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EDITORS INTRODUCTION
This issue marks the start of Elizabeth Pritchards tenure as coeditor of
JFSR. It also marks her return after twenty-three years to direct involvement
with the journals review and production process. She is thrilled to be back at
work helping assemble the longest-running and dependably stimulating conversation as to how gender gets done (and undone) in religious histories, texts,
and institutions. Much has changed for JFSR in the ensuing decades. It has
gone from being a stand-alone journal to being one hub amid a multimedia
platform. Such tremendous growth is certainly cause for celebration.
Nonetheless, this same period of time has seen either the persistence
or worsening of the injustices that spur our outrage and collective effort.
For instance, in 1993, the United Nations General Assembly produced the
Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, describing violence against women as a worldwide pandemic. More than twenty years
later, the UN reports that as many as one in three women experience physical
and/or sexual violence, usually at the hands of their intimate partners.1 A 2015
UN report reveals that women the world over continue to bear disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care work. Women devote one to three hours
more a day to housework than men and two to ten times the amount of time
a day to care for children, elderly, and the sick.2 In 1992, the average wealth
of African American households was 22 percent of white households and that
of Hispanic households was 24 percent of white households; in 2013, these
figures had fallen to 14 percent and 17 percent, respectively.3 The average net
1
UN Women, Facts and Figures: Ending Violence against Women, November 6, 2015,
http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures.
2
UN Women, Facts and Figures: Economic Empowerment, updated April 2015, http://
www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/economic-empowerment/facts-and-figures#notes.
3
Urban Institute, Nine Charts about Wealth Inequality in America, February 2015, http://
apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/. Median figures for wealth, or that of a typical
household for each group, are lower, but still reflect stunning disparities. Although Asian Americans
constitute the highest income bracket in the United States, gender disparity in pay is highest among
whites and Asian Americans; see AAUW, The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap, Spring
2016, http://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/.

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.2 (2016), 14

Copyright 2016 The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc.,

-1-

doi: 10.2979/jfemistudreli.32.2.01

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.2

worth of an unmarried middle-aged African American woman is $5 as compared to $42,600 for an unmarried middle-aged white woman.4 The Human
Rights Campaign, in partnership with the Trans People of Color Coalition,
reports that in 2015, twenty-one transgender persons were murdered in the
United States, almost all of them trans women of color.5 This is the highest
number of reported homicides since 2009 when such data was first collected.
Clearly, the work of challenging explicit and implicit religious authorizations
for sexism, racism, classism, homo and trans phobias, nationalism, and ethnocentrism is as crucial as ever.
In the face of such daunting challenges, we derive inspiration and determination from pioneering feminist scholars and activists. We start with Julie
Regans gracious tribute to the feminist Buddhist scholarship of Rita Gross. We
appreciate, in particular, Regans noting that Rita was refreshingly open to challenges and disagreements. Rita may have forged a path for subsequent scholars
of Buddhism and feminism, but as is the case with Regans insistence on contesting the category of gender in Buddhism, they will undoubtedly find their
own way. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that this lesson needs to be
learned over and over again.
This issues roundtable Feminism and Islam: Exploring the Boundaries
of Critique is a brilliant instantiation of this lesson. In light of the facts that
feminist or, as some prefer, gender-equality scholars are few in number in their
respective areas of expertise and that the challenges to building a tradition of
inquiry and activism so numerous, dissent can be a fraught undertaking. A central issue in this debate is the status of the Quran. What is its relation to the
divine? Is it revelatory? Is it a discourse? Is it sacred? And if so, how so? There
are moments of despair and flashes of anger in this roundtable. Nonetheless,
the intelligence, fortitude, and keen sense of stakes evidenced by the participants make for a gripping read. We know this was not an easy assignment for
any of the interlocutors and we are deeply grateful to them for their willingness
to take up these matters in this forum.
In our articles section, we are delighted to recognize the winners of the
Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza New Scholar Awards. The first-place award
goes to Brooke Nelson. Nelson revisits the texts describing the Martyrdom of
Domninaa lesser-studied work of late antiquity that nonetheless appears to
reflect a lively cult in her namein order to examine how Christianity reframed
4
Julianne Malveaux, Still Slipping: African American Women in the Economy and in
Society, Review of Black Political Economy 40, no. 1 (March 2013): 1321, esp. 16.
5
Human Rights Campaign and Trans People of Color Coalition, Addressing AntiTransgender Violence: Exploring Realities, Challenges, and Solutions for Policymakers and
Community Advocates, accessed July 4, 2016, http://hrc-assets.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.
com//files/assets/resources/HRC-AntiTransgenderViolence-0519.pdf. Following the passage of the
Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009, the FBI began tracking
bias-motivated crimes based on the victims actual or perceived gender identity.

