Transforming Patriarchy in Religions: From Gender Oppression to Beloved Community

Gender injustice and oppression afflict every major religion — with adverse effects on individuals, congregations, religious leadership, and cherished spiritual ideals. GERI programs help religious leaders and seekers of all faiths to begin skillfully dismantling the shackles of gender bias and patriarchal institutional structures, with profound benefit to the community and religious institutions.

Despite oft-repeated criticisms of religious and spiritual traditions for turning a blind eye to gender oppression and upholding patriarchal traditions, religious and spiritual communities provide fertile ground for innovative healing and reconciliation around gender issues that serve to transform patriarchal structures into beloved community.

Over the past 20 years, the GERI program has been conducted for various Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, and interfaith communities and congregations. GERI has presented on its work twice at the Parliament of World Religions—in 2015 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and in 2018 in Toronto, Canada. The Parliament of World Religions is the largest global gathering of religious leaders and seekers from the world’s major religious traditions, and the GERI program was well received both times.

An extended series of GERI programs were conducted between 2003 and 2007 for over a hundred Catholic priests and nuns in India, as documented in our book Divine Duality.  In South Africa, a series of GERI workshops was conducted for religious leaders from across the country, convened by the South African Council of Churches, and an invitational workshop for senior religious leaders in the Anglican Church was organized in 2013 in collaboration with the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.  Other GERI workshops were held for interfaith leaders in Cape Town, and in Seattle, Washington, and another workshop for a Zen Buddhist sangha in San Diego, California.

The results of these programs have been profound, and revealed that many religious leaders are seeking genuine methodologies for transforming patriarchy within their organizations. The PDF attached here gives more detail on GERI in religious communities, with testimonials from several religious leaders.