Revisiting Gender and Religion

Abstract

In this presidential address delivered at the 2014 annual meeting of the Religious Research Association, the topic of religion and gender is revisited by focusing on parallel histories of American Protestant ordained clergywomen and social science scholarship on religion, noting that in both cases we have witnessed extraordinary change, but not transformation.

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“…Lived religion, in our circles undertaken by J. Dubler (). David Hall (), Meredith McGuire (), Mary Jo Neitz (), Nancy Ammerman (, ), Joy Charlton (), Janet Jacobs (), and Marion Goldman () to name a few, makes a similar point but with respect to the spiritual connection. In the same way, I came to understand that the stories many religious women were telling me set them apart from other women in ways that were not always easy to identify or understand.…”

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“…Since then, gender has become an established subfield and some feminist insights have been so well integrated that their origins have been obscured (Ferree, Khan, and Morimoto 2007;Rosenberg and howard 2008). Yet, feminism remains an outsider critique that has not transformed sociology (Acker 2006;Ferree, Khan, and Morimoto 2007;Lorber 2006;Ray 2006;Rosenberg and howard 2008;Rupp 2006;Stacey and Thorne 1985;Williams 2006;Wills and Risman 2006), a concern echoed by feminist sociologists of religion (Charlton 2015;Nason-Clark and Neitz 2000;Neitz 2003;Wallace 1989Wallace , 1997.…”

“…Early missing feminist revolution scholarship noted the exclusion of women scholars, those who study gender, and feminists in academic settings such as PhD programs, faculty positions, professional societies, conferences, and publications (Neal 1975; Thorne and Laslett 1997), but such explicit exclusions have diminished (Charlton 2015). Our analysis of trends in the topics and conceptual approaches to gender in religion and gender scholarship over the past 32 years reveals a complicated picture of the inroads feminist thought has made and its remaining intellectual work: a dynamic process of integration and marginalization.…”

“…Feminist sociologists of religion publishing during this time report feeling that their scholarship was marginalized within the subfield (Davidman and Jacobs 1993; Nason-Clark and Neitz 2000; 2000 SOR special issue on feminist narratives). With the decline of reflexive writing, we have less insight into more recent experiences, though some feminist scholars continue to report marginalization (Charlton 2015; Neitz 2014). We partially attribute this continued sense of marginalization to insularity of distinct bodies of scholars, scholarship, and conversations, a process we call bifurcated knowledge .…”

“…Although publication of gender and feminist scholarship in the sociology of religion has expanded, feminist sociologists of religion maintain that feminist insights and gender scholarship remain marginal in the subdiscipline (Charlton 2015; Nason-Clark and Fischer-Townsend 2007; Nason-Clark and Neitz 2000; Neitz 2003). Theorizing about such phenomena, Stacey and Thorne (1985) identified the missing feminist revolution claiming that while some feminist insights have been incorporated, sociology’s intellectual frameworks have not been transformed.…”