Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality: Ethnographic Approaches

Abstract

St Methodius of Olympus, Bishop of Patara and martyr of the Diocletian persecution, uses sexual language in an unusual way. In a treatise on celibacy, The Symposium, he describes the relationship of Christians to Jesus Christ using the language of male orgasm. The cross is described as the moment of Jesus Christ's own ecstatic orgasm, and St Paul is described as a figure inseminated by God. This language is investigated with reference to a variety of selected methodologies, including Christian Platonist perspectives, feminist perspectives, Foucaultian perspectives, and men's studies perspectives.     

A Speechless Grace: Karl Rahner on Religious Language

Abstract:  The theological and pastoral goals of Karl Rahner's work require an accounting of the capacity of human language to speak meaningfully about God. This article argues that in his reflections on dogma, poetry, mysticism and 'anonymous faith', Rahner presents two conflicting perspectives on religious language: an 'incarnational' approach in which language is a necessary and constitutive dimension of revelation; and an 'optional' approach in which language is the subsequent and ultimately unnecessary embodiment of the 'transcendental revelation' of God. A way forward for Rahner's theology is proposed through a rejection of his identification of grace and revelation.     

Mathematics and Theology: A Stroll through the Garden of Mathaphors

Mathematics has long been considered the language of science and has even been acknowledged as the universal language of the future. Yet mathematics also plays a less-recognized religious role in that metaphors drawn from mathematics (mathaphors) can influence our spiritual perspectives by helping us to entertain new religious ideas and to challenge old ones. Mathaphors are therefore useful tools in matheology (the study of mathematics and theology). This essay explores ten ways in which contemporary mathaphors affect our spiritual lives. Specifically, mathaphors are: changing our metaphors for God; challenging our human role in the universe; helping us accept ambiguity; revamping our understanding of the one and the many; revising our thoughts about free will and determinism; moving us toward pluralistic, multi-world views; pushing the envelope on what consciousness is; altering our expectations for afterlife; offering the hope of a more compassionate future; encouraging faith perspectives that are always incomplete and in process.     

God-language in Public and Private Prayer: A Place for Integrating Gender,Sexuality and Faith

Abstract

Drawing on feminist liturgical critiques of prayer, Audre Lorde's notion of the erotic and Carter Heyward's relational theology, amongst other feminist, Womanist, Black and queer sources, this article proposes that prayer via gendered and erotic images of God and Christ may be a site for the integration of gender, sexuality and faith — not only in the life of the individual but in the wider body politic. The notion of integration is problematized alongside heteropatriarchal practices of prayer, and an eschatological understanding of prayer and identity offered. The article argues for prayer which engages with a multiplicity of embodied, erotic and queer images of God (and particularly Christ), as necessary to the complex work of personal and political integration with which prayer is charged as well as gesturing towards the fullness and mystery of God who both inhabits and transcends the limitations of metaphorical discourse about the divine.     

EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND THEOLOGY: A MUTUALLY ILLUMINATIVE DIALOGUE

Scientific perspectives often are perceived to challenge biblically based cosmologies and theologies. Arthur Peacocke, biochemist and theologian, recognized that this challenge actually represents an opportunity for Christian theology to reenvision and reinterpret its traditions in ways that take into account scientific theories of evolution. In the course of his career, Peacocke offered a new paradigm for the dialogue between theology and science. This paper explores his proposals, in particular his theories of language, the God‐world relation, and the nature of God, and exemplifies the impact these proposals had on his theological insights.     

Human Rights and the Citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven

This article argues for a new Christian theological rationale for human rights that takes into account serious contemporary critiques of rights language. Human rights derive from our being made in the image of God. But rather than being static metaphysical properties which humanity possesses, they form a moral language about the image of God, which must be constantly refashioned to suit the times. Furthermore, the human community to which these rights belong is not mere created humanity, but instead the humanity of the eschatological kingdom of heaven, of which the ecumenical church is the messenger. The ecumenical task, then, is to articulate a more holistic conception of what the image of God means to ensure that human rights language does not become narrowly sectarian.     

