Women and Religion

Margaret L. Anderson Pp. 232-259 in Thinking About Women: Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Gender

      In 1895, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a passionate feminist, close friend of Susan B. Anthony, and founder of equal rights and suffrage associations during the first wave of feminism in the nineteenth century, wrote:

 

From the inauguration of the movement for women’s emancipation the Bible has been used to hold her in the “divinely ordained sphere,” prescribed in the Old and New Tes­taments. The canon and civil law; church and state; priests and legislators; all polit­ical parties and religious denominations have alike taught that woman was made after man, of man, and for man, an inferior being, subject to man. Creeds, codes, Scriptures and statutes, are all based on this idea. The fashions, forms, ceremonies and customs of society, church ordinances and discipline all grow out of this idea (Stanton, 1895/1974:7).

 

      More than 100 years later, Stanton’s words still ring true. Certain religious beliefs have aroused conservative political movements that threaten many of the rights that women have won as the result of feminism, and in many religions, women continue to be excluded from positions of leadership. In those where they are now permitted to hold positions of leadership, they are still a small minority. Both in the United States and worldwide, some religious beliefs are the core of sex­ist ideologies that promote women’s exclusion from the public world and that maintain women’s subordination in the home. In the United States, the Judeo ­Christian tradition is the foundation for laws governing marriage, divorce, contra­ception, abortion, and sexuality that feminists argue have oppressed women.

     Religion is a powerful source for the subordination of women in society; yet, across the years religion has also been an important source for the feminist move­ment and other social and political movements for human liberation. This is evi­dent particularly, but not exclusively, in the African American community, where religion has been a powerful instrument for social change and where women’s roles in the church have provided African American women with opportunities for leadership, education, and the development of organizational skills. In addition, re­ligious belief in the Black community rests on a strong faith in justice, fairness, and equality. The liberating effects of religion are also evident in Judaism—one of the most conservative religions in its doctrine about women— yet, its religious faith has spawned feminism and liberalism. There are many feminists who are also de­vout Christians, and there is a feminist movement among Islamic women (Fernea, 1998; Mernissi and Lakeland, 1992; Mir-Hosseini, 1999).

     Thus, although religion has been a repressive force in women’s lives, it has also been a source of liberation. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Black feminist and performer, reflects on her religious experience in childhood, writing in her autobiography:

 

Everybody in church talked about/Miss Nana’s relationship with God/People thought she had a sort of audacity/Everybody else would say/”Now, Lord, here comes me your meek and undone servant and you know me and you know my condition”/This was a way of saying/”Now Lord, I don’t even need to go over my situation/Let us start now with where lam and what I need today”/.. . /Miss Nana was grateful for what she got but she didn’t let up on God for what she wanted/God had already given her a soul, right?/But then she’d say,/”That ain’t all I need, Lord/You are not off the hook/ I expect you to be here on time tomorrow night” (1982:90—91).

 

     Understanding of these dual tendencies of repression and liberation is best de­veloped through exploring sociological and feminist perspectives on religion. The sections that follow explore several themes in the feminist critique of religion, in­cluding the historical relationship of women, religion, and feminism; women’s reli­gious beliefs and status within churches; the role of the church in minority communities; and, new perspectives inspired by feminist spirituality and theology.

 

•• Sociological Perspectives on Religion

 

For most people, religion is something they hold dear, sometimes so much so that they see it as the only possible view of the world. Paul Tillich (1957), a liberal the­ologian, defines religion as the expression of humanity’s ultimate concerns, the ar­ticulation of longing for a center of meaning and value and for connection with the power of being. Sociologists who study religion take another approach. They are not so much interested in the truth or falsity of a religious belief system but in how belief systems and religious institutions shape social behavior and reflect the col­lective experience of society’s members.

From a sociological perspective, religion provides a culture with powerful symbols and conceptions that are deeply felt and shape a group’s view of the world around them. Religious belief is often the basis for cultural and societal conflict and is frequently so strongly felt that people will fight and die for it. Religion is also the basis for in-group membership, sometimes strongly protected by sanctions against interfaith marriages.

Sociological perspectives on religion also take the institutional structure of re­ligion as significant in a variety of ways. Like other institutions in society, religious institutions socialize their members through enforcing group norms that dictate many aspects of everyday life, including what men and women wear; how life events (such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death) are defined and ritualized; and how men and women are defined in terms of home, work, child care, politics, and the law. Religious institutions also include power structures and, like other social institutions, are characterized by a system of stratification, which is clearly demar­cated by gender, race, and class.

Religious belief is a particularly important part of many aspects of our experi­ence. Religion, for example, influences how tolerant one is on sexual matters, with those who are most religious generally being less tolerant of premarital sex, ho­mosexuality, and marital infidelity (Scott, 1998; Hager, 1996; Saguy, 1999). How­ever, this relationship is not as strong as one might think because secular (i.e., nonreligious) forces also influence people’s beliefs. Thus, among evangelicals— those generally seen as sexual conservatives—there is diversity in opinions about sexual morality (Park, 1999). Evangelicals have also generally been portrayed as antifeminist and conservative in views about women’s roles. However, research finds that support for egalitarian gender roles (i.e., shared housework and child-care, leadership for women in the church, and women’s employment) has declined both among evangelical, conservative Protestants (Hoffman, 1997; Peterson and Donnenwerth, 1998; Gallagher and Smith, 1999). Nonetheless, fundamentalist re­ligious groups have politically taken the position that the family should be morally autonomous, and thus the dominant political agenda of the religious right is one opposed to abortion and sex education and supportive of school prayer (Bendroth, 1999). Thus, despite an overall decline in religious faith in the United States, reli­gion has a strong influence on the political climate within which gender relations are being negotiated.

For feminist scholars, one of the beginning points of their analysis of religion is the fact that, as measured by a variety of indicators, women are more religious than men in U.S. society. Women are more likely to attend church than men are and to attend on a regular basis; women express higher degrees of religiosity, but, as feminists have pointed out, despite the fact that women outnumber men in reli­gious faith and in attendance at worship services, it is men, regardless of religious denomination, who maintain religious authority. In Christian churches it is men, for the most part, who are the priests and clergy, and they are typically backed up in the institution by men as deacons, elders, and vestry of the church. Orthodox Jews and Roman Catholics still deny ordination to women, and, although their numbers are growing, women are a numerical minority in seminaries of all faiths.

These patterns of gender inequality in religious institutions have raised the question of the extent to which religious traditions contribute to the subjugation of women. Feminist scholars have also examined the alliance between religion and other oppressive social systems (Hargrove, Schmidt, and Davaney, 1993). Religion is clearly one of the foremost forces in society to preserve traditions, conserve es­tablished social order, stabilize world views, and transmit values through genera­tions, but religion is equally important in social transformation. Religious beliefs can and do frame new sources of human potential and possibility, and organized re­ligious groups can release enormous bursts of political energy (Falk, 1985). This is well demonstrated in the history of the civil rights movement, with its organiza­tional center in African American churches. The civil rights movement demonstrates that religious institutions can provide liberation movements with the leadership, organizational structure, and values that provide both the support network for so­cial movements and the visions for new futures that such movements need.