Editors Introduction

Roman expectations of the virtue and disposition of upper-class mothers and,

thus, to flesh out the comprehensiveness of early Christian constructions
of gender. The second place award winner, Rachel Joyce Marie O. Sanchez,
uncovers the Roman Catholic hierarchys theological double cross, which works
to curtail womens leadership in the Church. The Sense of Faith deployed by
the hierarchy retains a distinction between those who are theologically competent (the hierarchy) and those who are not (laypersons) and, moreover, insists
that laypersons involvement in Church life is necessary for participation in this
Sense of Faith, even as they ensure that this involvement extends only to consultation not decision making.
Sallie M. Cuffee highlights how the spiritual autobiographies of nineteenth-century African American women entail these womens self-fashioning not simply as survivors but as moral agents and political actors audaciously
making a case for their communitys possession of fully human souls and bodies. Margaret Susan Thompsons detailed account of the Vaticans Apostolic
Visitation of US Catholic Women Religious (200914) also reveals the religious and political agency nuns (and their allies) exercise to forge a spiritual
discipline of solidarity and resistance to the hierarchys continued investment
in practices of policing and subordination. Fulata Lusungu Moyo rereads
the biblical text of Ruth and Naomi in the light of the experiences of sexually traumatized and trafficked girls. As Moyo points out, such a reading is
designed to afford healing to individuals, to mobilize communal advocacy
against the trafficking of women and girls, and to repudiate the theology
of Christian rescue centers, which instruct sexually violated girls to offer
forgiveness to their offenders and gratitude for the gift of their resultant
pregnancies. Moyo draws on her own experience of sexual violation and
her activism on behalf of womens rights. The resulting essay crosses the
boundaries sometimes too tidily maintained between articles and Living It
Out pieces in JFSR and we welcome more genre-bending pieces that speak
simultaneously to the overlapping communities of the journal: the academy
and the feminist movement.
In the poetry section of this issue, poetry editor Veronica Golos has collected poems by various authors that speak to her advertised theme of doubt.
Doubt would seem to be a fitting posture for those of us who have learned to
distrust authority, whether familial, textual, traditional, religious, or political.
Nonetheless, as the persistence of this journal exemplifies, doubt need not lead
to isolation. As one of the characters in John Patrick Shanleys 2005 play entitled
Doubt: A Parable remarks, Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as
certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone.6
6
John Patrick Shanley, Doubt: A Parable (New York: Theatre Communication Group,
2005), 6.

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.2

We conclude this issue with an Across Generations conversation between

Mercy Amba Oduyoye and Oluwatomisin Oredein. Oduyoyes remarkable
career spans forty-six years and counting. Over twenty years ago, she took up
the issue of global violence against women. If we find ourselves in despair about
the numbers of women who continue to experience violence, we must nonetheless join her in taking the pledge: We vow to you and to ourselves before this
great cloud of global witnesses, seen and unseen. Never again shall we walk on
tiptoe around the globe.7

7
Mercy Amba Oduyoye, A Letter to My Ancestors, in Journey of Hope: Toward a New
Ecumenical Africa, ed. Nicholas Otieno and Hugh McCullum (Geneva: World Council of Churches,
2005), xxii.