Building Bridges with Accessible Care: Disability Studies,Feminist Care Scholarship,and Beyond

This article uses elements of autoethnography to theorize an in/formal support relationship between a friend with a physical disability, who uses attendant services, and me. Through thinking about our particular “frien‐tendant” relationship, I find the common scholarly orientations toward “care” are inadequate. Starting from the conversations between feminist and disability perspectives on care, I build on previous work to further develop the theoretical framework of accessible care. Accessible care takes a critical, engaged approach that moves beyond understanding “accessibility” as merely concrete solutions to create more inclusive forms of care. Care, in this context, is positioned as an unstable tension among competing definitions, including that it is a complex form of oppression. Accessible care draws on feminist disability perspectives and the feminist political ethic of care to build bridges in four areas: from daily experiences of disability and support to theoretical discussions; across feminist care research and disability perspectives; across divisions and anxieties within disability communities; and from the local to transnational applications. These bridges do not aim to resolve debates but allow us to travel back and forth between differing perspectives and demonstrate the tenuous possibility of accessible practices and concepts of care.     

FEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

In this article I suggest that feminist poststructuralism (Weedon, 1987) is of great potential value to feminist psychologists seeking more satisfactory ways of theorizing gender and subjectivity. Some key elements of this theoretical perspective are discussed, including an understanding of knowledge as socially produced and inherently unstable, an emphasis on the importance of language and discourse, and a decentering of the subject. Discourse analysis is discussed as one way of working that is consistent with feminist poststructuralist theory. To illustrate this approach, an example is presented from my work on the sexual coercion of women within heterosexual relationships.     

God, Tragedy, and the Near-Death Experience: Evaluating Kushner's Perspectives on Theodicy

This article evaluates Harold Kushner's original and reconstructed perspectives on God and the theodicic problem on the basis of research on the near-death experience (NDE) and related phenomena. In response to a personal tragedy, Kushner reconstructed his thinking about God and tragedy from his original Causation-Power perspective to an Inspiration-Love perspective. The Causation-Power perspective posits that God causes human events and that tragic events do not actually contradict God's purpose or will, although tragic events may result from the human freedom to disobey God and suffer punitive consequences. In the Inspiration-Love perspective, human freedom expands to mean that God does not cause all events: God does not cause tragedy, suffers with the sufferer, and can intervene against tragic events only by inspiring people to cope with tragedy and care for others. Although the research findings are consistent with Kushner's emphasis on love and inspiration, the theme of divine power and purpose is also evident. Hence, Kushner should not have rejected entirely his early (Causation-Power) perspective. Identified in the research are forms of inspiration that Kushner did not take into account in his reconstructed (Inspiration-Love) view. The Causation-Power and Inspiration-Love perspectives seem incompatible and neither alone solves the theodicic problem. Nonetheless, they do complement one another; a resolution would permit an integrative understanding of God and tragedy.     

FEMINIST RESEARCH METHODS A Content Analysis of Psychology and Social Science Textbooks

This research examined the extent to which research methods textbooks in psychology and general social science discuss feminist challenges and approaches to social science (N = 40 textbooks). Two dimensions were examined. First, within the "nonsexist" dimensions, textbooks were analyzed to determine if they used nonsexist language and if they discussed ways to avoid sexist bias in research. The second dimension was "profeminist." Within this dimension four subdomains receiving considerable attention from feminist researchers were explored: (a) epistemology (or "ways of knowing"); (b) objectivity and subjectivity; (c) the relationship between the researcher and the researched; and (d) qualitative versus quantitative methodologies. Results demonstrated that although the majority of the textbooks did not use sexist language, they did not move much beyond this standard. There was little discussion of feminist challenges to these research issues. When the textbook authors did mention these topics, their analyses were most often inconsistent with feminist approaches.     

