Feminist Studies In Religion Research Articles

Feminist Theologies: Looking Back To Look Ahead

Feminist theologies in the U.S. are the reason why attention to gender has changed religions. Feminist studies in religion and social activism go hand in hand. These twin foci form a useful backdrop for understanding contemporary feminist spirituality which is a concrete coupling of religious dynamics and feminist action. That spirituality is the product of feminist work in religion and has an impact on society. Brief descriptions of a small sample of the groups that continue to deepen this work point to a bright future for feminist theologies despite backlash and obstacles.

Invisibility, Anti-Asian Racism, and Feminist Studies in Religion

Invisibility, Anti-Asian Racism, and Feminist Studies in Religion

Feminist Studies in Religion and Literature Approach to Reading Park Wansuh’s Novels: Beginning of the Living Days and Others.

Feminist Studies in Religion and Literature Approach to Reading Park Wansuh’s Novels: Beginning of the Living Days and Others.

The Doors She Opened: Honoring Rosemary Radford Ruether

This tribute to Rosemary Radford Ruether was presented in her honor at the Friends of Sabeel North America Conference, October 7, 2017. The editors at JFSR are grateful to Jane Dempsey Douglass for allowing us to publish it in honor of Rosemary's memory and generational significance to feminist studies in religion on her passing this May 21, 2022.

Introduction

Introduction Joseph A. Marchal (bio) One potential genealogy for this special section of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) begins with a special session of the 2021 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). Multiple program units (including the Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World section, the Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible section, and the LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics section) and status committees (including the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession and the recently established—if rather belatedly in comparison to other academic organizations—Committee for LGBTIQ+ Scholars and Scholarship) collaborated to recognize and reflect upon Bernadette J. Brooten's Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of its publication (with the University of Chicago Press in 1996). The task required that many partners because of this work's immense influence and impact on the study of women, gender, sexuality, and enslavement, among other domains and topics in relation to both material and textual remains, history, and the ethics of interpretation. Given these themes and Dr. Brooten's innumerable contributions to both knowledge and community building, the session was critical and celebratory, lively and substantial in ways that strongly correspond with JFSR's historical interest in honoring influential feminist scholars and desire to think reflexively and prospectively about our scholarly pasts in relation to our presents and anticipated futures. Of course, in reflecting on such scholarly pasts, the contributors who have known Brooten the longest (Sheila Briggs and Angela Standhartinger, among them) explain how this project concretely, politically, and interpersonally began years, even decades, before the quarter-century publication date that partially inspired the session. Thus, the following contributions trace how Love [End Page 143] Between Women and Brooten's work within and beyond this book are part of longer histories of feminist, queer, and increasingly intersectional approaches to biblical, ancient Jewish, and emerging Christian materials. Yet to call Love Between Women just a book is a gross oversimplification. It was and is a phenomenon, likely because Love Between Women contains multitudes. As several of the contributors to this special section highlight, it is an incredible resource; its many different parts inspire and inform work in its wake. Its latter half is anchored by an indispensable commentary on Rom 1:18–32, in which Brooten meticulously examines the arguments in this notorious passage in light of the relevant interpretive frameworks and intertextual echoes. Just as importantly, though, Brooten also gathers, translates, and explains an unprecedented assemblage of ancient materials reflecting upon female homoeroticism in the ancient Roman world. In clearly and critically presenting a range of cultural sources, from erotic spells and astrological texts to medical treatments and manuals of dream interpretation, Brooten pressed beyond the "classical" (mostly elite, imperial, enslaving, and male) literary sources to provide multifaceted angles on these (still often depressingly kyriarchal) materials and the potential people behind them. Love Between Women, then, performs a massive mitzvah in providing essential context. It builds an archive and in doing so, gives generations of readers, "scholarly" and otherwise, a new, profound, and still unparalleled access to a matrix of sources on, about, and at times even from women in the ancient Mediterranean context. Yet the picture provided by this archive is far from rosy, and Brooten refuses to adopt either apologist or falsely idealizing approaches to the often disturbing materials within and beyond Paul's letters. Indeed, Love Between Women demonstrates how thoroughly Paul's letters and particularly the "bashing passage" of Rom 1:26–27 are conversant and concordant with most of the ancient kyriarchal ambiance that presumed and projected a fundamental asymmetry so that what counted as "natural" intercourse was only the penetrative use of a social and political subordinate by their superior. Brooten's work demonstrates, then, why and how histories of sexuality could, even should, also be feminist histories, attending to specifically gendered dynamics and differences. The broader project also cautions scholars of Greco-Roman antiquity against dismissing "religious" sources out of hand, particularly if one is at all concerned with the vast majority of people who lived distanced from the apex of kyriarchal power and privilege. For a great many...

