Spiritual Activism Research Articles

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Posicionalidades brujas: hacia un activismo de espiritualidad chicana/latina

Este artículo de investigación profundiza sobre las construcciones de ‘la Bruja’ —una mujer practicante de conocimientos espirituales, sexuales y curativos— en nuestro imaginario cultural contemporáneo basado en el legado de la otrerización de curanderas en Europa y las Américas. En particular, analizo la canción “‘Livin’ La Vida Loca” de Ricky Martin sobre el poder ambivalente y hechicero que una mujer racializada ejerce sobre un hombre. Este artículo explora las maneras en que las ‘bru­jas’ son temidas por su conocimiento y poder, y por lo tanto, son sometidas a tratamientos opresivos. Mi planteamiento es por una posicionalidad bruja en los estudios feministas Chicana/Latina que incluya el desarrollo de nuestras propias episte­mologías brujas. Como práctica de lo que Gloria Anzaldúa llamaría ‘activismo espiritual,’ una posicionalidad bruja compren­de curar las creencias internalizadas que demonizan la Bruja, la espiritualidad y sexualidad transgresivas que ella representa.

Shamanic spiritual activism: alternative development in the Brazilian Itamboatá valley

Drawing upon critiques that claim a lack of interest in spirituality in development studies, this paper aims to show how alternative ethical forms of development can be enacted when adopting shamanic spiritual worldviews. The paper draws upon ethnographic research conducted in Terra Mirim, an intentional shamanic community, located in the Itamboatá valley, Bahia, Brazil. Drawing upon contributions from Chicano scholars, this research engages with the concept of ‘spiritual activism’ to understand how alternative ontologies of development are shaped around the idea of interconnectedness and relational consciousness.

Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations

Gloria Anzaldúa's understanding of suffering is inextricably connected to subjectivity and spirituality. Tracing her rethinking of stories/histories involving the violent dismemberment of female religious figures, specifically Teresa of Ávila and Coyolxauhqui, I show how Anzaldúa's critical engagement and creative reimagining of these stories/histories led her to develop a conception of fragmentation and wholeness that resists dualistic epistemologies. For Anzaldúa, suffering emerges from dualism and the violence inherent in processes of categorization, especially as they function in identity formations. “Self,” Anzaldúa argues, cannot be neatly organized or fully understood; it is always in process. Writing, as an act of “spiritual activism,” mirrors this process of becoming because it demands critically and creatively analyzing the stories/histories that inform our understandings of self and others–of nos/otras. Writing becomes a spiritual and shamanic act capable of inviting personal and political transformation. Through her writings, I argue, Anzaldúa acts as poet-shaman, calling us toward a spirituality of transformation and inspiring visions of what it might mean to live together in nonhierarchical multiplicity.

Spiritual Activism, Visionary Pragmatism, and Threshold Theorizing

Focusing on explorations of spirituality in Gloria Anzaldúa's theory of spiritual activism and Patricia Hill Collins's theory of visionary pragmatism, this forum essay invites scholars of black feminist thought to explore Anzaldúa's work and include it in their research specialties. This meditation models “threshold theorizing” as a dialogic method enabling additional angles of vision and thus generating new, potentially provocative, and transformative insights. It also demonstrates the value of spirituality and spiritual activism to contemporary research.