A Phenomenological Grounding of Feminist Ethics

The central hypothesis of this paper is that the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty offers significant philosophical groundwork for an ethics that honours key feminist commitments – embodiment, situatedness, diversity and the intrinsic sociality of subjectivity. Part I evaluates feminist criticisms of Merleau-Ponty. Part II defends the claim that Merleau-Ponty’s non-dualist ontology underwrites leading approaches in feminist ethics, notably Care Ethics and the Ethics of Vulnerability. Part III examines Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of embodied percipience, arguing that these offer a powerful critique of the view from nowhere, a totalizing God’s-eye-view with pretensions to objectivity. By revealing the normative structure of perceptual gestalts in the intersubjective domain, he establishes the view from everywhere. Normativity is no longer deferred to higher authorities such as duty, utility or the valorized virtue, but through the perceptual gestalt it is returned to the perceiving embodied subject. This subject, defined by inherent intersubjectivity, is thereby vulnerable to others and has the capacity for care.     

What Does It Mean to Be a Postcolonial Feminist? The Artwork of Mithu Sen

This article examines what the work of New Delhi‐based artist Mithu Sen brings to thinking about being a postcolonial feminist. Using images from Sen's solo exhibit in New Delhi and New York titled Half Full (2007), I theorize on the complexities that proliferate when thinking about postcolonial feminism. Sen's images play with “an” identity to showcase the hybrid and mobile configuration of postcolonial subjectivity. Sen's provocative aesthetic urges us to rethink defining a set of conditions or tenets for postcolonial feminism. Rather, her aesthetic politics propels through humor and provides a prism to constantly reimagine postcolonial feminist subjectivity by urging a consideration of maps that intersect and overlap.     

Feminism and the Decade of Behavior

This Psychology of Women Quarterly special issue argues that the goals of the Decade of Behavior to foster a healthier, safer, better educated, more prosperous, and more democratic nation cannot be achieved without contributions from feminist psychology. Its individual articles reflect feminist perspectives and provide examples of how feminist perspectives can inform behavioral and social research within Decade domains. In this overview, we outline the challenges that gender poses to achieving Decade goals, and discuss four cross-cutting feminist principles for research to address those challenges: Inclusiveness and Diversity, Context, Power and Privilege, and Activism. We discuss specific limitations of traditional research, and emphasize the need for new models that view the world in more complex, context-based ways. We underscore the importance of generating new, diversity-mindful research questions and of developing and accepting new methods to answer them. We discuss policy implications, stressing the need for activism. We hope this work will encourage the expansion of feminist scholarship in the new millennium and be helpful to researchers, educators, and policymakers in working to achieve the goals of the Decade of Behavior.     

Metaphor,Religious Language,and Religious Experience

Is it possible to talk about God without either misrepresentation or failing to assert anything of significance? The article begins by reviewing how, in attempting to answer this question, traditional theories of religious language have failed to sidestep both potential pitfalls adequately. After arguing that recently developed theories of metaphor seem better able to shed light on the nature of religious language, it considers the claim that huge areas of our language and, consequently, of our experience are shaped by metaphors. Finally, it considers some of the more significant implications of this claim for our understanding of both religious language and religious experience.     

CLASSICAL THEISM, PANENTHEISM, AND PANTHEISM: ON THE RELATION BETWEEN GOD CONSTRUCTION AND GENDER CONSTRUCTION

Abstract. The argument of this article is that, philosophically, there are but three broad conceptual models that Western thought employs in thinking about the meaning of God. At the level of greatest generality, these are the models known as classical theism, pantheism, and panentheism. The essay surveys and updates these three conceptual models in light of recent writings, finds more flaws in classical theism and panentheism than in pantheism, and suggests a feminist response to each.     