Response

Response Bernadette J. Brooten (bio) Thank you to Joseph Marchal, who organized this special section, to the respondents, each of whom has taken such care in engaging my work, and to the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion for publishing it. First, a word about the time in which I wrote. Jennifer Glancy and Mónica Rey have observed that, when I published Love Between Women in 1996, same-gender marriage was illegal. Beyond that, same-gender sexual contact itself was actually a crime in many states until 2003. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the United States Supreme Court overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 Supreme Court case, and declared that a Texas statute criminalizing consensual same-gender sex between adults was unconstitutional under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.1 As this goes to press, the constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy is at risk, which could mean turning back the clock on same-gender marriage and other hard-fought rights.2 [End Page 191] When New Testament scholars discussed Rom 1:26–27 at all, many assumed that Paul was speaking hypothetically about sexual relations between females: "For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the males, giving up natural intercourse with females, were consumed with passion for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error" (NRSV, slightly altered). I vividly recall speaking with a fellow, male member of the Society for New Testament Studies, who insisted to me that sexual relations between women did not exist in Paul's world, that Paul was simply hypothesizing such relations. Similarly, one well-known feminist theologian in Germany, speaking about my plans to write this book, once told another German feminist theologian, "I don't know any lesbians," to which her friend responded, "You know me." Silence. I cannot stress enough how wonderful I feel seeing more junior scholars working to interpret some of the same texts and artifacts about which I wrote and introducing new ones into the discussion. While writing about some of the more obscure texts, I felt as if I were excavating by drilling through ice in Antarctica, with no other experienced scholar in sight. I did, of course, discuss these sources with talented research assistants Denise Kimber Buell, Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Caroline Johnson Hodge, and many others. But how encouraging it is now to be able to communicate with each of you in this panel, and to read of other interpretations, such as in Joseph Marchal's Appalling Bodies.3 Marchal deeply engages a broad range of ancient sources, proposing new meanings of being a receptive erotic partner. Angela Standhartinger has outlined some of the difficulties that I faced in the 1980s in Tübingen with Hans Küng, who opposed the very subject of the research. Numerous German feminists, LGBTQ+ individuals and groups, and simply fair-minded persons supported my work in numerous ways. I want to single out for special mention my friend of over four decades, Sheila Briggs, who spent countless hours with me in long-distance phone calls between Claremont, California, and Tübingen, counseling me on how to fight for the academic freedom necessary to write this book. Thank you, also, Angela Standhartinger, for mentioning my early work in addressing anti-Judaism within feminism and some of my other experiences and initiatives in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. I am thrilled about all that has lasted and grown since the meaningful years that I spent in the lovely small city of Tübingen. Thank you, Mónica Rey, for highlighting Love Between Women's contributions to women's history. I set out to establish that people in the Hellenistic and [End Page 192] Roman Mediterranean world knew of female homoerotic desires and acts. This largely involved studying male fantasies, some of them bizarre and distorted. I did, however, also find fragmentary evidence for women's history. Now, some people are not interested in history. That's all right. Not everyone has the same interests. Some think that a desire to write...

A Response from the LAB

A Response from the LAB Monique Moultrie (bio) and Sarah Emanuel (bio) 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.1 The 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 alongside the journal, blog, and books. This timeline, although a coincidence, is interesting. While the FSR action items (see below) were created in response to the George Floyd protests, members of the LAB—formerly known as the Forum2—had been raising concerns within subcommittee meetings about the racialized structures of FSR. By the time the action items were crafted, many LAB members were already of the perspective that organizational change and truth-telling needed to occur. Projects within the LAB are continually rotating, but current works include the Feminists Talk Religion podcast, a self-reflective survey on FSR’s history, and a syllabus project where teaching resources will be housed on the LAB’s website. Needless to say, each project brings with it the following helpful organizational commitments: • Recognize the work of Black feminist and womanist scholars • Invite more women of color to FSR’s boards and leadership [End Page 75] • Facilitate intentional conversations of anti-Black racism and white supremacy • Expand our community • Self-reflect on FSR’s history and current practices • Host combined AAR/SBL panel(s) on anti-Black racism, white supremacy, and feminist religious studies • Gather resources • Foster syllabi collaboration3 Below are snapshots of the LAB’s current projects and how they engage FSR’s commitments to combat white supremacy and anti-Black racism. Podcast The Feminists Talk Religion (FTR) podcast launched in February 2020. Episodes range from fifteen-minute minisodes to hour-long conversations and include feminist discussions about religion-related topics. The podcast subcommittee has included within its bylaws the intent to always have at least one woman of color showcased on each episode. Episodes do not shy away from the hard conversations. As cofounder and cohost, Oluwatomisin Oredein states in the introductory episode, “We’re taking seriously diversity. . . . If [this podcast] feels too perfect, if it feels too clean, if it feels too white, too Christian, too something, that’s a fear.” That means we’re not doing it right.4 Some recent episode titles and descriptions include: “Racing the Pandemic: Anti-Asian Sentiment in the COVID-19 ERA,” April 2020, with Peace Lee and Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra, hosted by Oluwatomisin Oredein This week’s bonus episode interrogates the social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially toward the Asian and Asian American population in the United States. Within the United States, the coronavirus disease has not only uncovered how human systems and treatment of the world have historically caused earthly harm but also how social strain exposes cultural brokenness, agitates interpersonal animosity, and incites racist violence. ________ “White Institutional Fragility: A Raw Protest!,” June 2020, with Sharon Jacob, Angela N, Parker, and Karri L. Whipple Three New Testament scholars, a womanist, a white feminist, and an Indian postcolonial feminist discuss the issues of our time and what it means to build [End Page 76] a multiracial coalition within the academy to begin to dismantle the whiteness within our institutions, our scholarship, and the world. ________ “Immigration, Work, and Faith in the Midwest,” November 2020, with Kristy Nabhan-Warren, hosted by Naira Leão Working at a meatpacking plant can be dangerous and exhausting. That is the reality of Latino and refugee workers in this industry, who turn to their faith to cope with the difficulties of the workplace. In this episode, Kristy Nabhan-Warren discusses her research with a community of mostly immigrant workers in the Midwest. We also talk about the surprises, messiness, and nuances that emerge...

