella’s example, I decorated the inside of the hole with the fruit and the other food I had brought with me (see figure 5.2 ).

...

What Estrella defined as the altar was not something that rose up from the earth, such as a table or a rock (allowing interaction with forces ideally supposedly above), but a hole in the ground, created to communicate and exchange energy and healing with Mother Earth, situated below. Incense and candles were used as in Christian churches, but the main venerated figures were Mary Magdalene and Amma, the incarnation of the Divine Mother. Blood was offered in a cup together with food—that is, the fruit of the land according to the season of the year. What Estrella offered was not red wine, symbolizing Christ’s male blood from a wound caused by men and foretelling imminent death, but real female blood flowing out spontaneously from a woman’s womb and mixed with water. It symbolized Mary Magdalene, guardian of menstrual blood, Jesus’s lover and female counterpart, and testified to the woman’s potential to give birth in the future. As God’s bliss descended from the sky down to its worshippers, who celebrated Eucharist and communed with Jesus, Mother Earth, who received the offering, sent up her healing power and later absorbed the negative energy.

Talking about the blood offering, Estrella said: “When you offer your blood to the Earth, it is as if you lower your blood inside a vessel down to the earth. I mean, you lower it to the well to draw some water from it, but at the same time you leave your water. Then you pull up the container again and the energy is so powerful because it is the energy from Mother Earth. She makes the energy rise up to the heart and there you meet Mary Magdalene” (September 18, 2005)

...

According to Françoise Héritier’s analysis of male and female in traditional societies, the female menstrual blood is considered uncontrollable: it flows out without the woman being able to prevent it from doing do. When men’s blood flows, it is mostly provoked by an inflicted wound, and the blood flow can be controlled; that is, it can be provoked and later stopped. Héritier shows how, since Aristotle, this biological fact has been culturally interpreted as a sign of the inferiority of women, who cannot master their bodies, and so used to justify women’s social oppression. As opposed to men, who can decide to make blood flow while hunting or fighting their enemies, women of fertile age are experience periodical bleeding which is outside their control.

The women of the Goddess Wood viewed this spontaneous flow of blood as a sign of women’s superiority; they could bleed without suffering, without having to be wounded. Women can decide to offer their blood for the sake of humanity, as Christ’s blood sacrifice had redeemed humanity from the original sin. This offering ideally led to the disappearance of human sacrifice in war, a period of peace characterized by the respect and honor attributed to matter and the Earth, to body and sexuality and the consequent equality of women to men. The women of the Goddess Wood did not want to get back to a matriarchal society, but to a new, nonhierarchical society based on the equality of men and women.

...

Through a feminist reading of Jesus’s message, Dana and the other members of the Goddess Wood managed to blend two apparently opposed religious traditions they carried within themselves and to harmonize the attraction they felt toward the well-known Christian figures and rituals and the deep desire to be fully accepted as independent flesh and blood women. Menstrual blood represented a symbolically and physically powerful departure point for the transformation of a male-dominated world they sought to change. By replacing the blood of Christ offered by a male priest during Eucharist with their own menstrual blood, which they offered themselves as priestesses, these women autonomously established the importance of their wombs and bodies and their right to dialogue with the divine.

177-181

Comments: I find a lot of the symbolism here very interesting, of the different silhouettes of altars and of turning one's body into a living sacrifice; the latter is an idea I was exploring myself before reading this book, talking about the offering of animal blood to the rih al ahmar, the symbiotic relationship between humans and sheydim as cousins (+ why human Jews cannot consume blood, while the rih, a kind of sheyd, is most often offered blood), and reframing the period of Purification after menstruation and ejaculation not as a matter of disgust/simple uncleanness, but instead because one is symbolically dead, they have sacrificed and ensured the sheydim are sustained.

However I am once again frustrated at the portrayal of menstruation as bleeding without suffering. It's not a universal way of looking at things, and holding there is no suffering and it's all painless is troublesome here, because again, this groups frame of reference thinks experiencing pain is then a problem you caused yourself. I do think the connection between Eucharist and menstruation here is a pretty bold and progressive move for Christianity. Elsewhere, theres commentary on the parallel of Adam/Eve and Jesus/Magdalene, and how the former couple condemns humanity and the latter saves it. Implied is also the way menses and painful birth are seen as Eve's "curse", and how the blood of Jesus and Magdalene instead becomes redemptive.

