Liberal Secularism Research Articles

Digital Feminism, Public Theology, and the Reshaping of Female Subjectivity in Ghana

Abstract Taking the online feminist group Pepper Dem Ministries as a case study, this article assesses how a public theological approach to gender activism underlies public gender discourses by allowing online feminism to attain global-local and post-colonial dimensions. This is explored through a rhetorical analysis of Pepper Dem Ministries’ online and offline discourses, and the response of young Christian women to their activism. These responses are obtained from semi-structured interviews conducted via zoom calls. The discourse of identity fragmentation in modernity frames the analysis of this data, revealing the coherence of Pepper Dem Ministries’ rhetoric with fragmentary or unsystematic theology as a mode of public theological engagement. The article concludes that the social shaping of female subjectivity in Ghana transpires as a public theological discourse influenced by and coherent with global discursive patterns in online feminism, Christian and secular feminist discourse, and public theology.

Negotiating Islam and feminism: the political and social participation of Muslim women in Barcelona

ABSTRACT In secular contexts, the growing presence of Muslim women activists in the public sphere has challenged the stereotype that Islam plays an oppressive role in women’s emancipation and liberation. The relationship between secular feminism and religion is far more complex. This article explores how socially or politically engaged Muslim women understand, negotiate, and challenge secular feminist discourses and practices in Barcelona, Spain. Based upon 28 semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, and participant observation of political events, this article identifies three different positionings towards feminism: (1) women who identify as ‘feminist’, (2) women who identify as ‘Islamic feminist’, (3) women who express ambivalence regarding both feminism and Islamic feminism. Far from being a static classification, these three positionings show the different dilemmas that women face over the course of their lives. I discuss the way they are the result of negotiations and ‘recognition gaps’ in feminist movements.

From Text to Meaning: Unpacking the Semiotics of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights

Through an analysis of the European Court of Human Rights’ decisions concerning the practice of veiling, this article problematises the semiotics-architectural structure of article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights (Freedom of thought, conscience and religion), questioning which representation of the human and the female subject is recognised and therefore protected by secular/liberal and Human Rights law. It argues that the semiotics-architectural structure of article 9, which is based on the distinction between faith and its manifestation, not only relies on a particular ontological understanding of the religious subject as well as a specific notion of religion, but it also reveals a distinct relationship between the individual and sovereign power through the division between the public and the private spheres. In light of this, the western debate surrounding the women’s veiling overlooks how liberal secularism perceives and defines the religious and legal gendered subject in the modern world, and how this understanding is embedded in and reproduced through the law, which emerges as an instrument for regulating minority religious communities.

Saying ‘No’ to Power: From Diasporic Knowledge to Reclaiming Ethical Monotheism

ABSTRACT In European philosophies of history, the linear paradigm that has prevailed for centuries as a derivative of Christian salvation history (Heilsgeschichte), ultimately lost its monopoly with the arrival of the “post-age.” The result of this has been that ideas that have survived on the margins, even the cyclical interpretation of time attached to religious traditions, now seem capable of outliving the short-lived belief in continuous progress. According to the cyclical view of history, those who came last will leave first, with those who came first leaving as the last adherents of the driving force of Western rationalization. Thus, within a century, beginning with World War 2, a major turning point has been crossed: Socialism was the first to disappear, and it looks like Secular Liberalism will be the next; then Protestantism, followed by Islam, and so forth. As seductive as these images may appear, they only mirror an auto-destructive thread at the very center of Europe’s troubled Geist. But can anything be done to save the most important European values, and specifically, the ethical drive to say “no” to power, which is perhaps the most important legacy of monotheism? Either as a self-limitation from within powerful institutions or as a mode of resistance on the margins of powerful developments—there is a strong adherence to the good (often named God) that helps people and communities survive their diasporic state. I will present this kernel of ethical monotheism by two relatively unknown twentieth-century examples of “diasporic knowledge”: Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), in which she recorded her observations of the devastating effects of empires on Yugoslavia, and two poems by Rosario Castellanos, who decades before the debate on postcolonialism voiced the concerns of displaced indigenous cultures in her Mexican homeland. I suggest that, paradoxically, attention to diasporic voices is one way of realizing the spirit of European self-limitation that is so much needed today to prevent further damage to our societies and environment wrought by the excessive drive for progress fostered by an unethical monorationalism.

