Gender and religion (Women s Studies)

The Shaping of New Testament Narrative and Salvation Teachings by Painful Childhood Experience

by Benjamin Abelow

Archive for the Psychology of Religion 33 (2011) 1-54

PRINTING SUGGESTION: the following click sequence will print the article at full page size, allowing for comfortable reading of both text and footnotes: (1.) Download article and open using Adobe Acrobat or Reader; (2.) Click on the ‘File’ menu and choose ‘Print...’; (3.) Set the ‘Page Scaling’ option to ‘Fit to Printable Area’ (or 'Fit to Printer Margins'); (4.) Click on ‘Print'

NOTE TO NON-MEMBERS: If you are not an Academia member, you will not be able to download this article from this page. However, the article is available with unrestricted access at: http://benjaminabelow.com/Writings.html

This article considers the influence of childhood corporal punishment, abandonment, and neglect on the development and... more This article considers the influence of childhood corporal punishment, abandonment, and neglect on the development and reception of seminal New Testament teachings. Two related but distinct propositions are argued. First, that widespread patterns of painful childhood experience provided a thematic template that deeply shaped the New Testament during its formative period. Second, that this thematic shaping has contributed, on an individual level, to subjective experiences of faith and, on a cultural level, to the initial spread and subsequent persistence of Christianity. The approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on religious texts, historical evidence about the treatment of children, and several areas of psychology. The article ends with an exploratory excursus intended to stimulate thought about possible childhood influences in non-Christian religions and myths; the traditions considered are Judaism and Islam, the religious-philosophic system of karmic reincarnation that is foundational to Hinduism and Buddhism, and a Greek mythic text associated with the historically important Eleusinian mystery religion.

Feminism and Religion: Where Do Nontheists Fit? By Bridget Ludwa

by Feminism and Religion

originally published on the Feminism and Religion Project.

What is a woman to do when she no longer finds any type of theism relevant to her, but as a human being still needs... more What is a woman to do when she no longer finds any type of theism relevant to her, but as a human being still needs community, ritual and sense of the sacred that theistic religion inherently provides?  The most vocal representatives of atheists are men, such as the voices of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens.  I’m happy to have these voices, because they’re brilliant and well-spoken, but where are the women?  My partner shares the same belief system as I do, but he does not feel the same need for community as I do.  Is it gender?  What ratio of women to men do you observe when you look at who is spending their time and energy making sure your local Catholic Church functions?  In questioning if women are more spiritual than men, Caroline Kline observed that women outnumber men in religious observance.  For the sake of argument, let’s accept for a moment that women are more inclined than men to seek community, ritual and a sense of the sacred.  What is a nontheist woman to do?

I wanted to go through some articles posted on here before diving into this question, maybe I would find a satisfying answer and that would be the end of it.  Carol Christ consistently poses the divine gender question, and admittedly I’ve been very drawn to a feminine manifestation of the divine.  The idea of Mother resonates with me more than Father (a father whom many believe could only “save” humanity via human sacrifice).  Part of my rejection of theism does indeed stem from this issue of gender.  For many who find traditional theistic concepts unnerving, Christ’s reevaluation of the divine is gratifying and empowering.  As empowering as this reevaluation is, however, the concept of any deity, male or female, still did not settle with me.

Goddess Meditation: Pattini by Laura Loomis

by Feminism and Religion

originally posted on the Feminism and Religion Project

I first became interested in Goddess spirituality because of my love of storytelling.  Centuries-old stories... more I first became interested in Goddess spirituality because of my love of storytelling.  Centuries-old stories yield multiple layers of meaning, and can be told many different ways to get at different truths.  In this respect, the written word is both a blessing and a curse.  It preserves stories that might otherwise be lost; who knows what tales were told about the Venus of Willendorf, or the giant heads on Easter Island?  But it also gives rise to the idea that there is a single “right” version of sacred stories.  Adam and Eve can be a meditation on choice and responsibility, but the insistence on taking the story literally can turn it into a command to disbelieve science.

I’ve been working on some meditations about the connection between Goddess spirituality and political activism.  Last weekend, with people across the country rising up against Proposition 8, I was reminded of a story from Sri Lanki, about the Goddess Pattini.

