Feminist Philosophy Of Religion Research Articles

The ‘Divine Names’ and the ‘Attributes of Deity’: On the (Infinite) Analogical Interval in Forty‐Six Aphorisms

AbstractFor the modern tradition of analytic philosophy of religion (that this article rejects), goodness, beauty, wisdom, and so on are divine attributes, whereas, for the classical tradition of Christian theology, they are divine names. This crucial distinction between attributes and names helps to explain why feminist philosopher Grace Jantzen’s charge of an identification of the male self with the divine self in Anglo‐American philosophy of religion leads on, directly, to a critique of the ‘doctrine’ of analogy. Jantzen’s critique of ‘classical theism’ is directed against the (largely modern) reduction of God to a (male) superbeing. Here, God’s ‘attributes’ are merely human ones, even if extended to a superlative degree. I distinguish the analogical reflections of Aquinas (following Dionysius) and his heirs from the anthropomorphic dissolutions of the divine in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Theology’s analogical speech, I argue, has the potential to answer – at least partially – the feminist critique of God as a ‘pure projection’ of ‘man’. For Aquinas, God’s perfections must be qualitatively different and not merely quantitative maximisations of our own. I contend that feminist philosophy of religion cannot afford to dismiss the potential of the way of analogy, especially in its negative or apophatic dimensions.

Feminisms and Challenges to Institutionalized Philosophy of Religion

For my invited contribution to this special issue of Religions on “Feminisms and the Study of ‘Religions,’” I focus on philosophy of religion and contestations over its relevance to the academic field of Religious Studies. I amplify some feminist philosophers’ voices—especially Pamela Sue Anderson—in corroboration with recent calls from Religious Studies scholars to diversify philosophy of religions in the direction of locating it properly within the current state of Religious Studies. I want to do this by thinking through two proposals in productive tension: first, any philosophy of religions worthy of the name is intrinsically feminist; second, any philosophy of religions worthy of the name is intrinsically traditional. I want to use the productive tension between these two to illuminate ways calls for broadening the field can be enhanced when such calls are seen as both feminist and traditional. I proceed as follows. First, I note three instances of explicitly feminist work in philosophy of religions that do not suffer from the same narrowness as so-called “traditional” philosophy of religion. Religious Studies critics of philosophy of religion overstate the case in claiming feminist philosophy of religion is too narrow. Second, I develop a useful distinction between the concepts of “tradition” and “institution” to locate forces of oppression more precisely in dynamics of institutionalization so that we might rehabilitate tradition as a resource for combating institutionalized oppressiveness. I do this in response to the hegemony of current philosophers of religion who claim to speak about “the traditional god.” And third, I briefly coordinate four topics in religions from diverse feminist perspectives to help refine paths of inquiry for future philosophy of religions that is both feminist and traditional. My hope is that these clarify a philosophy of religions renewed through feminisms—moving from fringe to normative topics in institutionalized philosophy of religion, maintaining focus on actually existing human beings rather than hypothetically existing transcendent entities. I turn our attention to technical issues surrounding the status of mae chis, Buddhist laity who seek monastic recognition in Theravada. I turn our attention to struggles over fitting criteria for leadership between Mary Magdalene and Peter in early Christian contexts. I have us listen to Muslim women who seek to speak for themselves, many of whom describe Muhammad as a feminist. I have us listen to Anderson’s criticism of arguments about the (non)existence of a god and her promotion of human yearning as guided by regulative ideals as a pointed challenge to institutionalized philosophy of religion. In all these ways and more, feminist challenges to institutionalized philosophy of religion further contribute to diversifying field.