Christian vs liberal conceptions of human rights

The Catholic Church has traditionally raised four objections to the doctrine of human rights in its liberal version: the lack of reference to God as the source of human rights, individualism, the absence of a list of human duties accompanying individual rights, and the doctrine’s vulnerability to proliferation and creative interpretation of those rights. The paper mainly focuses on the first two concerns. From the point of view of secular liberalism, the idea of God appears as an unnecessary by-product of the process of human evolution. From the point of view of Christianity, creation in the image and likeness of God is the source of man’s inalienable dignity, and serves, at the same time, to safeguard his rights from reinterpretation by the state, should the state consider itself the source of such rights. Christianity presents man as an inherently social being, with two communities, i.e., the family and the nation, that are recognized as natural. Liberal individualism views people as a collection of elementary particles that collide with one another but never connect. The difference is fundamental when it comes to attitudes towards obligations prior to individual decisions, but also when it comes to a person’s emotional backing. The human being, therefore, seeks to create either family-type ties, or merely ones based on a voluntary contract. It is a paradox that the more atomized a society is, the more necessary a strong state becomes to guarantee individual rights and a sense of security in times of crisis. As a result, a system called statist individualism comes to existence. Religion not only reveals the ultimate meaning of human life and the reasons for which it is worthwhile to be human, but it has also been a source of public morality. The liberal concept of neutrality and the privatization of religion reopen the question of the axiological foundations of the state. On the one hand, why, in the end, should people obey state laws when the state itself convinces them that they are morally neutral? On the other hand, this raises the question of the preferred model of education. From the point of view of the state and society, can a culturally and axiologically neutral education, in which children are taught about what is allowed and what is forbidden by law, but not about what is morally right and wrong, be sufficient? One answer suggests that a liberal state conceived in this way is unstable, and able to exist only for a while. The alternative would be a liberal state that is imperfect, culturally charged, and open to the presence of the Church as a public and publicly meaningful authority.
 Benedict XVI, in a discussion on Marcello Pera’s interpretation of the doctrine on human rights, says: “It was only thanks to your book that it became clear to me how much the encyclical Pacem in terris had set a new direction in thinking. I was aware of the strong influence of the encyclical on Italian politics: it gave a decisive impulse to the opening of Christian Democracy to leftist views. However, I did not realize to what great an extent it signified a new premise also to the basis of the party's thinking”. Pera himself believes that the Church, by making the doctrine of human rights part of the Church Magisterium, proclaimed “by virtue of the Gospel committed to her” (Gaudium et spes, 41) has fallen into a “liberal trap”.

Cyberfeminism in Iran

Modern Iranian women face completely new challenges in the "Information Age" (Castells). The growing development of information technologies has opened up a wide area for female activists both internationally and regionally. This is the era where they can create a completely new identity through the influence of modern technology with the synthesis of tradition and modernity as a mean of struggle against religious dogmas and defending women’s rights. The nascent stages of Iranian Cyberfeminism are traceable to the early 2000s, with the inception of women-oriented websites such as "Zanan-e Iran" in 2000 and the establishment of the first feminist website, "Trubun-e Zanan," in 2002 under the auspices of the Women Cultural Centre. In the history of Iranian cyberfeminism, the most flexible and relaxed period coincides with the presidency of the relatively liberal Hassan Rouhani. However, questions persisted regarding the mobilization and unification of masses online in a country where the Internet and social networks faced periodic, varying levels of censorship to mitigate perceived Western influences. The events surrounding the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 altered the Iranian socio-political landscape, catalyzing large-scale protests and prompting a reevaluation of cyberfeminist efficacy in the physical realm. The mass protests of 2022-23 significantly reduced internet censorship in Iran, challenging the conventional notion of cyberfeminism. But as Mehrangiz Kar, the human rights defender and activist, says: “Iran is a paradoxical country. It creates roles under the veil of dictatorship and then suddenly appears on a big stage.” To conclude, Iran stands out in the Middle East with a rich history of women's movements that have evolved authentically from secular feminism to Islamic feminism and, more recently, cyberfeminism. The Iranian interpretation of cyberfeminism deviates from Western norms, representing a symbolic demand for freedom from compulsory hijab and an assertion of women's equality under Islamic dictatorial rule. The future trajectory of cyberfeminism in Iran and its potential impact remain contingent upon ongoing developments and the dynamic socio-political landscape.

