(Breaking Feminist Waves) Dawn Llewellyn (Auth.) - Reading, Feminism, and Spirituality - Troubling The Waves-Palgrave Macmillan US (2015)

Breaking Feminist Waves
Series Editors:
LINDA MARTÍN ALCOFF, Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center

ALISON STONE, Lancaster University
GILLIAN HOWIE†, University of Liverpool
For the last twenty years, feminist theory has been presented as a series of ascend-
ing waves. This picture has had the effect of constraining the way we understand
and frame new work as well as deemphasizing the diversity of past scholarship.
The aim of this series is to attract original scholars who will unearth neglected
contributions to feminist theory and offer unique interpretations of past scholar-
ship. By breaking free from the constraints of the image of waves, this series will
be able to provide a wider forum for dialogue and engage historical and interdis-
ciplinary work to open up feminist theory to new audiences and markets.
LINDA MARTÍN ALCOFF is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and
the City University of New York Graduate Center. Her books include Visible
Identities: Race, Gender and the Self; The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy
(coedited with Eva Kittay); Identity Politics Reconsidered (coedited with Moya,
Mohanty, and Hames-Garcia); and Singing in the Fire: Tales of Women in
Philosophy.
ALISON STONE is Professor of European Philosophy at Lancaster University,
UK. She is the author of Petrified Intelligence: Nature in Hegel’s Philosophy; Luce
Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference; An Introduction to Feminist
Philosophy; and Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and Maternal Subjectivity; and the edi-
tor of The Edinburgh Critical History of Nineteenth-Century Philosophy.
Titles to date:
Unassimilable Feminisms: Reappraising Feminist, Womanist, and Mestiza Identity
Politics
by Laura Gillman
Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone
edited by Mandy Merck and Stella Sandford
Hegel’s Philosophy and Feminist Thought: Beyond Antigone?
edited by Kimberly Hutchings and Tuija Pulkkinen
Femmenism and the Mexican Woman Intellectual from Sor Juana to Poniatowska:
Boob Lit
by Emily Hind
Between Feminism and Materialism: A Question of Method
by Gillian Howie
Resonances of Slavery in Race/Gender Relations: Shadow at the Heart of American
Politics
by Jane Flax
The Many Dimensions of Chinese Feminism
by Ya-chen Chen
Rousseau in Drag: Deconstructing Gender
by Rosanne Terese Kennedy
Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice
edited by Henriette Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni, and Fanny Söderbäck
A Theory of Freedom: Feminism and the Social Contract
by Shay Welch
Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference
edited by Noreen Giffney and Margrit Shildrick
Gendered Readings of Change: A Feminist-Pragmatist Approach
by Clara Fischer
Feminism, Time, and Nonlinear History: A Polytemporal Approach
by Victoria Browne
Socrates and Diotima: Sexuality, Religion, and the Nature of Divinity
by Andrea Nye
Reading, Feminism, and Spirituality: Troubling the Waves
by Dawn Llewellyn
Reading, Feminism, and
Spirituality
Troubling the Waves
Dawn Llewellyn
READING, FEMINISM, AND SPIRITUALITY
Copyright © Dawn Llewellyn 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-54995-2
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First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers
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ISBN 978-1-349-57067-6 ISBN 978-1-137-52287-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137522870
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Macmillan®, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in
England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Llewellyn, Dawn, 1977–
Reading, feminism and spirituality : troubling the waves /
Dawn Llewellyn.
pages cm.—(Breaking feminist waves)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-57067-6 (alk. paper)
1. Feminist theology. 2. Feminism—Religious aspects.
3. Feminism and literature. 4. Sacred books—History and criticism.
5. Feminist theory. I. Title.
BT83.55.L596 2015
230.082—dc23 2015012958
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
For my parents, David and Bridie Llewellyn
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C on ten t s
Series Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1 Reading, Feminism, and Spirituality 9
2 Talking in Waves: A Generational and Secular Metaphor 31
3 Filtering the Canon 65
4 Reading for Difference 89
5 Reading for Community 115
Conclusion Keep on Troubling the Waves 149
Appendix A: Reader-Centered Feminist Research:

Methodology and Methods 163
Appendix B: Readers’ Profiles 179
Appendix C: Groups, Networks, and Organizations 185
Notes 189
Bibliography 219
Index 251
This page intentionally left blank
Ser ies For e wor d
Breaking Feminist Waves is a series designed to rethink the conven-

tional models of what feminism is today, its past and future trajec-
tories, moving away from the metaphor of waves. For more than a
quarter of a century, feminist theory has been presented as a series of
ascending waves, imagery that constrains the way we understand what
feminism has been and where feminist thought has appeared. This
imagery simplifies the rich and nuanced political and philosophical
diversity that has been characteristic of feminism throughout, and,
most disturbingly, it restricts the way we understand and frame new
work. The aim of this series is to rethink the history and actuality of
feminist theory outside of these restricting metaphors.
This series provides a forum to reassess established constructions
of feminism and of feminist theory. It provides a starting point to
redefine feminism as a configuration of intersecting movements and
concerns, with political commitment but, perhaps, without a singular
center or primary track. The generational divisions among women do
not actually correlate to common interpretive frameworks shaped by
shared historical circumstances, but rather to a diverse set of argu-
ments, problems, and interests affected by differing historical con-
texts and locations. Often excluded from cultural access to dominant
modes of communication and dissemination, feminisms have never
been uniform nor yet in a comprehensive conversation. The genera-
tional division, then, cannot represent the dominant divide within
feminism, nor a division between essentially coherent moments; there
are always multiple conflicts and contradictions, as well as differences
about the goals, strategies, founding concepts, and starting premises.
In particular, this series provides a space for exploring the sometimes
surprising philosophical and theoretical resources that feminists have
taken as their starting premises at different times and in varied cul-
tural contexts.
In the contemporary world the problems facing women, feminists,
and feminisms are as acute and pressing today as ever. Featuring a
variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, Breaking Feminist
x SERIES FOREWORD
Waves provides a forum for comparative, historical, and interdisci-

plinary work, with special attention to the problems of cultural dif-
ferences, language and representation, embodiment, rights, violence,
sexual economies, and political action. By rethinking feminisms’ his-
tory as well as their present, and by unearthing neglected contribu-
tions to feminist theory, this series intends to unlock conversations
between feminists and feminisms and to open up feminist theory and
practice to new audiences.
LINDA M ARTÍN A LCOFF
and
A LISON STONE
Ack now l ed gmen t s
It is very overwhelming to think back over the care, encourage-

ment, and patience I have been given throughout the various stages
of this book. This research began during my doctoral studies in
the Department of Religious Studies (as it was, then!) at Lancaster
University, and I would like to thank those colleagues and good
friends who saw me through: Zephryine Barbarachild, Raana
Bokhari, Andrea Cheshire, Patrick Carr, Andrew Dawson, Wendy
Francis, Sarah Gibson, Katharine Moody, Shuruq Naguib, Gillian
Taylor, Andrew Tate, John Towse, Giselle Vincett, Simeon Wallis,
and Linda Woodhead. Special thanks to Deborah Sawyer, who has
invested in me since I was a Masters student. She cajoled, mentored,
and astutely pressed throughout this process, and her ongoing friend-
ship means a great deal.
This project would not have been possible without the women
who participated in this study, and who showed me such hospitality,
warmth, and generosity when sharing their reading experiences, and
their religious and spiritual lives with me. I hope I have done you
justice.
I am incredibly lucky to have found a home in the Department of
Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Chester; I could
not ask for better colleagues and students. Thank you for making
work fun, and for the research leave that enabled me to finish this
project. A special mention to the “Accountability Group” (or David
Clough and Ben Fulford as they are usually known), Hannah Bacon,
Mat Collins, Wendy Dossett, Elaine Graham, Steve Knowles, Paul
Middleton, Jon Morgan, Wayne Morris, Alana Vincent, and Rob
Warner. In particular, thank you to Fiona Hughes Carly McEvoy,
Charlotte Morgan, and Cath Rogers.
This book has also been shaped by conversation-partners and
friends, including Kristin Aune, Susannah Cornwall, Mathew
Guest, Anna Fisk, the members of the Faith Lives of Women and
Girls Symposium, David G. Ford, Lisa Isherwood, Chris Klassen,
Jane Nattrass, Sarah Jane Page, Emma Rees, Nicola Slee, the British
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sociological Association Sociology of Religion Study Group, and

Emily Pennington. I have been inspired by the friendship and work
of Anna Strhan, Sonya Sharma, and Marta Trzebiatowska, and the
always clever, thoughtful, and motivating things they say. I am also
privileged to have had continued support and advice from my doc-
toral examiners Heather Walton and Alison Stone—thank you for
your help in getting this book to this stage!
My thanks also to the late Gillian Howie, who showed initial inter-
est in this book, and to the publishing team at Palgrave, and especially
Ryan Jenkins, for guiding me through this process. Some of mate-
rial from this book appears in revised forms in the following publi-
cations: Dawn Llewellyn and Marta Trzebiatowska (2013), “Secular
and Religious Feminisms: A Future of Disconnection?” (Journal of
Feminist Theology 21/3: 244–58); “Safe and Risky Readings: Women’s
Spiritual Reading Practices,” in Religion and Knowledge: Sociological
Perspectives, edited by Elisabeth Arweck and Mathew Guest (2012)
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 165–80); “Across Generations: Women’s
Spiritualities, Literary Texts and Third Wave Feminism,” in Feminist
Spirituality: The Next Generation, edited by Chris Klassen (2009)
(New York: Lexington Books, 179–99); “Forming Community in the
Third Wave: Literary Texts and Women’s Spiritualities,” in Reading
Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred, edited by
Dawn Llewellyn and Deborah F. Sawyer (2008) (Aldershot: Ashgate,
153–69).
I am indebted to my family: Claire Llewellyn; Ken and Joan
Llewellyn; the Donnelly’s; Jo Llewellyn; Ali Gane; Bernie White;
Shelagh Smith and Steve Clements; Miriam Shepherd; Diana
Williams; Nick, Rachel, and Charlie Macdonald-Williams; and the
Vandermoulebrouke’s. And to Karen Llewellyn, who was the first
feminist I ever met.
To my parents for always doing all they can, then doing even more.
This is to you both, with all my love.
Finally, and completely, my last word of thanks goes to Bransby
David Macdonald-Williams: for all you do for me, and for us.
Parts of this book appear in significantly revised forms in the fol-
lowing publications:
Llewellyn, D. and M. Trzebiatowska (2013). Secular and Religious
Feminisms: A Future of Disconnection? Journal of Feminist Theology
21/3: 244–58.
Llewellyn, D. (2012). Safe and Risky Readings: Women’s Spiritual
Reading Practices. In Religion and Knowledge: Sociological
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
Perspectives, edited by E. Arweck and M. Guest. Aldershot: Ashgate,

165–80.
Llewellyn, D. (2009). Across Generations: Women’s Spiritualities,
Literary Texts and Third Wave Feminism. In Feminist Spirituality:
The Next Generation, edited by C. Klassen. New York: Lexington
Books, 179–99.
Llewellyn, D. (2008). Forming Community in the Third Wave:
Literary Texts and Women’s Spiritualities. In Reading Spiritualities:
Constructing and Representing the Sacred, edited by D. Llewellyn
and Deborah F. Sawyer. Aldershot: Ashgate, 153–69.
Introduction
During my third year as an undergraduate in 1997, reading Systematic

Theology and Philosophy at a British university, I spent a year as an
international exchange student in Canada. One of my classes, taken
in the autumn semester, was in feminist theology. Even though I was
three-quarters of the way through my degree, this was my first, for-
mal instruction in feminism of any discipline, and the first time I had
been taught by a woman. In the opening class, the seminar reading
was an extract from womanist writer and activist Alice Walker’s (1991
[1983]) epistolary novel, The Color Purple. The protagonist, Celie, a
14-year-old black girl living in the American South, writes letters to
God, and later to her sister Nettie about her life, and mistreatment by
Alphonso, the man she lives with and believes to be her father. While
the novel is known for addressing racial, sexual, and economic vio-
lence against women, it also features heavily in feminist theological
writings, and has been named by Judith Plaskow and Carol Christ as
the most commonly cited feminist “theological text” (1989b, p. 5).
Under discussion in the class was a scene between Celie and Shug,
a blues singer whom Celie befriends before becoming her lover. In
the extract we were using, Shug asks Celie: “Tell me what your God
look like” (Walker, 1991 [1983], p. 165), which prompts both women
to share their differing images of God:
He big and old and tall and graybearded and white. He wear white
robes and go barefooted.
Then she tell me this old white man is the same God she used to
see when she prayed. If you wait to find God in Church, Celie, she say,
that’s who is bound to show up, cause that’s where he live.
How come? I ast.
Cause that’s the one that’s in the white folks’ white bible.
Shug! I say. God wrote the bible, white folks had nothing to do
with it.
How come he look just like them, then? she say. Only bigger? And
a heap more hair. How come the bible just like everything else they
make, all about them doing one things and another, and all the col-
ored folks doing is gitting cursed?
2 READING, FEMINISM, AND SPIRITUALITY
Here’s the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you
and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But
only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just mani-
fest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for.
(Walker, 1991 [1983], pp. 165–66)
Susan Thistlethwaite (1989, p. 90) has dryly noted the prevalence of

this particular moment in the novel among religious feminists, but at
the time I was unaware of this popularity.1 Retrospectively, I think I
had always been aware of gender injustice and that there had always
been a murmur of a feminist consciousness (perhaps taking a course in
feminist theology was indicative of this!). I had read the novel before,
but without seeing the challenge to white, male, patriarchal images
of God, a depiction I had not previously questioned. When the class
drew to a close, I was in a daze, as were some of my classmates. We
were excited by the lively exchanges prompted by the session, and I
was not the only student struggling to think through the implica-
tions of this reading experience. I was disorientated and feeling a
degree of trepidation at the realization that my political, theological,
and personal horizon had shifted dramatically as a result of reading,
rereading, and discussing the novel with my colleagues. My Feminist
Theology Journal (a piece of required coursework that accompanied
the module, demanding reflection upon our own involvement in the
seminar readings and discussions) describes my response:
It is about the experience of women, their everyday living and how

this interacts with their spirituality. It is how women’s spirituality has
been smothered by male images of a God that does not connect to
their life experience . . . it is about the suffering that certain women
have endured and do endure due to their place in society and again
how this relates to their faith and their relationship with a typically
male God . . . I find that quite disturbing that I had not really thought
about this before.
I now cringe when I read this journal, and think of my 20-year-old-

self writing it. I am very uncomfortable with the ease with which I
unreflexively appropriated this fictional account of black women the-
ologizing their experiences and concepts of God. However, it was, as
they say, the “click”2: the moment I began to articulate that personal
and public life, including the religious sphere, was inflected with gen-
der inequality. I remember feeling annoyed and confused that I had
not explicitly realized or queried this before, and things were never
quite the same. I angrily began questioning the God and the church
INTRODUCTION 3
I had inherited from my Catholic upbringing and theological stud-

ies, and started to wear the “feminist label” openly and usually quite
loudly (particularly in religious studies and philosophy classrooms
taught by male professors).
I knew very little about feminism, but wanted to ground my awak-
ening in its history and the academic discipline of women’s studies, and
I was trying to make sense of patriarchy and its secular and Christian
manifestations in my life. In this search, I found a movement that
(almost) unequivocally uses the metaphor of the “wave”’ to depict its
history: the late nineteenth century’s campaigns for suffrage comprise
the first wave, while the second wave arrived in the late 1960s with
the onset of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Unbeknown to me
at the time, I was coming to feminism on the cusp of the third wave.
Emerging from the end of the 1980s to the late 1990s, the third wave
is usually associated with the move beyond the standpoint of Western,
white women; with theories of intersectionality and multiplicity of
identities; with the academic fields of poststucturalism and postmod-
ernism; and also with a young/er generation of feminist awareness,
activism, backlash, and popular cultural analysis.
Since undertaking the original research for this book, and while
preparing it for publication, references to “wave zero” (Baumgardner,
2011) have become more frequent. This recognizes those who might
be considered proto-feminists, such as Mary Wollstonecraft and
Christine de Pisan, and those women (and men) who spoke, wrote,
or campaigned about women’s status and rights before the suffragette
era. Most recently, media discussions about contemporary feminisms
in the United Kingdom and the United States claim the “fourth
wave” has arrived.3 For instance, Jennifer Baumgardner (2011) marks
the fourth wave as beginning in 2008, and associates it with online
feminist political action, particularly the adoption of social media;
and Pythia Peay (2005) named the fourth wave as a “new activist
movement . . . gathering women across faiths.”4
Amid these waves, as a student, it was not easy to work out where
I belonged. I had missed the second wave by about 20 years, but had
not yet heard of the third wave. My introduction to feminist religious
studies was inspiring, but seemed unconnected to the overall feminist
narrative, especially when I encountered “secular” feminists heavily
critiquing religious organizations. The scholars I was reading, such
as Mary Daly, Carol Christ, and Judith Plaskow, were problematiz-
ing “traditional” religion, and analyzing women’s experiences of the
sacred in Christianity and Judaism, which were helping me articulate
and think through my questions and confusions. I wanted to know
where they belonged, and where I belonged as a young(er) feminist in

the wave sequence. I still do.
This encounter with The Color Purple and the cluster of ques-
tions and emotions it engendered introduced me to feminism, the
study of women and religion, and reading as a spiritual practice, and
began an engagement with the significance of the feminist waves.
Like my reading experience and its aftershocks, this book brings
together reading, spirituality, and feminism, and the use of the wave
metaphor, and aims to contribute to critical discussions of the wave
metaphor—the pervasive image for depicting the development of the
feminist movement—by identifying and amending two limiting sets
of meanings accompanying this motif. First, as others have noted,
when the wave is construed as a generational, linear narrative, it forms
artificial divisions between different cohorts, such as between second
and third wave feminists.5 Second, I extend these debates about the
appropriateness of the waves by highlighting the metaphor’s secular
temperament. Although the early stages of the women’s movement
are linked to Christian activism, a sacred/secular ideological struc-
ture has coded the wave metaphor and the development of feminism
as a secular narrative. This has led to a disciplinary disconnection
between feminist studies and religious feminism, seen in the (lack of
a) relationship between feminist theology and third wave feminism.
This mutually unconstructive separation is evident in the former’s
neglect of women’s religiosity and spirituality, and the latter’s reserv-
edness in engaging with wider developments in gender theory.
Disconnections impoverish feminism, resulting in separation
rather than productive dialogue. However, by turning to real readers,
their reflections on literature, and how it shapes their spiritual lives,
I use their reading practices to build connections between second
and third wave feminisms, and between the secular fields of feminist
studies and religious feminism. Qualitative reader-centered feminist
interviews with 36 Christian and post-Christian women, aged 21–80,
reveals reading practices shared across generational distinctions, and
with different affiliations to feminism: recollections of experiencing
the click during the 1960s and 1970s; acknowledgments of a sense
of gendered entitlement but a cautiousness about the label; women in
their twenties, thirties, and forties declaring their feminist position,
and/or linking it explicitly to a spiritual and/or religious identity; and
women stating “I’m not a feminist, but . . .” Whether participants
claim strong or weak ties with feminist critiques and expressions of
religion and spirituality, and regardless of the position allocated to
them by the wave’s linear, secular narrative, this books identifies their
INTRODUCTION 5
reading as a third wave practice. As the third wave seeks commonali-

ties across individual differences to form community, women’s spiri-
tual reading elaborates this search in three ways—filtering the canon,
reading for difference, and reading for community—and offers a site
of overlap.
These three dimensions to women’s spiritual reading disclose to
third wave “secular” feminism an instance of its own emergence in
the realm of the spiritual—a place where, owing to its neglect of reli-
gion, the third wave has yet to look. As a third wave practice, women’s
spiritual reading is an experience where individuality meets com-
munity, and, by extension, the third wave meets feminist theology
among a group of women from both second and third wave cohorts.
My aim is not to dissolve the third wave, but to reinterpret it construc-
tively to understand women’s spiritual reading practices in ways that blur
the generational and secular/sacred lines drawn by the metaphor. This
books highlights where third wave and feminist theology converge, and
troubles the dominance of the wave’s generational and secular meanings.
To trouble the waves, I first trace the existing connections between
the titular themes of this book—reading, spirituality, and feminism.
In chapter 1, I examine feminist theology’s uses of literature and
establish that reading is a spiritual resource for women in contempo-
rary Christianity and post-Christianity. I also highlight that despite
this importance, these approaches have emphasized the text and the
theo/alogian’s interpretation to the extent that actual readers are usu-
ally implied, before suggesting a turn to real readers. Finally, I intro-
duce the Christian and post-Christian women at the center of this
book, whose reading experiences, patterns, and practices of spiritual
reading prompted me to question, and then to build critical bridges,
across the waves.
Chapter 2 continues to lay the book’s foundations by introducing
the third wave and addressing the hard lines the metaphor forges,
which women’s spiritual reading practices later trouble. I first focus
on the dominance of the motif’s generational meanings, as each suc-
cessive wave is claimed by a younger age-group of feminists, thereby
suspending interaction between different cohorts of women. I then
pay attention to the secular meanings of the wave, illustrated in the
disciplinary disconnections between third wave and feminist theol-
ogy. While the third wave’s gender analysis is missing this aspect of
women’s identity, it is not the only factor contributing to the disci-
plinary disconnection. Feminist theology’s reservedness in engaging
with wider developments in feminism has prevented it from drawing
on emerging third wave discourses.
Crucially, when the third wave overlooks women’s experiences

of the sacred and spiritual, it places itself on the secular side of the
secular/sacred binary. This tendency, alongside the third wave’s
inclination to self-identify generationally, runs counter to its insis-
tence on intersectionality and the plural forms of identity, and with
its concern to look beyond the privileged experiences of white, mid-
dle-class, educated, Western women. The third wave is searching
for ways that enable the fragmented woman, conceived as multiple
and fluid, to be the grounding for feminism in community. It is an
attempt to find commonality across individual located differences by
seeking motifs where subjective experiences overlap and meet, and
from which community across difference can flourish—a practice
found in the reading experiences and strategies of the Christian and
post-Christian women.
In chapters 3, 4, and 5, I convey the ways women’s spiritual reading
is a third wave practice, encompassing individuality, commonality, and
community. Participants’ engagements with the biblical canon is the
primary theme in chapter 3, and the first example of how their indi-
vidual practices intersect through a shared process of filtering, as par-
ticipants select the aspects of the Bible they perceive to enhance their
personal spiritual lives. While this resonates with attempts to gener-
ate a theologian-centered canon-in-canon, participants extend feminist
theology’s biblical text selections by claiming the authority to filter for
their own individualized, reader-centered canon-in-canons.
The process of broadening feminist theology’s canon continues
in chapter 4, which contrasts feminist theology’s and participants’
spiritual reading strategies for cultivating sacred texts outside of
Christian scripture. I suggest that feminist theology has largely relied
on reading “gynocritically” (Showalter, 1978, 1986a, 1986b, 1986c).
This is a predominantly second wave technique, adopted in feminist
theology’s relationship to literature, that prefers to draw on realistic
literary representations of women’s experiences, produced by women
authors, as the most appropriate and fruitful literatures for empower-
ing women’s spiritualities. However, participants, regardless of their
date of birth are reading beyond gynocriticism’s emphasis on same-
ness across the gendered identity of author, text, and reader to a third
wave emphasis on reading for “difference.” Women’s individual spiri-
tual reading strategies unify through their shared focus on the valida-
tion of their spiritual journey, overturning gynocriticism’s focus on
genres and literatures created by women writers.
Having argued that women’s spiritual reading practices are indi-
vidualized, but share common strategies in embodying third wave
INTRODUCTION 7
themes across Christian and post-Christian spiritualities, chapter

5 presents reading as an extended process and experience of both
individuality and community. First, most tangibly, participants are
creating physical individual isolated reading spaces, and through the
mechanisms of recommendation and discussion, are also creating
physical reading spaces for community. Second, even when partici-
pants are reading individually, they are forming intimate and imag-
ined communities in the reading experience.
I conclude by revisiting women’s spiritual reading practices as a
challenge to the limits of the wave metaphor, and suggest what might
be gained when the second and third waves, sacred and secular, enter
into productive dialogue. Furthermore, as the fourth wave of femi-
nism develops, I look to some early signs of the way the relationship
between this expression of feminism, generations, and religious stud-
ies is beginning to play out. Finally, the appendices outline the meth-
odology and methods comprising reader-centered feminist research,
and give brief biographical profiles of the readers and the organiza-
tions I approached when advertising for participants.
This book offers one reflection on the dominance of the wave met-
aphor and the generational and secular meanings it often carries, but
it is also about women, reading, and spirituality. I hope to contribute
to understanding the waves by identifying the disconnections, by uti-
lizing women’s spiritual reading to generating connection between
second and third wave feminism, and sacred and secular feminisms.
Although I use the third wave theme of individuality, commonality,
and community, this does not refer to a linear progression, where
readers as solitary individuals engage in an activity that subsequently
evolves stage by stage to build a community. Neither does it mean
that the activity of spiritual reading is a practice in which readers
oscillate between forms of individuality and forms of community. In
participants’ third wave feminist reading practices, individuality and
community occur simultaneously. Participants are emphasizing the
particularity of their experiences of spiritual reading, but these read-
ing processes overlap to form points of commonality, through which
communities are formed.
CH A P T ER 1
Reading, Feminism, and Spirituality
While this book brings together the largely secular field of feminist
studies and religious and theological feminism to trouble the rigidity
of the wave metaphor, it began in the same way I imagine other femi-
nist projects take shape: by wondering how mainly theoretical issues,
discussed in the scholarly literature, relate to women’s lived experi-
ences. In this case, feminism is a deeply bibliophilic movement that
uses women’s writing and feminist fiction to forward social critique
and change.1 As Maria Lauret chronicles, it is a form of “oppositional
literature” that can “contest both dominant meanings of gender and
standards of literariness” (1994, p. 4) and has heavily influenced femi-
nism’s development. More specifically, there are close sets of theoreti-
cal interactions between reading, feminism, and spirituality on which
this book is grounded, and which prompted me to make explicit the
experiences of real readers.
In this chapter, I introduce the practice of women’s spiritual read-
ing by drawing on feminist theology and literature, and the con-
cept of reading as a spiritual activity, particularly its importance “in
affirming and supporting women’s spiritual quest” (Slee, 2004, p.
177). However, although there is a relationship between literature
and religious feminisms, it is rare to glimpse the experiences of actual
women readers linking spirituality and literature in their lives. They
are mostly hidden in the historical and textual relationship between
feminist theology and literature, as the theo/alogian’s interpretation
of the text is emphasized to the extent that actual women readers in
the public sphere are implied. Therefore, I suggest transposing the
emphasis on the text for a reader-centered feminist approach in wom-
en’s spiritualities to uncover the experiences and practices of reading,
which also establishes the basis for the practices that I later use to
trouble the wave metaphor.
The Practice of Women’s Spiritual Reading

Naming reading as a practice in women’s spiritual lives, and my
draw to actual readers, is based on the historical, textual relationship
between feminist theology and literature, and the understanding in
textual and empirical studies that reading is a spiritual resource.
Feminist Theology and Literature

Feminist theology is replete with literary acts of writing and reading.
Across the debates arguing for biblical “reform” or the “revolution-
ary” assertion that it is untenable to ground religious feminism in
a tradition tethered to patriarchal writings, 2 literature is used as an
imaginative counterpoint to scripture. The creative written world has
provided a platform for women authors to carve out fictional spaces
in which the gendered sacred order can be probed and reimagined,
using literary and poetic forms to etch women into Christian tex-
tual history—a realm in which women have had a limited presence.
From women’s writing, religious feminism has derived new narra-
tives, images, rituals, prayers, and practices that validate women’s
religious identities and experiences and speak of the sacred in ways
that resonate with their lives. As Naomi Goldenberg has commented,
fiction and poetry authored by women are potentially the “sacred
texts” of a new feminist spiritual perception (1979, p. 120). Feminist
theologians who have found the sacred texts of Christianity lacking in
opportunities for women to access the divine have turned to women’s
fiction, poetry, and prose.
Many of the literary figures associated with feminism’s second
wave—such as Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Audre Lorde,
Michèle Roberts, Adrienne Rich, and Alice Walker—have crafted
fiction, poetry, and prose that has influenced feminist theology, evi-
dent in the ways their works appear as a resource within the disci-
pline.3 This is not to suggest that feminist theology is plagiaristic in
its own writings, for it has interrogated the literary realm creatively
in order to accomplish theological, cultural, and social objectives.
For instance, when Daphne Hampson (1990) was searching for post-
Christian feminist images of the divine, she turned to the description
of God that features in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1991 [1983],
pp. 163–67):
God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the
world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And
READING, FEMINISM, AND SPIRITUALITY 11
sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know
what you looking for . . .
Yeah, It. God ain’t a he or a she, but a It. (Walker, 1991 [1983],
pp. 166–67)
There is depth and vibrancy to feminist theology’s interaction with

women’s writing. For Heather Walton (2003a), Michèle Roberts’s
novels, The Wild Girl and Daughters of the House, are emblematic
of Adrienne Rich’s “re-vision—the act of looking back” (1972, p.
18) at old, and in this case sacred, texts to refashion and therefore
transform women’s futures. Elizabeth Johnson, in her feminist cri-
tique of the Trinity, calls on Maya Angelou’s phrase, “where love is a
scream of anguish” (1995, p. 246), to name women’s suffering. Katie
Cannon turns to the life and work of Zora Neal Hurston to formulate
womanist ethics because it “embraces a moral wisdom wherein grace
and truth constitute each other” (1988, p. 128) in which invisible
dignity, quiet grace, and courage offer moral guidelines and ethi-
cal insight. Rita Nakashima Brock (1993) uses the writing of Asian-
American women (Cynthia Kadohato, Wendy Law-Yone, Amy Tan,
and Maxine Hong Kingston) to propose a “hermeneutics of wisdom”
for approaching the canon. This brings personal and cultural memo-
ries and meanings from an Asian history to the present, advocates
the rejection of innocence, and understands identity as multiple and
fluid. These examples convey feminist theology’s reliance upon “their
literary sisters and foremothers” for narrative, poetry, and dialogue as
“elaboration and assertion” (Harde, 2006, p. 54). In feminist theol-
ogy, reading is connected to the spiritual as a practice that critiques,
represents, and reconstructs the religious.4
Moreover, the practice of reading to resource spirituality and the-
ology is so deeply implicated in the development of feminist theol-
ogy that in Imagining Theology: Women, Writing and God Heather
Walton suggests, “It is impossible fully to comprehend the develop-
ment of feminist theology without asking what women were reading
in bed, on the bus and in their book groups” (2007b, p. 2). Walton
illustrates this bookishness by taking the novels “everyone was read-
ing” as a device to chronicle the development of feminist theology
over the last 30 years, each decade corresponding to a novel and a
key theoretical shift. During the 1970s, at the start of feminism’s
second wave, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook was brought to
the burgeoning discipline of feminist theology (most famously by
Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow). The experiences of Lessing’s
heroine, Martha Quest, were read as examples of women’s distinct
spiritual experiences to counteract the androcentricism of the estab-

lished scriptures and traditions of Christianity and Judaism. In the
1980s, The Color Purple by Alice Walker was used to challenge
“whitefeminist” theology (Armour, 1999) by illustrating how black
women’s spiritual heritage had been excluded by feminist theol-
ogy’s cultural and racial essentialism. Through the course of the
1990s, feminist theologians challenged monotheological discourses
in the gradual but significant turn to postmodern hybridity with
Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
Walton’s sequential overview indicates the deeply political com-
mitment underlying feminist theology’s theological reading practices.
These strategies are part of religious feminisms’ project to “under-
stand the world” in order to work “towards changing the world” (The
Bible and Culture Collective, 1995, p. 253). Feminist theology has
used reading and writing to analyze the religious realm through a
gendered lens, and to construct effective responses. When feminism
began differentiating women’s and men’s experiences, religious femi-
nisms looked to literature for representations of women’s spirituali-
ties. As the racial bias of the feminist movement was exposed, black
women’s writing, for instance, conveyed the interconnectedness of
race, class, and sexuality. The growing influence of postmodernism
upon feminism saw women’s literature utilized to build a theology of
plurality that captures the particularity and multiplicity of “woman.”
Literature has been employed in a range of ways to offset enunciations
of the sacredly canonical, destabilize the foundational, and question
what appears to be historically unremitting within the Christian
tradition. Feminist theology’s reading is a spiritual practice because
throughout the past three decades its reading choices have been led
by the issues circulating the contemporaneous feminist landscape,
which in turn, informs its reactions to the debates that are impinging
upon women’s religious and spiritual lives.
Reading as a Spiritual Resource

The notion that reading is a spiritual practice is also found in Stephen
Crites’s (1971) suggestive essay, The Narrative Quality of Experience,
which names literature as having a spiritual dimension affecting the
reader. The many forms of narratives, stories, and literatures are the
“roots and branches” that organize and configure our experiences
(1971, p. 308), and thus constitute personal and social identity.
Experience has three interrelated narrated dimensions: sacred sto-
ries, mundane stories, and the active, temporal consciousness. Sacred
stories “orient the life of a people through time, their life-time, their
individual and corporate experiences . . . to the great powers that
establish the reality of their world” (1971, p. 295). They are shared,
fluid, and mythopoetic, and live within the consciousness of a people
to create a “sense of self” and a sense of the world (1971, p. 295).
Mundane stories are those told through art, literature, and culture,
and also include the ordinary ways in which interpersonal commu-
nication occurs. Although sacred and mundane stories are distinct,
elements of each partake in the other: “All a people’s mundane stories
are implicit in its sacred story, and every mundane story takes sound-
ings in the sacred” (1971, p. 296). Between the sacred and mundane
stories are the many facets of experience and awareness, which are
consciously perceived narratively.
Crites understands narrative to have a structuring function within
human cultures that gives coherence to all aspects of our experiences
and contains “the full temporality of experience in a unity of form”
(1971, p. 303). Narratives not only sustain personal and commu-
nal culture, but also are flexible enough to be able to contain the
“tensions, the surprises, the disappointments and the reversals and
achievements” (1971, p. 306) in threatening circumstances, or in dif-
ficult times of social and political change. Narrative enables people to
reinterpret their experience and their sacred cultural stories, adapting
identity to face new challenges:
The stories within which he [sic] has awakened to consciousness must

be undermined, and in the identification of his [sic] personal story
through a new story both the drama of his [sic] experience and his [sic]
style of action must be reoriented. (1971, p. 307)
Hence the need for expressive and artistic forms of narrativity, and, in
particular, the reading of literature, to create and replenish personal
and social identity as part of the spiritual process to find meaning.
In connecting stories to identity, and the orientating and reori-
entating of experiences and meanings, Crites draws out the spiritual
aspect of the practice of reading by suggesting that literary forms,
across many mediums, are instrumental in both individual and com-
munity development. Books, poems, films, art, and music potentially
offer a sense of “meaning, power and value that roots . . . mundane
stories with something deeper” (Christ, 1995 [1980], pp. 2–3). There
is a sacred import to literature, accessed through the activity of read-
ing that Crites elucidates, which is explored in the women readers I
interviewed.
Further evidence that reading is a spiritual activity is suggested in

contemporary studies of women and religion, particularly Christianity
and post-Christianity.5 Cynthia Eller’s Living in the Lap of the Goddess
is a ten-year study tracing the feminist spiritual movement in the
United States, and she comments that “the most common entrée into
feminist spirituality was through books” (1993, p. 33). Eller sug-
gests that women are mining an eclectic range of genres for religious
and spiritual knowledge: “A great many books on various aspects of
feminist spirituality have been published, and judging from personal
testimonies, they have been responsible for introducing many women
to the movement” (1993, p. 10). Alison Pryce reaches a similar con-
clusion in a British context, naming literature as the way women are
originally presented with post-traditional forms of feminist spiritual-
ity (1999, p. 198); while Nicola Slee notes that many of the partici-
pants in her study of women’s faith development mentioned books
and literature as influencing their spiritual quests (2004, pp. 113,
177). For contemporary Christian and post-Christian women, it
seems that reading resources their spiritual lives.
The Implied Reader in Feminist

Theology and Literature
While literature and reading have a strong presence in Christian and
post-Christian feminist theology, the actual reader is glossed over.
Although she is imagined by the theologian, very little is known about
the uses or the users of reading as a spiritual practice. Actual women
readers and their experiences of reading are only implied, by which
I mean the reader in feminist theology and literature, and women’s
processes and experiences of reading, are a missing dimension of fem-
inist theology’s relationship to literature.6 To my mind, the reader is
present, but only in the background, and just out of view.
The focus of feminist theology’s interest in literature is directed
toward the texts and the feminist theologians’ interpretations of
women’s writings, to the extent that she (the theo/alogian) is the
lone reader in feminist theology, and insight into women’s spiritual
reading as a practice is available mainly through her interpretations
and her reading experiences.7 Eminently, Carol Christ has written of
her feminist journey to thealogical consciousness, of which reading
Doris Lessing’s fiction is a significant moment:
When I first read The Four Gated-City in the winter of 1969, I knew I
had found the text I was looking for. Ideas and feelings I was struggling
to put into words were expressed in Lessing’s story of Martha Quest.

My connection to The Four Gated-City was so deep that I dreamed
about it for weeks. (1992 [1975]), p. 231)
Christ discovered The Four Gated-City while searching for “religious

and theological texts written by women that could verify my spiritual
experience” (1995 [1980], p. xxvii). The novel, particularly the expe-
riences of the heroine, Martha Quest, mirrors Christ’s longing for a
spirituality that speaks to her experiences, and confirms her attempts
to formulate a spirituality voiced by women in ways compatible with
a feminist outlook (Christ, 1992 [1975]). Reading Lessing stirred
a reflection that eventually led to Christ’s development of a femi-
nist religious approach to reading and interpreting literature (1976a),
and in Diving Deep and Surfacing (1995 [1980]) she offers ground-
breaking readings of themes found in women’s fictional writing.
Christ’s work finds a model for women’s spiritual quest in the novels
of Lessing, Kate Chopin, Margaret Atwood, Ntozake Shange, and
Adrienne Rich. Analyzing their form, content, and use of literary
devices, Christ derives four stages related to women’s spiritual devel-
opment: nothingness, awakening, insight, and new naming.
Christ’s approach highlights the text-centeredness of feminist the-
ology’s approach to literature that only implies the presence of actual
readers while making explicit the presence of the feminist theo/
alogian. Although Christ is not overtly examining the relationship
between women readers and reading, she refers to her own, and her
students’, responses. She prefaces her work by stating that her inter-
pretations of Lessing “have grown and ripened in many long discus-
sions with women about the books and about our lives” (1992 [1975],
p. 232). Feminist theology is concerned with women’s lives—in the
sense that “women’s experience” has been a particularly important
category in all its endeavors—therefore Christ is aware of actual read-
ers. However, Christ writes: “Lessing has represented a structure of
a quest myth from the perspective of women’s experience that strikes
a chord with many women” (1992 [1975], p. 238), thus highlight-
ing how Christ’s turn to literature implies untested and generalized
parallels from the text to the lives of women for whom the themes of
the text are imagined to appeal.
Although Christ is also a real reader undertaking reading as a
spiritual practice, her voice is the lone reader interpreting the text on
behalf of other women readers. While this means Christ’s spiritual
reading practice is accessible, the experiences of the spiritual reading
practices of other women is assumed. In other words, the implied
woman reader in feminist theology and literature is fulfilled by the

interpreter or critic because text-centered approaches to analysis privi-
lege the theo/alogian’s voice. This is a tendency common in textual
approaches to literature, as Sara Mills observes: “Literary theorists
have been particularly guilty of making assumptions about what read-
ers or ideal readers think, based on the intuitions of the critic or theo-
rist herself/himself” (1994b, p. 5). Mills is referring to the propensity
within literary theory to posit a speculative reader: for example, an
ideal, implied, virtual, superreader, or narratee as tools with which to
analyze the relationship between readers and texts (Bennett, 1995b;
Leitch, 1995). This is undertaken without investigating how readers
actually respond to or consider their reading experiences. As a result,
it is highly likely that “we know more about the concerns and the
views of researchers than we do about the actual practices . . . and
the experiences of other readers” (Hermes, 1995, p. 10), who com-
prise the greater part of users of literature for spiritual and religious
meaning and development. Even though women readers are sharing
literature’s platform with writers and theologians to resource feminist
spiritualities and theologies, the uses to which women readers are
putting literature remains open for investigation.8
My intention is not to be overly abrasive regarding the text-
centeredness or the lone theo/alogian reader. Centering the text is
not confined to feminist theology. According to Terry Eagleton, in
literary studies (including the specialized study of religion and lit-
erature) the reader has been “underprivileged” in comparison to
the theoretical attention given to the text and the role of the author
(1983, p. 74).9 Eagleton explains that the rise of New Criticism dur-
ing the 1930s and 1950s introduced textual analysis as the primary
mode of studying literature. The New Critics assessed a piece of prose
or poetry by evaluating the use of literary devices, such as imagery,
rhyme, patterns, themes, rhetoric, irony, and paradox. The subjective
response of the critic, biographical, or intentional details relating to
the author, or any sociological or historical influences upon a piece of
work were considered irrelevant.10 The meaning of a poem, prose, or
novel could be uncovered by practical criticism, which “still lives on
in the day-to-day reading practices” (Littau, 2006, p. 97) of students
of literature in schools and universities, and is the dominant mode of
doing literary analysis (Eagleton, 1983, p. 31). Feminist theology’s
text-centeredness, at least in part, owes something to its connection
with the literary realm.
I think feminist theology’s turn to literature has a different motiva-
tion than my turn to the reader; it looks toward the text as a product
to be investigated and assessed in relation to its potential to be part

of a new textual base from which to do theology (Ruether, 1985a).
The draw toward the text is unsurprising given that feminist theol-
ogy emerges within a religious tradition bound to a (sacred) book,
and that one of its first tasks was to read, reread, and reinterpret the
Christian sacred script. Furthermore, the use of textual criticism
has been invaluable for the development of concepts of the spiritual
and religious, shaping and shaped by women’s comprehension of the
sacred. For instance, Carol Christ’s turn to literature is daring. She
has used her detailed readings of women’s writing to propose distinct
forms of religious experience, and by “refusing to assimilate women’s
stories to the doctrines of men, she has established women’s literature
as a theological source that, while still largely ignored . . . has become
vital to most religious feminists” (Sands, 1994, p. 125). Adopting
textual approaches is a means to look closely at language, which can
have an “unbraiding” function (Modleski, 2008 [1982]) in divulg-
ing what has been hidden, what is potentially empowering, and what
has been coded according to the many facets of identity such as gen-
der, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, language, religion, and so
forth.
However, there is much to be gained by turning to the activity
and processes of reading rather than the textual product. Making
women’s reading practices the focus not only introduces a lived ele-
ment to feminist theology and literature, but also is a response to the
limited access women have had to Christianity’s textual traditions.
In the introduction to Religion and Gender, Ursula King overviews
women’s status in relation to sacred texts:
The sacred writings of the world religions are all thoroughly andro-
centric. However, women are not only readers of androcentric texts,
they are also writers and creators of such texts when they are schooled
in and express themselves through the dominant modes of thinking
of their age. Dissenting voices can be heard in the past, but they are
few . . . the gynocritical approach is particularly interested in women
as writers, that is women who as their own agents create structures of
meaning. (1995b, p. 19)
Women’s limited input as writers (of scripture, ecclesiology, or theol-

ogy) is rectified as feminist scholarship discovers and produces texts
(both sacred and scholarly) by women, rather than by men. Presenting
women as authors is part of the feminist challenge to traditional reli-
gious textual structures. However, not only are the sacred writings of
the world’s religions androcentric, but also their readings: “Reader

constructs often mask particular sorts of male interpreters and read-
ing strategies” (Malbon and Cape Anderson, 1993, p. 251), while
women’s readership, as Kate Flint (1993) has documented, has been
historically silent. Therefore, “consciously embracing their identity as
women readers in their particular sociocultural situation” (Watson,
1999, p. 78) asserts women’s spiritual readership as a challenge and
corrective to their absence as readers.
Furthermore, feminist research is often criticized for hiding in
the ivory tower, away from women living in the wider world. Janice
Radway (1991 [1984]), in Reading the Romance, finds fault with femi-
nist textual critics for their isolation from “real” women. In Christian
feminism, one of Mary McClintock Fulkerson’s conclusions is that
feminist theologians must include women who “are not the ‘we’ of
the feminist account” (1994, p. 114), and Ellen Clark-King argues
that theology is not the “possession of the academy” (2004, p. 25),
a standard that reflects liberation and feminist theologies’ focus on
starting theology from the experiences of those without positions of
power. My own view is that many important developments in femi-
nism are occurring outside academic debate and in locations, such as
the activity of reading, where empirical approaches are not usually
considered, at least, by feminist theology.
Turning to Real Readers

To bring the actual embodied reader and her experiences to view, I
developed a reader-centered feminist approach.11 This uses qualita-
tive, semi-structured interviews in which Christian and post-Chris-
tian women self-selected the texts they perceived to have shaped
their personal, spiritual journeys, with their reflections guiding the
interview schedule. It is a departure from text-centered interpreta-
tions that are the products of feminist theological readings, to the
processes and experiences of the activity of reading. Following Janice
Radway, rather than focusing on the “meaning of the text as read”
(1991 [1984]), p. 86), I wanted to pay attention to the “meaning
of the act” of reading (1991 [1984], p.86). The former constitutes
examining any of a number of textual features such as narrative con-
tent, contexts, themes, features, or devices to suggest the sense of a
piece of work, and, for my purposes, what that purports for religious
feminism. The latter observes the processes and experiences through
which readers make use of reading, and for this book, how the texts
function in their spiritual lives. This is not to deny the importance of
the textual interpretations that participants construe from their own

readings, but the text is surrendered to underscore that the activity of
reading has significance as a practice in the spiritual lives of Christian
and post-Christian women.
Real, rather than implied, readers have been a topic of investiga-
tion in disciplines such as audience and reception studies. Motivated
by a critique of formalism’s capitulations to the text as the (single) site
of a (single) meaning, and a dissatisfaction with the assumption that
readers are passively duped by the meanings embedded in the text, the
“reader, the reading process, and response” (Tompkins, 1980b, p. ix)
have become vital sites of interest. This reorientation toward the reader,
encouraged by the post-structuralist “death of the author” prioritizes
the reader as an agent in the production of the many situated inter-
pretations of a text.12 While reader response criticism posits the reader
hypothetically as a theoretical construct in the text, there has been an
ethnographic “turn to the reader” in literary and cultural research.13
The processes and experiences of reading have been prioritized by
qualitative studies in reader response theory: from studies of collective
reading practices in book clubs (Hartley, 2001; Long, 1986, 2003)
to community projects,14 and other sites such as prisons (Sweeny,
2010); education studies;15 and individual reading practices of genres
like romance, women’s, and girls’ magazines.16 In Christian studies,
anthropologists and empirical biblical reader response studies have
noted the similarities and differences between readers’ interpreta-
tions of the Bible, to investigate the meaning of the Bible for lay read-
ers, rather than the meaning of the activity of Bible reading.17 While
looking to methods other than text-centered exegesis or philology
to research how communities are creating and recreating Christian
symbols and narratives in ways sensitive to the “contingent outcome
of situated interpretation” (Tremlett, 2010, p. 209), most interest has
been directed at evangelical congregations, perhaps because evangeli-
cal belief in the authority of the Bible provides more opportunity to
find everyday readers.18 However, owing to the gendered ratio of Bible
group members and the particular manner in which gender dictates
access to scripture study in some traditions, the majority concentrate
on men’s biblical reading, or gender is not the primary focus.19
Women’s reading experiences have been explored in feminist cul-
tural and audience studies. Janice Radway’s (1991 [1984]) Reading
the Romance and Joke Hermes’s (1995) Reading Women’s Magazines
use semi-structured interviews to explore the relationship between
women readers and romantic popular fiction, and women’s weekly and
“glossy” magazines, respectively.20 Valerie Weaver-Zercher’s (2013)
Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels and Lynn S.
Neal’s (2006) Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational
Fiction are closer to my aims because they are set within the context of
women’s religious lives.21 Weaver-Zercher thinks through the “allure”
of Amish romance novels based on conversations with readers, writers,
agents, publishers, fan sites, and her own Amish novel reading, while
Neal investigates the relationship between Christian women readers
of evangelical romance novels through semi-structured interviews
and fan mail, 22 and concludes that reading is a religious decision. Neal
uses the term “fictional devotion” to denote her participants’ devout-
ness to and through the genre of evangelical romance as it shapes, and
is shaped by, their Christian piety, combining their dedication to the
novels and their devotion to God (2006, p. 12).
These various approaches bring the actual reader to the fore, but
the text is still very present as it almost acts as a control from which to
examine comparatively how readers’ subjective positions and identi-
ties impact upon reading processes and the construction of the text’s
meaning. The readers’ responses revolve around how the same texts,
preselected by the researcher, affect the same or different response in
readers, who are usually fans of the genre in question. These studies
identify a specific type of reading activity corresponding to a genre:
the activity of reading romance, the activity of reading evangelical
fiction, the activity of reading the Bible, and so forth. By focusing
on a distinct kind of literature, the topic of investigation becomes
the activity and practice of reading that distinct kind of literature: for
example, the activity of reading becomes the activity of reading the
romance. The reading experiences are seen in reference to specific sin-
gle texts or genres, and readers are identified in terms of their inter-
est in reading one type of literary material, and, therefore, compared
to the text, the reader is slightly less privileged. I wanted to invert
existing ethnographic explorations of the activity of women’s reading,
which usually depended upon the researcher’s choice of text. Instead,
reader-centered research adopts semi-structured interviews lead by
participants’ choices of text, by explaining and assessing the impact
of the literatures that have contributed to their spiritual journeys.
Participants self-selected the literatures they felt had affected their
spiritual journeys, which range across a variety of genres, and also dis-
cussed their often difficult relationship with the Bible (see chapter 3).
In this way, the interviews were based around their textual choices,
which maintains the profile of the reader and her experience, giving
insight into what women are reading, but emphasizes how they are
using the texts they name. Or, to put it another way, the text figures
instrumentally as a channel that submits access to the women’s spiritual

reading experiences. Reader-centered feminist research moderates the
text, while the presence of the reader is heightened to elaborate the
uses of literature and the act of reading within gender and religion,
indicating a shift from interpreting meanings of texts to interpreting
the activity and processes of reading. Subsequently, this book does
not offer explicit analysis of the literature named by women readers
in this study, although some textual details are included (either by
me or by the participants) to contextualize their experiences. To offer
my understanding of the meaning of the text would undermine their
reflections—another example of the lone, feminist researcher reading
on behalf of implied women reader above the voices of actual women
readers—and therefore reduce the insight into their reading processes
and strategies (Hermes, 1995).
Using “Women’s Experiences” 23