 

 

•Religion and Social Control

 

From a sociological perspective, religion is one of the forces that holds society to­gether. Although it is also a source of conflict, both within and between different groups and societies, religion is an integrative force in that it shapes collective be­lief and therefore collective identity. Religious rituals—such as weddings, chris­tenings, and bar and bat mitzvahs—promote group solidarity and symbolize group cohesion. Promoting identification with a religious group gives members a feeling of belonging; at the same time, it also promotes feelings of exclusionary or outsider status to those outside of the group. Jewish or Muslim people living in a predominantly Christian society therefore feel estranged from the dominant cul­ture, yet, their religious faith creates their own awareness of group identity.

        Because religion is such a powerful source of collective identity, it also is a form of social control. Religious sanctions, whether formal or informal, chastise those who violate religious norms. Religious beliefs, if internalized (i.e., learned and de­veloped as part of one’s self-concept and moral development), direct individual and group beliefs and behaviors. In this way, religion controls the development of self and group identity. At the societal level, religion also can be a form of social control. In the extreme, groups who deviate from religious proscriptions may be tortured, executed, or excommunicated; in more subtle ways, religious deviants may be ridiculed, shunned, or ostracized. In the history of Western religion, the persecution of witches is a good illustration of the connections between religion, social control, and gender.

        During the Middle Ages in western Europe, it is estimated that between 30,000 and 9,000,000 women were killed or tortured as witches (Daly, 1978). The breadth of this estimate indicates how difficult it is to pinpoint the number of witch perse­cutions. Toward the end of the seventeenth century in the United States, another 20 persons (seven of whom were men) were tried and executed as witches. Al­though the scope of this experience hardly matches that of the witch craze that swept Europe during the period of the Inquisition, the sociological impetus was the same. In both places, witches were believed to be women influenced by the devil, and they were perceived to be threats to social purity.

        In western Europe, the Malleus Maleficarum, issued by the Catholic church in 1484, defined the church’s position on witches. This document defined witchcraft, described the alleged practices of witches, and standardized trial procedures and sentencing for those persecuted as witches throughout Europe. The Malleus Malefi­carum defined witchcraft as stemming from women’s carnal lust; women were seen as instruments of Satan because of their insatiable desire. According to the Malleus Maleficarum, “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable. Quoting Proverbs XXX: “There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, a fourth thing which says not, it is enough; that is, the mouth of the womb” (Malleus Maleficarum, cited in Dworkin, 1974:133). People believed that witches collected male organs for use in satanic rituals and stole semen from sleeping men. They were also believed to cast spells over male organs so that the organs disappeared entirely!

        Who were these women, and what was happening in history that there was such organized madness to eradicate them? Historians explain the witch hunts as stemming from the historical movement of the Catholic and Protestant churches to establish themselves as supreme authorities over sacred and secular matters. The period of the witch hunts in western Europe was a period of the solidification of church authority. Women who were singled out as witches were women who de­viated from the religious norms of the time; they were healers, wise women, and midwives. Those who formed witch cults were women who had a strong sense of people as a part of nature and who, because of this belief, gave animals a prime place in some of their rituals. Such a belief system, with its integrated view of human life and nature, was anathema to the patriarchal and hierarchical structure

of the church. As feminists have argued, because the church was the ultimate rep­resentation of male power, witchcraft also symbolized men’s fears of female sexu­ality, its assumed relationship to nature, and its unbounded expression. Feminists describe the witch hunts as a means of men’s desire to control women’s sexuality (Daly, 1978; Dworkin, 1974). Women defined as witches also were often widows and spinsters—in other words, single women who were living independently of  men (Anderson and Gordon, 1978; Szasz, 1970). In sum, the witch hunts were a mechanism for ensuring the social control of women (and those who supported them), as represented in the emerging hegemony of organized patriarchal religion.

        The persecution of women as witches is a historical case of the imposition of serious sanctions against women who lived outside the developing control of pa­triarchal religious bodies and outside the control of men. Modern sociologists see the persecution of witches as the persecution of sexual and religious deviants (Szasz, 1970). Although, in retrospect, the treatment of women as witches may seem like an extreme case of religious persecution, there are contemporary equiv­alents. The so-called ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina that resulted in the mass murder and rape of Bosnian Muslim women by the Serbs can be interpreted as an example of ethnic conflicts that originate, in part, in religious differences. Also, the treatment of women under Taliban rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 also illustrates the extreme to which some fundmentalist interpretations of reli­gious belief can be taken. Under Taliban rule, women were banished from schools and workplaces, forbidden to leave their homes without a male relative escorting them, and could be beaten or stoned for the slightest infraction of Taliban rules. So­ciologists who have analyzed the political, social, and economic subordination of Muslim women often see this as stemming from interpretations of Islamic theology to require the restriction of female sexuality (Mernissi, 1987). As in all religions, different interpretations of religious texts lead to different conclusions about the treatment of women, but the point here is that religion often contributes to the sub-ordination of women.

 

 

••Religion and the Emergence of Feminism in the United States

 

Discussion of religion as a form of social control may create an assumption that re­ligion is only a negative force in women’s lives. Religion, however, is also a source of resistance to oppression. This duality is well illustrated by the history of femi­nism in the United States.

        In the United States, the power of the Protestant and Catholic faiths was well es­tablished during the colonial period, and, although women outnumbered men in the churches, the church hierarchy was exclusively male (Cott, 1977). Not until the nine­teenth century in the United States do historians typically see the beginnings of sig­nificant social change in women’s religious roles and the seeds of developing feminism. Two particular developments in the nineteenth century in the United States have major significance for the role of women in religion and the development of the feminist movement: the evangelical spirit of the Second Great Awakening and the widespread belief in the cult of womanhood that defined and restricted women’s world to the world of domesticity (Hargrove, Schmidt, and Davaney, 1993).

        The Second Great Awakening was a social movement in the early nineteenth century that emphasized a revivalist and egalitarian spirit in religion. During this period, ministers and laypersons began to see religion as a route to salvation on earth and they used this belief to teach the restraints they believed were necessary for an orderly society (Cott, 1977). Occurring in the aftermath of the French Rev­olution and in the midst of worries about the destructive influence of growing urban populations and Catholic immigration, the Second Great Awakening had a democratic impulse—reaching out to the urban poor and western frontier resi­dents. The Second Great Awakening created a lay missionary spirit in which con­version and religious benevolence were seen as the solution to the social ills generated by widespread social transformations affecting the fabric of American society (Cott, 1977).

During this period, Christianity was softened (or “feminized”); rather than stressing dogma, it instead exalted meekness. Christians also began to reinterpret Christ as embodying these more gender-typed images of love, forgiveness, and hu­mility. The “feminization” of American culture and religion meant that, among other things, by the middle of the nineteenth century, women were the majority in American religion (Douglas, 1977; Welter, 1976). During this time, women were de­fined as the keepers of the private refuge of the home—the place where piety and religious spirit were to prosper. In this domestic refuge, women’s purity and piety were seen as vehicles for redemption; women were seen in opposition to the ag­gressiveness and competition of the public sphere that was identified with men. Al­though these images exalted the traditional status of women, many have suggested that they also provided women with positive roles and images—at least ones that did not degrade and denigrate women’s culture. The exaltation of women’s culture encouraged women to speak in prayer meetings and congregations and encour­aged them to participate in voluntary religious associations.

        Women’s religious societies were especially successful at fund-raising, and these societies became the basis for a developing sense of sisterhood among women. Local missionary activities trained women for what was defined as a life of social usefulness, teaching them hygiene, citizenship, family values, and social relationships and engaging them in fieldwork in the cities. As a consequence, women’s religious activities engaged them in other social reform movements.