Gloria Anzaldúa and the Problem of Violence against Women

Gloria Anzaldúa and the Problem of Violence against Women John Kaiser Ortiz “It seems like one of my functions is to go in and out of various worlds.” —Gloria Anzaldúa (2009, 105) In Interviews/Entrevistas, Gloria Anzaldúa relates the story of her brother who had returned “half dead and unrecognizable” from Vietnam, weighing “only 87 pounds,” after ending up “in the bottom of a foxhole,” where he was drowning in the blood of his fellow platoon members, “which is what saved him” (Anzaldúa 2000, 44). As an example of Anzaldúa’s sense that philosophical dialogue carries with it possibilities of conf lict mediation, this war story stretches the familiar claim in Borderlands/La Frontera that “the U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta [is an open wound] where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds” (Anzaldúa 1999, 25). Of significance here is not only the disturbing idea that this moral hemorrhaging promises to save both nations and their relationship, even though Anzaldúa’s notion that moral crises bleed onto and into still other problems clearly approximates a sorely lacking critique of the extreme violence marring life in and between the United States and Mexico. More importantly, the act of retelling someone else’s survival of traumatic experience intimates a way of publicly raising problems of violence in terms that expressly engage the issue of how such conf licts might be tackled. [End Page 195] Anzaldúa’s reiteration of her brother’s uncommon survival in warfare calls attention to her abiding concerns with how one is humanized by thinking, talking, and writing about moral crises. Attending philosophically to the problem of violence against women in particular, Anzaldúa’s thought shows us how the ways in which we discuss the trauma or human rights abuses of others discloses our proximity and also distance (and so our relevance) to these issues, thereby showing us how we might act in terms of getting closer to these issues in order to effectively challenge them. I argue that Anzaldúa’s thought maps out a moral geography that identifies key moments where a normative view of how to address violence begins to appear. I draw on Anzaldúa to argue for what I call a normative view of philosophical practice as conflict mediation. By this I mean a mapping of moral conflict that normatively gestures toward practical ways of ending the many forms of violence faced by women on the border. The philosophical challenge in mediating violence is to stretch our thinking about and acting upon (through talking about and writing on) the ways in which given forms of violence relate visibly and directly to other moral crises, especially in terms of our own personal witness. But acts intended to mediate violence produce the realization that in order to staunch any one form or instance of violence one must also draw real, felt, and personal connections to these and all other existing forms of violence (often at the same time). This essay attempts to delineate my own sense of how philosophy serves to mediate conflict when seen next to Anzaldúa’s model for what it means to write and talk about violence, moral crises, and human rights abuses. That my own spiritual activism leads me to think of Anzaldúa’s writings and interviews as theorizing models of peacemaking and healing explains why I invoke metaphors of bleeding and bruising throughout this essay. References to bleeding and bruising should be seen as an attempt to visualize and dramatize my own personal relation to the realities of femicide and other human rights abuses along the U.S.-Mexico border. Mapping out moral conflict in this distinctly Anzaldúan sense means seeing the diverse persons and places who share this planet together as members of equal standing in terms of both a shared geography and a collective normative cartography. Importantly, my approach to philosophical dialogue as conflict mediation resolves what I call the problem of distance. The problem of distance refers to the problem of motivating others to care about and act upon violence suffered by people who live in parts of...

An Author's Response

Honored by the colleagues who celebrate Jesus ACTED UP with their reflections on the book's twentieth anniversary of publication, I respond briefly to each other them in turn. I frame my response with recollection of the trauma of the 1980s and both governmental and ecclesial homophobia and AIDSphobia at the beginning and a brief portrait of ways I am still “ACTing UP” in partnership with my husband Joe and the members of MCC in the Valley, especially in relation to ecology and US–Mexican border violence. With Michaelson, I reflect on the necessity of confrontational activism in the pursuit of social justice reforms. With Cheng, I consider the role of Jesus ACTED UP in inspiring the continuing development of queer theology. With Jordan, I emphasize the interdependence of silence and the speech of protest, of spiritual disciplines and social activism. Finally, with Hunt, I recognize my own journey of spiritual development and growth in relation to the diversity of LGBTQ communities and the intersectionality of the structures of dominance against which we contend.

Nepantla, Spiritual Activism, New Tribalism: Chicana Feminist Transformative Pedagogies and Social Justice Education

In this paper, I propose that Gloria Anzaldua's philosophy offers pedagogical and epistemological tools for social justice and human rights education and theory. I propose that Anzaldua's conceptualizations are helpful to re-thinking Western based human rights frameworks by including indigenous worldviews. In this vein, I examine how conceptualizations, such as Nepantla, Spiritual Activism, and New Tribalism, can inform the development of transformative pedagogies for social justice education and praxis. Their significance lies in their ability to offer multifaceted examinations of multiple forms of oppression and agency. At the same time, Anzaldua provided us with innovative tools to work across differences. I argue as well that the methodology of testimonio is helpful in this process because it offers tools to work in solidarity with different communities and voice multiple perspectives. I conclude by offering pedagogical strategies for social justice education and praxis.