In keeping with the feminist orientation to this book, turning to
real readers and reading relies on deploying women’s experiences as a
source from which knowledge is generated. This has been a practice
since the social sciences were charged with only investigating and
producing theory from men’s (usually, white, middle-class) experi-
ences (Oakley, 1981; Roberts, 1981b). In feminist theology, as early as
1960, Valerie Saiving (1992 [1960]) identified the androcentricism in
systematic theology, and claimed women’s experiences as a vital category
in feminist religious studies and theology (Isasi-Diaz, 1996, p. 95).
Feminist theologians (like other liberation theologians) have used
the experiences of those underrepresented in church history, ecclesi-
ology, and academia as the “source and norm” for feminist theology
(Young, 1990, p. 49). However, the use of experience can also enforce
absence. In feminist theology, the “source and norm” has generally
referred to the experiences of white, heterosexual, relatively privi-
leged, wealthy, and educated women who essentialized “woman” and
“woman’s experience” by failing to account for differences between
women. As a result, the experiences of nonwhite, non-privileged, les-
bian, and bisexual women were marginalized.
This critique, which forced feminism to rethink their use of
“woman” and “experience,” synchronized with the rise of postmod-
ernism and its challenge to experience. The death of the autonomous
subject means experience can no longer be taken as the “individu-
alistic, idiosyncratic sense of something belonging to an individual
and exclusively his or her own” (Lury, 1987, p. 2), but is “open to
contradictory interpretations guaranteed by social interests” (Weedon,

1987, p. 80). This also brings the fragmentation and deconstruction
of the “meta” truths that diffuses knowledge, identity, and experi-
ence from the objective to the subjective, from the universal to the
relative. Differences between women are recognized, but likewise
make it difficult to mark our commonalities in the way suggested by
the claim to experience.
Despite its limitations, I am struck by the pragmatic value, perhaps
close to what Gayatri Chackravorty Spivak has rationalized as “stra-
tegic essentialism” (1996, p. 205). Listening to women’s versions of
their experiences when investigating religious, gendered social lives
is “a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible
political interest” (1996, p. 205). When utilized by those who are
deprived of power, the use of women’s experiences as a shared notion
can be a powerful ally in dislocating and rupturing oppressive and
social forces (Fuss, 1989, p. 32). I want to keep experience, but rec-
ognize it as a complex and intricate category because it remains more
useful and productive to draw on women’s experiences than to leave
their stories unheard and therefore unknown (Ramazanoglu and
Holland, 2000).
Joan W. Scott’s suggestion is helpful in historizing experience,
reworking its meaning as an event, occurrence, or knowledge to
denote an ongoing set of processes that constructs. Scott advocates
exchanging “experience” as it is usually theorized as “the authoritative
evidence that grounds what is known” for experience as “that which
we seek to explain, that about which knowledge is produced” (1992,
p. 26). Rather than experience being the possession of an individual,
it continually and contingently constitutes. Experience therefore is
one way to understand the “operations of the complex and chang-
ing discursive processes by which identities are ascribed, resisted, or
embraced and which processes themselves are unremarked” (1992,
p. 33). Experience is not a foundational or necessary point from
which we interpret and work in the social world because it is already
an “interpretation and is in need of interpretation” (1992, p. 37).
Women’s testimonies about their spiritual reading experiences and
my analysis are representations of experiences: what is offered is “an
account, an interpretation or representation” (Thomas, 1999, p. 81)
that can act as “windows on the social” (1999, p. 75). This allows
access, albeit partial, to the social framework in which the experiences
of women’s readings in the context of their religious and spiritual lives
occur. The analogy of the window highlights the mediated nature
of research that draws upon and investigates experiences. As Angela
McRobbie argues, “representations are interpretations” (1982, p. 51)

as they use “a whole set of selective devices such as highlighting, edit-
ing, cutting transcribing and inflecting . . . these invariably produce
new permeations of meaning” (1982, p. 51). As a window intercedes
between what the viewer sees and what the view offers, in an inter-
view participant’s offer reflections, accounts, and interpretations of
spiritual reading in their religious and spiritual lives, understood from
their situated vantage point.
Introducing the Readers

At the heart of this book are 36 women’s stories of reading and spiri-
tuality.24 The majority of the women were white, generally formally
educated, most having attended college or university, although this
was not always the case. Employment histories were varied; some
were studying, while almost half had retired, and one participant had
cared for her family full-time but had undertaken voluntary work.
Sexual identities included heterosexual, lesbian, and bisexual women,
and those who refused a specific gendered identity. They warmly and
generously welcomed me into their homes, churches, and places of
work to discuss at length their religious background, and the pieces of
literature that had most influenced their spiritual identities.25
Meanings of Spirituality
The call for participants asked for women who were interested in “spiri-
tuality,” a term that, like religion, is contested, is usually only loosely
delineated, and can be applied to a variety of settings.26 Spirituality is
often positioned as part of the world’s religions (and sometimes not),
referring widely to personal and group practices and experiences, exer-
cises, and faiths in relation to the divine, sacred, transcendent, or ulti-
mate meaning. Within the discipline of religious feminism, spirituality
is usually thought of as a series of movements rather than a coherent
system of beliefs and customs, but some common themes emerge.27
Cynthia Eller (1993, pp. 6–11; 1995, pp. 276–77) characterizes feminist
encounters with spirituality as being concerned with women’s empow-
erment, emphasizing the goodness and sacredness of nature, utilizes
female images of the divine, and takes a revisionary view of world reli-
gious history. She comments on the diversity of the movement:
It draws on many religious traditions, but answers to none. It has

neither institutionalized nor stagnated, and is in constant flux. The
primary characteristic of feminist spirituality is variety. For virtually

every belief that one woman claims as authentic feminist spirituality,
there is another woman who will assert the opposite belief but make
the same claim. (1993, p. 3)
Christ and Plaskow (1992a [1979]) demonstrate this diversity

in their edited volume Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in
Religion, an early and important collection that includes work on
Judaism, Christianity, thealogy, lesbian spirituality, womanist spiri-
tuality, Paganism, Wicca, and the Goddess. Since this book, further
work has acknowledged thinkers across cultures working within and
outside their religious traditions, while adhering to a feminist agenda
specific to their geographical and historical localities.28 Ursula King
offers a broader framework by suggesting that spirituality is a cen-
tral theme in the women’s movement, “a search for wholeness and
integration through radically transforming traditional patriarchal
attitudes to gender, work, the environment, and many other aspects
of personal and social experience” (1989, p. 126). The aims of gender
liberation are spiritual in that they attempt to work toward the full
flourishing of men and women in the social, political, and cultural
world. This incorporates feminist forms of religious and spiritual
practice and includes women’s spirituality within traditional religion
or as part of new, post-traditional spiritualities.
The readers have belonged and some continue to belong to
Anglican, Baptist, Brethren, Christadelphian, Church of Scotland,
Ecumenical, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Quaker, Roman
Catholic, and United Reform faith communities, or some com-
bination thereof. At the time of interview, participants were either
regular attendees at various Christian denominations and identified
strongly with their respective faith communities; were affiliated to
Paganism, Goddess feminism, Wicca, or combined Christianity with
such forms of spirituality; or had rejected any formal connection
to a particular organized or nontraditional spirituality. To capture
this range of identities, mostly, I refer to readers as Christian and
post-Christian women. “Post-Christian,” as part of the literature on
contemporary feminist theologies and women’s spiritualities, usually
indicates someone who having once stood within Christianity (either
by upbringing or by personal choice) has subsequently left, at least
in part on account of their feminist stance.29 It is usually associated
with Mary Daly and Daphne Hampson’s critical denunciation of a
Christian faith coupled with a desire to retain a (feminist) spiritual
quest. While Daly (1985 [1973]) is credited with coining the term
“postchristian,” she later discarded it to signify her radical and total
rejection of Christianity, rather than acknowledging any connection
to the Western theological paradigm. Hampson (1990, 1996) later
developed “post-Christian” to connote her Christian (as opposed to
Judaic, Islamic, or Buddhist) heritage but her simultaneous abandon-
ment of the tradition’s myths, symbols, teaching, and practice.30 For
both Daly and Hampson “post” is temporal, signifying that their
understanding of religion and spirituality has been informed by and is
chronologically dependent upon Christianity: their current spiritual
identities following after, but are now severed from this particular
past. The strength of the term is its pliability. For instance, Linda
Woodhead (1993) identifies commonalities between post-Christian,
feminist spirituality, and reform theologies as part of the new spiritu-
alities that began emerging in the later part of the twentieth century.
I would emphasize that post-Christian includes women who have
moved, or are in the process of moving, from Christianity to other
forms of religiosity and spirituality, or to none, for feminist and non-
feminist reasons.
In the interviews, participants used religion and spirituality in a
range of ways. For Carol, who describes her identity as a “Spiritual
Searcher,” religion is associated with “dogma”; while for Pat, a prac-
ticing Catholic, religion is “a code of practice which had evolved to
help explain some of our questions . . . religion . . . does routinize the
way that people might believe, or behave.” Rachel is a Christian, and
she contrasts religion and spirituality: religions are systems of “beliefs,
practices, and morality” but spirituality is “a new age sort of con-
cept where you are engaging with the divine in some sort of practice,
whether it be meditation or prayer or yoga or whatever.” Participants
often spoke of spirituality as the search for understandings and
activities that “feed [my] inner self” (Linda, Holistic Christian), that
“speak my truth” (Sophia,—), 31 and “nourish” and encourage per-
sonal “growth” (Jane, Christian Feminist). Miriam defines herself as
“Methlican,” to indicate her Anglican background and her training
for ministry in Methodism, describing faith as “the root of who I am”
and “spirituality is in terms of how that is expressed.” Most women
in this study follow the popular pattern of naming religion as insti-
tutional and organized, and spirituality as the private and personal,
which can fall within the limits of Christianity or fall far outside.
Generally, when quoting or referring to what a participant has said, I
follow their use of either spirituality or religion.
The Role of Reading

Any doubts that reading is a spiritual practice used by actual women
was quickly countered in the interviews. Louise (Goddess Feminist)
describes reading as a “spiritual pursuit” and Jane (Quaker), when
asked what spiritual practices she engaged in, answered readily: “I
read an awful lot of books!” Likewise, Sharon (Worldly) states “I
read, I read all the time,” and Margot (Roman Catholic) named her
reading as being “very important on my faith journey.” Reading
also appears as an element in participants’ self-created rituals. Anne
(Pagan), a Druid, meditates daily at a small temple she has built in
her home. She often uses a short extract as a “seed thought”—her
term for a literary, and often poetic, stimulus for reflection. In the
interview, she paraphrases Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “You would
take a phrase . . . ‘And the earth is a fire with the glory of God, but
only those who see take off their shoes’ [sic] And see what other
insights come from that.” Amaw32 (Church of England/Methodist)
belongs to a large Methodist community and incorporates literature
into her daily morning prayer time: “I use my Book of Offices from
West Moreland Abbey, and then Bible Reading Fellowship, then my
Book of Intercessions, then followed by whatever it is I’m reading a part
of a chapter of.” Władysław Szpilman’s The Pianist and Kate Adie’s
memoir The Kindness of Strangers: The Autobiography have been
reading material during this time of devotion, which is “giving time
to God.” Ann-Marie (Catholic) has a prayer corner at home, with a
Bible, rosary beads, a candle, a notepad, and a piece of literature to
reflect upon. Nicola (Christian Feminist) compares reading poetry to
prayer and has drawn on her own verse, as well as the work of May
Sarton, Denis Levertov, Adrienne Rich, and others, to create women-
centered and feminist liturgies. In the emerging church group that
Laura (Christian) considers her faith community, literature, music,
film, and art are often used in worship. In her individual spiritual
practice she attends gigs, the cinema, and reads.
Although participants take part in an eclectic range of spiritual
practices, individually and in groups, reading is a significant activity
within their spiritual lives:33
There’s this sense of journeying. Books lead you on journey from one
to the other, and deeper and deeper within yourself. (Linda, Holistic
Christianity)
I think the reading has been very important on my faith journey, and
specific examples are difficult because it’s been a long journey, but it’s
certainly been important because if I hadn’t done the reading and the
reading led me to other networks of people and has made me inter-

ested in going and doing weekend courses, if all that hadn’t happened
then I would be right back where I was when I was 20. (Margot,
Catholic)
I mean they’ve [her selected texts] kept me going, they’ve kept me
on my spiritual journey, a bit like stepping stones really. (Mary,
Catholic)
[Fiction] it’s just a different way of taking a journey. It’s what mat-
ters is there is something in the content that leaves you richer than
when, than before. You gain something from it. (Karen, Quaker-
Spiritual)
The centrality of reading to my participants’ spiritual journeys was

encapsulated when I met Eileen, in her sixties, a retired civil servant
who now writes and consults on spirituality in the business world.
Eileen’s religious background lies in the Plymouth Brethren, but she
now affiliates with New Age and emerging spiritualities, and also
attends an inclusive Anglican congregation. I arrived a little early to
Eileen’s home for the interview, and as I was apologizing, she ushered
me into her living room where she had just finished preparing for my
visit. Awaiting me was a vast array of books, sorted into about ten
piles lying across the floor. I had asked participants to think about
the key texts that had most influenced their journeys for the inter-
view, and Eileen had decided to collect the most important books
together, each heap was themed according to the contribution the
books had made, and symbolized a shift in her spiritual life. There
were piles for topics on the New Age, feminism, religion and science,
and Christianity. In the preinterview chatter, she gestured toward
the table (also heavily laden with texts), remarking, “If you want to
understand my spirituality, here it is.”
There are pragmatic reasons that reading has become a practice
within women’s spiritualities. This group of women have access to
books, literature, and printed material, and by borrowing from book
groups, libraries, friends, and family the cost of the activity is kept
relatively low, as Gillian (post-Christian) comments: “And it’s free
as well, that’s the great thing about reading. It’s cheap.” Reading is
also “free” because it is available and convenient, as Lizzie (Spiritual)
explains:
It’s something that . . . I can do at times which I can choose when to

do it. Um, and . . . the act of reading, you can just read three lines and
have a think, or an entire book . . . and also it’s there to go back to . . .
or indeed to give away or whatever or to recommend.
Another basis for the high incidence of reading is the overall,

integral prominence given to reading. Yvonne (Christian) stresses
the importance of reading to her faith journey and Margot (Roman
Catholic) comments: “I know that I read a lot and I always have.”
Reading was presented as urgent and necessary: “I think when you’re
a reader, it’s part of you” (Gillian, post-Christian); “if I go into a room
without books in it I feel bereft” (Carol, Spiritual Searcher). Before
commencing the interviews, I anticipated a degree of dedication to
reading, given that my call for participants stated an interest in read-
ing and women’s spiritualities and relied upon women to self-select.
However, I was still struck by its elevated status and the frequency
with which participants stated its importance and their commitment
to the literary world.34 There were vivid examples of bibliophilia.
Some women brought their books to the interview, or listed especially
the books they felt best summarized and represented the different
shifts in their spiritual development, and other participants already
had a very exclusive collection they returned to for nourishment and
validation. Participants described how they first came across their
texts; gave intricate details of plot, character, and themes; conveyed
their understandings of the text; recalled its emotional affects and
their feelings toward the texts; and added their overall assessment
of reading in their spiritual lives. I was given tours of participants’
bookshelves, and, in some cases, book rooms and libraries. The texts
participants’ brought to the interview were often well worn, with sec-
tions highlighted, pages turned down, notes in the margins, or bits
of paper full of notes interleaved with book pages. I was shown book
diaries, scrapbooks, and personalized anthologies, and presented with
wall displays of poetry and excerpts of prose. Within the interviews,
the women readers recurrently conveyed an unreserved love of words
that refused the possibility that participants were just asserting the
depth of their passion and knowledge of literature for the benefit of
this research.
For me, while clear theoretical prompts pointed toward the rela-
tionship between reading, feminism, and spirituality, it was these
women I wanted to meet. Women who were entering and partak-
ing in the imaginative worlds of the sacred found in titles borrowed
from friends and family, or unearthed in bookshops, libraries, charity
shops, or car boot sales; then passionately discussed, recommended,
and passed on; or treasured in a personal collection. Through hearing
about their experiences and their spiritual journeys, the connections
in their lives between reading, spirituality, and feminism emerge as an
embodied instance of the third wave emphasis on individuality and
community, through commonality. However, before I begin to use

this activity of reading to build bridges between the second and third
waves, sacred and secular feminisms, the next chapter introduces the
wave metaphor, the generational and secular disconnections it cre-
ates, and suggests the third wave is a search for individuality, com-
monality, and community.
CH A P T ER 2
Talking in Waves:
A Generational and Secular Metaphor
It is almost impossible to speak of feminist history without “talking

in waves”; such is the pervasiveness of this image for depicting the
development of the feminist and women’s movement. Since the wave
metaphor began to appear at the start of the second stage of femi-
nism—often credited to Marsha Weinman Lear’s (1968) article “The
Second Feminist Wave” in the New York Times Magazine (Henry,
2004, p. 58)—the wave is now a familiar and much-loved trope for
capturing the unfolding story of feminism.1 And there is good rea-
son. Waves signify the constancy of the women’s movement: even on
an apparently still stretch of water, there are ongoing ebbs, flows,
peaks, ripples, and swells as the water rises and falls. There is energy
as one wave crashes on the shore, and is drawn back out to the sea by
the current to rejoin tidal streams. Waves overlap and undulate but
always belong to a larger body of water, dependent upon previous
and consecutive surges, but it is possible to see the distinct breaks. As
Cathryn Bailey notes, “As feminists, we could do much worse than
be associated with this phenomenon” (1997, p. 17), its power, poetry,
and beauty.
Despite its strategic force, two limiting and divisive sets of mean-
ings underscore the wave, which I suggest result in rigid distinctions
between second and third wave feminists, and between third wave
feminism and feminist theology. First, when tracing the origins of the
third wave, the motif is often accompanied by a series of generational
connotations as each successive wave is claimed and becomes attached
to a younger age-group of feminists. As extant critiques suggest, this
is a linear narrative, which forms artificial divisions between the dif-
ferent feminist cohorts.2 Second, owing to a sacred/secular binary in
operation (Magee, 1995) the wave is primarily a secular motif, which is
apparent in the way feminist studies have largely overlooked women’s
spiritual lives. Although the early stages of the women’s movement

were linked to Christianity, a sacred/secular ideology has coded the
wave metaphor as a secular narrative, which has led to a disciplin-
ary disconnection between feminist studies and religious feminism
(Llewellyn and Trzebiatowska, 2013). This mutually unconstructive
separation is evident in the third wave’s neglect of women’s religios-
ity and spirituality, and feminist theology’s reservedness in engaging
with wider development in gender theory.
In this chapter, I outline the generational and secular/sacred dis-
connections forged by the wave, and illustrated in the relationship
between second and third wave feminists and third wave feminism and
feminist theology. However, such rigid distinctions are at odds with
the third wave search for ways that enable the fragmented woman,
conceived as multiple and fluid in postcolonial and anti-essentialist
discourses, to be the grounding for feminism in community. The
third wave attempts to form community without essentializing and
universalizing by finding commonalities across individually located
differences, and is therefore an attempt to bridge individuality and
community by seeking instances where subjective experiences overlap
and meet, and from which community across difference can flourish.
Aging the Wave: Generational

Meanings of the Wave Metaphor
Feminism has entered a third wave. At least since the early 1990s,
third wave feminism has been contributing to our understanding
of gender relations. Arising from within, but also signaling a criti-
cal distance from second wave feminism, it deliberately embraces an
eclectic range of theoretic devices to emphasize difference in relation
to women, women’s experiences, and their many situated and con-
tingent contexts. Third wave voices keenly stress the anti-essentialist
eclecticism, contradiction, and hybridity of feminist identities and
meanings of feminism and undertake feminist practices in plural and
diverse ways, bringing to the fore a range of discourses questioning
the unity of categories such as woman and woman’s experience.
Descriptions of the third wave in British and American con-
texts usually emphasize the difficulties in defining contemporary
feminism, 3 rightly identifying it as a complex, messy movement that
eschews conformity to a single cohesive standpoint.4 These compos-
ite beginnings have led some to comment that the third wave “has
yet to become an organized (or even disorganized) political move-
ment of any significance” (Lotz, 2007, p. 83). However, while this
TALKING IN WAVES 33
acknowledges that the third wave’s meanings are still debated, the
success of organizations such as London Third Wave in the United
Kingdom, and Third Wave Foundation in the United States, plus the
growing use of third wave theory in the academy, testifies to its sig-
nificance for many women and men.5 Although Stacy Gillis, Gillian
Howie, and Rebecca Munford comment in their introduction to
Third Wave Feminisms that the origins of the third wave are some-
what “blurry” (2007b, p. xxiii), the third wave is thought to have
been galvanized by a new generation of younger women, who were
raised after the 1970s and living in a technological, multicultural,
and diverse society. This cohort is thought to be responding defiantly
against the media-fuelled “backlash,” Susan Faludi’s (1993) notable
term for the antifeminist rhetoric based in popular culture.
The wave has had generational connotations since feminists in the
1960s designated their burgeoning women’s movement “the second
wave,” while retrospectively naming the nineteenth-century proto-
feminist era as the “first wave.” For instance, Germaine Greer (1993
[1970]) situated her iconic work The Female Eunuch as “part of the
second wave” and a “new feminism” that may share some features with
earlier times, but replaces the suffragettes with a set of “younger women
with a new and vital cast” (1993 [1970], pp. 13–15). The second wave
follows and is indebted to nineteenth-century suffrage, but Greer uses
the wave metaphor to signify a bifurcation: as Astrid Henry has com-
mented, for Greer “‘second’ is tantamount to ‘new’ (and ‘improved’)
making the first wave analogous with ‘old’” (2004, p. 58).
The generational motif carries through to the first set of publica-
tions announcing the third wave. Rebecca Walker’s statement, “I am
not a postfeminism feminist. I am the Third Wave” (2006 [1992],
p. 5), is considered to be one of the first articulations of a new stream
of feminism by a new generation of feminists, comprising women and
men born after the 1960s, “[who] are the first . . . for whom feminism
has been entwined in the fabric of our lives” (Findlen, 2001b [1995],
p. xxii). Owing to the political and social transformations attained by
the campaigns and protests of first and second wave feminism, those
who came of age in the decades following the 1970s have been raised
with at least some sense of entitlement to equal opportunities. As
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards write in Manifesta: “For
our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice that we
have it—it’s simply in the water” (2000, p. 17).
Rebecca Walker’s (1995a) To Be Real: Telling the Truth and
Changing the Face of Feminism; Barbara Findlen’s (2001a [1995])
Listen Up: Voices from the New Feminist Generation (2001 [1995]);
Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake’s (1997a) Third Wave Agenda:

Being Feminist, Doing Feminism; and Jennifer Baumgardner and
Amy Richard’s (2000) Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the
Future, are, as these titles suggest, edited volumes of autobiographi-
cal and research-led pieces from self-identified young feminists her-
alding the (need for a) third wave, naming teenagers and women
in their twenties and early thirties as the third wave’s progenitors.
For example, Heywood and Drake’s Third Wave Agenda collection
contains essays by women born “between 1963 and 1974” (1997b,
p. 4). In Manifesta, Baumgardner and Richards continue the gen-
erational associations by identifying fellow third wavers as being “in
their late teens through their thirties” (2000, p. 401). In a British
context, Natasha Walter, in On the Move, illustrates “feminism for a
new generation” by collating statements from “young women—some
in their teens, most in their twenties and early thirties” (1991, p. 1);
and Kristin Aune and Louise Livesey (2007) maintain that although
they are “just past thirty” they consider themselves “young, third
wave feminists.” Amid the diverse voices, the third wave is associated
with a new generation of young feminist women who grew up in the
1980s and 1990s, as Ednie Kaeh Garrison writes: “The only general
consensus to have emerged is that [the third wave] has become a name
for young women who identify as feminists (but not feminists of the
sixties and seventies)” (2007, p. 185).
According to self-identified third wavers, emphasizing the genera-
tional distance from previous articulations of feminism marks their
contribution to feminism. Drawing on quantitative research into fem-
inist groups and networks in the United Kingdom, Aune and Livesey
describe the third wave as “new feminists, same old issues.” Their
analysis indicates that “new feminists” share the same concerns about
gender inequality and women’s issues as earlier feminisms, although
how their feminism is expressed and practiced takes different forms
(Aune, 2009), suggesting a gap between theoretical academic under-
standings of contemporary feminism and how younger women are
exercising feminism. However, a noticeable trait of self-identified
third wave literatures (from both within and outside the academy) is
their insistence that the third wave is a fresh articulation of feminism.
This is noticeable in the claim that the impetus to push feminism in
new directions is innate. Baumgardner and Richards note that a new
wave emerges as each generation of women has to respond to the
challenges and injustices of their era: “The difference between the
First, Second and Third waves is our cultural DNA . . . Each genera-
tion has a drive to create something new” (2000, p. 129). Using this
TALKING IN WAVES 35
language of inheritance admits the third wave debt to, and continuity
with, earlier women’s movements, while articulating a feminism that
engages with their immediate shifting societal contexts and defines
feminism in their own terms.
Another way in which feminists are differentiated generationally is
through the “matraphor” (cited in Henry, 2004, pp. 2–3), Rebecca
Dakin Quinn’s term for the maternal-filial bond bestowed upon the
wave.6 It is figurative, capturing the relationships between older and
younger feminists, and literal as many third wave feminists—such as
Rebecca Walker (1995a) who has written about her relationship with
her mother, Alice Walker—are the daughters of the second wave’s
founding figures and activists. While it acknowledges the metaphoric
and literal bond between women comprising the different feminist
waves, as Astrid Henry (2004) comments, it has also exacerbated the
relationship between older and younger feminists.
When the second wave began to demarcate a different agenda
from the suffragettes, at least four decades separated the two feminist
eras, therefore limiting opportunities for intergenerational dialogue.
However, there is greater proximity proximity between the second
and third waves. This creates a greater capacity for interaction, but
the closeness in age has been a source of conflict and misunderstand-
ing. The matraphor uncritically reproduces essentialist discourses of
mothering: older women are locked in a maternal role, and must give
birth, raise, and nurture younger feminists—but only for a limited
period, when they are still relevant. Younger feminists are cast as
immature, requiring guidance, and must look toward their foremoth-
ers for support and direction. Moreover, it does so in ways that pres-
ent the relationships between feminists of different ages as frosty.
In trying to distinguish themselves from their literal and figura-
tive mothers, the third wave can appear hostile toward earlier forms
of feminism. Walker’s (1995b) To Be Real includes pieces by second
wave women such as Gloria Steinem, bell hooks, and Angela Y. Davis;
it signals a clear break from the second wave, describing it in the fol-
lowing quotation as repressive, delimiting what comprises a “good”
or “bad” feminist, or “good” or “bad” feminism:
In order to be a feminist one must live in poverty, always critique, never

marry, want to censor pornography and/or worship the Goddess . . .
if she wants to be spanked before sex, wants to own a BMW, is a Zen
priest, wants to be treated “like a lady”, prioritizes racial oppression
over gender oppression, loves misogynist hip-hop music, still speaks to
the father that abused her, gets married, wants to raise three kids on
a farm in Montana etc., then she can’t be a feminist. That is, she can’t
join a community of women and men working for equality, and can’t
consider herself a part of a history of societal transformation on behalf
of women. (1995b, p. xxxii)
For Walker, when a new wave is instigated it brings a freshness and

relevance that means better and more radical ways of being and doing
feminism. Thus third wave feminisms are the initiates breaking new
ground: “pioneers, outlaws who demand to exist whole and intact,
without cutting or censoring parts of themselves” (Walker, 1995b,
p. xxxv). Echoing Greer’s division, Walker’s description of the third
wave takes on a rebellious tone to undermine what is understood to
be an inflexible and rigid second wave from which the third wave
secedes.
Unhelpfully, this reductive and distorted caricature of a repressive
second wave community is replicated across many third wave writ-
ings, and has led to intergenerational conflict. For example, Madelyn
Detloff describes some of the “emotional fireworks” (1997, p. 77)
that sparked at the 1995 National Women’s Association conference.
During the first plenary session, Louise Bernikow gave a paper titled
“Political Matricide: Feminism’s Second Wave, Third Wave, and the
Amnesia Problem,” arguing that the third wave had “forgotten” the
many different political struggles the second wave advocated. Detloff
describes the fallout from this paper:
In the panel discussions that followed . . . third wave dissenters were

numerous activists who did not identify as “feminists” because they
considered the term too narrow for their concerns; “grrrls” who
believed that the credentialed professionals in women’s studies conde-
scended them, expecting gratitude without acknowledging the grrrls
particular concerns and activism; graduate students who embraced
queer theory and found themselves at odds with a previous generation
of lesbian feminists. These advocates voiced their displeasure with the
tendency of second wavers to conflate third wave criticisms with con-
servative backlash or false consciousness. (1997, p. 78)
On one hand, second wavers are said to grieve for the apparent (femi-
nist) political apathy of younger women, and third wave attempts to
claim a different feminism can be read as a premature and ungrate-
ful calling of the end to second wave feminism—an “act of ampu-
tation” (Dicker and Piepmeier, 2003, p. 14)—when many second
wave feminists remain committed, involved in contemporary feminist
politics, teaching, and activism. In an example of the second wave’s
TALKING IN WAVES 37
antagonism toward contemporary feminism, Mary Daly (1998,

139ff.) has raucously described the postmodern turn in feminism
as “a cause of paralysis” (1998, p. 140) and postmodern feminism
a “monster” and a “dead thing” (1998, p. 144) that kills political
involvement. On the other hand, younger women claim their femi-
nist voices are not heard, and their activism dismissed. Insidiously, as
the title of Bernikow’s keynote address alleges, and as Garrison has
pointed out, there is the Oedipal inference: “This vocabulary of [gen-
erations] requires a particular Oedipal metaphor to keep the crone
specter of the (second wave) feminist separate from young women”
(Garrison, 2004, p. 192), and assumes that the third wavers are out
to “kill” their mothers, are accused of marrying their fathers, and
are complicit in capitalist, popular consumer culture, and a weakened
politics (Garrison, 2007).
While I do not want to negate third wave feminist experiences
and their right to be heard, the third wave’s claim to be a younger
movement of women—generally hitting 30 at some point in the
nineties or the noughties—seems arbitrary and exclusive. Giving the
wave metaphor such a specific generational association with particu-
lar age boundaries, whether as dates of birth (Heywood and Drake,
1997a), or with the addition of the prefix “young” to “feminist”
(Walker, 1995a), creates cracks into which some feminists disappear.
For instance, I wonder how the feminists who campaigned before
and between the waves fit this metaphor: “Where are . . . Christine
de Pizan, Aphra Behn, the women in World War Two?” (Aune and
Livesey, 2007). A strong adherence to the wave metaphor overlooks
the cross-generational conversations that have taken place in femi-
nism’s changing historical contexts. By segmenting feminism into
separate age brackets, the wave metaphor is “always unspeakably
generalizing” (Hogeland, 2001, p. 110), and misses the instances
of overlap.
I also wonder how I fit this metaphor. I was born in the late 1970s
and have the third wave sense of social, political, and cultural entitle-
ment women have not always had, having benefited from the social
change instigated by the women’s movements. While I did not self-
define as feminist until my early twenties, I expected “to do what I
wanted to do” and did not anticipate there would be gender barriers
to prevent me. Once I had been introduced to feminism theology as an
undergraduate, I started reading Mary Daly, Carol Christ, Germaine
Greer, Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Wollstonecraft, Kate Millett, and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton to research the beginnings of feminism, and
feminist studies in religion and theology. I felt nostalgic about having
missed out on the 1970s surge of activism, but because I was learning
from these second wave thinkers, recognizing in their analysis of gen-
der that there was a continuing need for theory and political engage-
ment, and discussing feminism in the classroom and with friends, I
felt part of the feminist journey.
I was not aware of third wave expressions of feminism until I was
about to turn 30. I shared their indebtedness to the hard work of
the women’s movement, was inspired by the emphasis on postcolo-
nialism, intersectionality, and the playful, fluid, and contradictory
subversions. Third wave discourses also helped me navigate “post-
feminism”:7 a recoil against feminism, and the assumption that the
time for gendered political activism has passed. Confusingly, post-
feminism can refer to the third wave’s use of pluralistic frameworks
that aim to disturb universal meta-narratives and binary patterns of
thought as part of a broadly defined postmodern, post-structural-
ist, and (as already suggested) postcolonial milieu (Gamble, 2001b
[1998]; Gilley, 2005). The third wave distinguishes from the “back-
lash,” a version of postfeminism instigated by a conservative ideology
claiming feminism’s demise, as Faludi notes, ironically:
Just when record numbers of younger women were supporting feminist

goals in the mid-1980s (more of them, in fact, than older women) and
a majority of all women were calling themselves feminist, the media
declared that feminism was the flavor of the seventies and that “post-
feminism” was the new story—complete with a younger generation
who supposedly reviled the women’s movement. (Faludi, 1993, p. 14)
The backlash includes the range of hostile responses to feminism that

at best derides the women’s movement as out of touch, too academic,
or extreme, and at worst accuses it of raising a new range of detrimental
problems for women. For instance, the debates circling postfeminism
include issues of victimhood, individuality, and personal responsibil-
ity, popularly perceived to be connected with figures such as Naomi
Wolf, Camille Paglia, Katie Roiphe, and Rene Denfield. This stream
of postfeminism accuses the women’s movement as espousing “victim
feminism,” in which “a woman seeks power through an identity of
powerlessness” (Wolf, 2006 [1993], p. 13) 8 and adopts a flexible ide-
ology in which feminist matters become issues of personal preference
and individual desires (Orr, 1997, p. 34). Postfeminism, as the prefix
“post” signifies, is thought to have moved beyond feminism, “dis-
carding the essence” (Whelehan, 2000, p. 90) of feminism’s original
purposes and objectives. It tends to imply that the time for feminism
TALKING IN WAVES 39
has passed, as gender injustice and women’s oppression in the public

and private realms has somehow been taken care of.
Sarah Gamble helps to clarify the difference between postfemi-
nism and the third wave. She sees the third wave as a movement try-
ing to adapt to shifting times in which second wave feminism has not
officially ended, and yet there seems to be a demand for feminism
to change (2001b [1998], p. 52). However, I would make a stronger
claim that third wave feminism is, in part, a compulsion to define
itself against the postfeminist, conservative backlash and to simul-
taneously affirm the continuing need for feminism by highlighting
existing gender-based discrepancies. The third wave’s contradistinc-
tion to the “big lie” of “False Feminist Death Syndrome,” Jennifer L.
Pozner’s (2003) wry take on the aspersions made in popular culture
that herald the “death” of feminism9 helped me maintain that femi-
nism was not a “dirty word” and nor was it “dead.” The third wave
insistence that gender inequality still existed and the disassociation
from postfeminism (Heywood and Drake, 1997b; Modleski, 1991)
contradicted the backlash I encountered when I declared myself femi-
nist. However, I did not recognize the portrayal of the second wave
as rigid and prescriptive, and when faced with the heavy rhetoric that
defined the third wave, or new feminism, as a movement for women
in their teens and twenties, I felt left out.
Rita Alfonso and Jo Trigilio (1997) are also feminists caught
between the waves, and describe their uncertainty as to whether they
belong to the second or third stages of feminism: “I feel as if I am
standing on the beach with my surfboard, too late to catch the peak
of the second wave and unwilling to conform to the rules of pack rid-
ing the third” (1997, p. 8). More recently, Jo Reger has lamented:
I feel feminist, but do not fit into the second (i.e. starting in the 1960s
and 1970s and continuing into the backlash 1980s) or third wave (i.e.
argued by some as beginning in the 1990s) description. I am barely
a baby boomer and too young for the second wave, and not quite
a member of Generation X, making me too old for the third wave.
(2005b, p. xvi)
I, too, wondered where I would fit when I turned 30 and was no lon-
ger described (according to the third wave) as a young feminist. Do I
relinquish the third wave and pass it on? Do I hold on to it and wait
for the fourth, fifth, sixth wavers to arrive and establish their own
set of feminist agendas for their political era? Am I a “mid-waver”
or “2.5 waver”? Could I contribute to third wave feminism? Could
I join London Third Wave or be a Riot Grrrl in my forties? These

questions reveal flaws in the generational depiction of feminism.
Presenting feminism as a linear meta-narrative of generational waves
is an attempt at specificity and discreteness, separating the feminist
movement into organized intentional epochs. Designating the waves
by age is a mechanism for seeking precision, which conversely results
in a lack of clarity.
I have tried to point to some of the problems inherent in the seem-
ingly innocent use of the wave metaphor to mark differences between
second and third wave feminists. The age-based parameters are often
exclusive and capricious, and the familial mother-daughter trope trou-
bles the relationship between younger and older feminists. Another
reason why the metaphor has received critical attention is because
the wave imagery is disconcerting. While it seems to suggest fluidity
rather than the rigid distinctions I have suggested, it also “washes”
away previous feminist movements. As Aune and Livesey comment:
Waves wash a beach clean, taking out some or all that has assembled
between the tides. In intellectual thought this denies what comes
before, in between and after . . . Talk about waves also assumes that
third wave will delete second wave . . . the wave metaphor is one of
constant movement but also of temporality. The wave image hides con-
tinuity. The tide is constant but the wave is essentially short-lived and
its effects are removed by the next wave. As such the wave metaphor
serves only to suck the sand from beneath our feet in reinforcing the
idea of feminism as something non-permanent and eradicable. (2007)
These criticisms have forced feminist thinkers to recast the wave

metaphor in a move to minimize the strict delineation between sec-
ond and third wave feminism. Recognizing that generational could
refer to changing contexts, rather than a specific age category, Nancy
Whittier uses the term “political generations” (1995, pp. 14–19),
which are cohorts triggered into political consciousness by common
experiences (usually key stages of life such as schooling, migration,
and entering the workforce) at approximately a similar point in their
lives. They share an interpretive framework shaped by historical cir-
cumstances and factors, and strengthened through collective action,
networks, and commitments rather than being associated with the
Gen-Xers of the third wave, or the baby boomers of the second. Each
political generation comprises “micro-cohorts,” “groups of women
[who] entered radical feminist organizations together, every year or
two, shared similar experiences inside and outside the movement”
TALKING IN WAVES 41
(1995, p. 17). The political generation is more diverse than the divi-
sion of feminism by historical waves, as it allows for variations of age,
background, geography, and opinion, and acknowledges that these
differences are largely due to women becoming feminists at different
times. The concept of political generations breaks down the depen-
dence on chronological age within different waves, emphasizes the
historical and political contexts that inform women’s mobilization
to feminism, and recognizes that social movements are shaped by
“shared transformative experiences that create enduring political com-
mitments and worldviews” (1995, p. 16). While feminists belonging
to different micro-cohorts within political generations can vary in age
chronologically, perhaps their feminist birth date or feminist agenda
will be similar.
Ednie Kaeh Garrison also offers an amendment to the analogy.
Rather than being bound to the watery images, Garrison suggests
that the electromagnetic radio wave is more suited to capturing
the complexities of feminist history. Radio waves are multiple, exist
simultaneously in various bandwidths, and are based on frequencies
that produce different transmissions, and are harnessed by different
types of equipment. Radio waves, at times, are “fading and dissolv-
ing, other times interrupted or appropriated or colonized, oftentimes
overlooked because we can’t hear or perceive a signal we haven’t got
an ear for” (2005, p. 244). She claims electromagnetic waves avoid
the idealistic but problematic generational understandings of feminist
wave by allowing us to think differently about the more intricate ways
radio waves can exist. Catherine Harnois (2009) investigates the gen-
erational differences in contemporary American feminism, identify-
ing three dominant approaches to understanding the third wave that
feminist scholarship has not questioned adequately: cohort-based,
age-based, and theory-based. She uses empirical data to discern the
extent of difference in and across waves to argue that third wave femi-
nism might be better understood as an identity, rather than a distinct
theoretical perspective, age-group, or cohort. She suggests feminists
of all ages share many important aspects of their gender and political
ideologies, but the diversity of people and perspectives in all feminist
generations is rarely recognized.
These attempts to rethink the way we “talk in waves” underscore
the multifarious and intricate nature of the wave metaphor, but it is
still difficult to resist the desire to categorize and locate women into
one paradigm. While the wave metaphor encapsulates the unceasing
motion of the feminist movement, its ebbs, and its flows, it is only
ever temporary and fleeting, and hides continuity and commonality.
When feminist history is told and retold as waves, the default method
of distinguishing one wave from another is to define (often nega-
tively) against what has come before.
While feminist thinking has critically engaged with the problems
incurred by the generational undercurrents comprising the wave
metaphor, even suggesting alternative configurations to water imag-
ery, there has been less reflection on the wave’s secular temperament.
Although the feminism associated with the first wave comes out of the
Christian campaigns during the 1800s for abolition and temperance,
the telling of feminist history is predominately a secular narrative.
The wave metaphor often neglects to fully incorporate the religious
lives of women, or the contributions made by feminists working in the
discourses around religion and theology. This is primarily because of
a sacred/secular ideological structure (Magee, 1995) that constructs
the development of feminism, and the wave metaphor principally as a
secular story. I suggest as a result of the operation of this binary code,
an interdisciplinary disconnection exists between third wave femi-
nism and feminist theology, which is evident not only in the former’s
neglect of religiosity and spirituality, but also in the latter’s reservede-
ness in engaging with wider developments in gender theory. Both the
generational and secular meanings of the wave are at odds with the
third wave’s anti-essentialist, postcolonial concern to move beyond
the standpoint of white, Western privilege and acknowledge the mul-
tifarious aspects of identity while searching for community.
A Secular Narrative
I was once at a conference on the broad theme of women and spiri-
tuality, hosted by what is probably best described as a department
of letters. It was an interdisciplinary event, featuring scholars mainly
from historical, literary, and cultural studies, but I was one of the few
contributors from theology and/or religious studies. It was a memo-
rable meeting for many reasons (not least because it was in France,
in the summer), but the keynote address has stayed with me. The
speaker’s presentation concerned the work and lives of George Eliot
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and after a brief introduction to both
women, the paper’s main argument was disclosed: to highlight the
religious orientation and theological work of these writers. While
Eliot’s fiction, and Stanton’s part in the 1848 meeting at Seneca Falls
(which is thought to have kick-started the first wave of campaigning
for women’s suffrage) are well documented, the paper suggested that
Eliot’s and Stanton’s engagements with cutting-edge theology and
TALKING IN WAVES 43
biblical studies of their time were generally less well known. Eliot’s
translations of Feuerbach and Stanton’s leadership in the production
of the The Woman’s Bible (Stanton, 1993 [1895]; Fitzgerald, 1993)
had been part of my training in women and religion. The evolution of
post-traditional, post-Christian feminist, and women’s spiritualities
usually includes Stanton’s critical stance for religious reform (and to
writers preceding Stanton) through to the emergence of new spiritu-
alities at the beginning of the 1970s that gained momentum through
women-only conscious-raising groups (Eller, 1995; Klassen, 2009;
Pryce, 1999). I was confused that this aspect of their work seemed
less recognized outside of my discipline. However, this kind of occlu-
sion is emblematic of how feminist narratives neglect the religious and
spiritual, such as framing the opening acts of the first wave as a politi-
cal rather than religiously driven project,10 and neglecting the role of
religion in the lives of women comprising the first, second, and third
waves of feminism.
Neglecting Religion
Religious feminists have long contemplated a disciplinary segregation
preventing studies in women and religion, feminist theologies, and
other related subject areas from fully conversing with nonreligious
work about gender. Ursula King (2005a) has identified a “double
blindness” facing feminist work in theology and religious studies: the
arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences continue to harbor a
religious “blind-spot”; and religious and theological studies continue
to harbor a gendered “blind-spot.” Adopting metaphors of disability,
such as blindness, to negatively describe a theoretical gap or lack is
pejorative, and it is striking how often this device is used in the acad-
emy.11 Therefore, as I argue below, while it is difficult to disagree
with King’s analysis, I prefer to use “neglect” to suggest that as “mal-
estream” academia has marginalized feminist scholarship, feminist
scholarship has marginalized religion and gender.12
The place that religious concepts and practices, belief systems, and
experiences have in women’s lives is rarely approached outside the
realm of feminist religious studies and theology. For example, the
indexes and contents pages of feminist readers and anthologies reveal
incidences where feminist theological reflection and women’s reli-
gious or spiritual experiences are absent. For example, Sandra Kemp
and Judith Squires’s (1997a, 1997b) Feminisms has been praised for
its inclusive range of subjects,13 but apart from a passing mention
to Mary Daly as a founding figure in ecofeminism (Stabile, 1997,
pp. 509–10), as a representative of second wave radical writing (Kemp

and Squires, 1997b, p. 4) and “spiritual ecofeminism” (Mies and
Shiva, 1997), there are no contributions from religious thinkers. In
Maggie Humm’s (1992) Feminisms: A Reader, Daly’s Gyn/Ecology
(1990 [1978]) is included in the section on “lesbian feminism” but
no mention is made of her influence on radical feminist spirituali-
ties. Strikingly, Humm’s introduction to “feminist theory and the
academic disciplines” considers some of the main features of femi-
nist work in anthropology, economics, history, law, literature, media,
medicine, psychoanalysis, the sciences, and sociology but omits reli-
gious studies and theology, and her overview of first wave feminism
overlooks Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s biblical exegeses (Humm, 1992,
pp. 56–59).
Rarely is the work of feminist theologians called upon in contexts
outside of religious studies or theology, and even when “secular”
thinkers invoke divine language, argument, or imagery, this aspect
of their thinking is downplayed. For instance, French philosopher
Luce Irigaray’s anti-essentialist stance to human subjectivity has
influenced third wave academic theory (Stone, 2007; Howie and
Tauchert, 2007), but her work has been de-theologized by gen-
der theorists. Tina Beattie (1999) considers Elizabeth Grosz and
Margaret Whitford—two scholars responding to Irigaray—and notes
that they “appear determined to rescue her [Irigaray] from her own
mystical and religious inclinations, particularly when these focus on
Christianity” (Beattie, 1999, p. 119; Magee, 1995). This denies the
centrality of the sacred to Irigaray’s project, which is so evident in
Divine Women (2002 [1993]) and her essay Equal to Whom? (1994),
which challenges Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s In Memory of Her
(1983). Feminist theologians have drawn on the so-called French
feminists, such as Irigaray, Catharine Clément, Julia Kristeva, and
Hélène Cixous, to explore the sacred in relation to women.14 While
these writers, who have inspired contemporary gender theory, are
engaging with religious imagery and thought, this aspect of their
work is often lost in secular feminist discussions.
Feminism’s lack of engagement with religion questions whether
feminism is a predominantly secular movement. However, this is too
remiss of the role that religious women have played and continue to
play throughout the stages of feminist history, the way self-defined
feminists employ gender theory in their theology, and the occasional
glances that feminist studies makes in the direction of religion. Also,
claiming the third wave as secular because of its lack of attention
to religion uncritically repeats, rather than challenges, an established
TALKING IN WAVES 45
and already recognized disciplinary divide occurring across feminist

studies in the academy.
Feminist Theology’s Reservedness

Academic feminisms’ unreflexive secular temperament is not the
only reason for the distance between secular and religious femi-
nism. Feminist theology has also contributed by having an unhurried
response to keeping up with the pace of contemporary feminisms—a
trait it recognizes in itself (Collier and Sawyer, 1999). While secular
feminism seems naive of its inattentiveness to women’s religious and
spiritual lives, feminist theology has reflected on its position. Shelia
Davaney suggests that religious feminisms’ slower start owes some-
thing to its interdisciplinarity, describing the subject area as “parasitic
of the ideas, debates and critical work already carried out by scholars
in other fields” (1997, p. 5). A lag ensues when feminist theology
waits and takes its cue from other branches of learning, preferring to
appropriate for its own purposes other disciplinary positions devel-
oped outside of theology and religious studies. As Tina Beattie viv-
idly notes, feminist theology is Cinderella, “pretending that of course
she has been invited to the ball, and steadfastly refuses to acknowl-
edge that she has been confined to the entrance hall while the ugly
sisters are having a ball without her in the banqueting rooms of the
ivory tower” (1999, p. 117).
Linda Woodhead (1999) has used the image of the “ghetto” to
signify feminist theology’s location within academe. She argues that
feminist theology is isolated from and overlooked by other branches
of learning (not just feminist and women’s studies) but that it has also
self-withdrawn. While it has, in the past, had to claim and protect a
place for itself within and against the “malestream,” Woodhead is
critical of what she sees as feminist theology’s reluctance to leave the
relative safety of the ghetto (1997,1999). However, the metaphor is
perhaps too stark. It is difficult to leave disciplinary boundaries (or
to break out of the ghetto) if only a cool reception awaits not only in
the discipline of theology and religious disciplines, but also in other
subject areas that hold religion at arm’s length. Feminist theology is
outward looking and willing to escape the ghetto. It embraces mul-
tidisciplinary approaches to the study of women, gender, and religion
by actively and deliberately making use of the tools offered by literary,
cultural, social, scientific, psychological, anthropological, historical,
and philosophical methodologies and methods to shape religious fem-
inist research and to harness this into channels for change (Plaskow,
1993b). This characteristic is indicative of its general desire to con-

tribute to, rather than just be derivative of, feminist theory (Chopp
and Davaney, 1997). Even if feminist theology has responded to the
violence of its seclusion hesitantly, it has done so by breaking out of
and battling against its disciplinary isolation to actively bring feminist
theology into productive and fruitful dialogue with other feminist
theoretical interests.
A Sacred/Secular Disciplinary Divide

