Transforming the Master Narrative: How Women Shift the Religious Subject

A religious master narrative is in place that is currently directing many religious activities in Western culture. At the same time there are many ways that we can think about religious subjects and how the inclusion of women in the pulpit transforms the religious subject, subverts the master narrative, and offers new theological discourses. I certainly see evidence that the religious master narrative—in which males are privileged by culture, society, and the church—continues to gain new strength, power, and renewed reinforcement (for example, with the new edicts from the Southern Baptist Convention against women in the pulpit and the roles of women as subordinate to men). Yet I also recognize that the religious master narrative is being deconstructed and reimagined in positive new ways because some women are also claiming their right to all the roles and possibilities within some religions, including the rights and powers associated with the pulpit. Although many women are reluctant to use feminist language in reference to what they are doing, the inclusion of women's roles in the pulpit confirms that their endeavors are feminist to the core. The fact that they do not claim their efforts as feminist does not diminish the fact that their work is feminist and effective.

The French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard is perhaps the first to call a directive narrative, a "master narrative" or a "grand narrative." ¹ Lyotard points out that until we recognize that there is a master narrative in place and that we have all been participants in the structuring and application of that master narrative can we call it into question, examine it, and ask ourselves whether or not we want to change it. Until this recognizing moment, he claims, the master narrative has been acting invisibly. In fact, he argues that even those who are oppressed by the master narrative are complicit in its survival and effectiveness. ² In terms of a religious master narrative that has, by and large, transcended all distinctions of race, creed, and denomination, this essay seeks to illustrate how women in the pulpit serve to challenge the religious master narrative.

Each of the following points illustrates the ways in which women in the pulpit shift the religious subject and challenge the male-identified religious master narrative by their presence, voice, and experiences. I acknowledge that many of these points overlap and that my outline of them as separate items is largely arbitrary. Nevertheless, separation of the eight points can be beneficial.

My first point examines how the physical presence of women in religious contexts changes the subject of religion because it changes the positionality of the religious subject or participant. Contemporary women who centrally and actively participate in religious contexts and speak with authority in these contexts further change the religious subject. Religions in which only men enter the primary sanctuary and where only men are allowed to pray and speak are intentionally naming the religious subject as male. Modifications to this model occur in religious contexts where women are allowed in the sanctuary but where male clergy and religious potency are still endorsed, as evidenced in clerical garb vested with the inscriptions of power and authority, and (again) where praying, speaking, and preaching are restricted to men. These modified models still intentionally name the religious subject as male. Yet often in the most restrictive of religious contexts, when the female subject makes her presence known she forces a shift in the religious subject.

For example, some of my earliest field research took place in small, rural Pentecostal churches in southern Indiana and later in southern Missouri. ³ The master narrative of these conservative, even fundamentalist, charismatic congregations supports an injunction that refuses to recognize women as authorities who can speak. In homes, communities, and the church women are enjoined to listen and not speak. Men are the heads of the family, the decision...