        During the nineteenth century, women were considered to be more spiritual and more naturally prone to religious observance and piety than were men. The be­lief that women were naturally good also influenced the development of the fem­inist movement in this period. Women’s alleged moral superiority was perceived to have a potentially benevolent impact on the more callous and harsh realities of the public world. Some feminists argued that extending the values of the domestic or private sphere to the public would create a more compassionate public world— a theme now resounded among some contemporary feminists, as well (Miller, 1977). Throughout the nineteenth-century women’s movement, religious faith played an important part in articulating feminist concerns. Women in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, one of the first feminist organizations, extolled the virtues of women and blamed the impersonal and competitive culture of the male public world for a variety of social ills.

        Belief in the virtues of women’s culture led early feminists to use the values of the home as the basis for crusading in the public world and for demanding women’s rights. At the same time, as the suffrage movement developed, men (and some women) also used arguments from the Bible against women’s suffrage and other changes in women’s status. They maintained that the Scripture ordered a dif­ferent and higher sphere of life apart from public life and that this “higher” sphere was the responsibility and, in fact, nature of women. As a result, many feminists eventually gave up on the traditional churches and turned to experimental reli­gious societies, such as the Quakers, for more inner-directed spiritual experiences.

        For most early feminists in the United States, religious faith was a significant part of their feminist ideology. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was herself relatively alone in seeing the domination of women as having religious roots. By the late nineteenth century, when Stanton first published The Woman’s Bible, the influence of Darwin’s thought was also paramount in U.S. culture. Stanton had likely been influenced by the more relativistic view of culture that Darwin’s work inspired. Darwin’s work had encouraged the development of anthropological relativism—a system of thought that saw ideas in society as emerging from culture. Such a belief made it possible to doubt that the Bible had been divinely inspired. While Stanton herself seemed to be influenced by this developing social consciousness, other feminists of the period did not share her perspective.

        The first publication of The Woman’s Bible in 1895 (reprinted in 1898) reflected Stanton’s belief that domination of women had deep ideological and religious roots. Other feminists, however, did not share her sense of its importance. Members of the National American Women Suffrage Association, with the exception of Susan B. Anthony and a few others, repudiated any connection with this view (Hole and Levine, 1971). Afterwards, The Woman’s Bible went into obscurity, not to be redis­covered until the 1970s during the second wave of feminism in the United States.

        Historians of religion have since asked why Christianity was a basis for women’s progressive movements in the nineteenth century when in the twentieth century, Christianity is more often perceived as an enemy to feminists than a friend (Reuther and Keller, 1986). The answer lies in observing the social transformations occurring in the nineteenth century. Throughout the nineteenth century, the process of industrialization meant that men had entered a new secular world. Even when women worked in the industrial sector, the cultural ideology of the time de­fined women’s world as being in the home. Religion was defined as a part of women’s culture, although, for women, religion was one of the few dimensions of public culture in which they were allowed to participate.

        By the early twentieth century, White women’s winning of the vote coincided with shifts in the boundaries between religious and secular domains. White women in the twentieth century entered the public world with men. Feminist so­cial reformers of the 1920s and 1930s were more likely to use the language and phi­losophy of social science than they were to use theology to articulate their concerns. In the twentieth century, religion for women, if they believed it at all, had become more a private culture. At the same time, secularization resulted in the increasing conservatism of churches on women’s issues. Churches, particularly Evangelical and Catholic churches, perceived secularism as having a pernicious influence on society. As a result, the churches politicized religious culture by using religious doctrine as a platform against women’s equality—including their social, legal, and reproductive rights.

        By the time of the emergence of the second wave of feminism in the 1970s, women’s religious roles had changed dramatically. Although many feminists were still active in religious life, their critical distance from religious institutions and their understanding of religion’s sexist roots created a new basis for feminist criticism of religion and a new basis for feminist transformation of religious thought.

 

 

 

Women and Religiosity

 

Images of Women in Religion

 

Feminists have contended that the traditional view of women in most religious faiths idealizes and humiliates women (Daly, 1978). Images of women in religious texts reflect and create stereotypical gender roles and legitimate social inequality between men and women. The New Testament of the Bible, for example, urges women to be subordinate to husbands, thereby fulfilling the assumed proper hier­archy of women as subordinate to men as men are subordinate to God. Jewish feminists have also repudiated the traditional Jewish morning prayer in which a man blesses God for not creating him as a woman, while a woman blesses God for cre­ating her in accordance with His will.

        The humiliation of women through religious texts is especially clear in religious depictions of female sexuality, defined by both Christianity and Judaism as a dangerous force to be feared, purified, and controlled by men. In Orthodox Ju­daism the myth that women are unclean during menstruation and seven days thereafter also reflects a negative view of female sexuality. Feminists see misogyny, meaning the hatred of women, depicted in the creation stories in male-dominated cultures that assign women responsibility for evil. In most of these legends women are seen as sexually alluring, curious, gullible, and insatiable. The biblical story of Adam and Eve is, of course, the classic example. Eve is depicted as cajoling Adam into eating the apple, thereby dooming them to live in a world of trouble and evil, Hebrew myth depicts Lilith, the first woman, as equal to Adam in all ways, but she refused to do what he wanted her to do. As this myth goes, in response to Adam’s demands, the Lord created Eve from Adam’s rib and made her inferior and de­pendent. One version of this legend in Hebrew tradition is that it was Lilith who persuaded Eve to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Feminists suggest that this creates dual stereotypes of woman—one as evil, the other as gullible. Either way, women are defined through these myths as bad (McGuire, 1997).

 

 

Religious Texts as Interpretive Documents

 

Whether a group of religious believers accepts their religious tradition as literally true and divinely ordained by God or whether the group sees their religious text as subject to interpretation influences the group’s acceptance of transformed reli­gious roles for women. Sociologists see all religious texts, including the Bible and the Torah, as cultural and historical documents. That is to say, sociologists see these texts as not containing truth per Se, but as cultural artifacts—records of particular cultural beliefs, historical practices, and societal legends. The legends and beliefs that the texts communicate are the basis for what Durkheim called the collective consciousness of a society—the system of beliefs in a society that create a sense of belonging to the community and the moral obligation to live up to the society’s de­mands. Sociologists see these histories and texts as neither true nor false, but as symbols, powerful as they may be, of group belief and collective consciousness; consequently, they are subject to interpretation and symbolic use by religious groups.

        Seeing the Bible as a document to be interpreted, not just the literal word of God, is probably the most contentious point between sociologists of religion and those with strong and traditional commitments to religious world views. The use of Christianity to justify slavery shows, however, how Christianity and the Bible have been interpreted to support human oppression. European explorers who trav­eled to African cultures in the sixteenth century encountered societies having reli­gious practices and beliefs quite unlike the Christian traditions of western Europe. Their response to such practices was to define African people as heathens and sav­ages who worshipped pagan gods (Jordan, 1968). Europeans~ identification of Africans as heathens led them to believe that Black women and men were lustful, passionate, and sexually aggressive; this became the basis for racial and sexual stereotypes of Black men and women. White beliefs in Black men’s sexual prowess created fears among White men that were the basis for extreme measures of social control—including lynching—throughout U.S. history. The identification of Black women as lustful also established White men’s belief in their rights to sexual rela­tions with Black women.

