Religion, Intersectionality, and Epistemic Habits of Academic Feminism. Perspectives from Global Feminist Theology

Elina Vuola

doi:10.20897/femenc.201704

Abstract

This article pays critical attention to the ways in which academic feminism has regarded religion. Issues related to religion and gender have by and large either been ignored or treated quite stereotypically. I have called this phenomenon a simultaneous under- and overestimation of religion. The phenomenon is not global. Feminists of the global south tend to pay much more and more multi-faceted attention to religion than scholars from the global north. I will illustrate this problem through a close reading of intersectionality in feminist research in religion, especially feminist theology. My argument – which can be supported by evidence from historical records – is that what has been called intersectionality since Kimberle Crenshaw, has in fact been explicitly present in early feminist theology (1970s-). The reason why feminist liberation theologians stressed the interstructuring of gender, class, and race/ethnicity lies in their practical and theoretical cooperation with liberation and feminist theologians from the global south, for example through the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT). My article is a critical re-reading of the history of feminist theorizing from the perspective of religious feminists, academic feminist theologians and liberation theologians from both the global north and south (including black and womanist theologians from the USA, Latin America and Africa). My aim is to correct a long-held understanding of the history of feminist theorizing as purely “secular”.

Highlights

In my article1, I pay critical attention to the ways in which academic feminism has regarded religion
Because of my emphasis on early feminist theology, it is beyond the scope of this article to analyse if and how the concept of intersectionality is included in contemporary feminist theology
I have argued that key concepts such as intersectionality have been theorised in feminist theology earlier than possibly in any other field of feminist research due to the close cooperation of feminist theologians with liberation theologians from the global south

Summary

INTRODUCTION

I pay critical attention to the ways in which academic feminism has regarded religion. I emphasise that what feminist theologians did was to theorise the experiences of multiple oppressions They paid attention to the intersecting categories of gender, class and race and addressed colonialism, north-south relations and worked within a global perspective in their theorising and writing. I will demonstrate how feminists from different faith traditions used ecumenical and interfaith networks that had been well-established at least since the Second World War as a context for developing feminist theologies These were created with the aim of forming a critique of religion that would be attentive to gender and women’s position in different religious traditions, and to colonialism, class, race, and ethnicity.. I consider feminist theology to be early feminist theorising which is both intersectional and international in its approach and scope

RELIGION AND THE NARRATIVES OF ACADEMIC FEMINISM

INTERSECTIONALITY AND RELIGION

FEMINIST THEOLOGY AND INTERSECTIONALITY

CONCLUSION