Gender and religion

Synthesizes previous work by Rabbis Saul Berman, Avraham Shamma, and David Bigman on the subject of kol ishah, and adds a few additional sources as well, to conclude that kol ishah can be permitted whenever and wherever contemporary society considers a woman's singing voice to not be sexual in nature.

What is the basic structure of African Indigenous Religions (AIR/s)? How is it gendered?  How did colonialism affect AIR/s?  Is the academic study of AIR/s among Africanists and feminists decolonized?  Using the context of Southern Africa, this paper will address the above questions by exploring the construction of gender in AIR/s’ concepts of community, ancestorhood and the Divine.  The paper will investigate the academic frameworks of Africanists and feminist scholars of AIR/s by investigating the naming of AIR/s and the frameworks of gender analysis within the postcolonial history.  It will further make some proposals on decolonized frameworks of studying AIR/s.

Author: William B. Bowes
Publisher: CBE International

Amid the patriarchy of the ancient world, early Christianity had a particularly liberating and redemptive place for women, one significant enough to be mentioned by Christianity’s first major critic, the second-century philosopher Celsus.

In order to broaden the search for liberating African masculinities, I engage with key and recent works on African masculinities. I explore some of the reasons why scholarship on masculinity in Africa – especially scholarship within that aims to go beyond interventionist and advocacy work – remains sparse and inadequate. To remedy this situation, I propose a scholarly approach to the subject of African masculinities which is situated at the intersection of culture, religion and politics. Furthermore, I argue that while it is important to begin this search through examining conventional sacred texts, it is necessary to interrogate modern 'sacred texts' as well. To illustrate our main argument and to highlight key aspects of hegemonic masculinities in Africa, I draw on Thando Mgqolozana's groundbreaking novel, "A man who is not a man", published ten years ago.

During the onslaught of the Islamic caliphate on Kobanî, Syria, media outlets across the globe broadcast pictures of brave and often unveiled Kurdish women fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a quintessentially male force of destruction. The images of women fighting Islamist male aggressors aroused outrage, admiration, and pity among observers. But had all Kurdish fighters been male or had women fought for ISIS, viewers might have reacted differently. To examine some of the most widely disseminated gendered pictures and videos of the Syrian uprising in the media, this article draws on Mohja Kahf’s three categories, which typify how Muslim women, Arab women, or both are perceived by the Anglophone reading and viewing public: the first is victims; the second, escapees; and the third, pawns of patriarchy and male power. While this typology helps in examining gendered images of the Syrian uprising, it also obscures the socioeconomic realities on the ground.

One of the contemporary approaches to history, namely that it should be reread, deconstructed and basically rewritten in order to fully present previously silenced or censored perspectives, has allowed modern historians, without falling into the trap of relativism, to reinvigorate the field and provide a better understanding of our past and present. This article aims at such a rereading of a cornerstone text in the study of Armenian society of the 4th c. C. E. generally known as P῾awstosi Buzandac῾woy Patmut῾iwn Hayoc῾ (The History of Armenia by Faustos of Buzand). By a close reading of the text, I analyse the valuable information about the position of fourth-century Armenian women in the society in the transitional period of the country’s history characterised by a fierce clash between pagan norms and values, and recently adopted Christian ideology. This analysis enables us to answer the following questions: 1) which women attract the fifth-century cleric’s attention and what is their function in the narrative? 2) How does the compiler present and appraise his female protagonists’ agency and experience? What are the criteria that influence his evaluations? Is the factor of gender one of them? 3) What is the overall image of women’s position in the society that the compiler creates?

A fin de arrojar luz sobre las manifestaciones femeninas de la reforma franciscana, estas páginas analizan las fundaciones reformistas de la Orden de Santa Clara en el obispado de Córdoba entre las primeras noticias conocidas, datadas en 1465, y 1525, año de la última fundación clarisa anterior al concilio de Trento. Ofrecen una cronología que parte de las distintas fisonomías institucionales y espirituales y una fenomenología fundacional. Estos aspectos contienen claves de interés para, en un futuro, poder profundizar en sus implicaciones eclesiales, políticas y espirituales.