Christian beliefs played a central role in legitimating the exploitative treatment of African people. Slave traders and owners believed that Africans needed Christ­ian salvation. Slaveowners saw their exploitation of slaves as the justifiable and necessary conversion of heathens, even going so far as to think that the slaves could not take care of themselves. Slaveowners reasoned it was their Christian duty, al­though a burden, to care for the slaves (Genovese, 1972).

        Although Christianity was a tool of the oppressing class, used to justify and le­gitimate the economic and cultural exploitation of millions of African American slaves, it also reinforced slaves’ own belief in their rights as human beings. As a re­sult, Christianity provided the basis for slaves’ political resistance to exploitation. The slaves came to believe in the Christian values that slaveowners taught them, and therefore continued to believe in their own humanity and their rights to social justice. So, while Christianity was interpreted by slaveowners to justify slavery, for the slaves Christianity was also a source of salvation.

        Understanding the relationship between Christianity, slavery, and emancipa­tion also helps us understand why feminists who reject the misogynist traditions of religious beliefs and institutions sometimes see Christianity as providing the theological and philosophical basis for advocating women’s liberation. In the sec­tions that follow, we examine more carefully the role of women in religion and the new ways that feminist theologians have transformed traditional theology to gen­erate new meaning systems intended for the liberation of human beings.

 

 

 

Gender and Religious Beliefs

 

As we have already seen, studies show that women are more religious than men, both in expressed religious faith and in women’s participation in worship services (see Figures 8.1 and 8.2). This difference has persisted over time, despite the fact that church attendance has declined in U.S. society. In 2000, 58 percent of all Amer­icans identified themselves as Protestant, 26 percent as Catholic, and 2 percent as Jewish; 8 percent claimed other religious preferences, and 8 percent said they had no religious preference (Gallup Organization, 2000). Women are also more likely than men to say they are religious (see Figure 8.3).

        In the United States, 68 percent of the population say they are members of a church or synagogue, although considerably fewer (44 percent) say they attend church weekly (Gallup Organization, 2000). Because in polls more people re­port church membership than the churches themselves report to data-gathering agencies, poll data are not totally reliable. Nonetheless, the poll data indicate the public importance people attribute to religious affiliation, and polls are a sound measure of where people place their religious identification.

Despite the historical decline in religious faith and attendance at worship services, religion still plays a significant role in U.S. society. Religious belief influ­ences a wide array of other social attitudes and behaviors. As previously dis­cussed, this is especially evident on matters involving sexual attitudes and behaviors. Church attendance and fundamentalist Protestant religious identifica­tion also tend to preserve more traditional gender role attitudes, whereas youth, labor force participation, and educational attainment contribute to more egalitar­ian views (Thornton, Alwin, and Camburn, 1983). One’s religious affiliation is also related to one’s politics, with those of Jewish faith typically being more socially and politically liberal than other religious groups.

Attention to women’s religious beliefs shows, however, that women may have a slightly different understanding of religion than do men. The General Social Sur­vey, a national opinion poll taken among U.S. men and women, asked people to identify their images of God. The population as a whole ranked their images of God in the following order: creator, healer, friend, redeemer, father, master, king, judge, lover, liberator, mother, and spouse. On closer look, men were more likely than women to emphasize the paternal images of God (e.g., father, master, king), whereas women were more likely to identify with the more feminine images of God (e.g., healer, friend, lover, mother, and spouse). In recent years, the more fem­inine images of God have become increasingly popular among the entire popula­tion, although for both men and women they are still secondary to paternal images (Roof and McKinney, 1987).

These data suggest that women’s understandings of religion may differ from those of men and that women may adopt those aspects of religious belief that speak best to their situations (McGuire, 1997). The data also raise the question as to whether women see themselves as their religion sees them. Although the tradi­tional image of women in religious texts is one that sees women as more passive, docile, and pious, women may be more active agents in the construction of their re­ligious identity and beliefs than has typically been assumed. Although sexist im­ages in religious thought remain, it may well be that women adapt them to their own circumstances, indicating that women’s religious faith is not as passive or meek as the images in religious texts suggest.

This has been demonstrated in a study of contemporary, well-educated women who have returned to Orthodox Judaism. In her study of these women, Lynn David-man, a feminist sociologist, asked how women who have the modern options of a ca­reer would turn to a traditional religious faith, one that professes very traditional roles for women. Such a conversion seems contrary to societal movement toward women’s greater independence and new gender roles—transformations one would especially expect to see among well-educated women. Davidman found, however, that joining an orthodox religious community where women retreated from the pub­lic world was one way her respondents avoided the difficulties faced by other women who have to balance the competing definitions of womanhood generated by dual and competing roles for women in the family and at work. For the women she studied, religious orthodoxy provided meaning and a sense of self that was less frag­mented than more modern and evolving definitions for career women. Davidman (1991) is careful to point out that the construction of women’s identities, including their religious identities, is an active and conscious decision the women make. This perspective sees women not as mere victims of religious and gender roles but as ac­tive agents in the construction of their own identities and religious world views.

In recent years, there has been a dramatic resurgence of traditional evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals, popularly known as “born-again Christians,” are those who claim to have been born again through conversion, who accept Jesus as a personal savior, who believe the Scriptures are the authority for all doctrine, who feel urgency in spreading their faith, and who claim to have had a dramatic witnessing of the presence of a divine spirit (Flowers, 1984; Pohli, 1983). They also hold highly traditional views of womanhood. Forty-two percent of the U.S. population identi­fies themselves as “born again,” an increase from 17 percent in 1981. The resur­gence of this movement has created a consequent rise in the political power of this group. More women than men identify themselves as evangelical Christians; women are 54 percent of all evangelical Christians. Although the vast majority of evangelical Christians are White (74 percent), 36 percent of all non—Whites are evangelical Christians, compared with 16 percent of Whites. Compared with the rest of the national population, evangelical Christians are less educated, older, and more likely to live in small communities. Fifty-three percent of evangelical Chris­tians have no college education; 46 percent began, but did not graduate from, col­lege (Gallup, Jr., 1993; Gallup Poll, 1996; Gallup Organization, 2001b). Studies also find that young women have a more positive attitude toward Christianity than young men and that among both young men and women a positive attitude to­ward Christianity is associated with belief in more traditional gender roles (Fran­cis and Wilcox, 1998).

 

•Women’s Status in Religious Institutions

 

Gender and Religious Participation

 

Measures of church attendance and identification alone do not fully reveal the ex­tent of women’s religious participation. Although observers can easily document that women have been excluded from positions of religious leadership, nonethe­less it is women who constitute the vast bulk of church activity. Many of these ac­tivities are difficult to measure numerically, but observations of women’s activities in religious organizations show that women run the church bake sales, dinners, and bazaars. Women also teach Sunday schools, babysit during religious services, visit the sick, join prayer circles, and arrange and staff church social events. In fact, women have historically been those who raise funds for churches and temples. Al­though Orthodox Judaism defines women’s religious role as centered in the home, women in Reform temples participate fully in the life of the temple and they en­gage in a wide array of volunteer religious, educational, and philanthropic activi­ties (Hargrove, Schmidt, and Davaney, 1993).

