Secular and Religious Feminisms: A Future of Disconnection?

Introduction

This paper emerges from on-going conversations between the authors regarding a disciplinary disconnection between ‘secular’ feminisms, and ‘religious feminisms’. Although the roots of secular feminism begin in the reform work spearheaded by religious women and Christian organizations in the nineteenth century, and despite both fields contributing to the understanding of gender relations, they are two forms of analysis that rarely share common ground. On the one hand, and at best, secular feminism is neglectful of the role of the religious within women’s lives, and at worst can perceive researching women’s experiences of religion a futile exercise, tainted by a putatively patriarchal context. On the other hand, religious feminisms (both practitioners and researchers) are typically marginalized and ignored by secular feminism, but can appear hesitant in engaging with the broader development of gender studies. This uncomfortable relationship between the secular and the religious is reproduced in the disciplinary relationship between feminist studies across the academy, and the study of women, gender, religion and spirituality within religious and theological studies.

In this article, we first identify the disconnection and its expression in the academy, before moving to suggest it is connected to three interrelated factors: secular feminisms’ neglect of religion; feminist theology’s reservedness; and the sacred/secular binary (Magee, 1995). While recognized by feminist theologians and scholars of religion, we also display the level of secular/religious detachment in the most recent articulation of feminism, the third wave – despite its attention to the multiplicity of identity and experiences. These disconnections are troubling as they result in a lack of dialogue, which not only impoverishes both disciplines but also effects the way women’s experiences are understood in the public sphere (Butler et al., 2011) beyond the realms of the academy. Therefore, we argue for the importance of paying attention to religion, and finding discourses and examples that destabilize the religious and secular feminist separation.

Neglecting Religion

Religious feminists have long contemplated a disciplinary segregation preventing studies in women and religion, feminist theologies and other related subject areas from fully conversing with non-religious work about gender (Beattie, 1995, 2005; Woodhead, 1999). For instance, Ursula King has identified a ‘double blindness’ facing feminist work in theology and religious studies: the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences continue to harbour a religious ‘blind-spot’; and religious and theological studies continue to harbour a gendered ‘blind-spot’ (1995). We would further add that as ‘malestream’ academia has marginalized feminist scholarship, feminist scholarship has marginalized religion and gender. King’s use of the metaphor blindness is intended to capture the way that religious concepts and practices, belief systems and experiences in women’s lives is rarely approached outside the realm of feminist religious studies and theology. This is a common metaphor used by feminist scholars of religion to describe the lack of attention paid to the sacred and divine in the academy (Beattie, 1999, 2005; Woodhead, 1999) and as this article argues, it is difficult to disagree with this assessment. However, the adoption of this metaphor of disability to describe a negative characteristic of feminist studies is problematic, and therefore we prefer to use ‘neglect’.

Examples of the neglect of religion in women studies and feminist studies can be found in the indexes and contents pages of feminist readers and anthologies, revealing incidences where feminist theological reflection and women’s religious or spiritual experiences are generally absent. For instance, Sandra Kemp and Judith Squires’ (1997) Feminisms has been praised for its inclusive range of subjects. However, apart from a passing mention to Mary Daly as a founding figure in ecofeminism (Stabile, 1997: 509-10), and as a representative of second wave radical writing (Kemp and Squires, 1997: 4) and ‘spiritual ecofeminism’ (Mies and Shiva, 1997), there are no contributions from religious thinkers. In Maggie Humm’s (1992) Feminisms: A Reader, Daly’s Gyn/Ecology (1990) is included in the section on ‘lesbian feminism’ but no mention of her influence on radical feminist spiritualities. Strikingly, Humm’s introduction to ‘feminist theory and the academic disciplines’ considers some of the main features of feminist work in anthropology, economics, history, law, literature, media, medicine, psychoanalysis, the sciences and sociology. While this demonstrates the breadth and depth of the interdisciplinary in feminist and women’s studies, this volume omits religious studies and theology, and her overview of first wave feminism overlooks Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s biblical exegeses (1992: 56-59). ¹