In order to throw light on the feminine manifestations of the Franciscan reform, these pages there analyze the foundations reformists of the Order of Santa Clara in the bishopric of Cordova between the first news known, dated in 1465, and 1525, year of the last foundation nun of the order of St Clare previous to the council of Trent. They offer a chronology that departs from the different institutional and spiritual physiognomies. These aspects contain keys of interest for, in a future, to be able to penetrate into his implications about the churches, political and spiritual.

Este artículo busca describir la participación de las mujeres que ayudaron a desarrollar y a consolidar la presencia de la Iglesia Adventista del Séptimo Día como una iglesia cristiana dentro del protestantismo, en Argentina, y por extensión en Sudamérica, a partir de las vinculaciones con las migraciones europeas del siglo XIX. Se toma como marco de referencia documentos de la propia iglesia y personales-que abarcan el período desde 1894 hasta 1930-con el propósito de captar los matices de las experiencias de los sujetos para comprender sus perspectivas de interpretación de la realidad que buscaron plasmar. Entre los principales resultados surge el aspecto comunitario como una arista importante de transformación mediante el aporte de las mujeres, quienes llegan desde Europa y Estados Unidos para evangelizar. Si bien estas traen ideas progresistas, no logran deshacerse de conceptos ambivalentes de los roles de los sexos, los que influyeron en las primeras creyentes locales en tres dimensiones: la educación, la ética y la salud. Palabras clave: Iglesia Adventista del Séptimo Día, mujer, liderazgo, Sudamérica, evangelización.

Abstract:This article describes the participation of women who helped establish and consolidate the presence of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a Christian church within Protestantism. These events occurred in Argentina, and by extension in South America, given the links with 19th century European migrations. Documents from the church itself along with personal

The tale of the generous prince in the versions written, painted, read, told, heard, and viewed among the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley is a complicated one, marked both by unique narrative developments and an unexpected convergence between story and ritual. The Newar language version is striking in as much as it ends with Vessantara persisting in blissful renunciation, dramatically emulated by his father, with kingship casually passed on to the grandson. This is a plotline that may help complicate models conceiving of Newar Buddhism, and Buddhism beyond Nepal, as centered on a certain idea of the domestic and may help us look at their reverse side: what kind of literary domus are we talking about in which the husband protagonist remains ascetic? How, for his public, does the ascetic resist home and through that allow for imagining life beyond the family? What does that mean for the family, particularly the wife and how does she make sense of the story both affectively and ritually? And how did such an ending come to be told in the first place, what is its historical and thematic location in the larger network of variants of the story? This study  tries to answer these questions through a closer reading of the 1980 documentation by Siegfried Lienhard of one manuscript’s text and illuminations and a comparison of it with further Newar and Sanskrit variants. It will further do so by exploring how this story and its oral and visual commentarial field may have been transformed by the purposes and circumstances of its ritualized telling.

Author: Christy Hemphill
Publisher: CBE International

The primary task when considering Paul's assertion, “the husband is the head of the wife,” should be discovering the meaning of this head-and-body metaphor, not arguing for an extended metaphorical sense of half of the metaphor.

Religion in 20 th century China was reorganized according to new, modern, and scientific paradigms; in this novel definition, which excluded many communal experiences deemed superstitious, religion came to be identified more with personal practice and individual beliefs, understood as self-strengthening and self-improvement, and was to be one of the responses against Western Imperialism and Japanese occupation. Women had always been seen as closely involved with religious practices, but at this time, they were identified as intrinsically and powerfully superstitious, and their religiosity was used as a necessary site of symbolic transformation for the nation. Numerous examples of the deleterious effect of superstition on women, their children, the family and society were described, and modern and scientific education was seen as the antidote to this seemingly intractable problem.

