Dr. Cartier will discuss her ground breaking work, Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars and Theology before Stonewall, which argues that American butch-femme bar culture of the mid-20th Century should be interpreted as a sacred space for its community. Before Stonewall―when homosexuals were still deemed mentally ill―these bars were the only place where many could have any community at all. Baby, You are My Religion explores this community as a site of a lived corporeal theology and political space. It reveals that religious institutions such as the Metropolitan Community Church were founded in such bars, that traditional and non-traditional religious activities took place there, and that religious ceremonies such as marriage were often conducted within the bars by staff. Baby, You are My Religion examines how these bars became not only ecclesiastical sites but also provided the fertile ground for the birth of the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights before Stonewall.
A multicultural deep-dive into the mythology of queer deities, mythic legends, and historical leaders from around the world throughout human history.
This talk explores an implicit ecospirituality contained in the Bhagavadgītā. A proper understanding of the Bhagavadgītā’s well known “yoga of action” (karmayoga) depends on a cosmic sacrificial wheel described by Kṛṣṇa in verses 3.9-16. This cosmic wheel is an all-encompassing ritual ecology tha...
Spiritual ecology may be defined as the vast, diverse, complex, and dynamic arena of interactions of religions and spiritualities with ecologies, environments, and environmentalisms. It is predicated on understanding that secular approaches to resolve environmental problems from the local to the ...
