The Odd Couple: Religious Feminism Eastern Sociological Society Conference, NYC 2015

1 The Odd Couple: Religious Feminism Eastern Sociological Society Conference, NYC 2015 Authors Jessica Finnigan, Kings College London [email protected] Kari Waters, Syracuse University [email protected] Nancy Ross, Dixie State University [email protected] Religious feminists are in the difficult position of navigating multiple borderlands. The most obvious of these borders is the challenging middle ground between feminism and conservative religious institutions, which want to define and maintain their own boundaries and protect their faith traditions from change. Religious feminists are in the awkward position of insisting on change and want these institutions to broaden their religious framework to include those with heterodox beliefs and experiences. But this isn’t the only contested space that religious feminists must negotiate. Modern feminism, defined as second and third wave feminism, or feminism from the 1960s onward, is often seen as inherently secular. Religious feminists push back against this idea and seek to reclaim their own space and acceptance within the the broader feminist movement. This study looks at the way in which various religious feminist groups build upon the agency work of Mahmood (2005) and Avishai et al (2012). We found that those who participate in religious feminism present compelling questions of agency, identity, social movements, and organizational change. The past decade has brought new approaches for studying conservative religious women without resorting to the two most common stereotypes of 1) dominated women who do not question or 2) women who are unconsciously subverting the patriarchal structure of their faith. The work of Mahmood (2005) and others suggests that docility within a conservative religion 2 can be a conscience choice, and those who choose docility should not be condemned as “doormats,” but seen as women who are using their agency (Mahmood 2005; Jouili and AmirMoazami 2006). Avishai, Gerber, and Randles (2012) take it further and propose that feminist researchers must look past the political aspirations of feminism and look at how conservative religious women use their agency to live their religion, not only because of social benefits they may gain, but simply because it is part of their identity. We applaud this leap forward in feminist ethnography when looking at conservative religion, but want to take it further. There is a growing number of studies looking at conservative religious women, but religious feminists are almost entirely absent from the literature (IsraeliCohen, 2012). Religious feminists, are keenly aware of the way in which their often revolutionary and progressive foremothers have been written out of religious institutional religious narratives. We can document this happening in Catholicism (Macy 2007), Mormonism (Basquiat 2001; Hanks 1992), Judaism (Plaskow, 1990) Christianity (DeConick, 201), and Islam (Ferina, 2010). But this is not the only erasure that religious feminists have experienced. We have been written out of feminist narratives, though current scholarship does not address this (Woodhead, 2002; Zwissler, 2012). For example, within popular media, Courtney from Feministing (2011) identified four “common problems that come up when feminists talk about women and religion.” These include 1 “making monolithic statements about women and religious traditions,” 2 assuming that “religion is inherently irrational,” 3 letting “loud fundamentalists define what a religious tradition is,” and 4 being “too dogmatic about… feminism.” This list is missing an important fifth item. That the stories of religious feminists within religion are not the only victims of 3 institutional editing. Because the contributions of religious feminists have been written out of the narratives of first and second wave feminism, third wave feminists question whether or not feminists can authentically participate in patriarchal religion (Gupta 2011) or even to say that any gender advances in religion are owed to secular feminism (Jones 2012). Claims like these are deeply offensive to religious feminists because it undermines their agency and activist efforts. I can best illustrate this erasure with a personal story. As a teenager and young adult reading books with titles like “Introduction to Feminism,” I was introduced to the ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, and Susan B, Anthony. In these texts, religion was always the patriarchal enemy and never a source of empowerment for women. So I was surprised when I was recently watching Ken Burns’ documentary titled Prohibition (2011), which talked about the role of religious women in organizing for the cause of Prohibition in an effort to reduce family poverty and domestic violence. The documentary also mentioned that the same religious women who were using their church networks to organize for Prohibition were the same women who were using their church networks to organize for women’s suffrage. I was surprised and wondered why I was not already familiar with this story. I knew that Mormon women in Utah had campaigned for suffrage, as I had learned about that in a Mormon feminist podcast, but I was unaware that other religious women had as well. The dismissal of patriarchal religion by second wave feminists led to an erasure of the role of religious women or an erasure of some feminists’ religious identity. Online, the term “Modern Feminism,” another term for second wave feminism, is often used interchangeably with “secular feminism.” Numerous online overviews of feminism, citing scholarly articles, ignore religious feminists or the religious identity of some feminists. 4 In a Google search for “History of Feminism,” the nine sites that appear on the front page demonstrate this erasure. Within the nine websites, two reference the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in relation to first wave feminism and another only talks about religion in reference to feminist theology. The remaining six articles do not reference religion or the religious identity of the women involved. Create a slide with the following listed: ● A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) ● A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf (1929) ● Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937) ● The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949) ● The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963) ● Sexual Politics by Kate Millett (1970) ● The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970) ● The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982) ● The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991) ● The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler (1996) In looking at some of the foundational texts for feminism, these feminist authors discussed the issues of their day through their own feminist lense. Many of these authors, like Simone de Beauvoir, had difficult relationships with organized religion and moved away from it in their early years. Some, like Virginia Woolf, grew to detest religion and Christianity in particular. In later works, many of these women describe religion only in terms of patriarchy and they way that patriarchy oppresses women. While these claims were not without merit they were however overly simplistic and reductionary. These books and their authors shaped the discourse on feminism and one of the products of their secular feminism was a large gap with religious feminists. Today, religious feminists are presented as a paradox, with the assumption that it would be impossible for a person to embrace 5 both the ideas of feminism and the tenets of a conservative religion (Basquiat 2001; Bell 1976; Dodwell 2003; Stack 1991). Because religious feminism is an example of women proactively using agency it should fit well into standard social movement literature, but it often dismissed, seen as overly passive because they choose to operate within a restrictive space. While there is a growing body of literature on religious women being free agents (Bartkowski and Read 2003; Avishai 2008; Cite), the study of religious feminists adds the dimension of how women can operate with agency inside of patriarchal organizations while trying to proactively change those institutions. According to Casanova and Phillips (2009), the active participation of these groups within religion fundamentally changes what religion does and what it will become. However, because many of these movements run parallel to mainstream feminist movements, religious feminism is often marginalized and dismissed as less feminist than secular actions. Today, though, discussions of “Modern Feminism” often leave out those references to religious women or erase their religious ties, as religion is more frequently represented as a patriarchal oppressor (Zwissler 2012). The term “Modern Feminism” often refers to Second and Third Wave feminism and, in its usage, is often synonymous with secular feminism. Critiques of Second Wave feminism often identify this wave’s lack of intersectionality with race and LGBT issues as problematic. This movement also failed at intersectionality with regard to religion. Intersectionality was first used by Kimberlé Crenshaw when discussing the interconnected difficulties faced by black women as they were both black and women. She explored the idea that there were “intersecting oppressions” (Crenshaw 1989) in black women’s lives, and how the two worked together to affect their experiences. Since then, many different 6 intersectionalities have been investigated in feminist research, including gender, race, class, ethnicity, social and cultural practices, and institutional

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