Structures

Structures Emilie M. Townes (bio) 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 remains at its core a space that is shaped by the values of whiteness and Christian traditions on a global scale. There is irony in this because JFSR and FSR were formed as a clear alternative voice to an academy that holds the values of whiteness and Christianity in high regard, to the point that what we judge as normative is glossed with the assumptions and attitudes of a value system that privileges the way that white people—their customs, cultures, and beliefs—and Christianity—with its seemingly ubiquitous presence in religious scholarship—both operate as the standards to which all other groups and religions are compared. I am referring to a particular kind of whiteness that proves vexing not only in FSR but in most of our sociopolitical and intellectual endeavors—particularly those that are aimed at disrupting hegemonic norms that would rather disavow, minimize, and/or remain doggedly ignorant of the harm that uninterrogated whiteness wreaks in systematic ways. The whiteness I am referring to is the product of what I call the fantastic hegemonic imagination that delights in obscuring the deeply structural ways in which white-dominant culture is seen and responded to as the norm—so much so that despite our best attempts to create diverse and/or inclusive communities of accountability, they often stall on the altar of racism and ethnocentrism (along with a host of other “isms” and phobias). One base point of this form of whiteness was imported by the Spanish and Portuguese during [End Page 15] early slavocracy, when whiteness became a way to define the enslavers as different from the enslaved. This form of whiteness carried with it hierarchy, privilege, and property. Someone had to be better—the logical candidate became those who defined the slave trade as progress rather than as tragedy and inhumanity. We continue to live in the backwash of this hierarchy. Likewise, FSR faces a dilemma much like I find at my own university. Our Graduate Department of Religion is really a graduate department for the study of Christian traditions. Christianity is baked into its structure to the degree that colleagues in Jewish studies and Islamic studies are rightfully wary of any conversation about reimagining the study of religion on the graduate level because it is the structure itself that is problematic and the biggest hurdle to envisioning (let alone creating) an inclusive alternative—something utterly new. I spend this time talking about a whiteness that codifies itself in our lives and leaks into our scholarship and the hegemonic blunt edge of the study of Christian traditions because I believe that this is an important backdrop for FSR’s best-faith efforts to undo the whiteness and Christian lean that is inherent in the scholarship we were taught and, in many cases, continue to espouse both intentionally and unintentionally. In sum, what FSR is seeking to face is a systemic worldview, not just inadequate and misguided scholarship, or imperfect attempts to debunk the exceedingly tensile threads that hold the matrices of domination in place despite our best efforts to eradicate them. The important questions FSR must continue to trouble itself with are, Who sets the questions and why and how? Twined with this is an equally important question: Are there topics that we shy away from? These are power dynamic questions among committed people who do not traditionally hold a great deal of power. Its challenge to...

Transforming Feminist Racist Structures

Transforming Feminist Racist Structures Mary E. Hunt (bio) 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 surmount systemic racism, Christocentrism, xenophobia, transphobia, and more. I cofounded and codirect the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER), an organization of the same vintage and similar in some respects though quite different in others to JFSR. Thus, I stand doubly involved, hence doubly responsible for the multiple failings of these groups to be structured and to operate as equitable fora for feminists in religion. I regret that and apologize for my mistakes. Regrets are for dinner parties, a wise friend once counseled. The issues at hand are not finally personal, though relationships are key. But even those can get in the way if we rely too heavily on a small circle of friends. Rather, efforts need to focus on structural and systemic matters in addition to personal failings. The task moving forward is to avoid repeating mistakes as projects and organizations are restructured or newly created in ways that are adequate to the needs of the day and reflective of what we have learned. That we missed the mark is no excuse to persist in error. But figuring out how to proceed from the morasses we have developed is not simple. One obvious way forward, taking up Judith’s challenge to “move beyond multiple voices in a room to finding ways to give them the same weight and power,” [End Page 39] would be to dissolve current projects and begin anew (13). While attractive, it would be wasteful to destroy what we have created. It would dishonor the best intentions of those involved to simply close doors, dismantle databases, and let new colleagues start from scratch. Rather, it makes strategic and ecological sense to transform groups like FSR through the painful process of accountability and change and at the same time to support and follow the lead of those who have previously been marginalized. The field of feminist studies in religion today has strong groups led by women of color that did not exist when FSR was created. The Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership in Richmond, VA, is a vibrant locus of scholarship, pastoral practice, the arts, and more where Black women shape the agenda. Their 2021 conference eclipsed anything I have seen in the field with its technologically sophisticated, multivalent approach to womanist work. Their program offerings are cutting edge and attractive to a broad audience. There is much to learn from them about the nexus of scholarship and practice. The Pacific, Asian, and North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry (PANAAWTM) recently incorporated as a nonprofit, signaling its seriousness about the future. They offer substantive online courses and workshops. They prioritize mentoring the next generation and building intentionally on the knowledge production of the community. They model ways to do feminist studies in religion that can transfer to other groups. One way to transform historically predominantly white women’s groups is by changing the composition of the leadership and activists. A concomitant way is for such groups to support concretely the work of colleagues of color. The Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South, another group similar to WATER in age, focus, and composition, recently made that explicit in their fundraising. They urged their donors to give as well to groups run by women of color, a strategy other groups can adopt. FSR needs to attend to international and trans inclusion as well as racial and religious issues. What began as US-based work is increasingly global. Yet...