This book examines the nature and significance of religious enthusiasm in early Enlightenment England. In the early modern period, the term ‘enthusiasm’ was a smear word used to discredit the dissenters of the radical Reformation as dangerous religious fanatics. In England, the term gained prominence from the Civil War period and throughout the eighteenth century. Anglican ministers and the proponents of the Enlightenment used it more widely against Paracelsian chemists, experimental philosophers, religious dissenters and divines, astrologers or anyone claiming superior knowledge. As a result, our understanding of enthusiasm is largely influenced by the hostile discourse of Augustan moralist and early Enlighteners. But who exactly were these enthusiasts? What did they believe in, how did they operate as a community and what impact did they have on their contemporaries? This book aims to answer these questions by concentrating on the notorious case of the French Prophets. It demonstrates how the understanding of enthusiasm evolved around 1700, designating anything from a religious fanaticism to a social epidemic and even a bodily disease. It offers the first comprehensive approach to enthusiasm, looking at this multifarious issue from a successively social, religious, cultural, political and medical perspective. Based on extensive archival research, it sheds new light on the reality of enthusiasm away from the hostility of Enlightenment discourse.

Author: Timothy Paul Erdel
Publisher: CBE International

Erdel proposes a dramatically different way of understanding the typological divine-human relationship in Song of Songs: The female beloved is a type of God, and the male lover is the type of unfaithful Israel.

The field of gender and development has been marked in recent years by extensive debates about the shortfalls of gender mainstreaming and the depoliticisation of gender and other concepts in development praxis. In these discussions considerably less thought has been given to the theoretical premises of these concepts and the implications of their interface with the epistemological and normative systems of the diverse communities in which they are employed. In the current paper I hope to undertake a more theoretical project by delineating how three foundational concepts -
gender, gender equality, and empowerment - are directly linked to secular epistemologies and western gender metaphysics, to suggest how this might be interfering with effective gender and development practice in non-western/non-secular contexts. I propose that more effort may need to be put in reconstructing and theorising gender realities through local conceptual repertoires in order to better design gender interventions that are attuned to local normative systems. For proper citation see the full article on the Journal's page here: http://journals.dbuniversity.ac.in/ojs/index.php/jdp/article/view/305

Gender, which is a fundamental aspect of identity, in biblical Israel, is an expression of power in a hierarchical relationship. It signifies the power differential that results from the different roles that men and women have in procreation, as culturally understood through the metaphor of agriculture. The husband was the dominant, ruling member because he possessed the seed necessary for procreation, whereas the wife was dependent upon his seed to fulfill her primary social role. In other social relations, however, a man or woman might take on different gendered roles depending on the circumstances, giving rise to various gender ambiguities, where men and women behave or are treated contrary to the expectations of gender. In their relationship to YHWH, for example, the Israelite men always take on the female, subordinate role. In this gendered relationship, YHWH has all the power and Israel is wholly dependent on him, and thus YHWH, the consummate male, may take the men of Israel as his wife.

This article describes the beliefs and some of the ritual practices of a group
of female pilgrims visiting places in France and Catalonia that they associate
with the figure of Mary Magdalene. It pays particular attention to the pilgrim’s process of learning ways to relate to her own body and to her menstrual cycle. Drawing elements from neo-paganism these women reinterpret
the meaning of Christian symbols and places. They consider Mary Magdalene both as a forerunner of feminism and as a model for independent
women. Performing a ritual of offering menstrual blood to the earth, they
establish an intimate relationship with what they identify as the “Mother
Earth”. Theories used to justify the beliefs in the sacrality of menstrual
blood are largely derived from anthropological texts.

The workshop serves as a forum for discussion of female religious and ritual leadership The workshop serves as a forum for discussion of female religious and ritual leadership in South Asian religious traditions. in South Asian religious traditions.