Penelope Margaret Magee has argued that the disciplinary discon-
nection is the result of the sacred/secular ideological structure, that
codes religious studies as extraneous to academic feminism and, by
extension, feminist religious scholars and theologians have been “mar-
ginalised or made invisible as humanist-liberal ‘reformers’ within reli-
gions” (1995, p. 103). Feminists working in religion can be seen by
“secular” feminists as religious and therefore politically neutral and
traditionalist. Judith Plaskow argues the slippage that collapses “reli-
gious women” with “women working in religion” is perhaps due to
the close connections that the academic discipline of women and reli-
gion has with women’s faith and spiritual communities (1993, p. 16).
Or, as Leela Fernandes argues, women’s religiosity is consigned to the
“local, ‘cultural’ idiom of grassroots women (usually in ‘other’ places
and for ‘other women’), acknowledging it in the name of an uneasy
cultural relativist tendency of ‘respecting cultural difference’” (Aune,
Sharma, and Vincett, 2008, p. 7). Religion is read as a confining
institution, which is ineffective in offering women constructive trans-
formative resources and rendered as a sign of false consciousness. This
pessimism is a shadowy and incongruous overhang from feminism’s
own Enlightenment legacy. As “reason” unseated systems of faith,
and “religion” became separated from the public sphere, the secular/
sacred binary infiltrated Western thinking and became inscribed onto
disciplinary boundaries. Feminist theologies have fallen on the wrong
side of this hierarchical divide that prefers, in a very modern sense,
secular sources.
The disconnection between secular and religious feminism contin-
ues as the second wave of feminism breaks into a third wave. Feminist
religious studies has yet to consider what influence the third wave of
feminism may be making to women’s religious lives (Klassen, 2009a)
on account of the general lag hindering feminist theology’s joining in
wider feminist discussion; while third wave continues to suffer from
a religious neglect.
TALKING IN WAVES 47
Identifying a Disconnection: Third Wave

Feminism and Feminist Theology
Despite the third wave pursuit for sites where individuality and
community dovetail and its attention to the historical and cultural
specificities of “woman,” the third wave is contesting the meanings
and concerns of women’s diverse identities and experiences without
including women’s spiritual lives, such as the spiritual journeying of
the women at the heart of this research. The third wave suffers from
what I term a religious neglect. The powerful contribution that reli-
gion makes (both positive and negative) to women’s identities and
experiences is rarely given comprehensive treatment compared with
the discursive space given to race, sexuality, or class.15
The third wave’s religious oversight is an implication of the disci-
plinary disconnection between, on one hand, feminist studies across
the academy, and on the other, the study of women, gender, religion,
and spirituality within religious and theological studies. However,
this is not the only contributing factor to the separation, as feminist
religious studies also participates in this disconnection. Marginalized
by mainstream feminism, it appears reserved and hesitant to engage
with wider and broader developments in feminist studies. This disci-
plinary disconnection, I suggest, impoverishes both fields by hinder-
ing the possibilities for creative and challenging dialogue (Llewellyn
and Trzebiatowska, 2013).
Disconnections in the Third Wave

The third wave aims to build, as Leslie Heywood remarks, “an inclu-
sive feminism that respects not only difference . . . but also makes
allowance for different identities within a single person” (2006a, p. xx).
However, despite its attention to the historical and cultural specifici-
ties of feminism and patriarchy, the third wave continues to neglect
religion, despite its privileging of differences and identity positions.
There are degrees of severity to feminism’s neglect of women
and religion, and occasions when it can seem well intentioned with
regard to gender and religion. For instance, Heywood includes “race,
ethnicity, religion, and economic standing” as factors of difference
(2006a, p. xx). Furthermore, her The Women’s Movement Today: An
Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism contains entries on religion.16
They are notable because there are very few sustained treatments of
religion and third wave feminism apart from Danya Ruttenberg’s
(2001) Yentl’s Revenge, which is a collection of first-person narratives
from young, Jewish third wave feminists, and Chris Klassen’s Feminist
Spirituality: The Next Generation (2009), an example of current
research by and on third wave feminists engaged explicitly with
Christian and post-Christian religious and spiritual discourses.
Usually, the sacred is often overlooked or appears only fleetingly
in self-named third wave publications: Walker’s To Be Real mentions a
young woman identifying as Christian and feminist who feels excluded
from the “seamless narrative” of feminism (1995, p. xxxi); Heywood
and Drake’s Third Wave Agenda claim Me’shell Ndegéocello’s “take
on religion” as an example of third wave revisioning of spirituality that
“work the edges of contradiction” (1997, pp. 6–7); and Baumgardner
and Richards’s Manifesta “ditched” Wicca to concentrate on the
“intellectual and personal ideas . . . and continued to have dinner
with interesting new batches of women” (2000, p. 16), but an explicit
address of either connection or disconnection between religion and
the third wave is lacking. In an entry on “Individualism” in The
Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism,
Nel P. Sung identifies that third wave feminism distinguishes itself
from its forerunners by drawing on the multiple ways that the various
aspects of individual identity relate:
Young feminists of the third wave celebrated the pluralities of race,

colour, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and class, sexual orientation,
nationality and geography, physical disability, and age to broaden the
boundaries of previous feminisms that were often narrow in scope or
altogether skipped over such characteristics. (2006, p. 184)
Despite the long lists of identity that comprise the category of

“woman/women”—and the third wave is very fond of compiling
extensive catalogues of all the possible variants—religion is missing,
or, at best, problematically (mis)assumed to be implicit in categories
of race, ethnicity, or culture.17 Yet religion is a factor that intersects
other identity categories, and like other categories can also be subdi-
vided. The religious and spiritual can be broken down according to
tradition, denomination, or any number of variances, which can add
layers of complexity to how women define themselves. In overlook-
ing religion, third wave feminism brackets out the complicated work
religions do, in their many complex forms, in people’s lives.
If religion is considered in third wave writings, it is often treated
as paradoxical and a specialist area of interest rather than examined in
terms of women’s theological viewpoints, their religious and spiritual
practices, or a vital structuring factor that shapes the way women
TALKING IN WAVES 49
attribute meaning and value. Religious identities and experiences are

often conceived to contest with feminism. For instance, in Listen Up
(2001 [1995]), Sonja D. Curry-Johnson considers her “acute case of
multiplicity” as she identifies as an “educated, married, monogamous,
feminist, Christian, African-American mother,” and the piece alludes
to the hostile tension between her feminism and her religious tradition
(2001 [1995], pp. 51–52); Robin Neidorf speaks of some of the con-
tradictions she faces while “living out of the paradox” of being Jewish
and feminist (2001 [1995], p. 61; see also Ruttenberg, 2001); Bhargavi
C. Mandava (2001 [1995]) reflects on reconciling her gender politics
with her Hindu heritage; and Susan Muaddi Darraj has “grappled with
the eyebrow raising self-identification as an Arab American Feminist”
(2003, p. 190). In these examples, religious identity is enjoined with
a feminist outlook; however, this is not an easy partnership. Religion
is acknowledged as influencing women’s broader cultural, identity
but lived religious experiences, theology, practices, text, or dogma,
are mostly unexamined. Also, in these examples, third wave religious
identities are presented as puzzling, and that feminists must overcome
many difficulties to engineer ways to hold their religious and political
affiliations together. Many women, including participants, experience
this tension (often painfully), but it too readily depicts religious femi-
nism as a paradox, and imagines contradiction as the only way religion
and feminism can coexist.
Third wave feminism’s religious neglect is a trait carried through
from previous feminisms, yet it is at odds with attempts to envisage
feminism based upon the multiple, intersecting, and complex factors
of identity and experience. Taken in this light, feminism seems to be
unable to divorce itself from the legacy of the Enlightenment: first,
in the second wave’s repetition of hierarchical power structures in
excluding women of color; and second, in the third wave the separa-
tion of the secular from the religious.
Despite feminist theology’s timid venturing into third wave
territory,18 and third wave attempts to deconstruct Enlightenment
lines of thought in embracing the “and” instead of the “either/
or,” the relationship between these branches of feminist theory and
branches of the contemporary women’s movement remain fixed to
the binary opposition between the sacred and the secular. My con-
cern is that this disciplinary disconnection hampers reciprocal theo-
retical exchange between feminisms, and limits the flow of ideas to
one direction of travel: from feminist theory to feminist theologies,
and as Magee has pointed out, favoring one pole in a binary oppo-
sitional relationship is repressive, anti-intellectual, and elitist (1995,
p. 105). It is my suggestion that propagation of the secular/sacred

divide diminishes third wave and religious feminisms.
Third Wave Feminism AN D Feminist Theology

The third wave’s religious neglect and feminist theology’s reserved-
ness suspend interaction, which impoverishes both spheres. For femi-
nist theology, a lack of engagement with the third wave risks missing
out on the possible constructive and enriching challenges available by
interacting with emerging lines of thought. When feminist theology
is restrained, even when being multidisciplinary, it still is cautious in
ways that restricts the work feminist theology can do.
If the third wave is concerned with the tangible and particular
realities of women’s existence, then it must recognize and assess reli-
gious and spiritual beliefs, practices, and experiences. Paula M. Cooey
(1997) has argued for the importance of “paying attention” to the role
of religious teachings and practices in the construction of identities
and experiences. She argues that religion, positively and negatively,
is a vital component of the production of cultures and values. When
contemporary forms of feminism and politics fall short of address-
ing the lived, embodied reality of religion within women’s lives and
assume it to be the final, unconquerable, harmful, and tyrannical
stronghold of patriarchy, it overlooks the ways in which religion in
traditional and new emerging forms are sources and sites of transfor-
mation and empowerment for women. Furthermore the “either/or”
underpinning the sacred/secular divide is contrary to the hybridity,
plurality, and diversity that marks third wave discourses and is incon-
gruous to the third wave search for instances of the “and”(Walker,
1995b, p. xxxv). These characteristics underpin attempts to recog-
nize women’s individual differences and personal agency as the basis
for commonality, thus creating ample theoretical and ethnographic
space—yet to be fully enacted by contemporary feminist theory—for
the inclusion of women’s religious and spiritual theologies and experi-
ences. Third wave feminism contains the tools within its ideological
framework to approach and incorporate the insights of religious femi-
nists and women’s experiences of the sacred, but has yet to do so.
From Essentialism to Anti-Essentialism

Traditional views of womanhood, profuse before the second wave,
tended to assume that all women were constituted as women on
account of specific biological characteristics. Second wave feminists
TALKING IN WAVES 51
and religious feminists questioned this vision, divorcing biology from

gender to identify that “while being female may require certain ana-
tomical features, being a woman is something different, dependent
on identification with the feminine gender (the social traits, activities
and roles that make up femininity)” (Stone, 2007, p. 87). For the
second wave, “woman” and “woman’s experience” were the common
denominators and the founding principles from which to do and think
feminist strategies that could challenge, and overcome patriarchy and
its sexist manifestations in the public and private arenas. Political
change was envisioned through womanhood, founded on a com-
mon identity and community. As the radical feminist “Redstockings
Manifesto” (1969) urges:
VI. We identify with all women. We define our best interest as that of
the poorest, most brutally exploited woman.
We repudiate all economic, racial, educational, or status privileges
that divide us from other women.
We are determined to recognize and eliminate any prejudices we
may hold against other women.
We are committed to achieving internal democracy. We will do
whatever is necessary to ensure that every woman in our movement
has an equal chance to participate, assume responsibility, and develop
her political potential.
VII. We call on all our sisters to unite with us in struggle.19
This vision of feminism imagines a universal community of woman

distinct from men, unified through their shared biological iden-
tity. Patriarchy is the common point to rally against, bolstered by
the universal experiences that women essentially share. Appealing to
“woman” and “woman’s experience” became the foundation for the
feminist endeavor. One of the earliest conventions of feminism was
making explicit and visible the stories of women’s lives to validate
their experience. Through the swell of feminist research, conscious-
ness-raising groups, and grassroots activism, women began to per-
ceive similarities in their experiences as marginalized and sidelined
by society, in comparison to men. The suggestion is that a commu-
nity based on sisterhood and solidarity, rather than the independent
interests of individual women, is necessary to accomplish gendered
political and social transformation: during the second wave, “we” was
prefaced above the “I” (Henry, 2004).
Women may share many experiences, including those of exclusion
at the hands of gender injustice, but to focus exclusively on the gen-
eral can portend the demise of the particular, or, in other words, can
forward the notion of community at the expense of the individual

woman. The third wave was set in motion by the realization that
underlying the use of “woman” and “woman’s experience” in sec-
ond wave feminism and theology was an assumed, essential, univer-
sal, fixed female identity, and a reductionist vision of patriarchy as
the single cause of gender oppression and inequality. Moreover, the
very categories that feminism declared necessary had been adopted
without critically addressing their basis in patriarchal definitions of
woman’s identity and experience: “[The concept of woman] is over-
crowded with the over-determination of male supremacy, invoking
in every formulation the limit, contrasting Other, or mediated self-
reflection of a culture built on the control of females” (Alcoff, 1998,
p. 405). In using these terms to mark women’s gendered distinction
from men, feminism had called upon the same notion of woman fab-
ricated through and by patriarchal societal structures. The construc-
tionist refutation of foundational categories and the rethinking of
their deployment in terms of particular, historical, cultural, socially
situated, and plural women’s identities and experiences prompted
the third wave’s beginnings. This most recent branch of feminism
diverges from second wave feminism’s trajectory because it moves to
understand and nuance individuality and community differently, a
critique that stems from the anti-essentialism of postcolonial and gen-
erational feminisms.
A Postcolonial Critique
In Third Wave Agenda, one of the initial third wave publications,
Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake state that the work of women
of color, womanist, mujerista, lesbian, Asian, and other self-named
theorist’s critiques of the “white woman’s movement” represents
the “definitional moment” of third wave feminism (1997b, p. 8) by
critiquing the notion of a universalized community of women that
eradicated individual differences.
Rebecca Walker and Naomi Wolf are often credited with indepen-
dently coining the expression “third wave feminism,”20 but its earliest
use appears in a 1980s planned anthology titled The Third Wave:
Feminist Perspectives on Racism, edited by M. Jacqui Alexander,
Lisa Albrecht, and Mab Segrest, and published by Kitchen Table:
Women of Color Press. The collection aimed to name racism within
the feminist movement, but was never published owing to the col-
lapse of this publishing house.21 However, the phrase “third wave”
has endured. Denoting a resistance to the implicit and explicit racial
TALKING IN WAVES 53
bias existing within the second wave, it signals a critical assessment

of a feminism predicated upon white, middle-class, and heterosexual
women claiming to speak on behalf of all women, despite the diver-
sity of the women’s movement.22 For instance, Cherríe Moraga and
Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1983 [1981]) collected work This Bridge Called
My Back voices hitherto unspoken testimonies of self-identified “U.S
third world,” “non-white,” “lesbian,” “poor,” and “colonized” femi-
nists that were personally damaged by the implicit and explicit racism
encountered within feminist networks. In her contribution to This
Bridge, Pat Parker writes: “I am a feminist. I am neither white nor
middle class. And the women that I’ve worked with were like me. Yet
I am told that we don’t exist and that we didn’t exist” (1983 [1981],
p. 241). Individual women of color felt excluded from a feminism that
claimed commonality, but was founded on a particular and marginal-
izing vision of community.
This Bridge, and successive examples of feminist postcolonialism, 23
highlighted the loss of the particular experiences of individual women
of color amid the rhetoric of community. Dominant modes of femi-
nism, in the name of female solidarity, had presented a universal vision
of woman as the subject and object of feminism, but lacked awareness
of the circumstances in which non-white, poor, and disadvantaged
women lived. Audre Lorde’s “Open Letter to Mary Daly” is a clear
articulation of this critique:
Within the community of women, racism is a reality force within my

life as it is not within yours. The white women with hoods on in Ohio
handing out KKK literature may not like what you have to say but they
will shoot me on sight. (2007 [1984]), p. 70)
Second wave feminism was failing to recognize, explain, or contend

with the different situated contexts of women’s lives and the different
hardships they faced on account of race, class, and sexuality. Moreover,
patriarchy was viewed as the single cause of women’s oppression and
sexism as the means of their subjugation, which is too crude and
reductive for analyzing the multiple and diverse ways women lives
are burdened:24 “to imply that all women suffer the same oppression
simply because we are women, is to lose sight of the many varied tools
of patriarchy” (Lorde, 2007 [1984], p. 67).
The experience of women who lived in a predominantly educated,
colonial, and relatively affluent, heterosexual world was the norm,
which subsequently and painfully failed to recognize those living
outside these parameters of privilege. Epistemologically dependent
upon the experience of white, middle-class women, and in a gesture

that echoed the hierarchical structures of patriarchy, feminism had, in
effect, silenced diversity by excluding women outside of “whitefemi-
nism” (Armour, 1999) in its endeavors to build a political commu-
nity against patriarchy. Despite its liberating agenda, feminism has
benefited from its own mode of dominance and suppression, as bell
hooks explains:
Simplistic definition of women’s liberation is a dismissal of race

and class as factors that, in conjunction with sexism, determine the
extent to which an individual will be discriminated against, exploited
or oppressed. Bourgeois white women’s interests in women’s rights
issues have been satisfied with simple definitions for obvious rea-
sons. Rhetorically placing themselves in the same social category as
oppressed women, they were not anxious to call attention to race and
class privilege. (1984, p. 18)
Although the second wave had achieved political progress, its gains
were being made via the labor of those undercut by race and class.
It was inadvertently repeating the same excluding tendencies it was
fighting patriarchy for, without attempting a thorough examination
of class, race, and gender oppression, their interlinked causes, or what
might be required to simultaneously combat all three.
The third wave’s indebtedness to postcolonial feminism is evident
in the voluble input that Chicana, Asian, Latina, African American,
lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and straight women make to
third wave publications, describing how their understanding and
experiences of feminism have been shaped by the impulse of anti-es-
sentialism (Henry, 2004, p. 165). For instance, Gwendolyn D. Pough
traces the roots of third wave hip-hop feminism to “black feminist
foremothers . . . the feminism they created is the feminism that hip-
hop feminism grew out of” (2003, p. 234) citing Queen Latifah’s
music video for Ladies First 25 and Erykah Badu’s remix of Ntozake
Shange’s choral play for the stage for colored girls who have consid-
ered suicide/when the rainbow was not enuf (1975) as testament to
this lineage. Veronica Chambers was inspired to reconcile that “rare
bird” of “Black and feminist” (2001 [1995], p. 260) by reading not
only Simone de Beauvoir and Gloria Steinem, but also Paula Gunn
Allen, Barbara Smith, Alice Walker, Michelle Cliff, and Toni Cade
Bambara.
This is not to say the third wave has succeeded where the second
wave has failed. To suggest that the women’s liberation movements
TALKING IN WAVES 55
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been superseded by

a more evolved third wave disguises the involvement of non-white,
non-Anglo-American women in all stages of feminist history, activ-
ism, and theorizing.26 Furthermore, it continues to ignore the strug-
gles across race, ethnicity, sexuality, social and economic status, and
religion that women continue to experience. Although appearing to
be race and class cognizant, dominant contemporary feminists are
culpable for failing to consider their “individual positions in rela-
tion to other black women and other women of colour” (Miles, 2001
[1995], p. 179), 27 the third wave continues to participate in the white-
ness of feminism. It seems that Moraga and Anzaldúa’s challenge,
written in their introduction to This Bridge Called My Back, remains
unresolved:
We want to express to all women—especially white middle-class

women—the experiences which divide us as feminists; we want to exam-
ine incidents of intolerance, prejudice and denial of differences within
the feminist movement. We intend to explore the causes and sources
of, and solutions to these divisions. We want to create a definition that
expands what “feminist” means to us. (1983 [1981]), p. xxiii)
However, the general resistance to “whitefeminism” and a deeper

awareness of race, class, and heterosexuality has reshaped understand-
ings of “woman” and “women’s experiences” and exposed feminism’s
preference for the universal and essential, over the particular and
individualized. The postcolonial critique prefigures the third wave
shift to individuality and community by refusing to “deny differ-
ence,” questioning how to form community of individual difference
and inclusion, rather than through universalism and exclusion in the
third wave of feminism.
Individuality in the Third Wave

Deriving from the third wave emphasis on diversity, the theme of
individuality, an emphasis on the “I” rather than the “we” runs
through third wave writings. Although the writers garnered in the
collections of Walker, Findlen, Heywood and Drake, and Dicker and
Piepmeier have been deliberately and purposively commissioned, and
selected to represent third wave feminism according to the vision
of the editors, the diversity of positions and experiences included
in their collections are carefully declared. Despite all contributors
being strategically young and third wave, 28 the editors state the
diversity of positions and experiences included in their collections.

For instance, Walker notes that “the group you will read here is an
eclectic gathering of folks” (1995b, p. xxxvi); Findlen opens with a
list of the different identities claimed by her contributors, “white,
middle-class college kid; wild and unruly; Chicana single mother;
Asian bisexual; punk; politically astute, active woman; middle-class
black woman; young mother; slacker” (2001b [1995]), p. xvi). These
anthologies comprise personal essays and statements by women con-
templating and ascribing meanings to feminisms, relevant to their
lives and employing “I” to embody the individualized fragmentation
of the feminist subject and to shatter the notion of the monolithic
“we” of the feminist community. As Walker writes, feminists of the
third wave are “seeking to create identities that accommodate ambi-
guity and our multiple positionalities: including more than exclud-
ing” (1995b, p. xxxiii).
In keeping with the third wave’s approval of individual contra-
diction and personal hybridity is intersectionality—a paradigm that
sees race, class, sexual preference, ethnicity, nationality, ableness,
religion, and any other marker of individual or group identity that
amalgamate to effect women’s divergent selves (Zack, 2005, p. 73;
Valentine, 2007; Sung, 2006). “Intersectionality,” a term coined by
Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), refers to the many ways that the multiple
features of one’s individual identity relate to coincident cultural and
social patterns, rather than holding an either/or binary thinking that
takes oppositions of difference independently of each other (male/
female, black/white, rich/poor, and so forth) as the primary basis
for the analysis of gender repression. It also denotes the relationships
between the dimensions that form society and subject, and can be
used to examine social injustices in terms of the “matrix of domina-
tion,” Patricia Hill Collins’s (1990, p. 225) designation for the inter-
secting composite forms of oppression such as sex, race, ethnicity,
and class that are bound together (Mann and Huffman, 2005, p. 61).
In third wave feminism, intersectionality underscores the numerous
fluid facets and patterns to individuality, opening women’s identities
to plurality and hybridity.
Celebrating the playful and empowering possibilities of contra-
diction is a pivotal precept that “marks the desires and strategies”
of third wave feminism (Heywood and Drake, 1997, p. 2), deriving
from the historical and cultural juncture in which third wave femi-
nists have had to negotiate between second wave and postfeminism,
and the “blurred boundaries, uncertainty, and flux” (Kinser, 2004,
p. 139; Bailey, 1997) that accompany postcolonial and postmodern
TALKING IN WAVES 57
discourses. Navigating a series of apparently incongruous social con-

ditions is intrinsic to third wave lives:
My hope is that this book [To Be Real] can help us to see how the peo-
ple in the world who are facing and embracing their contradictions and
complexities and creating something new and empowering from them
are important voices leading us away from divisiveness and dualism.
I hope that in accepting contradiction and ambiguity, in using and
much more than we use either/or, these voices can help us continue to
shape a political force more concerned with mandating and cultivating
freedom than with policing morality. (Walker, 1995b, p. xxxv)
To this effect, third wave feminist Melanie Klein notes the third wave
postmodern focus on plurality within the individual is reflected in
the reclamation and subversion of traditional notions of femininity
and sexuality. Using the alternative music scene as an example, she
writes that the girl rock groups “combined toughness and tender-
ness, vengefulness and vulnerability . . . Stage presence . . . contrast-
ing a physical emphasis on overt sexuality with lyrics about sexual
abuse” (1997, p. 216). Individuality, contradiction, and hybridity are
part of the third wave’s self-representation as rebellious. The third
wave constructs the women’s movement as a hybrid product of “all
the contradictory definitions of and differences within feminism”
(Heywood and Drake, 1997b, p. 3) without a unified feminist per-
spective, praxis, or community.
The third wave appraisal of the second wave stresses individual
“multiplicity and difference” (Heywood and Drake, 1997, p. 8) in
what was a white, middle-class, first world feminist community, that
seemed devoid of younger contemporary voices asserting the con-
tinuing need for feminism. The second wave insistence on (gendered)
difference was being (rightly) usurped by a third wave challenge of
differences by postcolonial and generational feminism. This provoked
a realization that “woman” was a fragile category that was strug-
gling to “bear the weight of all contents and meanings ascribed to it”
(Gillis et al., 2007b, p. 1). The singular categories of woman, women,
feminism, identity, and experiences have imploded, and new streams
of feminism flow from anti-essentialist voices dissenting from and
responding to this singular category, a postmodern inclination that is
also characteristically third wave. Attending to multiplicity and dif-
ference within the individual and the other, the desire to adapt femi-
nism for a different era, and the drive to answer back to postfeminism
have fused to become a search for ways of being individual and being
community.
Toward Individuality,
Commonality, and Community
As Heywood and Drake discuss, there are dangers attached to the
“ideology of individualism” woven through third wave lives (1997b,
p. 8). The third wave seems to emphasize individuality over com-
munity, which loses the notion of a collective feminist agenda. For
example, third wave feminist voices have a penchant for defining
feminism in their own terms, a proclivity encapsulated in Rebecca
Walker’s statement: “I am the Third Wave” (2006 [1992], p. 5).
In this sentence, Walker does not draw on a notion of collectivity
or community, but relies on an emphatic use of the first person to
underscore her individual experiences of feminism. Demanding to
“exist whole and intact” (1995b, p. xxxv) is an indication that the
call to “sisterhood,” and the beliefs, behaviors, and practices this was
supposed to entail, is not inevitable or compulsory for third wave
feminism:
In reality, feminism wants you to be whoever you are—but with a

political consciousness. And vice-versa: you want to be a feminist
because you want to be exactly who you are. (Baumgardner and
Richards, 2001, pp. 56–57)
The repetition of “you” at the end of this paragraph is heavy, stressing

that women’s personal not collective franchise is enabled via feminism
in the third wave. Rather than using the highly specific category of
gender identity as the basis for speaking chorally, and taking gender
as the grounds for political mobilization (upon which the first and
second waves relied), third wave feminists have used the categories
of gender to differentiate between the personal, individual stand-
points of every woman and to acknowledge the numerous differences
between them. This translates to individual or local forms of activism,
as opposed to a unified enclave announcing a unanimous message
and delivering large-scale social activism.
In such extreme plurality, the meaning of feminism can become
highly relative, as each individual acts upon their subjective defini-
tion of feminism to the extent that it has become empty, as bell hooks
argues in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center: “The ‘anything
goes’ approach to the definition of the word has rendered it practi-
cally meaningless” (1984, p. 23). Abstaining from speaking and act-
ing collectively toward a communal goal weakens the vision of the
third wave feminist movement and the shared struggle against shared
TALKING IN WAVES 59
obstacles begins to ebb. Although universal definitions of woman

and feminism are incredible, partially as a result of hooks’s and oth-
ers’ influence, feminism still requires a shared agenda. For hooks,
feminism “is a struggle to end sexist oppression” (1984, p. 24).
Participating in feminism, of whatever wave, and whatever aspects of
identity one adopts, requires at least a minimal critical commitment
to this belief, and is repeated across third wave writings:
Most feminist praxis operates . . . out of a deep commitment to wom-

en’s lives and to redressing the injustices that they face. In its most basic
sense, feminism calls for the social, political, and economic equality of
women. (Dicker and Piepmeier, 2004, p. 8)
The problem of incorporating individuality and community into one

feminist vision is one consequence of the constructivist and anti-
essentialist debates.29 As Donna Haraway writes, when identities
“seem contradictory, partial and strategic” (1990, p. 196), it becomes
urgent and pertinent to ask, “What kind of politics could embrace
partial, contradictory, permanently unclosed constructions of per-
sonal and collective selves and still be faithful, effective?” (1990,
p. 199). Emphasizing personal feminist choice risks following an
oppositional logic that positions individuality against commonality.
The third wave demands a feminism that responds flexibly to the pos-
sibilities, nuances, and complexities of women’s identities and experi-
ences and promotes the practice of particular feminisms. However,
the third wave’s pursuit of local practices fragments feminism. The
individualized and contradictory self of the third wave has challenged
the universalized subject of feminism in recognition of diversity and
differences between women, but this abstracts from the force of femi-
nism as a community-based social and political movement.
Iris Marion Young’s (1990) analysis of this polarization argues
that individuality and community define the other negatively in a
way that denies difference. Individuality, following the liberal legacy
of the autonomous, self-supporting, and independent subject, treats
all persons separately, equating them under a universal measure of
rights. Community denies difference by positing an ideal notion of
social synthesis and cohesion. There are usually two awkward options
in response to this binary. First, rather than denying difference by
conjecturing community, feminism surrenders the hope of forming
social groups as it becomes too treacherous to make generalizations
about women’s experiences and women’s identities. This can become
a useful tool for postfeminism. Pointing to the endless differences
between women (rather than suggesting a nuanced category of

women in useful and effective ways) can be fodder for dismissing fem-
inism altogether. If women’s experiences and identity as categories are
impossible, then classes such as women’s oppression could become
obsolete (Alcoff, 1998, p. 419). It is difficult to imagine feminism
and feminist politics without maintaining some notion of categories
of women, as a group, or groups.
Second, addressing every intersection of identity involves a never-
ending quest to account for each possible instance of exclusion, and,
in response, tries to include each conceivable, innumerable group in
an observation. It can be an impossible and superficially broad task
to incorporate class, race, age, sexuality, and religion equally, in all
the ways they intersect, at any time: taking gender as the primary
lens is insufficient. My own observation that third wave feminism has
“missed out” religion is one example of looking for such an excep-
tion; however, I am not claiming that the solution to essentialism
lies in cataloguing each possible identity category—a kind of “add
in and stir” method—without attempting any further analysis. Nor
am I suggesting that social groups are too copious to theorize. Both
these views either take the individual over the group, or acknowledge
the group but leave it so divided that communal links are difficult to
trace (Heyes, 2000). Neither negating groups for the individual, nor
evading the serious charge of essentialism by listing every possible
combination of identity is viable.
In setting itself apart from the second wave’s politics of a shared
purpose, language, and identity seems to make it difficult, some
would say unwelcome, for the third wave to operate as a women-cen-
tered feminist community. However, I suggest that the third wave
emphasis on individual difference does not preclude community but
seeks to bridge individuality and community through commonality.
For Deborah Siegel, this begins by finding places where individual
voices “coalesce in the space between differences” (1997, p. 58). This
evokes locations where subjective experiences brush alongside each
other to form, even if briefly or momentarily, connections, points
of contact, and commonalities that can form the building blocks
for community in the third wave. The third wave emphasis on indi-
viduality tries not to preclude common ground, but contradictory
and subjective experiences nestle within, and remain the basis for,
community.
The third wave yearns for an ideal feminist community within
its writings. Third wave authors implement a language that speaks
TALKING IN WAVES 61
of “linking across our many differences” (Heywood and Drake,

1997b, p. 11) and of a “shared purpose . . . beyond our personal
spheres” (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000, p. 125). In Manifesta,
Baumgardner and Richards appeal to Sarah Hoagland’s notion of
“autokeonony” or “self in community” and demand its inclusion in
their third wave agenda (2000, p. 219). Autokeonony is the place of
the “individual in community” (2000, p. 219), echoing Richard’s call
that Manifesta, and the third wave feminism it presents, is part “of a
big, visible, passionate movement” (2000, p. xxviii). Sarah Boonin,
a contributor to Catching a Wave, argues that feminism implies “a
certain philosophical and ideological connection. We share a commit-
ment to the pursuit of equality. That common pursuit forms the basis
of our community” (2003, p. 149). 30 The third wave has used the
tools of postcolonial and postmodernism to highlight that a feminism
defined by (biological) sameness is inadequate. In realizing the spe-
cific historical contexts from which feminists speak and the different
sets of challenges faced with each historical location, the third wave
has steered clear of clarion calls to sisterhood, but it is still searching
for individuality and community. Third wave feminisms are trying to
form communities comprising multiple, fluid, and non-essentialized
individuals.
In thinking of the ways in which differences can coincide, Diane
Elam’s (1994) notion of “groundless solidarity” is fruitful for mov-
ing beyond the either/or division that polarizes individuality from
community, and the “I” from the “we.” A “groundless solidarity” is
an alliance based on the notion of a shared ethical commitment that
recognizes differences between individuals and the other, but allows
the other to partake in community (1994, p. 109). It is groundless
because community is constantly shifting across nonessential com-
monalities. Individual singularities are ungrounded and unfixed, and
separate from each other. Difference, within and without the com-
munity works to “destabilize any clear separations between individual
and other” (1994, p. 109). The community does not bond through
the unification of individuals based on similarity, but through the
differences between the individual and other, and the ethical com-
mitment required to allow and welcome one another into community.
For Elam, a community requires the threshold between the individ-
ual and the other, a difference that subverts the either/or proposition
that opposes individuality and community. The third wave emphasis
on individuality tries not to preclude commonality, but contradic-
tory and subjective experiences are invited to become community by
maintaining their distinctiveness—a theme actualized by women’s

spiritual reading experiences.
A Third Wave Feminist Reading Practice

The wave metaphor has become problematic, in part, because it has
relied on identifying with a particular version of feminism, based on
cohorts. The women readers in this book range in ages and identify
with feminism to different extents, which makes it difficult to place
them on a “wave” as a research group. By listening to these wom-
en’s practices, rather than focus on their generational differences, the
activity of reading emerges as an embodied, lived instance of the third
wave emphasis on individuality and community, through commonal-
ity. From this, it is possible to build critical bridges between the second
and third wave feminisms, and third wave and feminist theology.
Part of my project is to highlight that women’s spiritual reading
practices cut across the generational lines of the wave, which rests
on the significance of participants’ birth dates in relation to the age-
based parameters of the wave, and their relationship to feminism. The
youngest participants were in their early twenties; the oldest partici-
pants were in their eighties and include women who felt the feminist
click at the height of the second wave. For instance, Pat is very active
in the Catholic women’s movement and became aware of “feminism
within in the church . . . in the early 70s.” Maggie (Ecumenical)
belongs to an interfaith group and maintains that “most of my kind
of struggles over the years have been, of course, with as you’d expect
from a woman of my age [64], to do with feminism.” Margot (Roman
Catholic) describes her feminist activism: “I’ve been arrested, I’ve
protested, I was at Greenham Common,” an experience she inde-
pendently has in common with Scarlet (Quaker/pagan/lesbian/
feminist/pacifist), who was born in 1953, and identifies clearly
with the second wave. Ann was brought up in Methodism, but now
goes to Quaker meetings. She was born in 1931 and recalls finding
“personal liberation” during the “great wave of 70s feminism . . . we
wrote our own liturgies . . . we marched in the street and danced in
the Cathedrals!”
Some participants defined as feminist, without specifying whether
they belonged to the third or second waves, while other rejected the
feminist label and feminist politics. Some participant nonfeminists
declared, “I’m not a feminist but . . .” and then ironically made a
number of statements that I would argue described a feminist posi-
tion: an ambivalence that is quite characteristic of third wave feminists
TALKING IN WAVES 63
who have been raised in a society that was transformed by the sexual
politics of the 1960s and 1970s. Yvonne is in her sixties (Methodist)
and describes how she has never felt personally effected by gender
powers in the church, or when working as a senior business executive:
“It just doesn’t come up.” Megan (Quaker) is in her early twenties,
has taken undergraduate courses in women’s studies and describes her
understanding of feminism:
I know a lot of people say that nowadays because you always think of
lesbians and big kinda scary women as feminist. That’s not the reason
I don’t class myself as a feminist. the reason I don’t class myself as a
feminist is because I see it, there are a lot of faults with it . . . I know
a lot of women who are feminist and I don’t have as strong views as
them . . . It’s definitely women’s suffrage that I identified with and
rather than second wave feminism in the 60s.
Megan describes her awareness of “women’s pain, women’s rights and

women’s role in the family and things like that,” is critical of the
negative stereotypes associated with feminism, and although she says
that her friends think she is a feminist, she refuses the label. Rachel
(Christian) is also in her twenties and comments, “I’m not feminist in
anyway, well, maybe in some ways.” She explains:
I don’t want to be anything or be branded as a particular type of per-

son or . . . I think people are too quick to generalize, to pigeon hole, to
presume things about people—I do it myself, and I know I shouldn’t.
That’s the whole reason I don’t like to say, “yeah, I’m a feminist”,
because I know instantly people are going to think this and this . . .
you believe this and you think that, and I don’t I’ve got a variety of
beliefs. And they change . . . but I know I have feminist ideas some of
the time and other times I have fairly traditional you know, just what
I think are my own ideas.
Second wave women such as Pat, Maggie, Margot, Scarlet, and

Ann have moved their feminism beyond the generational lines drawn
by the wave metaphor, while Yvonne, Megan, and Rachel highlight
the ambivalence toward feminism that is incorporated in third wave
discourses; as Jo Reger notes, “the generational definition of the
third wave is not problematic but finding those who identify with the
label is” (2005b, p. xxvi). It could be suggested that even though par-
ticipants do not self-identify as third wave feminists, because of their
practices and ambivalence toward feminism, the “third wave” label
is an apt and accurate nomenclature for this research group. While
this is a possible “twist in the tale,” I would argue against imposing a

fixed, third wave feminist epithet on participants, but instead empha-
size spiritual reading practices are emblematic of the third wave.
The artificial age-based parameters of the wave metaphor nar-
row feminist history too readily, and stimulate a view of feminism’s
progression that can overlook generational crossings between and
through different cohorts of women, or fail to notice where femi-
nist currents coalesce. For feminist work on women’s experiences of
the religious and spiritual to strengthen, it needs to glimpse a wider
portrait of its changing contexts by looking for expressions of femi-
nism in places other than those set aside for a particular generational
cohort. The wave is a rigid metaphor, but, as I try to demonstrate in
this book, women’s spiritual reading is weakening its strictures, as it is
a practice that cannot be clearly allocated to a particular stage of the
wave, or a specific feminist identity.
Women’s individual, distinct reading encounters are the basis
for commonality and community within their religious lives. It is a
search to connect but not collapse with the experiences of others,
and create communities outside traditional religion in a textual form.
The pursuit of individual spiritual journeys undertaken through the
reading of different texts, yet yielding experiences that can meet oth-
ers, is a process of individuality and community, through commonal-
ity. Significantly, although the third wave advocates and searches for
places where individuality and commonality reside, it has tended not
to look to women’s religiosity.
Generating connections between feminist cohorts and disciplines
does not mean folding one into the other. For a fruitful, charged
exchange and communication to exist, in keeping with the images of
community, local and particular singularity and interests need to be
maintained, but enter into community through the identification of
commonalities. By being in a community bonded by their separate-
ness and difference, second and third wave, sacred and secular keep
their uniqueness but are no longer invisible to each other (if in com-
munity), and also by being in connection gain from the exchange
of (each other’s) perspectives. I suggest a relationship that gives up
the “either/or” (either the second or the third wave; either a secular
form of feminism or a sacred form of feminism) in favor of a relation-
ship built on the “and,” connection without collapsing—and the next
chapter, Filtering the Canon is the first illustration of this practice.
CH A P T ER 3
Filtering the Canon
The first interview I conducted was with Bethany, a Christian in

her early twenties, who was brought up in the Anglican Church and
describes herself as “more of a reformer than a radical.” At the time,
Bethany was studying full time for a postgraduate taught degree in
religious studies. We met in her on-campus shared flat, in her indi-
vidual, student study-bedroom, kitted out in the usual corporate
furniture used ubiquitously in university accommodation. It was an
intimate setting because space was tight. This was not only because
there was one place to sit (on her single bed, leaning up against the
wall, side-by-side with the voice recorder in between us), but also
because the room was a record of her reading. Apart from the stacks
of library books on the desk and packed onto the limited shelving,
Bethany’s room was covered in post-it notes and scraps of paper she
had blue-tacked to the wall, on which she had handwritten extracts
and quotations from songs, films, poetry, prose, and academic theory
(with full referencing) she finds inspiring. Bethany reads for spiritual
meaning constantly.
One of the most significant and unexpected themes to come out
of our meeting was that Bethany’s spiritual reading practices involved
reading not only fiction, but also the Bible. The interview started
with Bethany explaining feeling outside the Anglican church of her
childhood, because she finds the mainline worship at church “irrel-
evant,” and church language “hard to understand.” She illustrates
this by explaining that liturgy, hymns, and preaching are not ways to
“get me up there . . . straight to God,” and neither is the Bible:
The Bible that used to be read from [in her family parish church] is still
sort of “thees” and “thous”. That sort of language now is changed.
We do read from other Bibles that have more personal language that
is a bit more up to date. It’s still—it’s not inclusive language at my
church.
However, at a later stage in our conversation, Bethany reveals that

the Bible is part of her spiritual reading practice because it “makes
things click together.” Despite Bethany’s personal critical stance, this
does not deter her from including Bible reading as an activity within
her spiritual life, a reading practice she has in common with other
participants.
In setting the research within Christianity and post-Christianity,
I gathered women that belonged, or had belonged, to the Christian
tradition and therefore have some familiarity with the Bible. However,
discovering that Bible reading featured as a spiritual practice for par-
ticipants was still surprising. Following my analysis of feminist theolo-
gy’s relationship to literature (see chapter 1), I anticipated that women
who answered my call for participants would have severed their ties
to Christian scripture and would be using other sources, particularly
women’s literature. Feminist theology’s turn to literature is spurred
by a search for its own textual base to substitute and/or supplement
biblical writings. For instance, Rosemary Radford Ruether (1985)
has argued that the Bible contains glimpses of women’s spiritual his-
tory and practices, what Elisabeth Gössmann (1999) might describe
as women’s “counter-tradition.” However, because the Bible has been
formed, transmitted, and canonized to sacralize patriarchy, it is an
imperfect text to elicit the norms necessary for a new community that
embraces the full personhood of women. Therefore in Womanguides
(1985), Ruether contrasts contemporary poetry and feminist retell-
ings of biblical passages with ancient, patriarchal icons and myths
from different historical and cultural Christian locations. This juxta-
position is intended to disturb the reader’s concept of sacred texts and
to prompt a creative response. Generating “new stories, new parables,
new midrashim,” such as those included in the anthology, “provide a
resource for the doing of feminist theology” (1985, p. xii). Although
the collection is presented as one possible version of spiritual lit-
erature for feminist theology rather than a “closed set of historical
documents,” the hope is for a “new canon” to “express our new con-
sciousness” (1985, p. ix).
Prompted by feminist theology’s turn from the Bible toward other
literatures, I, too, readily made a crude either/or distinction that
opposed sacred and secular literatures. I assumed that readers who vol-
unteered for my research, which had specified an interest in women,
spirituality, and (nonsacred) literature, had done so because they had
rejected the Bible. I supposed that women’s spiritual reading prac-
tices excluded biblical reading because the feminist theologian had
undertaken the task of interpreting so-called secular creative writing
FILTERING THE CANON 67
in place of the Bible, on behalf of implied, rather than actual, readers.

