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Abstract: As we enter yet another pandemic year, it seems appropriate to begin with wishing you all a “Healthy New Year,” as variants and discussions over whether COVID-19 is here to stay now begin to dominate our landscape. In this special issue, we turn our attention to the “pandemic within the pandemic”—which is how Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) characterized the experience of Black Americans in calling for an examination of the legacy of slavery and systemic racism in 2020. In summer 2020, as noted in previous issues, Feminist Studies in Religion Inc. (FSR) publicly affirmed commitments to combat anti-Black racism. Those commitments can be found on our website at ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Ten days after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the cochairs of the various units of Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) (the journal, the website, and the CoLaboratory) asked their boards to suggest initiatives to address systemic racism in both the larger society and within FSR. When I received the invitation as a member of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) board, it led me to ponder more deeply issues that I have thought about often over the years but have never tried to articulate for myself in a systematic way. As a cofounder of the JFSR and coeditor for its first ten years (1985–94) and then from 2012 to 2016, and as a member of the fiduciary board JFSR, Inc. from its founding, I have ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Perhaps the dilemma Judith points to so well—historically and currently—can best be summed up with what I think of as a truism: Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) is still a white space because it is a white space, and it is a space that privileges the study of Christian traditions. These totally value-laden assertions are blunt assessments on my part. They are my admission that, for as much time and energy that many of us from across the spectrum of color, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual identity, nationality, age, and more have poured into FSR and however many scholars whose work reflects a variety of religious traditions we have invited to sit on the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) board, FSR ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: George Floyd’s murder sparked protests globally as protesters connected the Black Lives Matter movement to racial oppression in their own contexts. As I am writing this in the final days of US evacuation from Afghanistan, I am concerned that Islamophobia will rear its ugly head in the future fight against the Taliban and the resettlement of Afghan refugees in the world.I appreciate Judith Plaskow’s insightful, self-critical reflection on racism and Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) and her tenacity to stay in dialogue even when the conversation became personal and painful. But she has left out the dimension of global racism and feminist publishing. Even as she points out that the Journal of Feminist Studies in ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: To address the proliferation of white supremacist habits in the “white space” of Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) through a genuinely transformative process, we need more conflict. How can we increase honest and probing conflict articulated in FSR’s publications, organizing, and leadership contexts' This seems crucial for figuring out how a “feminist institution that has a long and solid history of involvement of women of color,” as Judith Plaskow writes, can confront “what stands in the way of our creating something together that we all feel is ours” and not merely “white space” (5). No, of course, I do not mean that we need more conflict that demeans, shames, or purposefully maintains objectifying notions of ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The near occasion for Judith Plaskow’s reflections on the history of white supremacy in Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) (and, more specifically, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, JFSR) was the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. The less proximate occasion was the FSR conference in the summer of 2017, “Making Alliances, Breaking Taboos, Transforming Religions.” The conflict that erupted at the conference should not have surprised anyone (and, no doubt, did not at all surprise many in attendance). Despite our best intentions and continued denunciations, no spaces, projects, or persons are free of the grip of white supremacy. Rather than perpetuate the conceit that FSR, and specifically JFSR, are ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Knowing the deep commitment of Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) to diversity, equity, and inclusion, I was not surprised that the leadership responded to the murder of George Floyd and the renewed focus on race in the United States by creating a list of “Action Items to Combat Anti-Black Racism.”1 I was curious that these items included no. 5, “Self-reflect[ion] on FSR’s history and current practices,” and so was honored, since I have not been that deeply involved in FSR, to be asked to respond to Judith Plaskow’s deeply thoughtful and provocative roundtable essay to begin this conversation.I was invited to join the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) board in 2010, and I was both pleased and surprised ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In the above essay, Judith Plaskow pointedly describes how Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion’s (JFSR) commitments to inclusion as well as the board participation of Black women and women from other minoritized backgrounds do not, in and of themselves, necessarily “alter the white supremacist ethos within which they operate” (4). I read this and remembered the “brick wall” that Sara Ahmed describes as having an impact on university diversity workers.1 Something about the academy, which JFSR names as one of its two spaces of accountability, remains white even as people who are other-than-white participate in a space and try to alter it. A brick wall remains that cannot be dismantled.I have sat on the JFSR ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Judith Plaskow’s characteristically candid, courageous, self-critical, and honest assessment of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) continues an important conversation that will endure long beyond current participants. As a white, Christian, cis, lesbian US citizen, I embody many of the problematic dynamics at hand. I am increasingly aware of the hegemonic forms of oppression from which I benefit and which I perpetuate.I was on the fiduciary board of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc. (FSR, Inc.) for decades and have been on the editorial board of JFSR since its inception. I have been involved in conferences and roundtables, planning and hiring over the years. Good intentions proved insufficient to ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In the Gospel of Luke, there is a story about two sisters, Martha and Mary. In five verses, we learn that Martha welcomes Jesus into her home and is busy with many tasks. She is portrayed as distracted. Mary sits at Jesus’s feet, listening. Martha petitions for Jesus to have Mary help her. Jesus replies, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41–42). This passage leaves me with many questions. How do we define hospitality' What are the concerns that are distracting Martha' Why would Martha not approach Mary directly' Many readings of this text pit the sisters against each ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: When racial justice is still far away on the horizon, I welcome Judith Plaskow’s candid reflection on the ways in which the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) has operated in the white supremacist ethos for the past thirty-five-plus years. In doing so, Plaskow does not locate racism either outside of JFSR or herself, but instead examines how she, as cofounder of JFSR, has been implicated in the perpetuation of “white space” in spite of having “powerful Black women and other women of color” on the editorial board and in leadership positions (3). Plaskow also rightly points out how JFSR has been “unable to escape” Christian hegemony (7). As someone who has been affiliated with various units of Feminist ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: As a new board member, I welcome this opportunity to respond to Judith Plaskow’s essay, “Race, Racism, and the JFSR,” part of a series of actions that Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) has undertaken as a response to growing concern about anti-Black racism and carceral violence in the United States. When I was invited to join the board in 2020, I was glad to become part of an academic community that has made so many important interventions in the field. But as Plaskow rightly observes, for many of us scholars of color, the journal still feels like a “white container.” To understand this problem, I invite readers to reflect on three questions.First, what does the word race mean in FSR’s action plan' There is a ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Judith Plaskow asks why, when women of color have been members of the editorial board and coeditors of the journal, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) “still feels like a white container” (3), signaling issues women of color raise about feminism and calling on white-centered feminists to examine how they may crowd out women of color, closing the space for expressing anger, signaling oppression, and demanding response.1I was not at the Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) conference; my remarks are about what I heard and my thoughts, addressing: how race marks the line at which white-centered feminism may choose leverage over inclusion; white women’s tears as a silencing power move; and Black women ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I started writing this response to the question of systemic racism within the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) around the same time that I made a decision to lay a formal complaint of academic harassment and bullying against a senior white male professor who has consistently directed several microaggressions toward my scholarly authority since I joined the institution in 2016. These microaggressions range from asking me to just be the “face of a conference” to harassing me to such an extent that I eventually withdrew my keynote lecture from the conference. The straw that broke the camel’s back was his unilateral decision that another colleague (presumably he himself or the junior male colleague he was ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I am grateful to Judith Plaskow for offering such a deep, open, and thoughtful reflection on race, racism, and Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR)/Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR). Her examination of the disjunction between JFSR’s foundational inclusive commitment and its white hegemonic reality is honest and self-critical, engaging fundamental and necessary questions. As she says, it is essential for JFSR and other white-founded progressive groups to challenge their very foundations if they truly desire racial justice.I am struck by the parallel Plaskow draws between white hegemony and Christian hegemony. As she reflects on a difficult crisis at a 2017 FSR conference where she called out a Black ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In her powerful opening to this roundtable, Judith Plaskow begins by acknowledging a frustrating reality: that even though “the editors of the JFSR [Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion] have been committed to inclusion from the moment of founding the journal,” these efforts “have not been enough to keep it from remaining a fundamentally white enterprise” (3). As Plaskow makes plain, the pervasive whiteness of JFSR has persisted despite deliberate attention to racial equity in the journal’s intellectual content and its editorial leadership. Even though “Black women and other women of color have both sat on the editorial board and been coeditors,” Plaskow writes, “the container of the JFSR still feels like a ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: We begin with gratitude to all those who have contributed to this conversation, accepting invitations to write amid their busy schedules and offering candid, thought-provoking, and generous responses to Judith Plaskow’s opening reflection and about their own experiences related both to the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) and to Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) as an organization. The responses in this roundtable as noted in the Editors’ Introduction are either former coeditors or members of the JFSR board. However, many of them have experiences with other parts of FSR. For readers unfamiliar with our wider organizational structure, we were originally founded as a nonprofit organization that ran an ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: A significant step toward achieving concrete organizational change was to envision a new Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) leadership structure: one with not only a more diverse leadership group but also clear governance processes and transitions between those leaders. Formerly, there were four officers and several directors of FSR, Inc. who were responsible for budgetary and planning decisions. While these individuals were often part of FSR units, they were also able to act independently of the units and there was no required transparency for decision-making. In 2021, the FSR, Inc. board voted to make the cochairs of each unit (the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion [JFSR], e-FSR, and the LAB) board members ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The CoLaboratory (LAB) branch of Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) was established in June 2020 to create space for exploratory