These activities in different religious organizations make important social ties for women, but they also reflect a gender division of labor within religious institu­tions. In Protestant churches, women rarely preach, serve as trustees, control funds, or make decisions about the pastor, church, or church programs. In Roman Catholic churches, men have held all the positions of religious authority. This patriarchal structure is so pervasive that Roman Catholicism has even been described as a sex­ual caste system. This means that despite the greater participation and faith of Roman Catholic women, the organizational structure, beliefs, ritual expressions, and prescribed norms of the Catholic Church are patriarchal (McGuire, 1997).

Gender segregation in religious institutions is also evident in the nontraditional religious cults. In the Hare Krishna, Sikh, and Divine Light Mission religious cults, women’s roles have been described as those of a housemother. These cults are male authority systems in which women serve the men in exchange for the rewards of emotional gratification. The very intense nature of commitment in these nontradi­tional groups can lead to extremely repressive aspects. Women in these cults typi­cally have domestic obligations required as demonstration of their religious commitment, and they are often expected to engage in sexual relations with the men of the cult. Whereas male devotees have access to positions of power as a means of bonding and sustaining their group affiliation, love and devotion are seen as lead­ing to spiritual fulfillment for women in these movements. Women in these cults are often subjected to psychological, physical, and sexual abuse, as they are expected to be devoted to the religious leaders. Those who have studied women who leave such movements have noted, in fact, that the destruction of romantic idealism is a sig­nificant part of the women’s decision to leave these movements (Jacobs, 1984).

Despite the patriarchal structure of religious institutions, women develop or­ganizational and leadership skills through their work in these institutions (Gilkes, 2000). Although their contribution is often trivialized, there is a heavy dependence on women’s labor in religious organizations; however, in most churches and tem­ples, it seems that women are in the background. They play the support roles, but not the leadership roles. The Catholic church, for example, relies heavily on the work of nuns in the church, the schools, and the community, but, until the mid­1960s when Vatican II modernized the role of nuns by allowing them to discard their habits and take on a more public role, nuns were cloistered and were kept silent. Now they are among the active women within the church and are urging that women be ordained and given access to real power in the Catholic church.

 

 

Women as Clergy

 

The restriction of women to support positions in the church and their exclusion from making policies has led women to organize for the ordination of women in all the major denominations. Women now constitute 14 percent of all clergy, an in­crease from the past, but still a small proportion, especially considering that women are 62 percent of all religious workers. Even in the Catholic church, where women cannot be ordained, women serve as parish leaders in many places where there is no priest present (Wallace, 1992; U.S. Department of Labor, 2001).

The entry of women into the clergy is not entirely new, although its magnitude is certainly unprecedented. Throughout the nineteenth century, women were li­censed as evangelists, and, beginning in the 1880s, African American women began to press for ordination in the mainline Protestant denominations. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church ordained women as early as 1884, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church began ordaining women in 1948, but Harvard Divinity School did not even open its doors to women until 1955.  Holiness and Pentecostal denominations account for the largest share of all clergywomen. Those who have examined women’s role as clergy in Holiness and Pentecostal churches claim that the higher status of women as clergy in these churches stems from the faiths’ rejection of the practices of the mainline churches, including their role definitions for women. Their emphasis on charismatic or prophetic ministry, rather than the more “priestly” ministry of male-dominated re­ligious institutions, means that the ministry is more open to women’s participation (Gilkes, 2000; Barfoot and Sheppard, 1980; Carroll, Hargrove, and Lummis, 1981). As these churches evolve into more traditional and bureaucratic organizations and away from more spiritual symbolic roles, the proportion of women in positions of clerical leadership does decrease (Barfoot and Sheppard, 1980).

Evidence of the increasing role of women in the clergy is also seen by the sub­stantial increases in their enrollments in divinity schools (see Figure 8.4). In 1972, women were only 10.2 percent of divinity students, compared with 33 percent now. These increases reflect more than an increasing proportion of women as divinity students; they reflect large increases in the absolute numbers of women in divinity school (Baumgaertner, 1986). By 1997, women received 26 percent of all Ph.D.s in theology, compared with 2.3 percent in 1970 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001).

More people now support having women in positions of religious leadership, with 75 percent of Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians sup­porting equality in church leadership. Half of Catholics now endorse this idea, but members of more conservative Christian denominations (e.g., Southern Baptists and Assemblies of God) are unlikely to support women’s roles as leaders. Religious faiths that give a more priestly role to leadership and define women as supporters, rather than as leaders, are at least likely to support women as clergy (Hoffman, 1997; Nason-Clark, 1987; Jelen, 1989). People are also more likely to endorse the idea of women’s leadership in the church once they have experienced having a woman in this role. Women, young people, and those with more formal education are also most likely to support women’s ordination (Dudley, 1996). Generally, as the women’s movement has changed the public perception of women’s roles, resistance to women as clergy has declined over time (Chaves and Cavendish, 1997). Because women are more liberal on critical issues facing religious organizations, such as abortion and the acceptance of gays and lesbians, an increase in women’s leadership may well influ­ence church positions on abortion and other issues in the future (Finlay, 1997).

Those who advocate women’s greater leadership in religious institutions often do so by asserting that women will bring a more woman-centered approach to these leadership roles. Studies of women ministers and rabbis find that women in these roles do tend to have a more collaborative style than men and that there are gender-specific approaches to women’s leadership roles. Women ministers also tend to be more open to a wide variety of service-oriented roles, whereas male clergy are more likely to want a high-status clientele (Finlay, 1996). How women specifically define their roles depends somewhat on their faith. Women rabbis, for example, are more likely to emphasize the secular aspects of their lead­ership (as teacher, counselor, and community leader), whereas women ministers emphasize the more spiritual components of their role (saying they are a “moral voice” and emphasizing that they have been “called” to the ministry). In either case, women believe they carry out their role differently from male colleagues, saying they are more engaging, less formal, more people-oriented, and less con­cerned about power struggles (Lehman, 1994; Wallace, 1992; Simon, Scanlan, and Nadell, 1994).

 

 

 

 

•Religion and Social Change

 

The role of religion in social change movements, such as feminism and the civil rights movement, is a complex one. Many see religion as a force against progres­sive social change, but review of the development of feminism and civil rights shows the compelling role that religion plays in promoting, not just resisting, change. What is the relationship between religion and social justice?

 

 

Race, Religion, and Social Justice

 

For numerous racial and ethnic minority groups, religion is often a strong basis for one’s political identity. For Jewish women and men, religious and ethnic identities are fused as a public and political culture. For Native Americans, Latinos, and African Americans, religion is one way to affirm one’s ethnic subculture, while si­multaneously creating a basis for political and social organizing. For African Amer­icans, strong religious faith has buttressed and inspired activities for social justice. These facts reveal the complex relationship between religion, race and ethnic iden­tity, and policies.

Among Latinas, although the Catholic Church has been seen as an oppressive social force, it also plays a positive role in relationships with friends, family, and community. Religion sustains ties to family and friends in the face of more indus­trialized and bureaucratic public life, although among both Catholic and Protestant Latinas, the influence of religion varies by social class, with the working class more committed to religious beliefs than the professional class (Williams, 1990). The in­fluence of religion is not monolithic, however—as is popularly imagined. Urban­ization, education, and other social influences shape how Latinos interpret the meaning of religion in the context of their lives. Seen in this way, the influence of religion is not always one of resistance to social change; indeed in liberation the­ology throughout Latin America, religious belief has provided the foundation for movements for social change.