However, this idea was soon put to one side, as by using a reader-
centered methodology to dramatize the meaning of the activity of
spiritual reading, and to listen to the experiences of actual readers,
women’s spiritual biblical reading emerges within Christian and post-
Christian spiritualities. I had repeated one of the wave’s rigid distinc-
tions and had set sacred and secular literature apart, and set women’s
sacred and secular spiritual reading practices apart. Moreover, I was
repeating feminist theology’s hesitancy with regard to the third wave
by making a reserved presumption that women’s spiritual reading was
not echoing third wave practices. Women readers in this study are
critical of the Bible, particularly its hierarchy and authority, and ques-
tion its relevancy for their individual spirituality. However, partici-
pants are concurrently reading the Bible and reading literature, and
their individual but shared approaches are, I suggest, an instance of
individuality and commonality from women across generations.
This chapter examines participants’ uses of the Bible, and, in par-
ticular, I identify filtering as a reading strategy in feminist theology
and also in participants’ third wave spiritual reading. Filtering is the
process through which feminist theology and participants select and
use biblical texts to serve the development of women’s spiritualities,
effectively forming “canons-in-canons”—an inclination that is part
of the history of the Christian sacred texts but is noticeable within a
range of contemporary contexts (Aichele, 2001).1
Filtering is a point of commonality in feminist literary theory
and feminist theology, as both have utilized strategies for selecting
texts. With regard to reading the Bible in feminist theology, filter-
ing is the process of selection undertaken by the theologian, who
is the lone reader. She interprets and offers readings of biblical texts
on behalf of the assumed wider community of Christian women, a
trait that highlights feminist theology’s tentativeness toward includ-
ing individual actual readers. In participants’ accounts of read-
ing, filtering is a process that screens in, and screens out, elements
of the Bible. Women readers’ choices are made in accord with what
best befits their individual spiritual journeys, but is a strategy they
shared across their personal reading experiences. A distinction also
exists between the respective processes of filtering that underlines
the disconnection between feminist theology and participants’ third
wave reading practices. The difference lies in the seat of authority and
the locus of selection. In feminist theology, the canon-in-canon is
formed through the theologian’s interpretations. In comparison, in
the embodied practices of women’s spiritual reading, canon-in-canon
is formed in relation to the individual spiritual journey: a distinction

I make between “theologian-centered canon-in-canons” and “reader-
centered canon-in-canons.” This chapter first examines feminist the-
ology’s filtering practices, before displaying participants’ filtering by
rejecting, resisting, and reading the biblical texts. These shared expe-
riences occurring across individual, Christian, and post-Christian dif-
ferences are commonalities across individual reading strategies that
begin to demonstrate the third wave theme of both individuality and
community, through commonality.
Processes of Filtering:
A “Theologian-Centered Canon-in-Canon”
It could be said that feminist theology was born “wrestling” with the
Bible and its authority (Lancaster, 2002, p. 11). Feminist theologians
have analyzed the ways the language in the Bible and its presentation
of gender are tied to women’s position in society since the beginnings
of feminism, when women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1993
[1895]) and The Woman’s Bible revising committee declared that the
“idea of women’s subordination is reiterated times without number,
from Genesis to Revelations” (1993 [1895], p. 8). Within Christianity,
as feminist awareness grew, women have been confronted with the
question of how to read and respond to the sacred texts of their tradi-
tion. Some retort by rejecting the Bible and Christianity as inherently
patriarchal, while others continue to accept the Bible without ques-
tion. For some women, the Bible is recognized as the sacred text for
Christian life but they are left “on the horns of a dilemma’” (Tolbert,
in Lancaster, 2002, p. 13). Their struggle with scripture is a struggle
to reform and transform the church, its practices, and textual tradi-
tions by developing hermeneutics that discriminate which aspects of
the Bible are empowering and which are oppressive.
Ways of Filtering
Feminist theologians have been “searching the scriptures” (Fiorenza,
1993) for a biblically grounded, alternative textual base to form its
canon-in-canon. An accepted and widespread method for this is to
use textual analysis as a means to filter texts: filtering out those that
support patriarchal systems, and filtering in those that work against
them. The former are rejected for being contrary to the Bible’s “true”
message of liberation and are excluded from the feminist canon:
“whatever diminishes or denies the full humanity of women must
be presumed not to reflect the divine or an authentic relation to the

divine . . . or to be the message or work of an authentic redeemer or
a community of redemptions” (Ruether, 1983, p. 19). The latter are
accepted as passages that can be read as a challenge to patriarchy and
promise its elimination, and are thus entitled entry into the femi-
nist biblical collection: “Biblical revelation and truth are given only
in those texts and interpretive models that transcend critically their
patriarchal frameworks and allow for a vision of Christian women
as historical and theological subjects and actors” (Fiorenza, 1993,
p. 30). To reveal the texts that can be read positively with regard to
women, and to highlight those texts that complot with, and facilitate
patriarchy, feminist theology employs a range of strategies to compile
its own canon-in-canon. Feminist theology has been reading to name
the biblical texts that are the most, and least, useful for its liberating
agenda.
Carolyn Osiek (1985) names five different types of feminist
hermeneutics, four of which serve as a useful portrayal of the differ-
ent patterns of filtering, adopted by the theologian to form a canon-
in-canon: loyalist, revisionist, sublimationist, and liberationist (1985,
p. 97). Osiek also identifies “rejectionist,” which does not attempt
to form a canon-in-the canon, but is a means of filtering most often
associated with post-Christian feminist positions. Rejectionists fil-
ter out the entire biblical text for the authority it represents, and,
by extension, also cast off the Christian tradition. Scholars such
as Mary Daly (1985 [1973], 1990 [1978]) and Daphne Hampson
(1990, 1996) argue that owing to the essentially patriarchal nature of
Judaism and Christianity, these traditions harm and prevent women’s
spiritual development and the flourishing of women’s full humanity,
and must therefore be abandoned.
A loyalist appraisal assumes biblical passages are not inherently
sexist, but that blinkered commentators have read the text super-
ficially and have incorrectly interpreted its meaning. For instance,
Mary Evans attempts a “re-examination of the attitude [toward
women] of the church today” (1998 [1983], p. 132) by rereading
biblical texts that have been used against the full personhood of
women.2 In light of the cultural and religious influences upon the
New Testament, Evans attempts to build a portrait of the biblical
mind-set in regard to the status of women.3 She examines a range of
passages infamous for being used to uphold the secondary status of
women, and vindicates them by referring to the historical attitudes
at the time, or contradicts them with another biblical reference that
she claims valorizes women.4 Loyalist hermeneutists maintain that
with enough interpretation, it is possible to reach the non-patriarchal

meanings of those biblical passages that have been used to protract
women’s subordination. Revisionist frameworks see patriarchy as
a historical but not theological truth. Therefore, traditions can be
reformed and revised to include knowledge about the experience of
women in biblical times. For instance, Phyllis Trible uses literary
methods to reexamine the canon and to offer a new “depatriarchal-
ized” reading that divulges the androcentric nature of certain texts
(1973). Sublimationist critics, such as Rosemary Radford Ruether
(1983), and I would include Elisabeth A. Johnson (1995), search for
the hidden feminine divine in the biblical narratives through lan-
guage and imagery, such as ruach, Sophia, and Mary, to envision
the sacred in ways that counter the glorification of male symbolism.
Finally, liberationist methods pioneered by Letty M. Russell (1985),
and developed by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (1993) and Ruether
(1983), are rooted in liberation theology. As a framework for bibli-
cal interpretation, a liberationist approach effects social and politi-
cal change by assuming the central message of the Bible is human
liberation.
Osiek’s (1985) typology indicates the breadth of methods femi-
nist hermeneutics have developed, and continue to develop, to tackle
the androcentric writings that Christianity has named authoritative
and sacred. In the feminist canon-in-canons, the resulting canon
is text-centered around the representations of women: “Rather
than ponder David and Saul, women wondered about Michal and
Bathsheba; rather than ask if Paul silenced women, they inquired
after Chloe, Junia, Syntyche and Euodia” (Phillips, 1999, p. 392).
The passages selected are those that contain figures and narratives
that are interpreted as representing the “experience of women,” and
once read through a feminist hermeneutical framework can poten-
tially challenge or reform the Bible. Deborah F. Sawyer lists the texts
that feminist canons have usually excluded: the creation narratives;
legislation in Leviticus; the household codes in Paul’s letters and
Peter 1; the Pastoral Epistles; and the abused women and children
in Judges 19 and Genesis 22. Those invited for selection into the
new feminist canon include the stories of Tamar and Ruth; John’s
account of the Samaritan woman; the women supporters of Paul;
and Galatians 3.28 (2002, pp. 11–12). Understandably, when femi-
nist theology is filtering for a canon-in-canon, it has been drawn
to collections of texts that can challenge and enable patriarchy, and
expose those narratives that are extraneous to the Bible’s theme of
women’s liberation.
The Limits of the Feminist Theologian’s Canon-in-Canon

Filtering approaches do reveal feminist theology’s reservedness. Based
on the textual analysis of the lone theologian rather than actual read-
ers, they reduce the texts and the reading strategies available for femi-
nist theological and biblical scholarship. For instance, Sawyer (2002)
argues that to understand power and patriarchy fully within the Bible,
feminist theology needs to read for more than just the roles and rep-
resentations of selected biblical women. Consequently, Sawyer takes
the revisionist work of Phyllis Trible as an example of how filtering for
a canon-in-canon “has worked to restrict the scope of contemporary
feminist theology” (2002, p. 12). Sawyer argues that Trible’s depa-
triarchalized Bible assumes that there is an essential meaning behind
certain texts (the texts that are filtered in to the feminist canon) that
surpasses the historical and cultural epoch in which they were written
and communicated. However, as Sawyer suggests, the meaning of the
text is not (as Trible intimates) universal, but lies “at the level of faith”
(2002, p. 12) and can only be explained in terms of the reader’s situ-
ated relationship to their community of faith. Therefore, as Sawyer
points out:
When we stand outside that community of reformist believers and ask

why these texts confront patriarchal boundaries, we may not conclude
with Trible that they are the challenge of a “depatriarchalised” god
but rather that they are the ultimate finesse of a very patriarchal god.
(2002, pp. 12–13)
Trible is the lone theologian assuming a universal reading of the text

on behalf of the specialized community of Christian feminism, an
instance of feminist theology’s tendency to engage with those already
within its discipline, and its hesitancy in engaging with those beyond.
When the theologian filters texts to produce a canon-in-canon, they
do not address those who are positioned externally to the Christian,
feminist community and for whom there can be “no ‘depatriarchal-
ized’ Bible” (Sawyer, 2002). Furthermore, by assuming the texts that
form the feminist canon (and therefore the feminist canon itself) have
an ahistorical and acultural stable meaning for the Christian femi-
nist community, the particular and individualized situation of the
reader and her readings are not acknowledged. A Christian feminist
community is addressed, rather than the individual readers within, or
without, that community.
Relying on a canon-in-canon approach displays another example
of feminist theology’s hesitancy. When feminists create alternative
text-centered canons based on the choices of the theologian to con-

firm women’s faith, the danger is that it replaces one (male) canon
with another (female) canon. The texts included in a “female tradi-
tion” become imbued with authority and hierarchy, the same pro-
cesses used to support the patriarchal institutions feminism means
to weaken. In reinforcing a canonical view, feminists “continue to
employ aesthetic concepts that are compromised and intrinsically
linked with the very social order they wish to undermine” (Eagleton,
1986b, p. 3). A feminist woman-centered textual tradition, if pre-
sented canonically, is selected by the lone, feminist theologian reader,
producing an analysis of the text for other readers. She identifies for
other women which texts fit with her particular version of Christian
feminism. Sanctioning which texts are in, and which are out, depends
upon the perceived existence of some intrinsic textual meaning, and
is usually predicated upon a white, middle-class, hegemonic view-
point. There is a need for texts that rewrite practices and images from
which feminist and women’s spiritualities and theologies can draw.
However, the production of a theologian-centered canon-in-canon
invokes what Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (1995b [1985]) has called
an “archetypal biblical paradigm” that establishes principles and nor-
mative patterns and gives superiority to a particular historical text and
its culturally specific traditions. This use of canon is therefore unsuit-
able for feminist theology (Hogan, 1995).
Like much scholarship of the second wave, feminist biblical schol-
ars filtering for a feminist canon have focused on the experiences
of some women to the exclusion of others, and on patriarchy as the
essential characteristic of the cultural and political West and the
preeminent source of subjugation for women. More recently, femi-
nist biblical scholarship has negatively judged reading strategies that
uncritically and unreflexively repeat this pattern, and the way it has
become the basis for filtering canonical processes. Using insights
from postcolonialism and postmodernism, feminist theologians have
challenged the understanding of canon, and canons-in-canons. The
biblical text and the notion of canon, like the notion of woman, and
her experience, has been envisaged as fluid and socially located, and
its meanings unstable. For instance, feminist thinkers have imagined
(but not empirically investigated) the way Pentecostal women readers
hypothetically could take verses from scripture that feminist theolo-
gians have read as patriarchal and interpret them to resist oppression
(Fulkerson, 1994); have advocated a “trickster” model of reading the
Bible that embraces chaos and flexibility, and seeks the ambiguity of
meaning (Camp, 1993); and have illustrated the way women might
read, interpret, find meaning, and reject texts by paying attention to

specific intersections of women’s identity.5 Feminist strategies have
moved past the theologian-centered canon-in-canons that only pro-
mote women biblical characters, or narratives that include women’s
experiences.
These techniques could be seen as the beginnings of feminist the-
ology’s acknowledgment of another wave of feminist analysis. Pamela
Thimmes has suggested that “third-wave hermeneutics is at hand”
(1999, p. 140) because she anticipates that in the future more mul-
ticultural biblical reading strategies that embrace intersectionality
will be developed; and Deborah Sawyer employs a broad third wave
paradigm by using contemporary gender theorists, such as Judith
Butler and Luce Irigaray, to move past the preoccupation with female
biblical figures and to focus on the biblical constructions of both
maleness and femaleness (2002, 2005). While this is evidence of an
engagement between feminist theology and the third wave, feminist
biblical readings have not yet fully ventured into third wave territory.
For instance, Sawyer (2005) seeks to fragment gender identity and
experience in the writings of the biblical world in the way the third
wave seeks the multitude ways of being woman and being man in the
contemporary world. This pushes feminist theology to read for dif-
ference and to include diverse identities and communities previously
universalized through canon-in-canon strategies, which general-
ized the meaning of the text and the meaning of women’s experi-
ences in patriarchy. However, even the most radical feminist biblical
approaches, reading for difference and inclusion, can only imply the
fragmented and particular identity of the reader as far as the self-
location of the individual theologian allows.6 In other words, the
biblical interpretation of either the black, Asian, queer, working-class,
white, mujerista, lesbian, or Native American theologian is suggest-
ing and assuming reading strategies and biblical texts for, and to, the
implied reader that is constructed as belonging to their respective
communities. Although focused on the individuality of the implied
reader, the diffusion of her identity stops at the identity of the femi-
nist theologian.
Even though feminist theology is reading for individual difference,
the third wave seeks both individuality and community, through
commonality. Sawyer comments on the apparent tension between
individual differences, and community: “Although the recognition of
difference might seem to endanger the foundational unity of politi-
cal feminism . . . the lack of recognition is far more disadvantageous
for the majority of women” (2005, p. 162). However, while feminist
biblical hermeneutics has focused on the individualized, intersec-

tional construction of gender, it is yet to consider how individuality
is (re)connecting. It is only when a reader-centered approach to the
activity of reading is used to examine women’s spiritual journeys that
instances of biblical filtering emerge as a lived example of the third
wave individuality and commonality, toward community.
Processes of Filtering:
A “Reader-Centered Canon-in-Canon”
The process of filtering also occurs within women’s spiritual reading
practices. Like the canon-in-canon formed through the theologian’s
selections on behalf of an implied reader, filtering is a practice of
choosing texts from the Bible to forward women’s spiritualities. In
feminist biblical theology, the theologian produces and transmits her
canon, constructed through a range of reading strategies. Yet even
when the theologian is rereading the Bible to include differences
across women’s experiences and identities within the Christianity
community, the community formed through reading is that which is
implied by the theologian. Just as the reader is implied by the theo-
logian’s biblical interpretation, so the community is implied as far
as the self-identity of the individual theologian permits. When the
theologian reads for community, the community she reads for cor-
responds to her own identity. However, when the locus of authority
to select and filter texts relocates from the theologian to the reader,
the embodied reading practices of women within spirituality become
a site where individual strategies of filtering readers’ own canons-in-
canons connect, and their individual experiences coincide.
An explicit experience of commonality transpires as participants
assume that the process of reading the Bible, regardless of the ele-
ments, beliefs, and attitudes that are filtered in or out of the reader-
centered canon, places them into a wider (Christian) community. The
women readers I interviewed, with strong and loose connections to
Christianity and post-Christianity, recognize that reading the Bible
unites the Christian community through time and culture. For
instance, Laura is in her late twenties, and identifies as Christian. She
describes her contact with the Bible as rooting her to the rest of the
church, but considers her spiritual position to be developing outside
of the Anglican community she grew up in. Participants refer to the
Bible as a historic record of God’s interaction in human existence,
as a witness to “a shared history of the people of God” (Miriam,
Methlican), and other readers emphasized the shared nature of the
text rather than the significance of historical deliverance. Debbie

(Anglican) describes the Bible as providing a “common language,” and
Nicola (Christian Feminist) states, “I might be reading the Bible on
my own but I’m part of a whole [tradition].” This links Christian par-
ticipants’ individual reading to each other, and to the wider Christian
community. However, the Bible is already a common text, and read-
ing and interpreting the Bible is a shared activity amongst Christian
readers. Therefore it is not surprising that individuality connects to
community; however, this third wave theme is transpiring not only
between Christian women, but also across women’s spiritual reading
practices within post-Christianity.
The process of filtering has much in common with what Lynn
Resnick Dufour (2000) names as “sifting.” In her study of identity
formation among contemporary Jewish feminist women, Dufour
traces the development of three identity positions—inclusionist,
transformationist, and reinterpretationist—each comprising a “clus-
ter of practices and attitudes that tend to be sifted together” (2000,
p. 98). Sifting is an active model of identity,
and is the process of constructing a fairly stable, biographical iden-

tity that incorporates aspects of two or more potentially conflicted
identities . . . people form such identities by cognitively, emotionally,
and behaviorally sifting through the attitudes and practices of their
various reference groups, “trying on” or testing various attitudes and
practices to see if they mesh well with one’s existing sense of who one
is. (2000, p. 94)
A sifter is a device used for separating wanted from unwanted material;

as the material passes through the sifter the sought-after material is
screened in, and the unwanted material screened out. Dufour argues
that through experiences of socialization, we encounter a range of
practices and attitudes through contact with significant groups and
others. Before identificationwith these practices and attitudes occurs
and they are internalized we sift them. Dufour traces the process of
sifting in the ways her participants creatively incorporate the poten-
tially conflicting aspects of Judaism and feminism into their spiri-
tuality. The women in Dufour’s study are assessing, or “trying on,”
which Judaic and feminist ideas and practices cohere with personal
values and needs. Evaluation results in either identifying with and
screening in the sifted beliefs and activities from Judaism and femi-
nism, or screening out those that do not fit. Figuratively, practices
and attitudes from Judaism are the materials placed into the sifter,
and “in order for these materials to fall into the mixing bowl, and
thus become part of an identity” they are sifted through the screens
(2000, p. 95).
In this study, women’s spiritual biblical reading practice is also a
process of filtering. As participants began their spiritual lives within
Christianity, they have encountered and are familiar (albeit to differ-
ent extents) with the biblical literature as a source of Christian beliefs
and attitudes. Before participants identify and incorporate the Bible
or parts of it into their spiritual lives, they are filtering, or sifting, by
reading. The activity of reading is a means of screening in and screen-
ing out wanted and unwanted texts and passages, based on which
texts participants judge to be relevant for their personal validation,
nourishment, and sustenance in support of their Christian and post-
Christian spiritual journeying. Rather than permitting feminist the-
ology’s version of a theologian-filtered canon-in-canon to suggest the
biblical passages that provide empowerment, participants are using
their individual spiritual journeys and experiences as the filter, or
screen, through which the biblical material is passed and evaluated.
Dufour’s participants are asking themselves, “Does this practice . . .
feel feminist to me? Does it feel spiritual to me? . . . This practice feels
spiritual to me, but does it feel Jewish?” (2000, p. 97). Participants
such as Miriam (Methlican) are asking themselves when they are read-
ing the Bible: “And then, how does, how do I respond? What does
that say about me?” Sophia (—) questions the patriarchal, universal,
and ethnocentric interpretations of the Bible and explains why she has
stopped reading the Bible: “I just don’t think I’m interested in it . . .
reading the Bible and doing things like that . . . don’t necessarily
have, um, a place for me.” Sophia’s spirituality is a journey to find and
assess sources that “speak her truth,” and do “have a place for her.”
Participants, on their own authority, are filtering to reject and resist
certain aspects of the Bible, and to continue to use scripture. Filtering
is a gradual series of readings in which reader-centered canon-in-can-
ons are formed and reformed as participants search for relevant texts
that resonate with their personal lives and spiritual journeys.
Rejecting and Reading

One of the reading practices participants are using to filter biblical
material displays a point of juncture, and disjuncture with the femi-
nist hermeneutical rejectionist response (as outlined by Osiek above),
a filtering strategy that screens out the entire canon. The rejection of
the Bible by some feminist theologians is based on assessments that
the Bible presents a patriarchal order in which, compared to men,
women play diminished roles dictated by society. For instance, post-

Christian feminist Daphne Hampson (1990) argues that although
women are present, “That the Bible reflects a patriarchal world is
clear” (1990, p. 86). Hampson explains:
The majority of biblical figures, whether patriarchs, prophets, priests, dis-

ciples or church leaders, are male. The scriptures largely concern the inter-
action of men with one another and with their God. The central figure of
the tradition for Christians, Jesus Christ, is of course male. A handful of
women who play a part on the stage form the exception. Likewise, parable
and ethical sayings are largely directed to the world of men. Nevertheless,
it is not simply that women are notable in their absence. When they are
present, they are for the most part performing females’ roles as defined by
that society. The problems are thus multi-faceted.
In general terms these things are evident: one need not demonstrate
them . . . the bible is patriarchal in its presuppositions. (1990, p. 86)
Hampson is critical of feminist attempts to salvage scripture. She

counters the claim that the New Testament contains a pro-feminist
message through the actions and teachings of Jesus. While Jesus might
have personally treated women respectfully, Hampson is unconvinced
by the evidence that Jesus challenged women’s oppression, male
privilege, or the gendered order. In short, Jesus was not a feminist.7
Hampson also doubts the success of biblical readings produced by
feminist scholars through textual analysis that attempt to appropriate
the scriptures in ways that evoke women’s lives and experiences. She
acknowledges the ingenious ways feminist hermeneutics endeavor to
reread and to subvert scripture, but concludes pessimistically: “For all
the chipping away here, the re-reading there, the underlying problem
remains” (1990, p. 107). For Hampson, the patriarchal character of
the Christian text cannot be changed.
Post-Christian feminists also highlight that the masculine imag-
ery of the Bible, as a religion of God as “Father” and God incar-
nate as “Son,” authoritatively and absolutely sanction an ideology
that supports patriarchal power structures. Perhaps the most well-
known and impassioned voice to construe biblical religion as incom-
patible with feminism is Mary Daly. In her analysis of Christianity,
she writes of the “power that religion has over the human psyche,
linking the unsteady reality of social constructs . . . to ultimate real-
ity through myth” (1986 [1973], p. 138). In other words (to repeat
her often-quoted maxim), if the symbols that are enshrined within
the Christian sacred text are masculine then “God is male” and “the
male is God” (1986 [1973], p. 19). For Daly, the biblical imagery has
an “inherent deficiency” (1986 [1973], p. 72) because the language

only reflects the “structures blessed by male religion” (1986 [1973],
p. 152), which is ultimately harmful to women, and therefore must be
rejected, or screened out, as a resource for women’s spiritualities.
Participants, both within and outside of Christianity, feminist and
nonfeminist, share some of the post-Christian feminist critiques of
the Bible, recognizing the patriarchal imagery, language, and culture
of scripture. Pat is Roman Catholic, in her late sixties, and recalls
coming to feminism in the 1970s. Along with the issue of women’s
ordination, biblical language “was one of the first things that one
becomes . . . aware of, and I did my own adaptations of things of
things like the Creed and so on.” During the interview, Pat showed
me her Bible in which she had made edits to the text, often making
changes to male imagery, like scoring out “father” and replacing it
with “mother.” Eleanor (Christian) is 61, and came to feminism in
the 1980s. She implies that certain language is the primary obstacle
preventing her from turning to the sacred text:
At one time I used to read the Bible every day and um, meditate on
it . . . Um, not so much now, even with the inclusive language . . .
I don’t want to use the word Lord anymore, you know the imagery
that’s very power over, and masculine and you know Kings and . . . and
I don’t like the Father thing one bit. I loathe it!
Ann-Marie is a Roman Catholic charity worker and is 30. Although

she was cautious of the label “feminist,” she describes her struggle
with the privileged (male) interpretive class: “The Bible sometimes
seems part of the patriarchal, it’s a man. The priest is the one who
does it [preaching and interpreting] at the front of the altar.” Ann-
Marie depicts scripture as male, locating the priest and text as presid-
ing “at the front,” which is a reserved, honored place where she is not
welcome, and from where she has to maintain a physical distance from
the Bible and its priested interpreter. Sophia (—) is also critical, and
speaks of her exemption as a woman from scripture and interpreta-
tion. She recalls her reaction in a hermeneutics course at college that
shattered, for her, the claims of the universality of scripture: “How
was what I had been believing all along, you know, how is it true if
it’s been interpreted by man, by groups of men throughout the ages?”
Her shock and disbelief when this ideology is unmasked are clear.
Sophia had understood scripture to be the unmediated Word of God,
but became aware that access to biblical revelation has been colonized
by a select few perceived to have the truest insight to the divine mes-
sage. By stressing “the groups of men” as the authoritative assembly,
Sophia points toward her exclusion from the patriarchal hierarchy

working with biblical authority, and like Pat and Ann-Marie, iden-
tifies the Bible as an androcentric text written and interpreted pre-
dominantly by men.
The women are also troubled by the way the Bible has been used to
endorse unethical and morally dubious social practices. For instance,
Carol (Spiritual Searcher) says: “I feel very unhappy about the Bible . . .
and the things that have resulted from it. Persecution, the Inquisition.”
Having left Catholicism, it is not surprising that Carol disputes the Bible
as the Word of God and fails to see any redeeming features because
of the “the damage it’s done.” The Bible is “a human library” rather
than a divine piece of work, and is a powerful, damaging force that the
church has used to further its hierarchical authority. Carol is drawing
attention to the darker times in Christian history, when, as Elizabeth
Schüssler Fiorenza comments, “the appeal to scripture has authorized
for example, the persecution of Jews, the burning of witches, the tor-
ture of heretics, national wars in Europe, the subhuman conditions of
American slavery, and the antisocial politics of the Moral Majority”
(1995b, p. 66). Carol’s rejection of aspects of biblical language and
of the use of the Bible as an instrument of power for the institution
is an obstacle that could prevent the reading of scripture from being
included in her, or other participants’, reading practices.
Readers share the post-feminist Christian appraisal of the Bible,
and are critical of its authoritative and hierarchical status. However,
they do no not reject the biblical content in its entirety. In accor-
dance with their individual spiritualities, they are seeking ways to
incorporate the Bible as a resource for their personal journeys. As
Bethany’s account at the start of this chapter intimates, reading the
Christian sacred text can be both irrelevant and relevant in ways that
help make sense of participants’ doubts and questions about their
faith. Through filtering, participants are screening out the authorita-
tive and hierarchical status of the Bible, but screening in elements
from the canon that are purposive for their individual spirituality.
For instance, I would consider Carol (Spiritual Searcher) to occupy
a post-Christian position. She has discarded Catholicism because of
the anger she directs at the church as an “exclusive and hierarchical”
institution, is seeking spirituality outside of traditional religion, but
recognizes her Catholic heritage. Although Carol has rejected the
Bible, it still impacts upon her individual spiritual journey:
I would say, for instance, that you can’t get much more higher than
“Love your neighbor as yourself” . . . wherever there is truth that
connects with my truth . . . I can say yes. But a lot of it, rules and regu-
lations and what, what it’s been used for, only the damage it’s done.
I’ve read it twice, all of it, but that doesn’t speak to me . . . unless, it
comes up in the middle of something, and it’s relevant.
Given Carol’s denunciation of the Catholic Church, history, teach-

ings, and sacred text, I was taken aback as she simultaneously fil-
ters out the Bible for its “rules and regulations” and inerrancy, while
filtering in the occasions when reading the Bible is “relevant” and
can “speak” to Carol’s own spiritual “truths.” Carol does reread and
returns to the Bible for passages she has filtered in according to their
suitability for her spiritual searching.
Laura (Christian), like Carol (Spiritual Searcher), argues that
the Bible has been used to serve social injustices such as misogyny,
homophobia, racism, and prejudice against those with physical or
learning disabilities, and mental health issues. Laura believes that
because “the Bible roots [me] to the ancient faith of Christianity, I
have to accept some responsibility” for such injustices. Despite this,
she includes reading the Bible and contemporary fiction, films, and
music in her spiritual practices. The texts that she filters in, both bib-
lical and nonbiblical, are those through which she personally encoun-
ters God:
Because of my belief that God is absolutely out in the world . . . God is

in the Bible because the Bible at the end of the day is a piece of printed
matter, the book itself is not necessarily any better or worse than a set
of Tarot cards or a Jamie Oliver cook book . . . they are bits of paper
that have got print on them.
By stressing the physical existence of the Bible and comparing it to

other “printed matter,” she minimizes the importance of the book
as a textual object. Even though Laura’s encounter with the Word of
God may be mediated through a physical text, it is her own relation-
ship with God that is accentuated and on which she places the most
importance:
The relationship bit [between herself and God] is paramount to the

scriptural bit of it . . . It’s [the Bible] about whether God loves and how
you live your life and the connectedness of the world and. . .your con-
nectedness to God, your ability to be connected to God personally.
Laura incorporates the aspects of the Bible that help her “understand
my faith position, myself.” She recognizes the different interpretations,
the misuses, and the uses, but Bible reading remains a spiritual prac-
tice because there is always the possibility that “it might have some-
thing useful to say.”
Participants, although critical of the Bible’s authoritative, hierar-
chical status, continue to read the Bible as part of their spiritual read-
ing. They are using their individual spiritual journeys as a screen to
filter in and filter out biblical texts on their own authority, selecting
the passages and texts from the Bible that are relevant for their indi-
vidual spiritual journeys. The process of filtering for a reader-centered
canon-in-canon, rather than the theologian-centered canon-in-canon
is a shared process across participants’ personal spiritual lives. Filtering
is an individual experience that is common throughout participants’
spiritual reading practices.
Resisting and Reading

As well as rejecting and reading, filtering is also a process through
which participants are able to withstand the dominant power struc-
tures extolled in the biblical text by “resisting” the text (Davies,
2003). A “resisting reader” is taken from the title of Judith
Fetterley’s (1978) work The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach
to American Fiction, and is a reader who refuses to assume the
(usually masculine) position proffered by a narrative for the reader.
Through textual analysis of well-known American fiction written
by men, Fetterley asserts that women readers are made “power-
less” by the text, as most American fiction defines experience and
identity as male.8 The text has an authoritative power over women
readers, which paradoxically excludes and compels them to conform
to a masculine system of values. Fetterley names this “immascula-
tion,” an experience of reading, whereby “the female reader is co-
opted into participation in an experience from which she is explicitly
excluded; she is asked to identify with a selfhood that defines itself in
opposition to her; she is required to identify against herself” (1978,
p. xii). Although immasculation demands that women participate
in the reading experience, the content of the text precludes their
full involvement. For both women and men, this is alienating and
results in “the endless division of self against self, the consequence
of the invocation to identify as male while being reminded that to
be male—to be universal . . . is to be not female” (1978, p. xiii).
Women are identified against themselves as the text induces women
to submit to the patriarchal narrative and be complicit in perpetuat-
ing male experience as the norm.
The process of immasculation can also occur when women read

the Bible. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (1995) argues that the symbol
systems of “master/lord/father/husband” persuade women to iden-
tify with what is “male” and therefore identify against herself:
Thus biblical readings intensify theologically wo/men’s internalization

of a cultural system . . . whose values alienate us both from ourselves
and from each other if they maintain that all biblical texts are the iner-
rant word of G*d.9 (1995, p. 87)
Fetterley posits resistance as a way for the reader to challenge immascu-

lation and open the text to alternative readings. In addition to stand-
ing firm against immasculation, resistance includes exposing “the
complex of ideas and mythologies about women and men which exist
in our society and are confirmed in our literature” and to “make the
system of power embodied in the literature not only open to discus-
sion but even to change” (1978, p. xx). The resisting reader is a radical
reader, and through resisting can sit outside the literary and biblical
canon, the best position from which to disrupt the immasculation pro-
cess. Fetterley anticipates that once the resisting reader has unmasked
the immasculation process, and sounded an emphatic “no” to the
masculine positioning of text, other readings of the text can emerge.
However, I suggest the resisting reader is a constrained concept, as
the reader is restricted in how far she can open the dominant power
structures inscribed in the text to dialogue and transformation.
Fetterley’s work is arguably a memoir of her own resisting readings.
As is often the case in theoretical reception work, the definition of
the reader, text, and meaning is based on the critic’s own understand-
ings and readings (Mills, 1996). While attacking the literary canon
for its universalizing tendencies, Fetterley seems to reduce the reading
process to a simple formula where all women must resist all texts that
address a male reader. However, as Sara Mills comments, Fetterley’s
resisting reader makes this interaction too straightforward:
It is clearly the case that not all texts address their readers as male
(although it is evident that many texts pose as universal in their
address, whilst in fact addressing only males); not all women will resist
that address, or even want to resist that address, since not all women
are feminists. (1994c, p. 27)
Like Mills, I am struck by how a resisting reader must refuse to accept

the text, and refuse it all. Although the resisting reader can refuse to
assent to a piece of work that renders her powerless, her authority is
limited in two interrelated ways. First, Fetterley constructs readers as

passive, susceptible to the power of the text, and subsumed into the
position of the male reader. The reader is made powerless not only
through the text, but also by virtue of Fetterley’s description of the
woman reader. Second, the resisting reader is a useful strategic tool as
it assigns power to the (female) reader and assumes she can withstand
the immasculation process. However, it also limits her authority as
she has recourse to (only) one response (rejection) and the opportu-
nity to consent to the text is taken away.
Readers are resisting certain aspects of the text. For instance,
Nicola (Christian Feminist) identifies “a lack of the female voice”
because “the Bible is patriarchal.” Bethany is critical because the
Bible does not use “inclusive language . . . it’s still ‘God the Father’
and ‘He’ all the time and even ‘mankind.’” However, unlike the
resisting reader, filtering for a reader-centered canon keeps open
the possibility of dialogue with the text. Rather than withstand
the entire text in a single act of resistance, filtering is a contin-
ual appraisal using the screening process, based on the changing
requirements of participants’ individual journeys. Participants may
resist, accept, and re-resist the patriarchal ideology within the text,
because filtering is based on the readers’ own experiences, contex-
tualized, and historically situated. The embodied and experienced
act of engaging with the text through filtering opens dialogue with
the Bible.
For instance, Scarlet (Quaker/pagan/lesbian/feminist/pacifist)
has moved away from “traditional” religion,10 but admits to “liking
the stories” in the Old and New Testaments and enjoys the literari-
ness of scripture. However, she refuses to own a Bible. She says, “it
would be too much” because she opposes the hierarchical authority
of traditional religion. Yet, despite this, Scarlet does not reject, or
resist, as this is premature and too limiting:
You feel this resistance in yourself immediately and then you know . . .
Immediately when I feel the resistance I always know, “Aha! Wait a
minute! Moment of truth!” If you’re feeling the resistance that means
that you’ve actually got to go beyond the resistance to acceptance. You
might still choose to jettison it, but you’ve actually got to open your
mind to the possibility.
Scarlet filters out the Bible’s patriarchal language and its authoritative
status because these are unwanted aspects. Yet she can still dialogue
and engage with the Bible because through rereading and examining
her own responses based on her experiences and evolving needs, it

potentially contains “moments of truth” and is rich in possibility for
her spiritual journey.
Rather than only rejecting or resisting the Bible, participants are
making it relevant for their individual spiritual journeying by read-
ing and screening the Bible in relation to their individual spiritual
lives. Participants filter in texts that reflect a particular situation
in their own lives. Ann-Marie (Roman Catholic) reflects on a pas-
sage from John’s Gospel that helped her respond and confront a
difficult circumstance at work. When faced with the possibility of
a promotion, but sensing “that something was telling me that this
is not what I want,” Ann-Marie went to her prayer corner and her
Bible, which fell open at John 14:2: “In my Father’s house there are
many places to live in.” This passage reassured Ann-Marie, “that it
didn’t matter what role I did, as long as it was [a] role I was choos-
ing I felt God was calling me to that, and I would still be in God’s
house.” For Rachel (Christian), “the only real times that I chose
to pick up the Bible are probably when I’m feeling really, really
down.” She “random[ly] flicks . . . to see what’d come up, and in my
mind it was like a bit of a calling, that a passage had sprung out.”
Nicola, a Christian feminist, does not attempt to rescue the Bible
from its immasculating tendencies and patriarchal ideology, but is
very much aware of the tensions. For instance, she mentions the
Song of Songs as a much-loved text for its poetry and because this is
where she hears “the female voice” in scripture. However, she also
draws on metaphors of combat to describe her readings of biblical
sections she sees as patriarchal: “There are parts of the Bible that I
really wrestle . . . and my engagement with them would be more in
the form of wrestling and rejection.” Readers are filtering the bib-
lical texts, sifting the sections—perhaps whole books, sometimes
passages, or single lines—in order to choose which verses have a
particular significance or merit for their own lives, and deciding
which do not.
Participants are confident and pragmatic; using their own expe-
rience as the measure by which filtering decisions are made. Linda
(Holistic Christianity) believes the Bible to be an important source
for her spiritual life, but also uses Celtic and Native American prayers,
imagery, and ritual as part of her personal practice and public minis-
try. Linda resists the Bible’s authority by rejecting literalism because,
for her, this would be too problematic, especially regarding the status
of women. In the following interview fragment, it is possible to see
Linda filtering scripture for her own, reader-centered canon as she

juxtaposes one biblical narrative against another:
And it [the Bible] does challenge me. There’s lots of things that chal-
lenge me and lots of things that make me angry. I mean, why stone the
woman when she’s committed adultery, you know, and he walks away
scot free! And I love that bit about Rachel sitting on the household
gods and telling them that she’d got her period! [Linda laughs heart-
ily] I love that!
Linda focuses on the elements of scripture that she can use, taking
joy and pleasure from moments when strong women are depicted
as resisting patriarchy and authority, but distances herself from the
accounts she feels compromise her feminist stance. For instance, she
has “struggled” with the image of Paul as misogynistic and chauvinis-
tic. After “looking deeper” into his writings, she is “becoming more a
Paul fan” and has found aspects of the Pauline ministry and scripture
more palatable. She is not concerned with resolving the conflict she
has identified in Paul’s theology, or reconciling her responses to the
unsavory actions taken against women in the Hebrew and Christian
narratives. Although the challenges presented by scripture are test-
ing, she is able to live with them without feeling a need to rescue
the entire text. Instead of taking her cue from feminist theologian-
centered canon-in-canons, participants, such as Scarlet and Linda, are
shifting the locus of authority and selection to their individual spiri-
tual journeys. When participants filter in suitable texts, or filter out
unsuitable texts, the individualized actual reader becomes the center
of the screening process.
Debbie is in her mid-forties, separated from her husband, with a
family, and describes herself as a committed Anglican and a “duti-
ful daughter” of the church. She resists biblical authority, but filters
her own selection of texts in an ongoing dialogue with the Bible.
When questioned on her personal feelings about the Bible, I was sur-
prised when she advocated: “Jettison the entire Bible and just put
Bleak House in the canon instead!” Although this appears to be a
thoroughgoing resistant reader strategy, she later discloses that read-
ing the books of Job and Philippians are part of her spiritual reading
practices, remarking that these are “the two books that are worth
bothering with.” Debbie is an academic theologian, lecturing while
working toward a PhD. She works with scripture professionally,
and this broad knowledge has no doubt informed her loyalty to her
selected passages. Debbie has chosen Job and Philippians carefully and
deliberately, based on her own experiences. Job is compared to Bleak
House, as it, too, is a book she rereads and turns to at certain points
of crisis in her life:
Except that I can read the book of Job and it works . . . I don’t think
it’s something about, I mean, it’s that wonderful thing, the Lord takes
and the Lord gives away . . . I don’t understand it, I don’t know what
is going on, but God’s there . . . It’s dreadful really! It’s the most
depressing book! [Debbie laughs].
Job and Philippians fit the bill at times when Debbie finds it dif-
ficult to establish meaning and maintain her faith, such as during
the breakdown of her marriage, when in her words she feels like her
life “hit brick walls.” Reading these texts helps her to come to terms
with her loss, and to regain her Christian convictions. Job’s experi-
ences may not mirror Debbie’s exactly, but she recognizes parts of her
life and finds solace in these moments of commonality. The reason
Debbie filters Job to her individual canon is because, she insists, it
“is the only bit . . . that really really works for me,” which is mea-
sured by the extent to which this text is able to sooth and reassure.
Unlike theologian-centered feminist canons, which make deliberate
selections based on textual features and their political implications,
Debbie emphasizes that she is the locus of this process, choosing Job
and Philippians because they offer comfort and meaning when she
is troubled. Whereas feminist canons suggest a list of texts for the
implied reader in her implied community, Debbie is filtering in the
texts that offer her a solution, and filtering out those that offer no
further answers; reading precise books at a particular time for certain
reasons. In this way, Debbie’s strategy allows her to dialogue with a
text that if she had resisted, she may have otherwise rejected in favor
of Bleak House.
Filtering by rejecting and reading to screen in and screen out aspects
of the Bible for women’s spiritual lives is an embodied illustration
of the third wave emphasis on individuality. Despite the particular
encounters with the Bible through the personal activity of reading,
the women’s reading experiences connect. Commonality occurs when
highly individualized reading practices of filtering overlap as shared
experiences in the processes of women’s spiritual reading.
This chapter brings feminist theology and third wave feminism into
dialogue through participants’ uses of filtering. While feminist theol-
ogy has largely read to create theologian-centered canon-in-canons,
participants are creating fluid reader-centered canon-in-canons. The

feminist theologian is the lone reader, who may be reading for individ-
ual differences, but is selecting texts for a canon-in-canon on behalf of
an implied individual reader, and her implied community. In contrast,
participants’ reader-centered canon-in-canons are contingent upon fil-
tering through the internal authority of the individual women reader,
making selections on account of the perceived needs of her spiritual
journey. Participants’ are using filtering to make the Bible relevant
to their spiritual development by rejecting and resisting the Bible, its
authority, or particular passages from scripture. Women readers select
the texts by using their spiritual journey as a screen, separating which
elements of the Bible are meaningful, and which are not. Through
following participants’ individual strategies and their personal text
selections, filtering emerges as a common reading practice, which
offers feminist theology an example of third wave individuality and
commonality.
This chapter has explored the generation of biblical canon-in-
canons. In the following chapter, I examine how feminist theology
and women’s spiritual reading practices extend the canon by reading
literature in a wider sense—referring to writings not usually regarded
as sacred texts—as a further illustration of the connections, and dis-
connections between feminist theology and third wave feminism.
CH A P T ER 4
Reading for Difference
Why is literature more important than theology? . . . the important

reading has been literary . . . great writers reach the soul—what-
ever it is—theology reaches my intellect. But it takes the poets and
the great prose writers to, I don’t know, to get to the whole person.
(Ann, Quaker)
I remember meeting Ann very clearly. I had travelled the 40 or so

miles by bus, and was gently welcomed into her neatly kept terraced
home. In the back room, lined with her precious books, we sat and
chatted over cups of tea. Ann is in her mid-seventies, once married,
but now divorced and in a same-sex partnership; she had once been a
lay Methodist preacher and heavily involved in the church. Her reli-
gious and spiritual life has altered since coming to feminism in the
1960s and 1970s and reading feminist theology, and she now attends
Quaker meetings and affiliates to the Sea of Faith. As she under-
stands it, the traditional concepts and teachings of Christianity hold
very little water. While popular and academic theologians are part
of her library, she is most likely to read and write poetry to glimpse
the transcendent. In addition to employing strategies to filter for a
biblically based “reader-centered canon-in-canon,” the women in this
study are extending their spiritual reading practices to texts outside
the boundaries of the Christian scriptures. As feminist theology’s
turn to literature implies, Christian and post-Christian women are
incorporating prose, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction into their spiri-
tual reading practices.
Feminist theology’s search to extend the canon and find a body of
literature to call its own is characterized by “gynocritics” (Showalter,
1986a, 1986b). This is a predominantly second wave feminist branch
of literary criticism that focuses on women’s writing, which feminist
theology has adopted, at least tacitly. Gynocriticism privileges the

woman author, which guarantees for the reader the representation
of women’s experiences in the text. Feminist theology has been con-
vinced that the images, characters, and narratives that feature in
women’s writing, and that can pertain to women spiritualities, are
legitimate and validating sources for the implied reader’s spiritual
journey. In this sense, gynocriticism and feminist theology “read for
sameness”: the author, the experiences in the text, and the reader
share a gendered, female identity.
In light of anti-essentialist responses to second wave discourses,
gynocritics has been critiqued for universalizing “women” and
“women’s experience.” However, feminist theology has been very
loyal to women’s writing, and it is important to acknowledge the
significant influence this partnership has had on feminist theology’s
trajectory. But this faithful reliance on gynocriticism is indicative of
a reserved methodology that has also hindered feminist theology’s
engagement with alternative, and less “innocent” reading strategies.1
In contrast, women’s actual spiritual reading practices move beyond
gynocriticism. In its place, participants in this study are not reading
for sameness in identity and experience of the author, text, and reader.
Individual, actual readers’ experiences are finding commonality in
the shared processes of “reading for difference” beyond these essen-
tialist notions.
By reading for difference, the women in this study are undoing
feminist theology’s link between women’s authorship and women’s
spiritual experiences, which raises questions for the “death of the
author” discourses. For participants, the relationship between the
activity of reading and the validation of their individual spiritual jour-
neys has greater significance than the gender identity of the novelist
or poet, or the content of the literature. The texts participants are
naming are not necessarily those written by women about women’s
experiences of the sacred, but the literature comprising participants’
individualized, and fluid, textual bases are those that best facilitate
their spiritual journeying. There is a distinction between feminist
theology’s tendency to read for sameness and participants’ third wave
strategies in reading for difference, but this also highlights a point
of commonality across the wave metaphor. As a third wave practice,
women’s spiritual reading demonstrates to secular feminism where
the third wave theme is emerging in women’s spiritualities; and dem-
onstrates to feminist theology alternatives to second wave reading
strategies.
READING FOR DIFFERENCE 91
In this chapter, I first introduce and critically discuss feminist the-

ology’s gynocritical reading patterns, using Carol Christ’s work as
an example of the partnership between feminist theology, women’s
authorship, and women’s experiences. Following this, I focus on the
two interconnected ways in which participants’ reading experiences
reflect the emergence of third wave feminism in women’s spirituali-
ties. First, a mutual concern for validating their individual spirituali-
ties, and second a shared departure from gynocriticism as participants
read to affirm their individual spiritual journeys, and share the pro-
cess of reading for difference.
Introducing Gynocriticism
In building its literary collection, feminist theology has implicitly
and explicitly drawn on gynocritics or gynocriticism. Associated with
Elaine Showalter (1978, 1986c) and cultivated by feminist literary
studies in the late 1970s, gynocriticism is, in part, a device for dis-
covering and analyzing unknown and unrecognized women writ-
ers, whose work has been left out of the canon of primarily Western,
male-authored texts. Showalter’s (1978) work, A Literature of Their
Own: From Charlotte Brontë to Doris Lessing, anticipates gynocritics.
It is devoted to honoring the “lost continent of the female tradition”
(1978, p. 10) by featuring known and previously unknown women
British writers and accents the continuities that unite them throughout
literary history. Showalter identifies three historic phases to women’s
literary culture. The first is the “feminine” and dates from approxi-
mately 1840 to 1890, when women writers such as George Eliot and
Acton Bell wrote according to the mainstream (male) standards of the
time, striving to attain the same critical acclaim. The second “femi-
nist” phase occurred between 1880 and 1920, when women writ-
ers contested “male” values and advocated women’s rights. The third
“female” phase began in the 1920s and is ongoing, as women writers
are drawing on women’s experiences and women’s lives as the “source
of an autonomous art,” and feminist criticism evaluates modes, forms,
and techniques within literature (1986b, p. 139). Reconstructing
women’s literary past is the beginning of a feminist criticism that
can “challenge the periodicity of orthodox literary history and its
enshrined canons of achievement” (1986b, p. 137), which, Showalter
suggests, gynocritics achieves.
As a form of textual analysis, gynocritics attempts to redress the
limited representation of women’s creative heritage within literary
production. The method follows from earlier feminist endeavors

to expose and condemn the negative literary depictions of women
and their inequitable treatment by writers, critics, and publishers.
Showalter names this initial period the “feminist critique” that reread
the traditional canon, challenged the so-called great literary works
for their pervasive sexism, and questioned the male critics for claim-
ing objectivity and disinterestedness in their interpretation of them.
Influential examples of this include feminist literary studies by schol-
ars, such as Ellen Moers (1978), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
(2000 [1979]), and Kate Millett (1977 [1970]), who all cast a critical
eye over male writers’ fictional representations of women and wom-
en’s experience. This mode of analysis was vital in highlighting the
sexual codes and ideological assumptions embedded in the esteemed
mansion of literature. However, Showalter argues that feminist criti-
cism fixated too heavily on the literary creations of male authors and
the false impressions about women in literature made throughout
androcentric literary critical history (1986b, p. 128).
Even though feminist textual analysis critiqued and challenged the
androcentricism of the literary realm, Showalter argues there is a need
for textual analysis that is not an “angry or loving fixation on male
literature.”(1986b, p. 131) Whilst feminist criticism is concerned with
the woman as a reader of male literature, Showalter proffers gynocriti-
cism as an alternative form of textual analysis that is solely concerned
with the woman as a writer and the producer of meanings. Gynocritics
is a technique that studies female experience as it is manifest in the
“newly visible world of female culture” (Showalter, 1986b, p. 131):
Thus the first task of a gynocentric criticism must be to plot the pre-
cise cultural locus of female literary identity and to describe the forces
that intersect an individual woman writer’s cultural field. A gynocen-
tric criticism would also situate women writers with respect to the
variables of literary culture, such as modes of production and distribu-
tion. (1986c, p. 264)
Gynocritics transfers the feminist literary attention from male writing

and the male author, to female writing and the female author, and
examines women’s creative outputs for the “psychodynamics of female
creativity; linguistics and the problem of female language; the trajec-
tory of the individual or collective literary career; literary history; and
of course studies of particular writers and works” (Showalter, 1986b,
p. 128). For feminist theology, the gynocritical emphasis on identify-
ing parity between the distinctive and authentic voice of the woman
author capturing women’s experiences is compelling, and has proved

an important device for finding literature beyond the canon that can
speak to women’s spiritualities.
Reading for Sameness

