Women's Religious Experience (RLE Women and Religion)

Pat Holden

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138813175
• eBook ISBN: 9781317590255
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Most of the early literature concerning women's religious experience is about exceptional women; those who diverged from the traditional female role to become nuns, mystics or charismatic leaders. While women were permitted to be prophets and visionaries they rarely played an important part in church organisation. This paradox is explored in this book and a number of themes emerge: in particular, the dominance of male symbolism within the great religions. The question of whether men and women apprehend religious systems and signs in the same way is also explored. In considering the contemporary scene, the book is able to look at the ways in which religion affects the lives of women in different societies and in different historical periods; this gives us a larger view of the ways in which our own perceptions of 'femaleness' have been constructed out of the religious world views of both the past and the present.

First Published in 1983.

1 INTRODUCTION

Pat Holden

Religion and some Feminist Viewpoints

Most of the earlier literature concerning women’s religious experience is about the ‘exceptional’ women, those who diverged from the traditional female roles to become nuns, mystics [1] or charismatic leaders, This type of literature forms part of the devotional body of works which provides the church with inspiration from the accounts of the lives of the saintly. There is thus a recognition in the Christian church, at least, that women have a part to play in the process of divine revelation. Mystical experience, in the Christian church is, nevertheless, always carefully controlled. It is a spontaneous union of the soul with God only achieved after the soul has been prepared according to a pattern of strict asceticism. The visions of women (and men) were thus carefully regulated and rigidly examined. It is arguable that the control exercised over female visionaries was particularly scrupulous; with the uncontrolled female visionary labelled as a witch or a mad woman. Fears of uncontrolled female enthusiasm are succintly expressed by Ronald Knox who says:

from the Montanist movement onwards, the history of enthusiasm is largely a history of female emancipation, and it is not a reassuring one (quoted in I.M. Lewis, 1971, p. 31).

What also emerges from this literature is that although women were permitted to be prophets and visionaries they rarely played an important part in church organisation. They have certainly always performed the tasks of deaconesses, and it is claimed that at certain periods in the Middle Ages abbesses exercised considerable power and ruled over combined male and female orders. Women, however, have generally been excluded from administering the Eucharist, and their power and influence in the church, it is said, has gradually declined. The endless processions of male clerics of all denominations who accompanied the Pope on his recent tour of Britain were a continuing witness to the ‘invisibility’ of women in this aspect of church life [2]. Paradoxically, women are said to attend church in much greater numbers than men (Lucy Rushton notes this also for the Greek Orthodox church) and this largely concords with the commonly held view that women are intuitive, receptive to religious experience, and by ‘nature’ more devout than men.

More recent literature dealing with women and religion has attempted to widen the scope of discussion by considering material from different cultures and by placing the accounts of women’s religious lives within historical and social contexts. It has often focused on areas of particular interest for female religious experience such as the worship of certain goddesses and women’s cults. Perhaps more importantly it has turned its attention to the everyday religious experiences of ordinary women.

The argument put forward by feminist literature is that the picture presented by much of this material is not very favourable from a woman’s point of view. Women are confined to the domestic sphere often in some form of ‘seclusion’; and even if they are allowed to move in public spaces ‘veiling’ or the social conventions related, for example, to the dangers of their sexuality impose similar restraints on their freedom. They are excluded from formal religion, and from participating in important public rituals; they may be prominent in possession cults or healing rites but these can be seen as simply extensions of their traditional female roles. They are often either excluded or relegated to an area ‘out of sight’ in the church, the mosque the synagogue or the sacred area. This is sometimes justified by their state of ‘pollution’ or by the view that they are distracting to men.

Men, on the other hand, are prominent in religious organisation; they perform the important rituals, formulate dogma and hold the pens that write the ‘divinely inspired’ texts. They control the powers of female reproductivity and dictate the social and cultural roles of women. If women provide the important images of religious mythology and symbolism men manipulate these symbols.

These are some of the arguments which point to religions as male dominated systems in which women have little freedom to act [3]. The feminist viewpoint has of course correctly noted the repressive aspects of religion. If it has a major fault it is that the self perceptions of Western feminists, deriving mainly from the imagery of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, are at times, projected on to women in other cultures. The danger of such an approach is that women in these societies are not allowed to ‘speak’ (not only vocally but also through lack of examination of the religious action, mythology and symbolism which invariably ‘speaks’ more loudly).

