Editors' Introduction

Abstract

Editors’ Introduction Judith Plaskow and Traci West This issue of JFSR marks the completion of a remarkable thirty years of feminist publishing. We celebrate this anniversary with a special section on comparative feminist hermeneutics, a roundtable reflecting on the history and future of the Journal, and a general focus on boundary crossing and innovative methods. Each section of this issue makes a unique contribution to broadening how feminist and womanist studies in religion intentionally constructs scholarly conversations that include diverse voices and theoretical perspectives and benefit a wide range of constituencies. In twenty-first century women’s and gender studies scholarship, one expects that to some degree multiple and/or intersecting understandings of sex, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and nation will be incorporated within most field-specific analyses. But too often in fields other than religious studies the category of religion is neglected as a primary, intersecting axis of women’s and gender studies, and of women’s lives, that deserves careful interrogation. JFSR has contributed to filling this lacuna. This issue advances the discussion of a need for diverse voices and theoretical perspectives in feminist and womanist studies in religion with critical reflections on how to include them and what methodological difference it makes to do so. The Journal’s deep commitment to such discussions across differing faith traditions is manifest in this issue’s inclusion of articles on gender in the study of Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, and Islamic traditions. The critical perspectives from differing global locations found here, including Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Japan, represent an important commitment and direction for the journal that we hope to develop and expand in the next decade. The articles in the opening section of the issue explore new methods for theorizing gender and religion in historical studies, theology, and cultural studies. In her study of narratives about Saint Thecla, Susan Hylen challenges standard scholarly views, including feminist ones, in the field of Christian historical studies. Hylen’s argument counters the notion that the later Thecla is “domesticated” or watered down in order to be acceptable to the church. Hylen develops a more expansive understanding of Thecla as a radical female leader whose acceptance of Paul’s call to virginity frees her to live an active life of ministry. Susannah Cornwall interrogates the implications of boundary-crossing sexuality in her discussion of sex, intersex, and the maleness of Jesus in Christian theology [End Page 1] and church life. Cornwall’s essay interweaves the views of theologians with testimonies by intersex persons about their faith from interviews Cornwall conducted. Cornwall daringly considers the difference it would make for Christian theology if Jesus had had an intersex condition and what it would mean for theological arguments that assume Jesus’s maleness is obvious and incontrovertible. Robert Patterson’s essay is concerned with a paradigm-shifting conceptualization of gender and religion in popular culture filmmaking. He works on a method for envisioning wellness within black communities in the United States that can transform oppressive stereotypes of black women yet also maintain the liberation of all black people as its aim. Utilizing womanist theology in an effort to interrupt traditional masculinist paradigms of popular discourse, Patterson focuses on Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman. We are delighted to mark our thirtieth anniversary by publishing a ground-breaking set of essays on comparative feminist hermeneutics that brings to the fore the complexities involved in discussing hermeneutical methods across the boundaries of religious traditions. As Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza explains in the introduction, one of the goals for organizing the panel discussion out of which the essays emerged was to “explore the contours and trajectories of feminist comparative studies of sacred texts across the confessional, historical, cultural, and communal boundaries of diverse male-dominated religions” (57). Karen Derris, a scholar of Buddhist traditions, examines the ethics and politics of knowledge production in her articulation of the liberating potential of feminist interpretation, specifically in the representations of motherhood and mothering. Rachel Adelman demonstrates methodological innovation when utilizing rabbinic midrash to construct a method of reading the story of Esther that extends an invitation to “dare to laugh at the role of gender in the...