projects within the FSR organization. As shared on the FSR website, the LAB facilitates in-person and online public engagement to help share and develop ideas, resources, and tools that advance inclusiveness and feminist imagination. Through these initiatives, the LAB links feminist scholarship and activism to strengthen the collaborative opportunities among academics, activists, religious leaders, and grassroots organizers.1The broader FSR organization created a list of action items to combat anti-Black racism at the same time the LAB was announced as FSR’s fourth unit, which now exists ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The electronic branch of Feminist Studies in Religion (e-FSR) has taken several steps to transform FSR from a white, Christian space to a space that is created by and belongs to all of us. Our goal is to create a space where our board members and blog authors can thrive and receive mentoring in a supportive and open environment.The change that has made everything possible is that we have significantly expanded our board. Although our board has always been diverse, we wanted to include even more voices in the leadership team. Since 2020, we have added nine new board members, growing the size of our board from ten to sixteen. We intentionally invited more womanist scholars. We also invited more people of color ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The Journal of Feminist Studies Religion (JFSR) was pioneering in its founding and yet, in order to sustain and be “recognized” in the academy, it often reified in its own practices the very categories and experiences that it sought to disrupt. In many ways, a peer review system is necessary to help authors achieve tenure, as is publishing in English. The journal has always published a diversity of authors, disciplines, and even materials, from poetry to teaching reflections, from Living It Out pieces to roundtables like this one. These “different” pieces are separate sections and do not fall under the same peer review guidelines. We, Zayn Kassam and Kate Ott as current coeditors of the journal, recognize the ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire worldBe an organ donor, give your heart to ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Though detractors represented the 1993 Re-Imagining Conference as an incursion of paganism into Christianity and supporters presented it as an integrally and intrinsically Christian phenomenon, the truth about the conference’s experimentation with new language for God is that it was a product of a wider feminist awakening. The critique of patriarchal religions that emerged both in the academy and in churches and synagogues in the late 1960s and early 1970s was part of the emerging feminist uprising. The feminist movement placed a question mark over all patriarchal texts and traditions, secular and religious, and as such, was beholden to none. In spring 1971, Roman Catholic Christian Mary Daly published “After the ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Nina Paley’s film Seder-Masochism is about creation and the Exodus and Passover and goddesses and religious violence and patriarchy and Paley’s relationship with her own father. To Paley, the Exodus is not the pinnacle of God’s relationship with Israel but the silencing of goddess religion. In this article, I discuss how Seder-Masochism uses artifacts and scholarship on goddess worship in the ancient world to support Paley’s case. I explore how Paley’s portrayals of goddesses interact with scholarship on goddess worship. I then show how the film’s central thesis that God silenced and killed the Goddess—the charge of deacide—connects with Paley’s anti-transgender ideology. Specifically, I probe how Paley interprets ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In 2019, Margaret Atwood released a long-awaited sequel to her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale.1 Entitled The Testaments, the new novel charts the decline and fall of Gilead, the Christian theocracy so memorably described by Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale, through the accounts of three witnesses: a young woman raised in Gilead, a Canadian teenager smuggled into Gilead as part of the resistance, and The Handmaid’s Tale’s own Aunt Lydia, a notorious supporting character in the earlier work. Like the earlier novel, The Testaments is at once richly biblical and subtly subversive, in ways that demand further inquiry.2Taking up her use of the biblical in The Testaments, we argue that Atwood’s feminist reading of the Bible ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Zaynab al-Ghazali (1917–2005) was an Egyptian Muslim orator, writer, and prominent activist. Dissatisfied with the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU) founded by pioneering feminist Huda Sha‘rawi (1887–47), which promoted Western feminist ideologies and secular/liberal nationalism, al-Ghazali established the Muslim Ladies’ Association (MLA) in 1935 at the age of eighteen. The MLA “helped women study Islam and carried out welfare activities, maintaining an orphanage, assisting poor families, and helping unemployed men and women to find useful employment.”1 Al-Ghazali was the “first Muslim Sister [within the Muslim Brotherhood] who was publicly active—both socially and politically—during the [Gamal Abdel] Nasser years,” ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Who are les indocumentadxs'1 Speaking of the “undocumented” in the United States likely conjures ideas related to groups of persons’ current lack of a legal status that would ensure their ability to live and work without fear of imprisonment, deportation, or violence in this nation-state. As militarized practices have increased at the U.S.-Mexico border, we find many denominations, including, and perhaps especially relevant for this essay, the Roman Catholic Church, protesting and writing and signing letters of admonition to halt the violence, family separation, and murder occurring at the border. Supporting the right to migrate and for migrants to be treated with dignity is, in fact, consistent in the Catholic ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Has feminist Christianity or a sustained Christian feminist discourse existed in Japan, and if so, can it be considered a vibrant theological movement' In contrast to surrounding Asian countries, only a handful of contemporary Japanese female theologians and biblical scholars exist across various Christian traditions. Furthermore, in Japan, the archives for feminist movements in Christian contexts are scarce. Mira Sonntag, for instance, has traced the development of post–World War II Japanese Christian feminism, addressing several academic and ministerial figures belonging to different denominations or institutions.1 According to Sonntag, three generational distinctions can be discerned among Christian feminists ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: You shall not plant for yourself an Asherah, or any tree, beside the altar of ... Read More PubDate: 2022-06-08T00:00:00-05:00
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