Rarely is the work of feminist theologians called upon in contexts outside religious studies and even when ‘secular’ thinkers invoke divine language, argument or imagery, this aspect of their thinking is downplayed. For instance, Luce Irigaray’s anti-essentialist stance to human subjectivity has influenced feminist academic theory (Stone, 2007; Howie and Tauchert, 2007), but her work has been de-theologized by gender theorists. Tina Beattie considers Elizabeth Grosz and Margaret Whitford – two scholars responding to Irigaray – and notes that they ‘appear determined to rescue her [Irigaray] from her own mystical and religious inclinations, particularly when these focus on Christianity’ (Beattie, 1999:119). This denies the centrality of the sacred to Irigaray’s project, so evident in Divine Women (2002) and her essay ‘Equal to Whom?’ (1994) – her critique of Fiorenza’s In Memory of Her. Feminist theologians have drawn on the ‘French Feminists’ – Irigaray, Catherine Clement, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous – to explore the sacred in relation to women’s lives and experiences; ² and in another example of drawing across disciplines, have used Judith Butler’s theories of gender in order to illuminate and analyse women’s religious practices (Armour and St.Ville, 2006). While such writers (such as those named above) who have inspired contemporary gender theory are engaging with religious concepts and thought, this aspect of their work is often lost in secular feminist discussions.

Feminism’s lack of attention with regard to religion questions whether feminism is a predominantly secular movement. However, this is too remiss of the role religious women have played and continue to play throughout the stages of feminist history. Central to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s nineteenth century reform campaigns was a theological account of women’s political disenfranchisement, culminating in The Women’s Bible (1993). The evolution of post-traditional, post-Christian feminist and women’s spiritualities can be traced from Stanton’s critical stance (and writers preceding Stanton) for religious reform, through to the emergence of new spiritualities at the beginning of the 1970s that gained momentum through women-only conscious-raising groups (Eller, 1995; Klassen, 2009). These historical connections do not map directly onto the contemporary lacunae between feminist theory and feminist theology and religious studies. However, it illustrates how far apart they have drifted despite this historical interface, the occasions when self-defined feminists employ gender theory in their theology, and the occasional glances feminism makes in the direction of religion. Also, claiming that feminist and women’s studies disciplines are secular because of a lack attention to religion uncritically repeats, rather than challenges, an established and already recognized disciplinary divide occurring across feminist studies in the academy.

Feminist Theology’s Reservedness

Academic feminisms’ unreflexive secular temperament is not the only reason for the distance between sacred and secular feminism. Feminist theology has also contributed by having an unhurried response to keeping up with the pace of contemporary feminisms – a trait it recognizes in itself (Collier and Sawyer, 1999). Shelia Davaney suggests this slower start owes something to feminist theology’s interdisciplinarity, as it is: ‘parasitic of the ideas, debates and critical work already carried out by scholars in other fields’ (1997: 5). While both feminist theology and feminist religious studies, and feminist and women’s studies draw on a range of fields, for feminist theology a lag ensues when it waits and takes its cue from other branches of learning, preferring to appropriate for its own purposes other disciplinary positions developed outside of theology and religious studies. As Tina Beattie vividly notes, feminist theology is Cinderella, ‘pretending that of course she has been invited to the ball, and steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that she has been confined to the entrance hall while the ugly sisters are having a ball without her in the banqueting rooms of the ivory tower’ (1999: 117).

Linda Woodhead has used the image of the ‘ghetto’ to signify feminist theology’s location within academe. She argues that not only is feminist theology isolated from and overlooked by other branches of learning (not just feminist and women’s studies), it has also withdrawn from wider gendered debates. While it has, in the past, had to claim and protect a place for itself within and against the malestream, Woodhead is critical of what she sees as feminist theology’s reluctance to leave the relative safety of the ghetto (Woodhead, 1999).

