Feminist Philosophy Of Religion

After addressing the evolution of my standpoint as a women's spirituality scholar, I discuss Women's Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Then I propose that an embodied women's spirituality practice can to some extent the divide between science and religion; and that a nature-embedded women's spirituality practice and serve to resolve some of the conflict between anti-essentialist and essentialist women's spirituality scholars.

In this article, I engage with academically acclaimed writing of Luce Irigaray and non-academic but also widely-acclaimed writing of Clarissa Pinkola Estés. I speak of the Virgin Mary in non-Christian terms as of the Goddess who can be the source of the divine power and strength, and explore a few ideas of the two authors on a woman's soul and breath, on being virgin and connecting to the divine.

Disclaimer: I am neither affiliated with nor has cultural exposure to Tenrikyo beyond some casual run-ins with their missionaries while in Japan.  Everything I know about Tenrikyo is from what I read.  I'm not an expert on Tenrikyo.  Please do not ask me about it.

Tenrikyo, one of the oldest and most well-known of so-called “new religious movements” (NRMs) in Japan, emerged from a rural village of Nara, Japan, founded by a woman of an agricultural household, Nakayama Miki. With a peasant woman as the foundress and the chief medium of the God the Parent, and its doctrinal emphasis on social justice, it is tempting to make an assumption that Tenrikyo is not unlike some liberal Protestant churches in North America where feminist theology wields a significant influence and women are working in all levels of church leadership. As with Christianity, it is likely that a more patriarchal elements crept into Tenrikyo as it established itself as an officially recognized Sect Shinto denomination and surviving the trying periods of the early 20th century.

This chapter charts various ways that religious persons and groups can be perpetrators and victims of epistemic injustice. The practices of testifying and interpreting experiences take a range of distinctive forms in religious life, for instance, if the testimonial practices require a special sort of religious accomplishment, such as enlightenment, or if proper understanding of religious experiences is only available to those with authentic faith. But it is also clear that religious communities and traditions have been sources of epistemic injustice, for instance, by conjoining epistemic and spiritual credibility in ways disadvantageous to ‘deviant’ groups. I focus mainly on the major monotheistic religions, culturally dominant in the modern West.

A study of of medieval female-authored Buddhist texts from Pakistan comparing the differences between female-authored and male-authored religious biographies. The paper attempts to establish a gender theory and methodology for the study of female-authored religious works. It lays out an interpretive framework for subjectivity via the terms 'appropriation' and 'assertion' as two interrelated yet diametrically opposed elements in the performativity of the subject. It also discusses and criticizes Judith Butler's notion of gender performativity as being overly restrictive with its reference to the physical body, and instead argues for a gender concept that is truly performative, irrespective of bodily gender, by showing that the medieval female religious teacher Laksmi took on a gender role that was neither female nor male but which asserted itself in a third gender role, that of an asexual religious mode, a gender x.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) affirms the existence of a divine woman, a Heavenly Mother as a companion to a Heavenly Father. Feminist philosophers of religion have argued for the importance of a divine feminine as a challenge to patriarchal religion, yet the Heavenly Mother tradition has not created an egalitarian religion in Mormonism. Mormon feminists have charged that relative silence about this teaching is a primary cause of this discrepancy. This paper explores the performative dynamics of speech and silence and their relationship to presence and absence in a feminist analysis of power.

This essay examines how Tārā 'reclaims' the discourse of enlightenment for Buddhist women and feminist theologians. Despite universal concern for the liberation of all beings, Buddhahood in mainstream texts and narratives was confined to male deities and masters, or females that switched their genders in their final rebirth. Furthermore, Tārā's senior male bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara and Mañjuśrî, overwhelmingly monopolized compassion and wisdom as the latters' embodiments. This study proposes how Tārā's theology gradually came to distinguish her from her male colleagues and reclaim the state of Buddhahood. Tārā is an unequivocally female Buddha in Vajrayāna Buddhism because she has managed to assimilate these theological virtues that were essentially reserved as masculine, correcting them as genderless qualities without identity. Tārā's legitimization sets a concrete precedent for the title of 'Buddha' to be included amongst the categories of feminine faith and practice.

"* Preface *:

What makes laws endure or change? When a law changes, how does a tradition of legal interpretation justify the innovation in light of its legal precedents and foundational texts? What is the function of the reasons given for laws? What relationship does law bear to social values? These interrelated questions fall under the heading of philosophy of law, yet it is mainly through the study of history that they can be probed. Answering these questions in different cultural and historical settings is a prerequisite for developing a general theory of law, for it makes distinguishing universal elements from culturally-specific parameters possible. In particular, a culturally specific feature of Islamic law is its religious character. One may ask, therefore, whether the fact that Muslim legal traditions invoke sacred authority makes an essential difference to the way the questions posed above are answered. In other words, does sacred law operate in a fundamentally different way from secular law? This book explores these questions through a study of the largest legal tradition in Islam, namely the Hanafi school of law.

The book begins by creating a general model of juristic decision making that describes any legal tradition, Islamic or not, in terms of a number of parameters. It does not presuppose that all legal traditions are identical, for the parameters in the model may vary from one tradition to another.  [continued]"""""""

This paper argues that, although Margaret Cavendish's main philosophical contributions are not in philosophy of religion, she makes a case for a defense of God, in spite of the worst sorts of harms being present in the world. Her arguments about those harms actually presage those of contemporary feminist ethicists, which positions Cavendish's scholarship in a unique position: it makes a positive theodical contribution, by relying on evils that contemporary atheists think are the best evidence against the existence of God. To demonstrate that Cavendish's work should be considered as early modern feminist theodicy, this paper will briefly introduce the contemporary feminist worry about theodicy as a project, show that Cavendish shares the contemporary feminist view about situated evil, and argue that her theodicy aims for agreement about how to eradicate great moral evils while preserving free will—and so, carves out a space for future female philosophers of religion who aim to be agents of healing in the face of such evil.

