JFSR Vol. 17, No. 2
EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

Feminist spirituality, theology and feminist studies in religion are about a paradigm shift in consciousness. They seek to articulate visions and resources of empowerment for changing structures and relations of domination and exploitation. Such a theoretical paradigm shift that seeks to change the taken-for-granted maps of kyriocentric (i.e. lord, father, slave-master, elite heterosexist male) consciousness is not possible if scholars do not remain accountable to the continuing struggles of wo/men from all walks of life for justice and well being. Although they are speaking from different social locations, in one way or another all the contributions to this issue of JFSR explore the ways in which such a paradigm shift is daily brought about by feminist struggles. They testify to the strength of a multicultural, multi-perspectival and multi-religious feminist theory and movement.

The first two articles were chosen to receive JFSR’s New Scholar Award in 2000.  We congratulate the authors, Jennifer Huss Basquiat and Shelly Matthews, for their excellent intellectual feminist work, and want to thank all the others who participated in the competition for their submissions. We are especially grateful to the members of the JFSR editorial board who took on the additional task of evaluating and selecting the best submissions.  Although JFSR has only very limited financial resources, we conceived of this award as a way of encouraging young scholars to engage in feminist work. Thereby we wanted to create a small counterbalance to the academic forces which teach beginning scholars that in order to be worthy of recognition, intellectual work must take up the questions and theories elaborated by the outstanding men in the field, the great “fathers” of the discipline. We also wanted to counteract the prejudice that doing feminist work jeopardizes one’s career, a prejudice that is still alive and well in many academic quarters. By honoring newly emergent and outstanding feminist scholarship in the field, this award seeks to intervene in the struggles for the integrity, survival and flourishing of feminist work in the academic study of religion. 

Like the labels “Roman Catholic feminist” or “Muslim feminist,” so also the designation “Mormon feminist” is for many an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Given the patriarchal politics enacted by the leadership of these denominations, such a reaction does not at all surprise.  Yet it must not be overlooked that Mormon feminists have a long history of struggle inspired by the continuing hope that change is not only possible but integral to their religious community. Jennifer Huss Basquiat seeks to examine this struggle through the lens of cultural criticism articulated by Marxist theorists Althusser, Gramsci and Williams. She argues that change is possible, although the theocracy of Mormonism erases instances of feminist thought and eliminates feminists through excommunication. Mormon feminists are able to continue their engagement in the struggle for the change of patriarchal tradition and the inclusion of feminist religious experience, Huss Basquiat argues, because they view hegemonic Mormonism as a process rather than a fixed and unalterable product.  

Shelly Matthews takes up a different intellectual struggle: how to theoretically frame feminist historical inquiry and articulate feminist historical models and paradigms of research. She uses an early Christian text called the Acts of Thecla to illustrate some of the theoretical and methodological debates among feminist and other historians of women and gender in the discipline of early Christian studies.  After discussing three “women-centered” monographs on the Acts of Thecla written in the 1980s, she examines two types of responses to such women-centered hermeneutics, responses that argue on epistemological grounds against any possibility of gleaning any knowledge about second-century Christian wo/men from the Thecla text. Nevertheless, Matthews argues for the epistemological possibility of reconstructing the history of women in early Christianity, while acknowledging the growing consensus among feminist historians that such reconstructions cannot presume mimetic relationships between text and reality. 

As do the two preceding articles, so also the editorial by JFSR board member Laura E. Donaldson reminds us in a different way that feminist intellectual work is accountable to the struggles of wo/men for survival and the courage to live in dehumanizing conditions. She passionately seeks to persuade readers to speak out on the religious rights of American Indian wo/men prisoners. As feminist scholars we can support the struggle of incarcerated Native wo/men through our informed protest, teaching, research and cultural work for reforming state and federal prison systems. We can thank Laura best by heeding her call.

The next three articles continue to explore the spiritual resources that sustain wo/men from different social-religious locations in their struggles for religious and human rights, for dignity, survival and wisdom. In “Women’s Moral and Spiritual Leadership in Haitian Vodou: The Voice of Mama Lola and Karen McCarthy Brown,” Claudine Michel illustrates her thesis that morality is contextual as well as gender- and culture-specific by discussing the ethical framework of Haitian Vodou. She does so by drawing on the work of the white feminist anthropologist and scholar of religion Karen McCarthy Brown, who in her work has delineated the social system and religion of Vodou. Whereas McCarthy Brown, who herself is an initiate of Vodou, sets out to let  Mama Lola speak in her own terms, Michel seeks to build on McCarthy Brown’s work to develop a critical theoretical framework within which morality in the context of Haitian Vodou can be analyzed.

Tracey E. Hucks cites the work of Zora Neale Hurston as recognizing that hoodoo or voodoo is one of the African-based religions that have been “suppressed” in the United States. Hucks points out that African Americans “have historically engaged in the negotiation of multiple religious worlds for accessing spiritual power” and argues that in the work of contemporary African American wo/men, Christianity and African-based traditions such as Yoruba are reconciled in and through religious fluidity, multi-dimensionality, variegated ritual practices and theological language that transcends the concrete boundaries of particular religions. 

While the preceding two essays address African-based religions and spiritualities, Lara Medina’s analysis of the spirituality of Las Hermanas brings into view the struggle of Latina feminists within a Roman Catholic context. Las Hermanas was founded in 1971 at a gathering of fifty primarily Chicana wo/men religious who had gathered to discuss how to meet the pastoral needs of Spanish-speaking Roman Catholics in the U.S. By bringing the ethnic and gender struggles for self-determination into the religious realm, Medina argues, Las Hermanas sought to articulate a spirituality and theology rooted in the experience of Latina Catholics, many of whom were feminists. Medina argues that mujerista theology, as pioneered by the Cuban-American feminist Ada María Isasi-Díaz, as well as Latina feminist theology, articulated by the Mexican-American feminist María Pilar Aquino, have been made possible by the alternative religious-theological spaces   created by Las Hermanas and other groups. 

This analysis of the struggle of Latina feminists coming to the fore in the work of Las Hermanas also provides a transition to the Living It Out section, which seeks to connect theoretical analysis with particular feminist practices and struggles. Harold Remus has contributed to this section a poem entitled “Between the Lines” which grew out of a class exercise in biblical studies. We hope that others will follow his example and share with us the feminist fruits of their teaching for possible inclusion in the JFSR.

We conclude this issue with a case study by Ellen Blue, a United Methodist minister who critically reflects on her attempts to use feminist theology in the pastoral counseling of wo/men who have suffered from domestic violence and sexual abuse. Practical theology thus becomes a feminist space where feminist theory, spirituality and  theology coalesce in meeting the religious everyday needs of wo/men in their struggles for dignity, self-affirmation and justice. 

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