Synopses & Reviews
Argues that, contrary to liberal notions, Catholic and Shi'a Women do indeed have a voice in their respective religions and have affected change within their faiths. Original.
Synopsis
Much feminist scholarship has viewed Catholicism and Shi'i Islam as two religious traditions that, historically, have greeted feminist claims with skepticism or outright hostility. Creative Conformity demonstrates how certain liberal secular assumptions about these religious traditions are only partly correct and, more importantly, misleading. In this highly original study, Elizabeth Bucar compares the feminist politics of eleven US Catholic and Iranian Shi'i women and explores how these women contest and affirm clerical mandates in order to expand their roles within their religious communities and national politics.
Using scriptural analysis and personal interviews, Creative Conformity demonstrates how women contribute to the production of ethical knowledge within both religious communities in order to expand what counts as feminist action, and to explain how religious authority creates an unintended diversity of moral belief and action. Bucar finds that the practices of Catholic and Shi'a women are not only determined by but also contribute to the ethical and political landscape in their respective religious communities. She challenges the orthodoxies of liberal feminist politics and, ultimately, strengthens feminism as a scholarly endeavor.
Synopsis
Catholic Christianity and Shi'a Islam are two religious traditions that, genenerally speaking, have greeted feminism and feminist claims with skepticism or outright hostility. This is especially the case at the level of clerical pronouncements, where papal encyclicals and Ayatollah fatwas are assumed to limit the freedom of Catholic and Shi'a women, respectively. In this highly original work in comparative, cross-cultural ethics Liz Bucar explores how several women within these two traditions adopt strategies of feminist politics to respond to moral issues in their lives. Specifically, Bucar examines how eleven women understand the ethical teachings of their respective religious leaders: Pope John Paul II and Ayatollah Khumayni. What do these two leaders say about the role of women--what "clerical rhetoric" do they espouse--and how do these women accommodate these teachings? Using scriptural analysis and multiple interviews Bucar lays out comparisons over five core chapters. In one chapter she looks at moral exemplars, exploring how women from both traditions recast clerical rhetoric about moral role models into a brand of feminist politics. In another chapter she focuses on the clerical rhetoric of motherhood and childrearing, and how women in the two traditions expand that teaching into a feminist understanding of procreation. Thus her emphasis on "creative conformity" these eleven women manage to remain within the boundaries of their religious traditions, while interpreting clerical teachings in politically creative and feminist ways.