The ritual Estrella does is based on her fetish view of Indigenous Mexican women, claiming someone told her they did a similar practice, and hilariously Dana told the author that she thought it was baseless because "contemporary Indigenous women are prudish". I'll reiterate, these people fetishize their idea of Native American spirituality, but have no community with real Indigenous people. Dana there is frankly implying she doesn't like the real Indigenous women she's met much. Also somewhat relevant: Estrella fetishes Roma women in a similar way, though she seems to mostly not do it in her spirituality beyond liking Sara Kali iirc? Which is also generally common in the group, as they find female saints interesting and especially "Black Virgin" statues, which Sara kind of counts under.

They asserted that menstrual blood is sacred, like the most sacred of all blood in Christian terms, that of Jesus. As Vanessa Rousseau points out in her study about theories and practices related to blood in Western Christianity, in Christian terms the blood coming out of the body because of menstrual periods or because of wounds was identified with the Latin word cruor. Sanguis was the blood circulating through, and contained inside, the body, bringing life and force to it. The cruor, however, was considered impure, a sign of the body’s corruptibility and mortality, symbolizing life leaving the body. Christ’s blood is directly opposed to all other human blood, and goes beyond the opposition of pure and impure. It implies impurity and purity, fall and redemption. The pilgrims considered menstrual blood to have special status, being the only blood that flows spontaneously out of the human body, without wounding or harm. It made Jesus’s sacrifice and any further shedding of blood unnecessary.

Dana’s pilgrims were not the only ones to associate menstrual blood with that of Jesus. Analyzing the belief system of the Christian medieval believers, Caroline Walker Bynum observes that they might “see the blood Christ shed in the circumcision and on the cross as analogous to menstrual blood or to breast milk” because “all human exudings—menstruation, sweating, lactation, emission of semen and so on—were seen as bleedings; and all bleedings—lactation, menstruation, nosebleeds, hemorrhoid bleeding and so on—were taken to be analogous . . . Medieval writers, for example, urged men to apply leeches to their ankles when they failed to ‘menstruate.’”

Page 182

Comment: I do think it's a failing to not mention here that "menstruating men" not only related to Jesus, but was in this time period, an antisemitic stereotype used against Jewish men related to the idea that "Jews were ruled by Saturn", which was also applied to women in general. It is kind of true in a funny way that all human secretions are blood, which in turn is very specialized sea water.

In the introduction to the 1988 collection of essays Blood Magic; The Anthropology of Menstruation, Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb called for a study of menstrual customs and beliefs in their cultural context. They showed how previous analyses “have great predictability, for again and again they center on the concepts of taboo (supernaturally sanctioned law) and pollution (symbolic con-tamination),” and tended to consider menstrual taboos’ as indicators of female subordination. Moreover, psychoanalytic studies like those of Bettelheim, cited above, described women as passive vessels of male theories derived from fear and envy, and these had influenced anthropologists. The authors argue that menstrual taboos tend to be ambiguous and multivalent and could evoke concepts of holy as well as forbidden. They observe that “many menstrual taboos, rather than protecting society from a universally ascribed feminine evil, explicitly protect the perceived creative spirituality of menstruating women from the influence of others in a more neutral state, as well as protecting the latter in turn from the potent, positive spiritual force ascribed to such women.”

...

As Barbara B. Harrell has argued in her article “Lactation and Menstruation in Cultural Perspective,” in preindustrial societies menstruation is uncommon, because lactation is prolonged and intensive and the menstrual cycle can therefore be considered as a “liminal state.” Celso and Dana also spoke of menstruation as a liminal state, but did not mention that in traditional societies women had significantly fewer menstrual cycles. To them its special significance did not depend upon the fact that it was an uncommon event, but upon the particular state of awareness it could provoke.

Menstruation is an ambivalent state between life and death. It implies the woman’s capacity to give life, but also her power to decide to interrupt a pregnancy and provoke menstruation. The pilgrims’ Mary Magdalene, who witnessed Jesus’s death and resurrection and was often represented with a skull at her side, was also related to death and life and to the passage between them. During one of Goddess Wood gatherings, Dana told a woman who had just lost her husband that Mary Magdalene had also lost her companion and therefore was a good role model for widows.

Pilgrims spoke of menstrual blood as the blood of life but also saw menstruation as a moment of spiritual death for women. Dana explained that during their periods, women should meditate about impermanency and receive insight about the new cycle that would begin...