Knowledge Production in the Balkans

AbstractUntil the 1990s, secular feminism prevailed in the socialist Balkan countries, while religious feminism appeared only as an exception in the works of certain Catholic theologians. After democratic changes, gender equality was reaffirmed, but there was no dialogue in feminist knowledge production between secular and religious feminists. This paper presents initiatives by religious scholars and activists aimed at overcoming the secular‐religious divide in achieving gender equality. It looks at two key regional initiatives: Believers and Citizens, and the Feminism and Religion online school. These initiatives established collaborations between feminist scholars from various academic disciplines, religions, and worldviews and connected activists from civil society organizations and religious communities. The interreligious and interdisciplinary nature of these initiatives is unique not only in the Balkan region but also in the world.

Beyond towards The Stranger

This article discusses the relevance of the Baumanian-Levinasian notion of religion within a concrete analysis of refugee reception. As various classical approaches and definitions of religion have described it as a social phenomenon of grouping or an ideological tool for maintaining social order, it is necessary to provide a relevant approach to discussing religion as an ethical drive to build social inclusion through transmigration. The previous 2015 Western Europe immigration crisis due to the Syrian civil war has invited xenophobic responses towards immigrants, inevitably resulting in the socio-political impact of Brexit in 2020. Demonstrations of refugee resettlement driven by religious causes have provided a practical and ethical critique of secular liberalism. Furthermore, this article also reflects on the church's role as a refuge for refugees and marginalised groups in Indonesia. In conclusion, the Baumanian-Levinasian thought on religion and ethics remains relevant to both Western and Indonesian contexts in fostering inclusion, particularly during political turmoil.

Feminism in the Middle East: An analysis into Western, Islamic, and Secular Feminism

This article showcases the diversity of feminism in the Middle East and its effects on Middle Eastern women, particularly Muslim women. I argue that though Western feminism has provided important conceptual tools for understanding and fighting patriarchal systems, it has ultimately supported the othering of Middle Eastern women. As such, Islamic feminism and secular feminism have played an important role in discrediting Western generalizations. In this paper, I first explain how the logic of Western feminism is inherently rooted in Orientalism, promoting an inaccurate and oppressive image of the Middle East. I then illustrate how Islamic feminism has been used significantly to conceptualize feminism within Islamic traditions and religious beliefs. Lastly, I showcase the prominent discourse between Islamic and secular feminism to prove movements are important to women’s liberation and can benefit from joining forces.

“Gender Justice” versus “Gender Equality”

Abstract Much of the literature on women’s-rights activism in the Muslim world presents such activism as employing discourses either of egalitarianism (secular) or of complementarianism (religious). This article analyzes the recent framing of demands for women’s right to political office by elite Islamic women in Iran and Turkey in terms outside this dichotomy. Drawing on data gathered from personal interviews as well as on careful study of public statements and publications by elite women, or those backed by state institutions, this article demonstrates the inadequacy of understanding women’s activism in Muslim contexts as employing either an egalitarian or a complementarian approach by highlighting a more nuanced conceptualization of women’s-rights framing and organizing in accordance with shifting contexts and political ideologies. Specifically, it shows how Islamic women’s-rights activists who are closely affiliated with their governments at times strategically adopt a “gender justice” framing, as opposed to “gender equality,” to appeal to more conservative sectors of their society. This strategy can have important policy implications and lead to shifts in political discourse about women and politics. However, elite women’s backing from and affiliation with conservative ruling elites can lead some groups, particularly secular feminists, to perceive their use of gender justice discourse differently and to be dismissive of their efforts.

Constructing a Vishwaguru (world teacher): Hindu nationalism, populism and the domestic consumption of Narendra Modi’s global image

Narendra Modi is a prime example of a right-wing nationalist populist, in his case, trying to create a new India that rejects India’s traditional secular liberalism in favour of a Hindu state. Modi has gained a reputation amongst his supporters as a visionary who is improving India’s standing on the world stage as a great power and making a revolutionary change in India. But Modi has come under increasing international concern and condemnation for his majoritarian nationalist authoritarianism, which has seen India slide on many democracy indicators, a reality which his supporters reject. We argue, thus, that there is a fundamental discrepancy between the image of the Modi regime abroad and at home, that has gone unexplored in scholarship. We also contend that this discrepancy is implicated in post-truth politics. Modi’s populist project is one of asserting a true Hindu Indian identity, the global criticisms of which, under conditions of post-truth, are either irrelevant or, ironically, contribute to its strength.