What Does Genuine Transformation Look Like?: Emphasizing the “D” in DEI

What Does Genuine Transformation Look Like? Emphasizing the “E” in DEI Rebecca T. Alpert (bio) 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 by the invitation. For some twenty years before that I had actively published in the field (and in the journal) and had been both chair of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) Status of Women in the Profession Committee and director of the (then) Women’s Studies Program at my institution, so I occasionally wondered why I had never been asked to serve. But I also knew that diversity mattered to the JFSR board and so assumed that they were looking for a queer Jew at that time and that it was my turn. I stayed on the board for ten years and enjoyed interacting with an amazing cohort of scholars, including an atypically high percentage of scholars of color—at least 30 percent, as Judith calculated. In terms of representation, that board truly reflected inclusion. Despite those efforts, I, like Judith, failed to recognize how very white both the premise and power dynamics have been. Despite these efforts at inclusion, the results failed to achieve equity. Scholars of color were “invited into projects after their basic parameters have been determined” (10). Ownership has not passed out [End Page 31] of the founders’ control. Inclusion exists, but not power or influence. The idea that white people can, with the best intentions, find ways to be inclusive and diverse but yet fail to achieve the desired goal of equity struck me as Judith’s key insight in this retrospective essay. We must begin thinking long and hard about how to deal with the “container,” as Judith calls it, the system of white privilege and power that, despite our best efforts at inclusion and diversity, remains in place. As I read Judith’s words, I thought about how efforts to be inclusive have failed to achieve the desired goals. In my own case, I would highlight two things that Judith alluded to: • Confusing social position for insight. Assuming that as a queer Jewish woman who spent her childhood in a predominantly Black neighborhood, read widely in Black studies, and taught courses in the race requirement at my university to educate myself, that I really knew anything about the experience of people of African descent. Then compounding that with the assumption that my social location gave me some special privilege, not to ignore Black experience as Judith suggests she did, but to appropriate those experiences by comparing them to mine. • Struggling to get over my own self-importance in the cause of anti-Black racism by being too proud of my own contributions and unable to get over my own mistakes. I also didn’t “die” after my public gaffe at the 2017 meeting in the morning session on breaking boundaries that Judith referred to. But I still fault myself for falling into the trap of making a typical “white feminist ally” move by suggesting a personal solution to a systemic problem (coauthoring an article with a Black colleague) that I compounded by asking my colleague in public to write with me. Then furthering the problem by asking her to deal with my pain when she called me out on that suggestion publicly, not only for finding a personal solution to a systemic problem but for asking her to help me solve it and contributing to the extra labor Black women are perpetually asked to perform in the academy. I found...

Reckoning with Accountability

Reckoning with Accountability Elizabeth A. Pritchard (bio) 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 ensconced on the sidelines of white supremacy and need only to dial up the frequency and thoroughness of its critiques of white supremacy, Judith, correctly in my estimation, describes JFSR as a white container. Judith repudiates the whiteness of this container and looks to the possibility of “creating a container in which all those voices or assumptions have equal weight” (12). I am wary, however, about the journal serving as a “container.” In what follows, I reflect further on the significance of the phrase white container by revisiting JFSR’s longstanding mission statement. I focus on JFSR as I served as managing editor of the journal from 1992 to 1998 and as coeditor from 2016 to 2020. In the intervening years, I served on the editorial board, and I continue to do so. From the start, JFSR positioned itself in relation to the academy and to activism. Its mission statement reads as follows: “The JFSR has two communities of accountability: the academy, in which it is situated, and the feminist movement, from which it draws its nourishment and vision. Its editors are committed to rigorous thinking and analysis in the service of the transformation of religious studies as a discipline and the feminist transformation of religious and cultural institutions.”1 I am curious about the choice to make a home in the academy. Sure, most authors [End Page 27] and board members are affiliated with institutions of higher education, and it is a scholarly publication, but do those facts mean that the journal is or should be situated in the academy? I am also not sure how an author or a particular work is to be held accountable to two generalized and homogenized abstractions: “the academy” and “the feminist movement.” Moreover, why seek to be accountable to the academy? The academy has been a key driver of the historical exclusions that reproduce white supremacy. Even now, as many institutions of higher education diversify (to some extent) their student bodies—and, less strenuously, their faculty—their status remains inextricably tied to low acceptance rates. The discipline of religion was welcomed into US colleges and universities as a tool for promoting good governance and Cold War nationalism. Moreover, the emergence and celebration of empathetic engagement with “religious pluralism” at Harvard Divinity School (and, likely, other divinity schools as well) was a strategy to suppress a student movement, which mobilized liberation theologies to protest racism.2 In a context of dwindling public funding, the future of the academy depends upon donations from alumni whose revolutionary energies must be contained and redirected toward accumulating wealth. In what way(s), then, should JFSR be accountable to the academy? And what of JFSR’s accountability to “the feminist movement”? And what, really, is “the feminist movement”? When one considers the persistence of a feminism that centers white women and valorizes neoliberal “choice,” it becomes clear that the generalization “the feminist movement” is a deeply flawed attempt at inclusion.3 A flattened and romanticized feminist movement that is a source of “nourishment” and “vision” is a depoliticized movement. It is a movement that is ill at ease with dissent and conflict, let alone revolution. The danger of a depoliticized movement is that the aspiration to inclusion too readily becomes a containment strategy. In reflecting on the conflict that erupted at the 2017 FSR conference, Judith laments the fact that “FSR had not created tools to work through those moments as they would inevitably arise” (7). I certainly...

Who and What Count in Feminist Studies of Religion?

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...

