Project MUSE®: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.daily12026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 21 (2005) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of Feminist Studies in ReligionTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion1553-39138755-4178Latest articles in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editors’ Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969450
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In the last several months, the Trump administration has scrutinized the holdings and programming of libraries and schools across the United States. This scrutiny has even reached some of the most prominent libraries in the country. In May 2025, President Trump fired Dr. Carla Hayden, the first woman and first African American to serve as the Librarian of Congress. That same month, the Pentagon ordered the removal of books from military libraries that were tagged by search terms including affirmative action, anti-racism, diversity, transgender, and white privilege. At the Naval Academy, this triggered the removal of books related to the Holocaust, feminism, and civil rights, including Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallEditors’ Introduction2025-09-12text/htmlen-USEditors’ Introduction2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®97782026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12A Womanist Way Out: Reimagining God and Sexuality in Black Women’s Fiction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969451
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When she wrote The Color Purple, Alice Walker “sat down upon the Earth and asked its permission to posit a different way from that in which [she] was raised.”1 Raised in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Color Walker proposed “a viable alternative to Christian dogma”: a spirituality that affirmed queer sexuality and prioritized Black women’s pleasure.2 The different, womanist way found in The Color Purple highlights the harmful inadequacy of evangelical Protestant Christianity’s heteronormative gender and sexual ethics.3 Reading The Color Purple alongside short stories in Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, this article explores the lasting significance of Walker’s “different way” for Black
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallA Womanist Way Out: Reimagining God and Sexuality in Black Women’s Fiction2025-09-12text/htmlen-USA Womanist Way Out: Reimagining God and Sexuality in Black Women’s Fiction2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®798682026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12Telling Her Story: Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink and Jewish Feminist Narrative
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969452
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Rachel Kadish’s 2017 novel, The Weight of Ink, recounts the fictional life of seventeenth-century Jewish scribe Ester Velasquez as she is encountered, in the year 2000, by scholars Helen Watt and Aaron Levy. The novel’s frame structure—a story within a story—spotlights the contemporary reader’s work to deliberately piece together Ester’s account from long-forgotten pages. The Weight of Ink presents reading and writing as a disciplined labor, and as a method to encounter and connect with figurative ancestors. The novel exemplifies a broader trend in contemporary Jewish American women’s fiction, one in which women characters come to know Jewish foremothers by recovering and retelling an ancestral woman’s
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallTelling Her Story: Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink and Jewish Feminist Narrative2025-09-12text/htmlen-USTelling Her Story: Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink and Jewish Feminist Narrative2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®887202026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12Why We Need Womanist Ways: A Means of Liberation for Black Churchwomen
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969453
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I first learned about the power of womanist theology when I was well into my thirties. I read books and attended conferences where Black women scholars spoke of its impact on their lives. I found myself encompassed by womanist scholars who taught me to truly love—myself, freedom in Christ, Black women, the color purple, and the wonder of the moon. The words of womanist scholars have changed me. They mapped pathways to freedom beyond the walls of churches and other institutions. In the midst of dense academic rhetoric, I heard a call. A call to come home to myself.We set out for the hotel ballroom that was transformed into a sanctuary for revival. My three friends and I had anticipated going to hear Juanita Bynum
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallWhy We Need Womanist Ways: A Means of Liberation for Black Churchwomen2025-09-12text/htmlen-USWhy We Need Womanist Ways: A Means of Liberation for Black Churchwomen2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®448712026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12Listening to the Audible Voices of Indonesian Postcolonial Feminist Theology
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969454
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Throughout history, feminist theology has faced challenges in its efforts toward women’s liberation. One such challenge, particularly from marginalized communities, is that gender inequality—as its primary focus—has been deemed insufficient as the sole framework for addressing women’s subjugation globally.1 This has led to the emergence of more interdisciplinary feminist theological thinking, with the incorporation of postcolonial analysis in feminist theology serving as one notable example.2 The goal of this movement is to present a feminist theological voice that recognizes the complex and multifaceted identities of women. This goal is also embraced by Indonesian feminist theological discourse.3I would also