Woodhead’s metaphor is perhaps too stark. It is difficult to leave disciplinary boundaries, or break out of the ghetto, if only a cool reception awaits from the disciplines of theology and religious studies, but also other subject areas which hold religion at arm’s length. Feminist theology is outward looking and willing to escape the ghetto. It embraces multidisciplinary approaches to the study of gender and religion by actively and deliberately making use of the tools offered by literary, cultural, social scientific, psychological, anthropological, historical, philosophical methods and methodologies to shape religious feminist research and to harness channels for change (Plaskow, 1993). This characteristic is indicative of its general desire to contribute to, rather than be derivative of, feminist theory (Chopp and Davaney, 1997). Even if feminist theology has responded hesitantly to the violence of its seclusion, it has done so by battling to bring feminist theology into productive and fruitful dialogue with other feminist theoretical interests.

A Sacred/Secular Disciplinary Divide

Penelope Margaret Magee (1995) has argued the disciplinary disconnection is the result of the sacred/secular ideological structure which codes religious studies as extraneous to academic feminism and, by extension, feminist religious scholars and theologians have been ‘marginalised or made invisible as humanist-liberal “reformers” within religions’ (1995:103). Feminists working in religion can be seen by ‘secular’ feminists as religious and therefore politically neutral and traditionalist. For instance, Judith Plaskow argues the slippage that collapses ‘religious women’ with ‘women working in religion’ is perhaps due to the close connections that the academic discipline of women and religion has with women’s faith and spiritual communities (1993:16). Or, as Leela Fernandes argues, women’s religiosity is consigned to the ‘local, “cultural” idiom of grassroots women (usually in “other” places and for “other” women), acknowledging it in the name of an uneasy cultural relativist tendency of “respecting cultural difference”’ (2003: 9; Aune et al., 2008). Religion is read as a confining institution, which is ineffective in offering women constructive transformative resources and rendered as a sign of false consciousness. ³ This pessimism is a shadowy and incongruous over hang from feminism’s own Enlightenment legacy. As ‘reason’ unseated systems of faith, and ‘religion’ became separated from the public sphere, the secular/sacred binary infiltrated Western thinking and became inscribed onto disciplinary boundaries. Feminist theologies have fallen on the wrong side of this hierarchy which prefers, in a very modern sense, secular sources.

The disconnection between secular and religious feminisms has, as we have indicated, a long pattern, at least from the burgeoning of feminist scholarship to the end of the twentieth century. As this special edition of the Journal of Feminist Theology reflects upon our feminist futures, we observe this recurring in the twenty-first century, particularly in the most recent branch of feminist theory – third wave feminism. We suggest that feminist religious studies has yet to fully consider the influence that third wave feminism may be making to women’s religious lives (Klassen, 2009) on account of its slower uptake to join in broader feminist discussions. Simultaneously, third wave feminism continues to neglect religion. We now turn to discuss these tensions, and offer an analysis on where there is camaraderie versus separation. ⁴

Disconnections in the Third Wave

During the end of the last century and in time for the new millennium, the third wave emerged as a development in contemporary feminist theory and as an active strand of the women’s movement. It has been contributing to our understandings of gender relations by embracing an eclectic range of theoretic devices to emphasize diversity in relation to women, women’s experiences and their many situated and plural contexts. It arises from within, but also signals a critical distance from second wave feminism.

It is a deliberate defiance against the post-feminist climate of a conservative ‘backlash’ claiming the death of feminism, and asserts the continuing need for the women’s movement by highlighting existing gender based discrepancies and presenting the third wave as vibrant, socially energetic and culturally savvy. It is also a departure from the second wave identification of a singular movement that took the experience of women who lived in a predominantly white, educated, colonial, and relatively affluent world as the norm, which subsequently failed to recognize those who live outside of these parameters of privilege. This critique, voiced by women of colour, womanist, mujerista, lesbian, Asian, and other contextual theorists provoked the realization that ‘woman’ was a fragile category struggling to ‘bear the weight of all contents and meanings ascribed to it’ (Gillis et al., 2007: xxi) The third wave emerges from these anti-essentialist voices dissenting from and responding to this singular category.