Peering Inside the White Container: Feminism and Antiracism in the Work of JFSR

Peering Inside The White ContainerFeminism and Antiracism in the Work of JFSR Sailaja Krishnamurti (bio) 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 critical difference between advocating for “diversity” and committing to antiracist work. Let me contextualize my question by first interrogating my own position in this discussion. I am a queer cisgender woman of Brahmin (upper caste) Hindu South Asian descent. I live and work in Canada, the carceral state next door. As a racialized settler on colonized land, and as an academic of color with tenure, I occupy positions of marginalization and of privilege in academia and in North American society. I locate myself this way as a practice of interrogative positionality, a method which asks that we continually reexamine our locations, orientations, and relationships to power.1 From this vantage point, I can see that I am one of those non-Black scholars of color whose numbers, Plaskow notes, have grown on the board in recent years while the number of Black scholars has stayed steady. Non-Black women of color are indeed often used as an alibi in equity initiatives: the number of women of [End Page 51] color goes up, and “diversity” is achieved.2 Why is it that non-Black women of color like me grow in number in academic spaces when Black women do not? The core problem—that white supremacy, class inequality, and anti-Black racism are deeply embedded in American and global history and culture—cannot be addressed through institutional diversity initiatives that do not radically change institutions. It requires an explicitly antiracist approach that understands anti-Black racism and settler colonialism as institutional ontologies and as transnational phenomena. A second question therefore arises: What does it mean to engage in “the study of religion” when we know that our field owes its existence to colonial, orientalist, and imperial institutions? These are the same institutions that are responsible for exploiting people of color all over the world. Some traditions, and some scholars, sit more comfortably in relation to the term religion than others. Assumed divisions between insider and outsider, practitioner and scholar continue to shape our theories and methodologies. It is inevitable, therefore, that efforts to diversify representation within the field will expose the limits of what “religion” itself can contain. Plaskow writes that “like systemic racism, Christian hegemony is built into the fabric of the academy and society in ways FSR has been unable to escape” (7). Indeed, white Christian hegemony is so deeply enmeshed in the academy that we must ask how we can challenge it as long as we are so invested in maintaining its terms and structures. Here is one small and unscientific example. A brief search of JFSR’s hundreds of articles shows that only eighty-three contain the word Hindu, and of those, only sixteen are authored or coauthored by scholars who are (or at least whom I know to be) racialized people. I offer this observation to make two points: a) diversity in the coverage of religious traditions does not always equal racial diversity, and b) white scholars continue to dominate many fields of religious studies, particularly those which have been historically connected to the colonial apparatus. In her 2020 blog post “Not Just the Syllabus, Throw the Whole Discipline in the Trash,” Harvard MTS scholar Ciarra Jones writes that the “foundation of American academia is white supremacy. By refusing to reimagine not only the canon but also the theories and methods...

Global Racism and International Publishing

Global Racism and International Publishing Kwok Pui-lan (bio) 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 Religion (JFSR) remains a largely white Christian enterprise, she fails to interrogate that it is a US-dominated white Christian enterprise. As a former coeditor of JFSR (2000–2005), I want to reflect on the challenges of global racism in knowledge production and publishing. It would be myopic to reflect on racism and JFSR only from the US context. JFSR was founded in 1985, at a time when feminist and womanist religious scholarship gathered momentum globally. Asian feminist theology began in the late 1970s and the journal In God’s Image launched in 1982. The Womanist Approach to Religion and Society group at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) was formed in 1985. The AAR’s Native Traditions in the Americas group was formed in 1987.1 In Africa and Latin America, feminist religious networks also began. For example, the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians was founded in 1989 and published numerous books. In Latin America, the ecofeminist theology and spirituality group Con-spirando was formed in 1991 and publishes a widely read journal. [End Page 19] JFSR supports and promotes international feminist religious scholarship. The editorial board has international scholars; an international board was formed to encourage foreign submissions and networking. As a premier feminist journal, JFSR appeals to international feminist scholars, some of whom would find it prestigious to publish in an American journal. So, why is it difficult to publish more articles by female scholars from the global South? This issue was discussed in some of our editorial board meetings. People said international authors did not know the logistics of writing for an American journal. Reviewers of international submissions said the authors did not reference representative or latest works on the topic (their libraries may not have had these books). Some remarked that these submissions seemed more fit for the Living It Out or Roundtable sections. Even as we encourage board members to solicit international submissions, it would take much time for them to “coach” the authors to make their pieces publishable. This is doubly taxing for board members of color, who are already overstretched. As a coeditor of the journal, I devoted much time to overseeing the editing and proofreading processes, as the journal did not have a paid staff. Instead, we relied on student help and volunteers. This was on top of my full-time job, with no course relief. The editorial team worked constantly under pressure. I worried about meeting the deadlines for each issue and did not have the luxury of thinking about long-term planning or expanding international networks. Thus, we cannot assume that if we have women of color as JFSR’s coeditors or serving on the editorial board, we will increase publications by women of color or women from the global South. The problems are more systemic. As a feminist peer-reviewed journal, are we subscribing to the academic and publishing standards defined largely by the white academy? Do we understand feminist work if it is not done according to the protocols of research methods conceived and developed largely by white scholars? What is allowed as data using these methods and what is concealed? Are we using the master’s tools, only adding a feminist twist? What new feminist research methods in religion have we developed? Can women in the global South be theorists, and not merely providers of data or stories to be incorporated into the theories originating in the...