Debt Resistance and Satisfaction? Notes from Catherine of Siena toward a Theology of Redemption against Neoliberal Capitalism

Adding to recent concerns about resonances between debt in Christian soteriologies and in capitalism, Hollis Phelps has argued that Anselm’s satisfaction theory provides subjective reinforcement for neoliberalism’s biopolitical use of debt, and thus calls for an abandonment of the idea that humans must be redeemed from debt to God. Without advocating mere retrieval of satisfaction theory, I submit that such a concept of debt can have the opposite effect by analyzing how it plays out in Catherine of Siena’s mystical theology and the way she articulates satisfaction in her writings. Catherine’s doctrine of creation casts humanity’s unremittable debt as an obligation to love God, self, and neighbor that is divinely designed to benefit all. This concept of debt determines what satisfaction signifies for Catherine, fostering an “indebted subjectivity” incompatible with that of neoliberalism. Her theology thereby suggests a productive way to leverage the language of a prominent Western atonement theory against the neoliberal concepts of debt that discipline Western society—namely, by rooting debt in a doctrine of creation that emphasizes relationships of mutuality and interdependence that benefit all.     

Reconsidering Relational Autonomy: A Feminist Approach to Selfhood and the Other in the Thinking of Martin Heidegger

This paper examines a convergence between Heidegger's reconceptualization of subjectivity and intersubjectivity and some recent work in feminist philosophy on relational autonomy. Both view the concept of autonomy to be misguided, given that our capacity to be self-directed is dependent upon our ability to enter into and sustain meaningful relationships. Both attempt to overturn the notion of a subject as an isolated, atomistic individual and to show that selfhood requires, and is based upon, one's relation to and dependence upon others. The paper argues that Heidegger's notion of authentic Mitsein (being-with) rejects traditional notions of autonomy and subjectivity in favor of a relational model of selfhood. Ultimately, it provides a new point of entry into contemporary debates within feminist philosophy on Heidegger's thinking and defends Heidegger from certain feminist critiques.     

Feminism as a Radical Ethics? Questions for Feminist Researchers in the Humanities

A feminist perspective on selfhood – bound to a perspective on otherness – is the main concern of this article. The resonance of this notion of selfhood both with ethical philosophy and with the language of humanism enables a deeper understanding of a feminist ethics as well as its internal tensions. The article considers the relationship of feminism and humanism as one of “paradoxical fluidity” rather than antithetical polarization, to explore the ways in which feminism’s alliance with contemporary ethics exemplifies its paradoxical relation to humanism. The study then underlines the vital contribution of feminist discourse to an ethical understanding of selfhood and intersubjectivity. Finally, it examines the work of experimental Canadian poet Lola Lemire Tostevin, who reveals the importance of an ethical, feminist version of selfhood that highlights the insufficiency as well as the potential of both humanist and postmodern versions of subjectivity.     

SAFER, BETTER SEX THROUGH FEMINISM: THE ROLE OF FEMINIST IDEOLOGY IN WOMEN'S SEXUAL WELL-BEING

Feminists have argued that traditional gender norms can obstruct women's sexual well-being ( Amaro, 1995 ; Morokoff, 2000 ; Tolman, 2006 ; Walker, 1997 ). Therefore, we expected feminist ideology, by virtue of this critique, to be associated with women's sexual subjectivity and sexual well-being. To test this model, we analyzed data from a survey of college-age women ( N = 424) using structural equation modeling. As hypothesized, feminist ideology was indirectly related to condom-use self-efficacy and sexual satisfaction via sexual subjectivity, and sexual motivation was directly related to sexual satisfaction. In an alternative model, feminist ideology was directly related to sexual motivation. This research indicates that feminist ideology may play a role in the promotion of women's sexual well-being.     

Luther and Justification

In this article, I reflect on Luther's doctrine on justification as it came out in different ways in some of his seminal writings between 1518 and 1538, all represented in volume 2 of The Annotated Luther. Discovering the righteousness of God as something already given to humans opened fundamentally new perspectives to Luther.