The pilgrims and their leaders sometimes referred to menstrual blood as the material out of which the ovule was made or the material that would have provided nurturing food for the future baby. Celso said: “Menstrual blood is not impure at all. From a biochemical point of view it is among the richest [kinds of blood] because it contains hormones, vitamins and mineral salts. It is a rich blood... organically these tissues must have the maximum potency because they must be able to give life. [They can] host life, for this reason it is the richest of all bloods” (February 16, 2006).

The blood that had not been used to nurture the baby, and give life to a human being, should be used to nurture the Earth and to help plants and life in and on the earth to develop. At the end of the offering, Estrella covered the altar hole and what remained resembled a corpse buried in the earth. In a delayed menarche ritual for adult women described by Jone Salomonsen and analyzed in more detail in the next chapter, women explicitly refer to the ambiguous nature of menstrual blood singing: “Power of the blood, rain from the Dark Moon. Power of life and death, flow from our wombs.”

In current times, women of fertile age who are not pregnant and do not use the contraceptive pill menstruate once a month and those who are on the pill experience a monthly bleed designed to mimic what is believed to be a normal menstrual period. As Harrell argues, “the preindustrial reproductive cycle with its intensive transition period suggests another view, that continuous menstrual cycling is not a natural attribute of human females. Perhaps ‘the curse’ can be explained as an artifact of the Age of Technology, something imposed upon women by a society of plenty which needs no more children. From the preindustrial reproductive cycle, we can learn that menstruation need not be regarded as the hallmark of healthy womanhood. Our femaleness need not be inextricably bound up with recurrent menstrual flow.”

...

Pilgrims from Goddess Wood stated that women choosing to menstruate (i.e., not to have a baby and not to take the contraceptive pill) could use their life-creating potentialities to foster their own spiritual elevation and to work toward a new kind of society based on equality between men and women. To them, the menstruating woman gave birth to a new and more conscious self. Most of the pilgrims in all three groups rejected the contraceptive pill as offering them a fake menstruation and also opposed hormone therapy during menopause.

Pages 183-186

Comment: more the sacrifice/life and death imagery I had been thinking of here. There's also good criticisms going on, as I've seen people state that just because a culture would exempt women from work or had special lodging for them during menses, meant they were misogynistic, even when women of that culture disagreed. In fact, Dana advocates that women shpuld be excused from work during menstruation. I'm not surprised by some of the medical takes here.

For Roger, Magdalene, like a second Eve, could heal the menstrual wound and reverse the curse inflicted on women by Yahweh after the fall on mankind. As Warner observes: “For mankind, these curses were the struggle against nature, of which hitherto Adam had been master; mortality of the flesh; and for woman in particular, the pains of childbearing—the whole gamut from menstruation to suckling—and subjection of heart and head to the authority of the male.”

Most pilgrims from all three groups held that women who, thanks to Magdalene, had recovered their connection with the Feminine and knew about its sacrality would not experience menstruation, childbearing or suckling as painful, but instead would enjoy them. They would learn how to take care of and listen to their bodies, venerating their flesh as a divine part of the body of the Goddess.

Katherine Jansen described the Magdalene staying at the cross and witnessing Jesus’s death as the symbolic counterpart of Eve: whereas Eve had caused the Fall of mankind, Magdalene witnessed and helped Jesus to sacrif i ce himself and redeem the original sin. But even if they seemed to share this position, the three pilgrimage leaders never explicitly mentioned Magdalene’s function as a helper in redeeming Eve’s fall and the menstrual curse.

192-193

Comments: definitely getting the Gnostic influence through here. Notably, the pilgrims across the three groups examined in this book don't really refer to a masculine God at all, just their Goddess, so it's not a case of "the masculine God (identified with "Yahw*h") is the evil Demiurge and the Goddess is the good divinity. The idea that Adam and Eve parallel Magdalene and Jesus shows up again here too.

[heathersdesk]

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Isaiah 53:3

[positivelyapunovexponent-good]

I am visiting extended family and experiencing a spectrum of shrimp emotions both positive and negative. Positive because I love them and love spending time with them. Negative for reasons I feel so self conscious about I can’t bring myself to explain them outside of the tags even in my anonymous personal blog. I can’t sleep even though I’m exhausted. every night I’m pacing from anxiety as I try to figure out which parts of me to be honest about and which to conceal for the sake of not? Deeply hurting the people I care about? Even though I haven’t done anything wrong so if they are hurt that’s not on me.