The third wave aims to build, as Leslie Heywood remarks, ‘an inclusive feminism that respects not only difference … but also makes allowance for different identities within a single person’ (2006a: xx). However, despite its attention to the historical and cultural specificities of feminism and patriarchy, the third wave continues to neglect religion, despite its privileging of differences and identity positions.

There are degrees of severity to feminism’s religious inattention, and there are occasions when it can seem well intentioned with regard to gender and religion. For instance, Leslie Heywood includes ‘race, ethnicity, religion, and economic standing’ as factors of difference (2006a: xx). Furthermore, Heywood’s The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopaedia of Third Wave Feminism contains entries on religion. ⁵ They are notable because there are very few sustained treatments of religion and third wave feminism apart from Ruttenburg’s (2001) Yentl’s Revenge, which is a collection of first person narratives from young, Jewish third wave feminists; Chris Klassen’s Feminist Spirituality: The Next Generation (2009), an example of current research by and on third wave feminists engaged explicitly with Christian and post Christian religious and spiritual discourses; and the recent special edition of Feminist Review on Religion and Spirituality (2011).

Usually, the sacred is often overlooked or appears only fleetingly in self-named third wave publications: Walker’s (1995) To Be Real mentions a young woman identifying as Christian and feminist who feels excluded from the ‘seamless narrative’ of feminism (xxxi); Heywood and Drake’s (1997) Third Wave Agenda claim Me’shell Ndegéocello’s ‘take on religion’ as an example of third wave revisioning of spirituality that ‘work the edges of contradiction’ (6-7); and Baumgardner and Richards’ (2000) Manifesta ‘ditched’ Wicca to concentrate on the ‘intellectual and personal ideas … and continued to have dinner with interesting new batches of women’ (16), but an explicit address of either connection or disconnection between religion and the third wave is lacking. In an entry on ‘Individualism’ in The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopaedia of Third Wave Feminism, Nel P. Sung (2006) identifies that third wave feminism distinguishes itself from its forerunners by drawing on the multiple ways that the various aspects of individual identity relate:

Young feminists of the third wave celebrated the pluralities of race, colour, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and class, sexual orientation, nationality and geography, physical disability, and age to broaden the boundaries of previous feminisms that were often narrow in scope or altogether skipped over such characteristics (Sung, 2006: 184).

Despite the long lists of identity which comprise the category of ‘woman/women’, religion is missing, or perhaps problematically (mis)assumed to be implicit in ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ or ‘culture’. ⁶ Yet ‘religion’ is a factor that intersects other identity categories, and like other categories can also be sub-divided. The religious and spiritual can be broken down according to tradition, denomination, or any number of variances which can add layers of complexity to how women define themselves. In overlooking religion, third wave feminism brackets out the complicated work religions do, in their many complex forms, in people’s lives.

If religion is considered in third wave writings, it is often treated as a paradoxical and specialist area of interest rather than examined in terms of women’s theological viewpoints, their religious and spiritual practices, or a vital structuring factor which shapes the way women attribute meaning and value. Religious identities and experiences are often conceived to be in contest with feminism. For instance, Sonja D. Curry-Johnson (2001[1995]) considers her ‘acute case of multiplicity’ as she identifies as an ‘educated, married, monogamous, feminist, Christian, African-American mother’ and the piece alludes to the hostile tension between her feminism and her religious tradition. Robin Neidorf (2001 [1995]) speaks of some of the contradictions she faces while ‘living out of the paradox’ of being Jewish and feminist (2001; Ruttenburg, 2001); Bhargavi C. Mandava (1995) reflects on a reconciliation with her Hindu heritage; and Susan Muaddi Darraj (2003) has ‘grappled with the eyebrow raising self-identification as an Arab American Feminist’ (190). In these examples, religious identity is enjoined with a feminist outlook, however, this is not an easy partnership. Third wave religious identities are presented as part of women’s broader ‘cultural’ identity, which acknowledges the influence of religion, but does not examine theology, religious practice, text, dogma or the religious as a lived aspect of identity. Also in these examples, third wave religious identities are presented as instances of a contradiction in which feminists must overcome many difficulties to engineer ways to hold their religious and political affiliations together. Many women, experience this tension (often painfully), but it too readily depicts religious feminism as a paradox and imagines contradiction as the only ways religion and feminism can co-exist.

