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Introduction: Women, Religion and Politics

The papers in this special edition were part of an international seminar that was held in Shoal Bay, Australia in December 2012. Participants from Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia gathered together for three days to workshop papers, discuss ideas and enjoy the beautiful coastal environment of northern New South Wales. The seminar was funded from a grant from the University of Newcastle, NSW for the research group Religion in Political Life, and was the first of two international seminars organized with Professor Lisa Isherwood at the University of Winchester. The second seminar was held in July 2013 at Winchester University and consisted of papers from European scholars. These essays will also be published in a future edition of Feminist Theology. As readers will find, the essays are inter-disciplinary in character and draw on the fields of religious studies, theology, feminism and gender studies, biblical studies, political theory, history and sociology. Essay themes include eco-feminism, biblical studies and materialism, historical analysis, feminist accounts of religion, gender and law, gender equality in post-modern Buddhism, feminist biblical studies, women, religion and the state in post-secular Australia, and Indigenous Womanist theology. While this may seem an eclectic mix, it can be argued that this is also a strength as the essays all engage emergent paradigms of knowledge that have characterized the new visibility of religion that has materialized in the last decade and which has led to a reassessment of the intersections of religion and gender in the contemporary world by feminist scholars. Hence, the essays explore the emergence of new articulations of feminist theology (Skye, Elvey, Wainwright); the uses of feminist biblical scholarship in the understanding of women’s religious experiences (Kelso); intersections between religion and law that constrain women’s citizenship (McPhillips); case study accounts that document gender and religious change processes (Jones, McPhillips, Halafoff and Rajkobal); and the experience of women in new religious groups (Halafoff and Rajkobal). It can be argued that these essays contribute to the project of radicalizing feminist theology, precisely by deconstructing these two terms, exploring the lived realities of 555627 FTH0010.1177/0966735014555627Feminist TheologyIntroduction introduction2015