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallListening to the Audible Voices of Indonesian Postcolonial Feminist Theology2025-09-12text/htmlen-USListening to the Audible Voices of Indonesian Postcolonial Feminist Theology2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®963972026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12Shifting the Critique from the Ten Bridesmaids to the Bridegroom: A Postcolonial Feminist Reading of Matthew 25:1–13
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969455
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This paper aims to color the interpretation of the parable of the ten bridesmaids in Matthew 25:1–13.1 It reads with suspicion the dichotomy—wise vs. foolish—that Matthew uses to talk about the kingdom of heaven, a dichotomy that leads readers to identify with the wise and condemn the foolish. The guidelines and its benefits are pretty clear: the bridegroom will open the door to the wedding banquet for the five wise young women and those who align themselves with them. Conversely, the foolish women and their allies will never be admitted to the banquet because they fail to meet the bridegroom’s standard in welcoming him.Through a postcolonial feminist approach, I demonstrate that the labeling of “foolish” and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallShifting the Critique from the Ten Bridesmaids to the Bridegroom: A Postcolonial Feminist Reading of Matthew 25:1–132025-09-12text/htmlen-USShifting the Critique from the Ten Bridesmaids to the Bridegroom: A Postcolonial Feminist Reading of Matthew 25:1–132025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®862722026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12PANAAWTM Continues to Live! A History and the Future of Transnational Asian/American Feminist Theologies
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969456
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Since its founding in the 1980s, the Pacific, Asian, and North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry (PANAAWTM) has been instrumental in shaping Asian/American feminist theologies.1 This article traces the organization’s historical development and thematic shifts, highlighting its critical contributions to theological discourse, justice, and solidarity. Through a chronological and thematic analysis, it examines how PANAAWTM has offered a transformative platform for women and nonbinary people of Asian heritage to articulate their experiences, challenge dominant theological paradigms, and reimagine faith through transnational feminist perspectives. The organization has advanced theological thought while
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallPANAAWTM Continues to Live! A History and the Future of Transnational Asian/American Feminist Theologies2025-09-12text/htmlen-USPANAAWTM Continues to Live! A History and the Future of Transnational Asian/American Feminist Theologies2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®535852026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12PANAAWTM and the Inner Landscape
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969457
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Boyung Lee’s article describes PANAAWTM’s development in the past forty years, discussing changes in its structure, the various PANAAWTM’s anthologies, highlights of its meetings, and evolving concerns over the decades. As someone who has journeyed with PANAAWTM since its inception, I want to share how PANAAWTM has shaped my personal and professional life by reflecting on changes in my inner landscape. The networks we participate in and the friends we make influence our psychic lives.When I cofounded PANAAWTM in the mid-1980s, we chose the name Asian Women Theologians because most of us were international graduate students in theological schools in the northeast United States. I primarily identified myself as Asian
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallPANAAWTM and the Inner Landscape2025-09-12text/htmlen-USPANAAWTM and the Inner Landscape2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®120512026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12A Living, Expanding Network
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969458
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Many thanks to Boyung Lee for a comprehensive and inspiring overview of PANAAWTM’s first forty years, its current opportunities, and its potential future. As someone who holds memories of PANAAWTM that go back to the late 1980s, I am moved to reflect on its expanding network over time, which has been both personally meaningful and professionally significant, and impactful for so many others. That expansion, now framed transnationally and globally, has placed PANAAWTM in a position to do new and necessary work in an era that is witness to global crises on an unprecedented scale.As a dynamic network, PANAAWTM welcomes equally members who come to every meeting, as well as those who may attend only as their schedules
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallA Living, Expanding Network2025-09-12text/htmlen-USA Living, Expanding Network2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®112932026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12“While There Is Life, There Is Hope”
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969459
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Before I was born, my Ninang Eliz (ninang means “godmother” in Tagalog), the Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Tapia, who was one of PANAAWTM’s foremothers, refused to take “no” for an answer at the visa counter. She wanted to pursue her PhD in theology and would not be turned away. My mother followed in her footsteps and met my father at the Pacific School of Religion, where Ninang Eliz completed her master’s degree before going on to Claremont School of Theology to complete her PhD. Ninang Eliz/Dr. Tapia passed away from cancer this past June 5, 2025, and I am grieving and reflecting on her legacy. I want to honor the walls she broke down and the gardens she planted for us and for the next generations.In a chapter Dr. Tapia