Tags:  tags: Adam and Eve, goddess, Goddess Devi, How a woman became a Goddess, Kovolan, Laura Loomis, meditation, Pattini, Goddess Spirituality, Feminism, Religion

Tg

Beata Grant:< i> Eminent Nuns, Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China</i>. xiii, 241 pp. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008.£ 46. ISBN 978 0 …

by Elena Valussi

Residing in a Liminal Space: Finding a scholarly home at the Institute for Thealogy and Deasophy by Patricia ‘Iolana

by Feminism and Religion

originally published at the Feminism and Religion Project.

For years I was outside of traditional academia.  I can no longer count the times I have heard that my research... more For years I was outside of traditional academia.  I can no longer count the times I have heard that my research and my theories were highly radical and would never find a home or a place of acceptance.  Early in my career, while still in the States, a number of my colleagues tried to convince me to take a traditional theological stance, and join the world of orthodox faith tradition.  What my well-meaning colleagues never considered was that in asking me to alter my way of being, they were asking me to deny myself, my understanding of the Numinous, and negating that there were other people in the world who think and feel as I do.  I would rather cut off my nose to spite my face. Needless to say, I continued on, even though it often meant blazing my own trail off the safe and ‘beaten path.’ I trusted that I was on the right path and that the Divine would lead my way.  In other words, I had faith—loads of it, and in the end it paid off.

Chicken Patriarchy by Caroline Kline

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion Project.

One of the most powerful and frequently cited Mormon feminist blog posts, Kiskilili’s “The Trouble With Chicken... more One of the most powerful and frequently cited Mormon feminist blog posts, Kiskilili’s “The Trouble With Chicken Patriarchy” on Zelophehad’s Daughters discusses the strange brand of patriarchy Mormons contend with in the modern LDS Church. On the one hand, Mormons are told that men are to preside over their wives, and on the other hand, husbands and wives are told to act as equal partners with one another. As Kiskilili shows in her post, this embracing of two seemingly contradictory stances towards the issue of male headship leaves many Mormon feminists frustrated.

Women's Majelis Taklim and gendered religious practice in Northern Ambon.

by Phillip Winn

A draft of a paper to appear in a forthcoming edition of the journal: Intersections:Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific http://intersections.anu.edu.au/

The recent phenomenal growth of majelis taklim groups in Indonesia has been linked to the ‘Islamic revival’, often... more The recent phenomenal growth of majelis taklim groups in Indonesia has been linked to the ‘Islamic revival’, often conceived as involving innovative models of Muslim orthodoxy couched in scripturalist or theologico-legal terms. This paper asserts that women’s majelis taklim in Leihitu on the northern coastline of Ambon Island instead reaffirm longstanding forms of devotional performance among local Muslims by (re)presenting these as fully compatible with contemporary Muslim identity. While there is evidence to suggest majelis taklim are reshaping normative aspects of gendered religious practice in Leihitu, this process is as enmeshed in local understandings as it is influenced by new intersections of national religious and political discourse concerning Muslim women. Ultimately, the article argues for greater attention to the diverse terms in which global and national currents of Muslim religiosity are instantiated locally via closer consideration of the social and cultural settings in which shifts in religious practice, such as majelis taklim, occur.

Divine Immanence: A Psychodynamic Study in Women's Experience of Goddess

by Patricia 'Iolana

Published in Claremont Journal of Religion Vol 1 No 1 January 2012, 86-107.

Contemporary women’s spiritual memoirs document a paradigmatic shift towards the Sacred Feminine with vast... more Contemporary women’s spiritual memoirs document a paradigmatic shift towards the Sacred Feminine with vast theological, psychological, social, and religious implications.  These memoirs serve as a locus theologicus for heterodoxical thealogical reflection on religious experience. Drawn from the pages of the memoirs in this study this paper shall briefly examine the methodology required to understand these collective spiritual experiences and how the experience of an immanent Sacred Feminine lies at the heart of this Western paradigmatic shift towards the Feminine Divine.


Keywords: Divine Immanence, Sacred Feminine, Carol P. Christ, Carl Jung, Thealogy

Changing Worldviews and Friendship. An Exploration of the Life Stories of Two Female Salafists in the Netherlands

by Martijn de Koning

Changing Worldviews and Friendship. An Exploration of the Life Stories of Two Female Salafists in the Netherlands. In Global Salafism. Islam's New Religious Movement, Ed. Roel Meijer, 372-392. London: Hurst.

Muslim Women in Poland and Lithuania. Tatar tradition, religious practice, hijab and marriage

by Agata S. Nalborczyk

published in:  "Gender and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe" (2009), ed. by: E. Adamiak, M. Chrząstowska, Ch. Methuen, S. Sobkowiak.  Faculty of Theology Adam Mickiewicz University: Poznań, p. 58-69.