Women and religion has not been a dominant issue in the women’s movement in the West mainly because we live in a secular society, but also because religion seems to offer little scope for challenging dominant ideologies, as a number of contributors to this volume point out. However, it is generally accepted that the religious world-views of the past have been influential in shaping women’s perceptions of themselves, and this is particularly important in relation to their sexuality.

The Christian church has been depicted as an instrument for the oppression of women and it is said that the Church has always linked anti-feminism with anti-sexuality. The Genesis myth, the writings of Paul, and the views such as those of Thomas Aquinas that woman was a ‘misbegotten male’ or of Jerome that she is ‘the door of the devil’ have all added flame to the fire which has brandished women with self-images of their own corruption and power to corrupt others.

Some of the Christian literature suggests that only by a symbolic denial of their femaleness could women achieve salvation. The church’s oppression of women reached a gruesome climax in the witch-finding activities of the middle ages. Eva Figes points out that crimes of witchcraft were invariably linked to the male horror of sexuality;

But the gore of a woman’s natural viciousness says Sprenger, lies in her insatiable lust, and it is her dreadful and perpetual appetite that allows her to copulate with the devil (1978, p. 63).

In a recent book, Mary Daly (1979), a feminist theologian, argues that women can only be freed from these negative self-images by a complete re-creation of mythology and language. She makes a powerful and poetic plea for women to rewrite their own crone-ology [4]. Feminists have, however, rewritten their own charter myth by drawing largely upon religious mythology and ancient history. The myth presents an age of matriarchy in which women were powerful which preceded the present age of patriarchy. A rather tenuous framework has thus been constructed through which both the past and the present can be viewed. The construction of a mythology from the ‘bricolage’ of history is a necessary task of most ideologies; and for feminists, not least, the mythology provides legitimation for the search for equality and a share in power structures but it also provides an area for the exploration of ‘mystical’ feminism - the exploration of the nature of the feminine ‘self’. (Diana Burfield’s paper draws attention to one area in which ‘mystical’ feminism was developed).

The assessment of their own religious and historical tradition has exerted some influence on feminist concern with the lives of women in other cultures where religion still plays a dominant role. The frustration of Western feminists has become mirrored in readily available symbols like the veil. Outrage at sexual abuse (inherent perhaps in ideological systems which rigidly control female sexuality) is similarly reflected in the condemnation of such practices as polygamy, child-marriage and female circumcision, sometimes without consideration for the complex cultural and historical factors which underly these practices.

The familiar association of women with their bodies [5] which says, in effect, that ‘woman is a womb’ (de Beauvoir, 1972, p. 13) has also provided some writers with what they consider to be a model for world-wide application. Thus Hoch-Smith and Spring (1975) claim that ‘In no religious system do women’s dominant metaphors derive from characteristics other than their sexual and reproductive status’ (p. 1) women can thus be viewed as vessels to be filled as much religious imagery suggests. They also say that most religions generate negative images of female evil, representing women as polluting, as witches and as prostitutes. It might be pointed out in connection with these claims that in some societies the metaphors associated with women’s reproductive status can be very positively interpreted (see Catherine Thompson’s paper). Words like ‘witchcraft’, ‘pollution’ and ‘prostitution’ may be negatively evaluated in our society but this does not necessarily mean that the same applies for other people. The words themselves may indeed be inadequate translations for comparable ideas and practices.

Hoch-Smith and Spring’s work points also to one further area of interest in the study of women and religion; the prevalence of sexual imagery in religious description. There is wide cross-cultural evidence for the use of sexual metaphors in describing relations between people and the supernatural. To give just one example, in the Christian tradition the descriptions of the visions of female mystics often indicate an overt concern with sexuality. There are certainly those who would like to claim that the religious life of women represents a form of perverted sexuality. This is, of course, often said about nuns, ‘the brides of Christ’. One simple answer to this was offered by the great authority on religious experience, William James, some seventy years ago; ‘religious language clothes itself in such poor symbols as our life affords’ (1907, p. 11). The subject of the sexual psychology of women in religious systems is a matter of immense interest but some care has to be taken to ensure that the value of female religious experience is not seriously undervalued by it. After all, as in the case of Christian mystics, it may in the end tell us no more than that in describing states of religious ecstasy both women and men draw upon conventional literary forms. However, the fact that these forms may be the literature of chivalry and courtly love, written by men, is not without significance!

