Text Box: A SUSTAINED AND SERIOUS EFFORT TO GAIN HUMAN RIGHTS FOR WOMEN WORLDWIDE COULD BE THE START OF A BRAND NEW APPROACH TO FIGHTING TERRORISM. I’ve been reading Bin Ladin – Carmen, that is, not her brother-in-law, Osama (she spells the last name with an “I”) – and I’d like to present a brand-new approach to terrorism, one that turns out to be more consistent with traditional American values. First, let’s stop calling the enemy “terrorism,” which is like saying we’re fighting “bombings.” Terrorism is only a method; the enemy is an extremist Islamic insurgency whose appeal lies in its claim to represent the Muslim masses against a bullying superpower. But as Carmen Bin Ladin urgently reminds us in her book Inside the Kingdom, one glaring moral flaw of this insurgency, quite apart from its methods, is that it aims to push one-half of those masses down to a status only slightly above that of domestic animals. While Osama was getting pumped up for jihad, Carmen was getting up her nerve to walk across the street in a residential neighborhood in Jeddah – fully-veiled but unescorted by a male, something that is an illegal act for a woman in Saudi Arabia. Eventually, she left the kingdom and got a divorce because she didn’t want her daughters to grow up in a place where women are kept “locked in and breeding.” So, here in one word is my new counterterrorism strategy: feminism. Or, if that’s too incendiary, try the phrase “human rights for women.” I don’t mean just a few opportunistic references to women, like

CONTINENTAL ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER OF

UU FEMINIST INSPIRATION — News to use for more than just personal gain

2005

WINTER

W&R

u  SELENA FOX TO KEYNOTE AT WOMANSPIRIT IN PALATINE, IL ................. 5

u  ”WHY DIVERSITY TRAINING DOESN’T WORK” AVAILABLE IN JP DISTRICT ................. 3

u  “UNRAVELING THE GENDER KNOT” GOES

ON THE ROAD............... 2
Text Box: Women and Religion has planned a tea to be held in conjunction with the 2006 General Assembly, to honor women who have participated in the landmark curriculum Cakes for the Queen of Heaven. At the 1977 GA, when the Women & Religion Resolution was passed, demanding that we rid our theology of sexism, Rev. Leslie Westbrook felt that we needed curriculum materials to help congregations with that process. Rev. Ranck was asked to write “a study guide on feminist theology.” The Cakes kit has ten detailed session plans and a booklet of extra resources, and is still in use today. Rev. Ranck says, “What I wanted to do in Cakes for the Queen of Heaven was to present women’s religious history in the context of the personal issues women face living in a patriarchal society. Issues such as how we feel about our female bodies, mother-daughter relationships, power and self-esteem.” The response to Cakes was overwhelming. The course seemed to open doors for women, empowering them to claim their history and in many instances to make significant changes in their lives and relationships. It was used in approximately 800 congregations, often repeated each year. Cakes groups tended to keep meeting and eventually women demanded more material for study. Under the sponsorship of the UU Women’s Federation, Elizabeth Fisher created Rise Up and Call Her Name. The Rise Up curriculum was multi-cultural in content and met an expressed need for a global perspective. In 1995 Cakes for the Queen of Heaven was turned into a book. Twenty years have gone by since the Cakes curriculum was published. Rev. Ranck will be working this year on the republication of the curriculum. Please join in a celebratory tea at the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis on June 21, 2006 from 3-5. Rev. Ranck will be there. Whether you were a facilitator of the text at your church or one of the countless women whose lives have been changed irrevocably by the curriculum, please join us.

WOMUUNWEB Fall 2005 Page 7

I’M IN CHARGE OF CELEBRATIONS

 

Every day I celebrate
The rising of the sun.
I answer cardinal’s “pretty, pretty”
With my own shout of joy.
I celebrate little triumphs
Connections, friends,
Even good weather.
I celebrate having my own home,
My backyard sanctuary.
I celebrate the truck
That takes me to work.
I celebrate a job where
I am making a difference.
I celebrate coming home
To the arms of love.
I celebrate the sunset, the dusk,
The purple fingers of night,
The stars that deck out the sky.

— Barbara Vaughn
Text Box: Tea and Cakes for the Queen of Heaven

WOMUUNWEB