Imagining a Feminist Midrash - with writers Gloria & Bob Rees
Breaking Down Patriarchy
Amy McPhie Allebest
4.9 • 654 Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amy is joined by authors and educators Gloria and Bob Rees to discuss midrash --stories we write to interpret scripture and create meaning -- exploring the endless possibilities of imagination and the radical power that women hold to write our own midrash and change the spiritual landscape.
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Gloria Gardner Rees has taught English in the US, China, India, and Nepal. Her studies include nutrition, gerontology and adult development. Currently, she is involved in interfaith, humanitarian, and environmental work. In addition to writing midrash, she is co-editing a collection of essays by Latter-day Saints titled Pillars of my Faith.
Robert A. Rees is a scholar, poet, and humanitarian. He is the author of “Toward a Mormon Feminist Midrash: Mormon Women and the Imaginative Reading of Scripture,” Sunstone (2012) and “The Midrashic Imagination and the Book of Mormon,” Dialogue (Fall 2011). His most recent book is Imagining and Reimagining the Restoration (Kofford Books, 2025).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McThea-Awebest. One thing I've spoken about often is my religious upbringing and how I felt throughout my whole life as I would read scripture written by men, about men, for men, and interpreted by men. In the Bible, women's voices comprise less than 1% of the total spoken words. |
| 0:24.9 | So women's exclusion is not subtle. And it's not just women being overly sensitive, making something out of nothing. |
| 0:32.7 | Women are left out. And when they are spoken about by men, they are often denigrated or monitored |
| 0:38.8 | or bossed around by men. The harm that was done to my self-concept as a girl and woman in |
| 0:45.9 | that environment is inestimable. Interestingly, though, I've been going through somewhat of a |
| 0:51.7 | spiritual journey this year, and I've gained important insights from |
| 0:55.5 | other religions. However, I've been deeply disappointed to find the gender ratio in other faiths |
| 1:02.2 | that is not much better than the one I come from. I've been reading Buddhist and Taoist works, |
| 1:08.2 | for example, all men. And even the book Falling Upward, a Spirituality for |
| 1:13.5 | the Two Haves of Life by Richard Rohr is a wonderful book, and Richard Roar is a wise, beautiful |
| 1:19.7 | soul. But he's also a man, and the pages are filled with biblical passages, again, all men, |
| 1:26.0 | and Franciscan monks from Francisco, a man and monks, all men. |
| 1:30.5 | And I had to set the book down in frustration that women are still so utterly absent. |
| 1:36.6 | In the meantime, one other example. |
| 1:38.5 | My husband has been sending me links to YouTube videos about Carl Jung. |
| 1:42.9 | These videos have been extremely helpful. But Carl Jung was also |
| 1:47.4 | surprise, a man. And the scripts of these videos are written by men and read by an AI. That's a man's |
| 1:55.0 | voice. Even our robots are men. So today I am very excited, not just to highlight what a male-centric world we live in, |
| 2:05.1 | but to talk about a practical solution, something we can actually do to change the spiritual |
| 2:11.5 | landscape for ourselves. It's creating a midrash. And to guide us in this practice are the incredible Bob and Gloria Reese. |
| 2:20.2 | Hi, Bob and Gloria. |
| 2:21.7 | Hello. |
... |
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