Feminism and Religion and Her Voice, Her Faith

Final Paper

Feminism and Religion and Her Voice, Her Faith

General Introduction

In her book Feminism and Religion, Rita M. Gross provides readers with an introduction to the need for, and benefits of, androgynous scholarship in the field of religious studies. Gross strives to make readers aware of the dangers of androcentric, Eurocentric scholarship. Moreover, she advances the claim that, "properly pursued, the field of religious studies involves study of all major religions found in human history" and an equal representation of both men's and women's religious experiences (Gross 1-4). Because androcentrism has permeated both religion and scholarship for the greater part of history, Gross strives to correct and augment this perspective with illuminating examples of what she deems "proper" religious scholarship - scholarship that includes the experiences of women. Ultimately, Gross believes that "feminist scholarship requires the study of the actual lives and thoughts of women" (Gross 81) and that "the diversity within feminist theology and spirituality is its strength" (Gross 49).

The anthology Her Voice, Her Faith: Women Speak on World Religions (Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young, Editors) is a glowing example of the type of religious scholarship Gross, and others like her, fought so tenaciously to bring into being. In the introduction to Her Voice, Her Faith, Young expresses a desire akin to Gross':

When both the male and female voice become of equal strength... we may begin to see for the first time three-dimensional religious worlds -- fully of the two genders (and multiple cultures) but also of the human dimension that transcends their particulars... This goal, of stereophonic sound, I hope, will inform the religious voices of the future (Sharma 9).

Sharma and Young deftly assembled their anthology. The book includes an essay on each of the world's major religions, as well as a chapter on Goddess Spirituality. The author of each article is a feminist scholar and female practitioner of the represented faith. The result is a refreshing and insightful collection of actual women's experiences as both members of their chosen faith and as devout feminist scholars. Thus, Her Voice, Her Faith is an eloquent contribution of the "proper" religious scholarship Gross advocates.

For purposes of this essay, I have decided to use three of the essays contained in Her Voice, Her Faith to emphasize the link between the scholastic ideals explored in Gross' book and their actualization in the scholarship of the authors of my chosen essays.

Representation of Sources/Selective Summary

"Taoism" by Eva Wong

One of the primary claims in Gross' book is that "it is necessary to rewrite the history of thought to include forgotten contributions by women and forgotten female imagery" (Gross 76). In her essay, Eva Wong augments and amends the traditional androcentric view of Taoism to include the neglected contributions of women in Taoist practice. Wong notes that "the relative invisibility of women in (the Taoist Canon) has led many to believe that female Taoist practitioners have been rare and that their contributions to the development of Taoist thought and practice have been negligible" (Wong 122). This seems a dichotomy since today Taoism is a religion in which most of the adherents are women (Wong 121). However, Wong believes that "it is possible to recover the hidden history of women in Taoism" by examining certain sources that do illustrate the contributions of women to the religion of Taoism (Wong 124).

Wong believes the difficulty of finding women in the history of Taoism is due to the selective, subjective nature of both available written material and the study of that material. "Historical records are not objective" and what is included in written history depends upon the interest and motivation of the preservers of that history (Wong 121). Indeed, most scholars use The Twenty-four Histories of China and The Taoist Canon as "the authoritative sources" for studying the history of Taoism in China (Wong 121). However, The Twenty-four Histories was highly influenced by Confucian scholars who did not have the same perspective in recording the Taoist history as would a Taoist devotee, and The Taoist Canon was written and edited primarily by male practitioners with little or no input by women adepts who were largely illiterate due to prevailing cultural and political influences of their day (Wong 122).

Wong points to four sources to augment the traditional written record of Taoist practice. First, the biographies of the immortals (written between the second and seventeenth centuries) illustrate that female practitioners are not an anomaly in Taoist history and that "many women attained levels of spirituality that are comparable to their male counterparts" (Wong 123). Second, the biographies of important male Taoist adepts tell that these men learned from female teachers, illustrating that some women were respected for their spiritual wisdom (Wong 123). Third, novels and folklore, not generally recognized by Chinese scholars as legitimate historical records, provide important glimpses into the lives of Taoist women (Wong 123). Finally, though quite rare, the writings of female Taoist adepts provide "an invaluable source of information about Taoist women and their level of spiritual development" (Wong 123).

By using the above sources, Wong effectively "rewrites" Taoist history to include feminine contributions. For the remainder of her essay, Wong chooses to focus on the historical figures of Lady Wei Hua-ts'un (founder of the Shang-ch'ing School of Taoism in the fourth century CE) and Sun Pu-erh (paragon in the emergence of female internal alchemy in the thirteenth century CE), as well as the spiritual figure of Mother Empress of the West (accepted into the Taoist pantheon of deities in the second century CE) for their contributions to the development of Taoist thought and practice (Wong 124). Wong believes knowledge of these figures is a fundamental step to the further appreciation of a corrected, non-androcentric view of Taoism.

Wong's analysis of the problems in finding feminine perspective in Taoist written history, and her careful search for, and interpretation of sources, that do represent women, is a fine example of the sort of revisionist history Gross advocates. Wong concludes her article by stating:

The goal of this chapter