Ces dernires annes, lintroduction de mthodologies transdisciplinaires et interculturelles a dgag de nouveaux champs de recherche pour les tudes religieuses

et pour les tudes de genre. Ces domaines sont touchs par une double ccit : la plupart des tudes de genre contemporaines sont aveugles quant aux religions, tandis que les tudes religieuses, quant elles, ignorent encore la notion de genre. Reprenant le conseil mthodologique de Randi R. Warne de faire le gender-critical turn ( virage de la critique genre ), Ursula King, professeure de thologie et dtudes religieuses Bristol, et Tina Beattie, professeure dtudes catholiques Londres, promeuvent une nouvelle forme de recherche scientifique aspirant dcentrer la masculinit comme norme et idal humains. Le lien entre genre et religion a de nombreux effets pratiques, ainsi le genre, la religion et la diversit doivent senvisager de manire synthtique. Cest ce que ce recueil darticles se propose de faire.

In recent years, the introduction of new interdisciplinary and cross-cultural methodologies has opened up fresh fields of study for both religious studies and gender studies. These fields are affected with a double blindness: most contemporary gender studies are religion-blind, while studies in religion remain gender-blind. With reference to Randi R. Warnes methodological guideline to make the gender-critical turn1, Ursula King, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies in Bristol, and Tina Beattie, Professor of Catholic Studies in London, promote a new kind of scientific research, which seeks to decentre maleness as the human norm and ideal. The relationship between gender and religion has many practical implications, and gender, religion and diversity do not exist independently from each other. Patterns of gender are deeply embedded throughout all religions and the scientific approach of diversity as any form of otherness entails a risk of social and political violence imperialism, orientalism, neocolonialism, to mention only a few as well as one of epistemological violence. GENDER, RELIGION AND DIVERSITY Cross-Cultural Perspectives

This collection of articles was published in 2004. In the first part of the book, several fundamental theoretical and methodological questions are presented. This is the goal claimed by the authors: This first section gives a sense of the increasingly diverse theoretical perspectives that inform the study of religions, as questions of gender, culture, ethnicity and plurality intersect with postmodernist and post-colonialist theories of subjectivity, difference and otherness to challenge existing paradigms and methods. Therefore, the authors aim to provide a completely new approach of gender and religion studies, as the first article, written by Rita M. Gross, illustrates it. Where have we been? Where do we need to go? : Womens studies and gender in religion and feminist theology Rita M. Gross, specialist of Buddhism and Feminism and Professor Emerita of Comparative Studies in Religion at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, presents the current status of research in the study of gender in religion and that of feminist theology, as well as the problems these encounter. Both disciplines, even if somehow related to each other, have to be clearly distinguished, in order to provide research on gender and its scholars with more objectivity and legitimacy. If the author admits that there is no neutral place from where one could simultaneously observe and report on
1

Randi R. Warne, Making the Gender-Critical Turn, Secular Theories on Religion, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000, pp. 249-260

