Feminism Must Be More than Celebrating Women 

“We could celebrate people who identify as women just for being women who are doing great things, but at the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) we believe that none of us are free until all of us are free.” Dr. Kate Ott offered these words as she opened Let’s Talk Globally’s March gathering. “Our approach to feminism must be intertwined with how we think about colonialism, racism, heterosexism, and patriarchy, both within our religious traditions and outside of them,” the director of Garrett’s Stead Center for Ethics and Values continued as she introduced this month’s panelists. “That work toward justice and freedom is what we’re celebrating today.” To honor International Women’s Month, the Stead Center and Office of Student Life invited some of the world’s foremost feminist scholars, who serve as board members for JFSR, to discuss how their work intersects global justice issues; an incredible opportunity for students to meet and engage luminary theologians.

From the beginning of the talk, speakers made it clear that feminist concerns cannot be neatly sequestered into academic inquiry. “For me the personal is always political and it is definitely intellectual,” said Dr. Sarojini Nadar, the Desmond Tutu Research Chair in Religion and Social Justice at University of the Western Cape in South Africa. “I came to this work on gendered violence as a survivor of childhood sexual violence, myself, and I continue to revisit the questions of epistemic violence as a woman of color in a deeply patriarchal and white South African Academy.”

These sentiments were roundly shared by Dr. Monica Melanchthon, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Pilgrim Theological College in Australia, and Dr. Anne Hidalgo, Adjunct Professor of Feminist Theology at Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana in Costa Rica. “In India, the paradigm of feminism or womanism is deeply entrenched in women’s sociocultural, political, and economic realities—an ever-evolving byproduct of patriarchy born out of the caste system,” Dr. Melanchthon observed. “As a result, the plurality within Indian feminisms is based on the multiple patriarchies that exist within Indian society.” Dr. Hidalgo was likewise quick to explain how feminist studies in Latin America must converse with the political realities affecting migrants across the geo-region. “Issues of citizenship status are very pertinent, with people leaving as refugees from Venezuela, for example, or people trying to flee Nicaragua whether or not they have official permission to do so,” she said. “Those realities deeply impact the way students in a classroom see a particular issue.”

Speakers dedicated particular focus to how these broader political realities affect religious scholarship. “Many of us, especially feminist scholars, have been overburdened by those who police the boundaries of various disciplines, who are really just protecting colonial forms of knowledge production,” noted Dr. Nadar. “Feminism isn’t a single, monolithic thing. There are multiple feminist theologies, feminist movements and one of the most pressing concerns has been the way mainstream feminism is often perceived—and in many cases has functioned—as a white, middle-class women’s movement. So, I’m deeply invested in the intersections of race, class, and culture within movements for gender justice.” As Dr. Nadar observed, this often blurs the supposedly neat boundaries between biblical scholarship, ethics, and systematic theology. This permeability is often treated as a threat to traditional scholarship but is essential if our goal is to uproot injustices that refuse containment in neat academic boxes.

Resistance to bring outside resources into academic traditions also harms the ensuing scholarship. “I wish I had professors in my Master’s degree program who introduced me to Indian resources,” Dr. Melanchthon confessed. “Much of my education was Western, and part of the struggle I had to go through when I committed to working as an Indian woman on the Bible—to authenticate my work and make it different from Western scholars—was that I had to embark on a journey of discovery because I didn’t know what existed within my own culture.” Today, those labors are bearing remarkable fruit. “I have found it most exciting and invigorating to bring the biblical text into conversation with other scriptural texts, and then look at what women in that religious community are saying about that scripture,” she said. “It has enabled me to remain grounded in my culture and also helped me showcase to the world that India, too, is a producer of literature—it’s not just the West that has wisdom.”

Dr. Hidalgo also noted that engagement beyond the bounds of religious academia is a crucial part of changing how Christianity is perceived and understood by wider culture. She and other Christian feminist activists have witnessed the surprise Latin American secular activists express when they see pastors and theologians joining protest marches. “You see a lot of critical comments and posters saying religion is bad, that religion is what’s holding us down because the only messages they hear publicly are the conservative ones,” she said. “To me, it’s a sign of how much work must be done.”

It was beautiful to watch how all three presenters coupled this piercing analysis with deep comfort and encouragement for the women gathered who are just beginning their ministerial and scholarly careers. “There’s so much to be said about a sisterhood of support,” Dr. Nadar proclaimed. “Don’t underestimate the toll that doing activist work takes on your body. We need to start talking about our bodies more and building rest into our schedules.” Particularly as feminist studies come to the fore in the church and academy, that often means a greater burden is placed on women doing this work. “We must find ways to rejuvenate from the tiredness that comes from the constant demands that are made upon us as women academics and clergy,” Dr. Melanchthon concurred. Ultimately, a core part of that work is discerning how to a build a career that arises from deep passions but is also shaped by the contours of practitioners’ lives. “There isn’t any one path that’s correct,” Dr. Hidalgo concluded with care. “There isn’t any one type of scholarship, one thing you need to achieve. You’re looking for what’s right for you, where your interests and talent intersect with a need in the community to whom you’re accountable.”

This entire conversation was recorded by the Office of Student Life. Click here to watch the full event! Our deep gratitude to the Stead Center for Ethics and Values for making this important dialogue possible.