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmall“While There Is Life, There Is Hope”2025-09-12text/htmlen-US“While There Is Life, There Is Hope”2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®119792026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12Witnessing PANAAWTM’s Embodied Praxis of Solidarity
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969460
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Boyoung Lee opens her article by saying “since its founding in the 1980s, PANAAWTM has been instrumental in shaping Asian/American feminist theologies” (91). As a first-generation Kachin feminist theologian, it is my profound honor to bear witness to PANAAWTM’s embodied praxis of solidarity in aiding the birth of Kachin feminist theology.1I first attended PANAAWTM in 2017, and what I witnessed remains seared in my heart and continues to shape my work as a theological educator and writer. The opening ritual, followed by the theme “When Women Lead,” honored women leaders from diverse Asian/American groups. Hearing the names of powerful women leaders—known and unknown, from the Bible to Burma—my heart rejoiced; I had
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallWitnessing PANAAWTM’s Embodied Praxis of Solidarity2025-09-12text/htmlen-USWitnessing PANAAWTM’s Embodied Praxis of Solidarity2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®110632026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12Dancing on the Water: A Story of a Messy Theology
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969461
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Boyung Lee’s inspiring and cartographic essay on the history of PANAAWTM and its role in shaping and orienting “the future of transnational Asian/American feminist theologies” provides a solid grounding for the ecofeminist theological imaginative response I offer here, especially in relation to the three signifiers of PANAAWTM’s history and vision—justice, healing, and transformation.I live in the multicultural, Muslim-majority, and maritime country of Indonesia, and this shapes my response. My perspective is embedded in my intersectional theological background as a Christian feminist-ecumenist-interfaith activist, lecturer, researcher, and ordained minister. It is also shaped by the compatible but often competing
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallDancing on the Water: A Story of a Messy Theology2025-09-12text/htmlen-USDancing on the Water: A Story of a Messy Theology2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®98112026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12De/Cyphering the Menu: The Flavors of PANAAWTM-Style Mentoring
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969462
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The word mentor or a variation appears eighteen times in Boyung Lee’s essay. This averages out to about one appearance per page, a literal example of how mentoring forms a small but dedicated and ongoing part of the life of PANAAWTM. As a PANAAWTM mentee and a PANAAWTM mentor, I want to share how their intergenerational work of Asian/American feminist praxis has and continues to guide me as a theologian, scholar, and leader. I experience PANAAWTM-style mentoring as the work of de/cyphering, a term that I hope bridges and disrupts the binary meanings between decipher and cypher, allowing them to maintain their unique meanings while complexifying and connecting them.The first way I experienced mentoring was through
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallDe/Cyphering the Menu: The Flavors of PANAAWTM-Style Mentoring2025-09-12text/htmlen-USDe/Cyphering the Menu: The Flavors of PANAAWTM-Style Mentoring2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®148892026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12Might This be the Time to Broaden the Reach of Feminist Theology?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969463
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I appreciate Boyung Lee for painstakingly documenting PANAAWTM’s four decades of work that has shaped and transformed feminist theological discourse and praxis. Such critical institutional memory work needs to be shared to underscore PANAAWTM’s impactful legacy and to avoid reinventing the wheel through generations to come.The world is on fire, both literally and figuratively. Imperialist military violence and its dreadful aftermath persist. Climate crisis continues to pose planetary yet “uneven” challenges, affecting communities disproportionately. The global rise of antifeminist “far-right” forces, manifested and articulated in various contexts, also increasingly targets feminists, LGBTQIA+ people, antiracism
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallMight This be the Time to Broaden the Reach of Feminist Theology?2025-09-12text/htmlen-USMight This be the Time to Broaden the Reach of Feminist Theology?2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®166222026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969464
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For the 2024 Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, Feminist Studies in Religion cosponsored a book conversation panel for Marriage in the Bible: What Do the Texts Say? Jennifer Bird’s recent publication argues that the Bible does not take a specific stance on marriage, which counters the US sociopolitical context in which claims are often made about biblical marriage in support of conservative legal and social policies. Instead, the respondents in this book conversation confirm that Bird invites readers to an honest and exegetically rich review of biblical stories, laws, commands, and sayings based on their meaning in their original contexts. The authors shared their original comments in a panel format and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallIntroduction2025-09-12text/htmlen-USIntroduction2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®24552026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12Marriage: Making Babies or Making Kin? On Jennifer Bird’s Marriage in the Bible