Muslim American Protest Iconography and Revisionism: On the Gendered-Racial and Secular Aesthetics of (Neo)Liberal Dissent

In this essay, I account for the continuum of inclusion, regulation, and historical revision formative to "Muslim American" iconography in the late war on terror era. In 2017, a poster of a South Asian Muslim American woman wearing a hijab in the style of the United States flag was touted by transnational media as "the face of the Trump resistance" and carried across pro-immigration and feminist protests that imagined a more inclusive state. It was also rebuked by Muslims for desanctifying the hijab through the US flag, perceived as symbol of the state's settler-imperial violence. Tracing the poster's production—from its source artwork to its distinct revisions—and mass circulations, I consider the intersections of race, gender, and secularism in US politics, markets, and aesthetics. I situate the poster within uneven neoliberal art markets that commodify dissent as well as flexible genealogies of secular arts and civil religion, which racially discipline Islam into an aesthetic of the US state and its resistances. I then focus on the poster's mobilization in the Women's March on Washington, where Muslim women, Islam, and transnational solidarities with Palestine became subjects of feminist inclusion and contention. I argue the shifting aesthetics of gendered-racial and secular (neo)liberalism converge on Muslim American iconographies of protest and inclusion while managing the terms of Muslim protest and inclusion.

Editor's Note

Editor's Note Mari Yoshihara This issue opens with Shana L. Redmond's presidential address delivered at the 2022 ASA annual meeting held November 3–6, 2022, in New Orleans, the first in-person conference in three years. The devastating deaths, violence, pain, mourning, policing, and confinement that filled the world during the intervening years only highlighted what Blacks have lived through for centuries. Redmond's powerful, beautiful, and heart-wrenching address, "The Dark Prelude," frees from capture the Black lives that were arrested, suspended, or terminated with a "routine" traffic stop by the police—Sundiata Acoli, Zayd Malik Shakur, and Assata Shakur on May 2, 1973; and Sandra Bland on July 10, 2015—by listening, accompanying, amplifying, and conversing with the sonic everyday of Black living. By turning our ears, eyes, hearts, and brains to the life before terror, Redmond urges us to imagine otherwise and be better. Kimberly Juanita Brown re-creates and joins the Black chorus Redmond called forth by pointing to the inquiry, immersion, politics, and prose of Black study and tracing Blackness that upends temporality. Erica R. Edwards responds to Redmond's invocation of "thick emotion" and "thick camaraderie" of Black study by beholding and listening to the Black anterior that lies in advance of and surrounds Black death and taking the reader through Redmond's act of indictment, not of the state of the field but of the world and our hearts. "Abolitionist Worldmaking" is a forum on Ruth Wilson Gilmore's muchanticipated collection of essays, Abolition Geography, published in 2022. In his introduction, convener Alyosha Goldstein situates Gilmore's decades-long contributions to the prison abolition movement in the history of abolitionism and elucidates the mode of critique that abolition requires. Alisa Bierria, Lisa Lowe, Sarah Haley, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Angela Y. Davis each reflect on the significance of the collection from a variety of perspectives, ranging from everyday movement building to the historical conditions of possibility for worldmaking as well as Gilmore's theoretical and methodological contributions. The first two essays examine settler cosmology, knowledge, and relationship to Indigenous lands and the environment. Nadia Chana's "On Eating, Critical Distance, and Qallunaat Cosmology" critically reads filmic texts that are purportedly about the Inuit and the hunting and eating of seals, showing that the tensions between eating and critical distance indeed illustrate Qallunaat (non-Inuit) cosmology. In "A Forest of Energy: Settler Colonialism, Knowledge Production, and Sugar Maple Kinship in the Menominee Community," [End Page v] the study of the impact of settler colonialism on Menominee land and their understanding of "energy," Gregory Hitch and Marcus Grignon show that the Menominee consistently adapted and resisted colonization by utilizing their ancestral knowledge systems and interspecies ethical frameworks while also appropriating dominant science and technology for their goals. The next two essays bring contrasting approaches to the racial meanings of iconography. Sharron Conrad's "More Upset Than Most: Measuring and Understanding African American Responses to the Kennedy Assassination" uses a public opinion poll conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center that illuminated African Americans' deep veneration and mourning for the slain President John F. Kennedy. Through the analysis of the poll and Black families' practice of hanging his portrait alongside images of Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King Jr., Conrad challenges scholarly assessments of Kennedy's civil rights accomplishments. In "Muslim American Protest Iconography and Revisionism: On the Gendered-Racial and Secular Aesthetics of (Neo)Liberal Dissent," Najwa Mayer traces the production and mass circulation of a poster of a South Asian Muslim American woman clad in hijab in the style of the United States flag and argues that the aesthetics of racial and secular liberalism converge on gendered Muslim American iconographies while managing the terms of Muslim protest and inclusion. Finally, in "Un/Blocked: Writing, Race, and Gender in the American Academy," Naomi Greyser offers an innovative look at the American academy. Focusing on the felt impacts of institutional oppression on writing and learning, Greyser reframes writer's block less as a psychological syndrome than as a symptom of nationalist investment in academic writing as a means of managing knowledge, labor, and subject formation. In Book Reviews, Kristin...

Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Global Scope in Interfaith Reconciliation

Rosemary Radford Ruether’s life work demonstrates in books, conferences, and courses her commitment to facilitating dialogue to advance the well-being of women, not as a secular feminist, but as a feminist theologian providing self-critical attention within the Christian community. Her work is an exemplar of redemptive recovery from harmful thinking and the concrete contexts where harmful thinking becomes systematized and institutionalized. Drawing primarily from her Buddhist-Christian dialogues with Rita Gross, this essay provides a series of vignettes to demonstrate Ruetherian methods for self-critical Christian participation in pluralistic encounter.

Between Anti-Islamic Sentiment and Liberal Secularism: Muslim Organizations and the EU

Between Anti-Islamic Sentiment and Liberal Secularism: Muslim Organizations and the EU

Review: Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers, by Charles McCrary

Review: <i>Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers</i>, by Charles McCrary

Defenders of the Faith? How shifting social cleavages and the rise of identity politics are reshaping right-wing populists’ attitudes towards religion in the West

ABSTRACT From the display of oversized crosses at the United States Capitol riots, to a new rhetoric centred on defence of the ‘Judaeo-Christian West’ in Europe: right-wing populist movements on both sides of the Atlantic are intensifying their use of Christian symbols and language. Many observers have interpreted such rhetoric as symptomatic of a conservative religious resurgence against secular liberalism and multiculturalism. However, several indicators suggest a more complicated relationship between the populist Right, religion, and secularisation. For instance, in the United States Donald Trump was perceived to be the least religious Republican party candidate in recent history, while in Europe church attendance remains a strong predictor for not voting for right-wing populist parties. Deploying a demand- and supply-side framework to understand the socio-demographic roots behind the rise of right-wing populist movements and the motives behind their references to Christianity, this contribution posits that right-wing populists primarily employ Christianity as a cultural identity marker to mobilise voters around a new post-religious identity cleavage. However, they often remain distanced from Christian doctrine, beliefs, and institutions, and instead seek to combine cultural references to Christianity with secular policies, suggesting a secularisation of Christian symbols rather than a resurgence of religion in western politics.

The question of collaboration between secular feminists and pious feminists in Turkey

AbstractThis paper examines two seemingly opposing trends in the women's rights movement in Turkey: the first trend indicates growing numbers of feminist collaborations and alliances while the second highlights heightened levels of identity‐ridden dissent and polarization. By focusing on the relationship between self‐identified “pious feminists” and “secular feminists” in Turkey this paper argues that, rather than opposing ends of a continuum, these two trends are in a relational flow. Based on a rich ethnographic study and discourse analysis, I analyze secular feminist and pious feminist perceptions of a possible long‐term collaboration between the two groups as equal partners and by mutual consent. I delineate the relational and affective dimensions of collaborations that may initiate as well as hinder new solidarities based on difference. I argue that the shared civil society encounters between secular and pious women's rights groups in Turkey present opportunities for “feminist iterations” that are contingent, performative, and opaque which require what Lugones calls “complex communication” in addition to the deliberative dialogue.