Muslims have been living in the territories of present-day Poland and Lithuania for over 600 years. Their history is... more Muslims have been living in the territories of present-day Poland and Lithuania for over 600 years. Their history is described in numerous works, which, however, concentrate on Muslim participation in armed fighting and their legal and political situation. It can be concluded, based on the very sparse mentions of Tatar women and their legal, political, or religious situation in historical works, that since the nineteenth century they have been functioning in society in the same way as their Christian contemporaries, and in the twentieth century their situation also looked similar.

Contemporary Tatar women present a relatively high level of religious knowledge. They are able to justify why they do not wear hijab; they take part in religious practices, sometimes even in greater numbers than men; and some of them hold the function of Muslim community leaders. They are, therefore, a specific group of Muslim women when contrasted with all other female Muslims. Tatar women integrate with the local, Polish and Lithuanian, community, but, at the same time, preserve their Muslim identity and religious practices.

At the end of the twentieth century, a new group of Muslim women appeared in Poland and Lithuania. These Muslim women exist in the immigrant Islamic communities. They represent a different attitude towards women and their place in the community, one characterized by Arab Islam. They are as religious as Tatar women, but probably on average less educated in religious matters.

It will be interesting to see what the future of the Muslim community in Poland and Lithuania will be and particularly how the Tatar experience will influence other Muslim women and their religious practice in future generations.

‘Medical Philanthropy and civic culture: Protestants and Catholics united by a “common Christianity”’

by Carmen M. Mangion

published in Proceedings - The First Danish History of Nursing Conference edited by Susanne Malchau Dietz (Dansk Sygeplejehistorisk Museum, 2009)

St. Joachim as a Model of Catholic Manhood in Times of AIDS: A Case Study on Masculinity in an African Christian Context

by Adriaan van Klinken

Published in CrossCurrents 61/4 (December 2011), special issue on Embattled Masculinities in Religious Traditions, p. 467-479.

Mothering Across Borders: Narratives of Imigrant Mothers in the United States

by Heather Hewett

Published in Women's Studies Quarterly, 2009

Translating Desire: Exile and Leila Aboulela’s Poetics of Embodiment

by Heather Hewett

Published in Expressions of the Body: Representations in African Text and Image, edited by Charlotte Baker (2009)

Les femmes dans l'église protestante mâ'ohi. Religion, genre et pouvoir en Polynésie française

by Gwendoline Malogne-Fer

INTRODUCTION 2007, editions Karthala (Paris) 512 pages.

cet article est l'introduction du livre issu d'une thèse en sociologie qui a pour fil conducteur la transformation de... more cet article est l'introduction du livre issu d'une thèse en sociologie qui a pour fil conducteur la transformation de l'institution ecclésiale et des modes d'exercice des différents ministères en lien avec la transformation des relations entre les hommes et les femmes en Polynésie française. La première partie du livre étudie les parcours des femmes pasteures et diacres et les répercussions attendues en termes de dynamique de couple. L'accession des femmes au ministère pastoral et diaconal interroge directement ces femmes sur la difficile construction d'une identité féminine - qui s'analyse à travers les vêtements, le maquillage, l'implication dans les activités des femmes de la paroisse - qui puisse aller de pair avec une identification aux ministère pastoral et diaconal. L'analyse comparée des parcours de femmes diacres et pasteures souligne des stratégies différentes selon les fonctions et les personnes et des hésitations entre la revendication de rester soi-même et un certain conformisme. la féminisation du corps pastoral associée au maintien de l'obligation du mariage annonce une redéfinition des formes d'autorité au sein du "couple pastoral" et de la place du conjoint en paroisse. la troisième partie étudie en quoi la féminisation du corps pastoral s'inscrit dans un processus de professionnalisation. cette dynamique de professionnalisation des ministères s'analyse à travers quatre axes : l'élévation du niveau de formation académique, la création de ministères spécialisés (c'est-à-dire non paroissiaux comme pasteurs aumôniers des hôpitaux et des écoles qui correspondent à des tâches traditionnellement dévolues aux femmes), la séparation entre vie privée et professionnelle, enfin l'interdiction d'exercer des mandats politiques.

