1. The Divine Feminist: A Diversity of Perspectives Which Honor Our Mothers’ Gardens by Integrating Spirituality and Social Justice

Subjugated Voices and Religion - Souad T. Ali

Arisika Razak [+-]
California Institute of Integral Studies
Arisika Razak, MPH, is professor emerita and the former Chair of the MA and PhD Women’s Spirituality Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco California, where she also served as Director of Diversity. She is a former President of the American Academy of Religion - Western Region (AAR-WR), and she co-chaired the Womanist-Pan African Section of AAR-WR for five years. For over twenty years, Arisika provided midwifery care primarily to indigent women and women of color in the San Francisco Bay area, sparking her interest in multicultural feminisms, embodied healing methodologies and diverse spiritual traditions. She has led embodied healing and empowerment workshops for over thirty-five years and performed nationally and internationally as a spiritual dancer. Arisika is deeply committed to diversity, inclusion, cultural humility and anti-racist praxis; she has led numerous diversity trainings and served as a facilitator for groups in conflict. A presenter at the historic “The Gathering II,” a historic celebration of seventy-five Buddhist teachers of Black African descent, and the (virtual) Black and Buddhist Summit, Arisika is a regular contributor to books and journals, writing on the subject of womanism, African-Diasporic spiritual traditions, Buddhism and Blackness, and embodied healing traditions. She currently serves as a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center where her teachings incorporate diverse spiritual traditions, movement, and contemporary diversity theory. Her film credits include: Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth by Pratibha Parmar; Fire Eyes, by Soraya Mire, the first full length feature film by an African woman on the issue of female genital cutting; and Who Lives, Who Dies? a PBS production on the provision of health care provided to underserved and marginalized communities in the USA.

Description

In her essay, “The Divine Feminist: A Diversity of Perspectives Which Honor Our Mothers’ Gardens by Integrating Spirituality and Social Justice,” Arisika Razak discusses the important, yet often overlooked, intersection between spirituality and social justice. She starts her essay by discussing Western society’s depiction of the “divine feminine,” an idealized goddess woman who is not representative of every woman as society depicts her using unachievable beauty standards and abilities. Instead, Razak advocates for the “divine feminist,” calling on the reader to recognize the divinity of every woman in every feminist. This divine feminist accepts, acknowledges, and integrates secular feminism, religious studies, and ethnic/indigenous studies. To elaborate on the concept of the divine feminist, Razak draws on artists, activists, teachers, and scholars, some widely known and some unknown, from the African, Native, Queer, Latinx, and Islamic communities. For the divine feminist, drawing on spirituality and secularism when pursuing social justice is empowering.

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Citation

Razak, Arisika . 1. The Divine Feminist: A Diversity of Perspectives Which Honor Our Mothers’ Gardens by Integrating Spirituality and Social Justice. Subjugated Voices and Religion. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. Aug 2025. ISBN 9781800506725. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=46620. Date accessed: 25 Oct 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.46620. Aug 2025

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