Feminism's Fourth Wave

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THOUGH FLINDERS AND other writers have been calling on women to reconnect with the sacred for years, many agree that the tipping point was 9/11. Before then, a women's spirituality conference called Sacred Circles, held biannually at Washington National Cathedral in the nation's capital, had focused on personal spirituality. More recently, however, program director Grace Ogden said she felt compelled to use the gatherings to address religious violence. "There was this sense of something gone terribly wrong," she said, "of communities splitting apart and a growing suspicion of people of Arab descent or other traditions." Her planning committee has since become more interfaith than in the past. Recent Sacred Circles conferences have stressed the role of compassion and tolerance in addressing political, economic, and religious differences.

Appalled by the lack of women in positions of religious authority on 9/11, Dena Merriam, a New York arts writer and public relations executive, joined others trying to form an international network of women religious leaders from the major faiths. In October 2002, they launched the Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders in Geneva, Switzerland. Associated with the United Nations, the initiative wants to get religious leaders more involved in U.N. peace-building plans. Specific programs aim to help young women of different faiths to communicate in places like Jerusalem that have been torn by conflict.

Merriam, the group's convener, said that one of women's strengths in peace work stems from their greatest weakness -- their long exile from authority inside mainstream institutions. "Suddenly women are beginning to realize that their outsider status is an asset," she said, leaving them free to act directly, outside institutional lines. Many women are following the fate of U.N. Resolution 1325, which, if passed, will mandate that women be involved in all peace negotiations.

Feminism's new direction was perhaps most striking at the Women & Power conference sponsored by the Omega Institute and V-Day in New York City last September. The 3,000 participants heard celebrity feminists like Jane Fonda, Sally Field, and Gloria Steinem herself note the shift. Playwright Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day, a movement to stop global violence against women and girls, addressed the need to change the face of power. Today, she said, our power is seen in terms of "country over country, tribe against tribe." The new paradigm, however, has to be about power "in the service of" -- collaboration, not conquest.

The free flow of creative expression at these assemblies marks a radical departure from the church coffees of our mothers' era. Participants often join together in fashioning new rites and rituals from ancient traditions, shaping forms at once old and new. Organizers at the Women & Power conference draped one room in carpets and labeled it the Red Tent area, evoking the Jewish ritual popularized by the book of that name. Elizabeth Lesser, a co-founder of the Omega Institute, said the room was like "an ancient gathering place where women were laughing, crying, brushing each other's hair, praying, and meditating. It seemed to satisfy women's deepest longings and was spiritual in a very feminine way."

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