Feminist theology, in seeking to create alternative sacred text tradi-
tions, has formed a partnership with gynocritical textual analysis that
reads for sameness in the gendered identity of reader, author, and
text. The feminist critic/reader, presumed to be a woman, is reading
literature created by the woman author, whose work represents and
conveys women’s lives and experiences, usually through the genre of
realism. Like “authentic realism” (Mills, 1996), the largely antitheo-
retical branch of feminist literary criticism, gynocritics discusses wom-
en’s writing in terms of the relationship between women’s experience,
author, text, and reader; treats strong female characters in women’s
fiction as role models with which to identify and emulate; sees the
woman author’s biographical life written in the text; and also acknowl-
edges the critics’ personal response.2 These interlocking features find
expression in feminist theology’s relationship with literature.
When feminist theology embraces gynocriticism, it, too, reads for
sameness and “a common female identity between author, reader and
text” (Walton, 2007a, p. 39). In feminist theology, women authors
are repeatedly drawn upon to inspire and enhance women’s spiri-
tual journeying, particularly if the author is perceived to write con-
vincingly about women’s experiences in ways that can impart truths
and insights for spiritual and religious lives. Female authorship, as
opposed to male authorship, is treated as guaranteeing the represen-
tation of women’s authentic spiritual experiences, an assurance that is
considered necessary for the implied women reader to secure spiritual
validation. Gynocriticism is a reading strategy that promises feminist
theology a collection of writings for and about women’s experiences
of the sacred.
Women’s Writing and Women’s Spiritual Quest

Carol Christ’s sustained exploration of the literature by Doris
Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Kate Chopin, Ntozake Shange, and
Adrienne Rich conjoins feminist theology and gynocriticism. In
Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on a Spiritual Quest
(1995 [1980]), Christ utilizes these authors to discuss the “spiritual
consciousness of the modern woman” (1976b, p. 318), and to signal
a unique spiritual awareness pertaining to women and their experi-

ences beyond the biblical and theological traditions of Christianity.
Christ expounds a textual analytical methodology, deriving motifs
from her reading of these authors to distil an authentic, archetypal
spirituality for women. This is evidence of “a quest myth from the
perspective of women’s experience” (1992 [1975], p. 238) that nar-
rates “a woman’s awakening to the depths of her soul and her posi-
tion in the universe” (1995 [1980], p. 8). Diving Deep and Surfacing
outlines the four stages of the quest that Christ (1995 [1980])
argues are commonplace for women, and to which women’s fiction
bears out. The quest begins with the experience of nothingness in
which women encounter a painful lack of meaning and a deep pow-
erlessness. Nothingness preempts an awakening, a realization often
provoked by insights or moments of mystical connection especial
to women’s spirituality. Insights are instances of identification and
interaction with nature or women-centered communities, which
reveal women’s capacity for being and subjectivity. An awakening
draws women to a new sense of self and position within the world,
which leads to a new naming that communicates the emerging new
sense of self and experience against the gendered binary categories
that hierarchically structure and depict the world from a masculine
point of view.
Christ begins with Kate Chopin’s The Awakening as illustrative
of women’s spiritual, but not social, awakening. In Chopin’s narra-
tive, the central character, Edna Pontellier, is searching for selfhood.
Her quest is initiated when she learns to swim, an act that instigates
an unsuccessful rebellion against the “nothingness” of domesticity
and motherhood. However, these demands prove too great and Edna
swims out to sea to escape, but drowns. For Christ, although Edna’s
suicide is seen as a “social defeat,” it is a “spiritual triumph” as an
assertion of her personal and social liberty (1995 [1980], p. 39).
As Edna’s spiritual fulfillment is impeded by social circumstances,
so is the spiritual quest of the unnamed protagonist in Atwood’s
Surfacing. In this novel, Christ interprets the heroine’s journey out
of nothingness to selfhood as beginning after she has an abortion,
and returns to her childhood home in the barrenness of Canada’s
backwoods to search for her missing father. The termination and
the mystery of her father’s disappearance signal her lack of agency
and alienation, which she overcomes when she experiences a trans-
formation after a mystical immersion in lake waters, and when she
conceives another child. She undergoes a profound series of insights,
visions, and encounters in which she connects with the wilderness and
“experiences direct union with the great powers of life and death in
nature” to become the “transformative energy” of life (1995 [1980],
p. 48). Christ questions the way motherhood is tied to the protago-
nist’s personal redemption, but argues Atwood accurately depicts the
quest by providing images of power that are tied to women’s body
and nature, and that fund women’s struggle to surmount injustice
and achieve authentic selfhood (1995 [1980], p. 50).3
In Lessing’s five-volume The Children of Violence, Christ traces
the spiritual journey of Martha Quest, who guides and, in return, is
guided by her friend Lynda on a voyage from maternity to prophecy.
Despite Martha’s experiences of nothingness in her failed marriages
and indifferent relationship with her children, her ability to connect
to the transcendent develops into the power of insight. Martha has an
“active consciousness” and learns to understand the “deeper dimen-
sions of her experience” (1995 [1980], p. 71), a sign Christ reads as
evident of Martha’s spiritual authority and power. Christ is troubled
by the presentation of women as only “witnesses and prophets of
disaster or hope,” but anticipates more from women’s “new naming”
(1995 [1980], p. 73).
In Adrienne Rich’s oeuvre, Christ sees a feminist social agenda
merging with the spiritual to reverse “the wreck” of patriarchal insti-
tutions and male-defined culture (1995 [1980], p. 81). Christ takes
Rich’s poetry as representing a new language that celebrates women’s
physical and intellectual strength, and beauty, which will overturn
the cultural norms that denigrate women. In particular, Rich empha-
sizes the role of language in articulating “the strength of women, the
power of female values,” and the naming of women’s lesbian “love for
each other and for themselves” (1995 [1980], p. 95), which Christ
claims will “inspire all women’s quests” (1995 [1980], p. 96).
The final work that Christ examines is Ntozake Shange’s choral
poem for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow
is not enuf. Having experienced a profound reaction as an audience
member during a production of this piece (1995 [1980], pp. xxx–
xxxi), Christ construes the “affirmation of self, of being woman, of
being Black, which is at the heart of for colored girls” (1995 [1980],
p. 117) as an emblem that validates all stages of women’s spiritual
quest, from nothingness to new naming.
Christ clearly envisions what a feminist critical approach to religion
and literature can realize: “feminist criticism aids women’s quest for
self by discussing the shape, value, and direction given to women’s
experiences in certain works of literature” (1976a, p. 319). Her claim
is more than uncovering empowering images that are illustrative of
women’s journey to spiritual subjectivity: it is an assertion that women

must read literature by women for their spiritual fulfilment:
One task facing women writers is to write stories in which the spiri-
tual and social quest can be combined in the life of a living, realistic
woman. And also, one task facing readers is not to be fully satisfied
with women’s literature until it does. (1995 [1980], pp. 39–40).
Christ ultimately naturalizes women’s writing as the obvious partner

to feminist theology. The notion of a universal women’s spiritual quest
that can be unearthed through textual analysis is a claim that the
authority of woman’s experience is an essential category from which
feminist religious thinking must start, and a resource through which
all women can find religious affirmation and social empowerment.
Essentializing the Quest

The partnership between women’s writing and women’s spiritual quest
has been invaluable for feminist theology. The preoccupation with
women’s writing has uncovered forgotten or undiscovered authors
whose work has informed and moved women to write new theolo-
gies. Christ’s pioneering turn to literature has contributed to feminist
theology’s transformation into a very literary movement. However,
positing an exemplary model of women’s spiritual quest epitomized
through women’s writings obfuscates the intersections of women’s
identities. Although Christ (Plaskow and Christ, 1989) acknowledges
in later work that her use of women’s experience too often meant
white, middle-class, and educated women’s experience, in Diving
Deep there is an inattentiveness to difference: “The Black woman’s
experience of nothingness may be more intense, but it is not entirely
different from that of many women whose skin is a more acceptable
hue” (Christ, 1995 [1980], p. 103). The use of black woman’s literary
output is not problematic per se, since to omit black women’s writing
silences their voices, again. Nevertheless, Christ’s unreflexive appro-
priation of for colored girls is questionable. When women’s writing is
treated as providing unmediated access to the social lives of women,
the particularity and context of the literature produced by women
of color are secreted by the desire to find similarities across women’s
spiritual experiences. For example, Christ’s response to seeing a live
performance of Shange’s choral poem is to claim it as a “shock of
recognition to every woman who has given too much of herself to a
man” (1995 [1980], p. 98):
Shange’s boldness in naming “god in myself” seemed right . . . since

we recently had begun together to speak the “Goddess” and had felt
this new naming as a powerful antidote to the self-abasing depen-
dence on men that both of us, like Shange had known too well. (1995
[1980], p. xxxi)
Christ essentializes when she makes a seamless connection between

her experience and the voices in for colored girls. Christ recognizes
that she is witness to an expression of black women’s experiences
articulated by black women, but names Shange’s “Goddess” as her
own, and equates her own “dependence on men” with those relation-
ships between black men and women represented in the play. When
using Shange’s work as an example of her developing theology, Christ
conceals difference. By extracting and essentializing meanings from
black women’s literature, this particular literary tradition is universal-
ized and appropriated for the purposes of a whitefeminist theo/alogy
and women’s spiritual quest.4
Questioning Gynocriticism
As well leading to appropriation and essentialism, problems are inher-
ent with gynocritical approaches that impinge on its relationship to,
and uses in, feminist theology’s literary turn. Showalter’s develop-
ment of gynocritical literary theory, based on women’s writing and
experience, has assisted feminist theology in extending the canon to
find literature that validates women’s spiritual quests. However, read-
ing for sameness is uncritically self-serving and limits literature’s role
in feminist theology.
When, as Showalter advocates, the feminist literary theorist moves
from a feminist critique (woman as reader) to adopt gynocritics (woman
as writer), she loses the analytical edge she had when reading male writ-
ing. Toril Moi (1985), in Sexual/Textual Politics, notes that in feminist
critiques, the male author’s work is read through a hermeneutics of sus-
picion that “probes the ideological assumptions of literary phenomena.
It’s subjects include the images and stereotypes of women in literature,
the omissions of and misconceptions about women in criticism, and
the fissures in male-constructed literary history” (Showalter, 1986b,
p. 128). In a feminist critique, the critic presumes that the text is “not,
or not only, what it assumes to be” and therefore looks for hidden con-
tradictions, conflicts, absences, and silences (Moi, 1985, p. 76).
However, in comparison to feminist criticism’s general mis-
trust of the ideals and assumptions underlying works of literature,
gynocriticism is very trusting of the women author, her literature,

and the (mainly woman) reader’s ability to identify with the repre-
sentation of women in the texts. The actual author’s signature (as
a woman) authorizes the content of the literature and assures that
her literary output is legitimate: “The author is the speaking, full,
self-present subject producing the text from her own knowledge of
the world and she is the guarantee of its truth” (Weedon, 1987, p.
162), and therefore in feminist literary theology, she is treated as hav-
ing unique access to imagining the spiritual and religious experiences
of women. Gynocritics’ compassionate treatment of women’s writ-
ing handles the text carefully because it is the “transparent medium”
through which women’s experience “can be seized” (Moi, 1985, p.
76). Since gynocriticism reads for sameness, there is little evidence
or intention in feminist theology for anything other than a “sympa-
thetic” (Moi, 1985, p. 75) and “innocent” (Walton, 2007a, 2007b,
2008) appreciation of the woman author’s representation of women’s
spiritual lives, which can be too benevolent toward women’s writing
to be sufficiently evaluative.
In terms of the canon of Western literature, gynocriticism’s positive
readings privileges women’s writing over other literature, and there-
fore comes dangerously close to duplicating the patriarchal canoni-
cal processes of inclusion and exclusion that it attempts to oppose.
Treating the text as an accurate communiqué of experience is also a
tendency in “traditional” Western patriarchal literary criticism, but in
the latter “human” experiences too often means “male” experiences
(Moi, 1985). Although gynocriticism pursues the disintegration of
the Western canon, it does so by replacing the privileging of male
writing over women’s writing, with the privileging of women’s writing
over male writing. In feminist theology, as Heather Walton suggests
(2007a), the favoring of women’s writing stops short of canonizing
women’s writing. However, the growing feminist awareness that has
challenged the exclusion of women’s voices from the Christian textual
traditions, and simultaneously viewed women’s literature as giving to
women what men gain from “their” scriptures, means that women’s
writing does function in feminist theology as “sacred texts.”5
Upgrading women’s literature to the status of sacred texts has
inspired and validated feminist theological thinking, but this can
become naively self-serving. According to Robert Detweiler’s (1985)
working definition of “sacred text,”6 which Walton draws upon,
when a community bestows a special status upon texts, they are
treated differently to other kinds of writings. Sacred texts are vener-
ated and treasured as readers come to expect an encounter with the
transcendent (1985, p. 222). Therefore its community of readers are

inhibited in their response, unable to engage in a “free play” of inter-
pretation (1985, p. 214). By reading for sameness, feminist theology
has not engaged in a “free play” of response, but instead has looked
for themes and motifs that confirm and affirm both the discipline of
feminist religious studies and the implied woman reader’s spiritual
journey. As Walton suggests, feminist theology has “sought in litera-
ture spiritual encounters that are deeply connected to their embodied
experience, that are identity affirming, politically empowering and
personally nurturing” (2008, p. 91). Anticipating that women’s realist
literature guarantees recognition and confirmation, feminist religious
readings prefer women’s writing for “realistic” representations of
women’s experience, and themes, narratives, devices, and images that
mirror and subsequently sanction women’s spiritual lives. Feminist
theologians have been reading women’s writing to “see their mean-
ings (theological or feminist themes) endorsed in the literary” (van
Heijst, 1995, p. 256), Feminist theology has so far read too safely and
hesitantly, uncritically staying close to women’s writing and its gyn-
ocritical reading strategies in its search for a literature of its own.
As well as leading to a curtailing of possible responses to women’s
literature, reading for sameness also circumscribes the range of litera-
ture with which feminist theology can engage. Walton suggests that
the innocent treatment of women’s realist literature as sacred texts
leads to a textual closure, as other types of literature that could poten-
tially forward feminist theology are neglected or excluded: “The books
of men . . . bourgeois women, literary women . . . avant-garde women
authors. An awful lot of literature falls through the net” (2008, p. 90).
Furthermore, searching for narratives that affirm women’s spiritual
lives has meant that the literary aspects of literature, such as metaphor,
form, and construction—often the most powerful devices capable of
expressing “what does not exist, what is not true and what has not
yet been thought” (2007b, p. 55)—have been overlooked by feminist
theology’s dependence on gynocritical reading strategies and realism,
thus disguising the very literary nature of literature. In this context,
literature is unable to operate as a discourse of open opposition and
therefore unreflexively serves feminist theology’s own interests. By
inadvertently maintaining a complementary relationship between the-
ology and literature, they collapse, leading to textual closure and a
curtailing of an open right to response as these literary products are
treated as “sacred texts” (Walton, 2007a, 2007b).
When women’s literature is treated as sacred texts, and when femi-
nist theologians are reading for sameness, the relationship between
feminist theology and literature is restricted. Foundational to Walton’s

work is her insistence that for theology to flourish, it requires lit-
erature to be the “other to itself” (2007b, p. 16). While the role of
the imagination in theology has been acknowledged in recent times,
literature and theology are usually understood as different ways of
approaching the world and the sacred. For Walton, theology’s gen-
erative role is to seek “the illumination necessary to live by faith in
this world” via “universality and reasonable certainty” (2007a, p. 15).
However, it requires the challenge of literary writing as the space of
the “not true, the not complete, the not normal” (2007a, p. 122)
to keep a politically sharp and revisionary agenda. Walton wants to
retain “our sacred texts” (2008), but rather than reading for same-
ness, she wants to encourage more open ways of reading, and a less
inhibited list of what that might include.
Gynocriticism upholds that confirmation of women’s spiritual
experiences occurs through an encounter with sameness, proffered
through women’s authorship of predominantly realist fiction. The
biographical eclipses the literary content of the literature as the
author’s “personal identity reassures readers that her writing can be
treated as a valid resource” (Walton, 2008, p. 91). The author must
be a woman to secure an authentic imagining of the spiritual and reli-
gious experiences of women. Feminist theological reading focuses on
women’s writing for realistic representations of women’s experiences
that sanction feminist theology, and the implied women’s spiritual
lives. Feminist theology, looking for validation, has preferred to leave
the creation of alternative sacred textual traditions in the imaginative
hands of women writing about women’s spiritualities.
Feminist theology has begun to extend its repertoire of textual
methods beyond gynocriticism and toward a reading for difference.
For instance, Heather Walton’s own work revises the relationship
between feminist theology and literature by using post-structur-
alism to read literature as literature, and to destabilize its charac-
terization as the feminized other that unquestioningly self-serves
feminist theology. Feminist religious readings are practices framed
by the way a woman is figured in post-structuralism as a rhetori-
cal dark and negative cultural symbol, and as a space that has the
disruptive potential to undermine established discursive regimes
(2007a, pp. 2, 84). Walton therefore appeals to Kristeva, Irigaray,
and Cixous—writers who have diverted conventional gendered terms
and insist on metaphor and form—so that the relationship between
women’s literature can critically challenge feminist theology.7
Furthermore, where feminist theology’s readings deployed women’s

writing as a natural and authentic authority to speak for all women
and their divine encounters, there is now an attentiveness to dif-
ference and the issues of appropriation.8 Susan Thistlethwaite has
warned that white feminist theology has been mistaken in using
black women’s literature in the same way as white women’s litera-
ture. In relation to Shug and Celie’s imagining of God in The Color
Purple, Thistlethwaite writes: “No white feminist who has quoted
this passage . . . has ever remarked on the rejection of the whiteness
of God” (1989, pp. 115–16). Not only does this overlook the racial
difference in the texts of women of color, but reinforces the incli-
nation to universalize women’s experience “under white racial and
cultural codes of women’s authentic spirituality” (Kamitsuka, 2007,
p. 31). Theologians, such as Katie Cannon, have used black women’s
writing to illustrate that women’s experiences are historically and
culturally situated. This particular and plural literary tradition is
a “‘living space’ carved out of the intricate web of racism, sexism
and poverty” (Cannon, 1988, p. 8) and can be a site of resistance
in distinction to the totalizing universals posited by gynocriticism’s
emphasis on sameness.
The diverse methods theologians have been using are signs that
theology is beginning to engage with wider discourses, and to read
without inhospitably appropriating the literatures of the “other.”
However, feminist theology’s reading choices are still reserved. As
Walton (2007a) comments, it has been hesitant to leave the safety of
women’s writing and to walk “around and in the wild places explor-
ing all that can be experienced there” (2007a, p. 169). Walton is
looking forward to religious feminists reading more widely, “all sorts
of books, including those we have previously dismissed as indulgent,
difficult or strange. I also want us to read books written by men”
(2007a, p. 169). She hopes the realm of the literary continues to
politically charge feminist theology, by recognizing and confront-
ing its endeavors. She is hopeful that feminist theology will start to
read “dirty and dangerous books” (2007b, p. 17) to risk the darker
and more dangerous places in women’s writing to enliven feminist
theology. This is a call for feminist theology to extend its collec-
tion of sacred texts beyond the partnering of women’s authorship
and women’s experiences and the texts this produces, a practice that
the women in this study have already undertaken as they use pur-
sue nourishment and support for their individual spiritual journeys
through the activity of reading.
Reading for Difference and Overturning

Gynocriticism
Participants in this study are extending feminist theology’s circum-
scribed set of sacred literature and are seeking spiritual confirmation
beyond sameness by reading writings that fall outside the genre of
women’s, realist fiction. In a practice that resonates with third wave
discourses, participants in this study are undoing the sameness of
identity in author, reader, and text, and are, I suggest, engaged in a
shared process of reading for difference in order to secure validation
and affirmation for their individual spiritual journeys.
Individual Spiritualities in the Third Wave

As third wave voices are partial to “doing things for themselves” (Aune
and Livesey, 2007), the spiritual journey is a way of devising identities
and practices that best enable self-expression and mark agency. Based
on the assessment that the achievements of preceding feminisms have
provided women with the self-determination to take options previ-
ously unavailable, or options women were restricted from taking, the
third wave agenda is often condensed to being pro-choice, whatever
that choice may be: “Feminism isn’t about what choice you make,
but the freedom to make that choice” (Baumgardner and Richards,
2003, p. 450). As a result, third wavers incorporate a range ways of
being and doing feminism, often using unexpected mediums play-
fully. For instance, traditional modes of femininity that were once
enforced upon women and rejected by feminism are now being
claimed by the third wave as politically subversive. The third wave
foregrounds the retaking of “girl/girlie culture,” transgressive sexu-
alities, beauty culture, the punk Riot Grrrl scene, hip-hop, the Spice
Girls, Courtney Love, and Madonna, and uses new technologies and
new media to disseminate and generate activism. While the effective-
ness of using such strategies to refuse patriarchal structure has been
questioned,9 this self-conscious savoir faire outwardly points to the
way third wavers take the opportunity to self-select, from a startling
array of possibilities, how to express their feminism.
This impulse is also visible within participants’ individual spiritual
journeys. As the third wave brings out the composite, and sometimes
contradictory, ways of being “yourself,” participants’ religious and
spiritual identities have several seams. Scarlet is in her early fifties,
and was educated in Quaker schools. She refuses a single religious or
spiritual affiliation and instead identifies as “Quaker/pagan/lesbian/
feminist/pacifist,” each component having equal weight and mean-

ing. This is her way, she explains, of “picking out the threads” of her
spiritual orientation:
I can say “this bit’s macrobiotic, that bit’s Quaker, this bit . . . is
empowerment stuff.” I can see exactly that they are all so brilliantly
plaited together . . . it’s a very layered kind of spirituality . . . I don’t
feel like I’ve thrown anything away completely.
Whether participants identified with a particular Christian denomina-

tion, Paganism, or with spirituality more widely, their spiritual identi-
ties are inflected with diversity. For instance, Mary is an observant
Roman Catholic, which she “complements” with Native American
and Celtic spiritual practices, using Mandalas or Celtic prayers for
meditation; Eleanor is a verger in her city’s cathedral and is both
“Christian and Pagan”; Linda is an ordained Anglican minister and
describes her “Holistic Christianity” identification: “I’m a Christian
but I also draw . . . on lots of other spiritualities and traditions” from
Native American, Goddess, and Celtic sources; Gillian is priested
but prefers “Post-Christian.” For some, identifying as “Spiritual,”
“Spiritual Seeker,” or “Worldly” indicates their merging of differing
beliefs and practices.
This emphasis on individuality translates into participants’ spiri-
tual practices. For instance, even though Miriam’s (Methlican)
spiritual practices are attached to expected forms of worship such as
daily prayer, Bible study, and church attendance, she comments: “I
do things because of who I am, not because I feel I have to do it.”
This underscores that while these practices are rooted to her faith
position, for Miriam it is important that these forms of worship are
perceived to be about choice as much as tradition. This personal inno-
vation is also a thread weaving through contemporary women’s spiri-
tualities. For instance, Danya Ruttenberg’s (2001) Yentl’s Revenge:
The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism, in third wave style, is an anthol-
ogy of autobiographical pieces by third wave Jewish feminists who
are “determining for themselves the nature of the Jewishness that
best expresses their identity” (Heschel, 2001, p. xvii).10 For Dina
Hornreich, this means finding a spiritual identity and practice that
“conforms to you”(2001, pp. 50–51), a guideline followed by Ryiah
Lilith (2001) who combines ritual elements of Paganism and Judaism
in keeping with her Goddess-worshipping, lesbian, post-Jewish, femi-
nist identity. Drawing on the profits gained by the renovation of the
second wave, third wave feminists are emphasizing the particularity
of gendered identities, and participants embark on a personal spiritual

journey of reading so they can, as Scarlet (Quaker/pagan/lesbian/
feminist/pacifist) states, “find what I need for myself.”11
Collecting Texts
Although participants are not producing authoritative fixed canons,
they are using reading to procure texts relevant to their personal
spiritual journeying. The women’s reading practices attend to their
spiritual trajectory by providing an opening in which their individual
experiences of the sacred are mirrored and thus validated, and their
individual needs met. Texts that participants named as having signifi-
cance in their religious and spiritual lives were those that “explicitly
expressed what implicitly you have realized” (Pat, Roman Catholic),
“affirming what I thought” (Carol, Spiritual Searcher), and “affirm-
ing in way, what I already know” (Linda, Holistic Christian). Gillian
(post-Christian) comments: “The books we pick are the ones that
there is something in us that we relate to or keys into something. It
sounds a bit selfish in a way . . . but that’s how it works.” A reading
experience might also bring to light an idea that is already simmer-
ing below the surface, but is yet to fully take shape. Participants use
a range of images revolving around “being heard” and “spoken to”
when particular texts and reading experience “mirror” or “recognize”
something they had not yet been able to articulate, or had not known
they wanted, or needed to express. Maggie’s (Ecumenical Church)
selected poems and texts are those that are not inevitably telling her
“something new” but “say for me what I can’t”:
It’s about recognition. I’m looking now for things . . . somebody has
just said so beautifully what I was thinking and they are things that
you can take them if you want . . . you’re not alone in the world, there
are people out there . . . who stand in the same place you do, even if
it’s only for this one small thing . . . It really registers.
Maggie collects the poems, literatures, and texts that have inspired an
inner awakening of recognition that leads to inner acceptance, which
she dramatizes during the interview by reciting Kaylin Haught’s
poem God Said Yes to Me. After she had read this poem aloud, Maggie
stated: “If you want to know where I am with my spirituality—that’s
where I am.”
Participants in this study are gathering their own sets of sacred
texts to support and nourish their spiritual journey. Carol (Spiritual
Seeker) and Maggie (Ecumenical) keep a record of their readings by

cataloguing the books they read, quotes from texts, cuttings from
magazines and newspapers, or journaling their current reads: Carol
in her “Common Place” book, and Maggie on a notice board full
of poems, extracts, notes, and pictures. Although Mary (Roman
Catholic) reads widely and constantly, her ever growing collection of
books are only purchased when they have affected her spiritual jour-
ney: “I tend to borrow books first and then, you know, if they are very
meaningful to me then I will go and buy them.” Laura (Christian)
named a series of literary, cinematic, and musical texts that, although
not placed together physically, seemed to be imagined as a core set,
but balanced with a changing list of texts:
I have an ever changing top 10, probably . . . I probably come back to

most times, there’s about 4 or 5 that always appear. Um . . . A Prayer
for Owen Meaney . . . The film The Shawshank Redemption . . . I think
Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Copeland. Probably the music of U2 . .
. and I suppose those sort of things always come back into that top 10.
The rest of it might shift with what I’ve seen that week, or what I’ve
read that week but, those kind of books and those kind of films always
keep re-appearing.
Most readers preempted my request for a list of texts, having at hand

a list of their most significant novels or authors, poems, or poets spe-
cifically and significantly connected to their spirituality or religiosity.
Some participants were less formal and named key texts spontane-
ously, while some participants had carefully prepared an extended
index of their reading. For others, the texts they brought to the inter-
view had been selected long before our meeting, and they had already
begun the process of highlighting certain texts as instrumental to
their spiritual voyages. Having a set of important or favorite texts is
not unique to the readers involved in this study, neither is this aspect
of participants’ experiences sufficient (on its own) to invoke “canon.”
However, participants are selecting the texts that best serve their
spiritual journeys and the perceived spiritual significance attached to
these texts identifies them as more than well-loved or special. The
women’s bookshelves house discrete collections of the texts that have
moved them further along their spiritual journeys, and contain titles,
authors, and genres that extend feminist theology’s own collection of
literary sacred texts. Participants are still reading for spiritual valida-
tion, but they are departing from the gynocritical pattern of reading
for sameness across the gender identity of reader, author, and text,
and embracing reading practices of difference in line with the gradual

turn to the third wave (Llewellyn, 2009).
Undoing the Author

One of the ways participants read for difference is by being less reli-
ant on the gender of the author to validate their spiritual experiences.
While I suggest in the following chapter that the author is an impor-
tant figure in participants’ use of reading to form individualized
communities, this occurs only once a reading experience has become
significant for the spiritual journey. Initially, the capacity for read-
ing to empower and validate does not depend on the identity of the
author.
Feminist theology has continued to be much attached to the woman
author to the extent it has largely avoided “death of the author” post-
structuralist literary discourses (2007a, 88ff.). Instead, feminist the-
ology uses authorship to literally figure women as creators in the
material production of its sacred texts, and as a theoretical realm in
which feminist theology can authoritatively define itself and generate
sacred insights for and about women.12 Therefore, feminist theology
has yet to engage with challenges to the notion of the author, for to
do so risks losing women’s authorship as a special source of women’s
spiritual experiences.
The post-structuralist challenge to the author, associated most
notably with Roland Barthes (1995 [1977]) and Michel Foucault
(1977 [1969]), is an objection to the author as the originating source
circumscribing and controlling a single meaning, and a challenge to
the Western bias toward the universal and objective. Barthes’s sound-
ing of the “death of the author” (1995 [1977], p. 148) as the foun-
dational subject structuring the passive reception of meaning calls
for the reader, rather than the author, to be recognized as the site of
multiple writings (and therefore meanings):
We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single “theo-
logical” meaning (the “message” of the Author-God) but a multidi-
mensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original,
blend and clash . . . there is one place where this multiplicity is focused
and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author.
(Barthes, 1995[1977], p. 146)
Reading is revised as a process of extrication and unravelling, where

the meaning of a text is no longer closed, limited, or dependent upon
an author, but, instead, reading becomes a series of procedures per-

formed by (and on) the reader and what happens to her as she pro-
duces and constructs the literary work (Ahmed, 1998, 120ff.).
As the “death of the author” discourses were challenging the idea
that reading was the passive reception of work, bound to a concept of
authorship that operated to secure and bind the origins and mean-
ing of a text, feminist literary criticism had only just begun to locate
and make visible the distinct contribution women had been making
to literature. Consequently, the postmodern denial of the author has
caused grievous affront. For instance, Nancy K. Miller (1988) has
passionately and heatedly replied to Foucault’s (1977 [1969]) “What
Is an Author?” In conclusion to this essay, Foucault considers the
extent the author-function questions “the privileges of the subject”
(1977 [1969], p. 137) as creators of power rather than seeing the
subject as a function and effect of social discourses. To reinforce the
indifference that results from questioning preexisting, stable subject
positions that unite authorship and authority, he asks: “What differ-
ence does it make who is speaking?” (1977 [1969], p. 138). Miller’s
response encapsulates some of the anxiety feminists, both religious
and secular, have regarding the postmodern attack on the author as a
metaphor for “interrogating its [the subject’s] construction as a pre-
given or foundational premise” (Butler, 1992, p. 9):
The authorizing function of its own discourse authorizes the “end

of woman” without consulting her. What matter who’s speaking? I
would answer it matters, for example, to women who have lost and still
routinely lose their proper name in marriage, and whose signature is
not worth the paper it is written on: women for whom the signature by
virtue of its power in the world of circulation is not immaterial. Only
those who have it can play with not having it. (Miller, 1988, p. 75)
Authorship is a mode of subjectivity, therefore “the post modern deci-

sion that the Author is dead and the subject along with him does not .
. . necessarily hold for women, and prematurely forecloses the question
of agency for them” (Miller, 1988, p. 106). For Miller the death of the
author is untimely and ironic. Not only do women have a significantly
different relationship to the structures of cultural and theoretical pro-
duction than men, but also, just as women seem to attain an authorial
position—a mode of subjectivity and identity—it is snatched away
by “Theory.” The eradication of the author in order that the reader
might “live” is a very damaging challenge to the logocentric “sover-
eign subject as author, the subject of authority, legitimacy and power”
(Spivak, 1996 [1985], p. 210), but it is a challenge feminist theology

has not embraced. Relinquishing gynocriticism and women’s author-
ship would mean relinquishing women’s writing as a source for femi-
nist theology, and women’s spiritual journeys:
The gynocritical movement invested heavily in its endeavour to restore

to women a genealogy of creative mothers and the literary future, it
was argued, depended upon remembering the women authors of the
past. However, poststructuralism threatened more than the newly
constructed female literary tradition. Gynocriticism’s interest in “the
female author” was based upon the prior assumption that texts writ-
ten by women displayed a distinctive character confirmed by the living
link between the woman author and her textual productions. (Walton,
2007a, p. 89)
Feminist theology has therefore held on to women’s authorship as

necessary for the empowerment and development of feminist theol-
ogy, and the implied woman reader’s spiritual journey.
In participants’ accounts, the gender of the author as a woman is
not necessary for spiritual validation and confirmation (Llewellyn,
2008). The textual search for affirmation is such a central tenant of
participants’ individual spiritual journeys that it surpasses the reli-
ance on women’s authorship. As a third wave practice, women’s spiri-
tual reading for difference inverts gynocriticism by turning to the
writings of men, and literatures outside the genre-bound limits of
gynocriticism.
Lizzie (Spiritual) names one of her key texts by a Native American
writer, Eagle McGaa. His book, The Rainbow Tribe, “validated her”
because it mirrored a spiritual imagining—a vision of a snowbird—
she had previously experienced. As the episode in the book paralleled
a specific mystical happening in Lizzie’s spiritual journey, she inter-
preted this reading experience as a sign: “I felt like I was on the right
track in terms of exploring.” The book confronted Lizzie’s experi-
ence, thus securing it as authentic and legitimate. Linda (Holistic
Christianity) finds validation through identification with the male
protagonist in Stephen Donaldson’s series The Chronicles of Thomas
Covenant, a book she was reading at a time when she was consider-
ing leaving Anglicanism. The main character’s quest for “hope and
redemption” drew parallels with her own need for “self-worth, hope,
empowerment.” These similarities led to a powerful recognition: “I
had a choice to be who I wanted to be . . . it gave me the sense that I
didn’t need to be in the church to be a Christian . . . it also gave me
the space to explore who I was.” Lizzie and Linda’s personal spiri-
tuality has been validated through male-authored Native American
writings and speculative fiction, respectively.
For some participants spiritual validation stays entrusted to women
authors, and they speak of their need to hear women’s voices in a tradi-
tion where they are not very prevalent. Gillian is a post-Christian fem-
inist priest in the Anglican tradition, who at the time of interview was
leaving the church on account of its exclusive attitudes toward women
and lesbian, gay, bisexual,and transgender (LGBT) Christians, and
doctrinal teachings on the existence of heaven and hell. One of the
reasons she reads is to be “in touch with what other women are think-
ing and saying.” However, her key texts include Enduring Love by Ian
McEwan, the writings of C. S. Lewis, A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth,
and Shakespeare, as they are part of the “different stages in my own
journey, but each one at the time resonated with something in me.
Something felt true about it.” Maggie (Ecumenical) recalls Marilyn
French’s The Women’s Room, which “circulated with the group of
women that I was mixing with.” Other significant texts included
John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, which “politicized” her by introducing
her to the notion of the male gaze, Oliver Sacks’s The Awakening,
which brought home that spirituality is also about “humanness,” and
Edwin Muir’s The Border, which is a poem that “feeds” her. Nicola,
Gillian, and Maggie’s reliance on women authors is perhaps a legacy of
their second wave roots, coming to feminism at a time when feminist
theologians were supplementing and replacing patriarchal narratives
with women’s stories. However, while maintaining a strong connec-
tion to writing by women, their key texts include writing by men and
genres from outside feminist theology’s circumscribed set. Although
Gillian and Maggie prefer women’s voices, they still venture further
by crossing genres, illustrating an unwary approach to discovering
other sources of validation. This literature, although unbeholden to
the gynocritical partnership between women’s writings and feminist
theology, has depicted their innermost experiences and feelings. It is
a validation through identification, but through gendered difference
rather than sameness between reader and author.
Risky Readings
While validation can originate in literary texts that mirror experi-
ences, it is also encountered when participants read for difference,
through the uncomfortable and the challenging (Llewellyn, 2012).
Ann attends Quaker and Sea of Faith meetings, having once been a lay
preacher, and her collection of spiritual texts includes reading experi-

ences of fissure and disconcertion. A “guiding light” in reaching her
decision to leave Christianity was the feminist systematic theology of
Daphne Hampson. It caused an intellectual “upset” as Ann appre-
hended a previously unknown and disturbing realization: “I thought
the Christian myths go deep, I thought I could use them. It was
Hampson’s arguments against that that really upset me . . . I couldn’t
go on using this language [Christianity].” Ann’s spiritual journey is
entwined with feminism, and while her encounter with Hampson
was decisive (“the crux”) and ultimately “confirming” it first caused a
deep rupture that ultimately led to Ann’s rejection of the institutional
church. It could be argued that this experience is another example of
reading for validation by hearing women’s voices; however, affirma-
tion came via estrangement. Ann rarely reads theology now, find-
ing sustenance for her spiritual journey in “the numinous and the
ultimate” through reading poetry and fiction—although the reading
“needn’t be happy.” For instance, Gerald Manly Hopkins’s sonnets
stir distressing emotions:
There are terrible sonnets. Terrible. Upsetting. I was once at a drama

festival reciting one of the terrible sonnets, it was one of my perfor-
mance pieces. And, it makes me feel what no other poet can do, it
makes me feel what it’s like to be in the pits of pathological depression,
of manic depression, he was a manic depressive. So in his manic phase
you get these soaring poems of joy and in his depressing phase you get
the terrible silences, which are almost unbearably terrible.
Literature can express the “unspeakable” and “liminal” (Anderson,

1993, p. 158) aspects of the sacred, and can speak “strangely to us,
finds words for things that do not exist or have been previously unspo-
ken” (Walton, 2008, p. 95). For Ann, it is the alterity of Hopkins’s
verse that encapsulates the “transcendent” and “nourishes.” Ann’s
spiritual reading experiences, while validating, are not always com-
forting or comfortable, but can be precarious.
Texts that have bookmarked spiritual journeys are also those that
have not been read for the safety of sameness, but in confronting
difference. For Carol (Spiritual Searcher) reading is the sometimes
risky task of questioning traditional religion or discovering alternative
religious ideas and spiritual concepts. She uses the activity of reading
as an unfettered way of critiquing her once long-held religious beliefs.
Reading and researching different religious, predominantly liberal,
Christian ideas, enables the testing of unorthodox thinking that she
feels is against the grain of traditional Christianity. As an example,

Carol describes how Richard Holloway’s Doubts and Loves: What
Is Left of Christianity? has become her “spiritual home.” This book
began her gradual move away from Christianity with the promise that
“there is something better than rules based [on a] dogmatic, hierar-
chical, authoritarian, gendered, sexist situation.” The activity of read-
ing individually is a way of transporting her religious ideas, thoughts,
and concerns from the periphery to the center, with confidence:
May be my thinking isn’t so, way out . . . when I think the things that
I think, and they’re right out of kilter with the perceived wisdom of
the church and I think . . . it makes me feel a bit better and makes me
think well may be I’m not so way out.
Although Holloway introduced new ideas, and confirmed existing

suspicions, reading individually creates a space where she dares to take
the risk and reflect on what she sees as the damaging authority of the
church. To question the teaching of the tradition in which she was
raised is intimidating, implied in Carol’s gratitude for the encour-
agement and strength she gains from other voices (authors) who, by
speaking out, “put [their] head above the parapet.” Through reading,
Carol can also “put her head above the parapet” and join in theologi-
cal discussion and debate. It is a controlled risk with no immediate
recrimination, and was ultimately an empowering reading experi-
ence for Carol. However, assuming that a spiritual validation comes
through reading for sameness limits reading to being just an encoun-
ter in which Carol’s existing ideas are reflected back to her, and dis-
guises what is threatened through the activity of reading. Reading for
difference is disquieting because it ultimately risked her relationships
with her tradition, parish, friends, and church community.
The reading experiences that have been especially key to Nicola’s
(Christian Feminist) spiritual and religious outlook are those that have
“enlarged her reality,” an event she evaluates as a “spiritually good
thing” because “it results in a particular moral truth.” For Nicola,
reading is an event that offers confirmation and nourishment on her
spiritual journey, and it also exposes her vulnerability. For instance,
when reading The Bone People by Kerry Hulme, Nicola describes feel-
ing open and exposed as she was forced to face her “reality” and
“woundedness” as it touched her own “kind of brokenness and love
gone wrong” in relation to her family. Ann, Carol, and Nicola’s
experiences highlight that reading for difference—taking risks and
being confronted—is a crucial factor in acquiring spiritual validation.
The riskiness is highlighted in a neat observation that Nicola makes.