L'accès des femmes au pastorat

by Gwendoline Malogne-Fer

2007, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n°138 : p. 29-48

The main theme of this study consists in questioning, from the Polynesian Protestant field, the connection between the... more The main theme of this study consists in questioning, from the Polynesian Protestant field, the connection between the transformation of the church institution and the transformation of men-women relations in parish. The institutionalization of women’s activities initiated during the 1980’s by pastor’s wives and the acceptance of woman pastorate in 1995 show two distinct – and sometimes conflicting – processes increasing the participation of women in the church life. Before women became deacons or pastors, the church has been a place of socialization appreciated by women who have organized places and times for women only.
The accession of women to pastoral ministry goes with a professionalization of ministries characterized by a priority given to the theological training of the future pastors, the creation of specialized non-parish ministries and the separation between private life and professional life. But while the relations within the parish are considered in terms of parental relations (the pastor is a parent who should facilitate the spiritual growth of his parishioners), the mobilization of the private life, i.e. the use of the pastor’s family as an example, does not work for a woman pastor as it does for a man pastor.

Le role des femmes dans l'evangelisation protestante de Tahiti et des iles "adjacentes"

by Gwendoline Malogne-Fer

2011, French Historical Studies volume 34 n° 1, p. 57-86

The accounts of the eighteenth-century explorers have forged the Tahitian myth by describing the great sexual freedom... more The accounts of the eighteenth-century explorers have forged the Tahitian myth by describing the great sexual freedom enjoyed by Polynesians. While these explorers were inclined to praise it, the Protestant missionaries strongly disapproved it. This article firstly examines how the British Protestant missionaries from the London Missionary Society (1797-1863) and then the French missionaries from the Société des missions évangéliques de Paris have contributed to the elaboration of new sexual norms, which are exemplified in the marriage obligation. In a second part, the article looks at the missionary literature in order to shed light on the active role played by both Western and Polynesian women in the evangelization of Tahiti and its “adjacent islands”. It shows how this women dynamism sometimes worried the Western male missionaries who, as part of their “civilizing mission”, aimed to maintain the gender and racial hierarchies.

Mary, Motherhood and Nation. Religion and Gender Ideology in Bougainville's Secessionist Warfare

by Anna-Karina Hermkens

Article

The importance and significance of gender in religious ideas, practices and experiences is increasingly acknowledged... more The importance and significance of gender in religious ideas, practices and experiences is increasingly acknowledged and studied. As these studies show, religion is a thoroughly gendered phenomenon. In this article I focus on the Catholic religion, and in particular, on women’s and men’s beliefs in Mary on Bougainville Island during and immediately succeeding the nationalist struggle for independence from Papua New Guinea.

Male Headship as Male Agency: An Alternative Understanding of a ‘Patriarchal’ African Pentecostal Discourse on Masculinity

by Adriaan van Klinken

Published in Religion and Gender vol. 1, no. 1 (2011), 104-124

In some Christian circles in Africa, male headship is a defining notion of masculinity. The central question in this... more In some Christian circles in Africa, male headship is a defining notion of masculinity. The central question in this article is how discourses on masculinity that affirm male headship can be understood. A review of recent scholarship on masculinities and religion shows that male headship is often interpreted in terms of male dominance. However, a case study of sermons in a Zambian Pentecostal church shows that discourse on male headship can be far more complex and can even contribute to a transformation of masculinities. The main argument is that a monolithic concept of patriarchy hinders a nuanced analysis of the meaning and function of male headship in local contexts. The suggestion is that in some contexts male headship can be understood in terms of agency.

Margaret Kamitsuka: Feminist Scholarship and Its Relevance for Political Engagement: The Test Case of Abortion in the U.S.

by Religion and Gender (e-journal)

Published in Religion and Gender, vol. 1, no. 1 (2011), 18-43

This essay explores how gender studies in academe, including in religious studies, might remain relevant to ongoing... more This essay explores how gender studies in academe, including in religious studies, might remain relevant to ongoing feminist political engagement. I explore some specific dynamics of this challenge, using as my test case the issue of abortion in the US. After discussing how three formative feminist principles (women’s experience as feminism’s starting point, the personal is political, and identity politics) have shaped approaches to the abortion issue for feminist scholars in religion, I argue that ongoing critique, new theoretical perspectives, and attentiveness to subaltern voices are necessary for these foundational feminist principles to keep pace with fast-changing and complex societal dynamics relevant to women’s struggles for reproductive health and justice. The essay concludes by proposing natality as a helpful concept for future feminist theological and ethical thinking on the subject.