Shifting Subjectivities: Mestizas, Nepantleras, and Gloria Anzaldua's Legacy

Gloria Anzaldua was a prolific writer and, as Chela Sandoval phrased it, a “theorist of hope” (xiii) whose visions for future transformations were bold and always already present in her own theory and practice of consciousness. Her inclusive approach to subjectivity radically broke with binary thinking and identification by exclusion. Anzaldua was simultaneously a Chicana, queer, poet, feminist, writer, theorist, spiritual activist, and more. Her own experiences and theories fully embrace the fact that ambivalence is inevitable when dealing with questions of subjectivity. However, at the same time, Anzaldua recognizes the difficulties of living this ambivalence. The famous mestiza consciousness is only the starting point in her work. This essay traces the shifts, similarities, and differences in Anzaldua’s vision for a transformative subjectivity from her mestiza consciousness to her latest concept of becoming a nepantlera. Nepantla is a Nahuatl word for the in-between, and Anzaldua adopts the nepantla as the precarious but only possible home for a nepantlera subjectivity (“now let us shift” 574). These theories of subjectivity are also transformational strategies that start with and transcend individual change, creating new communities and worlds if enough people participate. These individual and collective changes may materialize through the power of language to rename and rewrite identities and personal, mythical, and spiritual histories—for example, with regard to one’s location in the conventional ethnic frame of reference or within heteronormativity. This essay analyzes the mestiza consciousness and becoming a nepantlera in their function of destabilizing and overcoming the tremendous influence of ethnic frames of reference on subjectivization. Both of these alternative, self-chosen subjectivities are located in the in-between spaces. They refuse to view and practice identities through the conventional categories of gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, or sexuality. Nevertheless, even though Anzaldua’s visions create alternative identity locations that potentially transform realities through literary and spiritual activism, the differences between a mestiza and a nepantlera and the significant developments in her later work are often overlooked (Keating, “Introduction” 4). Instead of viewing Anzaldua’s landmark publication Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) as the culmination of her work, I use its central chapter “La conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness” as a point of departure from which to compare her mestiza subjectivity to the theory-practice of becoming a nepantlera as presented in the chapter “now let us shift . . . the path to conocimiento . . . inner works, public acts” from this bridge we call home (2002). The first part of this essay offers brief definitions of mestizas and nepantleras and a review of the controversies surrounding Anzaldua’s own standpoint and her earlier work. On the basis

The Resurrection Project of Mexican Catholic Chicago: Spiritual Activism and Liberating Praxis

Drawing on historical archives, oral history interviews and ethnographic material, this essay explores the history of Chicago’s “The Resurrection Project”/ El Proyecto Resurreccion , a community development organization that builds healthy communities through housing and critical consciousness. The mission of the organization emerges from the lived realities of Mexican Catholic Chicago, formulated in large part by the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico, as well as a history of exclusion, displacement and marginalization in the Windy City. It argues that the spiritual activism and liberating praxis articulated between 1990 and 2005—namely housing and the formation of a critical consciousness—profoundly links experience, culture and faith. This integration of lived realities, culture and faith suggests an expansive view of popular religion.

Vatos Sagrados: Cursillo and a Midwestern Catholic Borderlands

This article uses a gendered religious borderlands perspective to analyze the Cursillo experiences of Latino Catholic deacons in the Diocese of Cleveland (OH) and the Diocese of Toledo (OH), who trace their family histories to Texas, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. By considering experiences of religious ecstasy, male social bonding, and spiritual activism as a result of Cursillo participation, this article attempts to provide insights into the complex relationships among gender, race, and religion. Joining other recent scholars who have conducted intellectual inquiries toward gendered borderlands literature, my drawing, based on semi-structured interviews and archival research, attempts to demonstrate the significance of the Cursillo experience in the changing narrative of Latino men as borderland gendered subjectivities, and specific to a Midwest experience.

Downhome Gospel: African American Spiritual Activism in Wiregrass Country

Downhome Gospel: African American Spiritual Activism in Wiregrass Country

Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World (review)

Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World (review)

Downhome Gospel: African American Spiritual Activism in Wiregrass Country (review)