This essay traces the notion of abstraction through the works of Gillian Howie as a means of thinking through the nature of critique within philosophy of religion. In particular, it argues that Howie’s recovery of a more productive conception of abstraction in her late Between Feminism and Materialism is closely linked to the resurgence of real abstraction in recent Marxist theory. From these shifts, one can derive both an enriched conception of religion as real abstraction and a method of critical history that offers a genuine alternative within the contemporary study of philosophy of religion.

The uploaded version is merely a preliminary draft; please follow the link for the published version: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11841-014-0411-7

Religious communities often discourage disagreement with religious authorities, on the grounds that allowing it would be epistemically detrimental. I argue that this attitude is mistaken, because any social position in a community -- including religious authority -- comes with epistemic advantages as well as epistemic limitations. I argue that religious communities stand to benefit epistemically by engaging in disagreement with people occupying other social positions. I focus on those at the community's margins, and argue that religious marginalization is apt to yield religiously important insights, so their disagreement with religious authorities should be encouraged.

The Objectification of Eve When God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him" (NIV, Genesis 2:18), it was almost certain that whatever the Creator intended was never well understood. The exegetical and hermeneutic interpretations that man has since engaged in to attempt to understand ancient scriptures remains elusive and dubious when juxtaposed with the various principles and values inherent in them. The positive views that medieval theologians and rabbis have interpreted from scripture are one sided and aggressively biased (Cornell; Kramer and Moore; McLaughlin; Nash; Polzer; Radford Ruether; Rosen-Zvi; de Beauvoir). Long before the rabbinical tradition of aggadic interpretations or Augustinian misogyny, a one dimensional and paternalistic view continues to permeate and exacerbate an unambiguous ideology against women. However, it was through religion that misogyny and objectification of women expanded into Western culture as classical and modern literature proves (Cornell; Kramer and Moore; McLaughlin; Nash; Polzer; Radford Ruether; Rosen-Zvi; de Beauvoir).

This chapter charts various ways that religious persons and groups can be perpetrators and victims of epistemic injustice. Religious persons and communities can commit, or can suffer, epistemic injustices. Miranda Fricker, for instances, mentions religion as a ‘dimension of social activity’ that prejudices could track but does not focus upon it (2007, 27). A religious identity can invite others’ prejudice and entail activities and experiences that others might find difficult to make sense of, while also shaping a person’s epistemic sensibilities. The practices of testifying to and interpreting experiences take a range of distinctive forms in religious life – for instance, if the testimonial practices require a special sort of religious accomplishment or if proper understanding of religious experiences is only available to those with authentic faith. But it is also clear that religious communities and traditions have been sources of epistemic injustice – for instance, by conjoining epistemic and spiritual credibility in ways disadvantageous to ‘deviant’ groups. I explore the ways that epistemic injustice and religion can interact and focus mainly in the major monotheistic religions that are culturally dominant in the modern West.

Šiame straipsnyje nagrin÷ju kelis lietuvių rašytojos Žemait÷s tekstus ir pateikiu pavyzdį kaip Žemait÷, galbūt nesąmoningai, tačiau užtikrintai, nukreip÷ savo kūrybiškumo projekciją į galingiausią moteriškosios dievyb÷s simbolį krikščionyb÷je -Mergelę Mariją. Straipsnyje teigiu, jog toks instinktyvus judesys Žemaitei buvo būtinas, kad jos dvasiniame simboliniame suvokime atsirastų aukščiausiais dieviškasis autoritetas ne vyro, bet jos pačios -moterslyties formoje, galintis atspind÷ti rašančią moterį. Kitaip tariant, Žemait÷ pademonstruoja, kaip moteriškasis dieviškasis autoritetas duoda leidimus moterims išreikšti savo pažiūras ir kūrybingumą griežtoje patriarchalin÷je aplinkoje, Žemait÷s atveju -rašyti. Taip pat straipsnyje ginčiju, kad Žemait÷ Mergel÷je Marijoje ne tik instinktyviai užčiuop÷ archetipinę moteriškosios galios versmę, bet taip pat ir jos šeš÷lį (negatyviąją pusę). Šie Žemait÷s instinktyvūs pajautimai yra nepaprastai svarbūs kalbant apie dieviškąją moterį ir jos reikšmę moterims įtvirtinant ir įteisinant asmeninę gyvenimiškąją patirtį ir ieškant moteriškojo dieviškojo modelio savajam subjektyvumui formuoti.

Feminist philosophers of religion such as Grace Jantzen and Pamela Sue Anderson have endeavoured, firstly, to identify masculine bias in the concepts of God found in the scriptures of the world’s religions and in the philosophical writings in which religious beliefs are assessed and proposed and, secondly, to transform the philosophy of religion, and thereby the lives of women, by recommending new or expanded epistemologies and using these to revision a concept of the divine which will inspire both women and men to work for the flourishing of the whole of humankind. 

It is argued, firstly, that the philosophies of Jantzen and Anderson are by no means as different from each other as they might, at first, appear. Secondly, it is suggested that their epistemologies are not distinctively feminist, and that the classical divine attributes of the Abrahamic faiths do not necessarily privilege the masculine. Perhaps the only way in which a philosophy of religion might be distinctively feminist is by emphasising the inclusion of women. This might mean being more open to concepts of the divine which are not, even in a metaphorical sense, masculine, and enhancing awareness of the ways in which abstract arguments about the divine could be relevant to the practical aspects of human life which have traditionally been the preserve of women. Insofar as these are increasingly also the responsibility of men, however, a feminist philosophy of religion might now be more appropriately characterised as an inclusivist philosophy of religion.