[dowsingfordivinity]

A caricature of Paganisms

If you want to overcome a powerful adversary, one possible tactic is first to make a caricature of your enemy into a bogey to frighten your children, and then reduce that bogey to an absurd oversimplification of your enemy. This is exactly what the Christian church did to ancient paganism. Continue reading Untitled

[cruelsister-moved2]

i honestly want to read the quran like just out of interest + to be better informed but the reason i havent yet is its going to confuse everyone even more to see me reading it. sorry for having a curious mind

[vulpine111]

It was Diwali recently. :)

I hope everyone enjoyed it and had a good one.

I keep forgetting about the mala necklace I wish to make to honor Ganesha. Chanting mantras with him every day will be a lot more effective than simply listening on YouTube.

If I am just even more careful with my money until Valentine's Day, maybe I will order myself the beads, cord, etc. to make it, finally.

I also still want a necklace for St. Rita. I still believe she's my patron saint.

I probably won't wear a rosary every day, I'll just pray with Ganesha and Rita a lot. Occasionally Santa Muerte as well.

No idea when I'll have a legit altar for my practice, but oh well. A desk and comfy chair sort of take priority.

[embassyrowprojectonline]

“Unity in Diversity: An Interfaith Guide to Peacebuilding in Conflict Zones” book is now available on Amazon

by Embassy Row Project

In an era where conflicts continue to splinter communities across the globe, peacebuilding stands as a beacon of hope. “Unity in Diversity: An Interfaith Guide to Peacebuilding in Conflict Zones” by Embassy Row Project founder James Scott offers an unprecedented and meticulously crafted roadmap for those striving to sew unity among diversity. Authored by leading experts in interfaith collaboration, this guide appeals to peacebuilders, religious leaders, policymakers, and anyone passionate about healing our fractured world. Dive into compelling chapters that provide actionable insights into the complex and rewarding world of interfaith peacebuilding.

Here’s What You’ll Learn:

-The Importance of Collaboration: Understand why interfaith collaboration is essential in modern peacebuilding efforts. Conflict Perspectives: Gain historical and contemporary insights into conflict and its complex origins. -Peacebuilding Essentials: Master the core concepts and principles that form the backbone of peacebuilding. -Faith and Conflict Analysis: Explore the intricate relationship between faith and conflict and how it shapes our world. -Communication and Conversation: Learn how to foster communication and dissolve divides between different faith traditions. -Shared Values & Trust Building: Recognize the unifying threads and foster trust among diverse faith communities. -Actionable Frameworks & Leaders’ Role: Discover how religious leaders can act as catalysts for peace and design effective programs. -Educational Initiatives & Community Engagement: Engage in peace education and grassroots efforts in your community. -Institutional Change & Healing: Learn how to influence policy and undertake spiritual healing and reconciliation processes. -Monitoring, Challenges, & Future Prospects: Ensure your initiatives’ effectiveness and overcome challenges in the ever-evolving field of interfaith peacebuilding.

“Unity in Diversity” is not just a book; it’s a call to action, a plea for understanding, and a guide to the profound path of healing that our world so desperately needs. Whether you are a seasoned peacebuilder, a curious academic, or a passionate advocate for unity, this book will equip you with the wisdom, tools, and inspiration needed to make a tangible difference. Join hands with others across faith traditions and embark on a transformative journey towards a more peaceful and inclusive world. Read this book, and be the change you wish to see. Your copy of “Unity in Diversity” awaits. Get ready to change the world.

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Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFCWVY6D

[embervoices]

This is beautiful.

And it's a huge part of why I AM kind to most proselytizers, especially younger ones.

The first time a pair of young Mormon missionaries came by and ran into me, and I told them, bemused, "Thanks, but I'm Pagan", I got back delight.

Two very wide-eyed young men saying "Oh my gosh! They told us we'd meet people like you here!!"

They weren't disgusted, they weren't braced for a fight, they were excited to meet a kind of person they'd only ever heard about in theory before.

Almost every Mormon on mission I've ever met has been at worse a bit bewildered by polite lack of interest, and actually incredibly sweet in the face of actual needs (one pair dropped everything to help a friend of mine when she was overwhelmed by a crying toddler, a sick pet, and a load of housework she didn't have the hands to address alone - they calmed the child and did some of her chores, because they were very used to large family households, and were unphased by the toddler or the housework).

They are not the enemy.

If a proselytizer from a tradition that teaches their door-to-door people to pile on the Fire And Brimstone wants to take me on, I am entirely prepared for that debate. I know a dozen ways to quickly alienate conservative Christians. But it's frankly more fun to accept their literature offerings and analyze them later as samples of human religious behavior from an anthropological perspective.

