Volumne 5 No. 2
Brazil Audience Welcomes Book
By MARY E. HUNT, Participating Scholar
An eager audience of nearly 100
people launched the Consultation's volume,
Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives From
the World's Religions, May 22, 2001,
at the Escola Superior de Teologia in São
Leopoldo, Brazil.Wanda Deifelt and Mary
E. Hunt, both contributors to the book,
conducted a roundtable discussion entitled,
Sexuality and Religion,moderated by Walter
Altmann, Professor of Systematic Theology at
the seminary.
Mary Hunt, co-director of
WATER, the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics
and Ritual in Silver Spring,Maryland, opened
the session with an overview of the interreligious
and international dimensions of the new work.
Wanda Deifelt, Professor
and Director of the graduate program at Escola
Superior de Teologia, cited Brazilian statistics
that showed 1 in 139 women dies from complications
of childbirth or from unassisted abortions.
She also described the double standard that
dictates that women, but not men, should be
virgins at marriage.
She noted that more Brazilian
Pentecostals than Roman Catholics believe that
the function of heterosexual relations is procreation,
an interesting shift in belief patterns in
what had been traditionally thought of as a
Catholic country. The compulsory nature of
motherhood continues in Brazil,with upper-middle-class
women schooled to use expensive in-vitro fertilization
so that the number of in-country adoptions
is dropping. Wanda invited the audience to
re-examine their presuppositions and engage
in focused conversation on sexuality so as
to bring religious insight to an increasingly
complicated situation.