Who and What Count in Feminist Studies of Religion?

Abstract

Who and What Count in Feminist Studies of Religion? Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier (bio) 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 scholar for perceived Christian hegemony without accounting for the racial dynamics inherent in an encounter between a senior white scholar and a more junior Black scholar, she discusses her ignorance of the extent to which so many Western academic spaces—including FSR—are spaces of white power. While not equating white and Christian supremacy in the academy and FSR, Plaskow notes the similar systemic nature of the problems: despite her own cofounding and coediting of JFSR, it remains Christian; despite women of color coediting JFSR and serving in substantive numbers on the board, it remains white. Although Plaskow frames these as parallel problems, I wonder if it would be helpful for JFSR to spend some time considering white Christian hegemony together. As Khyati Joshi examines in detail, white Christian privilege is woven into the very foundation of the United States.1 White supremacy and Christian supremacy are deeply entangled and mutually reinforcing. Thus, rather than seeing Christian normativity as a parallel problem to white normativity, we can see [End Page 63] white Christian normativity itself as a fundamental problem embedded in religious and theological studies—as well as JFSR. Indeed, Plaskow illustrates this in the discussion of her coteaching experience, when Delores Williams pointed out that the original framing of Plaskow’s draft syllabus was really a white Christian syllabus. Inclusion without Influence Plaskow’s application of Lynet Uttal’s “inclusion without influence” to FSR/JFSR is helpful. Of course, the very rhetoric of inclusion presumes a controlled space into which the “other” is entering. Inclusion requires learning and negotiating the preset rules of this space. Questioning those rules leads to exclusion or even recrimination. Thus, real influence is limited by the rules of engagement. Women of color may now be at the table, but they are nevertheless marginalized, tokenized, compartmentalized, and appropriated in ways that function to reinforce white power. Plaskow’s discussion is important for understanding why the inclusion of women of color in FSR/JFSR does not necessarily translate to fundamental structural change. Women of color are indeed being included, but they are included into a white structure. Instead, the very structure needs to be dismantled and rebuilt. As a result, Plaskow’s move to question foundational questions, assumptions, and structures is key to making real change. I found Plaskow’s willingness to raise foundational issues deeply moving. As a mixed Asian American woman, I have often felt myself on the margins of belonging and struggling to find my way into a system that wasn’t made for me. Years ago, the external committee reviewing my dissertation proposal criticized my project in Asian American comparative feminist theology as “personally inspirational but theologically irrelevant.” Fundamentally, the gatekeepers of the theological guild were concerned that my work was not “proper” (white) Catholic theology. Then, a couple of years later and freshly out of graduate school, I submitted a manuscript to JFSR. I was prepared for critical comments, and I was even prepared for a rejection. I knew that I had a lot to learn about the publication process. But I wasn’t ready for the response I did receive eventually. The substance of my article was hardly engaged. Instead, the reviewers simply noted that the article was not a fit for the journal as it was not sufficiently grounded in feminist studies. Whether correct or not, I heard in these comments that my own Asian American comparative women’s theology and the...