Some of my favorite religious discussions were cheerful debates with a particular Jehovah's Witness who was more invested in the conversation than he was in trying to convert me. But debate is rarely how it goes with anyone who comes to my door wanting to talk to me about religion.

Interfaith efforts are worth it, not just because I might be more understood when I'm done, but because whoever I'm talking to might realize they're more understood than they thought.

That's priceless.

[torahtot]

my hebrew bible class is 1 jewish professor + 8 jewish students 1 catholic and 1 guy idk who he is but i dont think he's jewish. anyways i sort of know the catholic guy & he's super involved w christian life on campus & posting bible quotes to his story & shit. im so so curious abt how this class is gonna go w him in it like i am going to write down every word he says & stick it under a microscope. also i think it's funny for a white christian guy to be in this position. get minoritied lol

[synderesis08]

Swedenborg: Buddha of the North (SWEDENBORG STUDIES)

"…important for anyone who is concerned with inter-religious dialogue and the meaning of… visionary mysticism." --The Reader's Review This first complete English translation of two works by Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki introduces Emanuel Swedenborg and compares Swedenborgian thought to Buddhism. The first work stresses Swedenborg's message that true spirituality demands an engagement in this world; the second compares Swedenborg's description of heaven to the paradise of Pure Land Buddhism.

[mariacallous]

Most of the time, as the senior rabbi of Temple Beth-El in San Antonio, Rabbi Mara Nathan’s focus is on Jewish families. But this week, she’s finding herself thinking about Christian ones, too.

That’s because Texas is poised to adopt a public school curriculum that refers to Jesus as “the Messiah,” asks kindergartners to study the Sermon on the Mount and presents the Crusades in a positive light.

The curriculum, Nathan said, “gives Christian children the sense that their family’s religion is the only true religion, which is not appropriate for public school education, at the very least.”

Nathan is among the many Texans raising concerns about the proposed reading curriculum as it nears final approval. Earlier this week, the Texas State Board of Education narrowly voted to proceed with the curriculum, called Bluebonnet Learning. A final vote is set for Friday.

The critics, who include Jewish parents and organizations as well as interfaith and education advocacy groups, say Bluebonnet — which will be optional but which schools would be paid to adopt — inappropriately centers on Christian theology and ideas. They have been lobbying for revisions since it was first proposed in May, offering detailed feedback.

“The first round of the curriculum that we saw honestly had a lot of offensive content in it, and was proselytizing, and did not represent Jewish people well,” said Lisa Epstein, the director of San Antonio’s Jewish Community Relations Council.

Now those critics say most of their specific suggestions have been accepted but they remain concerned.

“Looking at the revision, we still feel that the curriculum is not balanced and it introduces a lot of Christian concepts at a very young age, like resurrection and the blood of Christ and the Messiah, when kids are just really too young to understand and they don’t really have a grasp yet completely of their own religion,” she added. Epstein, who testified at a hearing on the proposal in Austin on Monday, has a child in high school and two others who graduated from Texas public schools.

The Texas vote comes as advocates of inserting Christianity into public education are ascendant across the country. Political conservatives are in power at the national level and the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has demonstrated openness to blurring church-state separation.

President-elect Donald Trump has signaled support for numerous initiatives to reintroduce Christian doctrine into public schools, from supporting school prayer to endorsing legislation that would require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. (One such measure in Louisiana was recently blocked by a federal judge.)

In Texas, Bluebonnet’s advocates say the curriculum would elevate students’ learning while also exposing them to essential elements of cultural literacy. They note that the curriculum includes references to a wide range of cultures, including ancient religions, and that the religious references make up only a small fraction of the material.

“They’ll elevate the quality of education being offered to all Texas students by giving them a well-rounded understanding of important texts and their impact on the world,” Megan Benton, a strategic policy associate at Texas Values, which says its mission is “to stand for biblical, Judeo-Christian values,” said during the hearing on Monday, Education Week reported. Texas Values called criticism of the proposed curriculum an “attack on the Bible.”

The Texas Education Authority solicited the proposed curriculum, which would join a menu of approved options, as part of a pandemic-era effort that waived some transparency laws, meaning that its authors are not fully known. But The 74, an education news organization, reported this week that a publishing company co-founded by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee contributed content to the curriculum.

Trump tapped Huckabee, a pastor and evangelical favorite, last week to become his ambassador to Israel.

For some in Texas and beyond, Bluebonnet represents a concrete example of how the national climate could ripple out into local changes.