Este artículo presenta un análisis sobre los elementos que componen la identidad femenina y masculina, trasladados del mundo secular al mundo sagrado-religioso para configurar una referencia de identidades genéricas a través de la relación del creyente con la figura sagrada. Para ello se utilizan elementos de lo femenino y masculino identificados como reproducción social, que son asignados a la virgen de Guadalupe y a san Judas Tadeo, a quienes los presentan como una pareja complementaria a partir de la relación que los creyentes mexicanos del siglo xxi tienen con ellos.

This article explores the fact that Đạo Mẫu gay mediums open up spaces to destabilize gender and sexuality norms in Vietnam by accepting that male bodies can perform feminine bodily gestures and permit a tacit understanding that comportment and gestures are not attached to specific sexed bodies. Using the lens of queer theory in Asian studies, this paper challenges heteronormativity through the case study of Đạo Mẫu gay mediums who frequently have male partners, a feminine appearance even after religious rituals, and are respected in their communities. By destabilizing gender and sexuality norms, Đạo Mẫu gay mediums reveal that there are other ways to
experience gender and sexuality than those prescribed by heteronormative societies. The acceptance of Đạo Mẫu gay mediums and other sexual minorities could be the start of significant changes in both social norms and possibly the attainment of social justice.

הרצאה באוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים במסגרת החוג ללימודים רומאיים ולטינו-אמריקניים והיספניה יודאיקה. ערב עיון לרגל הופעת התרגום העברי לספר הנודע הטירה הפנימית, במלואן 500 שנה להולדתה של המיסטיקאית הספרדייה תרזה מאווילה

Lecture delivered at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2015, organized by the Department of Romance and Latin American Studies and Hispania Judaica on the occasion of the publication of the first Hebrew translation of the well-known work of Teresa of Avila "Interior Castle," coinciding with the 500 anniversary of birth of the Spanish mystic.

This paper is a rebuttal and analysis of some common claims about Deut. 24:1-4, specifically the claims reiterated by Todd Scacewater in his paper "Divorce and Remarriage in Deuteronomy 24:1-4". In this paper I highlight and deconstruct some of the claims made by Mr. Scacewater in his analysis of The Torah passage in Deuteronomy 24:1-4. I also highlight and deconstruct some of the claims that his analysis accords with The Messiah's teachings. I demonstrate that Mr. Scacewater's analysis is primarily influenced by a Pauline theology based on Christianity rather than an understanding of The Torah.

Deer, antelope, gazelles, and other wild animals are central to early Tibetan dice divination. They appear in response after oracular response in approximately two dozen 9th- and 10th-century excavated dice divination manuscripts recovered from Dunhuang, Turfan, and other sites occupied by Tibetans along the southern Silk Road in the 8th and 9th centuries. In addition to deer, kiang, yaks, and so on, various birds and waterfowl make repeated appearances in the responses. These animals, whose preponderance has been remarked upon by others who have studied these texts, are more than just a picturesque evocation of Tibetan fauna. And they do more than simply bear witness to a process whereby Tibetans assimilated a foreign divinatory technology and infused it with their own poetic and oracular sensibilities. These seemingly omnipresent wild animals are in fact central to the exchanges between the wild and the tame, and between the divine and the human that underpin a larger ritual economy of fortune to which dice divination offers one very specific mode of access. As repositories of fortune, and as the favoured possessions of the wild sman goddesses who oversee the wild highlands, these wild animals index a competition wherein there lies a subtle balance between agonistic struggle and aleatory hazard. For a divination client or “oracular gambler,” human fortune (phya) may be won – essentially taken from the wild spaces overseen by the sman goddesses –, or it may be lost, often with grave results. This dynamic of exchange, in which the fortunate essence of the wild is absorbed by humans and livestock, also raises intriguing questions about the relationship between dice divination and hunting and, more generally, about animals and divinities in the construction of Tibetan personhood.

