O P T I O N S

C h o i c e i s P o w e r


Wo me n a nd Re l i gi o n
Issue No. 49

OPTIONS magazines issue on Women and Religion aims to focus on the
concept of women and religion from a feminist perspective.
Some themes OPTIONS hopes to explore:

1. Religion is everywhere today and is more meaningful to women perhaps than ever before. While
modernity, rationality and progress were expected to do away with the irrationality of religion, this
has hardly been the case. Academic/creative explorations of the place of religion in society today.

2. An earlier generation of feminists wrote about religious rituals, such as puberty rituals as marking
womens transition from freedom to unfreedom. Does this still persist? Do we have new ways of thinking
about the importance of ritual in our lives? Have religious rituals changed in meaning with the changing
political and social realities of our lives? For example what to contemporary young women experience
and understand puberty rituals? How do we decide on what rituals we will keep in our wedding
ceremonies and what we discard? Personal explorations of such experiences.

3. Reclaiming religion and spirituality: the literature on the manner in which religious texts portray women
in derogatory terms is now dated. In what ways are women reclaiming spirituality? Or are they in fact
still trapped in the narrative of womens subordinate place as dictated by certain religious texts?
Explorations about personal relationships to religion and spirituality.

5. The importance of religion in families forms of collective worship, religious festivals as times of
gathering together, families being brought together or torn apart as a result of tensions regarding differing
adherence to religious practices. Personal reflections and commentary.

4. Multi religious contexts: Sri Lanka, even during the war was considered a place where religious
differences were not paramount in creating acrimony between communities, where the politically
polarizing imperative emerged from ethnicity and not religion. This is of course no longer the case.
Religion is gaining new importance in post war Sri Lanka where scapegoating of religious minorities is
increasing. Why is this happening now and how is it gendered?

6. Religious movements/piety movements: Politicizing religion/ Sanitizing religion /Demonizing religion.
Ongoing transformations in religious practices that are socially isolating. Halalization of Muslim life
leading to distance from religious others, Buddhist temples being transformed into sites where religious
otherness is discussed. The manner in which the assertion of one religion/form of spirituality essentially
involves the denigration of another. Commentary.

7. Religion and sex: Is religion continuing to be used to control womens sexuality? If so how? How have
LGBTQ communities, and individuals engaged with their church, mosque, temple, and how have they
transformed them? Or have they eschewed such engagement?

8. New religions and revivalisms. (Sai Baba followers, New Evangelicals, Islamic Piety movements,
Breatharians etc.) Personal experiences of such movements, commentary on such movements.

DEADLI NE: 30th June 2014

Women and Media Collective
56/1, Sarasavi Lane, Castle Street, Colombo 8, Sri Lanka.
Tel : +94-1-5632045, 2690201, 5635900 Fax : 94-11-2690192 E-mail : wmcsrilanka@gmail.com, web: womenandmedia.org