Reviewed by: Downhome Gospel: African American Spiritual Activism in Wiregrass Country Thomas L. Bynum Downhome Gospel: African American Spiritual Activism in Wiregrass Country. By Jerrilyn McGregory. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. xx, 214 pp. $50.00. ISBN 978-1-60473-782-0. In Downhome Gospel, Jerrilyn McGregory documents a variety of African American sacred music performance communities found among burial leagues, Baptist union meetings, singing conventions, and anniversary gospel programs in the Wiregrass Country of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. This ethnographic study not only documents African American sacred music performance communities but also notes how these communities fortify spiritual as well as social needs. The title, Downhome Gospel, may lead readers to believe the book is solely about gospel music, but McGregory's research explores an array of sacred music such as spirituals, common meter, Sacred Harp, shape-note, and traditional and contemporary Gospel that persists in Wiregrass Country. While noting the geographical uniqueness of Wiregrass Country, McGregory also reveals how African American folk traditions make this region distinct. Of the many folk traditions that characterize Wiregrass Country, the Emancipation Day celebrations are most prominent. Although not as well known as the Juneteenth celebrations, the Twentieth of May celebrations typify this region. May 20 marks the date when the general order concerning the Emancipation Proclamation arrived in Wiregrass Country. Celebrated as a day of remembrance, May 20 celebrations, often combined with May Day festivities, consist of a formal program, food, games, musical performances, parades, and other jovial entertainment. While May 20 celebrations still feature prominently in Wiregrass Country, today these activities have significantly declined. Within the historical context of May 20 celebrations, however, Wiregrass African Americans assembled to sing. African American sacred music performance communities "are trademarks of life in Wiregrass Country" and their sacred music performances, which take place outside of "Sunday church-related activities," create a spiritual space that transcends the denominational divide. This ecumenical spirit is evident in the singing conventions and anniversary gospel programs, which consist of participants from various denominations such as Baptists (Missionary and Primitive), African Methodist Episcopal, and Christian Methodist Episcopal to name a few. McGregory states, "when individuals accept membership into a sacred performance community, they enter not on the basis of denomination but formulate a [End Page 145] network, an expansive community with a similar aesthetic and scriptural orientation" (p. xx). Membership in these communities does not require one to have a spectacular singing voice. McGregory maintains that "in Wiregrass Country, the people often say, 'You don't have to sing like an angel'" (p. xvii). Praising God through song does not require one to have a trained voice because "'good music is God's music regardless of the manner delivered'" (p. xviii). Moreover, these sacred music performance communities are not organized to promote a specific church dogma, neither is membership opened only to those with trained musical voices. The unique feature of Wiregrass Country sacred music performance communities is that emphasis is on praising God and enjoying genuine Christian fellowship. Largely populated by women, African American sacred music performance communities foster egalitarian ideals and practices. According to McGregory, Wiregrass African American women espouse a "womanist theology" that is concerned with promoting the good of the whole community. For these women, it is about ensuring the success of their entire sacred music network and not just their organizations. McGregory asserts, "these women represent the womanists of whom Alice Walker wrote, who are 'committed to the survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female'" (p. 162). Although the communalism within sacred music performance communities is unique, why did these Wiregrass women promote such an egalitarian ethos over individual pursuits? Why is this behavior more pronounced within Wiregrass Country than outside of it? McGregory points to African American female socialization patterns in the Wiregrass region to understand this phenomenon, which partly substantiates her argument. Downhome Gospel achieves the goal the author hopes to accomplish, which "is to introduce Wiregrass Country's African Americans and to examine their sacred music performed outside of Sunday church-related activities" (p. xvii). One criticism of this work, however, is that the author discusses too many sacred music organizations, particularly those that make up the singing...

Spiritual Activism: Grounding Ourselves in the Spirit

This final article highlights the twin perils of burnout and polarization that often occur during traditional approaches to social activism, and calls attention to an alternative approach that is emerging in the field—variously referred to as “engaged spirituality,” “sacred activism,” or “spiritual activism.” Seven key themes of this new paradigm for social change are presented: spiritual motivation for justice work, recognition of interdependence, the means matter, acceptance of not knowing, openness to suffering, outer change requires inner work, and commitment to spiritual practices. The article concludes by identifying ways the articles in this special edition reflect these seven themes and specifying possible areas for future research.

The Strong Meat of the Gospel: "Lacouturisme" and the Revival of Asceticism in North America

This paper investigates the history of the retreat movement founded by Onésime Lacouture, SJ, in Québec during the 1930s, which subsequently migrated to the United States, primarily under the stewardship of Father John Hugo, of Pittsburgh. The Lacouture retreat emerged out of a climate of cultural revivalism that swept over turn-of-the-century Québec as a contemplative response to the nationalist social Catholicism that was then ascendant. It was unrelentingly critical of mainstream, "respectable" Catholicism which, Lacouture believed, had forfeited its supernatural mandate in favor of secular "paganism." In both Canada and the United States, the retreat was controversial, and as its primary apologists, Lacouture and Hugo drew public fire from critics. Its most celebrated participant, Dorothy Day, was an avid supporter of the retreat and promoted it heavily within the Catholic Worker community. Although there was some disagreement within the Worker about the merits of "Lacouturite" theology, Day testified to its criticalrole in her own spiritual formatio n. During the course of its maturation, the retreat morphed from an apolitical insular program of maximalist Christianity into a generator for the Worker’s heroic spiritual activism.

