Religion & genderPub Date : 2022-06-27DOI: 10.1163/18785417-01202006
Susan Harper
{"title":"In the Service of All Life","authors":"Susan Harper","doi":"10.1163/18785417-01202006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18785417-01202006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper explores and attempts to propose a NeoPagan, or Contemporary Pagan, ethics of abortion. As a still relatively new religious movement, Contemporary Paganism and the various earth-centered religions (including Wicca) that fall under that umbrella are continuously in the process of creating theology, morality, and practice. Within the religious landscape of the United States in particular, this means engaging with the fraught issues of reproductive healthcare broadly and abortion specifically. This article explores the paradox of Contemporary Paganism’s overall ethic of affirming life and holding all life sacred while also giving primacy of place to individual Will, bodily autonomy, and personal and sexual freedom—ethical principles that lead the overwhelming majority of practitioners to adopt a pro-choice stance. The article describes an ethics of abortion in which Contemporary Pagans find that their pro-life politics and their life-affirming spirituality are not paradoxical but in fact are a coherent whole.","PeriodicalId":92716,"journal":{"name":"Religion & gender","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45084665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion & genderPub Date : 2022-06-27DOI: 10.1163/18785417-01202003
T. Moqbel
{"title":"Women and Gender in the Qur’an , by Celene Ibrahim","authors":"T. Moqbel","doi":"10.1163/18785417-01202003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18785417-01202003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":92716,"journal":{"name":"Religion & gender","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45793295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion & genderPub Date : 2022-06-27DOI: 10.1163/18785417-01202002
Eleni Marantou
{"title":"Gender in the Rhetoric of Jesus, Women in Q , by Sara Parks","authors":"Eleni Marantou","doi":"10.1163/18785417-01202002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18785417-01202002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":92716,"journal":{"name":"Religion & gender","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44231857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion & genderPub Date : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.1163/18785417-01201010
Judith C. Bachmann
{"title":"Witchcraft and Its Implications for Women Reconsidered","authors":"Judith C. Bachmann","doi":"10.1163/18785417-01201010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18785417-01201010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In Africa, witchcraft as both a practice and concept is characterized by diversity. A number of places such as Nigeria hold a general suspicion that women are more likely to be witches. This gendered social practice has been studied in anthropology. However, African women’s reactions and interests regarding practices associated with witchcraft (identification, deliverance, healing etc.) have not been studied sufficiently. And in particular, women’s multi-religious backgrounds have often been ignored. This article argues that research on witchcraft in Africa carries a burden of epistemic violence. It has often left the ascription of witchcraft to women unquestioned and at the same time, overlooked women’s own diverse religious perspectives and the interplay of this with witchcraft belief. Based on fieldwork among the Yoruba in Nigeria, the article analyses how witchcraft is ascribed as female, how women are impacted by this and how they position themselves within this social practice. It discusses these gender dynamics as related to the effects of epistemic violence and agency. Results show that women participate in the production of witchcraft as an imagined exclusive female practice, yet their dealings with witchcraft also implicate agency and the possibility of socio-religious change.","PeriodicalId":92716,"journal":{"name":"Religion & gender","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44483036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion & genderPub Date : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.1163/18785417-01201009
S. Page, P. Lowe
{"title":"Gendered Violence, Religion and UK-Based Anti-Abortion Activism","authors":"S. Page, P. Lowe","doi":"10.1163/18785417-01201009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18785417-01201009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The United Nations view access to abortion as a fundamental human right. Yet increasingly in the UK, religiously-motivated activists undertake public displays opposing abortion, often outside abortion clinics, and precipitated through international campaigns like 40 Days for Life (Lowe and Page forthcoming). Activists see their actions as an essential intervention; some explicitly frame this as a form of help. But examining this from the perspective of how bodies are gendered and regulated in the public sphere raises questions regarding whether this is a form of harassment, and therefore gendered violence. This article is based on a UK ethnography. Using Kelly’s (1988) continuum of violence thesis, we examine whether this activism constitutes gendered violence, examining two different activities—prayer and graphic images. Despite these activities being distinct and contrasting, we argue that both should be understood as part of a continuum of violence, causing harm to those seeking abortion services.","PeriodicalId":92716,"journal":{"name":"Religion & gender","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46658194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion & genderPub Date : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.1163/18785417-01201008
K. McPhillips, Tracy McEwan, Jodi Death, K. Richards