Race as a Fault Line in Feminist Allyship

Race as a Fault Line in Feminist Allyship Carolyn M. Jones Medine (bio) 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.1 I 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, particularly, breaking that silence with anger. Finally, I offer what is see as important for the work that is never done. Race is a “fault line” in the feminist movement,2 as white-centered feminism,3 located in racist and patriarchal systems, may privilege whiteness for leverage. Women of color often are let down by feminism, as Shirley Chisholm and bell hooks illustrate. Chisholm, in 1972, realized that key feminists would not back her presidential nomination. They thought she was “good for the cause,” but endorsed George McGovern, who could be “pro-leverage.”4 hooks unpacks leverage: feminists want Black women in their causes5 while simultaneously wishing to [End Page 55] control them.6 White feminists, for example, appropriate knowledge about racism, reproducing it in their scholarship and gaining career leverage.7 While they may be unaware of the depth of such violations, they cause righteous anger, criticism white women may disrupt with white women’s tears. Mary Beard, in a tweet, discussed Oxfam’s staff abusing sex workers after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, suggesting that it is hard to “sustain ‘civilized’ values in a disaster zone.” The backlash was, Ruby Hamad admits, perhaps “unnecessarily nasty.” Beard, in response, posted a picture of herself in tears.8 Beard deployed, Hamad and others suggest, the “appearance of powerlessness” in a harmful, controlling move9—even if the tears were genuine.10 Beard pivoted “her one down identity—woman—to her one up identity—white,”11 undercutting Haitian women’s exploitation,12 getting her critics labeled bullies, and gaining “‘the most protection in a world that does a shitty job . . . of cherishing women.’”13 A Black woman criticizing Beard’s tweet might be seen to “cause” white women’s tears and be labeled an “angry Black woman.”14 This happened in relation to Plaskow’s “vehement” reaction when a Black scholar made a comment to another Jewish scholar who was presenting on the panel. Plaskow, tired and “triggered,” deployed a master signifier: “anti-Semitic.”15 Why? What “ideological edifice” did [End Page 56] she seek to gather power around?16 Was the resulting anger truly “larger than [Plaskow’s] transgression” (6)? Watch it: white woman’s tears. This act stopped—some might say hijacked—the conference. This move reminded me of one of hooks’s female colleagues, a “friend” who wrote “vicious attacks” against hooks’s work for leverage and in a desire for power.17 Plaskow imagines an/other mode than this for FSR, signaling openness and leading me to some thoughts. First, the presence of women of color does not signal inclusion, and inclusion does not mean influence.18 Therefore, second, dialogue with women of color who left FSR and those who embrace other ethnic-identified women’s movements yet remain allied might reveal what is generative. Third, allies must recognize that they may still be part of the problem, not giving themselves “a pass.”19 Fourth, we must interrogate the white supremacist patriarchal frame in which we work and know how we pass on its values. Finally, let’s embrace the pause. Alice Walker reminds us that we are “required to stop, to sit down, to reflect,” to stay “present in the face of uncertainty.” This may lead to clarity.20 Right now, ethnic feminist critiques, particularly those of young women, signal that we must pause, reimagining feminism, community, and justice. [End Page 57] Carolyn...

Choosing the Better Part: Cultivating Solidarity in the Face of Racism

Choosing the Better PartCultivating Solidarity in the Face of Racism Jennifer T. Kaalund (bio) 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 other, concluding that this story ultimately teaches us a lesson about setting priorities. What if we are simply witnessing the struggles of how we choose to be in community together, in light of the new world vision that Jesus offers? This is a question to which I will return. There are points of inflection that force us to confront realities. Sometimes these moments are organizational, as Judith Plaskow describes in her essay; sometimes, they are personal, national, or international events. These critical junctures can be (self)-revelatory; they can also become turning points in our lives. We have experienced many of these moments over the past several years—the Black Lives Matter movement, the murder of George Floyd, a global pandemic, and the increasingly apparent effects of climate change, to name a few. Each moment has created an opportunity for reflection and action. We have been presented with multiple chances to move forward or to move in a different direction, one that brings us closer to equality. How have we taken advantage of these opportunities? That the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) locates itself at the nexus of activism and scholarship is significant. Activism compels us to be attentive to and engage in our world even while, as academics, we are trying to think [End Page 43] about, write about, and theorize these same happenings. To lose sight of either of these foci would result in the loss of creative possibilities for pushing the boundaries of the study of religion, a discipline that has an inherent tendency to draw clear borders and exclude all that is outside those bounds. Moreover, we risk losing our relevance. In her essay, Plaskow demonstrates the challenges of becoming an antiracist entity. Understanding this history is important for finding a way forward. Her essay elucidates how vision alone does not create reality, though it informs our intentions and clarifies direction. Hindsight is a good teacher; however, it should not be an enabling force. Recognition of past mistakes should lead to corrective actions. This acknowledgment is necessary to move the conversation from beyond these words on the page to the minds, hearts, and feet of people working daily to realize a more inclusive world. While I am curious to know what tools were put in place for the organization to address issues of race and racism following the 2017 Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) conference, perhaps a more productive question would be, What are we doing now to be better in the future? How can we be intentional about creating a more inclusive space in 2022 and beyond? I suggest that we should not follow the model of corporate America, who responded to their racial reckoning with futile statements of commitment and limited actions of resistance. Observers quickly concluded that acknowledging the truth is an essential first step, but it cannot be the only step taken. It means recognizing that diversity and inclusion (a seat at the table) is not the same as equity (a valued voice that influences decision making). We have become experts at defining the problem. As Plaskow astutely observes, “Naming absence is a necessary first step in repair, but it does not in itself effect repair” (5).1 Acts of reconciliation must accompany moments of truth. The process of repair must address how we reconcile our words...