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969465
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I come to Jennifer Bird’s latest book, Marriage in the Bible: What Do the Texts Say? (2023), as a Hebrew Bible scholar who has written about several of the topics she discusses. I am also a teacher who already finds Bird’s work useful for students. When I was academic dean at Chicago Theological Seminary, Bird offered an online course for us based on one of her previous books, Permission Granted: Take the Bible into Your Own Hands (2015). Students in her course responded very well to it, with some suggesting that Bird’s book should be required for anyone who wants to talk about the Bible with the general public. I also used Permission Granted as a textbook in a course on sex, gender, and kinship in the Bible, where
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallMarriage: Making Babies or Making Kin? On Jennifer Bird’s Marriage in the Bible2025-09-12text/htmlen-USMarriage: Making Babies or Making Kin? On Jennifer Bird’s Marriage in the Bible2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®189152026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12The End(s) of Marriage: The Empowering Work of Jennifer Bird’s Marriage in the Bible
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969466
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Cultural evolution provides us with the opportunity to seize control of the means of sexuality, reproduction, and socialization, and to make conscious decisions to liberate human sexual life from the archaic relationships which deform it.In 2017, I officiated the wedding between my cousin and her husband. When we came to the rehearsal, she requested that I ask: “Who gives this woman away in marriage?” As a queer feminist, every bone in my body objected to the idea of this tradition. I maintain that my wedding gift to the couple was—with as much of a smile as I could maintain—asking my uncle to give my closest cousin away to a man I only vaguely knew, all while possessing the legal and sacred authority to officiate
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallThe End(s) of Marriage: The Empowering Work of Jennifer Bird’s Marriage in the Bible2025-09-12text/htmlen-USThe End(s) of Marriage: The Empowering Work of Jennifer Bird’s Marriage in the Bible2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®202712026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12Disrupting Notions of a Bible Marriage in an Age of Trad Wives: A Review of Jennifer Bird’s Marriage in the Bible
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969467
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In a recent class that focused on gendered roles in the New Testament, my students explored the phenomenon of trad wives. The concept of trad wives has evolved from promoting traditionally aligned cishet gender roles with a focus on stay-at-homes wives and mothers to what Sophie Elmhirst’s recent New Yorker article calls “a money-making exercise and an amped-up, kink version of cottagecore with political and religious overtones.”1 Steeped in white supremacist ideology, Christian nationalism, and glorified misogynistic submission, trad wives have found a growing niche propelled by social media influencers emulating 1950s white middle-class housewives in heels and aprons. The Christian Right has also latched onto
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallDisrupting Notions of a Bible Marriage in an Age of Trad Wives: A Review of Jennifer Bird’s Marriage in the Bible2025-09-12text/htmlen-USDisrupting Notions of a Bible Marriage in an Age of Trad Wives: A Review of Jennifer Bird’s Marriage in the Bible2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®144632026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12A Wicked Look at Marriage in the Bible
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969468
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In 2024, Universal Pictures invested untold resources to ensure the world knew that the movie Wicked and its central characters, Glinda and Elphaba, were headed to movie screens across the globe! Walmart offers a Wicked-themed mac and cheese, Crocs launched their Elphaba clogs, Build-A-Bear has an Elphaba gift set, and I suspect some of you packed your earthly goods in a soft pink piece of Wicked-themed BEIS luggage.1 When I look at a screen, I see a movie trailer, Cynthia Erivo belting phrases from “Defying Gravity” in the aisle of Target, or TikTokers imitating Ariana’s choreography from “What Is This Feeling.” The movie release has become a cultural phenomenon, and—as one who loved the Broadway adaptation of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallA Wicked Look at Marriage in the Bible2025-09-12text/htmlen-USA Wicked Look at Marriage in the Bible2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®131212026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12It’s Not About Marriage: Sexual Ethics in the Bible
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/969469
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“Your body, my choice!” This phrase’s older antecedent, “My body, my choice,” was popularized in the 1960s as a rallying cry of the reproductive rights and sexual freedom movements in the United States. It was also influential in the late 1970s to support reform and implementation of marital rape laws. Nick Fuentes, a far-right, white, cisgender internet personality in the incel (involuntarily celibate) movement and avid Trump supporter, posted the revised anthem “Your body, my choice” on X following Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) reported that his post was “viewed more than 90 million times and reposted nearly 4,000 times on the platform.”1The
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/294/image/coversmallIt’s Not About Marriage: Sexual Ethics in the Bible2025-09-12text/htmlen-USIt’s Not About Marriage: Sexual Ethics in the Bible2025-09-122025TWOProject MUSE®230482026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-09-12