“A lot of things, we think they’re outside of our community, or outside of our scope, like we hear these things, but are they really going to impact us?” said a Jewish assistant principal in the Richardson Independent School District north of Dallas who asked to remain anonymous. “But I think now that it’s becoming a potential reality, a friend was asking me, would Richardson adopt this? Is this something that is really going to happen in our community?”

While the Supreme Court has ruled that public schools can teach about religion, they cannot prioritize one religion over another in that instruction. So Bluebonnet’s inclusion of Christian and Bible stories in lesson plans drew scrutiny from the start — which grew after the Texas Tribune reported that a panel required to vet all curriculum proposals included Christian proponents of incorporating religion in public education.

In September, The Texas Education Authority’s curriculum review board published hundreds of pages of emails from members of the public along with whether the critiques had resulted in changes. Some did, the board noted, but many others were rejected.

A coalition of Jewish groups submitted 37 requested changes to the initial curriculum proposal. Epstein said the San Antonio JCRC had specifically objected to language in some lessons that evoked “antisemitic tropes” and textual inaccuracies in referencing the story of Queen Esther, as well as offensive references to the Crusades and language that explained the birth of Jesus as the messiah.

One passage had invited students to imagine “if you were a Crusader,” Epstein said, referring to the Christian knights of the Middle Ages who sought to conquer the Holy Land, massacred communities of Jews and are venerated by some on the Christian right.

In the case of the Esther lesson, the original curriculum had recreated an aspect of the Purim story in which Haman drew lots to determine when to kill Jews in the Persian Empire — as a way to teach probability. Nathan called that particular lesson “subversively antisemitic.”

“In ancient Persia [drawing lots] was a way of helping someone make a decision, and the game was called Purim,” the initial text read. “Ask students to choose a number from 1 to 6. Roll a die and ask the students to raise their hand if their number was rolled.”

“This is shocking, offensive and just plain wrong,” Sharyn Vane, a Jewish parent of two Texas public school graduates, said at a September hearing, according to the New York Times. “Do we ask elementary students to pretend to be Hitler?” (Historical simulations have widely been rejected by educators for all grades.)

Both of the lessons were revised after feedback from Jewish groups and others, but Epstein and Nathan said the changes were not adequate. A new prompt asks students to describe “the journey of a Crusader” in the third-person, but it still sanitizes the murder of many Jews and Christians during the Christian quest to conquer Jerusalem, Epstein charged.

And while the Purim lots activity was dropped, Epstein noted that a specific lesson plan about Esther — a beloved figure among evangelical Christians — also includes a reference to God, which the Megillah, the Jewish text telling the Purim story, famously does not do. She said that inaccuracy was not addressed in the revisions.

In a statement, San Antonio’s Jewish federation, under which the JCRC operates, also acknowledged the changes that were made after its feedback but expressed concern over what it called “an almost solely Christian-based” perspective with “inaccuracies” and content that is inappropriate for elementary school students.

“We are not against teaching a broad range of religious beliefs to children in an age-appropriate way that clearly distinguishes between ‘beliefs’ and ‘facts,’ and gives appropriate time and respect to acknowledging many different religions,” the federation said. “Public schools should be places where children of all religious backgrounds feel welcomed and accepted.”

The newer version of the curriculum also did not address the federation’s concerns about language referring to Jesus as “the Messiah,” written with a capital “M,” and references to “the Bible,” rather than “the Christian Bible” specifically, as the federation had urged the curriculum’s creators to adopt.

The Austin branch of the Anti-Defamation League, which was also involved in the efforts, also applauded the revisions that had been made thus far but said it still “reject[s] the current version of the proposed curriculum.”

“We agree that students should learn the historical contributions of various religious traditions, but ADL’s analysis of the originally proposed curriculum found that a narrow view of Christianity was overwhelmingly emphasized, there were few mentions of other faiths and the curriculum baselessly credited Christianity with improved societal morality,” the group said in a statement. “Although improvements have been made, the materials still appear to cross the line into teaching religion instead of teaching about religion.”

Criticism to the curriculum goes far beyond the Jewish community. Texas AFT, the state’s outpost of the American Federation of Teachers, a leading teachers’ union, also opposes the proposal. “Texas AFT believes that not only do these materials violate the separation of church and state and the academic freedom of our classroom, but also the sanctity of the teaching profession,” the union said in a statement.

Some Republicans on the Texas Board of Education expressed reservations about the curriculum’s quality and age-appropriateness, separate from its religious content.

