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UNIT 5 GENDER and RELIGION Region and Language UNIT 5 GENDER AND RELIGION Region and Language Dipti Nath Structure 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Objectives 5.3 Feminist Engagement with Religion in the West 5.4 Religion and Feminism in the 20th Century 5.5 The Indian Context 5.6 Religious Feminism: Issues and Strategies 5.7 Feminism and Religion in India 5.8 Islamic Feminist Movements in India 5.9 Feminist Responses to the Church in India 5.10 Women in Other Religions in India 5.11 Let Us Sum Up 5.12 Unit End Questions 5.13 References 5.14 Suggested Readings 5.1 INTRODUCTION In the previous Unit we learnt how a gendered perspective can help us explain the relation between region, language and literature differently. In this Unit, we will study gender and religion, both of which are complex systems of belief that directly impinge upon the lived experiences of people. Most people have strong convictions and commitments regarding religion as well as feminism, and as such find it difficult to effectively separate an academic approach to these from their personal practices. It therefore, becomes a fraught and conflict-ridden endeavor when we attempt to examine religion through the lens of feminism using feminist strategies and methods. The issue is rendered even more complex when we seek to apply a feminist approach to religion in the Indian context with its obvious intersectional complexities of class, caste, regional specificities and multilingualism, compounded by cultural and religious difference. Let us try to unravel some of these complexities in this Unit. 165 Interrogating the Nation 5.2 OBJECTIVES After completing this Unit, you should be able to: • Explain the importance of religion, its patriarchal underpinnings and its impact on women’s lives; • Provide an overview of the feminist engagement with religion; • Discuss the engagement of Indian feminists with different Indian religions; and • Identify the plurality of issues and problems related to gender and religion within the multi-religious and diverse Indian context. 5.3 FEMINIST ENGAGEMENT WITH RELIGION IN THE WEST The study of religion as an academic discipline is of cardinal importance because it “…has been a major mover and motivator in human culture from time immemorial to the present, it is impossible to understand human history and culture while ignoring religion. Only an extremely artificial division of human life could tolerate the teaching of history, art, or social custom without understanding their connection with religion” (Gross, 1996, p.7). Religious feminists seek answers to the fundamental question as to how theologians engage in creating systems of thought that become naturalized as the ‘truth’. Many feminist theologians assert that personal experience can be an important component of insight into the divine, along with the more traditional sources of holy books or received tradition. They ask why there is hardly any mention of women in religious history. Feminist historical theologians study the roles of women in periods throughout history that have influenced any particular religion. They study individual women who influenced their religion or whose religious faith led them to impact their culture. What a feminist approach to religion aims to do is to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of the major religions of the world from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the participation and role of women among the clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting male-dominated imagery and language about God and favouring the use of non or multi-gendered language, determining how religious discourse fixes women’s place in relation to career and motherhood and studying images of women in the religion’s sacred texts and matriarchal religion.While feminist interrogation of religion first gained prominence in the 1960’s in the West, the past centuries had already witnessed women’s 166 engagement with religious issues. The writings of Abigail Adams (1744- Gender and Religion 1818) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) in the late 18th century questioned the traditional Christian stereotypes about women (Hogan, 2009, p. 207 and Wollstonecraft,1790, p.54). By the 19th century, instead of seeing them as weak and prone to lust and sin like their Biblical foremother Eve, women were in fact established by theologians as morally superior to men, though still too fragile and delicate for the hurly-burly of politics and business. Women, especially those belonging to the middle class, with education, leisure time and a sense of their own moral worth to back them, became prominent as participants in and organizers of religious activities like charities and missionary bodies. This also allowed women access to public spaces, an opportunity to sharpen their organizational skills and gave them a sense of self-worth (MacHaffie,1986, pp. 93-95). The 19th century also saw the beginning of the debates regarding ordination of and preaching by women. Some Christian evangelical groups were surprisingly open to the idea of women preachers, while more established Protestant denominations were resistant to the idea. The first formal ordination of a woman happened in 1853 when Antoinette Brown (1825- 1921) was ordained into the Congregational Church in the United States. Yet ordination was not a common practice and most Christian denominations did not even consider the idea. Hence very few women were ordained into the Church and the idea of women ministers did not gain currency until the 1970s and later (MacHaffie, 1986, pp.107-12). The question of religion was initially not of primary importance to the 19th century women’s movement. Women did not blame religion for their inferior position and neither did they demand a change for women in the church. And yet, with the passage of time they realized that it was quite impossible to ignore religion as many aspects of their social being were mediated by Christian ideas concerning the role of women and links began being made between women’s inferior position and religion. Thus when Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) wrote The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions that was adopted by the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 they began by stating that “all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights….” (cited in Schneir, 2009, pp. 76-82). They list a number of “injuries and usurpations” on the part of men towards women including the usurpation of the prerogative of God to assign women their sphere of action. To correct the imbalance they adopt a number of resolutions including the idea that “woman is man’s equal—intended to be so by the Creator” and another stating that “woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted interpretation of the Scriptures have marked for her” (cited in Schneir, 2009, pp.76-82). 167 Interrogating the Nation Consequent to this, Cady Stanton and a committee assembled by her proceeded to compile The Woman’s Bible, the “major nineteenth century feminist interpretation of religion” which was published in 1895 (Gross,1996, p. 37). However, the conclusions that Cady Stanton came to in this text were rejected by the Church and most women’s organizations, and it was only in the 20th century that these ideas were re-articulated and have gone on to make an impact on feminist approaches to religion. Check Your Progress: i) What were patriarchal Christian stereotypes about women? ii) Who was the first ordained Christian woman and in which year did her ordination happen? 168 Gender and Religion 5.4 RELIGION AND FEMINISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY At the beginning of the Second Wave Feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, feminists started to point out how women had been historically excluded from the full practice of Christianity and Judaism. The “generic masculine language of the liturgy, the monolithically male images used of deity, and the male monopoly on all visible roles beyond singing in the choir, baking and teaching young children” were examined by them (Gross, 1996, p. 40). This, when women formed the bulk of the congregations, and apart from leadership roles, performed most of the everyday tasks required for the functioning of religious institutions. One of the first issues to be addressed by women in the 1970s was that of the ordination of women into their religious institutions as it is an important, albeit symbolic, indicator of whether women have genuine membership within their religion (Gross, 1996, pp. 40-1). Through the 1970s and 1980s major battles were waged and won as the Episcopal Church, the Church of England, the American Lutheran Church and most Protestant denominations opened their doors to women priests and bishops and in the case of Judaism, rabbis. However, many major Western denominations like Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Orthodox Judaism still do not allow women to be ordained as priests. In 1976, the Vatican issued an official statement declaring the impossibility of allowing women into the priesthood, arguing that the priest is a representative of Jesus and since Jesus was a male, he could only be represented by another male. Despite this, the numbers of women priests and rabbis of many different denominations increased dramatically and by the 1990s women numbered one third of the student body at seminaries. One must bear in mind though, that women ministers and rabbis continue to be challenged and faced difficulty in finding employment even today (Gross, 1996, pp 41-3). Apart from ordination, the other major focus of feminists was to rewrite traditional liturgies which are couched in androcentric language to describe both the worshippers as well as the deity. It was pointed out that women were excluded by the use of such masculinist language and it was suggested that corrective steps be taken such as the use of female imagery to describe deity and the inclusion of women’s experiences vis-à-vis religious ritual.
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