Embracing Conflict

Embracing Conflict Traci C. West (bio) 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 one another’s social identities and religious communities. I am certainly not calling for boosting political conflicts that wage bruising competitions with each other over the degree of historical-victim status our particular groups can claim, or that engage in any form of destructive targeting and demoralization of one another. But we do need more conflict that stretches us beyond necessary revelations that only name the historically rooted habits of our racist unfreedom. We ought to intensify conflicts that also bring discomfort to the familiar patterns of white entitlement and supremacist logics embedded in our existing academic practices. We need conflicts that fuel more disruption of our tolerance for the continual reiteration of those familiar, lived patterns. A feminist and womanist gender justice approach to antiracism in religious studies intentionally promotes rupturing conflict with traditions of repression and our communal investments in them. Therefore, it ought not be surprising that deeply uncomfortable conflict arises if we, racially, ethnically, nationally, and religiously diverse gender justice scholars of religion, choose to seriously engage issues of white supremacy. Proceeding with this engagement should be understood as a deliberate commitment to immerse ourselves in tense, high-stakes struggle with one another. But many are unprepared for it or do not share this assumption. Perhaps this is partly because we disagree on the extent to which the [End Page 23] presence of racially and ethnically diverse perspectives constitutes a primary goal of antiracism. Plaskow’s essay helpfully provides detailed mapping of some of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion’s (JFSR) diversity. It allows us to consider how incongruous interpretations of the significance of an abundance of diversity can matter. The evidence of consistent racial and ethnic diversity in JFSR’s leadership and content illustrates an impressive array of feminist, womanist, and mujerista ideas about racial, ethnic, and national identities in religion scholarship and pedagogies. Yet, it is precisely such an array that can indicate not just the problem of presence without influence, as Plaskow so astutely points out, but also the sacralizing of diversity in feminist and womanist studies in religion. Respectful coexistence in separate essays or conference presentations, and even intentional affirmation of divergent perspectives and methods that are informed by critical analyses of race and racism, definitely generates intensely meaningful reflections. The presence of this dissimilar range can contribute an opening for womanist and feminist scholarly projects in religion to begin dismantling the academic practices of white dominance and intersecting hegemonies such as those related to class, sex/gender, dis/ability, and nationality. But when seen and celebrated as an end goal instead of merely an opening, the opposite may actually be achieved. Celebrations of diversity can promote avoidance of conflict that reveals the inadequacy of merely acknowledging difference and can generate too much contentment that militates against substantive disinvestment in status quo replication of white dominance. As a black Protestant Christian, I have been quite at home in the recalcitrantly Christian dominance of the JFSR context that Plaskow boldly describes. Admittedly, part of me wants to hide from confronting how my assumptions of black feminist Christian normativity and its supposed unquestionable anti-oppression stance contribute to an anti-Jewish hostile environment that can mimic well-learned white supremacist denial. I would rather leave uninterrogated the anti-Judaism relished in certain cultural and political expressions of blackness related to my Christian theology and social ethics commitments. I must choose to break out of this denial and seek a greater...

On Living with Affect Alienation within a “Master’s House”

On Living With Affect Alientation Within A “Master’s House” Jacqueline M. Hidalgo (bio) 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 editorial board since 2017, though I have never approached JFSR as one of my primary scholarly commitments. Perhaps that has to do with my attendance at that June 2017 conference, “Making Alliances, Breaking Taboos, Transforming Religions.” From that first evening I sat at dinner, trying to make conversation with a white Christian theology graduate student, I felt as I often do in feminist academia, like an “affect alien.”2 This feeling is not quite like impostor syndrome, which I also often feel. It is a strong sense that my very way of being is somehow offbeat, like I have the wrong feelings and express them the wrong ways at the wrong times. I have never been certain if that experience is a symptom or a cause of my feelings of alienation in academic spaces. Institutions must have a diverse leadership, but it is also worth paying attention to who feels welcomed even if they are not an invited panelist or a member of the leadership. [End Page 35] To the credit of the organizers, enough remarkable invited panelists were also affect aliens, and I rarely felt alone at the conference. In the academy, I often feel like I benefit most not from official panels or purposes but by being brought into proximity with other minoritized scholars, connecting with them in off moments. Some key panelists reflected critically, in different ways, on the limits of the very terms of the conference, such as “alliances” or “taboos,” words that sparked my unease from the beginning. I struggled, as I so often do, with the inadequacy of language and with its coloniality. So many of us speak English, whether as a first or second or third language, as a consequence of colonization, and Black scholars and writers in particular in the United States have found ways to disrupt dominant English, to signify on the colonizing and enslaving legacies in English. As scholars, though, we are trained to wield English as a weapon. Plaskow references how, in order to make it through graduate school, we all had to learn to employ the “master’s tools” and to think with and through “the master’s perspective.” I imagine somehow that when Audre Lorde wrote “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” she was signifying on the coloniality of English, adeptly working through her own affect alienation inside a house of masters (a humanities conference) and the immobile brick wall, a construction of space, theme, and time that was alien and alienating, one seemingly dominated by a white feminism that never questioned its own power dynamics.3 As an intellectual class migrant, I am still let into certain rooms, granted a visa as it were, sometimes because I have juggled the master’s tools and sometimes just as a consequence of passing. I benefit from enough privileges that I rarely have to face open hostility, and yet both open and covert anti-Black hostility persists in academic spaces. During one small group conversation at the 2017 Feminist Studies in Religion conference, a white scholar questioned the notion of Black women’s epistemic privilege, suggesting they would then dominate and silence others. This comment was like the fantasy of reverse racism. When had any of us who are not Black women ever been in an academic space truly dominated by Black women? I certainly have never been so...