The role of religion among African Americans reveals a similarly complex re­lationship between religion, conservatism, and social justice movements. The role of African American churches is multidimensional and includes religious, as well as social and political, work. Because the central theme of Black theology is libera­tion (Flowers, 1984), African American churches have been meeting places for po­litical organizing and have been highly significant in the historical development of Black protest. The liberatory function of the African American church is evidenced by the fact that African Americans define the education of both oppressed people and oppressors as central tasks of Christian missions. Black spirituals and sermons are full of protest symbolism. The musical ministries of African American women have advanced and institutionalized their forms of creative expression (Dodson and Gilkes, 1986). There is, in fact, enormous cultural significance to African Amer­ican church music; almost every popularly recognized indigenous musical style in the United States has antecedents in the oral tradition of African American worship services.

Despite the liberatory functions of the African American church, sociologists have also shown that religion can serve as an “opiate” for social protest. In other words, sociologists use the term religion as opiate to describe the fact that religion can also suppress social protest by encouraging people to accept their social posi­tion. Some sociological research has shown that despite the connection of Black theology to movements for social justice, there is an inverse relationship between religious piety and political militancy (Marx, 1967).

But, as in other minority communities, within African American communities the church has historically provided a buffer against segregation, discrimination, and bigotry. African American churches provide for the release of emotion that can­not be expressed in the dominant White racist society (Blackwell, 1991). Most rec­ognize that the church is, along with the family, the most important institution in African American society. It is the one institution over which African Americans have their own control (Frazier, 1964), and it is an important source of social cohe­sion. African American churches are often described as the organizational and ex­pressive core of African American culture and community, where the church performs a variety of social and community functions (Gilkes, 2000; Blackwell, 1991).

African American churches are instruments for the development of Black lead­ership, and they provide a cohesive institutional structure within African American communities. They are also the basis for community action and act as charitable in­stitutions on behalf of African American people. As a result of the churches’ many functions, Black ministers (and, when the ministers are men, their wives) play roles as both social workers and political, personal, and religious advisors. The Black church has a function of supporting education and being an institution for the trans­mission of community values, historically stressing the value of the family, mutual­ity, and responsibility. The educational function of the African American church is illustrated by the fact that more than one-half of all historically Black colleges are funded by religious bodies. The church in African American communities can also be an agency for the development of business ventures, a situation especially well illustrated by the economic entrepreneurship of Black Muslims.

 

 

The Role of Women in African American Churches

 

Within the African American community, as in other communities, it is the work of African American women that holds the church together. It is estimated that Black churches are 75 percent female. In the sanctified church—the term used to refer to Holiness and Pentecostal churches—women are 90 percent of the congregation. Women’s activities are crucial to African American churches, and Gilkes (2000) con­tends that all African American churches have been influenced by the militancy of women in the sanctified church. Gilkes also points out that historically men have rarely matched the financial contributions of women in the sanctified church.

African American women, like White women, seem to have greater participa­tion in decision making in churches with smaller, not larger, congregations (Grant, 1982). Interviews with African American male ministers, however, reveal continu­ing prejudices against African American women in the ministry, resulting in unfair expectations and unjust treatment of women ministers whom they encounter (Grant, 1982). Thus, although African American women have played a central role in the church, they too have been excluded from many positions of authority and leadership. Gilkes’s (2000) studies on the role of women in the sanctified church give us a detailed picture of African American women’s participation in religious activity and institutions. The sanctified church elevates women to roles as heroines, both as spiritual and professional role models. Gilkes identifies a feminist infra­structure in the sanctified church that has its origins in women’s racial uplift move­ments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She also shows that the collectivist orientation of these churches has emerged from the relationship of African American culture and its churches to the dominant culture. They have re­jected the patriarchal organization of major denominational churches, which has, in turn, encouraged a cooperative model of gender relations and pluralistic politi­cal practices within the church. In this sense, these churches can provide a feminist model of institutional organization and practice for the larger society.

 

 

Religion and Antifeminism

 

As within racial justice movements, the feminist movement has a complex rela­tionship to religion. Many simply associate religion with antifeminism, but doing so overlooks not only the feminist movement that has emerged within various re­ligious faiths, but also ignores the way that some feminists interpret religious val­ues as providing the basis for their feminism. Thus, a vast body of literature has emerged wherein feminists examine the relationship between their beliefs as fem­inists and the beliefs that emerge from their religious views.

One compelling example comes from examining the beliefs of the Islamic faith—an issue particularly compelling in the context of the U.S. war in Afghan­istan following terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The subsequent interest in Islamic traditions—including the treatment of women— though it had long been on feminists’ agenda, captured more public curiosity. Under the rule of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan—a regime that had taken con­trol of the nation in 1996 following the Afghani war with the Soviet Union—women were forcibly excluded from all public participation, including schools, health care facilities, work, even public baths. Women were forced to stay inside their homes and, if seen in public, had to be accompanied by a male relative and fully covered in the now widely recognized burqa—a covering that completely concealed women except for a narrow mesh slit over their eyes. When the Taliban were overthrown by other Afghani groups, with the support of the United States, many women ju­bilantly removed the burqa and returned to public life. Others remained veiled, al­though not always so fully covered as by the burqa. Is the Islamic faith inherently antifeminist or can it support movements for women’s liberation?

This is a complex question, not easily answered without careful study of is­lamic theology. But, like other religions, Islam is subject to interpretation and can be compatible with both antifeminist or feminist values. For some, the veiling of women in Islam stems from beliefs about women’s sexuality—that women’s sex­uality is so compelling that they must be covered or men will lose control. But this is interpreted differently among different Islamic groups. Indeed, the whole sub­ject of feminism and Islamic belief is much debated within Islam, with many ar­guing that Islamic beliefs are fully consistent with the liberation of women and others taking a more fundamentalist view that Islam requires the subordination of women (Mernissi, 1987; Mernissi and Lakeland, 1992; Fernea, 1998). In this regard, Islam is no different from other faiths, although its practice has been dominated by extremist and patriarchal groups in many contemporary nations. But Islam is not the only religion that has been used to justify the oppression of various groups, as a review of the role of Christianity in supporting slavery clearly shows. Extremism emerges within every religious tradition, just as feminism has grown within the di­verse religions of the world.

 

 

Feminism and the Religious Right in the United States

 

Within the United States, the rise of the religious right—the term used to refer to fundamentalist Christian groups that have politically mobilized on behalf of con­servative causes—has generated a new period of religious activism. Conservative Christian groups have been strongly opposed to abortion rights, gay marriage, sex education in the schools, and other social changes. Many in the religious right see the church as the defender of public morality and perceive contemporary so­cial changes associated with feminism and liberalism as threatening the values of family life and as violating the hierarchy of God to man to woman. Whether one believes in such antifeminist doctrine, however, depends on the extent to which one sees the Bible as a literal document or as one subject to interpretation. The most conservative and antifeminist evangelicals are those who take a more liter­alist position—that is the Bible is not subject to interpretation. Evangelicals with a more interpretive perspective tend to give women a stronger voice in church leadership and are more willing to challenge patriarchal structures of authority (Riesebrodt and Chong, 1999).