Reading is able to leave the reader susceptible but it is under her man-
agement, and she anticipates that a confrontation is possible. There
is a simple, inbuilt safety mechanism at the ready as participants are
one removed from the challenge of difference: no matter how risky
a reading may be, as Nicola explains, “You can always put the book
down.”
In the interviews, the texts that affirm the women’s spiritual jour-
neys are those marked as significant. Before embarking on the field-
work, I expected that participants would have been influenced by
second wave feminism, and would adhere to an unofficial canon of
feminist classics when cataloguing the texts that most influenced their
spirituality. I expected writers such as Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing,
Margaret Atwood, Marilyn French, Alice Walker, Marge Piercy,
Michèle Roberts, Sally Gearhart, Starhawk, and Marion Zimmer
Bradley to regularly appear; authors who had received attention from
literary critics and religious feminists for writing women’s spirituali-
ties and noted for their influence on the development of feminism
and its religious manifestations.
However, the search for personal validation is stronger than the
dependence on particular authors or titles. Women in this study have
drawn upon a wide range of genres, from speculative and science fic-
tions, lesbian and feminist fictions, experimental poetry, metaphysical
poetry, to different literary forms by women and men. Participants’
catalogues of sacred texts include David Almond, Thomas Berry,
Neil Douglas Clotts, Stephen Donaldson, John Donne, T. S. Eliot,
Matthew Fox, Mark Haddon, George Herbert, Richard Holloway,
Gerald Manly Hopkins, C. S. Lewis, Gabriele Garcia Marquez,
Somerset Maugham, Ian McEwan, Terry Pratchett, Phillip Pullman,
Vikram Seth, William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Brian
Swimme, and R. S. Thomas. Genres include contemporary fiction,
metaphysical poets, speculative fiction and fantasy, children’s nov-
els, writings of the mystics, Hindu and Buddhist religious writings,
“mind/body/spirit,” ecology, poetry, romance, autobiography and
biography, historical fiction, and even the odd cookery book.13 These
texts are from places unpredicted by feminist theology’s relation-
ship to literature, and such textual variety demonstrates participants’
openness and willingness to seek confirmation in writings that fall
outside the circumscribed realm of women authors and the genre of
realist fiction.
While feminist theology’s reliance on gynocriticism has limited
what literature is (a woman writing about women’s experience) and
what literature can do (validate and confirm through experiences

of sameness), the actual experiences of women readers and the way
they use reading in their spiritual journeys extends both by reading
for difference in seeking validation across genres and authors, and
through confirmation and challenge. Moreover, the uses of the activ-
ity and the literatures that women are reading are illustrative of the
ways in which personal individual reading strategies across individual
differences can meet, and coincide, without collapsing into a com-
munity that negates diversity. As filtering the canon and reading for
difference have illustrated, when women’s spiritual reading practices
embody individuality and commonality across the reading strate-
gies, this begins to prepare the building blocks for the formation of
individualized communities, which is the concern of the following
chapter.
CH A P T ER 5
Reading for Community
When you are so sort of spiritually bereft . . . reading opens up so

many possibilities that you hadn’t realized that were there . . . for
developing yourself spiritually, and knowing there are other people
out there like you.
(Louise, Goddess Feminist)
The third wave’s encouragement of individual feminist meanings and

practices has been interpreted as signaling the “death” of feminism as
a social, political, and women-centered movement. Its insistence on
intersectionality, gendered differences, and the “multiplicity of every
person’s possible identifications” (Kristeva, 1986b [1979], p. 210) has
advanced the pursuit of local feminisms (Zack, 2005, p. 3), but the
emphasis on fragmented subjectivities, and the relative definitions of
feminism makes it difficult for woman/women to be the basis for
commonality, which threatens the cohesion of a unified feminist
community.
However, even when individuality takes the foreground, commu-
nity is not only possible but also part of the third wave. In chap-
ter 2, I argued it was a misreading to propose the third wave makes
an “either/or” distinction that sets individualism in opposition to
community. Third wave feminism seeks both individuality “and”
community, without essentializing, or universalizing “women”—
as sometimes has been the case during the second wave—and looks
for instances of groundless (Elam, 1994) and fluid communities. As
I have been suggesting so far, these communities are created when
individual differences and experiences overlap, such as in the ways
participants’ spiritual reading practices of filtering, and reading for
difference, connect and meet.
Chapters 3 and 4 illustrated that the individual reader shares read-

ing approaches and has reading experiences in common with other
women, across Christian and post-Christian personal spiritual jour-
neys. Filtering the canon and reading for difference are actualized
ways in which individual women’s spiritual reading practices coincide
with the experiences of others, and therefore embody the third wave.
The women’s shared spiritual reading practices are the basis for con-
nection, and lay the groundwork for community among otherwise
individual and disparate experiences of women’s spiritual journey-
ing. While the previous two chapters have focused on instances of
individuality and commonality, this chapter considers how women
use reading as a spiritual practice to fulfill a desire for commu-
nity. Participants draw on reading to create supportive alternatives
to their existing religious communities, or to provide community
when and where one is felt to be lacking; actualizing and imagining
gathering places for companionship, conversation, community, and
spirituality.
As Louise’s comment implied at the start of this chapter, reading
is an experience of both individuality and community. Participants’
individual spiritual reading strategies are intersecting, and, through
these connections, participants are building new networks where
both individuality and community meet in two main ways. First, the
women in this study are forming physical and spatial communities
with other readers. Participants are extending the spiritual reading
process by taking their texts and their reading experiences from acts
of isolation (which refers to the individual aspect of reading that par-
ticipants use to create private spaces in which their spiritual journeys
take prominence), to others via acts of recommendation and discus-
sion to form community. This process is cyclical, as recommenda-
tion and discussion are the mechanisms participants employ to share
and forward their selected texts and their experiences directly into
community, and are the devices through which participants receive
texts. Second, women’s spiritual reading is expressed as a third wave
practice of individuality and community in the intimate communities
fostered in the personal connections participants make with the text
and the author; and imagined communities (Anderson, 1991 [1983])
participants cultivate through their reading experiences (Llewellyn,
2008). Reading for community is a practice that troubles the waves.
The communities generated through women’s spiritual reading are
third wave sites where both individuality and commonality reside in
women’s contemporary religion, highlighting the emergence of the
third wave in a place where the third wave is yet to fully explore.
READING FOR COMMUNITY 117
Reading Outwards
Reading, while never purely private, has exclusive qualities that reso-
nate deeply with how readers experience reading.1 The figure of the
solitary reader, sunken into a sofa, curled up in bed, or absorbed by
the words in front of her while sitting on a train, or lying in a park, are
typical, familiar images that illustrate reading as an act of isolation.
At its most particular, reading is a physical activity that temporarily
suspends the immediate, outside world so the reader can escape, once
she picks up a book and becomes immersed in discovering for herself
what lies within its pages. While participants are engaged in a process
that extends the reading experience from the creation of physical,
individual spaces to the creation of spaces for community, these acts
of isolation are a useful starting point from which to chart women’s
spiritual reading as a third wave practice for both individuality and
community.
Acts of Isolation: “Switch Off the World, Switch On the Book”

On their spiritual journeys, participants read to “be alone in your
own world” (Eleanor, Pagan and Christian); “because it is a per-
sonal thing . . . I can close off everything else to carve out private
spaces” (Jane, Quaker), which is one of the reasons that Gillian (post-
Christian) describes reading as one of the “essentials which feeds
your spiritual journey.” The interims participants fashion and then
enter are created by separating the reader from the outside world.
For Jane (Christian Feminist) reading is a space she can enter to find
nourishment and “recovery” for herself, and is a “refuge” for Debbie
(Anglican), a single mother of four children, a college lecturer, and a
PhD student. Reading is an activity Debbie makes time for at the end
of each day because, “You lose yourself in a book . . . sort of switch off
the world, switch on the book.”“To lose oneself in a book” is a com-
mon turn of phrase that describes how readers become captivated in
the activity of reading and disengage from the immediate surround-
ings. Literary phenomenologist Georges Poulet claims this is neces-
sary, as it is only when the reader is fully gathered into the space forged
by the activity that a text is fully realized. Reading is a convergence
between reader and text, occurring when the distinctions between
reader and book, subject and object, collapse: “You are inside it; it is
inside you; there is no longer either outside or inside” (1980 [1972],
p. 42). Although the reader appears acquiescent to the text, this does
not renege her part (Tompkins, 1980b, 1980c; Flynn, 1986) because
she manages the reading process, and permits it to unfold by deciding

when to begin the act of isolation, when to pause, and when to return
from her bookish retreat back to the everyday: to paraphrase Debbie,
“to switch the world back on, switch off the book.” Furthermore,
creating absorbing spaces for escape is not always a total submission as
it focuses participants’ attention on their spiritual journeys. Bethany
(Christian) is easily “wrapped up . . . and swept away with particular
characters and into situations.” However, her escape is accompanied
by awareness:
I’m picking up on the spiritual and religious things in a text because

I know that is what I’m interested in even if it’s not addressing a par-
ticular religious subject . . . I can’t be completely detached because as
soon as something is vaguely relevant to my situation, I snap back out
of the escapism and underline and fold down pages.
In deterring focus away from her direct environment, Bethany’s read-

ing draws notice to her own spirituality in relation to her journey. She
may momentarily forget her immediate surroundings and circum-
stances, but is soon “sucked back out . . . sucked into it and sucked
back out.” Lynn Neal, in the context of evangelical women’s romance
reading, articulates this as “forgetting as the enablement of attention”
(2006, p. 46). Neal’s participants read their evangelical romance nov-
els in order to forget and leave the busy world of family and work,
and enter into a space for “spiritual enrichment, and personal time”
(2006, p. 47). By directing their attention away from everyday affairs,
their attention is redirected to God. For the women readers in this
study, disengaging from everyday life facilitates an engagement with
their spiritual journeys, which are taken in from the sidelines into the
isolated spaces forged by reading, where participants’ spiritual lives
are centered.
Creating individual spaces through reading is physical. To borrow
from Virginia Woolf (2002 [1928]), women are literally making room
for their reading and creating reading spaces “of their own.” The
readers are creating individual, isolated spaces for escape and retreat,
and making physical spaces by setting aside specific areas to read:
their own prayer corner in their bedroom; their personal study; the
garden, or sometimes the shed at the bottom of the garden; under the
duvet covers; in the bath; next to their personal shrine; in the attic or
the basement; or nestled in an armchair.
The isolated spaces in which women can escape and find solace
are also experienced as an “overall pleasurable experience” (Kate,
Christian), “fun” (Miriam, Methlican), “escapism” (Mary, Roman

Catholic), and “relaxation” (Pat, Roman Catholic). Reading to escape
has most notably been formulated as pleasure by Janice Radway’s
Reading the Romance. Radway argues that her respondents—the
“Smithton” women 2 —are drawn to picking up and opening the
pages of a romance novel because it is pleasurable and provides an
entertaining escape and rewarding release from highly gendered fam-
ily, work, and home commitments. Radway identifies two meanings
to escape, and names it as a strategy with a double purpose. First,
reading the romance is a way of denying the present; as readers are
pulled into the novel and the story, their immediate concerns appear
to fade away. Second, escape equates to the feelings of relief as they
abscond symbolically into a fantasy in which the heroine’s needs are
always, happily and adequately, met (1991 [1984], pp. 90–93). As a
result, readers use the activity of romance-reading purposefully, to
break away from any pressing duties in order to “vicariously attend
to their own requirements as independent individuals who require
emotional sustenance and solicitude” (1991 [1984], p. 93).
Radway notes the escape and pleasure reported by her participants
were, to some extent, aided by the novels’ textual features. However,
it is primarily the silent, individual activity of reading that connotes
a “free space” (1991 [1984], p. 93) that is empty of their daily obli-
gations, and therefore compensates the Smithton women for time
spent fulfilling their daily tasks. Within the power relations of family
life and the gender politics of women’s leisure time, it supplies read-
ers “with an important emotional release that is proscribed in daily
life because the social role with which they identify themselves leaves
little room for guilt-less, self-interested pursuit of individual plea-
sure” (1991 [1984], pp. 95–96). The Smithton women find personal
nourishment in the space created by the activity of reading, in an
environment that often deprives them of public recognition for their
work in the private, familial realm. From her interviews, Radway sur-
mises that the activity of reading romantic fiction occurs in a frame-
work where there is a “lack of institutional emotional support” (1991
[1984], p. 96), for the Smithton women in their roles as “nurturing
wives and mothers” (1991 [1984], p. 97). 3 In these circumstances,
reading the romance works against this context, generating pleasure
because it meets the Smithton women’s needs for nurturance and
care that are often unfulfilled as a result of the domestic restrictions
placed upon their lives (1991 [1984], p. 113). The activity of romance
reading allows women readers to imaginatively position themselves at
the center of their own lives.
Radway’s work has highlighted that women are actively using the
romance to create places for escape and pleasure in order to strate-
gically focus on their personal needs. This has done much to con-
firm a much maligned activity that has been dubbed “low-brow”;
admonished for sentimentality and low aesthetic value; censured for
perpetuating the myth of women’s dependency upon men; and con-
demned for encouraging women to believe that heterosexual love,
marriage, and homemaking are necessary for self-validation. This
reprove extends to women readers, accused of taking in and being
seduced by the fantasy, rather than fending off the patriarchal mes-
sages incumbent in the “trashy” narratives.4
However, for Radway, the general process of reading becomes,
and is restricted to, a form of escapism. For the Smithton women,
the primary function of reading is to compensate for the pressures
of home and their caring commitments, which is only achieved by
reading popular, fantasy fiction. Although Radway makes the distinc-
tion between the meaning of the text and the activity of reading, the
reading process she is most concerned with is confined to an act of
romance reading, and the feelings of escape and pleasure are attached
to reading the romance. Escape and pleasure are important aspects
of women’s spiritual reading practice; however, these are not the only
experiences participants encounter in the isolated, individual reading
spaces.
Awakenings
Participants enter into the physical spaces created through reading
and are discovering new insights that provoke conceptual and practi-
cal changes in the development of their spiritual journeys. The inter-
view with Lizzie (Spiritual) took place in the bright, sunny room she
keeps for herself, in the house she shares with her partner; it is her
hideaway for reading, meditating, studying, and painting. We sit on
the comfy sofas, and laid out on the coffee table in front of us are
her special books, the writings that have introduced her to Native
American spirituality, Shamanism, Celtic spirituality, and the New
Age, and have been central to her search for meaning and understand-
ing. The first book she introduces me to, almost reverently, is Women
Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This bookmarks
the start of Lizzie’s spiritual journey as, during this reading, she first
became aware of the importance of trying to “develop” herself “spiri-
tually” and to find meaning in her life: “There was a real kind of push
within me . . . to find meaning . . . I began to experiment and meet
people and try things out and the first experience [was] this book.”
In Lizzie’s individual reading space, she discovered the importance of
attending to her personal development, which she sees in terms of her
individual spiritual quest.
By entering into reading spaces, participants connect to new ideas
and concepts that subsequently move them further along their spiri-
tual journey, an experience that Christ names “awakening” (1995
[1980], p. 13; see chapter 4 in this book). Nicola Slee also identifies
“awakenings” as one of the patterns of women’s faith development.
Awakenings are a returning, gradual, series of “breakthroughs” that
implement the deconstruction and reformation, reflection, and reas-
sessment of the current position of women’s spiritual quest, and can
lead to a “new state of faith” (2004, p. 114). Instances of awakening
occur in different contexts: the decision to leave a difficult or con-
fining relationship, community, or religious position; travel; moth-
erhood; intimacy; crisis and suffering in one’s self or another; and
creativity (Slee, 2004, 144ff.). Such awakenings, however, usually fol-
low a period of longing for meaning and fulfillment, are connected
to the ordinary, and can relate to an insight that is already emerging
within women’s lives. In these circumstances, the awakening begins
when one is unsettled, or “shaken loose” from one’s usual stand-
point. For participants in my study this is often through a particular
reading experience, which they describe through the language of the
spiritual, and in relation to their own spiritual journeys.
Literary awakenings, encountered in women’s private read-
ing spaces, can transform women’s spiritual journeys. For instance,
Louise is in her thirties and is a single mother and postgraduate stu-
dent. She transitioned from Anglicanism to Goddess Feminism in
her twenties, but even as a teenager her feminist consciousness was
developing. She began to question traditional male images of God
and experienced the sacred in nature rather than “in church.” In her
mid-twenties, Louise suffered from depression, and explains that
“part of that depression was not having a spirituality to call my own.”
This changed when Louise was introduced to Paganism, when read-
ing a feminist detective novel that featured a Wiccan protagonist: “I
remember she said, ‘Wicca is just my religion, that’s just what it is’ . . .
I kinda knew that witches existed these days, but I didn’t really know
what they did. So I took myself off to the library.” Louise cannot
recall the title, author, or any other details of the novel, but remem-
bers the reading as “mind-blowing” and “a completely different way
of looking at the world.” In order to keep discovering, Louise con-
tinued to create reading spaces to seek new awakenings that keep her
journeying toward the Goddess.
Other examples of literary awakenings in the isolated spaces of
reading are more modest than Louise’s experiences, but are just as
significant. Eleanor who identifies as Christian in a “loosely still
Roman Catholic” sort of way, returns to her Andy Goldsworthy book
of sculptures, made from natural materials, because they remind her
that “spirituality is organic, I have to keep telling myself this. And
these books help me tell myself this.” Ann Morrow Lindbergh’s A
Gift from the Sea, a reflection upon the different stages of family and
personal life symbolized through the collecting of seashells, taught
Eleanor, “That you don’t need all these things that you accumulate.”
Steph’s (Methodist) awakenings, in keeping with the shared strategy
of reading beyond gynocriticism for difference, are the result of new
challenges. One of the reasons Steph reads is because “It gives me
something to think about. Something new to think about usually, or
something I hadn’t thought in a while to re-think about.” For Jane
(Feminist Christian) the poetry of R. S. Thomas takes her “some-
where new, it’s taking me into a growing place . . . to either ideas or
thoughts or insights that I wouldn’t have had.” By physically con-
structing individual spaces of isolation, participants can create actual
interims, separate from the regular patterns and routines of their
lives, which usually afford little attention to religion and spiritual-
ity. In these spaces, participants experience moments of escape and
pleasure that replenish, empower, and awaken them to new insights.
The women in this study are reading and creating space for experi-
ences that they describe in terms of spirituality, and spaces to find
nourishment and sustenance for the changing needs of their spiritual
journeying.
Framing reading as individual acts of isolation can be seen as rel-
egating women’s experience of the sacred back to the domestic realm
of women’s personal lives, reinforcing the gendered binary opposi-
tion that confined women’s activities to the private sphere. Feminism
is predicated upon the notion that women should be more visible,
not disappearing into private worlds. When one of the aims of this
study was to highlight women’s “spiritual literacy” (King, 2008) as a
challenge to their absence as readers within Christianity, emphasiz-
ing so acutely the personal aspects of the spiritual and reading jour-
ney does little to bring women’s reading and spirituality out into the
public religious zone. Furthermore, the activity of creating private
spaces of escape seems to cosset readers from wider, political con-
cerns that deny “an unpleasant reality” rather than making a political
challenge to the status quo (Cranny-Francis, 1990, p. 108). Tania

Modleski touches on this when she suggests that genres associated
with escape—romance, Gothic novels, soap operas, fantasy, and uto-
pian fiction—can appropriate the position of women in society and
culture into a context that appeases and compliments women, thus
making it possible for women “to convince themselves that limitations
are really opportunities” (2008 [1982], p. 30). It is as if women are
escaping because of an inability to independently (without the aid of
reading) offset the emotional and social voids within their own lives.
Suggesting that reading is the production of safe spaces for retreat
could imply women are unable to cope with their lot, and instead
of engaging in alternative, social, and political practices to challenge
this, they sit down with a good book. Even Radway, who makes it
clear that reading the romance is an act of resistance, seems unsure
as to the efficacy of private, escapist reading as a means to social and
political change. She insists that the Smithton women have a right to
pleasure and escape, to seek compensation through the romance, and
to defend their reading, but
it seems clear that these indignant defenses originate in persistent

and nagging feelings of inadequacies and lack of self-worth which are
themselves the product of consistent sub-ordination and domination.
If romance readers and writers could be brought to see this, it might
be possible to transform their utopian longing into actual agitation
for social change. In that case, what is now really only a tacit cultural
critique might become a more thoroughgoing cultural politics, indeed
even active social resistance and opposition. (Radway, cited in Littau,
2006, p. 137)
Radway seems to suggest that readers and writers of the romance

are failing to connect their personal experiences of reading to wider
social, patriarchal structures. Moreover, a more authentic fulfillment
and empowerment is achievable if only woman readers could grow in
(feminist) consciousness—an example of the exacting second wave
expectations of what counts as feminism, of which the third wave
is so wary. However, I suggest that Radway’s examination of the
activity of reading narrows prematurely. By presenting reading as a
silent, private activity, she reduces the process of reading to a pro-
cess of escape “into imagined lives more active and interesting than
the reader’s own” (Flint, 1993, p. 32). However, by taking a wider
lens to the processes and experiences of women’s spiritual reading
that occur outside the isolated spaces, I suggest the reading process
is physically extended beyond individual isolation, toward social and

possibly political community.
Acts of Recommendation and Discussion

Reading has not always been, and is not always, an isolated and
unspoken act. Elizabeth Long has argued that the socialization of
reading has been suppressed by the hegemonic picture of the lone
reader. The way we are taught to read at home and in school; the pub-
lishing, marketing, retail, and literary critical forces; and the influ-
ences of teachers, family, and friends are part of the substrata shaping
and informing our reading habits and choices. Reading is encased in
social networks and supported by social and cultural institutions that
are the “social infrastructures” needed to provide and sustain liter-
ary cultures (Long, 2003, p. 8; Radway, 2004). In the interviews,
women’s spiritual reading practices do not just begin with the pick-
ing up and closing of a book. The reading experience is a process
that extends from the contexts in which a reader first meets a text,
through the experiences that occur during the activity of reading, to
the social implications once the page turning has ended. Participants
are physically extending the private act of creating individual spaces
and are literally taking their reading experience outward to share with
others. While women’s spiritual reading is a practice of reading to cre-
ate spaces for oneself, it is also, simultaneously, a practice that creates
spaces for community.
The most recognizable methods participants use to physically
extend the reading process, from an act of isolation outward to com-
munity, are acts of recommendation and discussion. For participants,
a text’s spiritual or religious significance was often marked by the
amount of passionate discussion it provoked and the extent to which
readers felt compelled to pass on the text and their reading experience
by inviting others, including myself, to delve into the pages and to
also experience the activity of reading.
A salient space for extending the reading experience through rec-
ommending and discussing are book groups. These meetings are
communities deliberately organized to enable book-talk, and are an
example of actual spaces created by readers where individual reading
experiences are brought out of isolated, individual spaces to others
and into the community. According to Jenny Hartley (2001), whose
research documents the growing popularity of book groups in the
United Kingdom, the most common reason for setting up these
societies is to arrange an outlet for exchanging reviews and assess-

ments of a text. Lone readers desiring the opportunity to share their
thoughts and feelings seek out other bookworms, and a key factor
to a group’s success and longevity depends on fulfilling this need.
Fostering a collective that reads together (in whichever way the group
manages their reading lists and reactions) and the subsequent conver-
sations are often perceived as the most rewarding, and challenging,
aspects of membership and the most important by-product of form-
ing a book community.
Belonging to a reading group was common among participants,
with 11 respondents regularly attending women-only book gather-
ings. Although this suggests that book fellowship is important, it did
not feature heavily as a theme in the interviews. Reading experiences
and texts that were significant for participants’ spirituality arose from
many other sources, and the threads of discussion and recommenda-
tion materializing outside of a prefabricated meeting were more cen-
tral to participants’ religious lives. This is not to dismiss the place of
book groups, but to indicate that the titles designated by participants
as key texts and their most noteworthy reading experiences were
generally not literary works read as part of a book group. I suspect
the way book groups manage their material and present reading lists
to their members precludes these texts from making it into partici-
pants’ special collections. For the women in this study, perhaps the
slightly contrived and organized nature of book groups, coupled with
the ongoing discussion, reduces the efficacy of the personal reading
encounter. It may be that the texts “met” and “selected” individually
by participants provoke a stronger sense of ownership over the texts,
and therefore proffer more meaningful interactions.
Instead, other contexts in which readers come across their special
literatures contribute to the significance of a text for readers’ spiri-
tual lives. Although some participants had forgotten how they heard
or came across one of their selected texts owing to their long read-
ing careers, the majority of women readers introduced their reading
experiences with vivid and detailed recollections of the circumstances
in which they first received the book, poem, or prose. For instance,
sometimes the texts within participants’ spiritual journeys were those
that had been gifted by loved ones. Eleanor’s (Christian) copy of
Adrienne Rich’s Coming into Fullness was a Christmas present from
her eldest son. For her it is poetry that is “about wishing, I suppose,
and regrets,” and she says it is therefore too personal to recommend
to others. Sophia (—) was given Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake by
her sister as a birthday present, and read it over a Christmas holiday

when she was separated from her family, and the theme of “being
inside and outside” within the novel “has also been a theme of [her
experiences of] church.”
Texts understood to have helped ease a difficult time, and books
that have been recommended to participants by family and friends
at the most painful and traumatic moments, are often significant.
As Helen (Non-Conformist Christian) cared for her terminally ill
son, George, reading brought them “to a sort of safer place, com-
fort, of a childhood, of a time when everything was OK.” Reading
novels such as J. R. R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit, Susan Cooper’s The
Silver Sword, Roald Dahl’s Boy, and Going Solo helped Helen find
a “wider context” for trying to find meaning and understand-
ing. Helen’s search for appropriate material was often fraught.
She described the sometimes laden pursuit of stories, poems, and
literatures that “had to impinge on my experience,” avoid trivial-
ity, and reassure. However, most of Helen and George’s reading
was led by the suggestions of others, to the extent that Helen was
often unsure of where “the stuff came from!” Friends and family
provided readings, which in such circumstances was, of course, a
loaded gamble:
I did have friends who understood exactly what was going on and they
would be sufficiently in touch with what I was thinking to give me
something appropriate. You would have to be very very in touch with
what was going on in the mind . . . my friends were just amazingly in
touch. . . . I mean, they were trying to make sense of it as well I think
maybe helping me was helping them. It was part of the whole way we
dealt . . . I mean, we did go to Church but that, there were things in
particular readings or particular readings um that unless you actually
are in a place where there those texts come your way. How do you
start? Where do you start? Things come when you need them!
While Helen’s experiences highlight how the details of recommenda-

tions can get lost during difficult times, and how the circumstances
in which participants accept a text can contribute to texts becom-
ing memorable, her experience of finding literatures “when you need
them” points to how often the finding of significant texts is described
in quasi-spiritual language. While at first glance, participants’ brows-
ing in bookshops, leafing through library ledges, and rummaging in
jumble and charity sales seem to be just lucky moments, if reading
these texts results in a transformative, affective literary relationship,
then the initial textual discovery is retrospectively read as fated. Lizzie

refers to her finding of The Whistling Woman Is Up To No Good by
Laurel King and Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola
Estes as an “experience”:
I had two experiences. One was I decided one weekend that I’d go
away on my own. I went to Brighton, because that’s where I was a
student. Um, and . . . it sort of, it was one of those sort of experiences
where the book just falls in your lap, yeah? I had experiences of, this
is quite a usual experience now, um, I don’t need to search for things.
Things find me.
As Linda (Holistic Christian) also believes: “Well again, the right

books or the right people always seem to turn up at the right time.”
Finding the right books at the right time is part of a greater “mys-
tery” (a term both Linda and Lizzie use); a transcendent connected-
ness running through the universe that participants connect with and
encounter. Catherine (Anglican) prefers to find books on her own
terms:
I think it’s partly, I want to find it for myself I don’t want someone to
have gone ahead of me. I want, it’s partly an adventure and stumbling
across something, you know, I make people read things! And they say,
“Oh, I never would have read that if you hadn’t made me!”
School, college, and university were also common locations where

special texts were discovered. Jane (Christian Feminist) names George
Eliot’s Mill On the Floss among her influential texts and has “very
clear memories of what was important to me in that book, I bought
it, it’s one of the first ones I bought, because it’s got a plate in the
front saying it was school prize in the third year.” Nicola’s (Christian
Feminist) reading of Wreck of the Deutschland by Gerald Manley
Hopkins was part of her A-level curriculum. She recalls this experi-
ence as “an amazing sense of God . . . it probably had that sort of
sense of the, elemental powers which are words that create and make
you and can form and shape you and you know touch you so deeply.”
Although participants’ catalogues varied greatly, unwinding across
genres and authors, participants’ lists did include the (different) meta-
physical poets and classical English literature first introduced in their
classrooms, reflecting the literary canon operating at the time of their
schooling and perhaps the formative times at which these novels and
poets were read.5
While readers’ influential texts rarely come via a book group,

reading clubs are models, as Janet Hartley suggests, for “reading in
the community” (2001, p. 138). Hartley argues that book groups
are primarily conversational places of meeting, interchange, and
channels for communication. Hartley seems to position discussion
at the end of the reading experience, as a signifier of completeness
that adds a further layer of sense and value, or as Richard Ohmann
has argued, “Reading a book becomes meaningful when, after com-
pletion, it is shared with others” (Hajda, cited in Ohmann, 1983,
p. 201). However, as part of women’s spiritual reading, participants
in this project turn this around. The private reading experience, rec-
ommending, and discussing are not separate reading acts, but are one
and the same activity. Therefore, they do not signal the end of the
reading, but are necessary for taking the private reading experiences
into the wider, social community. These events extend the reading
process outward from the individual, physical space into community.
Recommendation and discussion are the means through which read-
ers place their subjective reading experiences alongside other individ-
ual textual encounters. Discussing and recommending a particular
literary work is part of the reading experience rather than signifying
the closure of the reading process. The reading experiences continue
in the process of passing on the text to others and discussion illus-
trates a book’s importance, rather than being the cause or origin
of meaningfulness. In this respect, the community emerging from
this research does not follow the book group blueprint suggested
by Hartley, but, as Elizabeth Long’s historical and contemporary
ethnography of women’s book groups suggests, the “conversations”
within these social reading gatherings circulate through all stages of
the reading process:
A conversation that begins with the book each woman has read but
moves beyond the book to include the personal connections and
meanings each has found in the book, and the new connections with
the book, with inner experience and with the perspectives of the other
participants that emerge within the discussion. (2003, p. 114)
For participants, discussion and recommendations are vehicles con-

tinuing the reading process and are the means through which readers
place their subjective reading experiences alongside other individual
textual encounters, therefore finding communality and creating
community.
Reading Onward
The most palpable and overt ways in which readers extend the reading
process from an individual act of isolation to community is through
physical acts of recommendation, where the material text that has
been literally held and read in participants’ private reading space is
then passed on to others: friends, family, acquaintances, and some-
times strangers. The written works that participants’ perceive to have
impacted upon their spiritual journeys are, as Miriam (Methlican)
says, “to be lent, to be passed on, to be introduced to other people,
not to be held on to because holding on to them will kill them.” The
passing on of the text is often accompanied by an acute urgency to
share the book and to share the reading experience. One of Laura’s
(Christian) key texts is Douglas Copeland’s Hey Nostradamus! For
Laura, its significance for her faith lies in her analysis that the nov-
el’s fundamental themes are hope, redemption, and belief. These are
theological, sophisticated reasons for including Hey Nostradamus! in
her “top five” collection, and are ideas that she has formulated and
refined since her initial reading of Copeland’s work. In contrast to
these later considerations, her immediate reaction was more visceral.
When asked why she has named the text as one of the significant titles
for her spiritual journey, her first response is to describe the situation
in which the reading occurred, rather than explain her interpretation
or elaborate on the particular features of the story. Her first thought
is not to unravel any theological meaning, but to share her experi-
ence. She tells of her excited attempt to take the reading process out
of a personal alliance and into a more public place:
I just wanted to find somebody who’d read it and talk to them about
it . . . I just remember going round to people going, “Have you read
any Douglas Copeland, have you read Hey Nostradamus!?” I really
need to find somebody to talk to about this book!
Laura’s impassioned search to “find somebody to talk to” is a quest

to remain with the reading experience after the book has been closed.
This can be fulfilled by turning outward and trying to prolong her
reading by placing it into a social space outside of the isolated space
Laura entered in reading Hey Nostradamus! with at least one other
person who has hopefully read the same book. Finding someone to
share her reading maintains the reading process, tying her subjective
experience to another.
For participants, recommending a treasured text by physically

passing it on or through a verbal suggestion inserts the text into a
more open forum. For instance, Karen’s (Quaker/spiritual) enthusi-
asm for one of her key texts (The Last Hours of Ancient Sunshine by
Thom Hartman) is unabashed and she unapologetically tells of her
attempts to advertise the book: “I made a slip of paper putting down
the ISBN number, the author, basically what the book is about and,
well, ‘read this book’ and I would hand this out to people!” Karen’s
committed endorsement stems from a reading that had such bear-
ing she felt compelled to take direct action. However, while passing
out slips of paper endorses the material text, it is also an extension of
Karen’s reading experience, taking this particular reading event into
a more extensive social place. Karen admits to being “deeply” affected
by the book, a belief that fuels her commitment to recommending
it: “So when I come across a book that can change the world and
can really deeply, deeply effect how people perceive things I want
to spread it around.” The intensity of this “deep effect,” with the
desire to “spread it around,” is suggestive and includes the reading,
the effect, and the recommendation as part of the reading process.
Karen is intent on forwarding Hartman’s work, and this is inseparable
from the impact of her reading.
Mary (Catholic) often passes poems on to women she has met at
the conferences and workshops she attends as part of her exploration
of spirituality and religion. She is sometimes cautious of forwarding a
piece, aware that “somebody might be offended, or it might not do,
really do for them what you want,” but inevitably trusts her instincts
and is usually successful:
I sent it to this woman that I’d met on a weekend and she said her
friend had just died in hospital and it came on that morning and it
was just what she needed at that particular time. And, you know, you
have to trust your instincts in that you know you might think, “shall
I send that or shall I not?” So that has been good. And I’ve had other
people write to me and say, “that came just at the right moment” . . .
“I needed that.” So that was nice and these aren’t people I know very
well. I would only meet them perhaps once every now and then over
the years, once or twice at workshops.
Mary is often prepared to gift poetry. For instance, she carries copies
of the poem A Women’s Credo 6 in her purse at the forums she attends
in order to pass it on. Directing readings to other women that Mary
meets and spends time with at workshops is a way of reinforcing these
initial connections with those who are sharing her quest for spiritual
and religious meaning. In contrast to the lack of a woman-centered
community she feels is missing within the Catholic church, Mary
is building her own connections with women, using the poetry she
passes on to link to women she meets.
For Nicola (Christian Feminist), a recommendation involves gift-
ing the physical text, her impression of the text, and giving a part of
herself:
When you recommend a book to somebody it’s almost like saying this,
within the pages of the this book, I have experienced something pretty
powerful . . . It’s like here’s a bit of me that’s been so profoundly
moved and I want you to have this book.
Her individual experiences of reading the text are the basis and impe-
tus for making a recommendation, which places the book, and her-
self, in contact with another. Nicola’s experiences of the text and the
reading encounter are wrapped in recommending the text to others;
she is reading as an individual, and through recommendation and
gifting, she is also reading into community.
The highly personal engagement that occurs when a reading
touches upon a reader’s religious or spiritual life means these are very
strong recommendations that verge on compulsion. This deep con-
viction borders on imposition, and supposes that another reader will
have a similar reaction as long as they extract a single meaning from
a stable text. Yet there is a tension between this expectation and the
consistent assertions in interviews that the text is open, and reading
an activity that depends upon “your own interpretation,” echoing
third wave assertions of the importance of individual experiences. Or,
put another way, participants recognize that reading is an individual
personal experience, but the possibility of some shared experiences is
open, and desired. Participants did not expect their experiences to be
replicated exactly and were often attuned to the specific historical and
cultural position of their and others’ readings but remained hopeful
that any (religious or spiritual) benefit they felt might resonate with
another.
Recommending and discussing are the perceptible traces of par-
ticipants’ extended reading process that takes the text and the reading
experience out from individual isolated spaces and physically hand
them over to others, forming community by placing the text, and the
reading experience into direct, material contact with other people.
The physical ways communities are formed in women’s individual
spiritual reading practices highlight directly and very evidently how

the third wave theme of individual and community through com-
monality is occurring. However, women’s spiritual reading as an
expression of third wave individuality and community through com-
monality is also represented in the relationship between the reader
and text. Communities are being formed in women’s individual
spiritual reading practices and experiences. Reading is both an indi-
vidual experience and an experience of community, as participants
are already situated within an interpretative community, and are also
forming intimate and imagined relationships.
Intimate and Imagined Communities

The suggestion across participants’ experiences that reading is a spiri-
tual practice of individuality and community reflects their member-
ship of an “interpretative community.” According to Stanley Fish,
an interpretative community comprises “those who share interpretive
strategies” that “exist prior to the act of reading” (1980, pp. 170–71),
and are extensions of a community’s shared theoretical perspectives,
bringing the reader and the text into the social sphere: “It is inter-
pretive communities, rather than the text or the reader that produce
meanings” (1980, p. 14). For Fish, the text is deposed as the source
of meaning production, and is replaced by a set of discourses mov-
ing through a given community at any one time. To some extent, I
suggest that individual participants are already in an interpretative
community, binding them collectively as “women who consider liter-
ature to be important to their spiritual/religious lives.” As Fish might
argue, women readers located in their Christian and post-Christian
religious and spiritual worlds, who consider reading and spirituality
to be integral, are forming communities bound by their commonly
held interpretative strategies.
The notion of an “interpretative community” is used to theorize
the agreements inside, and disagreements between interpretative com-
munities.7 This leaves little space to consider deviating reading strate-
gies that may exist within an interpretive community or the agency
of the reader in relationship to her interpretive community. Literary
theorist Lynne Pearce tests the stability of a feminist interpretative
community by asking five groups of feminist readers to respond to
three texts, with reference to their political and national identities
(1997, p. 260). Pearce’s tight textual focus is a control from which
she explores the interpretive strategies at play among participants,
providing a common starting point that allows for comparison and

contrast. Rather than uncovering only shared interpretations, Pearce’s
participants’ responses were often in tension, leading her to remark
that an interpretive community
does not represent a set of fixed, and shared, values with which the
reader mindlessly agrees. Rather, it should be thought of as its own
site of struggle, a group whose position is constantly being renegoti-
ated and legitimised by its members even while its consensus is publicly
held. (1997, p. 212)
Pearce acknowledges that a literary community may share interpre-

tative strategies, but simultaneously frees the reader from passivity
and from being swallowed by her interpretative community. Reading
processes are individual, but sit within wider, connected bodies of
communal reading strategies.
Pearce initiates a more radical understanding of interpretative
communities but, like Fish, she situates an interpretative community
around a specific (textual) event. Fish’s work focuses on what inter-
pretive communities bring to a single text, while Pearce provides her
participants with set reading materials. By using a reader-centered
research methodology, my project ventures further. I invited a degree
of textual chaos and offered participants a more prominent degree of
agency by asking women to self-select the texts to reflect on, naming
the literature they felt influenced their religious or spiritual selves.
Subsequently, interviewees offered discrete and exclusive collections
of texts, with titles and authors rarely overlapping. Therefore, tropes
of community that surface within the interviews do not rely on a
singular text, but are being formed when participants’ experiences
of their individual readings of disparate literatures meet and find
common ground. The remaining section of this chapter looks at the
communities that participants are building in the individual space of
reading: intimate communities, formed through the close relationship
between reader and text, character or author; “imagined communi-
ties” (Anderson, 1991 [1983]) that stretch beyond the immediate
into the symbolic. Where the reading of different literary texts within
women’s spiritual and religious lives evokes experiences that contact
and connect with each other, a third wave community occurs as dis-
tinctive voices converge in moments of proximity, without homog-
enizing individual reading experiences across women’s Christian and
post-Christian spiritual journeys.
An Intimate Community
An intimate community is the closest and least extensive connection
formed by participants’ individual engagement with a textual other,
for instance, the text or the author. Individuality and community
emerge as participants describe reading as a relationship between
themselves and an “other,” more specifically, as Pearce connotes, the
“textual other” (1997, pp. 17–20). Textual others are the range of
textual and contextual factors such as the subjective experience of the
text, the author function, or certain textual devices such as a charac-
ter or a narrative theme to which readers connect, and form personal
attachments. It is the point of contact that allows Pearce to figure the
reading process as an implicated relationship; an emotional, affective,
effective, and, I would add, spiritual or religious liaison: “It is the
existence of this other, indeed, that has enabled me to conceptual-
ize the text-reader relationship as a relationship” (1997, p. 17). The
“textual other” denotes the available range of factors that ignite a
connection in the reader and subsequently engenders the reader-text
relationship, as Pearce explains:
[It] can be represented by many things as well as by a character in the

text: it might also take the form of a “structure of feeling”8. . . an
interlocutory subject position (how the character in the text positions
us), an author function, an interpretive community, or the (covert/
overt) audience/addressee of our own reading . . . The textual other
can, in other words, be both a textual and a contextual point of contact
for the reader, and individual reading-events might well move between
others. (1997, p. 12)
The strength of the textual other is its fluidity, encapsulating the

fluctuating reasons why readers visualize their connection with a text
as interpersonal. In the interviews, participants often describe the
textual others that have contributed to marking the text as spiritually
significant. For instance, in Sophia’s (—) reading of The Namesake by
Jhumpa Lahiri, she singles out the main character’s life experiences
“of being inside and outside” North American and Indian cultures
as an experience she has also shared generally, and in church. This
parallel with her own life is the textual other driving the significance
of The Namesake. Eleanor (Pagan and Christian) reflects that the
important texts, her “landmarks,” are those that have helped her bal-
ance and connect her Pagan and Christianity identity. Eleanor reads
“to find a friend,” and her textual others can be an isolated phrase of
prose or a line of poetry that stops her feeling “alone” in her spiritual
search. For Helen, a committed Anglican, it is the painful context of

deep personal grief that manifested as the textual other, during a time
when reading short stories and poems became a strategy for finding
some relief from nursing her terminally ill son. Additional significant
textual others that feature prominently, and with which participants
form intimate communities, include the text, and the author.
The Text
When asked how she regards her selected texts, Jane (Quaker, femi-
nist) warmly described the books that have significantly inspired
her as her friends: “Like when you meet a friend . . . or you meet
somebody new and you think, ‘Oh! What a nice person!’” Her
close textual friends include mind/body/spirit writings, poetry by
Wordsworth, Muir, and the Romantics, plus fiction by George Eliot
and Somerset Maughan. She connects these texts to her spirituality
by describing how they evoked feelings of affirmation, a deepening
in her self-understanding that helped her “find my own identity,”
summarizing her encounter with her texts as “having a relation-
ship, a conversation with somebody.” Maggie (Ecumenical, feminist)
describes how Michèle Roberts’s The Wild Girl and Marilyn French’s
The Women’s Room “feel like friends.” Maggie explains that like other
(non-textual) friendships, these books have been supportive, nourish-
ing, and strengthening. The metaphor of friendship is sincere and one
spoken of to denote the special significance a literary piece has had
upon spiritual or religious lives (Llewellyn, 2008).
Like the forming of friendship, an intimate community is forged by
repeatedly nurturing familiar, cherished alliances. Lizzie (Spiritual),
as previously noted, began her journey after reading Women Who Run
with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This book is “her constant
companion” that she carries with her daily, having it close and acces-
sible in her handbag. Debbie (Anglican) thinks of Bleak House by
Dickens in a similar way, as “the book I carry round with me and read
perennially . . . Nobody else believes that I have carried round copies
of Bleak House since I was a teenager.” Long after the first reading
is complete both women are physically staying in contact with their
respective text. The lovingly well-worn and dog-eared editions are
testament to the many times they have revisited its pages and, like an
old friend, spent a lot of time in its company.
The intimacy between readers and texts is reinforced when partici-
pants state their ownership of the books and set special texts together.
Steph (Methodist) says of her “special texts”: “They have to be close .
. . I wouldn’t like to be without them.” The intimacy with the mate-

rial texts can also be expressed physically. Catherine’s (Anglican)
books are on her shelves in her study but the regard extends physi-
cally: “Some of them I want to hug . . . and some . . . because I’ve
loved it so much it’s just become part of me.”9 Scarlet (Quaker/
pagan/lesbian/feminist/pacifist) is more exact and deliberate in stor-
ing her salient books. Her five key texts (The Lesbian Reader, The
Lesbian Love Advisor, The Lesbian Polyfidelity Book, Positive Magic,
and Mother Peace) are kept together on a separate shelf so they are
“very visible in my book shelf . . . There’s a particular shelf that these
books—because I know then I can lay my hands on them immedi-
ately. I know exactly where they are.” When I met Margot (Roman
Catholic), she presented me with two lists: one registering the titles
read as part of her book group, and the other the books that “are the
ones that I’ve kept,” the ones she considers to have been part of her
“life’s journey” and “faith journey”:
Dawn: Where are all these books?

Margot: They’re in my bedroom. I keep them together.
Dawn: Is that deliberate that you keep them together?
Margot: Oh yeah, the rest of the house is full of other books, but
these are my books.
Giving these texts their own space is practical. They can be accessed
quickly and conveniently for rereading. It is also commemorative,
discretely marking them from other texts on account of their value
and importance and conveying a sense of belonging and ownership.
Despite this relative textual steadiness, Scarlet and Margot’s inter-
views were colorful testaments to many other books that had been
spiritually enriching for them. While both stressed that although they
had reached a point (both women were in their late sixties) where they
were content with the direction of their spiritual journeys, they were
continuing to read and to find other sources of nourishment to feed
their spiritual lives.
Reviving the Author

The previous chapter suggested that, in contrast to feminist theology’s
second wave gynocritical attachment to literature written by women,
participants’ spiritual validation and confirmation do not necessar-
ily depend upon hearing a particular gendered, female, author voice
articulating women’s spiritual experiences. In participants’ spiritual
reading practices, the mirroring of experience is still vital, but the

search for spiritual affirmation and empowerment surpasses the reli-
ance on women’s authorship, and, subsequently, participants found
validation outside the genre-bound margins of gynocriticism. While
this embodies one of the key values of post-structuralism, the death
of the author, in women’s spiritual reading practices the author’s
demise is temporary. The figure of the author is less important when
searching for personal and spiritual validation: if a reading provokes
an experience of spiritual significance then participants welcome the
author as a textual other, although they are still largely indifferent to
the gender of the author.
Readers can become deeply attached to the authors of their spiri-
tually significant texts and they seem to inspire an almost cavern-
ous respect and affection that stays with readers long after the first
reading. Lizzie (Spiritual) speaks of her “gratitude” toward Clarrissa
Pinkola Estes, Margot (Roman Catholic) acknowledges how Richard
Rohr’s work “helped,” Carol (Spiritual) speaks very highly of Richard
Holloway and his writings, and Kate (Christian) is inspired by Corrie
Tem Boom’s novels and biography, while Gillian (post-Christian) is
good-naturedly envious of A. S. Byatt: “Wouldn’t we all love to be
her?” For Pat (Roman Catholic) the author’s role, quite traditionally,
is one of authority:
That you find somebody has explicitly expressed what implicitly you
have realized . . . I kept finding that when I was reading this book
about Eckhart . . . that is exactly the way I feel about things. Then you
have it endorsed by somebody . . . who is acknowledged as . . . a great
spiritual authority.
Despite the interviews being structured around participants’ self-

selected texts, an admiration for the author, as the individual producer
of the text, became very evident. This esteem discloses a set of prac-
tices through which participants seek to personalize their relationship
to the author (textual other) once a connection has been made.
One very visible form of authorship that participants personalize is
the (perceived) biographical figure, the historical, and culturally and
socially placed author who is materially the composer of a text. A con-
nection to this mode of authorship can be formed before the reading
of a piece of fiction, prose, autobiography, or poetry has begun and
is a connection that can eventually surpass the reading event. For
instance, one of the texts mentioned by Amaw (Church of England/
Methodist) is Kate Adie’s memoir. She stumbled across a secondhand
copy of The Kindness of Strangers: The Autobiography, a selection that

was, to some extent, informed by a familiarity with Adie’s distin-
guished career as a journalist and broadcaster: “I liked the book very
much indeed. I liked her when she was actively working as a war cor-
respondent.” Adie’s book was of great interest to Amaw, but it was a
subsequent occurrence—a meeting with Adie made possible by this
reading (“Based on what I’d read and what I’d seen”)—that seems to
bolster Adie’s significance:
Well, I picked up a second hand book of Kate Adie, and then she came
to give a lecture. I went to the lecture[,] it was really really good[,] and
got one of her books. And took it to her desk and it suddenly seemed
a healing point.10
Amaw’s connection to Adie (the author) is made more personally

distinctive through this profound experience, an association Amaw
feels she can credibly personalize further: “I’ve got the pictures that I
took, and in the course of next week I hope to send them to her via .
. . the publisher and tell her how the encounter had been.” Although
this moving instance happened after first finding Adie’s book, it has
since become part of Amaw’s reading experience.
Participants assert the significance of the author by seeking ways
to further personalize a link with this textual other. For instance,
after reading a work, participants often began a correspondence with
authors. Ann (Quaker) wrote to the poet Richard Skinner, Karen
(Quaker/Spiritual) arranged for the author of one of her key spiri-
tual texts to offer a lecture, and Eileen (Spiritual) attended a series of
seminars by Matthew Fox. Louise’s journey to feminist and Goddess
Feminist began, in part, with reading Patricia Monahan’s The Book of
Goddess and Heroines, but became clearer when she began emailing
Monahan to discuss her experiences:
It wasn’t really, I guess, until I started, I started emailing Patricia

Monahan, I’ve never actually met the woman but we’ve been emailing
for years and years now and I guess really, she, we talked about having
the same kind of background . . . and I realized what a lot of what I
had been doing were little rituals without realizing it . . . I did realize
that it was valid and I could do that.
When Eleanor (Pagan and Christian) was researching for an anthol-

ogy, she discovered the work of Kathleen Raine and wrote to her
asking for permission to include one of her poems. After receiving
a “handwritten note back saying, ‘yes,’” Eleanor bought her com-

plete works. For Eleanor, who identifies as both Pagan and Christian,
Raine’s poetry wrestles with imagery from both traditions and deliv-
ers a spiritual and religious content. However, Eleanor’s correspon-
dence with Raine was decisive:
So there are some people I feel I can read without the sense of, the
sense of being disapproved of. It’s an odd thing to say perhaps, but I
suppose having had that contact with Raine and the generosity of hav-
ing been able to use those poems made me feel closer to her.
For Eleanor and Louise, the contact with the “flesh and blood”
actual author becomes a nonjudgmental confidant nourishing their
spiritual journeying, which enforces the strength and significance of
the intimate community.
A preexisting relationship with an author can also foster an inti-
mate community. For instance, Margot (Roman Catholic) has a direct
friendship with Joan Chichester, whose writings have been, she says,
“seminal” in introducing her to feminism and in “understanding . . .
faith struggles and . . . family struggles”:
The other seminal thing would be the feminist thing, you see. For
instance, my friend Joan Chichester who I met at first because she
came over here in 1982, because of the Peace Movement. I got to
know her and I’ve been friends with her ever since, I’ve stayed at her
priory in the United States. But she wrote stuff about patriarchy and
hierarchy and militarism . . . from the feminist perspective.
In recent times, Margot has been unable to spend time with her friend.
Although she misses face-to-face conversation, there is still dialogue
and connection: “The last time I wrote her I said, ‘We don’t need to
talk about what you think because I know what you think, because
it comes to me in the newsletter!’” For Margot, Joan Chichester/the
person and Joan Chichester/the author merge in their significance
for Margot’s spiritual life: “But Joan has been seminal in my life.”
“Joan” refers both to Chichester’s email bulletins, newsletters, and
liturgical public writings, and her friendship.
Participants’ faith in the author at first seems incompatible with the
postmodern turn to the reader’s agency and a general mistrust of the
author. Barthes (1995 [1977]) warns against reader reliance on the
figure of the author, arguing that rather than offering textual coher-
ence and stability, the author’s intention often fails to materialize in
the text. The author is therefore untrustworthy and, despite conven-

tional understanding, cannot and should not be depended upon to
convey a single message. Although this wariness is aimed at an ideol-
ogy that assumes the author is the definitive explanation of a text’s
meaning, for participants the author (textual other) can be believed.
Without some level of conviction, the connection between the textual
other and the reader might fail to materialize. A lack of confidence
in the author would present an obstacle to the forming of the text-
reader relationship, as readers would find it difficult to connect to a
capricious textual other, and the possibility of spiritual development
could be thwarted. However, certainty in the author does not negate
the reader’s active role but once again highlights the reciprocity of
reading as an implicated process: an author is trustworthy only when
considered so by the reader. The practices of personalization illustrate
the workings of the reader’s agency in the reading.
A desire to connect with others is suggested by participants’ readi-
ness to pass on an important text. Within women’s spiritual jour-
neys there is an explicit desire for connection through reading. Lynne
Pearce conceptualizes this as a reader’s “will-to-relationship” (1997,
p. 20), the wanting of reciprocity and interactivity with a “textual
other” that goes beyond interpreting and comprehending the mate-
rial text. Having embarked upon a relationship with the textual other
through the reading process, the reader is affected. This begins a
yearning on their part for their emotional investment to be acknowl-
edged and requited accordingly, but such a response is rarely forth-
coming and the craving for interaction is not often sated. In women’s
spiritual journeys, the highly prized and loved texts are those with
which participant’s “will-to-relationship” comes to fruition in the
actualization of interpersonal relationships with textual other(s).
Intimate communities are created through the relationship between
readers and their chosen textual others. It is individual because par-
ticipants do not seem to share textual others; participants’ collec-
tions of significant texts were unique to their spiritual and religious
development and context. It is community not only because these are
shared experiences of commonality within the interview narratives,
but also because textual friendship occurs in the one-to-one relation-
ship between reader, author, and text.
Imagined Communities
Imagined communities are another form of connection fostered
through the individual, but commonly shared, practices of women’s
spiritual reading. Imagined communities are cultivated within the

physical space of reading, but are the communities participants are
conceptualizing through reading. To a certain extent, all commu-
nities exist notionally, or as Benedict Anderson suggests, as “imag-
ined communities.” This term captures the feeling that we belong to
something, even if it is indeterminable: “In the minds of each lives the
image of their communion” (1991 [1983], p. 6). Anderson acknowl-
edges that reading works as a tool to form imagined communities,
as it is a device that builds “the deep horizontal comradeship” (1991
[1983], p. 7) that connects people to those within proximate net-
works of family, friends, neighbors, and to others one does not see
and cannot know. These connections are set by participants imagin-
ing a collective group who are also pursuing a spiritual journey, who
might have also, at various points in time, read and formed a relation-
ship with the same text.
Imagined communities come into view within participants’ reflec-
tions on their spiritual or religious readings. For example, Scarlet
generationally falls into the second wave cohort, but her identity as
a “Quaker/pagan/lesbian/feminist/pacifist” recalls the third wave
insistence on multiple, fluid subjectivities. Although the daughter
of Quaker parents, she eschews traditional religion but has woven
together different aspects of her spiritual life. She is clear that her tex-
tual encounters with her five key texts place her within a very specific
type of hypothetical, but not unreal, community:
Those books there give me a sense of wider community . . . I actually

don’t know . . . very many people who would have that same lot of
books . . . so I feel like this represents a community who, I could sit
down and have a conversation with, any of the people who’ve written
them, or any of the people who appear in them.
Scarlet’s claim resonates with third wave individuality. Her collec-

tion is an assembly of works that not many other readers (anywhere)
would share and her set of texts is used to mark her divergence from
others. However, Scarlet is not isolated. She is part of a community,
accessed through her readings, comprised of authors and charac-
ters who share in her experience of the text, albeit in different ways.
There is a sense that reading forges virtual or symbolic partnerships
with authors, characters in the texts, other texts, and other readers.
Unlike the intimate relationship with a specific book, or the direct
act of discussion and recommending, the imagined community exists
beyond immediate associations. Scarlet imagines herself to be part of
an individualized textual community. It is unlikely that anyone else

would offer the exact texts as being influential and part of her spiri-
tual library, but there is an envisaged connection with other possible
readers even in other places and other times, whose existence may be
unverifiable and unknown, but who are within Scarlet’s community.
Participants shared a common desire, the “will-to-relationship,”
to be part of an imagined textual community of women. Cat (Pagan)
found a historical connection in reading about Queen Boudicca, one
of her “foremothers”:
I feel very definitely that all this horrible stuff . . . was my foremothers
. . . I suppose with connecting . . . through that book . . . made me feel
it more physically if you like. You know, the, the, the, people who are
fighting so desperately the Romans, were the people that believed the
things that I believe in now.
Cat imagines a lineage from the pre-Roman forms of Paganism in

ancient Britain to her spiritual identity as a Wiccan. Her individual
reading experience extends historically, and roots her contemporary
beliefs to an older tradition. Rachel (Christian) describes her reading
of Lucky by Alice Seabold as a moment of connection to other readers
and to the characters in the text:
but I think just trying to make a connection with someone that doesn’t
know me. Thousands of people read the book, but just having, I dunno,
just having some sort of understanding of what other people go through,
and they, the way they manage to like live their lives after really bad situ-
ations, and coming back to again, just knowing that I’m really thankful
to be in the position that I am and live the life that I do.
Steph’s (Methodist) fiction included authors such as Terry Pratchett,

Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, the Brontës, Alexander Kent, and
Harper Lee, and, as a student studying for the ministry, she is widely
read in contemporary feminist theology. She says that although she
is “gender neutral . . . I’d identify as readily with a male character as
a female character,” she finds not only an individual connection with
strong female protagonists, thinkers, philosophers, and theologians,
but also an association beyond the immediate:
If it’s [piece of literature] historical, you can feel reaching across the
ages, um, to make a connection to say, “Yeah! You go girl! Yeah! Right
on! I’m right beside you”, even though you may have died 200 years
ago. I was going to say, it’s another, ah, another brick in the wall. If
you think of it in terms of a building, it’s another bit of strength that

adds to the building which is women all over the world trying to get
their voices heard . . . it just adds a bit, it’s building, and if it’s building
then it’s getting higher but it’s spreading out as well. If it’s spreading
out then it’s reaching more people. It’s a . . . linking hand.
As reading literature is one of the most important sources for women’s

spiritualities, reading for both individuality and community takes a
textual form. The textual communities emerging from a reader’s sub-
jective experiences supplement, replace, or reside together with the
church, faith, and spiritual groups to which these women belong—
supplying support. The existence of these multiple communities
to which participants belong is a testament to the fluidity of third
wave spiritual positionings, and a site where the subjective experi-
ences in women’s spiritual lives reside side by side, connecting to form
community.
Reading to Connect
When presenting their spiritual identities, as suggested earlier (see
introduction and chapter 4), participants use the language of “spiri-
tuality,” “searching,” “meaning,” and “journey.” Reading is an activ-
ity that is used to explore “my truth,” “what I need for myself,” and
“what I want to be.” Sharon, having once been a practicing Catholic,
uses “Worldly” as a way of indicating her Christian past, but now
leans toward Hinduism and “spirituality,” which she says are “all
those things [that] make up the whole” in her own life; and Jane
(Quaker) describes:
For me spirituality . . . is about finding my own identity. It’s about . . .

being as whole a person as I can be and I think that, if you want to use
the word God, that’s what God wants of us. To be as much of a human
being of a person as you can be.
The widespread use of these terms within the interviews mirrors the
growing popularity of the metaphors of the spiritual journey, quest,
growth, and personal development that have been noted by sociologi-
cal studies of contemporary religion and spirituality, and are thought
to signal the effect of new, alternative, emerging spiritualities.11
For some sociologists of religion, evidence of a spiritual milieu is
insignificant in comparison to the forces of secularization diminishing
the role of religion in society and in people’s everyday lives, and the
decline in adherence to traditional belief and practice (in this context,
Christianity in the West; Bruce, 2002). However, an extensive, devel-

oping literature has started to chart and examine the extent to which
spirituality is a different expression of religiosity and is replacing tra-
ditional religion, and what the nature of these alternatives might be.12
Many writers have suggested that rather than dying out, patterns of
religiosity, influenced by the rise in religious individualism (Wilcox,
2010), are shifting beyond the boundaries of churchgoing, and less
institutionalized forms of religion and spirituality are increasingly
unfolding and are attracting adherents.
An important theme in these latter forms is how interactions with
the divine are generally understood as personal, individual, fluid
encounters as part of an autonomous search for self-transformation
and validation. Paul Heelas has theorized this as “expressive individu-
alism,” which places importance on “creativity,” “personal growth,”
and “meaningful relationships, being in tune with oneself” (1996,
p. 156). More recently, Heelas and Linda Woodhead have extended
this notion in their “subjectivization thesis” (2005, 78ff.), which
begins by identifying the “massive subjective turn of modern culture”
(Taylor, 1991, p. 26). This has resulted from the “sacralization” of the
self in late modernity (Heelas, 1996; Woodhead, 2008, p. 156), and
the cultural shift away from life lived in relation to externally imposed
duties, responsibilities, and authorities, to that lived according to
inner experiences and personal meaning (Heelas et al., 2005). As the
sacralization of the self promotes the pursuit of one’s personal path,
rather than authoritative modes of religious behavior (Houtman and
Aupers, 2008, p. 102), there has been an “implosion of religion and
consumer choice” speaking of “DIY” and “pick and mix” religions in
a highly diverse “spiritual supermarket” (2008, p. 101).
Religious individualism is sometimes referred to as “Sheilaism”
after the pseudonymous Shelia Larson. Shelia is an interviewee in
Robert Bellah et al.’s (1985) Habits of the Heart,13 who describes her
faith, which is seceded from community, as “Sheilaism”: “Just my own
little voice founded on love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You
know . . . take care of each other. I think [God] would want us to take
care of each other” (Bellah, 1985, p. 221). Personalized expressions
of religion such as “Sheilaism”—or as one of the participants, Lizzie
(Spiritual), in my own study describes, “It’s Lizzie’s world, I’ve no
other way of describing it because it’s the world I inhabit”—has been
taken as evidence for an atomistic and selfish spirituality in oppo-
sition to religion carried out in faith communities (Lynch, 2007).
Critics have suggested that this aspect of an emerging, individualized
spirituality is dominated by the principle that the spiritual searcher is

the “sovereign consumer” (Bruce, 2002, p. 105), and that the literal,
thriving spiritual marketplace represents a sinister privatization, com-
moditization, and commercialization of spirituality in late-capitalism
that promotes
accommodation to the social, economic and political mores of the day

and provide little in terms of a challenge to the status quo or to a
lifestyle of self-interest and ubiquitous consumption. . . . By “corner-
ing the market” on spirituality, such trends actually limit the socially
transformative dimensions of the religious perspectives that they draw
upon by locating “the spiritual” firmly within a privatized and con-
formist space. (Carrette and King, 2004, pp. 5–6)
For such commentators, religious individualism draws censure for its

“low-salience world of pick and mix religion” that is too shallow to
create a shared faith (Bruce, 2002, p. 105), and is therefore posi-
tioned against communal religious traditions, which are thought to
hold more value for developing personal, moral, and ethical virtues
than individualist expressions of spirituality: pitting the “I” against
the “we.”
However, I have been arguing that for participants in this study,
individualism does not lack recourse to community and their spiritual
searching is not purely privatized. While some are already part of
Christian communities, by examining their reading experiences, what
first might appear as individualistic transpires as a process of physi-
cally and conceptually seeking points of commonality in order to
form and engage with communities. This underwrites their spiritual
journeys by forming connections to the journeys of others, in order
to understand the deeper spiritual conditions of their, and others’,
lives. Women’s religious individualism has been read more positively
and optimistically. For instance, Melissa M. Wilcox (2002, 2010) sug-
gests that for women in LGBT communities, religious individualism
is a stage of development. Religious individualism derives from the
wider patterns of individualism in late capitalism, the individualism
that has fostered Western feminism, and offers alternative patterns of
religiosity (mainly through bricolage) to those facing discrimination
or alienation from traditional communities. As Wilcox explains: “The
increased flexibility of individual belief and practice, along with the
growth of congregational, denominational, and religious shopping
and switching, can be of critical importance” (2010, p. 511). Women
readers in my research are concurrently reading for both individuality

and community, a practice that when read with a sociological lens
could nuance the debates on religious individualism by illustrating
other possible ways (other than a “stage” in women’s development)
in which the personal spiritual quest relates to community within the
study of contemporary religion.
Through reading, participants reach out to find community with
others through commonalities, but still maintain their individual
spiritual trajectories. As women are pursuing religious and spiritual
insight and enrichment, often at a critical distance from established
religious settings, reading presents an opportunity for developing
intersubjective relationships, with the (textual) others within or out-
side of the text. The imagined connections and communities described
by participants might seem delicate, and as abstract and envisioned
might undermine my emphasis on actual readers and their reading
practices. Danielle Fuller and James Procter (2009), in their study of
the Small Island Read 2007 and other organized reading activities
(where groups and communities participate in a collective reading
of the same book), argue that an ideology of “social glue” under-
lies the marketing and management of mass-reading events. Fuller
and Proctor suggest community reading events envisage the reader
and the act of reading as a “kind of pull string, capable of draw-
ing diverse reading communities together and foster[ing] a shared
identity” (2009, p. 30) to “reconnect the citizens of divided cities”
(2009, p. 38) in the context of multicultural Britain. In their analysis,
Fuller and Proctor question the assumption that reading is an adhe-
sive strong enough to paste together social and cultural partitions,
and can pull individuals together cohesively through the activity of
reading the same book. Although they acknowledge that communal
reading, such as reading in book groups, can instigate different types
of connections through face-to-face and virtual meetings, Fuller and
Proctor argue that mass-reading events create only “fragile threads
among those who participate” (2009, p. 38).
However, for the women in this study, reading is a process that
invites and engineers fellowship. The “threads” that are created when
their individual spiritual reading practices overlap are strong enough
to connect participants and form groundless, fluid communities in
a range of social settings. As Jane Greer observes in her historical
study of working-class women’s reading of confessional magazines,
“shared texts and common reading strategies can lay the ground-
work for forging connections among otherwise isolated individuals”
(2004, p. 157). For participants in this study, reading practices do
not just lay the groundwork for community, but also form individu-
alized physical, intimate, and imagined communities through inter-
secting spiritual reading practices, held in common across Christian
and post-Christian spiritual journeys, across second and third wave
divisions.
C ON CL U S ION
Keep on Troubling the Waves
This book began with a story about reading, feminism, and spiri-
tuality, and the troublesome metaphor of the wave. My personal
experience of reading The Color Purple, and the relationship between
feminist theology and women’s writing, led to questions about what
literatures were important to women’s spiritual and religious lives;
how they were using the activity of reading; what they were taking
from the imaginary worlds they were entering; and what this might
say about the generational and secular meanings attached to the
watery imagery used to depict feminist history.
While the wave metaphor is the dominant image for charting femi-
nism, it brings with it generational and secular meanings, which have
led to unhelpful separations between different cohorts and feminist
disciplines, such as the lack of a relationship between feminist theol-
ogy and third wave feminism. However, this book has used women’s
spiritual reading practices, gathered by turning to real readers, to
trouble these distinctions. The contemporary Christian and post-
Christian women in this qualitative study navigate their religious and
spiritual trajectories through their encounters with literature. I iden-
tified their reading strategies—filtering the canon, reading for dif-
ference, and reading for community—as embodying the third wave
search for individuality, commonality, and community. From across a
range of cohorts, they offer a set of experiences that blur generational
lines, and suggest a point of contact where third wave feminism meets
feminist theology.
However, reading, feminism, spirituality, and the feminist waves
are not static, and neither is their relationship. While preparing this
book, the wave metaphor has been called upon, again, to mark the
most recent surge of feminist consciousness-raising, and protest.
Approximately since the late 2000s, observers and activists have
declared the onset of the fourth wave of feminism, emphasizing its
online campaigning, and its awareness of intersectionality and privi-

lege checking.1 This is exciting, and I am not surprised that the wave
motif endures in the public imagination and among feminists. It has
never been my intention to abandon it because I like its power, and
to do so would be to disempower feminists who positively identify
with a particular wave or waves. However, I want to maintain the
importance of critical reflection on the metaphor (Garrison, 2007;
Nicholson, 2010) to avoid repeating disconnections, to seek out
points of connection, and to uncover the messiness and complexities
of feminism that the wave metaphor tends to defuse. I want to keep
on troubling the waves.
In this closing chapter, I therefore attempt to look ahead to some
of the possible directions in which reading, feminism, and spiritual-
ity could venture. First, I suggest other ways in which reader-cen-
tered methodologies could be applied and developed in the study
of contemporary religion, such as in the context of new age, digital
religious cultures, women’s biblicalism, and book groups based in
faith communities. I then start to think through the arrival of the
fourth wave—albeit tentatively—and the extent to which it raises
generational, and secular and/or sacred meanings. In particular, it
seems that while the generational understandings of the wave persist,
the fourth wave’s Internet-based presence and the weight it gives to
intersections of identity suggest opportunities for connection across
cohorts, and for religion to have a more visible place. Finally, I reflect
on the importance of finding sites of overlap, like women’s spiritual
reading practices, and what might be gained when feminisms both
sacred and secular enter into dialogue.
Future Directions: Reading,

Feminism, and Spirituality
There is more to explore by bringing the implied reader and her read-
ing practices out from the sidelines, where she is usually found in the
textual relationships between feminist theology and literature, because
turning to real readers and their reading patterns could contribute to
mapping contemporary spirituality and religion. As discussed in the
previous chapter, reading is not only an individual activity that shapes
and reflects readers’ concerns, but also a social process. As Valerie
Weaver-Zercher points out, the ways a community uses literatures
signals their wider interests, therefore readers and reading are par-
ticularly fruitful places to gauge social developments. Memorably, she
states that reading is a “semaphore for the subculture that produces
CONCLUSION 151
and consumes it” (2013, p. 246) and therefore, I would argue, it is a

rich site that can disclose what matters to faith groups.
Various forms of popular culture have become a resource and a
channel for those desiring spiritual meaning and experience within
and outside traditional religion—and books have been a particularly
successful commercial item in the spiritual marketplace. For instance,
Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead’s (2005) The Spiritual Revolution
points to the increased presence and sales of books and literature
(among other products) about spirituality. Steve Bruce paints a picture
that I recognize when he recalls that “Waterstone’s shop in Aberdeen
has some 70 meters of shelves of New Age books, but fits its more tra-
ditional Christian titles into 5 metres” (1995, p. 104). Gordon Lynch
(2002) also discusses the extent to which popular cultural texts (from
literature, film, music, and the clubbing scene) function as a contem-
porary resource for finding meaning, spiritual or otherwise. As books
are one way of tracking the general interest in new spiritualties—“in
that they would not be supplied were it not for the fact that they can
find a market” (Heelas, 1996, p. 113)—this does suggest that mind/
body/spirit genres are read to resource forms and practices that fall
under new spiritualities. However, Steve Sutcliffe argued in 2004 that
despite the popularity of these literatures and evidence of their use,
there has been an “undertheorised relationship between the content
of New Age texts . . . and interpretive and practical uses to which it
is put by readers” (2004, p. 478). To my knowledge, this is an area of
research still to be exploited, and opens another sphere in which the
application of reader-centered research methods could yield insights
for the study of contemporary spirituality.
When I interviewed the women for this project, electronic books
and reading material had only just launched (for instance, the first
Kindle appeared in 2007), and readers discussed hard copy formats
of their selected texts. Since then, the growth of digital media in the
religious and spiritual sphere is raising questions for religious stud-
ies, and the sociology of religion, particularly how it reflects, shapes,
challenges, creates, and recreates forms of religious authority, texts,
meaning, community, and practices.2 While it cannot be assumed that
a change in medium constitutes a necessary change in spiritual read-
ing habits and patterns, e-books and digital material are potentially
effecting the uses and users of literature as a resource for women’s
spiritual lives, and on reading as an embodied, affective, and interac-
tive relationship (Pearce, 1997).
I argued in chapter 3 that participants’ reading strategies are con-
nected through the shared process of filtering the Bible, in accordance
with the changing needs of their spiritual journey. However, this

only begins to fill the lack of women’s voices in empirical studies of
lay Bible readers included in reader-response studies and Christian
anthropology. Two exceptions opening up the field of actual women’s
engagements with sacred texts are Raana Bokhari (2008) and Anne
Hege Grung (2009). Bokhari uses case studies to research the read-
ing practices of a community of Gujarati women and their assessment
of the influence of Bihishti Zewar—a late eighteenth/early nineteenth
century Urdu reformist text by Muhammad Ashraf Ali Thanawi—on
their religious identities. In addition, Anne Hege Grung (2009)
has undertaken comparative research, using focus groups in which
Christian and Muslim women discuss passages that feature in the
Old Testament and the Qur’an. Bokhari and Grung’s work suggests
that processes other than filtering are yet to be examined in rela-
tion to the ways women read, interpret, use, experience, and live with
their sacred texts in different religious communities, and that reader-
centered methods may uncover.
Reader-centered feminist research could also be helpful in explor-
ing the explicit, physical communities of readers who make up book
groups. Focusing on the social aspects of reading can be seen as part
of a wider interest in reading clubs and the communal aspects of read-
ing fiction. In addition to Jenny Hartley’s (2001) Reading Groups
and Elizabeth Long’s (2003) Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of
Reading in Everyday Life, the projects Beyond the Book and Devolving
Diasporas investigate reading as a communal, national, and interna-
tional practice. Beyond the Book examined mass-reading in the United
Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, and used various methods
to assess reading as a social practice, and the power relations involved
in local and national reading events. Devolving Diasporas explored
the connections between reading, location, and migration by ethno-
graphically researching book group discussions of contemporary liter-
ature, across different locations in the United Kingdom, Canada, the
Caribbean, and Africa.3 While I suggested that participants’ selected
texts were unlikely to originate from the reading lists of book groups,
this does not necessarily preclude their spiritual significance. Indeed,
among the women, the relatively high rate of book club member-
ship and their popularity indicate they may be a site where reader
agency can be seen, perhaps employing different practices to reading
individually, as women utilize reading to support and negotiate their
faith and development (Kidd, 2013; Ronald, 2013). Women’s read-
ing groups are a cultural form that provides a supportive network in
which the pleasures of reading help women find personal fulfilment
CONCLUSION 153
(Long, 2003, pp. 70–73). Therefore, because some book groups are
attached to parishes and are part of church social activities,4 they
offer an accessible and potentially fruitful vantage point from which
to investigate embodied and organized reading, as a barometer for
Christian communities and their practices.
Welcome to the Fourth Wave

In 2003, E. Anne Kaplan called for a fourth wave of feminism—
imagined but not yet materialized—consisting of generational over-
lap, and a plurality of voices to tackle persisting gender inequalities.
First, there are goals to achieve in relation to motherhood, career
progression, divorce, sport, feminist research, and LGBT voices.
Second, the fourth wave integrates theory and activism more closely,
and third, it addresses the impact of globalization and new technolo-
gies on concepts of solidarity. Finally, and Kaplan’s primary concern,
as fourth wave feminism is conceived in a post 9/11 era of “terror,”
it must speak to threats of violence and extremism, heightened secu-
rity measures, and financial and political risks for women, globally.
Kaplan pictures that the fourth wave
will be distinguished by bringing second and third wave feminists

together to confront a new and devastating reality that involves us all,
if not equally, then at least at once. This new reality ideally cuts across
racial, ethnic and national divides. (2003, p. 55)
Although religion is unnamed in Kaplan’s piece, her description runs

counter to the way the waves usually smoothe over the intersections
between different expressions of gendered consciousness-raising.
Rather than presenting the fourth wave as part of a seamless series
that can miss the rich complexities of the movement, for Kaplan,
the fourth wave has the energy to cut across stubborn distinctions,
because it is enabled by a multitude of voices in plural contexts.
Ten years later, feminists are claiming they are part of a fourth wave
that resonates with Kaplan’s vision. According to Kira Cochrane, in
her Guardian Shorts commentary All the Rebel Women: The Rise of
the Fourth Wave of Feminism: “Everywhere you looked in the sum-
mer of 2013, a fourth wave of feminism was rising in the UK” (2013).
For instance, for Everyday Sexism, Laura Bates collects men’s and
women’s experiences of sexism through a web-based project, Twitter
feed, and subsequent book (2014); Caroline Criado-Perez success-
fully fought to include a woman on British bank notes; the memoir
and feminist manifesto How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (2011)

became a bestseller; Lucy-Anne Holmes’s #NoMorePageThree has
over 30,000 Twitter followers, and more than 200,000 signatures
petitioning against The Sun newspaper’s commitment to regularly
showing pictures of young topless women (a battle first addressed
by second wave feminists); Equality Now has organized “Chime for
Change”; Daughters of Eve are opposing Female Genital Mutilation
(FGM); feminist groups are springing up on university campuses and
secondary schools; and Who Needs Feminism? (http://whoneedsfemi-
nism.tumblr.com/) has become an Internet meme. The fourth wave
is usually defined through examples of high-profile on- and off-line
media campaigning, intersectionality, and privilege checking; once
again “women were opening their eyes to misogyny and sexism, and
shouting back against it” (Cochrane, 2013).
The fourth wave is described as rising when “a critical mass of
younger feminists began expressing themselves. They were tech-savvy
and gender-sophisticated. Their youth was shaped by the 1980s back-
lash” (Baumgardner, 2011); for others, the fourth wave “feels like some-
thing new again” in response to the financial crash, austerity cuts, the
rise of zero-hours contracts, the introduction and increase in student
fees, neofascism, censorship, and antidemocratic governments, in a
post-9/11 context (Cochrane, 2013b). Apart from these conditions,
the fourth wave is presented as belonging to feminists who are con-
fronted by a paradox especial to this historical moment: women hear
the postfeminist message that equality has been achieved, but simul-
taneously are marginalized, and are confronted with outdated, sexist
representations of gender (Cochrane, 2013):
We are encouraged to celebrate the advance of women into the cock-

pit, yet Ryanair still releases an all-female nude calendar and Virgin
flight attendants go to work every day on a plane emblazoned with a
cleavage baring, swimsuit clad caricature. We simply aren’t living in an
equal society, but we are blasted for “whining” or “not knowing how
lucky we are” if we try to point it out. (Bates, 2013)
The fourth wave is spurred on by the sense that everyday gender dis-
parity is wearing thin.
When researching what the fourth wave might mean, I automati-
cally looked to academic journals, monographs, or edited collections,
but soon discovered these were not the most helpful places to uncover
what the fourth wave represents. This might be because the fourth
wave has not yet been the subject of intense research, but more likely
CONCLUSION 155
because the fourth wave is happening online. While second wave

feminists marched in the streets, wrote letters and pamphlets, and
produced magazines, and the third wave made use of zines and web-
sites and parodied popular culture, fourth wave feminism uses social
media: to find the fourth wave, open up a web browser.
For feminists seeking resources and support, the web enables access
to the multiple ways feminism is expressed, and is an obvious starting
point. As Lili Evans, a founding member of the Twitter Youth Feminist
Army, 5 tells Cochrane, she learnt about intersectionality “on Twitter
. . . in 140 characters per tweet. It’s not hard.” The transportation of
feminist ideas happens on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr;
and feminist activity includes reading and writing blogs, and contrib-
uting to, and keeping up with feeds such as Jezebel, The F-Word, and
Feministing. This not only raises consciousness, but also results in
change. The fourth wave counts as its victories Criado-Perez’s cam-
paign for a woman to feature on British currency, Facebook’s limiting
of misogynistic advertisements, and the major high street stores that
are “losing the lads mags.” These initiatives are tackling enduring and
current gender issues, and feminists at the helm are using the (tech-
nological) tools at their disposal.
The Internet is not the only the outlet for debate and discussion,
and online activity is not necessarily at the expense of, or in place of,
demonstrations or print material. However, these technologies have
become the primary channel through which women are confront-
ing issues that press upon their private and public lives, and it could
be argued that the Internet enabled the fourth wave’s nascence. For
contemporary feminists in the West, working and growing up with
access to the Internet, this technology is part of the public sphere. As
Martin and Valenti report in #FemFuture: Online Revolution:
In a study conducted in 2011, the Pew Research Center’s Internet and

American Life Project crowned young women between the ages of 18
and 29 years old as “the power users of social networking.” Eighty-
nine percent of women use social networks and 93 percent of young
people between the ages of 18 and 29 are online. (2012, p. 3)
When this statistic is coupled with an increase in digital cultural

spaces, it is unsurprising that feminism has gone viral.
In the fourth wave, intersectionality has entered everyday speech,
used to recognize the many possible ways feminists identify the plural
manifestations of injustice. While some of these terms are contested,
the fourth wave stresses multiple signifiers such as cis-gendered,
Women of Color—and the inclusion of men, and transgendered men

and women into the feminist fold is usually supported. Moreover, as
Lili Evans explains, intersectionality captures the fourth wave convic-
tion that
no person is free until we are all free. I am not free if a black woman
is still oppressed. I am not free if women are still being discriminated
against because of their mental health. I am not free until transgender
women are recognised legally and socially as women, and do not get
harassed and murdered violently, regularly, on the streets—because
it’s not just them who are not safe, it’s also me who is not safe, because
they are women too. (Cochrane, 2014)
For Evans and other activists, intersectionality is supplemented by

privilege checking. This reflexive position concedes how one’s posi-
tion in relation to gender, class, race, ethnicity, disability, age, reli-
gion, and sexuality guarantees power, and seeks to use this to alleviate
inequality and injustice. As cofounder of Daughters of Eve and anti-
FGM activist, Nimko Ali remarks: “I know that being well-educated
has allowed me to get into a lot of places . . . and that’s not the case
for everyone . . . I consider myself a privileged feminist and I always
say, listen to someone’s story, and never put words into their mouth”
(Cochrane, 2013).
Personally, I am energized by the media coverage given recently to
feminism, and, in some ways, I feel less alienated by the fourth wave
than I did by the third wave. In addition to researching, writing, and
teaching about feminism and religion, I use Twitter and Facebook to
engage with other feminists; the campaigners and media commenta-
tors on feminist issues include women of my age, and are voicing con-
cerns I share. I have contributed to @EverydaySexism, signed up for
The Women’s Room (thewomensroom.org.uk), bought myself a “No
More Page Three” T-shirt; and have added my name to online peti-
tions addressing gender inequality. In contrast to my early twenties
when I was not sure if, or how, I belonged to a wider feminist move-
ment, I now sense I am part something. However, I still want to reflect
upon the fourth manifestation of the wave, looking for the questions it
might raise for feminist generations, religion, and reading.
“Age Is Just a Number!” (Twitter Feminist Youth Army)

The Twitter Feminist Youth Army is an online community work-
ing through Facebook and Twitter, founded in 2012 by teenager
CONCLUSION 157
Lilianz (Lili) Evans. Notwithstanding their name, they are a “group

of young people who are passionate about feminism and equality”
and state, “we welcome member [sic] of ALL ages,” with supporters
ranging from 9 to 65 year-olds. This breadth seems to reflect the dif-
ferent cohorts of women comprising the fourth wave: feminist groups
formed by school and university students; Bates and Cirado-Perez are
in their very late twenties; and Caitlin Moran, Lucy-Anne Holmes,
and the actress Romola Garai, who spoke up to stop the supermarket
giant Tesco selling “lads mags,” are all in their late thirties. While
Cochrane was interviewing women at a rally in York, she spoke to
a woman in her sixties who had never before attended an organized
protest, despite identifying as a feminist for 30 years.
While women from a range of ages take part in the fourth wave,
as previously, the metaphor is being used to historicize feminism
and the wave continues to be inscribed with generational inferences.
Commentators are unable to resist trying to fix its origins, while
naming a fresh set of concerns that have launched it, and associating
it with the latest cohort of activists. For instance, it has been dated
as 2013 (Cochrane, 2013), 2008 (Baumgardner, 2011), 2006 (Wrye,
2009), and 2005 (Peay, 2005). These set of timings (although wide)
reveal a desire to find a discrete beginning that simultaneously marks
the end of the previous era.
Compliant with the wave’s linear telling of feminist history, a
younger generation is claiming the fourth wave. Students Active for
Feminism and Equality (SAFE) is the student-led organization at
Middle Tennessee State University, and their website (www.safemtsu.
com) details events and socials, as well as presenting feminism in four
waves, identifying key moments and figures. According to SAFE, the
fourth wave is “our generation’s feminist wave!” In the same way that
third wavers distanced themselves from the second wave by claiming
a new branch of feminism, fourth wavers such as SAFE assert the
need to “re-write feminism” (www.safemtsu) on their own terms and
to speak out against estrangement from and by “older” feminists.
For instance, Jessica Valenti cofounded the blog feministing.com in
2004 when she worked for an American national women’s organiza-
tion, and was “feeling like the mainstream feminist movement wasn’t
really interested in hearing younger women’s voices” (feministing.
com). This complaint, as I traced in chapter 2, can be heard regularly
in the exchanges between second and third wavers, and has led to
intergenerational miscommunication.
In some descriptions of the fourth wave, the generational divide
appears as a cautiousness regarding the academy. Despite their
affiliation to a Women’s and Gender Studies course, SAFE states:

“Feminism is often written in an academic language that is not acces-
sible to everyone, therefore it’s not of interest to many” (http://www.
safemtsu.com/feminism-101.html). The distance from academia con-
tinues when the third wave is typified as being “largely restricted” to
university departments during the 1990s and 2000s, but has since
“moved out of academia . . . and placed back in the mainstream”
(Hays, 2013). This dissociation seems to enhance the fourth wave’s
authenticity, translating theory-laden jargon into user-friendly lan-
guage thought necessary for inclusion. In this version, the wave
metaphor is used to represent a previous cohort’s understanding of
feminism confined to an (out of touch) ivory tower.
Feminist and gender studies are sometimes guilty of abstraction,
but academic and grassroots feminisms are linked: many third wave
activists (including those who first named the third wave) are not
employed by university departments; many academic women also par-
ticipate in feminist organizations; and feminist academic work in the
social sciences engages with women’s lives. The relationship between
activism and theory, in practice, is more intimate than this phrasing of
the wave suggests. For instance, one of the reasons the fourth wave’s
distance from theory seems curious is because feminist scholarship
inspires and is debated in feminist and women’s groups, such as fourth
wave feminists’ direct adoption of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989;
Collins, 1990), a theme I have also argued is part of third wave femi-
nism (chapter 2). Rather than reading this negatively as a failure to
acknowledge the third wave’s (academic) input, I would suggest inter-
sectionality’s influence on the fourth wave demonstrates the migration
of ideas and issues across feminisms, despite the barriers the wave met-
aphor suggests. As in earlier feminist movements, the wave metaphor
does encourage each cohort to build feminism in their “own way,” but
there is a danger in forgetting that this tendency can cause conflict as
feminists push to know and understand that their generation matters.
Wave 4.0
The move to online activism and expression offers the possibility
for individuality, connection, and community in the fourth wave.
Running counter to the suggestion that younger feminist women
are highly individualistic, neoliberal consumers detached from com-
munity, online forums and networks create a sense of belonging as
they use “the internet as a space that exists between the public and
the private,” which “enables them to negotiate a desire to organize
CONCLUSION 159
and communicate with others with a need to avoid surveillance and

appropriation of their cultures and politics” (Harris, 2008, p. 487;
Keller, 2011). Alongside these features, the Internet’s hectic traf-
fic may make it possible to target, and receive direct responses from
members of Parliament, chief executive officers, and cultural figures,
facilitating women to engage, question, critique, and campaign on
issues that affect their everyday lives, independently and/or with
other women.
This online presence is associated with greater opportunity for
participation, echoing the fourth wave’s presentation as a movement
without a “club with a pledge of allegiance” and its “infinite variety
of individuals and concerns” (Harrison, 2014). Individual women are
meeting online and organizing, and forming communities, across the
intersections of identity, as the Internet allows “people who might
otherwise be marginalized by disability, distance or caring respon-
sibilities to take part . . . and [to] hear the views of literally anyone”
(Cochrane, 2013).
Although the Internet is often interpreted as a site for connec-
tion, it is still infused with power. Using interviews with feminists
in New Zealand, Julia Schuster (2013) uncovers a “digital divide”
separating generations of Internet users, and is troubled by the nega-
tive consequences this has for communications between older and
younger women, and for feminism more widely. Schuster documents
the advantages of online activism, such as ease of access, the low cost,
providing a safe physical (not virtual) distance from others, and the
perceived control of identity, flexibility, and networking. However,
this is dependent upon having the social, economic, and technological
capital, or the literacy, knowledge, and confidence to use the appro-
priate devices. For feminism, it renders different generations invisible
to each other: older feminists notice the absence of younger women
at feminist events, while younger women reliant on online technolo-
gies to live out their feminism have limited chances of meeting older
feminists and are less aware of their work. In addition to minimizing
contact, and creating tension and misunderstanding, the possibilities
for political activism across generations are curtailed.
Schuster locates her work in the third wave, but her findings are
relevant for the fourth wave. If the fourth wave is largely online,
then the impact of new technologies on feminist theory, debate, and
activism is an important arena for academic research to track, and
Schuster’s work is a reminder that web-based feminist expression has
the potential for connection and disconnection. I would only add
that in characterizing fourth wave online feminism, it is important
to remember that feminist organizations and women’s groups with

histories longer than third wave or second wave feminism have an
online presence. To assume the virtual feminist world mainly com-
prises young, web-literate women and men, once again, implies that it
is a younger generation at the vanguard of new forms of feminism.
For religious women, the Internet is an outlet for feminist activ-
ity. On the British evangelical scene, for instance, Hannah Mudge’s
blog We Mix Our Drinks, Vicky Beeching’s Faith in Feminism:
Conversations on Religion and Gender Equality, and The Christian
Feminist network (christianfeministnetwork.com) are popular and
much cited; while the Twitter hashtag #FaithFeminisms “invites fem-
inists of all faiths to reflect with us on the interplay between feminist
praxis and religious faith in a synchroblog” (www.faithfeminisms.
com). Drawing on methodologies used in communications stud-
ies, scholars such as Mia Lövheim (2011, 2012) are theorizing the
online connections between religion and gender.6 Her examination
of blogging demonstrates it is a dialogic practice between young
female bloggers and their readers, creating shared ethical spaces for
the exploration of emotions, values, meanings, and subjective devel-
opment. This suggests another area in which reader-centered meth-
odologies could uncover further spiritual reading practices. Online
feminism may inculcate new forms of exchange between texts, readers,
and spiritual and religious reading experiences, which could facilitate
the kind of awakenings reported by women participating in my study.
As reading is a strategy to form community, through commonality
for individual women’s spiritualities, perhaps web-based activities—
commenting, linking, liking, sharing, favoriting, and re-tweeting—
are practices that engender online connections, for women looking to
support their religious and spiritual development.
Seeking Connection
One of the reasons for troubling the waves is because the discon-
nections it creates impoverishes the women’s movement and feminist
discourses. Focusing on third wave feminism and feminist theology,
the lack of reciprocal exchange or dialogue between these means
that third wave feminism (and secular feminism generally) attends to
women’s individual and diverse differences without comprehensively
factoring in their religious and spiritual identities. This undermines its
claim to encompass the many facets of women’s lives, and fails to chal-
lenge the “either/or” binary that underpins its religious neglect. The
third wave’s remissness of women’s religiosity is also incongruous, if
CONCLUSION 161
consideration is given to those women living outside of the privileged

white West. The majority of women globally are engaged in religious
and spiritual practice, and tradition. In particular, women’s pres-
ence is rapidly growing in contemporary branches of Christianity in
South America, the African continent, and some parts of Asia. Only
a relatively small minority of women, namely white, fairly affluent,
and educated women in the West are usually and already the primary
concern of feminist scholarship, for whom religion (Christianity) has
recently become seemingly less important. If the mission of feminism
is to locally empower women then it is not sufficient for feminism to
consider or impose a secular language of gender analysis onto the lives
of women whose values are framed by religion. Instead, secular femi-
nism must learn the language of religious women through engage-
ment and dialogue to begin to account for women in relation to her
many identities and experiences.
For feminist religious studies and theology, a lack of engagement
with the most recent developments in feminism loses out on convers-
ing and exchanging creatively with other fields of feminist enquiry.
Furthermore, by not venturing into the latest versions of the wave, it
cannot assess how feminism impacts on women’s spiritual and reli-
gious lives. When the twentieth century drew to a close, Deborah
F. Sawyer and Diane M. Collier’s edited collection addressed their
titular question: Is there a Future for Feminist Theology? In this noted
volume, Sawyer and Collier identify that for the new millennium,
feminist theology appears to be heading toward “a new integration of
gender theory and feminist theology” (1999, p. 23), evidenced by, for
instance, feminist theology’s engagement with men’s studies, thealo-
gies, and nontraditional feminist spiritualities. This signals a “coming
of age” for feminist theology as a vibrant future is dependent, at least
in part, on its capacity to be “informed and to inform current gender
debate” (1999, p. 24). Collier and Sawyer suggest that the challenge
of the new millennium is to disrupt the “traditional dichotomoy of
East and West, a meta-narrative of a past age . . . to allow the vast
plurality of global experiences to take center stage” (1999, p. 24). The
next step is to consider how to move beyond boundaries of geography
and religious traditions, to address differences not only within a par-
ticular context but also to dialogue across differences.
This step is reflected in Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Feminist
Theology: Legacy and Prospect (2007) and Elaine Graham’s (2011)
recent observations that feminist theology must begin to think
through its relationship with other religious traditions at this junc-
ture. In an article published in Journal of Feminist Theology, Marta
Trzebiatowska and I (2013) consider the importance of looking for

intersections rather than disconnections, the and rather than either/
or. Drawing on Jurgen Habermas (2008a) and Judith Butler (2008)
who argue that in democratic, multicultural societies, both secular
and religious sides need to “accept an interpretation of the relation
between faith and knowledge that enables them to live together in a
self-reflective manner” (Habermas, 2008b), we suggested secular and
religious forms of feminism must engage in an act of mutual recogni-
tion through acknowledging each other’s languages as legitimate. As
Rosi Braidotti writes, in a postsecular society, European feminism
needs to learn to grapple with the possibility of political subjectivi-
ties being expressed through piety and spirituality (often together
with their institutional baggage) (2008, p. 2). Although these inter-
ventions for secular and sacred dialogue are timely, we argue in our
article that there is still the tendency to equate religious women with
ethnic minority groups in the constellation of unequal power rela-
tionships in modern Western societies. In debates around Islamic
veiling practices, or FGM, for instance, religion tends to be singled
out as driving the practice, at the expense of examining the social,
cultural, and historical factors preserving the custom.
Troubling the wave not only reveals rigid disconnections, but also
highlights the gifts that connections can bring to feminism. Despite
the wave narratives, instances of overlap, such as women’s spiritual
reading practices, suggest that a richer dialogue between generations
and sacred and secular feminisms can occur without dissolving dis-
tinct modes of inquiry. A fruitful and charged dialogue across cohorts
and disciplines can still retain their local and particular singular-
ity and interests, but by conversing, there is the potential to move
beyond mutual neglect and gain from the exchange of perspectives.
This book, by focusing on actual rather than implied readers, contrib-
utes to the story of feminism by displaying women’s spiritual reading
as a third wave practice of both individuality and community. In iden-
tifying an instance of the third wave in religious feminism, the third
wave’s outlook is widened. In arguing that women are reading for
spirituality outside the limits of feminist theology’s reservedness, its
repertoire of reading extends beyond gynocritical approaches. These
points of connection suggest a community where generations and
feminist disciplines can dialogue, intimating the important gift of
not only finding new discourses in the academic realm of feminism,
but also discovering where they are surfacing in the embodied lives of
women to encourage conversation across the waves.
A ppendi x A : R e a der- Cen ter ed
Feminist R ese a rch: M e thod ol o g y
a nd M e thods
It is not always the case that monographs in social science related

subjects such as women’s and gender studies, or religious studies and
theology of the qualitative kind, feature methodological sections.
Instead, partial accounts about the research process that form our
ethics committee applications and doctoral projects—the research
design, methods for gathering data, sampling, data analysis, eth-
ics, the role of the researcher, and the challenges and successes—are
sometimes included in the introduction, are edited down, or specific
aspects appear as a focused methodological debate in other dedicated
volumes and journals. However, researchers need to consult publica-
tions that make the decisions and steps that shaped the different stages
of the planning, implementation, and findings transparent. Our doc-
toral training insists we leave an “audit trail” (Bong, 2005, p. 54) that
lays bare, justifies, and acknowledges the assumptions underlying the
choices, techniques, and tools used to address the research question;
to show that work is trustworthy, reliable, and valid. Therefore, this
is an attempt to keep company with authors who were the excep-
tions, who explored the theoretical and experiential complexities of
social research, and whose important interventions have informed the
methodology and research methods utilized in this book.1
Reader-Centered Feminist Research

Examining the activity of women’s spiritual reading requires an
approach that brings the actual embodied reader and her experiences
directly into view, and concordant with the orientation of this mono-
graph, does so within a feminist framework. In this book, a feminist
approach means committing to reflexivity throughout the differ-
ent stages of this project, making ethical choices to minimize the
role of power throughout the research process, and using women’s
164 APPENDIX A
experiences. To fulfill these aims, I developed a reader-centered

feminist research method and methodology that uses qualitative,
semi-structured interviews in which Christian and post-Christian
women self-selected the texts they perceived to have shaped their
personal spiritual journeys, with their reflections guiding the inter-
view schedule.
A reader-centered feminist method is qualitative, an approach
“usually used when the object of study is some form of social pro-
cess or meaning or experience which needs to be understood and
explained in a rounded way” (Mason, 2002, p. 134). It is a way of
accessing how people construe, experience, or produce their worlds
using a range of flexible methods that are receptive to the context in
which the phenomenon to be researched occurs. Qualitative meth-
ods elicit conclusions that are recognized as interpretive rather than
“objective” (Holland and Ramazanoglu, 1995), can be adapted to
give detailed and nuanced insights, and are therefore suitable for
researching the personal, fluid, and multilayered events of women’s
reading as a spiritual practice.
Although not exclusively feminist, 2 during the early stages of wom-
en’s studies and feminist research, qualitative methods were widely
adopted. They were considered the most appropriate way of enhanc-
ing women’s visibility (Oakley, 1981, p. 48), which was considered a
necessary tactic for promoting the social and political goals of femi-
nism.3 Accordingly, feminists tended to avoid quantitative research
and use qualitative methods to research women’s lives, and began to
develop alternative nonhierarchical, context-aware, participatory, and
reflexive methods that inductively took experience as a valid start-
ing point for the elaboration of theory. Recently, feminist interest
in research methodologies has moved away from highlighting the
flaws of quantitative research and praising the qualities of qualitative
research.4 This dualism not only pitted qualitative and quantitative
methods against each other, but also ostensibly created an orthodoxy
that limited feminist research to “research on, with and for women”
(Oakley, 1981, p. 48) and suggested face-to-face interviewing as the
feminist method par excellence.5 My selection of qualitative principles
and practices was not based solely on this historical precedent, or on
an assumption that these are inherently feminist methods of work-
ing, but because they offer the most appropriate means to uncover
women’s spiritual reading practices.
Qualitative interviewing techniques have already proved produc-
tive in approaches to the study of reading. Neal reflects that her choice
to talk to evangelical Christian women about their relationship with
APPENDIX A 165
evangelical romance fiction “offered a fruitful way to learn how these

women understand their reading practices and spin a web of everyday
religious life” (2004, p. 7). Discrete interviews with individual read-
ers is a means of bringing out the ways women understand their read-
ing practices in relation to their spirituality, at a particular juncture
in their journey. The reader becomes the center of the research, as
interviewing qualitatively, as Shulamit Reinharz writes, offers “access
to people’s ideas, thoughts, memories in their own words rather than
in the words of the researcher” (1992, p. 19) and admits the research
and the researcher to the ways women are using reading within their
richly textured spiritual journeys.
Interviewing can take a range of forms,6 but I chose a semi-
structured format, a decision that was also shaped by my own experi-
ences as a researcher. During the early stages of data collection, I had
adopted an open-ended approach to qualitative interviewing. Armed
with a vision of a democratic research model in order to best center the
reader and her activity of reading, I chose an unstructured format that
minimized my role in guiding the interview and anticipated that the
interviewees would have topics they wished to discuss, unprompted.
However, it soon became apparent—during the fourth interview—
that I was falling short of managing this style of interview. Between
trying to “own” my research, and promote the reader, I hesitated to
ask questions relevant to my research interests. It was often almost too
late into the interview when the conversation moved to reading. These
encounters left me doubting the relevancy of my research questions.
If participants were not reflecting upon their reading and spirituality
in the interviews (despite answering a call for participants specifying
this), perhaps the experience of reading in women’s spiritualities was
an unfruitful topic of study. It seemed as though myself and my par-
ticipants needed a clearer starting point by semi-structuring the inter-
view, therefore I invited participants to self-select the literatures they
felt had effected and affected their spiritual journeys. This maintains
the profile of the reader and her experience, as the interview is based
around her textual choices. The text does feature, which gives some
insight into what women are reading within their spiritual journeys,
but emphasizes how women are using the texts they name. The text
figures instrumentally, as a channel that submits access to the wom-
en’s spiritual reading experiences. Reader-centered feminist research
moderates the text, while the presence of the reader is heightened to
elaborate the uses of literature and the act of reading within gender
and religion, indicating a shift from interpreting meanings of texts to
interpreting the activity and processes of reading.
166 APPENDIX A
Having “Conversations”
A reader-centered approach also undertakes qualitative interviewing
to reduce, as much as possible, the exploitation of participants, as
they are thought to provide a “route through which inter-subjectivity
and non-hierarchical relationships between women researchers and
participants can be developed” (Kelly, Burton, and Regan, 1994,
p. 34).7 The model of the researcher working to extract informa-
tion from the passive research “subject” is supplanted by a model
of collaboration in which both the interviewer and the interviewee
are involved in a reciprocal exchange and respond to each other. As
Holstein and Gubrium stress, interviewing “is always unavoidably
interactional and constructive—in a word, the interview is active”
(2004, p. 142). The interview builds from the communication and
contact between the participant and the interviewer; they discuss,
listen, prompt, respond, and ask questions of each other. To put it
another way, qualitative interviews are engaged conversations. As the
prefix “con” implies, they are opportunities for talking with partici-
pants about a theme in which both the interviewer and the intervie-
wee are invested and interested.
During the fieldwork, I did come to think of the interviews as
“conversations.” They were one of the highlights of my research proj-
ect, as I listened to participants’ book selections, reading experiences,
and spiritual journeys. Discussion usually continued after the record-
ing had stopped, and participants often mentioned they had enjoyed
participating, a testament to the rapport that can be created through a
reader-centered approach.8 A conversational method also tested some
well-established research ethical protocol by relieving the researcher
of her role as an uninvolved interrogator, especially when interviews
surprisingly ventured into “sensitive” territory. Religion, spirituality,
and reading are personal topics, but in comparison to “sensitive”9 top-
ics often listed in research handbooks, I did not anticipate the inter-
views might cause some distress—to me or participants. However, on
several occasions, participants were clearly moved as particular texts
were associated with upsetting experiences. For instance, the texts
chosen by Helen (Anglican) were mainly those she had read with her
son, George, while caring for him during the final stages of termi-
nal cancer. Other experiences were interwoven through the readings:
separation from partners, family, and friends; loss of employment;
difficult relationships; loneliness; illness; depression; issues of gen-
der identity; sexuality; sexism; violence; and isolation from their reli-
gious tradition. Tears, anger, regret, tiredness, disappointment, and
APPENDIX A 167
confusion as well as laughter were part of the interviews, and part of

my role was to have a duty of care toward the women who were freely
sharing their experiences with me. When participants did show signs
of distress, I paused the interview for as long as required, while try-
ing to ensure the participant was appropriately comforted. The range
of emotions, during and after the interview, draws attention to the
ways all research is sensitive, as qualitative work gathers information
about peoples’ lives. It also highlights the implicated and involved
nature of interviewing and the need for the researcher to respond
carefully, responsibly, thoughtfully, and sometimes sympathetically
to these dynamics.
This is in contrast to the guidelines and suggested lists of appro-
priate responses that are usually offered in research manuals when
a participant becomes distressed. For instance Legard, Keegan, and
Ward seem to assume that the researcher is able to detach herself and
to hold back their own emotional response to the participant’s story:
Direct comments of sympathy that convey the researcher’s own emo-

tional reaction or feeling should be avoided. Whatever the researcher’s
own reaction to the situation, they should not display their own emo-
tions during the interview but deal with them later. (2003, p. 163)
Underlying this advice is an ideal that the interviewer should remain

as neutral and objective as possible through the interview process.
Legard et al. argue that reacting to an emotional response may
encourage or discourage, or feed the interviewee cues that will affect
participants’ answers. Not only does this fall short of recognizing (as
it is often said) that no research occurs in a vacuum, and that adopt-
ing neutrality is an emotional stance, but also I would have been
uncomfortable holding back my reactions to participants’ sorrow, joy,
rage, or calmness, and felt inappropriate and impersonal. There were
certain moments when I was moved by participants’ reactions, which
indeed may have affected the way my participant responded, as any
reaction (“neutral” or otherwise) will always affect the interview.
The “Parameters” of Feminist Research