And nonpartisan and interfaith groups like Texas Impact and Texas Freedom Network have also been involved in efforts to oppose the curriculum, as has the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Epstein said a Sikh parent also testified at one of the hearings, asking for her faith’s traditions to be incorporated into lesson plans to provide more religious perspectives.

Nathan said that when she testified against the proposal at a September hearing, her allies were diverse.

“Some of the people who were against it were not Jewish, and just were [against] the way that the curriculum was being put together pedagogically,” she said. “But there were both Jewish and non-Jewish people there, and also some Christian folks who were there who were opposed to such an overtly Christian curriculum.”

Marian Neleson, who has a 14-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son in the Frisco Independent School District, said it has never been easy to be a Jewish family in her area.

“There’s always concerns as a parent when there’s just a handful of other Jewish children in a majority Christian school,” said Neleson, who is active in her local interfaith alliance. “From how the school celebrates, how they do their calendars. Do they remember that there is a Jewish holiday, and then they schedule major school functions on High Holy Days?”

Now, she’s worried that her own district could face pressure to adopt the new curriculum, if it is approved.

“These kind of curriculums are promoting one interpretation, one religion’s view, and I feel like that’s not very respectful of people who come from different backgrounds and different faiths and different religions,” Neleson said. She added, “I do think that the Frisco school district particularly does try to be inclusive and try to recognize the diversity of the community, but I know that there’s always pressure from groups who are trying to promote one agenda in the schools.”

The Richardson assistant principal said she saw in the financial incentive to adopt the curriculum — districts that do so will get up to $60 per student — an inappropriate assertion of support by the state. Many Texas districts are cash-strapped after legislators declined to substantially increase school funding last year.

“There is such a push in education for high-quality instructional materials,” said the assistant principal, who has three elementary school-aged children. “They’re pushing this so hard, and even potentially putting up funding for it if you adopt it, but it’s not a truly high-quality curriculum.”

In a Facebook post after Tuesday’s preliminary vote, Vane encouraged parents to reach out to members of the state’s education board to urge them to oppose the curriculum. “It’s not over yet,” she wrote.

Nathan said she’s not sure how much opponents of the curriculum can do if it’s approved, but she stressed the importance of local advocacy — especially since the curriculum is not required.

“I think reaching out to your local school board and communicating with local teachers in your community is going to be key,” she said. “If this occurs, what do I need to do in my local school district to make sure that there’s programming that balances the perspective?”

But she signaled that the intensity of the proposed curriculum would undercut any counter-programming by representatives of other faiths.

“It’s not presented as, ‘Here’s what Christians believe,’” Nathan said about Bluebonnet. “It’s presented as, ‘Here is the truth.’ There’s a difference.”

[bijoumikhawal]

In the past decades, scholars assessing the increasing popularity of alternative spiritualities and the decreasing influence of traditional forms of religion (and especially Christianity) in Europe and Northern America have remarked a shift from religion to spirituality. Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead have put to test the theory of a spiritual revolution in the United Kingdom (with some references also to the United States); they concluded that statistical data do not confirm that we are facing a revolution on a religious level but that there has been a visible cultural change. They argue that the decline of institutional religion and the growing of spirituality might be an expression of the “massive subjective turn of modern culture” theorized by Charles Taylor and others.

Scholars studying alternative spiritualities in Europe and Northern America have distinguished between religious persons, recognizing a transcendent authority outside the self, and spiritual people, focusing on the inner self as the ultimate authority. However, both the religion/spirituality divide as well as that between external and internal authority tend to replicate the internal discourses of alternative spiritualities and in fact very often these theories are based almost exclusively on the analysis of texts and discourses. Little attention has been paid to the ways in which alternative spiritualities are themselves socially structured and how the dimensions of gender and power are addressed in terms of practice. As Wood has observed, the focus on a common idea of self-centeredness and self-authenticity risks imposing unity where there is diversity.

...

The pilgrims postulated a revolution of Christianity in the literal sense of the word, turning upside down its fundamental dogmas and rituals. This revolutionary mechanism emerged from their discourses, but also through the form in which they organized their rituals. One part of the ritual derived from the Christian tradition, for example, and was creatively adapted through references to indigenous rituals that were held to have maintained certain pre-Christian native features deriving from civilizations such as the Incas and the Aztecs.