Third wave feminism’s neglect is a trait carried through from previous feminisms, yet it is at odds with attempts to envisage feminism based upon the multiple, intersecting and complex factors of identity and experience. Taken in this light, feminism seems to be unable to divorce itself from the legacy of the Enlightenment: first, in the second wave’s repetition of hierarchical power structures (such as the claim it excluded women of colour) and second, in the third wave the separation of the ‘secular’ from the ‘religious.’

Despite feminist theology’s venturing into third wave territory, ⁷ and third wave attempts to deconstruct Enlightenment lines of thought, the relationship between these branches of feminist theory and as branches of the contemporary women’s movement remain fixed to the binary opposition between the ‘sacred’ and ‘secular.’ Our concern is that this disciplinary disconnection hampers reciprocal theoretical exchange between feminisms, and limits the flow of ideas to one direction of travel: from feminist theory to feminist theologies. As Magee (1995) has pointed out, favouring one pole in a binary oppositional relationship is repressive, anti-intellectual and elitist (Magee, 1995:105).

Feminisms: A Sacred and Secular Dialogue

The third wave’s religious neglect and feminist theology’s reservedness suspend interaction, which impoverishes both spheres. For feminist theology and feminist religious studies, a lack of engagement with the third wave risks missing out on the possible constructive and enriching challenges available by interacting with emerging lines of thought. When feminist theology is restrained, even when being multidisciplinary, it still is cautious in ways that restrict the work it can do. We therefore suggest that a feminist future involves seeking connection between the two spheres, which seems more pressing when considering the global status of women, religion and feminist studies outside academic disciplines, and the co-existence of both the secular and the religious in public sphere. ⁸

Key figures in philosophy and sociology, for whom religion is not a primary academic concern, have become interested in and puzzled by the interaction between the secular and the sacred in the public sphere. For example, Ulrich Beck devotes A God of One’s Own (2010) to the advent of the individualized God in late modern western societies. He examines this from the standpoint of a staunch secularist who is nonetheless eager to move beyond the secularization paradigm and concentrate on exploring the role of religion as a valid social force with a potential for creating peace, and not simply conflict. Beck’s message is clear: we live in a world characterized by a high degree of individualization, reflexivity and risk, and a world-condition strongly infused with cosmopolitan tendencies. Religion remains relevant in this context because individuals continue to engage with religious ideas and experiences in order to make sense of their lives, even though increasingly they do so outside the context of religious institutions. Similarly, Jurgen Habermas has paid considerable attention to the need for a dialogue between religion and the secular, without either necessarily giving up their specific modes of expression in the context of increasingly multicultural and complex western societies. According to Habermas, in order to foster shared citizenship in democratic, multicultural societies, both secular and religious sides need to ‘accept an interpretation of the relation between faith and knowledge that enables them to live together in a self-reflective manner’ (2004: 20). ⁹ This statement could well frame our own argument: both secular and religious feminists must engage in an act of mutual recognition through acknowledging each other’s languages as legitimate.

In regard to the theorizing of the relationship between the sacred and the secular in the public sphere, voices include those of feminist philosophers, Judith Butler and Rosi Braidotti. Butler echoes the sentiment expressed by Beck when she suggests that both secularism and religion come in many shapes and forms, many of which verge on absolutist and dogmatic. She goes on to argue that:

If religion functions as a key matrix for the articulation of values, and if most people in this global condition look to religion to guide their thinking on such matters, we would make a political error in claiming that religion ought to be overcome in each and every instance (2008: 13).

In the same vein, Rosi Braidotti comments on the challenge the postsecular turn presents to European feminism as the latter needs to learn to grapple with the possibility of political subjectivities being expressed through piety and spirituality (often together with their institutional baggage) (2008: 2). If we want to move away from unreflexive secularism that usually goes hand in hand with anti-Islamic and xenophobic attitudes, we need to take monotheistic religions seriously and analyse them in the context of ‘shifting global power relations’ (Braidotti, 2008: 4).