Isabel de Villena, author of Humanism, offers a female paradigm of government in her Vita Christi: the Virgin Mary as queen and as pope. Through queenship, she formulates a new political ethic that she presents as a model to power male holders. Its study confirms the participation of the author in the “Querelle of Femmes” and show coincidences with contemporary courts of queens like Isabel I.
Isabel de Villena, autora del Humanismo, presenta un paradigma femenino de gobierno en su Vita Christi: la Virgen María reina y papisa. Mediante la reginalidad formula una nueva ética política a seguir por los titulares masculinos del poder. Su estudio refrenda la participación de la autora en la Querella de las Mujeres y muestra sintonías con cortes de reinas contemporáneas como Isabel I.

L’articolo intende offrire l’anteprima di un lavoro in corso sulle fonti manoscritte di santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi che rivela il Carmelo fiorentino di Santa Maria degli Angeli ben inserito nei circoli savonaroliani. L’analisi dei manoscritti evidenzia vari miracoli attribuiti al Savonarola, anche a vantaggio delle carmelitane e del loro superiore, don Agostino Campi, della laica domenicana Bagnesi e della maestra e priora della santa, Evangelista del Giocondo. La comunità di S. Maria degli Angeli, profondamente radicata nella spiritualità più viva dell’arcidiocesi, inserendosi nel filone dell’osservanza, si fece promotrice del culto al Savonarola, preparando l’humus spirituale di rinnovamento ecclesiale in cui fiorì il carisma profetico e trinitario di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi.

Author: Katrina Armas
Publisher: CBE International

Abuelita theology recognizes the imago Dei in poor and marginalized women such as widows and grandmothers, understanding that when the image of God is degraded in one, it is degraded in all.

This chapter mainly summarizes arguments from the book To Be Cared For, but the conclusion contains totally new material. Publication info:

Roberts, Nathaniel. 2017. Transformation and the Suffering Subject: Caste-Class and Gender in Slum Pentecostal Discourse. In Dalit Women: Vanguard of an Alternative Politics in India. S. Anandhi and Karin Kapadia, eds. Pp. 279–304. London & New York: Routledge.

Nei primi decenni del ’900, la Congregazione del Sant’Ufficio discusse al suo interno progetti di riforma volti a riaffermare la propria autorità messa in discussione dai processi di secolarizzazione. Sullo sfondo di questo quadro istituzionale, il libro indaga le pratiche dei custodi dell’ortodossia e della morale cattolica. Al centro dell’attenzione vi sono vicende emblematiche del difficile rapporto tra il clero e il corpo: il corpo ostile della donna e il corpo inteso come luogo di pulsioni, indicibile perché scandaloso. Le vicende qui discusse – a proposito di mistiche, fondatrici, ‘teologhesse’, medici, pedagoghi e sacerdoti accusati di molestie verso le penitenti – permettono di osservare come il sant’Ufficio reagì a tali difficili questioni.

Le Vatican a publié lundi 10 juin un texte à l’intention des communautés éducatives des écoles catholiques consacré à ce qu’il appelle « l’idéologie du genre ». Intitulé « Il les créa homme et femme » et rédigé par la Congrégation pour l’éducation catholique, ce document de 26 pages est destiné à aider ces communautés à contrer une « idéologie » qui « nie la différence naturelle entre un homme et une femme ». Sous couvert d’appel au dialogue, il n’évoque les notions de « queer », « transgenre », de « fluidité » ou de « genre neutre » que pour mieux les révoquer, comme menant vers « une société sans différence de sexe » et sapant « le fondement anthropologique de la famille ».
Alors que le projet de loi bioéthique ouvrant la PMA à toutes les femmes doit être examiné par le parlement français à partir de septembre, le Vatican envoie aussi quelques messages aux politiques en évoquant le droit de l’enfant « à grandir dans une famille, avec un père et une mère » ou encore le rôle de la famille – naturellement hétérosexuelle – comme « précédant l’ordre sociopolitique de l’État ». Entretien avec le sociologue Romain Carnac, qui finit une thèse sur « L’Église catholique face à la problématique du“genre” » à l’université de Lausanne (UNIL). Il voit dans cette croisade du Vatican « une forme de repli stratégique sur des thématiques liées à l’intime face au constat de l’incapacité croissante de l’Église à peser sur les autres sphères, économiques et sociales ».