{"title":"Does Gender Matter?","authors":"K. McPhillips, Tracy McEwan, Jodi Death, K. Richards","doi":"10.1163/18785417-01201008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18785417-01201008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Sociological and historical research into sexual violence against children has reported consistently that it is girls who have most often been the subject of sexual, psychological and physical violence in both familial and institutional settings in modernity. However, more recently, public inquiries have provided evidence that during the 20th century, boys were much more likely to be abused in particular kinds of religious settings. This has been substantiated in findings from inquiries in Australia, Ireland, the UK and the USA. This reverses the trend of child sexual abuse (CSA) demonstrated in family and community environments, where girls are more likely to be abused, although perpetrators are much more likely to be men across all settings (Dowling, Boxall, et al. 2021). The question of gender in relation to the experience and management of CSA therefore requires further examination. In this article we investigate whether gender is a specific dimension of CSA in religious institutions, and specifically the Roman Catholic Church, by two methods. We begin by firstly examining the literature that addresses gender representation, religion and CSA in relation to three central evidence-based indicators: prevalence, disclosure and trauma impacts. Secondly, we link this discussion to a case study of the Catholic Church in Australia, where we identify specific patterns of gendered child violence and we ask the question: are such gendered forms of violence related to Catholic socialisation processes and if so by which specific mechanisms does Catholic culture produce the conditions that facilitate the sexual abuse of children? This article will explore these questions by looking at the ways CSA in Catholic institutions are gendered and how this produced particular forms of knowledge and truth. We argue that gender is a central organising principle in Catholic bureaucracy, culture and theology. The analysis identifies five central factors underpinning the reproduction of a discourse of power and knowledge normalizing gendered patterns of CSA and addresses a gap in current research by addressing gender representation as the central factor in the prevalence, disclosure and trauma of religiously based CSA.","PeriodicalId":92716,"journal":{"name":"Religion & gender","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49219463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion & genderPub Date : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.30965/18785417-01201008
K. McPhillips, Tracy McEwan, Jodi Death, K. Richards
{"title":"Does Gender Matter?","authors":"K. McPhillips, Tracy McEwan, Jodi Death, K. Richards","doi":"10.30965/18785417-01201008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18785417-01201008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Sociological and historical research into sexual violence against children has reported consistently that it is girls who have most often been the subject of sexual, psychological and physical violence in both familial and institutional settings in modernity. However, more recently, public inquiries have provided evidence that during the 20th century, boys were much more likely to be abused in particular kinds of religious settings. This has been substantiated in findings from inquiries in Australia, Ireland, the UK and the USA. This reverses the trend of child sexual abuse (CSA) demonstrated in family and community environments, where girls are more likely to be abused, although perpetrators are much more likely to be men across all settings (Dowling, Boxall, et al. 2021). The question of gender in relation to the experience and management of CSA therefore requires further examination. In this article we investigate whether gender is a specific dimension of CSA in religious institutions, and specifically the Roman Catholic Church, by two methods. We begin by firstly examining the literature that addresses gender representation, religion and CSA in relation to three central evidence-based indicators: prevalence, disclosure and trauma impacts. Secondly, we link this discussion to a case study of the Catholic Church in Australia, where we identify specific patterns of gendered child violence and we ask the question: are such gendered forms of violence related to Catholic socialisation processes and if so by which specific mechanisms does Catholic culture produce the conditions that facilitate the sexual abuse of children? This article will explore these questions by looking at the ways CSA in Catholic institutions are gendered and how this produced particular forms of knowledge and truth. We argue that gender is a central organising principle in Catholic bureaucracy, culture and theology. The analysis identifies five central factors underpinning the reproduction of a discourse of power and knowledge normalizing gendered patterns of CSA and addresses a gap in current research by addressing gender representation as the central factor in the prevalence, disclosure and trauma of religiously based CSA.","PeriodicalId":92716,"journal":{"name":"Religion & gender","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41829329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion & genderPub Date : 2022-03-25DOI: 10.1163/18785417-01201006
Stefan Meysman
{"title":"Men, Spirituality, and Gender-specific Biblical Hermeneutics, by Armin M. Kummer","authors":"Stefan Meysman","doi":"10.1163/18785417-01201006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18785417-01201006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":92716,"journal":{"name":"Religion & gender","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47281898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion & genderPub Date : 2022-03-25DOI: 10.1163/18785417-01201005
Luis Josué Salés
{"title":"Androprimacy","authors":"Luis Josué Salés","doi":"10.1163/18785417-01201005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18785417-01201005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article introduces a new analytical concept for the study of religion and gender that I term “androprimacy” by examining its specific instantiation in two early Christian sources, the Ethiopic Didəsqəlya and the Greek Apostolic Constitutions. These texts were concerned with the governance of Christian domestic and ecclesiastical bodies. I maintain that androprimacy is qualitatively different than, but interrelated with, other concepts and social structures of sexism, oppression, and marginalization that enables us to understand social anisometric dynamics predicated along the lines of sexual difference better. Particularly, I examine how narratives of androprimacy are used to legitimate other sexist structures, such as patriarchy and misogyny, by strategies of female erasure and the neutralization of motherhood.","PeriodicalId":92716,"journal":{"name":"Religion & gender","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47741296","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion & genderPub Date : 2022-03-25DOI: 10.1163/18785417-01201007
Martha Mapasure
{"title":"African Women’s Theologies, Spirituality, and Healing: Theological Perspectives From The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, by Mercy Amba Oduyoye","authors":"Martha Mapasure","doi":"10.1163/18785417-01201007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18785417-01201007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":92716,"journal":{"name":"Religion & gender","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45694635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}