Doing work that matters : the impact of Gloria Anzaldúa's "Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza"

He dividido este breve ensayo en tres secciones: primero, ofrezco una breve biografía de Anzaldúa, y la trayectoria de más de veinte años desde la publicación del libro, incluyendo la fundación de una organización que continúa el trabajo del proyecto vital de Anzaldúa. En segundo lugar, debido a que este escrito interroga el modo en que Borderlands ha cambiado radicalmente la manera en que abordamos ciertas áreas en el trabajo escolar, examino algunas áreas específicas en las que esto es evidente, e incluyo un ejemplo de cómo la creación o recuperación de ciertos términos por parte de Anzaldúa como mestizaje y facultad puso la base para un trabajo posterior, ella delineó un sendero para un activismo espiritual. Esto conduce a mi punto final: que el libro modifica el marco epistemológico y ontológico, funcionando como un cambio de paradigma tal como lo describe Thomas Kuhn en La Estructura de las Revoluciones Científicas (1962), un cambio de paradigma que necesitamos porque estamos en un tiempo de transición, política y social, en nuestro mundo globalizado.

A Mighty River: Intersections of Spiritualities and Activism in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

This article seeks to expand the possibilities of support that children’s and young adult literature provides to activist‐oriented educators. Joining our voices to others who have made significant contributions to this emphasis, our work examines a too‐often‐silenced aspect of activism: its intersection with spirituality. Using an inclusive conceptualization of spirituality that emphasizes diversity and complexity, we present and engage with a range of picture books and novels relevant to spiritual activism. We first present a literature review that traces the use of literature in the teaching of activism and spirituality. Drawing from this scholarship, we identify key criteria for selecting spiritual activist texts. Next, we discuss several texts that meet these criteria in relation to four overarching themes: 1) aligning activist approaches with spiritualities, 2) invoking praxis to sustain a vision of change, 3) identifying activist strategies for effecting change, and 4) negotiating across spiritual boundaries. This discussion foregrounds the power of these texts to explore how people’s spiritualities sustain and inspire their activist efforts. We conclude by extending these implications with specific recommendations for educators who seek to nourish the activism and spirituality of children and youth.

Apologies and Advice

Let’s get the apology over with first. Like everyone in my generation (those who lived through the upheavals of the sixties), I feel dreadful about the world we’re leaving you. I myself don’t plan on leaving it soon, but we had the chance to leave you a much better springboard, and we failed.In July, 2005 Michael Lerner and I (with the help of many others) mounted the first Spiritual Activism Conference on the Berkeley campus. I went up on the roof of the Student Union Building to hang out with the lively youth contingent. As I watched and listened, I was able to identify six things that my peers and I had gotten wrong when, forty-one years earlier, we had agitated for free speech on the plaza below:We felt alienated, if not betrayed by the older generation. Our defiant motto was “Don’t trust anyone over thirty,” which was fine with me until January 20, 1967, when I crossed into exile. This motto deprived us of much wisdom.We had no relationship with the earth and, in some cases, with anything material.We saw life and our situation as a simple political struggle, quoting Marx, though few ever read him. People with a spiritual view (like myself) were severely mistrusted. Somewhere in the mid-seventies this changed, though tensions remain.We thought things had to be big and hierarchical to have influence. Though numbers still seduce us, we now recognize that hierarchy itself is part of the problem.We knew next to nothing about nonviolence. There is still far to go here, but nonviolent groups are starting to pass their best practices on to other revolutionaries—a qualitative and welcome change.We thought (conveniently enough) that having sex was a revolutionary act. I think we still have a good bit to learn about the uses of sexual energy, but at least young people no longer confuse the act itself with political change.Building on these observations, I would urge today’s activists to make global warming the number one priority for the entire movement. Resolve to rebalance the planet in the next few years. But resolve to do so with nonviolence and in a way that permanently gets to the problem’s root.Concentrating on global warming does not mean dropping everything else, but it means only doing things that have at least an indirect tie-in to climate disruption, and understanding the connection so that we can make strategic decisions about when to do what. Going to the root means building on the discovery of spirituality, for as Vandana Shiva said, “If you get rid of the pollution in the human mind they will get rid of the pollution in the environment.” If enough people come to suspect that happiness is not something outside us, something to buy, but something lurking in our own consciousness, we will have made a profound change that can be built on to develop into our desired world.G_d bless all of you.

Embodied Spirituality, Now and Then

Research Article| August 01 2006 Embodied Spirituality, Now and Then Jorge N. Ferrer Jorge N. Ferrer Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Tikkun (2006) 21 (3): 41–64. https://doi.org/10.1215/08879982-2006-3016 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jorge N. Ferrer; Embodied Spirituality, Now and Then. Tikkun 1 August 2006; 21 (3): 41–64. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/08879982-2006-3016 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsTikkun Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © Tikkun magazine2006 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Spiritual Activism You do not currently have access to this content.