Epistemologically Privileging Anger: Living with Cracked Containers in Feminist Scholarship

Epistemologically Privileging AngerLiving with Cracked Containers in Feminist Scholarship Sarojini Nadar (bio) 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 copying in) should offer me their expertise in guiding a doctoral candidate who made an application to register for a PhD in the area of queer ecclesiology. Apparently, I needed academic hand-holding, despite the fact that I hold a prestigious research chair in religion and social justice, and my résumé contains ample evidence of two decades of transdisciplinary expertise including publications, teaching, and graduate supervision directly in this area. When I objected, he flexed his hegemonic disciplinary muscle through repeated email correspondence, and when I candidly called upon him to own up to his prejudice, he resorted to gaslighting and pretended that he did not understand where my questions were coming from. He cloaked his prejudice in terms of acting “in the best interests of the student.” After a few exasperating exchanges, I eventually notified him that I would be laying a formal complaint against him and copied in the dean. He quite quickly changed his mind and approved me as a supervisor of the project, while also inserting into the email how “deeply saddened” my allegations made him. I still insisted on the intervention because I believe that in calling out the white and male supremacy that hides behind the “best interests” claim, I will make visible the ways in which regulatory disciplinary [End Page 59] power is exercised in the everyday lived experiences of women of color in the academy. Calling attention to the material effects of multiple unhealthy operations of power on Black women’s bodies is important Black feminist work, as my colleague Megan Robertson and I noted in a recent special issue of essays honoring the late Katie Geneva Cannon.1 And so, I come to this piece still reeling from the effects of this epistemic and emotional violence, while preparing for a mediation meeting in the next week. The insomnia-generating, ulcer-inducing effects of my interactions were viscerally present in my body as I read Judith Plaskow’s many reflective questions posed in this roundtable. The confines of a response paper do not permit an expanded discussion, so I want to offer just one key reflection on the subject of Black women’s anger, with the hope that the reflections will galvanize larger conversations. Referring to an incident where she publicly called out a Black colleague whom she “perceived as guilty of Christian hegemony,” and to the subsequent collective anger of Black women in that space, Plaskow raises a question: “[How is it] possible to be a Black person in this country and not be in a continual rage[?]” (7). Transfer this question to South Africa, with our history of institutionalized and sustained systemic racism, and the answer is simple: it is virtually impossible. Despite acknowledging the validity of rage as a response, Plaskow still makes the following disclaimer: “I do not think it is an abdication of my own responsibility, however, to say that the anger directed at me was larger than my transgression” (6). Reading from my body in this moment, I do actually think it is an abdication of responsibility to make such a disclaimer. There is a well-documented concern expressed repeatedly by women of color about how they are driven to moments of rage which kill their spirits and sometimes even their bodies. When Black women find their voices in academia, only for them to be silenced or killed by a white and patriarchal academy...

A Response from E-FSR

A Response from E-FSR Michal Raucher (bio), Sharon Jacob (bio), and Jennifer Maidrand (bio) 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, scholars of Islam and Judaism, and activists working in the field. Knowing the history of FSR, we envisioned a board that would not just include women of color but also create an environment that would allow scholars of color to feel empowered and mentored and to succeed. The expansion of our board also means that we have more than one expert in a particular field. This allows us to tackle the issue of tokenism and create a space where relationships are fostered and nurtured. Quite often in organizations that are predominantly white, only one or two people of color are included. Similarly, in religious studies spaces that are marked as Christian, one or two scholars of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism might give an illusion of diversity. To avoid this, we aim to continue growing our board. This will also relieve some pressure and prevent feelings of isolation and burnout that a person of color or a scholar of a non-Christian tradition might feel in being the only person on a predominantly white, Christian board. At e-FSR, the expansion of the board was a step taken to not merely include diversity but to create a space where diversity [End Page 81] with regard to race, sexuality, gender, and scholarship would create something new for FSR. This expansion has sometimes led to conflict, but it has been the kind of conflict that Traci West refers to in her response to Judith Plaskow. We are respectful and honest with one another. We are also sometimes uncomfortable. Discussions that we’ve had over approaches to mentoring, reviewing blogs, writing blogs, welcoming new board members, and social media usage are the kinds of conflicts that, as West writes, “fuel more disruption of our tolerance for the continual reiteration of those familiar, lived patterns” of white, Christian supremacy ($$). Although this work is not easy, we are able to return again and again because we make space for regeneration and support. [End Page 82] Michal Raucher Michal Raucher is assistant professor of Jewish studies at Rutgers University. Her research lies at the intersection of the anthropology of women in Judaism, reproductive ethics, and religious authority. Raucher’s first book, an ethnography of Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jewish women’s reproductive ethics, titled Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority among Haredi Women was published in 2020. Raucher is currently conducting ethnographic research on the ordination of women in Orthodox Judaism in Israel and America. michal. raucher@rutgers.edu Sharon Jacob Sharon Jacob is associate professor of New Testament at Pacific School of Religion. Jacob earned her master of divinity from Lancaster Theological Seminary and master of sacred theology from Yale University. She earned her PhD from Drew University. Her research interests include gender and sexuality studies, feminist theory, race and whiteness theory, and postcolonial theory. Her publications include a monograph entitled Reading Mary alongside Indian Surrogate Mothers: Violent Love, Oppressive Liberation, and Infancy Narratives (2014). Jacob is also a regular contributor to the Electronic Feminist Studies of Religion where she has written several blogs on various topics. sjacob@psr.edu Jennifer Maidrand Jennifer Maidrand is a PhD candidate at Drew University in the Bible and Cultures program. Her research interests include the Hebrew Bible, ecological hermeneutics and theology, womanist and feminist hermeneutics, and geopolitics of Israel/Palestine. Maidrand serves as the web director and blog submissions editor for...