religion, and as a consequence the study of women in religions has to remain descriptive, observing specific scientific methods, including and organizing all relevant data. Conversely, feminism and feminist theology contain tend to be normative and thus can hardly be considered as academic. It seems that there could be a contradiction between being a feminist and doing cross-cultural studies, since empathy and rash reflections cannot lay the foundations for a thoroughly descriptive work. Ms. Gross exposes in the first part of her article what she calls the paradigm shift in models of humanity that has occurred in the last decades. This most important accomplishment made it possible to pass from an androcentric to an androgynous and inclusive model of humanity in the study of social sciences. An androgynous model focuses on both male and female, making the enlargement of the study of gender to both man and woman possible. As Rita M. Gross writes: We need to do whatever it takes to undermine the assumption that gender is as womens issue, is another term that can be used interchangeably with women. By this point, the author points out that not enough men feel comfortable with these topics. The literature about minorities is often taught by and for minorities (shall they be women, Native Americans, gays or lesbians). Therefore these subjects remain ignored by dominant cultural and social groups. How can we still justify the marginalization of these topics? As long as they are confined to the margins of mainstream academic interest, it will remain very tempting to produce normative subjective works lacking scientific cogency. Last but not least, the Eurocentric and Christian-centered biases of most scholars in gender and theological studies have to be addressed because of the cross-cultural and inclusive aims such studies should promote: Given the paradigm shift from less inclusive to more inclusive models of humanity that was both the inspiration and the primary achievement of the movement to study women and religion seriously, these tendencies are highly problematic and disappointing. For a movement that based its raison dtre on the need to include those who had formerly been excluded, to limit its discussions to Europe or North American women and Christian women is inexcusable. After presenting these theoretical prerequisites, the second and third chapters of the book focus on more specific aspects. The second chapter examines through a collection of various articles the representation of gender in the study of religious texts and historical contexts. This insight allows readers to shed light on the inherently gendered nature of history and theology by demonstrating the applicability of the theories of gender to concrete issues of religious historiography and textual interpretation. As an illustration, we present here the article by Sue Morgan entitled Rethinking Religion in Gender History: Historiographical and Methodological Reflections. Rethinking religion in gender history: historiographical and methodological reflections, by Sue Morgan In her research, Professor Sue Morgan has focused on the history of the intersections between gender, sexuality and religion in nineteenth and early twentieth century in Britain. While the process of modernization is normally regarded as going hand in hand with secularization, Sue Morgan has tried to at least complicate, if not unravel, this paradigm through her work. Therefore, in this paper, Sue Morgan inverts the approach taken by many other contributions to this book and rather than examining what the study of gender can offer to the understanding of religion, she explores how an analysis of religion can revise existing paradigms of gender history. In this particular essay she challenges some of the existing paradigms of gender history for its failure to take into account the significance of religion in the construction of gender and the socialization of women. She explores ways in which the concept of separation of spheres has been over-emphasized as a restraining factor in women's lives, when it also allowed homo-social bonding of women's culture, in which the Christian faith was a source of social and spiritual empowerment.

Moreover she explores women's appropriations of the Christian ideal of motherhood, and more generally of some iconic figures of Christian faith, in order to lend inspiration and justification to the action of women in the public sphere, mostly through philanthropic and social activities. That is to say that to a certain extent, women used their interpretation and reading of Christian values to justify their acting in the public sphere. According to Sue Morgan, religion as been regarded as essentially marginal to modern social and cultural formation by historians of gender, who have accepted without question the inexorable secularization of society. So far, religion has been unable to really influence the way in which gender history is constructed. While she never tends to minimize the considerable authority Christian exercised in defining ideological parameters of femininity and masculinity by delineating modes of behavior appropriate to either sex, Sue Morgan underlines the paradoxical consequences of religious commitment for women. Indeed, the Christian faith has proven a powerful mean of sexual inequality, while simultaneously declaring the equality of souls before God, irrespective of gender. Caroll Smith-Rosenberg's article The female World of Love and Ritual had already shed light on the inaccurate reading of separation of spheres as merely restrictive and negative for women. She showed how it enabled the development of an autonomous female social space. In this article, it was argued that the dominant cultural perception of the 'natural' female disposition towards religion enabled the extension of female role into the public sphere for philanthropic and social activities. Moreover, according to Martha Vicinus and Susan Mumm, the development of congregations or the emergence of religious sisterhood increased the communal power of women, and even threatened to undermine the hegemony of marital domestic ideal by offering full-time work to women, and insisting on their right to choose celibacy. To this regard, the author sheds light on the process of appropriation and redefinition of the traditional patriarchal language of religion by women. Indeed, the effective mobilization of women in the public sphere through philanthropic actions or missionary work required the development of a convincing and persuasive rhetoric. She describes how women successfully undermined the idea of impropriety of their role in the public sphere by appropriating dominant ideologies of femininity motherhood, womens moral superiority or greater compassion. Therefore, women conveyed spiritual arguments to justify their action in the public sphere. For instance, while motherhood was one of the most exalted symbols of femaleness in the nineteenth century, philanthropist women such as Mary Carpenter ennobled their own celibate and justified their philanthropic action by introducing the new icon of a virgin mother engaged in self-sacrificing work with the poor and the needy. And thus, single mothers used the rhetoric idea that through the management of rescue homes, schools or workhouses, they were offered the opportunity to create alternative families and be active outside the so-called private sphere. Therefore, Sue Morgan considers the gendered public/private dichotomy as a still unsolved and insufficiently nuanced framework of analysis for gender history, and advocates for a treatment in terms of permeability and flexibility of social boundaries. She promotes a method of feminist history that seeks paradoxes and not necessarily progress, in order to recognize the significance of religion for women's activities, in both the private and the public spheres. Rather than holding religion responsible for creating a domesticated female figure, the author argues that institutional forms of Christianity offered opportunities for women to take action in the public sphere and to create themselves a public profile, for instance by getting involved in charitable campaigning. Quoting Hempton and Hill, the author states that evangelical religion was more important than feminism in enlarging women's sphere of action during the nineteenth century. Although not motivated by the desire for gender equality, it is within the framework of Christian faith principles of sexual difference that women