Interview with Carol P. Christ

Interview with Carol P. Christ Elizabeth Ursic (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Carol P. Christ Click for larger view View full resolution Elizabeth Ursic Carol Christ is a trailblazer. She coedited the groundbreaking Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion with Judith Plaskow in 1979, as well as the 1989 follow-up volume, Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. In 2004, Christ was named “Leader of the Goddess Movement” in Anne Braude’s Transforming the Faiths of our Fathers: Women Who Changed American Religion. Christ has written six books in the areas of feminist study of religion and literature, feminist theology, and feminist philosophy of religion: Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (1980), Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess (1987), Odyssey with the Goddess: A Spiritual Quest in Crete (1995), Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality (1998), She Who Changes: Re-Imagining the [End Page 137] Divine in the World (2003), Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology (2016, with Judith Plaskow). She is a pioneer in the search for an “embodied theological method” that combines rigorous analysis with embodied personal standpoint; in this pursuit, she often interweaves personal reflections with scholarly analysis. I became aware of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion’s Across Generations project through Mary Hunt, who mentioned Carol Christ as one of the scholars to be interviewed. I was interested because I had met Carol once in 2008 while conducting research for my PhD dissertation on Christian communities that pray with female imagery of God. Carol had been invited to keynote a conference on Faith and Feminism at Ebenezer Lutheran herchuch, one of the congregations I was studying. One of her two talks, “Why Women, Men, and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess,” reconnected traditional male God language with male domination and violence.1 I was grateful to have an opportunity to discuss the field of women and religion with one of its early leaders. For thirty years, Carol has made her home in Greece. She directs the Ariadne Institute, through which she has led Goddess pilgrimages to Crete in the spring and the fall for over twenty years.2 Carol has taught online courses in ecofeminism, feminist and Goddess theologies, and spiritualties as an adjunct professor at the California Institute for Integral Studies. She is a weekly contributor to the blog, Feminism and Religion (www.feminismandreligion.com). She is also a political activist who has run for regional and national office with the Green Party Greece. To prepare for this article, Carol and I conducted four and a half hours of interviews in three sessions over two days in February 2015. We conducted the interviews over the phone. The recordings will be added to Carol’s archives at Smith University. Carol Christ grew up in southern California in the 1950s. She had a lower-end-of-the-middle class upbringing in a politically conservative family. Though her immediate family went to local Presbyterian churches, her grandparents and much of her extended family were Roman Catholic and Christian Science. She was valedictorian of her high school class, but her parents expected her to live at home while attending college and to teach high school art only until she got married. Carol credits three mentors, her female guidance counselor in high school and two male teachers, her undergraduate Old Testament professor and her Humanities Honors advisor, for insisting that she could go further in her [End Page 138] studies. Carol attended Stanford University on partial scholarships (where she also served meals in the dorms), followed by graduate work at Yale on Danforth and Woodrow Wilson fellowships where she became one of the first women to earn a PhD in Religious Studies in 1974. The feminist movement was burgeoning on college campuses during Carol’s time as a Yale graduate student. Carol joined the Yale Women’s Alliance, a consciousness-raising and activist feminist group in 1969, and in 1971 helped to found the Academic and Professional Women’s Ad-Hoc Affirmative Action Committee that brought a Title IX lawsuit for discrimination against Yale on behalf of...

Recognition in Feminist Philosophy of Religion

Abstract G. W. F. Hegel’s idea of recognition has become one of the central concepts of social and political philosophy and social theory. In feminist philosophy of religion recognition has also a prominent role. One problem which troubles philosophical discussions of recognition is the lack of adequate communication between different research traditions. This article describes briefly the original source of inspiration of contemporary discussions of recognition, Hegel’s own idea of recognition as it is narratively depicted in his Phenomenology of Spirit. It also takes up Hegel’s problematic views of women and the sphere of the family. The text tries to show how the Hegelian ideas have inspired three prominent feminist philosophers of religion: Luce Irigaray, Grace M. Jantzen and Pamela Sue Anderson. These philosophers are connected to the two ways of reading Hegel: the (predominantly) French tradition and the Critical Theory. It is argued that while Irigaray and Jantzen present important criticisms of the prevailing religious attitudes, they are unable to combine this criticism with a feminist view that would allow religion to be taken seriously. In this respect, Anderson’s – still undeveloped – theory of recognition is a more promising attempt.

Feministische Religionsphilosophie - ein innovatives Projekt

Feminist Philosophy of Religion - an innovative ProjectThis essay seeks to launch a systematic basis for a feminist philosophy of religion. The critical thrust is explained with reference to latent sexism in a great part of the traditional philosophy of religion, with reference to Vatican documents, which are marked by perceptions and observations that have resulted in an attitude of discrimination against women. Furthermore, many theories in the field of feminist theology are flawed by argumentative deficiencies as well. These problem areas warrant a necessity to develop a new approach, which eliminates the reductionist views dominating the current debates, by means of a careful philosophical argument. The article is divided in three parts. It starts by a short exposition of the issues at stak, to explain the philosophical methodology and the concept of feminist philosophy constituting the basis of this essay. Reconstructing central differentiations of Kant's 'Critical Philosophy', it is demonstrated that Kant's most elaborate conception of the human being does provide a sound foundation for dealing with the pressing issues of our time. Thus core elements of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason are examined in light of the question, in which way a philosophical and theological discourse on God may be possible. What can feminist philosophy gain from Kant's moral philosophy as it seeks to discard unfounded or defective theories that result in discrimination against women? The third point leads through central arguments of Kant's philosophy of religion, mainly his theory of "Herzenskündiger”, and provides a survey of Kant's philosophical conception of 'church' (ethical commonwealth), contending that this sophisticated understanding is more in line with feminist concerns than some recent theories of an 'ecclesia of women'.