The Laywoman Project: Remaking Catholic Womanhood in the Vatican II Era by Mary J. Henold

Reviewed by: The Laywoman Project: Remaking Catholic Womanhood in the Vatican II Era by Mary J. Henold Theresa Keeley Mary J. Henold, The Laywoman Project: Remaking Catholic Womanhood in the Vatican II Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020) Vatican II—the worldwide conference of Catholic bishops from 1962 to 1965—presented Catholic women with a contradiction. The council expanded laypeople's role in the church, but it did so without altering ideas "that women's nature was basically fixed and subordinate" (3). The question then became: What does it mean to be a Catholic woman? Mary J. Henold argues that, initially, there was no single answer or "collective consciousness" among women (8). Instead, nonfeminist women developed different understandings of this tension over time. To track this process—what Henold terms the "laywoman project"—she analyzes letters to the editor, organizational publications, conference addresses, and private memos and papers from four Catholic laywomen's organizations and the magazine Marriage. The women Henold studies were mainly white, middle-class, and middle-aged. Overall, they were more representative of Catholic women, as feminists were a minority. Henold first focuses on the Theresians of America, which became "an explicitly feminist organization" (15), although its path was circuitous. A priest first founded the group to encourage women to enter religious life. The number of women becoming sisters was not keeping pace with Catholics' baby boom, prompting parochial schools to hire lay teachers and pay them higher wages [End Page 113] than sisters. In response, Catholic periodicals spoke of a vocational crisis and blamed mothers for supposedly discouraging their daughters from becoming nuns. Initially, the Theresians saw themselves as praying and suffering for others, especially women religious whom they regarded as their superiors. In 1969, however, the board rejected the organization's founding purpose and recognized laywomen's vocation as just as valuable as that of women religious. Theresians' prayer also shifted to focus more on themselves and their fellow members, a display of female empowerment of sorts. This move grew from laywomen's consideration of their relationship to women religious, not women's status vis-à-vis men or women's overall place within church structures. Instead of unequivocal change, the National Council of Catholic Women (NCCW) adopted a position that was less conclusive. US bishops established the NCCW, which became "an umbrella organization for thousands of parish- and diocesan-based women's groups as well as many national laywomen's organizations, and claimed to represent all laywomen in the United States" (73). The NCCW initially welcomed Vatican II and eagerly educated its members about it. The organization reconsidered "women's nature," encouraged women to take on greater responsibility in the church, and rethought clergy's authority. This approach mirrored the way secular feminists were questioning society at the time. The NCCW, however, distanced itself from the radical feminist movement that emerged in 1968. At the same time, the NCCW exhibited "a mild, but still recognizable form of feminism" in its organizational publications and conferences (84). By the early 1970s, support for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and abortion rights were considered the litmus test of a true feminist. The NCCW officially condemned the ERA, leading outsiders to label it antifeminist. But the story was more complicated. Opposing the ERA was not an organizational priority. There were internal divides within the NCCW, and most significantly, the NCCW promoted "justice for women while rejecting organized feminism" (89). In this way, the NCCW exhibited what Henold terms "nonfeminist feminism," a provocative and useful way to emphasize how the NCCW did not align with the feminist movement but still advocated for women (15). Change characterized Marriage, the monthly magazine of the Benedictines of St. Meinrad Abbey. Marriage addressed topics such as "intimate areas of home, spousal relationships, work, and bedroom," which Catholic women's organizations, such as the Theresians and the NCCW, did not typically discuss, and which self-identified feminists regarded as settled (107). Although men created and ran the magazine, the periodical provided space for women as authors of articles and, especially, of letters to the editor. Over time, Marriage shifted its view of women's role in married life. Its pages moved from...

World Religions and the College Girl: Secularism and New Womanhood in Elizabeth W. Champney's Three Vassar Girls Series

ABSTRACT: This essay explores the intersections of religion, secularism, and feminism in the popular Three Vassar Girls series, written by Elizabeth W. Champney between 1882 and 1892. I argue that these novels illuminate the manner in which secular New Womanhood was configured in the context of the emerging science of world religions. That Champney's Vassar Girls participate in the construction of this world religions discourse is, in itself, notable, but more significant is the manner in which their comparative religious study is tied to their feminism. For the Vassar Girls, examining others' religious beliefs and practices ultimately confirms the universality of the liberal Protestant Christianity to which they subscribe. The women's Protestant spirituality—personal, transcendent, concerned with essences not things—informs and warrants their emancipation as women; through religious experience, the women feel called to lives of service, professional achievement, and independence. Their emancipation in turn serves to validate their belief in their own nondoctrinal Protestantism as the single universal, world religion. The Three Vassar Girls series allows us to see one way in which secular feminism was configured at the close of the nineteenth century, through an emerging world religions discourse that celebrated pluralism while presuming liberal Protestant spirituality. This essay aims to recover the work of a neglected, prolific writer of adolescent literature and to bridge important conversations taking place in Religious Studies and U.S. Literary Studies regarding secularism, the origins of Religious Studies, and women writer's engagement with religion.