Women, Gender, Religion: Troubling Categories and Transforming Knowledge

Castelli, Elizabeth A.

doi:10.1007/978-1-137-04830-1_1

Cited by 42 publications

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“…As an area of scholarship concerned with examining the gendered exercise of power across public and private domains, much remains to be interrogated within all major religions wherein: "men hold "most or all of the roles of authority and prestige' and "from these positions … control and dictate the norms of the [religion] for all women" (Gross 1996: 106). On another level, the silence on religion confirms the observations (Castelli 2001;Beattie 2005; and others) that most such scholarship retains an unexamined Enlightenment view of religion-as the antithesis of rationality and freedom. The persistence of this view of religion in feminist political theory, however, is at odds with quite basic feminist critiques of the public-private divide, which now underpin the most moderate liberal feminist agendas (evidenced, e.g., by the focus on remedying domestic violence or securing "family-friendly" conditions of work).…”

Section: Feminism Religion and Democracy On The Critical Edges Of Esupporting

confidence: 62%

Secularism, Feminism, and the Public Sphere

Reilly

2017

Oxford Handbooks Online

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In the early twenty-first century, religion resurfaced as a highly visible aspect of political and public life in all parts of the world. This has provoked renewed debate about the role of religion in late modernity. The widely held conception of secularism as a core tenet of a liberal, modernizing paradigm is now in question. That is, the phenomena of the separation of church and state, the progressive "secularization" of modern societies and relegation of religious practice to private domains, and the growing acceptance of gender equality are no longer presumed to be inevitable and interrelated. Most graphically, the events of 9/11 (11 September 2001) and the ensuing "War on Terror" have put religion at the center of global politics, albeit very narrowly as a problem of combating "radical Islam."In the context of Europe, globalization, immigration, and European Union enlargement have fostered the re-emergence of religious identities and actorsacross all faiths-as significant social, cultural, and political forces in public and private life in an increasingly multicultural Europe. These events underline the need to critically examine established ways of thinking about religion, secularism and the public sphere, and in particular, the status of women and the role of feminism in this nexus. Four sets of developments shape the parameters of this enquiry. These are: the dominance of the "clash of civilizations thesis" in everyday and academic discourses; the continued emergence of politicized, autocratic, and violent movements in the name of religion; the ongoing scrutiny of the empirical and philosophical basis of the "secularization thesis"; and new critiques of the religioussecular binary from progressive perspectives, both nonreligious and religious, as well as from expected traditionalist or conservative standpoints.The rest of this chapter is divided into four sections. The first outlines the four sets of developments just noted that shape contemporary debates about religion and secularism in public and political life and the role of women and feminism therein. The second section considers, from a gender perspective, debates in normative political theory about religion, secularism, and the Habermasian public sphere. The third section continues to explore these themes as they are dealt with in feminist scholarship on the critical edges of Enlightenment thinking. Finally, the conclusion considers what is involved in rethinking secularism as a feminist political principle in a context of globalization and in contemporary multicultural societies.reinforce the cultural essentialist notion of a "clash of civilizations," that is, the idea that there are irreconcilable differences between a supposedly rational and free West and an irrational and oppressive Islam. This is marked by the conflation of Islam with the threat of terrorism. Moreover, in Western liberal democracies, the violence of 9/11 has been filtered through a lens of anxiety in relation to the increasingly visible multicultural composition of societies. ...

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Section: Feminism Religion and Democracy On The Critical Edges Of Esupporting

confidence: 62%

Secularism, Feminism, and the Public Sphere

Reilly

2017

Oxford Handbooks Online

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“…This negative rendering of ‘religion’ is in many respects an ironic holdover from Feminism's own Enlightenment inheritance. (Castelli, 2001: 5)…”

Section: Feminist Critiques Of the Ecrmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conflicts between the claims of women's equality and the claims of religion are well-documented vis-à-vis all major religions and across all regions (Sharma, 1987; Plaskow and Christ, 1989; Castelli, 2001; King and Beattie, 2005). Most recently, in Europe, enlargement and immigration have led to increased awareness of religious diversity and a moral panic about the presence of Islam in Europe.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the Interplay of Feminism and Secularism in a Neo-Secular Age

Reilly¹

2011

Feminist Review

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The need to re-examine established ways of thinking about secularism and its relationship to feminism has arisen in the context of the confluence of a number of developments including: the increasing dominance of the 'clash of civilizations' thesis; the expansion of postmodern critiques of Enlightenment rationality to encompass questions of religion; and sustained critiques of the 'secularization thesis'. Conflicts between the claims of women's equality and the claims of religion are welldocumented vis-à-vis all major religions and across all regions. The ongoing moral panic about the presence of Islam in Europe, marked by a preoccupation with policing Muslim women's dress, reminds us of the centrality of women and gender power relations in the interrelation of religion, culture and the state. Added to postmodern and other critiques of the secular-religious binary, most sociological research now contradicts the equation of modernization with secularization. This article focuses on the challenges that these developments pose to politically oriented feminist thinking and practice. It argues that non-oppressive feminist responses require a new critical engagement with secularism as a normative principle in democratic, multicultural societies. To inform this process, the author maps and links discussions across different fields of feminist scholarship, in the sociology of religion and in political theory. She organizes the main philosophical traditions and fault lines that form the intellectual terrain at the intersection of feminism, religion and politics in two broad groups: feminist critiques of the Enlightenment critique of religion; and feminist scholarship at the critical edges of the Enlightenment tradition. The author argues that notwithstanding the fragmented nature of feminist debates in this area, common ground is emerging across different politically oriented approaches: all emphasize 'democracy' and the values that underpin it as the larger discursive frame in which the principle of secularism can be redefined with emancipatory intent in a neosecular age.

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“…According to Castelli (2001), the issue of power is an imminent principle in the intersection of gender and religion and profoundly landscape for scholar who examines religious discourses and practices. Resnick Dufour (2000) suggests to classify Jewish feminists’ identities into three particular categories (inclusionist, transformationist, and reinterpretationist).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performing Gender and Political Recognition: Israeli Reform Jewish Life-cycle Rituals

Ben-Lulu

2020

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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Anthropologists see life-cycle rituals as a significant way to understand gender roles and identities in religious communities. While in the past, these compulsory rituals involved a significant change in a person’s social status, today many of their traditional features have been transformed. This ethnographic inquiry examines Bat Mitzvah ceremonies (coming of age rituals for girls) in Israeli Reform Jewish congregations. By including new blessings, appropriating masculine religious symbols, and creating new bodily gestures, the feminine life-cycle ritual challenges the traditional Jewish laws and contemporary socio-cultural constructions of the Israeli Jewish community. The exclusion of the Israeli Reform community from mainstream Jewish religion turns this ritual into a subversive act that battles local Jewish Orthodoxy authority. The ceremony is a political performance, which positions the Reform congregations as an activist religious agent for gender equality in the Israeli public space.

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Women, Gender, Religion: Troubling Categories and Transforming Knowledge

Cited by 42 publications

References 0 publications

Secularism, Feminism, and the Public Sphere

Secularism, Feminism, and the Public Sphere

Rethinking the Interplay of Feminism and Secularism in a Neo-Secular Age

Performing Gender and Political Recognition: Israeli Reform Jewish Life-cycle Rituals

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