Obituary: Gillian O. Howie, 1965–2013

The present special issue of Sophia on ‘feminist philosophy of religion’ is dedicated to Gillian O. Howie who died in 2013. This essay is a short obituary touching on Howie’s philosophical and personal legacy. The intention is to give a brief overview of Howie as a courageous woman with boundless intellectual curiosity and passionate commitments to feminist activities; these include writing and living her philosophical vision for creating a just society with collective political action. Howie inspired both women and men in philosophy—especially, but not only, feminist philosophers of religion—with her work on the critical role of sexual difference in life today.

Editorial: In the Guise of a Miracle

The first-ever special issue of an Anglo-American philosophy journal on ‘feminist philosophy of religion’ appeared in 1994. The present special issue of Sophia: International journal for philosophy of religion, metaphysical theology and ethics marks the beginning of the third decade of feminist writings in Anglo-American philosophy of religion. At this time, we do well to pause, in order to think about the strong resistance, which feminist philosophers have faced in this philosophical field where ‘religion’ still generally means traditional theism. For this religious tradition, ‘God’ is personal, without a body, referred to as ‘He’ who is eternal, perfectly free, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient and Creator of the world. Insofar as this God has personified a gender ideal, ‘He’ has become the object of feminist critiques. Yet any successful feminist intervention into the philosophical debates concerning the nature and existence of the omni-perfect God will work against formidable inertia. A feminist philosopher of religion has to be realistic about the possibility of change; she is no miracle-worker. Nevertheless, she has certainly come close to something miraculous when she has laboured to give birth to something new. ‘The new’ comes, as Hannah Arendt wrote, ‘in the guise of a miracle’ breaking into our lives and, in this context, our thinking and acting. In light of the male dominated history of western philosophy, a woman philosopher initiating change to the (supposedly) changeless God has seemed nothing short of miraculous: she has confronted ‘His’ Anglo-American defenders, aiming to conceive something radically new. This newness has required a break in time, which is not exactly of its time. Instead, the required break has had to create a way to confront the SOPHIA (2014) 53:171–181 DOI 10.1007/s11841-014-0429-x

"Alternative Selves" and Authority in the Fiction of Jane Urquhart

The article engages with "alternative selves," a concept found in The Stone Carvers by a Canadian writer, Jane Urquhart. Her fiction is first seen in the context of selected texts by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro, who explore the clash between female characters' conventional roles and their "secret" selves. My analysis was inspired by Pamela Sue Anderson's A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, which stresses the need for "reinventing ourselves as other" in the face of biased beliefs and dominant epistemology. In particular, my article refers to Anderson's concern with Kant's imaginary from The Critique of Pure Reason, where "the territory of pure understanding" is projected on the island, while desire, chaos and death are identified with the sea. Seen through the prism of a feminist reading of the philosophical imaginary, the sea becomes the female beyond. Urquhart's three novels: Away, The Stone Carvers and A Map of Glass dissolve the opposition between Kantian island and water, by showing how reason is invaded by desire and death, and how the female protagonist embodies the elements that have been repressed. Urquhart's fiction, which is "landscape driven," provides the image of a dynamic relationship between the qualities that form a static binary opposition in Kantian discourse. Mary in Away, Klara in The Stone Carvers and Sylvia in A Map of Glass all subvert the dominant epistemology by following their desire, which becomes "a positive energy" and not "a deviation from a good rational norm," to refer to another concept by Anderson. Urquhart's Mary, Klara and Sylvia have to contend with power vested in collective beliefs and stereotypical construction of femininity. By venturing into the liminal zone beyond the territory of "pure understanding," the three protagonists regain their voices and discover their authority. The article ends with the analysis of a Homeric intertext in A Map of Glass, where Sylvia identifies with Odysseus "lashed to mast" so that he would not respond to the call of the siren song. Reading Homer's passage on the siren song, one realizes that the use of the Kantian imaginary turns Ithaca into the island of truth, and the sea into the stormy beyond, identified with desire, death and femaleness. While the Odyssey suppresses the dangerous message of the siren song, Urquhart's fiction rewrites it and reclaims it as positive inspiration for the female protagonist.

