JFSr
VOL. 18, NO. 2
Editors' introduction
JFSR has a new religiously and professionally diversified international advisory board and we are delighted to introduce some of our new colleagues on the board in this issue. We are very happy that the dream of a international community of feminist scholars who will shape the future issues of JFSR has finally become a reality, and we welcome the new international editorial board members: Tal Ilan, Kathleen McPhillips, Melissa Raphael, Maria José Rosado-Nunes, Sharada Sugirtharajah, Lieve Troch, and Meyda Yegenoglu.
The contributions to this issue are again variegated and timely. We congratulate Tisa Wenger for winning this year’s New Scholar Award. We also want to thank this year’s jury, Laura Donaldson and Elizabeth Pritchard, who took on the additional work of evaluating the submissions. We are grateful that they agreed to tender this additional service to JFSR.
The articles in this issue center on the question of representation, its construction and its socio-political functions. This theoretical problem is most explicitly addressed in the essay by Tisa Wenger but also shapes the article by Gloria Albrecht. Not only theoretical interests but also socio-political contexts determine and shape the construction of gender, femininity and family.
Tisa Wenger carefully lays out how religious authority, gender and feminist interests have shaped the construction of the biographical narrative of the eighteenth-century Shaker Ann Lee to support the shifting identity of Shaker society in the context of the changing cultural-political interests of the U.S.A. These changing biographical interests come especially to the fore in the attacks or positive statements of outsiders. Wenger argues that the development of the memory of Ann Lee and the theological construction of her life as the second appearance of Christ served as justification for the increasing authority claims of the elders of the community. This christologizing of Ann Lee as Mother and Christ figure, however, had conservative anti-democratic implications insofar as it strengthened the authority of the leadership but diminished the charismatic authority of each member of the community. Wenger also shows that this claim served apologetic feminist interests insofar as it sought to legitimate, for instance, Lucy Wright’s ascension to the leadership of the society, which was very controversial because she was a wo/man. Whereas earlier statements sought to construct the figure of Ann Lee in theological terms, representations at the end of the nineteenth century constructed the society beginning with Ann Lee as the paradigm of all reform ideals, such as feminism, disarmament, peace, the spirit of communism, spiritualism and progressive causes such as animal rights.
Gloria Albrecht’s “Re-forming Families: Producing the new Ideal” does not focus on personal-biographical representation and memory but on the representation of the social construct of “the family.” She argues that although they hold opposite views on gender equality, both right-wing and liberal Protestants’ ideological constructions of “the family” are rooted in the classical liberal political theory of society that constructs a dualism between the public and private spheres. “The family” is the heart of civil society and the formation of moral character takes place in the civil-private sphere, which is understood to be relatively independent from the public sphere of economics and politics. Both the right-wing and liberal Protestant constructs of the family understand the nuclear family to consist of heterosexual parents and children and overlook the material reality and ideologies of the political economy that justify the relations it creates. Welfare reform therefore imposed this middle-income two-earner family construct on single mothers with low wages and lack of benefits because wo/men’s equality and the well being of families are not values that a capitalist society engenders.
The article section is followed by an excellent review essay by Lisa Cahill on the discussion of bioethics in mostly Christian feminist theology. She critically and constructively reviews four areas —“gender and the new genomics,” “feminist theology, bioethics and genetics,” “feminist theology, genetics and reproduction,” and “the market, justice and public debate”—and outlines three distinctive commitments that feminist theology brings to the debate not only of genetics but of bioethics on the whole. First, as feminist, feminist theology seeks grounding in wo/men’s experience without limiting itself to the moral concerns of wo/men. As theological, it sets biomedical practices against a horizon of ultimacy. Finally, as political, it strives for social transformation dedicated to the “option for the poor” and aspires to a global vision of well being “in the context of a world in which the basic health needs of the majority have yet to be seriously addressed.”
In her editorial, Carol P. Christ explores the feminist theological implications of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. Writing from her social location in Greece, she points to the connection of process philosophy and feminist thinking in religion and its usefulness for exploring the global issues of justice raised by this terrible event. She encourages readers to practice the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Ethics she has formulated and to engage in actions that will help to turn the tide of violence and war.
In this issue we have constituted a special forum or roundtable to hear the voices of some of our new international editorial board members. Kathleen McPhillips from Australia introduces the problems and strategies of feminists in the Asia-Pacific region and Tal Ilan introduces us to the university system of Israel. Sharada Sugirtharajah introduces issues and problems that wo/men face in Hinduism and the contributions of Hindu feminists to Western scholarship on Hinduism. Melissa Raphael explores the issues raised by post-Holocaust theology in England and Europe. Lieve Troch in turn shares a dream of bringing together in 2004 a group of feminist theologians from northeastern Brazil, Europe, Indonesia and Sri Lanka for a month of sharing experiences, critical reflection, and creative exploration of a critical transnational feminist theology of liberation. This dream also expresses our hopes for the future of our collaboration on the JFSR.
The exquisite poems of Christina Hutchins deepen the intellectual discourse of this issue. They subtly move, in the words of the author, “from ideas/theologies to more embodiment as they go along from thinking and longing for the divine to a more incarnational human love.”
Finally, in the Living It Out section, Fawzia Ahmad shares with us her experiences in developing and teaching a course on “Women in Islam” that would counter the stereotypes of Muslim wo/men in the U.S. media. Whereas she herself began with the sorting out of texts and materials that carry inherent biases, the first step in the classroom was to introduce her students to Islamic sources and the rudiments of rules, tenets and traditions. Only after the students had a basic first hand knowledge of Islam did she move to the critical discussion of stereotypes about Muslim wo/men and the struggle of feminists to transform their own religious traditions and practices in the interests of wo/men’s freedom and empowerment.
We hope you
will find some ideas and visions in these pages to apply toward your own and
your community’s empowerment and well being.
Shortly before this issue went to press, we received a surprise gift from Patricia Reif, a Catholic sister scholar who died in March of pancreatic cancer. Pat left in her will a bequest of $2000 for JFSR. Pat Reif was a scholar, activist, organizer and committed feminist. She received her doctorate in philosophy from St. Louis University and chaired the graduate department of religious studies at Immaculate Heart College. She founded one of the first, if not the first, graduate-level programs in feminist spirituality and theology in the mid-1980s. She was a founding member of the Los Angeles Interfaith Hunger Coalition and the Interfaith Task Force on Central America. She served most recently on the board of Uncommon Ground, a program of the Inner City Law Center that invites young lawyers to use their skills in service of the poor. She served as chair of the Women’s Ordination Conference, was active in many forms of Women-Church and feminist liberation theology, and helped to transform her own order into the Immaculate Heart Community when it came in conflict with the Los Angeles diocese in the 1960s. Her activist scholarship, strategies of reform and feminist vision have been an invaluable gift for the wo/men’s movement in and outside Roman Catholicism.
Hence, we want to celebrate Pat Reif’s life and express our gratitude for her support by dedicating this issue “in memory of her.”