Introduction

Much work of late has focused on critiquing the secularization thesis, or at least its dominant versions. According to those versions, religion will gradually retreat to the private space of hearts and minds or dissipate amid the inexorable wave of "scientific progress."¹ It perhaps does not take a scholar of religion to point out the obvious: contrary to expectations, religion remains a potent and public force in much of the world. Feminist scholars of religion as well as scholars of gender in multiple disciplines have done careful work sifting through religion's persistence, pointing to its proclivity for producing conservative gender codes and boundaries, as well as its capacity to offer women new leadership roles and political platforms. Consequently, scholars of religion have come to see that the secular is not a singular gradual and global phenomenon, even if they do not always understand that the secular is not synonymous with women's emancipation.²

Nonetheless, analyses of secularization continue to unwittingly reproduce its key binaries: public and private, secular and religious, faith and reason. Moreover, recent portrayals of the secular as an encompassing and enabling network of forces and discourses suggest waning interest in tracing secularity's differential effects, depending on one's gender, race, class, ethnicity, and religiosity.³ The essays gathered here significantly advance our understanding of the secular. They not only interrogate its recurrent binaries but also supply well-crafted instantiations of the diversity of secularisms in different contexts, as well as the varying privileges that different religiosities—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim—can rely upon in negotiating with states. In addition, these essays seek to illuminate the genders, races, and sexualities authorized by the secular. In doing so, the authors keep sight of a feminist question that is too frequently absent from studies of secularity: who gains and who loses in particular configurations of the secular?

Marion Maddox's essay, "'Rise Up Warrior Princess Daughters': Is Evangelical Women's Submission a Mere Fairy Tale?" examines the rhetoric directed at the numerous women affiliated with the international Pentecostal megachurch Hillsong based in Sydney, Australia. Women are urged—indeed commanded—to accommodate or moderate their husbands' volatility, to be beautiful princesses for their lover God and husbands, and to submit to their husbands' authority with chins held high. As Maddox notes, a number of scholars see these gender codes as rhetorical ploys to distinguish a brand of Christianity that continues to blend into late-capitalist consumer culture. They point out that a far more complex practice of partnership is actually the rule in most evangelical households. Maddox notices, however, that this rhetoric is combined with surprising encouragement for women to be warriors preparing for battle and eventual societal and political dominion. Maddox reasons that it is mistaken to see the rhetoric of authority and submission as confined to the domestic sphere—a typical mistake of conventional readings of the secular, which see private spaces as the preferred stage for religious rhetoric and performance. She illuminates how this rhetoric works as a political theology, dictating church and citizenship practices in a context of conservative Christian dominance of politics in Australia. Although Maddox notes the dissonance between Hillsong's gender politics and the recent ascensions of Australia's first woman prime minister, Julia Gillard, and first woman governor-general, Quentin Bryce, she remains concerned about a broader cultural ambivalence as to women's agency—suggesting not a contrast but a resonance between evangelical and secular portrayals of women's power.

Maddox's analysis also suggests a secularization of kyriarchal power. Evangelical talk of men's ineffable and untamable wildness, danger, and leadership seems halfhearted. There is increasing mention of men's shortcomings and insecurities. (One is reminded of the story of the emperor with no clothes.) Having exposed male vulnerability and the fabrication of their power, women at Hillsong are accordingly urged to pray for and defer to men's weaknesses. In other words, women's help is needed to reassure and radiate phallic power back to men.

In her article, "In This Southern Land: Gender, Nation, and Saint-Making in Australia," Kathleen McPhillips reminds readers that long...