Regardless of the diversity of beliefs found among those of deep religious faith, the religious right has been a politically effective force because of the strong orga­nizational infrastructure it has established within Protestant and Catholic churches. Evangelical churches provide a massive communication network that has con­tributed to the mobilization of voters and has thus become a powerful source for conservative social changes. Although membership in Catholic or fundamentalist Protestant churches does not necessarily predict support for right-wing attitudes, there is a strong relationship between church attendance in these groups and con­servative political attitudes.

One of the puzzling features of the religious and political right is that many of its activists are women. How can women be so numerous in a movement that to many seems opposed to women’s interests? Studies show that women in the anti-feminist movement tend to be White, middle-aged housewives (married or wid­owed), relatively new to politics, and focused usually on a single issue. But they are not monolithic in their beliefs. Some define their political activism in terms of gen­der roles, defending traditional roles in the family, which they see under siege by so­cial changes that erode women’s position. Others take the approach that individual lives should be free from government intrusion; their politics are not a defense of traditional gender arrangements per Se, although many find themselves in coali­tion with socially conservative women (Klatch, 1988).

 

 

The Abortion Debate: A Conflict of World Views

 

One of the most active programs of the religious right has been its organized op­position to abortion rights for women. Spurred by the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade (see Chapter 7), many women who previously had not been politically ac­tive were prompted into antiabortion activism. Studies of women active in the pro-life movement have found that they tend to be women who are married, with children, generally not employed, and with high school, and sometimes, some col­lege education. The most thorough study of the abortion movement has come from sociologist Kristin Luker (1984), who analyzes the debate over abortion as a mat­ter of conflicting world views—not just views on abortion, but fundamental dif­ferences in the gender location of different groups of women.

Luker based her study on two groups: those identified as prochoice and those identified as prolife. The prolife women were antiabortion activists who tended to believe that giving women control over their fertility (through abortion or birth control) breaks up the traditional relationships in families that have women caring for the home and children and men being responsible for the family’s income. Pro­choice women, on the other hand, saw women’s control over reproduction as es­sential for them to have control over their lives. Prochoice women do not see re­production as the primary purpose of sex; instead, they think of sex as a means of communication between partners and, if they think of it as sacred at all, it is be­cause they see sex as a mystical experience that breaks down the boundaries be­tween self and other. Women in the antiabortion movement, on the other hand, tended to see sex in more sacred terms, and they believed that the widespread availability of contraception encourages teens to have sex.

In Luker’s research, prochoice and antiabortion activists also differed in their social characteristics. Generally speaking, prochoice activists are better educated and more likely to be single than are those organized against abortion. Prochoice activists are more likely to be employed with incomes of their own; if married, their husbands also usually have above-average incomes. Those active in the prolife movement were less likely to be employed and generally had lower family incomes than prochoice women. Luker found that the most dramatic difference between these two groups is in the role religion plays in their lives, a fact supported by other research (Himmelstein, 1986). Three-quarters of the prochoice people in Luker’s study say that formal religion is either unimportant or completely irrelevant to them. In contrast, over two-thirds (69 percent) of those opposed to abortion say that religion is important in their lives.

Luker interprets what she found as a struggle over very basic values—not just about abortion, but about religion, motherhood, and the direction of contemporary social changes. Those active in the antiabortion movement, she argued, tend to be concerned about a broad decline in religious commitment and a sense of common community. The struggle over abortion, in Luker ‘s thinking, is also a struggle over the meaning of motherhood itself. She sees antiabortion activism as stemming from the status anxiety some women experience when social and economic changes in the society threaten their social and cultural status (Ehrenreich, 1983; Luker, 1984). Thus, antifeminism is not seen as just a function of socioeconomic variables like age, education, and class, but is explained by the fact that some groups see themselves as vulnerable to the very social, cultural, and economic changes that have also spawned feminism. Antifeminism, seen in this light, is then interpreted as the result of status anxieties that are produced for women who may interpret social changes as generating weakened commitments to family.

 

 

Faith, Feminism, and Spirituality

 

The connection between feminism and religion is not always one of opposition. Many feminists have developed their feminist politics through their religious faith. Although critical of patriarchal religion and its subordination of women, feminists have also developed a feminist view within diverse religious traditions. This con­cluding section examines the work of feminist theologians and activists who are working to construct new forms of faith and spirituality that will also support the liberation of women.

At the heart of the feminist critique of religion is a deep-felt sense of injustice (Christ and Plaskow, 1992). This is particularly evident in the personal accounts some feminist scholars have written of their experiences in divinity school. Judith Plaskow, a noted feminist theologian, describes the reaction of her thesis advisor at Yale Divinity School when she said she wanted to do her thesis on theology and women’s experience. “‘Fine,’ he told her; it was a good subject as long as she dropped all the references to women” (Christ and Plaskow, 1992: i-ii). Both she and Carol Christ, another feminist theologian and scholar, were told by divinity faculty that the history of Christian attitudes toward women was not an important area for study (Christ and Plaskow, 1992).

Theologians such as Christ and Plaskow nonetheless persisted in their studies of women and religion. The first feminist analyses of religion during feminism’s second wave in the 1970s criticized the explicit statements of female inferiority found in religious texts, the subordination of women in the church, and the exclu­sion of women from ministry. Christian women, for example, rejected the biblical teaching that women must be subordinate to their husbands as indicated in, among other things, the passage in wedding ceremonies that women must obey their hus­bands. They also criticized the image of God as male and have developed new im­ages for feminist worship. Feminists came to believe that the church and theology will transcend sexist ideologies only when women are granted full spiritual, theo­logical, and ecclesiastical equality. They are not hesitant to acknowledge the inter­est-laden character of feminist theology, since they have openly declared the commitments out of which it emerges.

Beyond this reform position, however, lies a deepening analysis of the andro­centrism, or male-centered view, of traditional theological views. This developing analysis is one that is critical of the theological world view of biblical faith and that sees sexism in religion as integrally tied to the dualistic and hierarchical mentality of traditional Christian theology (Reuther, 1979). From this analytical perspective, feminist transformation of patriarchal religion will take more than eliminating or changing sexist images in religious thought and admitting women to positions of religious leadership. The more radical feminist critique suggests that the patriar­chal models of patriarchal religions cannot be simply rehabilitated to include women. Instead, the radical perspective understands the exclusion and domination of women to be fundamental to the very nature of patriarchal systems of religious thinking. The radical view sees sexism as so deeply embedded in the theology of patriarchal religion that reforms alone could never create the postpatriarchal future that feminist theologians seek (Christ and Plaskow, 1992).

This position in radical feminist theology sees the need for revolutionary changes in religious thought, practices, and organizations and refuses even to ac­cept the possibility of the male messiahs of Christian tradition. Whereas many fem­inists believe that traditional religions can be reformed by identifying sexist language and symbols and giving women full status in places of worship, more radical feminist theologians say that women should simply discard patriarchal re­ligious traditions and forge new visions of women’s spirituality—ones that are dis­tinctively based on women’s experiences.

Several themes emerge from this radical theological stance: that patriarchal re­ligions rest on and re-create the domination of women by men; that women, like nature, are degraded and seen as needing control; that patriarchal religion forms the basis for other patriarchal institutions; that patriarchal religion has emerged historically through the suppression of female power; and, finally, that spirituality based on women’s experience is the only way of reclaiming a fully human faith and liberatory vision of the future.