The Papers

The contributors to this volume take into account the view that religion is invariably male dominated, that it can repress and restrict women, and reinforce accepted female stereotypes. Some of the papers provide further evidence for this. The main focus of attention of the contributors, however, is to widen the discussion by considering how women perceive themselves and their roles within varying religious systems. They attempt to answer such questions as: can there be said to be a female experience of religion? Do men and women experience systems, symbols - even beliefs - differently? The answers, as might be expected from such a variety of approaches, both historical and anthropological, are varied and by no means exhaustive. The material is extremely varied and reflects the recent research interests of the contributors.

Since the book is about female religious experience it is neccessary to discuss briefly the implications of this term for both the readers and the contributors. When we speak of religious experience we are dealing with a topic which has long been problematic in social analysis [6] and one on which even theologians do not necessarily agree. For some it implies an extraordinary moment of revelation, for others it may be present in the monotony of everyday activities. It generally indicates something that is unique and individual, which as Tonkin says ‘no-one can experience for anyone else’ (p. 166). The social analysts who write about religion have in the main concentrated on the ‘collective’ representations of religious systems rather on the workings of the individal psyche although the best accounts have shown clearly that ‘collective’ symbols can reveal much about the nature and working of the ‘self’ as a society perceives it [7]. It is also acknowledged that any examination of religion must consider the question of the individual experience. This lesson derives most firmly from some of the great world religions in which the individual inspiration or revelation of the founder has ensured the continuing importance of such experiences for the adherents. And even in those societies without comparable organisation or without written texts there are frequent examples in myth and ritual of dependence upon the ‘revelations’ of the intermediaries between people and the supernatural, the priests, prophets and diviners. In the end, however, these observations take us no further forward in deciding upon the methods for analysing religious experience. It may even be, as Tonkin says, that there is as yet no adequate methodology for dealing with the problem. We can certainly never be sure of any common consensus on its meaning. The important thing is that we acknowledge that it may mean different things to different people at many different levels. In this volume those who deal directly with the great world religions necessarily explore aspects of the individual experience. In others the individual is revealed through the biographical account. Those who adopt the approach of the social anthropologist follow the conventional methods of analysis; the exploration of religious action and symbolism ‘understood in the light of a detailed examination of a people’s entire categories of thought’ (Evans-Pritchard, 1954, p. 10). In these cases religious experience is that which is experienced in everyday life.

The papers in the book are linked together in pairs. Some deal with similar subject matter; others are linked by material from a common geographical area. There is no overall unity except that suggested above by the exploration of the complexity of female religious experience. However, within the diversity of material certain recurrent strands emerge; and there are distinct indications of new approaches to the study of women and religion which should provide important pointers to future studies.

Women and the Occult in the 19th Century

Vieda Skultans and Diana Burfield describe the participation of women in religious activities which were regarded as being outside ‘institutionalised’ religion. (A fact often reported of women in many different areas). In this case the papers deal with the resurgence of interest in the occult in 19th century Britain, with which women were particularly associated.

Spiritualism, the subject of Skultans paper, as an organised movement was first recorded in the home. It thus provided women with interests which allowed them to remain within their traditional environment. The practice of Spiritualism at this time, she says, reflected the polarization men/science/objectivity and women/religion/passivity [8]; a division which was particularly significant in an age which attempted to subject religion to scientific experimentation. The preponderance of male controls and female mediums further reflected the division and also asserted the superiority of science. The paper provides a fascinating picture of the sometimes strange relationships between the eminent men who were controls and the ordinary women who were mediums. These partnerships mirrored traditional male/female relationships but at the same time Spiritualism allowed women to step outside traditional roles whilst still, remaining firmly within male control. Women were thus viewed as ‘extraordinary’ because of their psychic powers but they also remained ‘ordinary’ because, as Skultans points out, the ideal female medium conformed to the Victorian stereotype. There is in this observation a hint of the recur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Mediums, Controls and Eminent Men
• 3. Theosophy and Feminism: Some Explorations in Nineteenth Century Biography
• 4. Doves and Magpies: Village Women in the Greek Orthodox Church
• 5. Gender and Religion in a Turkish Town; A Comparison of Two Types of Formal Women's Gatherings
• 6. Essence and Existence: Women and Religion in Ancient Indian Texts
• 7. Women, Fertility and the Worship of Gods in a Hindu Village
• 8. Women in Judaism: the Fact and the Fiction
• 9. Between Law and Custom: Women's Experience of Judaism
• 10. Women Excluded? Masking and Masquerading in West Africa
• 11. Men, Women and Misfortune in Bunyole
• Index