Volume 16, No. 2
EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

It is a commonplace that feminist theory and theology are shaped and determined by their socio-religious location. Such a location in malestream discourses and institutions continues to engender the construction of exclusionary dualisms, although feminist studies have set out to deconstruct such dichotomous thinking. The contributions to this issue of JFSR elaborate how wo/men negotiate identity and agency within the constraints of such different subject locations. They invite us to reflect on how feminist studies in religion are shaped not just by their socio-cultural and religious but also by their geographical, historical, and especially theoretical locations.

We begin this discussion with an article on Asian feminist theology by Wong Wai Ching, who investigates how Asian wo/men’s theological discourses are shaped not only by their shared geographical location in Asia but also by their theoretical political location in discourses of nationalism that often construct Asia and the West in essentialist dualistic terms. She argues that the construct of the "poor wo/man" in Asian feminist theology is located within the wider socio-political discourses of national liberation in general and serves Asian theology as the most powerful postcolonial discursive strategy against Western imperialism. In the process both Asia and the West become essentialist global categories that do not allow for the articulation of differences among wo/men in the culturally and religiously very diverse countries of Asia.

In "Negotiating Social and Spiritual Worlds," Camilla Gibb explores the gender of sanctity itself and asks "what the existence of female saints can tell us about the place of gender in the contemporary construction of sanctity within a particular community." She focuses on Harar, a small city in Eastern Ethiopia, in which the high percentage of shrines devoted to female saints is quite remarkable. She argues against a dualistic conceptual framework in which the Muslim patriarchal system is pitted over and against the shrines as the sites of the dispossessed or as big and little tradition. Instead, she argues that shrines devoted to female saints are best conceptualized not as marginalized alternative places but as public spheres of religious life and as central Islamic institutions.

As such institutions, the shrines seem to be able to navigate differences based on wealth, status, ethnicity and politics. Gibb concludes that male and female saints do not necessarily serve specifically gendered needs nor attract constituents of the same gender. Sainthood is not necessarily male or without gender since wo/men can embody ideal womanhood in saintly fashion. As murids (intermediaries), wo/men transmit the baraka (blessing) of the saints and facilitate the identification with the ancestors of the city.

The third article does not speak about a different religious-geographical but a different historical location. Carla Gerona argues that dream interpretation during the 17^th and 18^th centuries offered Quaker wo/men such as Ann Moore a way to navigate some of the biases produced by religious discourses that prohibited female preaching and spiritual activity in public arenas. These wo/men responded to an economic, cultural and spiritual revolutionary situation that looked back to biblical values and forward to the capitalist age with the strategies of "egalitarian beliefs, visionary dreams, and creative motherhood."

Dreams and visionary experiences established a direct communication with the Divine Spirit and therefore could be invoked to bolster wo/men’s authority. Ann Moore appealed to her dream visions in order to assert her right to travel, to maintain ministerial authority in her community, and to resolve the conflict between her itinerant spiritual ministry and her maternal authority by focusing on the well-being of her actual and spiritual children all over the world. Quaker belief in the Inner Light in every person regardless of gender, class, race or status enabled a wo/man like Ann Moore to negotiate her community’s opposition and to overcome her fears in order to follow her true calling as a spiritual leader.

A poem by Ralph D. Cushing on the "Healing of Miriam" builds the bridge from the articles to the roundtable discussion that forms the heart and center of this issue. We are very grateful to professor Rita Gross for initiating and developing the lead-in essay that raises significant questions for the inter-religious conceptualization and practice of feminist theology. She articulates three challenges:

First and foremost, genuine diversity must include religious diversity and not just Christian diversity. Second, Christian feminists must recognize the long history of exclusive Christian truth claims and cultivate appreciation for the significance and value of perspectives that are different from those of Christian theology. Finally, we must create appropriate academic positions for those theologians who are committed to religious perspectives that are different from those of Christians.

The responses to Rita’s challenge are mostly very positive and so variegated that it is impossible to summarize them here. We were very fortunate to attract a distinguished group of scholars to reflect on the obstacles to and the possibilities for developing a multivoiced inter-religious feminist theology and we are very grateful to them. For this round of the conversation we invited scholars from diverse and different religious-theological persuasions to participate in the discussion of how to articulate a feminist theology that, in professor Amina Wadud’s words, is a genuinely "pluralist religious discourse."

We hope, however, that in a second step, Christian feminists of different denominations and backgrounds will join in the conversation and collaborate in the work of articulating such a heterogeneous and genuinely pluralist religious feminist theology. In short, this roundtable raises very important questions and crucial issues with which the field must wrestle and come to terms. We hope you will feel motivated to join in the conversation and to send us your reactions and thoughts. As professor Susan Shapiro, one of the respondents, so forcefully states:

In the Living It Out section, Flora Keshgegian and Naomi Baer report on a particular spiritual practice of ritualizing groups at Brown University that reminds one of the early feminist Consciousness Raising groups. WEB groups began meeting in the fall of 1984 and stopped meeting formally at Brown University in 1998 but continue to gather across the country. They were initiated by a Christian campus chaplain but draw on a variety of spiritual religious traditions. WEB intends to create a space of respect among wo/men and understands respect as including an acknowledgment of one another and of the common focus as well as a withholding and suspension of judgment.

At each meeting each member creates ritual by sharing "offerings" such as readings, activities, actions, verbal and physical symbols, poetry, music, drawings or meditations that are meaningful to her. Each meeting has a designated theme and the members begin the ritual portion by lighting a candle and chanting together. Moreover, after an initial period of time, members are asked for a commitment to the group and no new members are admitted. The authors stress that, unlike other feminist ritual and liturgical groups, WEB does not have explicit feminist goals, but rather its purpose is to achieve "ritual literacy." Although not explicitly feminist in its theoretical conceptualization and practical orientation, the ritual practice of WEB nevertheless creates a feminist space of respect where wo/men can learn to value and authorize each other.

Finally, we want to share some bad and some good news. The bad news is that professor Emilie M. Townes has resigned her position as co-editor of JFSR because of a heavy workload which jeopardizes her health. The JFSR has greatly benefited from her expert editorial work and ready assistance. Hence, we are very sorry to lose her services as co-editor and we cannot thank Emilie enough for all that she has done for the journal. The good news is that we were fortunate to persuade professor Kwok Pui-lan to become the new co-editor. Since Pui-lan has been a member of the editorial board for several years, we are convinced that the Journal will be greatly enhanced by her leadership and are looking forward to fruitfully working together in the years to come.