New Wineskins Community YouTube Channel Launched!
New Wineskins Community has been planting seeds of liberation, equality, justice, and peace for more than 26 years. Beginning with six women meeting in a small room at Royal Lane Baptist Church, we created this egalitarian community to explore new ways of seeing the Divine so the spiritual gifts of everyone are equally valued and nurtured. Since then we have met in five other churches of various denominations. We have been grateful for the hospitality of all these churches and for the opportunities to spread our message.
Like many faith communities during the pandemic, we have met online, extending our reach to people around the country. Many people have asked for resources to begin New Wineskins communities in their locations.
Now we’re launching a New Wineskins Community YouTube Channel with resources for groups to use in creating these new communities and for personal meditations. You can find the channel on YouTube with the title “New Wineskins Feminist Ritual Community.”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Fn8l_cmt0j3VXjovz00pA/videos
New Wineskins Community celebrates rituals especially focused on the Divine Feminine, to change culture from devaluation to empowerment of the feminine and to change culture from one up/one down and win/lose to mutual relationships. The rituals symbolize shared power and responsibility to change culture from white supremacist/patriarchal to egalitarian. The mission of New Wineskins is to expand experience of Divine Mystery and to contribute to healing, peace, and justice in our world.
The name “New Wineskins,” coming from the metaphor in Matthew 9:17, describes our search for new language and symbols to proclaim the good news of liberation and shalom. Our worship services name and image the Divine as female and male and more to support the equality and value of all. New Wineskins Community welcomes people of all faiths, races, genders, sexual orientations, ages, abilities. We celebrate diversity and actively encourage the discovery and exercise of everyone’s gifts.
Words and Visual Symbols Matter
Because worship in most faith communities has excluded or only marginally included female names and images of Deity, New Wineskins Community seeks to provide balance by focusing especially on the Divine Feminine. Language and visual images we use for the Divine matter.
- Words and visual symbols have great power in that they constitute our world and our beliefs that drive our actions.
- The language and symbols we use for the Divine reflect and shape our deepest values.
- If all our names and images for the Divine are male and white, then we are giving greatest value to white males and devaluing all others.
- This devaluation lays the foundation for worldwide violence against women and girls and for racially motivated violence and violence against LGBTQIA+ persons and others in devalued groups.
- People who are not given sacred value are excluded, marginalized, and discriminated against in faith communities and throughout society.
- New Wineskins Community worship services name and image the Divine as female and male and more, providing a foundation of justice and freedom for all creation to become all we’re created to be in the divine image.
Genesis 1:27 reveals female and male in the divine image. But language and visual images in most faith communities reveal worship of a white male God. Deity has been created in the image of a white masculine human being. This prevalent worship of a white male God sanctions the dominance of white males. Denying Deity a female face diminishes the sacred value of females and forms a foundation for demeaning and abuse of women. In the U.S. alone, every fifteen seconds a woman is battered. One in three women experiences some kind of abuse. Worldwide, an estimated four million women and girls each year are bought and sold into prostitution, slavery, or marriage. Seventy percent of the poor are women. Men as well as women suffer from the worship of an exclusively masculine Deity. Making the Ultimate Power of the universe male gives the strongest support imaginable to the dominance of men, stifling full emotional and spiritual development. Dehumanization results when dominance leads to violence. The earth and all creation suffer from this male-dominated theology and culture. References to the earth are feminine, but the feminine is not given sacred value.
We’re all in deep need of healing. We can never be all we’re created to be in the divine image until we expand our image of the Divine. That’s why New Wineskins Community worship services name and image the Divine as female and male and more. By so doing, New Wineskins Community contributes to justice, peace, and freedom for all creation to become all we’re created to be in the divine image.
Our hope and prayer is that you will use this New Wineskins Community YouTube Channel to contribute to spreading this message that has power to transform our world.
“New Wineskins Feminist Ritual Community”: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Fn8l_cmt0j3VXjovz00pA/videos
New Wineskins Community has collaborated with a variety of faith communities:
The Gathering, A Womanist Church, Dallas, TX
Unity Church of Dallas
Ebenezer/herchurch Lutheran, San Francisco, CA
First United Methodist Church, Boulder, CO
Northaven United Methodist Church, Dallas
Northridge Presbyterian Church, Dallas
Royal Lane Baptist Church, Dallas
Kessler Park United Methodist Church, Dallas
Grace United Methodist Church, Dallas
Church in the Cliff, Dallas
Cathedral of Hope, Dallas
Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, Raleigh, NC
First Baptist Church, Pittsfield, MA
Equity for Women in the Church, Inc.
Mary Mother of Jesus: An Inclusive Catholic Community, Sarasota, FL
People’s Catholic Seminary
Christian Feminism Today
First United Methodist Church, Fort Worth
Westside Unitarian Universalist Church, Fort Worth
United Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, SC
We hope this New Wineskins Community YouTube Channel will inspire more communities to collaborate with us.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Fn8l_cmt0j3VXjovz00pA/videos