The experience of gender transition can be a deeply troublesome and religiously fraught experience. Often, the individual who discloses gender diversity becomes ostracized from religious elements in their families. Both Christianity and Islam have historically been reticent to deal with modern movements toward expanded gender diversity. This reticence can lead to an exodus of people from one faith tradition to another tradition – or no tradition at all – this reticence leads to a loss of beloved theological resources that can provide comfort amid the tumults of life. This paper will use theological and philosophical resources from both Islamic and Christian traditions to engage in constructing a new means of understanding gender transition as a healing process rather than as a fragmentary event which leads to destruction or degradation of the religious community.

Cet ouvrage est un essai d’histoire du catholicisme mais aussi d’histoire sociale et culturelle des savoirs, et de ce savoir spécifique qu’est la théologie, inscrit dans une réalité ecclésiale, mais dont les modalités de construction, de publication et de circulations ne le différentient pas nécessairement des autres savoirs, en particulier à l’époque moderne. Il analyse une figure désormais classique en histoire des savoirs, celle de l’échec, ou plus précisément celle de la « gloire déchue ». Théophile Raynaud, le théologien que cet ouvrage étudie – sans proposer ni une biographie, ni une exploration exhaustive de son œuvre – est au moment de sa mort en 1663, célébré comme une des figures majeures de la scène théologique européenne, une sorte de « nouveau Bellarmin ». Une génération après, toutefois, il commence à être décrit comme une figure obsolète de la théologie, avant que la tradition savante ne le transforme en étape marginale de l’histoire de la théologie. L’ouvrage en reconstituant ce glissement, en examinant la place du travail intellectuel dans la carrière du théologien dans les institutions religieuses et dans son ordre, en examinant comment la position savante le situe dans un espace ecclésial, montre comment et par quels types d’opérations et d’évolutions, au XVIIe siècle, la place de la théologie recule dans la culture, mais aussi d’une certaine manière dans « l’Église ». À partir de ce constat, il examine aussi comment le théologien affronte les tensions qui traversent l’histoire religieuse du XVIIe siècle (rapports à l’affirmation du pouvoir politique et de l’espace public, ainsi qu’aux nouvelles configurations de genre) et ce que son œuvre en révèle. Ce qui apparaît alors n’est pas seulement la variabilité de l’ordre religieux du savoir, ou la manière dont la revendication de l’autorité de la théologie et des théologiens peut être tout à fait contradictoire avec les dynamiques de la confessionnalisation catholique, c’est aussi la manière dont la réforme catholique est historiquement travaillée par de profondes contradictions internes.

From the early 1970s until 2011, the Syrian shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab flourished as a minor centre of Shiʿi learning. It predominantly served Iraqi Shiʿi refugees, but also temporary visitors from Iran and the Gulf countries. The seminaries viewed it as their responsibility to draw in transient Shiʿa and turn them into students and loyal followers of important marājiʿ al-taqlīd or Shiʿi legal scholars who mainly reside in major centres of Shiʿi learning, such as Najaf, Karbala and Qom. While the seminaries in Sayyida Zaynab aimed at strengthening institutional affiliation among lay Shiʿa, they concurrently aided the questioning of authoritative religious edicts and opinions emanating from Iranian and Iraqi centres of learning and produced local religious authorities. This article examines two spheres in which central authority was challenged in the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab. First, it was contested in seminaries where students and teachers debated legal rulings, and second, in contested public Muharram practices such as self-flagellation processions and the showing and selling of recorded laṭmiyyāt, which are chants performed during ritual mourning gatherings.