I Called to God from a Narrow Place... A Wide Future for Philosophy of Religion

I urge philosophers of religion to investigate far more vigorously than they have until now the acceptability of varied components of the world religions and their epistemological underpinnings. By evaluating “acceptability” I mean evaluation of: truth, morality, spiritual efficacy and human flourishing, in fact any value religious devotees might think significant to their religious lives. Secondly, I urge that philosophers of religion give more attention to what scholars have called the “esoteric” level of world religions, including components of strong ineffability, weak ineffability, and an alleged perennial philosophy. All this should involve a cooperative effort between analytic, comparative, and feminist philosophy of religion.

Feminist Challenges to Conceptions of God: Exploring Divine Ideals

The aim of the present chapter is to challenge conceptions of a divine ideal against which human subjects measure their ethical points of view. I locate my own position at the interface of debates concerning the positioning of a first-person human subject in relation to a third-person divine ideal in Anglo-American philosophy of religion and Continental feminist philosophy. My critical point of departure is Luce Irigaray’s feminist challenge to what she sees to be a masculine conception of God; her alternative is for women to become divine (Irigaray L, Divine women. In: Gill GC (trans.) Sexes and genealogies. Columbia University Press, New York, pp 57–72, 1993; Irigaray L, La Mysterique’. Divine women. When the Gods are born. In: Joy M, O’Grady K, Poxon JL (eds) French feminists on religion: a reader. Routledge, London, 2002), or for ‘a divine in the feminine’ (Irigaray L Towards a divine in the feminine. In: Howie G (ed) Women and the divine: transcendence in contemporary feminism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. pp forthcoming, 2007). Irigaray’s provocative accounts of divinity are having a profound impact on feminist philosophers and certain theologians. The poetic or, some would say, slippery style of Irigaray’s French psycholinguistics finds expression in sexually differentiated conceptions of the divine, including accounts of ‘divine women,’ and of becoming divine as women and as men (Jantzen GM, Becoming divine: towards a feminist philosophy of religion. Manchester University Press, Manchester,1998; Martin A, Luce Irigaray and the question of the divine. Maney Publishing, Leeds, 2000).

Life, death and (inter)subjectivity: realism and recognition in continental feminism

I begin with the assumption that a philosophically significant tension exists today in feminist philosophy of religion between those subjects who seek to become divine and those who seek their identity in mutual recognition. My critical engagement with the ambiguous assertions of Luce Irigaray seeks to demonstrate, on the one hand, that a woman needs to recognize her own identity but, on the other hand, that each subject whether male or female must struggle in relation to the other in order to maintain realism about life and death. No one can avoid the recognition that we are each given life but each of us also dies. In addition, I raise amore general, philosophical problem for analytic philosophers who attempt to read Continental philosophy of religion: how should philosophers interpret deliberately ambiguous assertions? For example, what does Irigaray mean in asserting, ‘Divinity is what we need to become free, autonomous, sovereign’? To find an answer, I turn to the distinctively French readings of the Hegelian struggle for recognition which have preoccupied Continental philosophers especially since the first half of the last century. I explore the struggle for mutual recognition between women and men who must face the reality of life and death in order to avoid the projection of their fear of mortality onto the other sex. This includes a critical look at Irigaray’s account of subjectivity and divinity. I turn to the French philosopherMichele Le Doeuff in order to shift the focus from divinity to intersubjectivity. I conclude that taking seriously the struggle for mutual recognition between subjects forces contemporary philosophers of religion to be realist in their living and dying. With this in mind, the lesson from the Continent for philosophy of religion is that we must not stop yearning for recognition. Indeed, we must even risk our autonomy/divinity in seeking to recognize intersubjectivity.

Evidence and faith: philosophy and religion since the seventeenth century

1. The sovereignty of the good in seventeenth-century philosophy of religion 2. Cartesian philosophy of religion 3. The ascendancy of laws of evidence in early modern philosophy of religion 4. Humean philosophy of religion 5. Kantian philosophy of religion 6. Religion and the philosophical gods and giants 7. Continental and feminist philosophy of religion 8. Five major moves 9. Religions, evidence and legitimacy.