The pilgrims I came to know wanted to oppose a Christianity they perceived as a coherent, monolithic belief system following classic social science theories of religion. In their critique of religion as a universal concept, they did not distinguish between dogma and practice. Talal Asad argues that the universal definitions of religion and ritual offered by social scientists were the product of a particular historical discursive process much like the religions and rituals they try to define. In recent years different scholars have stressed the importance of studying religious phenomena as lived experiences in constant change rather than stable and coherent belief systems. The pilgrims on the contrary had a stereotyped view of established religions, especially Christianity, and seldom took into account that lived religious experience has always tended to be in dialectical contrast with orthodoxy. Throughout the centuries Christians—whether theologians, visionaries, spiritual entrepreneurs, or everyday believers—have manipulated religious theories, symbols, and practices; they have generated often-contradictory discourses, negotiated with religious institutions, and created new ways to define and contact divine forces in ways not so different from those of the pilgrims.

Even if in the pilgrims’ discourses their spirituality was opposed to religion, their spiritual practices were strictly connected with Christianity. They constructed their spirituality almost in opposition to what they perceived to be religion, but in this process of construction they inevitably remained dependent on their very concept of religion and on Christianity. In this sense they ended up having much in common with the heretic groups they considered as their predecessors such as the Cathars, the Templar Knights, or the Rosicrucian who criticized Christian orthodoxy and proposed a different, more authentic access to the Christian message.

Pg 17-18 (emphasis mine), Looking for Mary Magdalene by Anna Fedele

[heathersdesk]

The Universal Guide to Scripture Reading for Beginners

Having participated in Scripture study with Muslims and other believers, I've realized there's a universal approach for beginners to take when they start reading Scripture for the first time. No matter what tradition they come from, there are three things that every person needs when they engage with these texts

Awe/Wonder

If you want to understand why people read Scripture, what the lasting relevance of the texts are, this is the spirit I think they all teach. Whether it's awe and wonder for God, for self, for others, or something in the world around you, this is what we're all searching for. Those of us who revere our sacred texts do so because we have experienced that awe and wonder in the past, and hope to do so again in the future.

When you're in a comparative religion space and sharing Scripture with others, giving space for the awe and wonder of other believers for their own texts and sharing in it is one of the most beautiful experiences you can share with other people. Interfaith spaces that can achieve that are truly special. And you don't have to be a believer to experience it.

If you can look at any text and recognize "this honors the dignity of the human spirit and I respect that," that is something anyone can experience.

Curiosity

In pursuit of that awe, there are two approaches you can take: alone or in community. And what becomes almost immediately apparent is Scripture demands to be understood in community.

"What does this mean?"

How can there be an answer to this question if there is no one to ask?

And this, I think, is also part of the value of religious texts. They can't be understood in isolation. Curiosity invites communion, which resists ignorance and isolation.

Curiosity, the spirit in which questioning becomes a sacred act, is essential to understanding any religious text. It's the act of opening oneself to new thoughts and ideas about the world, to extend a hand out into the world to see what will fill it in response.

And when you study Scripture with many people, including those outside of your tradition, the possibilities for the answers that can find their way to you greatly expands.

Skepticism

Not everything a person will give in terms of answered questions or communion will be consistent with sacred texts as written, or historical viewpoints and practice. Being able to handle contradictions with care, especially in a respectful way, is also a holy act. It's necessary for the pursuit of truth, which can end up being a composite of many different viewpoints. Some things will fall away. Others will be embraced. This discerning influence is impossible with skepticism, which every student of Scripture needs.

Gentle, respectful interrogation of an idea or principle is one that leaves no trace for the person being asked. It's a practice that honors consent. It leaves space for deep examination, which often takes time and ongoing consideration. It recognizes that not all people are prepared or willing to engage in that examination, and seeks out those who willingly enter that place of reasoning. It's an honor, another sacred act, to occupy that space with someone else. Honoring that space means allowing others to decide the impact you can and cannot have upon them there, and accepting that choice.

In my experience, those who study Scripture need all three of these traits to have a vibrant, healthy inner life and outward expressions of their own faith. When these three traits aren't in balance, it gives place to dogmatism, extremism, and conflict.

Part of why sharing beliefs with newcomers and seekers outside of our own communities is often such a rewarding experience is because we exercise these traits/reset these boundaries with them in ways we don't with our own communities. These are the healthy habits that matter most in seeking the sacred through Scripture.

When people ask me where to start with reading Scripture, they often ask me about which sections to read, translation recommendations, and resources to assist in the act of reading. And while those things are important, this is what I find myself wanting to explain instead.

To simply read Scripture was never the point. It's true in my religion with my texts. It's true, I think, in every religion with all sacred texts. And if giving ourselves and others access to the full power and benefit of Scripture is what we want, how we read almost matters more than what we read.