started to take action and advocate for the moral and educational welfare of women, unmarried mothers and other sexually vulnerable individuals. Challenging the dominant academic paradigm: research from the fringes The third and last chapter of the book provides the reader with reading and comprehension tools from different cultural and contextual perspectives. The specificity of this last section is that the essays are all concerned with the applicability of theoretical issues concerning the study of religion and gender to contemporary cross-cultural, ethical and political contexts. It is for the various authors the opportunity to present themselves and their research, pointing out the problems they had to face as they were not spokespersons of the dominant academic paradigm. For instance, Anne Sofie Roald in her essay Who are the Muslims? Questions of Identity, Gender and Culture in Research Methodologies explores issues of Muslim identity and the representation of Islam and Muslims in Western academic research. She pleads that such representations are often distorted by scholarly views that are insufficiently understanding of the constant permeation and complex interaction between ethnicity, religiosity and gender. She specifically describes how she, as a Muslim woman doing research in a Western context, has had to and was able to use the various dimensions of her identity depending on the context in which she had to interact with others. Beyond cultural and religious factors, Islam in the case of Anne Sofie Roald, the notion of diversity encompasses other dimensions of ones identity as an academic researcher: in the case of Paul Reid-Bowen, gender is also an essential aspect for the understanding of diversity when studying religions. In his essay Reflexive Transformations: Research Comments on Me(n), Feminist Philosophy and the Thealogical Imagination, he questions the implications and possible problems caused by the integration of men in feminist scholarship. He highlights the fact that if a man wants to write about a radical feminist religion (Goddess feminism or thealogical imagination) from a position of advocacy and commitment, it is certainly not easy and requires a certain amount of selfreflexivity. He rightfully points out however that if men are to be part of the feminist solution to patriarchy [] then they must be willing to enter into a committed engagement with feminism which, although awkward and ambiguous, also gives hope of transformation. Mukti Barton lastly, tutor in Black and Asian Theology and Bible and Liberation at the Queens Foundation in Birmingham, is concerned with questions of biblical interpretation and social justice, but she declares unashamedly that [she is] biased towards to poor and the oppressed. () This open declaration helps [her] to have certain objectivity about [her] own subjectivity and in return helps [her] to be objective about [her] research material. As an Indian Bengali Christian in Britain and as a black woman doing theology, she shares the condition of the most oppressed of the oppressed. She rebuts the idea of a so-called scientific objectivity which she associates with what some people refer to as the epistemological violence of the dominant academic paradigm. Thus, in this last section, not only religion, but also gender and ethnicity are presented as the various identity layers of researching as well as of researched individuals. Broadening the approach of religious texts and of religious issues through the prism of these new dimensions has thus considerable consequences on the scientific methodologies as well as on the scientific community itself. The power relationships at stakes are so big that such authors and such research are still

marginalized within the academic society, but such books as that elaborated by Ursula King and Tina Beattie provide a great insight into the potentialities enclosed in these works from the fringes. However fascinating each article might be though, the reader cannot but sometimes be frustrated from not having the possibility to get a further and deeper understanding of the content of these works. Indeed, as a collection of articles focusing mostly on methodological perspectives, the articles tend to insist on the authors profile rather than on their argument. It remains nonetheless a great way to start reflecting on these well-established subjects through unconventional ways.

Written by Alice Lorfeuvre, Elodie Joubert, Margot Weijland.