Feminist Philosophy of Religion

Feminist Philosophy of Religion

Reason, Religion, and Sexual Difference: Resources for a Feminist Philosophy of Religion in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Reason, Religion, and Sexual Difference: Resources for a Feminist Philosophy of Religion in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Reason, Religion, and Sexual Difference: Resources for a Feminist Philosophy of Religion in Hegel'sPhenomenology of Spirit

Reading Hegel's1827 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religionalongside hisPhenomenology of Spirit, I argue that his vision for becoming a self-conscious subject—or seeing (oneself as) “spirit”—requires taking responsibility for the insight that every act of reason expresses an experience of sexual difference. It entails working to bring into being communities whose conceptions of gender and the absolute realize this idea.

Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Critical Readings

Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Critical Readings Pamela SueAnderson BeverleyClack London Routledge 2004 302 pp. $ 34.95 (pb).

REVIEWS

Books reviewed:Antony Copley (ed.), Hinduism in Public and Private: Reform, Hindutva, Gender, and SampradayJames D.G. Dunn and John Rogerson (eds), Eerdmans Commentary on the BibleJohn Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic SketchMusimbi R.A. Kanyoro, Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics: An African PerspectiveEryl W. Davies, The Dissenting Reader: Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew BibleRalph McInerny, AquinasSarah Borden, Edith SteinM.F. Snape, The Church of England in Industrialising Society: The Lancashire Parish of Whalley in the 18th CenturyStephen Platten (ed.), Anglicanism and the Western Christian Tradition: Continuity, Change and the Search for CommunionPaul Avis (ed.), Seeking the Truth of Change in the Church: Reception, Communion and the Ordination of WomenDonald Fairbairn, Eastern Orthodoxy Through Western EyesWallace M. Alston, Jr. and Michael Welker (eds), Reformed Theology: Identity and EcumenicityJohn G. Stackhouse, Jr. (ed.), Evangelical Ecclesiology: Reality or Illusion?Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the WestJoerg Rieger (ed.), Opting for the Margins: Postmodernity and Liberation in Christian TheologyAndrew Wright, Religion, Education and PostmodernityKarl Ernst Nipkow, God, Human Nature and Education for Peace: New Approaches to Moral and Religious MaturityHenrique Pinto, Foucault, Christianity and Interfaith DialogueViggo Mortensen (ed.), Theology and the Religions: A DialogueMichael L. Peterson and Raymond J. Vanarragon (eds), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of ReligionPamela Sue Anderson and Beverley Clack (eds), Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Critical ReadingsBruno Forte, The Essence of ChristianityJean‐Louis Chrétien, The Ark of SpeechDavid Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of the Christian FaithGerald O’Mahony, A Way into the Trinity: The Story of a JourneyPeter Byrne, God and RealismSimon Francis Gaine, ‘Will There Be Freedom in Heaven?’: Freedom, Impeccability and BeatitudeMichael Washburn, Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred WorldMichael Breen, Eamonn Conway, Barry McMillan, (eds), Technology and TranscendenceAlan G. Padgett, Science and the Study of God: A Mutuality Model for Theology and ScienceAnne Primavesi, Gaia's Gift: Earth, Ourselves and God after CopernicusEric O. Jacobsen, Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian FaithGerard Loughlin, Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and TheologyKathryn Rountree, Embracing the Witch and the Goddess: Feminist‐Ritual Makers in New Zealand

Embodiment and Feminist Philosophy of Religion

Embodiment and Feminist Philosophy of Religion

Struggling for Truth

Despite some feminist wariness about the possibility of attaining full knowledge of the truth, this paper argues that feminists should work to disclose truth, particularly by exposing unacknowledged partiality and dishonesty. The struggle for truth should be understood as a moral and spiritual task, rather than rejected as a narrow and mistaken preoccupation of epistemologists. Some of the compromises that parts of the Church of England are prepared to endure by knowingly living with dishonesty are explored as a means of illustrating the need to avoid compromise and to struggle for truth. It is argued that we should resist moves within the feminist philosophy of religion that would divert us from that struggle. Contra Jantzen, this paper stresses the importance of critical reasoning, which works hard at both exposing distortion and offering truer beliefs. Half-truths and semi-concealed power- relations throw people into distraction, by holding them in 'diabolical' (which means duplicitous or distracted) circumstances.

Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion (review)

Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion (review)