Reuther (1979) early articulated the feminist view that Christian theology is centered on a domination model. She argues that traditional Christian theologies depict the soul and spirit as opposed to the human body—flesh, matter, and nature. This world view sees human beings as standing between God and nature and teaches human beings that they must subdue the irrational desires of the flesh to spiritual life. This creates a model for domination—one that sees human life as dominated by God, just as some human lives are dominated by others; further­more, because Christianity depicts the desires of the flesh as needing suppression, the domination model of Christianity has justified the historical domination of those seen by Christians as more carnal (including Jews, African Americans, and Native Americans). Reuther contends that Christianity encourages a world view characterized by dualisms—such as the ethnocentric “we/they” view of the world that sees one group as superior and all others as inferior and in need of salvation and civilization. As a result, the missionary spirit of Christianity feeds the histori­cal development of racism and the development of imperialistic power by seeking to create a monolithic empire.

Similarly, Daly argues that the “widespread conception of the ‘Supreme Being’ as an entity distinct from this world, but controlling it according to plan and keep­ing human beings in a state of infantile subjection, has been a not too subtle mask of the divine patriarch” (1979:56—57). Unmasking the patriarchal character of reli­gious traditions causes us to see the powerful alliance between religion and op­pressive social structures. Patriarchal theologies have in this way directly contributed to the oppression of women.

This more radical feminist critique of patriarchal religion leads to more funda­mental changes in feminist visions of faith and spirituality—ones that are stimu­lated by asking what it would mean if women’s experience were the basis for theological and religious world views. Experience is the key term in this develop­ing feminist analysis. Feminist religious scholars take experience to mean the fab­ric of life as it is lived. In keeping with the feminist practice of consciousness-raising and defining the personal as political, they believe there is something unique about women’s experience and that women’s faith and spirituality should be centered on those experiences (Saiving, 1979).

This has also led such thinkers to distinguish between religion and spiritual­ity. They claim that religion is that which is historically associated with established and institutionalized structures and ideologies, whereas spirituality suggests a vital, active, and energizing interior perception of the power of being (Yates, 1983). This vision of spirituality is exemplified in Ntozake Shange’s play, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf “i found god in myself/& i loved her/i loved her fiercely” (1975:63).

Because religion has such a deep hold on the human psyche, radical feminist theologians believe one cannot afford to leave it in the hands of men. They see that men’s control of religion emerged only with the suppression of female power and symbolism through the historical demise of goddess worship. They argue that there is nothing natural about patriarchal religion, pointing out that the introduction of male gods and messiahs occurs at specific historical points in the development of human experience and that before the introduction of male messiahs, goddess wor­ship was a nearly universal phenomenon. The earliest artifacts of human culture, they suggest, are female statues and symbols, indicating the awe our ancestors felt for women and their bodily mysteries (Spretnak, 1994).

The creation of new symbols, legends, myths, and rituals centered on women’s experiences is central to new forms of feminist worship. Often, these rituals are ex­plicitly linked to attempts by women to release anger and fear and to increase a sense of power and community. One study found that participation in such rituals helped women recover from sexual victimization and improved their mental health (Jacobs, 1994). For contemporary women spiritualist5~ reclaiming the goddess has become symbolic of the affirmation of female power and the female body, the celebration of female will, and the recognition of women’s bonds and heritage (Christ, 1979). Positive attitudes about women’s bodies are an essential dimension to this new fem­inist spirituality, and affirmation of the female body and the life cycle expressed in it have become the basis for new feminist rituals. The positive value of female will is also expressed by newly celebrated practices such as women’s spellcasting and witchcraft—forms of spirituality that have now come full circle from the persecution of women as witches to woman-centered forms of “new age” spirituality.

According to some feminist theology~ reclaiming goddess imagery is a way of acknowledging female power as beneficent and independent. This is, of course, in radical contrast to the patriarchal perception of women’s power as inferior and dangerous. The significance of the goddess for reevaluating women’s bonds and heritage is that “as women struggle to create a new culture in which women’s power, bodies, will, and bonds are celebrated, it seems natural that the Goddess would reemerge as symbol of the newfound beauty, strength, and power of women” (Christ, 1979:285).

          In sum, the emphasis in radical feminist theology is not just to point out the androcentric bias of traditional religious world views, but to fundamentally change theology and religion to represent women’s experiences in all its forms. Some have criticized radical feminist theology as reflecting a White, middle-class, and Chris­tian or post-Christian perspective. Jewish women have also criticized some femi­nist theology for its anti-Semitic framework (Hargrove, Schmidt, and Davaney, 1985). The many attempts to re-create systems of faith to acknowledge the presence and power of women are indicative of the far-reaching attempts of feminist thinkers to create new visions and world views that will provide the foundations for building a feminist society.

 

 

• Summary

 

Religion is a powerful source for the subordination of women. At the same time, religion has historically been a powerful instrument for social change. For women, religion has a dual tendency to be both oppressing and potentially liberating.

Sociologists see religion as a system of beliefs and an organized institution that provides groups with symbols and concepts that define their world view and shape other social institutions. Religion provides group norms that influence the everyday behavior of members of a society. As such, religion is strongly associated with sexual attitudes and behaviors and can operate as a system of the social con­trol of sexuality.

The burning of witches during the European Middle Ages represents the growth in the authority of the church and its takeover of women’s traditional power. Women who were persecuted as witches were those who were sexual and religious deviants. In the United States, religious belief has played a strong role in the development of feminism. During the nineteenth century, women were be­lieved to be more pious and spiritual than men, and religion was used to justify their exclusion in the domestic sphere. Religion also was important to some of the early feminists, although others saw religion as a source of women’s oppression.

Images of women in religious texts produce stereotypical gender roles and have defined women as subordinate to men. Whether a religious group defines its religious tradition as literal or interpretive is related to the group’s acceptance of nontraditional religious roles for women. Christianity has historically been used to justify slavery and the sexual exploitation of African American men and women. At the same time, Christian theology has been used by minority groups as the basis for strong beliefs in social justice.

Gender inequality in religious institutions has segregated women into the least powerful and influential religious roles. Even though women are the majority of church participants and tend to be more religious than men, they play a support role in most church activities. Gender segregation in houses of worship for differ­ent faiths has given women secondary status in religion, although the number of women clergy in most denominations has increased in recent years. African Amer­ican churches provide cohesion and fulfill important sociological functions in the African American community. African American women’s work in the church holds the church together.

In recent years, the religious right has become especially politically active on antifeminist issues. Antifeminists in the religious right hold different world views than do activists who are prochoice on the issue of abortion. Religious identifica­tion is one of the major distinctions between those who are prochoice and those who are against abortion.

Some feminist theologians have a reform perspective on religion. They believe that eliminating sexism in religious images of women in religious texts and admit­ting women to positions of religious leadership can transform religious institutions and belief systems. Radical feminist theologians have constructed new theologies that begin with women’s experience and construct new rituals, legends, myths, and spiritual practices based on women’s experiences. Both reform and radical feminists see faith as an important dimension to the construction of a new feminist society.

 

 

 

•Key Terms

androcentrism                     liberation theology                                religious right
collective consciousness     misogyny                                              sanctified church
feminist theology               religion as opiate                                   Second Great Awakening

                                                          

 

 

••• Discussion Questions/Projects for Thought

1.        Talk with a group of people from different religious backgrounds (this could be a discussion group in class) and ask the men and