Feminist Liberation and Studies of Women in Religion

The general rejection of Chinese religions (read: superstition) in the process of building modern China during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the suppression of Christianity as an instrument of Western imperialism in Communist China after 1949 have meant that the academic study of religion—not to mention feminist studies in religion—is just now gaining momentum in the Chinese-speaking world.¹ Perhaps the best-known work that ties women to religion is Lu Xun's famous modern Chinese novella "Blessings" (1926), in which a woman by the name of Aunt Xianglin was gravely exploited not only by poverty but also by popular "superstitious" practices. She had two unfortunate marriages and was haunted until death by the popular belief that her body would be divided in half and distributed to her two husbands in the underworld.² The story's lesson is clear: traditional religions of China could only destroy the already helpless poor—especially innocent women like Xianglin—if they were to continue. Religion did not have a place on the roadmap to modernizing women for a New China.

For feminist studies in religion, the most essential question has been whether religion is an oppressive force that exploits women or whether it has been a liberating force that provides women alternatives to the largely patriarchal culture and society around the world. Similar to what happened in the Western academy, early feminist study of religion in China began with a critical unmasking of the patriarchal construction of various traditions.³ Through this lens, centuries-old traditions like Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and other local popular religions were criticized for privileging elite men at the expense of women, children, and illiterates.⁴ Reinforced by Western missionaries' intention to save "heathens" during the nineteenth century, the first studies of women in Chinese cultures and religions recorded some of the most exploitative images of women in arranged marriages, polygamy, concubinage, slavery, and foot binding, and how Chinese religions have corroborated and endorsed them.⁵

These early studies were soon supplanted by the more general studies of women in Chinese religion that scholars began publishing in the 1980s. Since then there have been two primarily related but different directions of development in terms of academic studies of women and religion: feminist studies of religion and studies of women in the history of religions. The first category reflects a direction that determines to bring about transformation to patriarchal institutions and hierarchical structures, which have subjugated women. The second adopts a multiple level of examination in studying the history of religious traditions and cultures and pursues a more complex picture of women and their varied roles and symbolic meanings in the specific historical moments of different religions. I place Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's primary contribution to the first group of feminist studies of religion, in contrast to the second group, characterized by Caroline Walker Bynum's approach to historical studies of women in medieval Christianity in Europe. In what follows, I explain how interweaving the two approaches may further enrich and challenge studies of Chinese women and religion.

Schüssler Fiorenza's contribution to feminist studies of religion is three-fold: she rewrites history, opens up the scripture, and reconnects women with their respective religious traditions in a critical and revolutionary manner. First, in examining Christianity in its early days, she has made monumental changes to the understanding of its history as something constructive in two senses. On the one hand, Christianity was a construction made from a "kyriarchal" point of view subjugating women, the underclass, and the marginalized. On the other hand, it is to be reconstructed on a critical principle to be derived primarily from the struggling experiences of the community of women and the oppressed. In short, she does not only underline the problem of the patriarchal construction of early Christianity but also establishes a critical principle of writing the history for the present and the future.

Second, Schüssler Fiorenza's challenge to kyriarchal history aims directly at the heart of church authority. Who decided what went into the scripture and who chose what...