These interventions are timely and laudable. Unfortunately, as Linda Woodhead points out in her response to Butler, ‘to date, it has to be said, religions and religious minorities in the west have shown themselves to be more willing to make this compromise than have enlightened secularists’ (2008: 58). This is indeed the case. Even those ‘secularists’ who appear willing to compromise and enter a dialogue with feminists considering the sacred and religious lives of women tend to think and write about religion in a very particular way, which is not always conducive to fostering a constructive exchange. Secular feminist thinkers sometimes equate religious women with ethnic minority groups that need accounting for in the constellation of unequal power relationships in modern western societies. Although not guilty of this charge herself, Judith Butler, usefully for our purposes, cites the case of the Dutch citizenship test where migrants are asked to state their feelings upon seeing a photo of two men kissing. The correct answer for the applicant to succeed is unquestionable acceptance of sexual freedom as an indicator of progress and modernity – the core values of Dutch society (2008: 3). This is, of course, problematic, as it imposes an ultimatum on some migrants: if you want to become one of us, you must relinquish, or at least moderate, your religious worldview. The same logic has been applied to the ‘affaire du foulard’ where Muslim women who choose to veil remain, despite numerous debates on the subject, treated as victims of false consciousness, and those who speak out against veiling and abandon the practice themselves are applauded by secular feminists as enlightened and on the right side of the fence (Reilly, 2011).

Another example is the debate on female circumcision where religion tends to be singled out as the oppressive mechanism that drives the practice, and little attention is paid to the myriad of social, cultural and historical factors that operate to maintain the custom. It would be inaccurate to suggest that religion is entirely absent from the discourses used to justify the practice but, as Mary Nyangweso Wangila amongst others, argues at length, it cannot be isolated and blamed as the universally valid reason for female circumcision to continue (2007). As always, a combination of cultural and historical factors must be examined in each case in order to determine what, if any, role religious justifications play. In Kenya, for example, religious explanations for everyday occurrences saturate the collective consciousness and there exists no formal distinction between the sacred and the profane. Although religion is used to justify female circumcision, it is equally drawn upon to oppose it (Wangila, 2007: 38). The custom is motivated as much by community pressure as it is by religious beliefs. The solution is not to make Kenyan women secular but rather to empower them so that they can end the practice themselves (Wangila, 2007: 72). In Wangila’s own words:

because religion is one of the most powerful institutions for perpetuating sexism and patriarchal authority, it also has the potential to address the very problem of oppression. Religion can be a powerful instrument to deconstruct oppressive social stereotypes and to work to transform attitudes and social behaviour (2007: 98).

As we have seen in the recent case of the Russian feminist band Pussy Riot, religion can be mobilized as a tool for any social, cultural or political machination, be it feminist or not. Religion in itself is not a force that can liberate, or dominate at a whim but like any other social phenomenon, is dependent on the relations of power in a particular time and place. On 17 August 2012 three members of Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. The three women performed an anti-Putin song, a ‘punk prayer’, in Christ the Saviour Cathedral, Moscow, February 2012. Their performance was deemed blasphemous by Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Orthodox Church. The case illustrates the general argument of this article. Here we have a Riotgrrl-inspired feminist group, speaking out against the corrupt political system in Russia by staging a protest in the building which symbolizes the support of the dominant religious institution for the Russian government. Patriarch Kirill has famously referred to Vladimir Putin as ‘a miracle from God’ and the close relationship between the Orthodox Church and the government is no secret despite the official separation of church and state in Russia (Cohen, 2012). Secular feminism is pitched directly against organized religion and the latter wins by charging the former with disrespect, obscenity and blasphemy, all of which could be understood as challenges to the established (patriarchal) order. Secular feminism and religion are incompatible at best and natural enemies at worst. What makes this case multifaceted and complex is that the members of Pussy Riot chose the cathedral for their performance because it is an emblem of what they were protesting against, rather than because they objected to religion per se. Religion is neither the oppressor, nor the liberator here but it is a clear instance of ‘religion’ as a symbol of tradition and social order being hijacked for political causes. The Russian case shows the complexity of the matter. In the case of religious women, their piety and practices have been too often hijacked in order to illustrate a cause that has little to do with them as individuals.

Beck, Habermas, Butler and Braidotii all refer to the public sphere where multiculturalism has become a lived reality and thus issues of secular/religious divide cannot be ignored if societies are to function and all citizens are to be treated fairly and equally. We are extending this line of thought to academic disciplines: secular feminism has been declared dead by many commentators and religious feminism remains invisible and marginalized.

Identifying, analysing and exploring the disconnection between disciplinary feminist discourses is also salient if we consider the status of European Christianity. Christianity and feminism have found themselves in a curiously similar historical moment in their trajectories. Traditional, organized Christianity has mutated alongside social change in the West, where it could be said we have witnessed a move from cathedrals to cults (Bruce, 1996), from church-based, organized religion to more fragmented spiritualities that are also individualized and commercialized (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005). This does not mean that Christianity is dead – it has adjusted to the changing social condition.

Feminism is not dead either – despite some declaring its demise – but it has also mutated, as illustrated in the emergence of a third strand that identifies the individualized post-modern fluid self that is seeking new ways of ‘being and doing feminism’ (Heywood and Drake, 1997; Redfern and Aune, 2010). Hence, both feminism and Christianity have been adjusting to the changing times and may be misrecognized as dead when in fact they simply modified their modus operandi. If we live in a post-secular society, this is a good moment for secular and religious feminisms to enter into dialogue.

For the third wave, if it is concerned with the tangible and particular realities of women’s existence, then it must recognize and assess religious and spiritual beliefs, practices and experiences. Paula M. Cooey (1997) has argued for the importance of ‘paying attention’ to the role of religious teachings and practices in the construction of identities and experiences. She argues that religion – positively and negatively – is a vital component to the production of cultures and values. When contemporary forms of feminism and politics fall short of addressing the lived, embodied reality of religion within women’s lives and assume it the unconquerable, harmful and tyrannical final stronghold of patriarchy, it overlooks the ways in which religion in traditional and new emerging forms are sources and sites of transformation and empowerment for women. Furthermore the ‘either/or’ underpinning the sacred/secular divide is contrary to the hybridity, plurality and diversity that marks third wave discourses and is incongruous to the third wave search for instances of the ‘and’ (Walker, 1995: xxxv). These characteristics underpin attempts to recognize women’s individual differences and personal agency as the basis for commonality, thus creating ample theoretical and ethnographic space – yet to be fully enacted by contemporary feminist theory – for the inclusion of women’s religious and spiritual theologies and experiences. Third wave feminism contains the tools within its ideological framework to approach and incorporate the insights of religious feminists and women’s experiences of the sacred, but has yet to do so.

Secular feminism’s remissness of women’s religious lives is incongruous when the majority of women globally are engaged in religious and spiritual practice and tradition. As well as the examples highlighted, we also note women’s presence within the rapidly growing contemporary branches of Christianity in South America, the African continent and some parts of Asia. It is only a relatively small minority of women, namely white, relatively affluent and educated women in the West that are usually and already the primary concern of feminist scholarship, for whom religion (Christianity) has recently become seemingly less important.

If our feminist future maintains a mission to locally empower women, then it is not sufficient for feminism to consider or impose a secular language of gender analysis onto the lives of women whose values are framed by religion. Instead, secular feminism must learn the language of religious women globally through engagement and dialogue to begin to account for women in relation to her many identities and experiences. Third wave feminism (and secular feminism more widely), by continuing to attend to women’s individual and diverse differences without comprehensively factoring in their religious and spiritual identities, undermines its claim to encompass the many facets of women’s lives, and fails to challenge the either/or binary underpinning its religious neglect. For feminist religious scholars, increased interaction with feminist discourses enlarges opportunities for conversing and exchanging with other fields of feminist enquiry – including the third wave.