A reader-centered methodology and method is deliberately located
within the “parameters” of feminist research (Maynard and Purvis,
1994, p. 2). Although there is no single feminist methodology or
method,10 there are recognizable strictures within which “feminists
168 APPENDIX A
feel they, minimally, must operate, in order to be rigorous about, and

maintain integrity towards, their work” (Maynard and Purvis, 1994,
p. 2). I intentionally inhabit these feminist boundaries as a political
commitment to hear women’s experiences of religion and spirituality,
and redress the gender-based discrepancies that continue to inflect
the textual traditions of Christianity11 by recognizing women as active
in creating alternative religious and spiritual literatures through read-
ing.12 Dwelling within feminist parameters can assist in disrupting
the binary oppositions between researcher and researched, knower
and known, political and personal, cognition and emotion (Stacey,
1988);13 eschew the notion of value-neutral research;14 accepts that
the conclusions produced are partial, mediated, and situated rather
than totalizing and universal;15 and can create “frameworks for under-
standing that can lessen exploitation” (Skeggs, 1994, p. 82) during the
dynamic encounters between researchers and participants.16 Feminist
research principles and practices are neither limited by this list, nor
exhausted by my use of reflexivity, the use of women’s experiences,
and an ethical attention how power operates in this study, although
they are the particular features that have informed the development
of my reader-centered methodology and methods.
Reflexivity
As an attempt to “reflect upon, examine critically and explore analyti-
cally the nature of the research process” (Fonow and Cook, 1991a,
p. 2), reflexivity is an ongoing practice ideally operating concurrently
with the theoretical and practical choices made at each stage of the
research. While I explicitly refer to it here, reflexivity is a continuous
practice throughout research—from the first “hunch” of a research
question to dissemination—in which a critical lens is directed back on
to the research and the researcher. It is an expository position and a
tool to analyze how personal and interpersonal factors influence the
research processes (Finlay, 2002), demanding that the researcher is
self-critical, aware, and able to scrutinize that “our research is itself
a social process, occurring within particular sorts of social contexts
and structures, and that it will have our own thumbprints all over it”
(Ribbens, 1989, p. 591). Being reflexive is the recognition that my
own gaze has shaped the research questions I ask, the way I ask them,
and how I interpret and convey the answers. In practice, reflexivity
lays bare the circumstances in which research is conceived, designed,
carried out, and analyzed, while also illustrating the myth of objec-
tive research and validity (Stanley and Wise, 1979).
APPENDIX A 169
Objective positivistic paradigms of knowledge have been presented

as “the most rational that human kind has devised for investigating
the world” (Addleson, 199, p. 16). This has led to the view that the
generation, analysis, and dissemination of data are untainted by the
values of the researcher and devoid of social, historical, and political
motives; while concurrently failing to discern that striving for objec-
tivity is a partial and self-interested claim. Sandra Harding explains:
The conception of value-free, impartial, dispassionate research is sup-

posed to direct the identification of all social values and their elimi-
nation for the results of research yet it has been operationalized to
identify and eliminate only those social values and interests that differ
among researcher and critics who are regarded by the scientific com-
munity as competent to make such judgments. (1993, p. 70)
Reflexivity challenges this by registering that research is imbued

with the researcher’s self-location, and by noting the effects this has
upon the production of knowledge. This means acknowledging my
confusion in identifying with the third wave, my self-identification as
post-Christian, and my use of that label to skirt round the ambigu-
ity and confusion with regard to a faith I once held. This is neither
an exercise in self-indulgence, nor does reflexivity excuse question-
able research practice. Instead, it illustrates that research “bears the
marks of time, place and the social” (Thomas, 1999, p. 69) by making
plain “the mess, confusion and complexity of doing research” (Kelly,
Burton, and Regan, 1994, p. 46) so research is not written “hygieni-
cally” (Stanley and Wise, 1979). It is only by attending to issues such
as the relationships between the researcher, the research project, and
participants,17and the emotional labor of undertaking fieldwork,18
that the un-sanitized and bumpy processes as well as the successes
can be worked in. Reflexivity is a “turning back of inquiry on the
formative conditions of its production” (Gray, 2008, p. 936) to reveal
rather than hide the full range of experiences.
When aiming for reliability, reflexivity is a key factor. Qualitative
work is difficult to replicate owing to the complexities of studying
behaviors and experiences, because a particular phenomenon is tied
to a specific time or place (Lewis and Ritchie, 2003), and owing to
the organic manner in which qualitative research should respond
to the changing demands of a project, it is not always possible, or
warranted, to repeat a piece of research (Mason, 2002). However,
because a reflexive research account documents “as much as is pos-
sible of the procedures that have led to a particular set of conclusions”
170 APPENDIX A
(Seale, 1999, p. 158), it can leave a map of the research decisions.

Using reflexivity as a device for transparency opens the research to
appraisal and accountability (Harding, 1987), therefore demonstrat-
ing the quality and meaningfulness of the research findings and the
validity of the study.
Power and Powerlessness

Central to the feminist agenda is correcting the balance of power
within the research setting, which is generally weighted in favor of
the investigator who has more control over the research agenda, the
analysis, and the representation of findings. There is the danger that
participants are othered and manipulated as the researcher commits to
realizing successfully the goals of her project.19 Keeping in the param-
eters of feminist research bestows the responsibility of minimizing
hierarchical relationships on me, as the researcher, to be vigilant to
power, how it shifts, and to recognize that any interaction is tainted
with imbalance. My use of qualitative semi-structured interviews to
foster participatory research and my refusal to play the role of the
objective researcher are examples of measures I took throughout the
different stages of the research to keep the research ethically reader-
centered, to reduce the researcher’s “power over” participants, and to
maximize their opportunity to be actively involved. Other examples
are my extension of consent and my inclusion of participants in the
transcribing process.
Working with the notion of “informed consent”20 (Miller and
Bell, 2002) was helpful in preparing for the interview. In most cases, I
spoke to participants prior to our meeting to discuss the research and
the interview process in more detail, providing the opportunity for
them to sound me, and my research, out. However, acquiring consent
is not a one-off, never-to-be-repeated event, but should be extended
throughout the stages of the research and be thought of as an ongo-
ing negotiation as the research process evolves. For instance, to main-
tain a reader-centered research, participants set the conditions for
their own representation in transcripts and subsequent publications.
Anonymity is often considered a key methodological imperative that
treats the data rather than the biography of participants as an impor-
tant factor, and a key ethical imperative that protects confidentiality
and privacy.21 However, from a reader-centered feminist perspective,
this assumes that I should control the representation of someone
else’s identity, which is at odds with my attempts to cultivate par-
ticipatory research with participants. Therefore, rather than impose
APPENDIX A 171
this convention, participants were invited to choose the identifying

details (for example, age, sexuality, and profession) they wanted me
to omit or include in the transcriptions and findings. Some chose a
pseudonym but surprisingly the majority of participants enthusiasti-
cally wanted their (own) names to appear, as one participant, Megan
(Quaker) explained: “These are my words.”22 Insisting on anonymity
would have taken away participants’ ownership of the transcripts and
the recognition of their part in the research.
Another strategy I adopted to minimize the uneven distribution of
power was to send transcripts to participants for their comments on
its faithfulness to the interview. At times, it seemed an imposition to
ask participants to contribute further; however, it was ultimately ben-
eficial. Some added points of clarification, or changed biographical
data, which safeguarded against mistakes that could misdirect analy-
sis and therefore helped foster reliability. Generally, the transcripts
were thought accurate and the women readers did take ownership.
For instance, one interviewee felt that, at times, her transcript “didn’t
sound like me, and I think it should.” In a way that exemplifies her
sense of ownership of transcript, she changed three words of her
interview and as a check I listened again to the interview recordings,
while following the written transcript.23 I wanted to acknowledge her
feelings regarding my transcription, but was also mindful that I had
been careful throughout the transcription processes. Having been a
participant in other people’s research and having been confronted by
written versions of interviews, I could understand that transcripts do
not often sound like the interviewee or the interviewer. I was able to
draw on these experiences again to reassure a participant who was a
little anxious that the way I had presented her pattern of speech in the
interviews—including false starts to sentences, pauses, and breaks—
sounded unintelligent and inarticulate. Showing her the difference
between the transcript format, and the way her comments in for-
mal accounts of the research were presented, restored her confidence.
Receiving this feedback falls short of participants’ active interpre-
tation of data, because although they are integral, their collabora-
tion falls short of coauthorship in analysis or the writing (Ribbens,
1989, p. 590).
Even though I have been attentive to the ethics of conducting
qualitative research, there are always risks for participants. Judith
Stacey, in relation to ethnography but a point that is applicable to
qualitative research more broadly, urges that “elements of inequality,
exploitation, and even betrayal are endemic to ethnography” (1988,
p. 23). This point is often reiterated and particularly in feminist work
172 APPENDIX A
that tirelessly struggles to develop new methodologies and methods

to thwart power over research methods. Despite the arduous attempts
to treat participants carefully and respectfully, to locate the research-
er’s theoretical position, to adhere to ethical guidelines, to commit
to transparency and reflexivity, to reach informed consent, to aim to
contribute to the analysis and correction of gender discrepancies and
to write responsibly, the power between the researcher and research
set fluctuates and is constantly negotiated and renegotiated: “power
plays” are inevitable (Ristock and Pennell, 1996, 64ff.).
However, Beverley pessimism over-amplifies the perils of research
for participants. While I was able to take advantage of participants’
willingness to cooperate so that I could pursue academic standing
and complete a piece of research that was important to me, for which
I am extremely grateful and am unlikely to ever repay, I was anxious
that participants might feel used as instruments for gathering data,
or find the interview process uncomfortable and onerous. However,
the women in my study were not as pliable as Stacey assumes, and
although this is conjecture, I think most would oppose the suggestion
that they were incapable of defying me or any aspect of the research.
It could be argued that most of the women comprising the research
set were not at risk (the majority were well-educated, white, middle-
class), while a very small minority (owing to ill-health or their mental,
physical, or social-economic status) were potentially exposed to harm.
However, as Beverley Skeggs (1994) has observed, even vulnerable
participants are able to resist the researcher, enjoy the project, and
work the research to their own advantage. It was a welcome surprise
and relief when most commented that they had enjoyed thinking back
on their reading histories, faith, and spirituality, how important they
thought the research had been, and because no one had ever asked
them these questions before, they had not realized how much they
had to say about their lives. Indeed, most were just as anxious as me.
They wanted to make sure they did not waste my time, and were of
use to the project.
When the risk of power is taken seriously within the research process,
awareness of other power relations grow. As a result of the shifting play of
power within the interview setting, feelings of inadequacy (on my part)
rose, usually when my expertise or knowledge base was questioned. For
example, two participants were raised within closed denominations and
were surprised that I was unschooled in the particular histories of their
churches, and decided to fill me in, in great detail. In another instance,
it was inferred that I must be finding the interview difficult to follow
because I did not participate personally in New Age spiritual practices.
APPENDIX A 173
I was frequently given strong advice on how to conduct research and

zealous recommendations to read certain texts, or as previously dis-
cussed, asked to amend transcripts. While the development of nonhi-
erarchical methodologies has rightly focused upon shielding volunteers
participating in empirical studies from misuse, manipulation, and aban-
donment, power is a restless force that oscillates between researchers
and the researched, gaining and diminishing momentum and changing
hands at different moments during a project.
Thematic Analysis
To analyze participants’ reflections of their spiritual reading, I
adopt “the middle way,” proposed by Janet Holland and Caroline
Ramazanoglu (1994, pp. 144–45) in recognizing that although
qualitative data does not directly reflect an uncomplicated narrative
of reality, neither does it necessarily result in only relativistic views of
women’s lives. Rather, it not only admits that any interpretation of
interview data uses a framework in order to access people’s accounts
of their realities, but also accepts that there are no fixed explana-
tions of how this is done (Holland and Ramazanoglu, 1994, p. 145).
Although the process of interpretation is always flawed in this sense,
the validity of using women’s experiences of reading in the context of
the religious depends upon reflexive transparency, as Judith Stacey
argues: “There also can and should be feminist research that is rigor-
ously self-aware and therefore humble about the partiality of its eth-
nographic vision and its capacity to represent self and other” (1988, p.
26). The methods and conclusions of a research project should always
be open to comment and critique.
Conducting Reader-Centered Feminist

Research
Having outlined the main features comprising reader-centered fem-
inist research, this section outlines the practicalities of conducting
reader-centered research, from sampling strategies used to gather and
select participants, to data analysis.
Theoretical Sampling
Gathering participants was based upon theoretical sampling, which
demands the research group embody certain characteristics relevant
to answering the research questions. It begins with the identification
174 APPENDIX A
of “who it is that has, does or is the experiences, perspectives,

behaviors, practices, identities, personalities, and so on, that your
research questions will require you to investigate” (Mason, 2002,
p. 129). These criteria may relate to social and demographic con-
cerns, behaviors, roles, subcultures, specific experiences, people,
and processes according to their relevance to the theoretical puz-
zle. 24 However, this is not static; it is ongoing and interactive, as
sampling decisions are not cast in stone at the start of the research
process, but reviewed in light of the shifting theoretical concerns
uncovered as the research progresses. Theoretical sampling begins
with the founding themes of the research, and reconfigures them
from the abstract ideas of the implied reader, and her implied uses
and experiences of reading, to actual readers in women’s spiritual
journeying.
Diversity
At every stage of the sampling procedure there is a danger of cre-
ating a self-serving and uncritical circularity linking my preexisting
notions of women and spirituality to participants considered suitable.
It is necessary to strike a balance between interviewing participants
who would offer insights and challenge the research agenda, choos-
ing volunteers who (too) conveniently fit the bill, and encouraging
diversity and variability to allow for comparison. Based on theoreti-
cal sampling, I advertised locally and nationally in groups, organiza-
tions, and networks found through Internet research, which seemed
likely places to contact women who had “particular features or char-
acteristics which will enable detailed exploration and understanding
of the central themes and puzzles which the researcher wishes to
study” (Lewis and Ritchie, 2003, p. 78). I advertised in local book
groups, libraries, exploited my personal contacts, and got in touch
with national organizations that self-defined as interested in spiritual-
ity in a broad sense, across denominations, emerging, and “progres-
sive” spiritualities (Lynch, 2007), the “holistic milieu” (Heelas and
Woodhead, 2005), having an interest in literature and reading, with
a strong female membership base.25 I was also concerned to offset the
anticipated bias toward white, middle-class, well-educated women, as
other studies tangential to the themes of this project confess a cultur-
ally limited sample (Slee, 2004, p. 53)26 and selected networks that
hinted or claimed to have a wide demographic and national reach.
Reading, spirituality, and literature are not homogeneous terms,
and do not necessarily meet neatly under one geographical site or
APPENDIX A 175
organization exclusively dedicated to these themes, therefore it was

also critical to involve fixed institutions (centers and churches) and
virtual networks and societies, and to include groups based in differ-
ent locations in the United Kingdom.
My attempts toward diversity were successful in some areas, and
less so in others. Participants came from a range of spiritual and reli-
gious identities, ages, sexualities, and physical abilities, but all par-
ticipants except one identified as white and the majority as middle
class. It was disappointing not to have achieved greater diversity
across the lines of race and ethnicity but to make further attempts at
engineering the recruitment of non-white women seemed complicit
with tokenism and stereotyping. Selecting individual women only on
account of race or class risks interpreting her reading experiences in
terms of race, or, as a woman of color, her experiences of reading
come to be regarded as representative of black women (Elam, 1994).
Although I was uncomfortable with the whiteness of the study, I was
more uncomfortable contriving to recruit participants on account of
a particular aspect of their identity. However, as I was relying on par-
ticipants’ to volunteer in response to my advertisements, I did not ask
for information regarding ethnicity, race, sexuality, class, and ability
status prior to the interview. Just as I was unaware of participants’
age, ability status, sexuality, race, or ethnicity, they were unaware
of the elements of my identity until we met and talked. It is pos-
sible that some women who did respond (but were not interviewed)
may have identified differently, although I imagine this would have
still been a predominantly white study, in keeping with the demo-
graphic of participants within post-traditional or new spiritualities.
While it is important to encourage a range of identities, theoretical
sampling does not necessarily adhere to the logic of generalizability
or representation (Mason, 2002). Rather, the sample group should be
seen as a very particular group of women, who, between them, focus
some of the characteristics of women’s spiritual reading practices with
Christianity and post-Christianity within one culturally and histori-
cally situated juncture, yet with enough differences (of backgrounds
and experiences) to enable evaluation.
Making Contacts and Selecting the Research Group

Having identified potential groups and networks to advertise my
research, I contacted the groups to further determine the suitabil-
ity of the organizations, and to assess the best way of reaching their
base membership. I wrote tentatively, asking for advice on the most
176 APPENDIX A
appropriate way to contact associates, intending to follow up with

a more formal invitation. However, like most research, things did
not go according to plan. In another instance of the changing power
relations in research, I may have held control in sending the advert
to specific sites but my influence diminished when the email was
forwarded (by the person I had contacted) to other parties: friends,
Christian churches, universities, colleges, parishes, ecumenical and
interdenominational networks, and non-Christian spirituality groups,
leaving me unable to account for the emails’ final destinations. 27 I
had lost the management of this part of the selection process, and
the email was heading in different and unplanned directions. It was
only possible to trace my message’s meanderings as far as participants
were aware of the channels through which they had heard about the
research, and were able to link it back to the originating source. I
was constantly surprised by places in which the research had been
advertised and the many ways participants heard about this project.
Concerns about reaching those without access to the Internet were
waylaid as the email left the virtual world and was printed in newslet-
ters, found its way to parishes, and was circulated via word of mouth.
This was exciting, but also messy. The sampling strategy was moving
away from the directness and tightness of the theoretical and purpo-
sive, and venturing toward a virtual form of snowball sampling, 28 as
my email message was being forwarded by participants, through their
formal and informal networks.29
Through advertising, I received 78 replies in total, staggered over
a period of three months, sometimes gradual, sometimes rapid, but
overwhelming for this project, which made managing the interview
schedule difficult to direct. I did not always feel I had the luxury of
declining an interview in case my list of possible respondents dried
up sooner than expected. On some occasions, the choice was not
mine. For instance, one particularly enthusiastic respondent wrote
eager emails to ensure her place on the interview schedule was secure
before I had the chance to send her a consent form. On another two
occasions, I arrived at the agreed time and place to find not one but
two interviewees, as participants had organized (without consult-
ing with me) for a friend to be interviewed. Such encounters added
a lively dimension to proceedings, and more than emphasized the
organic nature of qualitative research.
Participants were largely self-selecting, dependent upon women
volunteering, and taking the trouble to contact me. However, selec-
tion also depended upon pragmatic and fiscal choices, which are not
ideal and often an unwelcome factor in making sampling choices.
APPENDIX A 177
On account of participants’ availability and accessibility, some replies

were instantly filtered out of the selection process. For instance, two
respondents were due to leave the country, and another lived abroad
and came to the United Kingdom only sporadically. Some did not
reply to follow-up emails that included a consent form, which I took
as a signal of withdrawal, a choice I respected and did not pursue
further. Owing to travel, time, and financial considerations, I tried
to coordinate the interviews by organizing successive meetings in
one location or breaking up longer journeys by meeting other conve-
niently located participants. A small number were filtered out because
although they were avid readers, they made clear this was not part
of their spirituality or religiosity, but had volunteered because they
wanted to be “helpful.”30
Reading the Interviews

To make sense of the wealth of data generated in the interviews, I
adopted a broadly thematic framework for interpreting the tran-
scripts. I identified patterns in participants’ experiences in relation to
my initial research questions regarding the users and uses of reading
within women’s spiritualities (Joffe and Yardley, 2004). I follow a
“free-flowing dialogue” typified by a “constant backwards and for-
wards movement between the data on the one hand, and my own pre-
commitments, hunches, questions and insights on the other, which,
themselves had been shaped by my own reading of the literature, as
well as by my own experience” (Slee, 2004, p. 58). A relationship
between the data and the relevant frameworks used to study this phe-
nomenon developed (Stacey, 1994, p. 72) as I placed the theme of
individuality and community that emerges from the data on women’s
spiritual reading practices, in dialogue with feminist theology and
literature, and third wave feminism. This echoes Beverley Skeggs’s
adoption of “routine reflexivity.” By asking: “Could this theory say
anything to me about my life or about the lives of the young women?”
there is an ongoing “discovery” (Skeggs, 1994, p. 82), which, in this
research, uncovers connections between women’s spiritual reading
practices, feminist theology, and contemporary feminism.
A ppendi x B:
R e a der s’ Prof il es
These summaries are listed alphabetically, by participants’ first

names. All information is as of the time of interview (January 2005 to
January 2006). Identity terms (race, class, and so forth) are in partici-
pants’ own words taken from the biographical questionnaire and from
interviews; more nuanced information (such as spiritual and religious
affiliation, and family status) reflects details from the interviews.
Ann: 75, white, British, middle class, divorced, and bisexual. Anne
is a retired librarian, and is now an editor and a writer. She identi-
fies as Quaker, and is affiliated to Sea of Faith. She was once a
preacher, but now rejects the traditional teachings and concepts of
Christianity.
Anne: 53, British, Celtic, and Pagan. Anne’s religious upbringing was
Presbyterian and later Anglican, when as a child her family moved
from Scotland to England. She later became a Druid, one of the
first women initiated in the United Kingdom. She is a clinical hyp-
notherapist, and is widowed.
Anne-Marie: 30, Irish-British, heterosexual, and Roman Catholic.
Anne-Marie works for an organization based on Christian prin-
ciples, but it establishes mixed faith communities where adults with
learning disabilities work and live with their assistants. She is cur-
rently studying for a postgraduate degree in Art History.
Amaw: 62, white, and Scottish. Amaw does not identify with a particu-
lar class, sexual orientation, or gender. She considers her cat her life
partner. She has links to the Church of England and Methodism.
She is retired.
Bethany: 22, white, British, and cautiously identified as middle class,
single, and gay. Bethany identifies as Christian. She is studying for
an MA in Religious Studies, having completed a BA in Religion.
When visiting her family she attends her local, Anglican parish
where she belonged as a child. However, she is no longer comfort-
able worshipping there and is looking for somewhere that suits her
personal theology.
180 APPENDIX B
Carol: 66, white, British, heterosexual, and single. She previously

identified as Roman Catholic, was practising, and raised her family
within the church. Her decision to leave was informed by her evalu-
ation of a hierarchal, authoritative, and too powerful institution,
and now names herself a “Spiritual Searcher.” She has been married
and widowed, and has children. She is also bereaved after losing her
second long-term partner to terminal illness. She obtained a history
degree as a mature student.
Cat: 56, middle class, white, and lesbian. Cat “comes from a Roman
Catholic background” but has identified as Pagan (Witch) for ten
years and is a founding member of a feminist, women-only Pagan
group. She is a retired college lecturer in women’s health.
Catherine: 44, white, British (English), middle class, and married. She
has a BA in English and a PhD in Theology, and works as a free-
lance writer. She is married to an Anglican priest and also identifies
as an “open Evangelical” Anglican.
Debbie: 45, named her class as “ABC1” to indicate a middle-class status.
She is white, British, and Anglican, describing herself as a “dutiful
daughter” of the church. She is a heterosexual and separated. She
has an undergraduate degree in Theology, and is currently working
as a lecturer while completing her PhD.
Eileen: in her sixties, white, British, middle class, single, and hetero-
sexual. Eileen’s family were Plymouth Brethren, but she identifies
with New Age and emerging spiritualities, and is a member of an
inclusive Anglican congregation in London. She is a retired senior
civil servant, and now writes and consults freelance on holistic val-
ues and spirituality in the business world.
Eleanor: 61, white, British, middle class, and married. Eleanor is a
Pagan and Christian, belonging to a Pagan spiritual group and vol-
unteers at her local cathedral. She has just completed a PhD.
Eleanor: 61, white, English, middle class, married, and an artist. She
describes herself as “loosely still!” Roman Catholic. Eleanor was
baptized an Anglican, but converted when she met her husband.
Although her family have been very involved in her local parish,
and Eleanor was a chaplain, she feels she has “moved more and
more away” and feels “on the edges” of Roman Catholicism.
Gillian: 34, white, British, middle class, and married. She is a
clergywoman who is currently rethinking her relationship with
the Anglican Communion and her personal faith. She identi-
f ies as “post-Christian” and is in the process of leaving her
ministry.
Helen: 61, white, British, “professional middle class,” and married.
Helen identifies as “non-conformist Christian” and describes her
family as Christian and is actively involved in church life. She is a
social worker.
APPENDIX B 181
Jane: 54, white, British, married, and middle class. Jane is a Quaker,
and is very active in her faith community. She is an infant school
teacher.
Jane: 40, white, British, middle class, and married. Jane is a Methodist
minister and has a PhD. She teaches theology and ministry
at a Methodist training college and identifies as a “Christian
Feminist.”
Kate: 48, white, and middle class. Kate is an American, but has lived
in the United Kingdom for about 20 years. She is divorced, but is
currently in a long-term heterosexual relationship. Kate is a men-
tal health nurse, is working full time, and studying for a BSc. She
was raised in a Lutheran church in the United States, which she
describes as “very conservative . . . almost stifling.” Since moving
to the United Kingdom, she has attended Methodist and Baptist
churches, but now attends an (evangelical) Church of England
parish. She identifies as “Christian,” although she feels her faith
is not as “strong” as it has been, mainly owing to her marriage
breakdown.
Karen: 63, white, and British-American with Swiss ancestry. She
declined to name her class status (writing “huh?” as a response),
and is divorced, straight, and single. She is educated to under-
graduate level, and is a writer and photographer. Karen continues
to acknowledge her Quaker roots without attending Meeting, but
identifies as “spiritual.”
Laura: 28, married, white, British, and middle class. Laura grew up in
the Anglican church, but now is a member of an emerging church
community. She identifies as Christian, but says she sits “outside”
but “alongside” the church. She is a self-employed project manager
in the arts.
Linda: 58, “Human,” British, heterosexual, widowed, and single. Linda
is a non-stipendiary minister in the Anglican church, is a healer,
and leads retreats and workshops. She identifies with “Holistic
Christianity,” which signals her interest in Christianity, Celtic spiri-
tuality, Hinduism, and Native American spirituality. She is also
studying for a postgraduate degree, having already completed a BA
in Business Studies.
Lizzie: 54, white, divorced but in a long-term partnership, middle
class, and British. Lizzie identifies as a “Spiritual Searcher,” does
not have a “label” for her spirituality, and draws on Native American
spirituality, Shamanism, Celtic spirituality, the New Age, and other
religious traditions.
Louise: 35, Anglo-Saxon Canadian, and middle class. She is divorced,
currently single, and working toward a postgraduate degree. She
was raised Anglican—her mother is priested—but is now a Goddess
Feminist.
182 APPENDIX B
Maggie: 64, white, British, and married with grown-up children,

but prefers not to identify a class affiliation. She is retired, but has
worked in social and education work, having obtained undergradu-
ate and postgraduate qualifications in education, counselling, and
therapeutic practice. She is a member of an ecumenical church in
the United Kingdom.
Margot: in her eighties, Roman Catholic, married, white, and British.
Although she is originally from the United States, Margot has lived
in the United Kingdom since her twenties. Margot is very involved
in her parish, and was active in the peace and feminist movements.
Mary: 57, and Irish-British. Partly owing to Mary’s mobility needs,
she has not worked, but has volunteered, and is married with a fam-
ily. Mary is Roman Catholic, but draws on Celtic spirituality, uses
mandalas, and attends women-only workshops and conferences to
explore her spirituality.
Megan: 24, white, British, lower middle class, and single. Megan is a
Quaker, and attends Meetings when she returns home from univer-
sity. She is a postgraduate student.
Miriam: 25, white, British, middle class, and has “bi-sexual inclina-
tions.” Having completed a psychology degree, she is now training
to be a Methodist minister, but defines as “Methlican” to indicate
her Methodist and Anglican family background.
Nicola: 48, white, British, middle class, and lesbian. She identifies as a
Christian feminist in the Anglican tradition. She is a freelance writer
and teacher, and has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.
Pam: 63, white, middle class, and widowed. Pam grew up in the
Anglican church and identifies with this denomination, although
she has been part of a Congregational church.
Pat: 69, white, middle class, and married. She is Roman Catholic, and
heavily involved in the women’s movement in the church. Pat is a
retired university lecturer.
Rachel: 22, working class, and white, British. She is currently study-
ing for an MA in Religious Studies, and although in a long-term,
heterosexual relationship identifies as single. Rachel names her
religious affiliation as “Christian beliefs” and grew up within the
Christadelphian church.
Scarlet: 52, white, British, “very middle-class,” lesbian, and “single
and polyfidelitous.” Scarlet identifies as “Quaker/pagan/lesbian/
feminist/pacifist.” She is a self-employed gardener and is also study-
ing part-time for an M.Res.
Sharon: 47, white, British, married, and did not specify her class. Sharon
was a logistics manager, but is now retired owing to a disabling ill-
ness. As a mature student, Sharon gained a BA in Religious Studies.
She has left Roman Catholicism, and now identifies as “Worldly,”
and draws on Hinduism to frame her understanding of spirituality
and religion.
APPENDIX B 183
Sophia: 33, Indo-Canadian, middle class, straight, and single. Sophia

declined to identify with any particular religious stance, putting a
line through the section of the questionnaire that asked partici-
pants to identify their religious or spiritual affiliation. However,
during the interview she mentioned that she is “transitioning” out
of the “church,” having attended both Baptist and Methodist com-
munities. She is questioning the relevance, “whiteness,” patriarchy,
and hierarchy of the institution. Sophia is working for a research
degree.
Steph: 37, white, British, middle class, and Christian. She has divorced
and remarried. Originally a civil engineer, she is studying Theology
as part of her training to become a Methodist minister.
Yvonne: 67, middle class, British, white, has never married, is currently
single, and heterosexual. Although Yvonne identifies as Methodist,
she works across denominations as a spiritual director. She has a BA
in French and Spanish, and is a retired business executive.
A ppendi x C: Grou ps, Ne t wor k s,
a nd Org a ni z at ions
After a sustained period of web-based research to identify net-

works, alliances, groups, centers, or associations based in the United
Kingdom, I selected the following six groups as suitable and purpo-
sive contacts for advertising for participants.
Catholic Women’s Network (CWN)

via Catholic Women’s Ordination (CWO)
www.catholic-womens-ordination.org.uk (accessed March 2005)
CWO (closely linked to Catholic Women’s Network) is a campaign
group and forum to discuss and work toward women’s ordination.
Attempts to contact CWN (perhaps a more diverse membership base)
were unsuccessful, and the two groups are historically linked.
Greenspirit
www.greenspirit.org.uk (accessed March 2005)
Greenspirit is a registered charity, with over 350 members. It is a
UK-based network of local groups that connect through annual
meetings, an online forum, a newsletter, and an email list. Greenspirit
claims to “celebrate the human spirit in the context of our place in
the natural world . . . Our radical vision brings together the rigor
of science, the creativity of artistic expression, the passion of social
action and the wisdom of spiritual traditions of all ages” and “seeks
to redress the balance of masculine and feminine.” Greenspirit also
has a book service, runs literary events, and publishes pamphlets and
essays on a range of related topics.
186 APPENDIX C
Holy Rood House: Center for Health and

Pastoral Care and Centre for the Study of
Theology and Health, Thirsk, North Yorkshire
http://www.holyroodhouse.org.uk/ (accessed March 2005)
This is an interdenominational study center, independent from aca-
demic institutions, that runs various workshops, retreats, lectures, and
seminar series. Some events are women-only and include sessions on
spirituality (from across traditions), health and well-being cultures,
literature, poetry, and writing.
Inclusive Church
www.inclusivechurch.net (accessed May 2005)
Inclusive Church is an interdenominational network that has “a
vision of a liberal, open church which is inclusive of all, regardless
of race, gender or sexuality.” The organization comprises a mixed
Christian membership and petitions for inclusivity across Christian
denominations.
Living Spirituality Network

http://www.livingspirit.org.uk/ (accessed April 2005)
This is a trans-denominational network of churches in Britain and
Ireland that aims to “resource, encourage and support those who are
pursuing their spiritual path on the margins of the traditional, main-
stream churches.” Living Spirituality also has a “spiritual library” and
resource center in Milton Keynes.
Sanctus 1
www.sanctus1.co.uk (accessed March 2005)
Sanctus is an “emerging church . . . engaged in a journey of creative
exploration into faith, worship, spirituality, friendship and lifestyle”
and advocates “God’s indefinable presence in music, film, arts and
other key areas of contemporary culture.” It self-defines as inclusive,
and is an Anglican and Methodist joint initiative in Manchester.1
APPENDIX C 187
WATCH: Women and the Church

https://womenandthechurch.org/ (accessed April 2005)
WATCH is a Church of England organization that campaigns to “see
women take their place alongside men as bishops and at every level in
the Church of England.” It produces a magazine titled Outlook.
Local Groups
I also contacted groups local to Lancaster. First, I wrote to five mem-
bers of a Pagan (Wiccan) women-only group, whom I had inter-
viewed for my MA project in 2000. I also contacted three reading
groups. First, a women-only group attached to an Anglican evangeli-
cal church in the center of Lancaster. Membership of this group is
dominated by parish churchgoers, but the group also includes readers
from other Christian and non-Christian faiths. Second, a women-only
nonacademic reading group based in the city. Third, a local library
group that organizes and runs three reading meetings throughout
the week.
Other Groups
My advertisement for participants also reached several other national
groups and networks, without me specifically contacting them.
Based on information collected from the responses and participants
the email also reached Anglican parishes in St. Albans, The Urban
Theology Unit in Sheffield, a Methodist circuit in central London,
Guy Chester Centre (a Methodist community), L’arche, Grassroots
Ecumenical Trust, Sea of Faith, and various branches of the Society
of Friends.
No tes
Introduction
1. Mary Patricia Beckman and Mara Donaldson remark on its “enor-
mous popularity . . . in the black and feminist communities”
(“The Theological Significance of The Color Purple: A Liberation
Theology?” Saint Luke’s Journal of Theology 33(2) [1990]: 119). See
also D. Hampson, Theology and Feminism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990);
M. D. Kamitsuka, Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); H. Walton, Literature,
Theology and Feminism (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2007a); and H. Walton, Imagining Theology: Women, Writing and
God (London: T & T Clark, 2007b).
2. The “click” is attributed to Jane O’Reilly and marks the moment
when one first becomes aware of gender inequality. See A. E. Kinser,
“Negotiating Spaces for/through Third-Wave Feminisms,” NWSA
Journal 16(3) (2004): 137.
3. For example, see K. Cochrane, All the Rebel Women: The Rise of
the Fourth Wave of Feminism (London: Guardian Books, 2013,
http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-ebooks [downloaded June
2014]); <S. Knox, “I Am a Feminist, but . . . That Comes with
Responsibility,” 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shelby
-knox/i-am-a-feminist-butthat-c_b_537217.html (accessed
June 2014); E. Munro, “Feminism: A Fourth Wave?,” 2013, http://
www.psa.ac.uk/insight-plus/feminism fourth-wave (accessed June
2014); and J. Simpkins, “‘You Can’t Sit With Us!’ How Fourth Wave
Feminism became Mean Girls, 2014, http://www.huffington-
post.co.uk/jennifer-simpkins/feminism-fourth-wave-became-
mean-girls_b_4616597.html (accessed June 2014). The fourth
wave has yet to receive the same kind of sustained theoretical atten-
tion as previous waves of feminism, but in the conclusion to this
book, I mark out some of the fourth wave’s characteristics and the
questions it raises for reading, feminism, and spirituality.
4. However, as I argue throughout this book, women’s religiosity
and spirituality are usually neglected when the feminist waves are
depicted.
190 NOTES
5. R. Alfonso and J. Triligio, “Surfing the Third Wave: A Dialogue

between Two Third Wave Feminists,” Hypatia 12(3) (1997): 7–16;
K. Aune and L. Livesey “Reclaiming the F-Word and Recovering
Dialogue: Younger Feminists, Older Feminists and (Mis)communica-
tion,” Unpublished paper (2007); A. Henry, “Not My Mother’s Sister:
Generational Conflict and Third Wave Feminism” (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2004); and E. K. Garrison, “Are We on a
Wavelength Yet? On Feminist Oceanography, Radios and Third Wave
Feminism,” in Different Wavelengths: Studies of the Contemporary
Women’s Movement, ed. J. Reger (London: Routledge, 2005).
1 Reading, Feminism, and Spirituality

1. For example, see A. Diamond and L. R. Edwards, eds., The Authority
of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1988 [1977]); C. Belsey and J. Moore, eds., The
Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989); S. Mills and L. Pearce, eds., Feminist
Readings/Feminists Reading (London: Prentice Hall, Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1996); and J. Newton and D. Rosenfelt, eds., Sex, Class
and Race in Literature and Culture (London: Methuen, 1985).
2. For example, Phyllis Trible (“Depatriarchalizing in the Biblical
Tradition,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 41 (1973):
30–48; Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality [Philadelphia,
PA: Fortress Press, 1978]; Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-
Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives [Philadelphia, PA: Fortress
Press, 1984]) attempts to retrieve biblical narratives from patriar-
chal ideology, while Mary Daly (Beyond God the Father: Toward a
Philosophy of Women’s Liberation [London: Women’s Press, 1985
(1973)]) radically rejects biblical-based religions.
“Reformist” and “revolutionary” are used by Carol P. Christ
and Judith Plaskow (“Introduction: Womanspirit Rising,” in
Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, ed. C. P. Christ
and J. Plaskow [San Francisco: Harper Collins San Francisco, 1992b
(1979)], pp. 10–11, 193), respectively, to denote feminists who live
out their theological vision within “traditional” religion but attempt
to reinterpret and modify it; and feminists who have rejected insti-
tutionalized religion and are seeking alternative horizons. Although
this dichotomy captures the polarized attitudes to using biblical
texts, the distinction between reform and revolutionary ignores the
diverse ways scriptures have been appropriated, rejected, or accepted,
and new symbols and meanings found. Furthermore, J. Plaskow and
C. P. Christ later retracted this distinction, as it tended to function
hierarchically and thus created tensions within the feminist study of
religion: the revolutionaries were often privileged above the reformers
NOTES 191
(“Introduction,” in Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist

Spirituality, ed. J. Plaskow and C. P. Christ [San Francisco: Harper
San Francisco, 1989b], 6ff.).
3. This overview only suggests the scope of feminist theology’s read-
ings of women’s writing. For example, Mary Grey (Redeeming the
Dream: Feminism, Redemption and Christian Tradition [London:
SPCK, 1989]), has drawn on George Eliot, Doris Lessing, and
Alice Walker; Patricia Bastida Rodríguez, “Rethinking Female
Sainthood: Michèle Roberts’ Spiritual Quest in Impossible Saints,”
Feminist Theology 15(1) (2006): 70–83; and M. Soraya García
Sánchez, “Michèle Robert’s Protagonists: Catholicism and
Sexuality,” Feminist Theology 17(2) (2009): 229–44, have writ-
ten on Michèle Roberts; while Anna Fisk (Sex, Sin and Our Selves:
Encounters in Feminist Theology and Contemporary Women’s Writing
(Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2013)) uses autoethnography, and
the fiction of Roberts and Sara Maitland to construct a feminist theo-
logical response to sex, sin, and identity. Heather Ingman (Women’s
Spirituality in the Twentieth Century: An Exploration through
Fiction [Berlin: Peter Lang, 2003]) draws out the spiritual themes of
Margaret Atwood, Zee Edgell, Rose Macaulay, Iris Murdoch, Eilis
Ni Duibhne, Edna O’Brien, Kate O’Brien, Kathleen Raine, Michèle
Roberts, May Sinclair, Alice Walker, Sylvia Townsend Warner,
Antonia White, Virginia Woolf, and Anzia Yezierska. She argues that
these writers attempt to connect traditional religion with women’s
experiences, through their fiction. Ingman’s approach is thematic,
and illustrates how the religious aspect of women’s writing has largely
been neglected by feminist literary criticism.
4. This overview is admittedly brief, and is more concerned with the
development of feminist theology in an Anglo-American context. For
further examples, see C. Beyer, “Feminist Revisionist Theology and
Female Identity in Margaret Atwood’s Recent Poetry,” Literature and
Theology 14(3) (2000): 276–98; C. P. Christ, “Feminist Studies in
Religion and Literature: A Methodological Reflection,” Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 44(2) (1976a): 317–25; C. P. Christ,
“Margaret Atwood: The Surfacing of Women’s Spiritual Quest and
Vision,” Signs: Journal of Women and Culture 2(2) (1976b): 316–30;
C. P. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing: Woman Writers on a Spiritual
Quest (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995 [1980]); C. P. Christ and
C. Spretnak, “Images of Spiritual Power in Women’s Fiction,” in
The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays by Founding Mothers of the
Movement, ed. C. Spretnak (New York: Doubleday, 1982); M. Grey,
Redeeming the Dream: Feminism, Redemption and Christian Tradition
(London: SPCK, 1989); L. Hogan, From Women’s Experience to
Feminist Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1995); M. D.
Kamitsuka, Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference (Oxford:
192 NOTES
Oxford University Press, 2007); A. S. Ostriker, Feminist Revision of

the Bible (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); A. S. Ostriker, The Nakedness
of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1994); R. R. Ruether, ed., Womanguides:
Readings toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985);
K. Sands, Escape from Paradise: Evil and Tragedy in Feminist Theology
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994); and H. Walton, “Re-vision
and Revelation: Forms of Spiritual Power in Women’s Writing,”
Feminist Theology 12(1) (2003a): 89–103; H. Walton, “Women Writing
the Divine,” in Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Critical Readings,
ed. P. S. Anderson and B. Clack (London: Routledge, 2003b), H.
Walton, Literature, Theology and Feminism (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2007a); H. Walton, Imagining Theology: Women,
Writing and God (London: T & T Clark, 2007b); and H. Walton,
“Our Sacred Texts: Literature, Theology and Feminism,” in Reading
Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred, ed. D.
Llewellyn and D. F. Sawyer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). For black and
womanist work on women’s writing and theology, see K. Cannon,
Black Womanist Ethics (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988); K. Cannon,
“Moral Wisdom in the Black Women’s Literary Tradition,” in Weaving
the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, ed. J. Plaskow and
C. P. Christ (San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1989); K. Cannon,
Katie’s Canon: Womanism in the Soul of the Black Community
(London: Continuum, 2003 [1995]); E. Culpepper, “New Tools for
Theology: Writings by Women of Color,” Journal of Feminist Studies
in Religion 4(1) (1988): 39–50; M. P. Beckman and M. E. Donaldson,
“The Theological Significance of The Color Purple: A Liberation
Theology?” Saint Luke’s Journal of Theology 33(2) (1990): 119–28;
S. Thistlethwaite, Sex, Race, and God (London: Geoffrey Chapman,
1989); and D. S. Williams, “Black Women’s Literature and the Task
of Feminist Theology,” in Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in
Sacred Image and Social Reality, ed. C. W. Atkinson, C. H. Buchanan,
and M. R. Miles (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1985). For an example
of spiritual themes in Chicana literature, see M. A. Álvarez, “Spiritual
Themes and Identities in Chicana Texts: The Virgin of Guadalupe as
Role Model for Womanhood,” in Reading Spiritualities: Constructing
and Representing the Sacred, ed. D. Llewellyn and D. F. Sawyer
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). For a considered and sustained critical
treatment of the methods through which feminists have used literature
in their theology, see Walton (“Women Writing the Divine,” 2003b;
Literature, Theology and Feminism, 2007a; Imagining Theology,
2007b; “Our Sacred Texts,” 2008), R. Harde, “Making Our Lives a
Study: Feminist Theology and Women’s Creative Writing,” Feminist
Theology 15(1) (2006): 48–69; and S. H. Hughes, “‘Eye to Eye’: Using
Women’s Literature as Lenses for Feminist Theology,” Literature and
Theology 16(1) (2002): 1–26.
NOTES 193
5. Reading as a spiritual practice transpires in emerging spiritualities. In

The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), Paul Heelas, Linda Woodhead et al.
observe a rise in the availability and turnover of books and other mer-
chandise about spirituality (p. 68), which could suggest that mind/
body/spirit genres are being read to resource forms and practices in
new spiritualities. Gordon Lynch, in After Religion: ‘Generation X’
and the Search for Meaning (London: Darton, Longman & Todd,
2002), discusses the extent to which popular cultural texts (from lit-
erature, film, music, and the clubbing scene) function as a contempo-
rary resource for finding meaning, spiritual or otherwise, particularly
amongst Generation X.
6. This is a departure from Wolfgang Iser’s (The Act of Reading:
A Theory of Aesthetic Response, [Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1980 (1978)]) “implied reader,” which is a struc-
turing (but not imperative) function embedded in the text. A “real”
reader apprehends the text by filling in the “blanks” and gaps of a
literary piece according to their experience, context, knowledge, and
interests. While each text is read differently by real individual readers,
the implied reader is part of the text’s construction. It is the structure
that frames the reader’s response by providing the gaps for the reader
to connect. As Iser explains:
It is generally recognized that literary texts take on their real-
ity being read, and this in turn means that texts must already
contain certain conditions of actualization that will allow their
meaning to be assembled in the responsive mind of the recipi-
ent. The concept of the implied reader is therefore a textual
structure anticipating the presence of a recipient without nec-
essarily defining him; this concept prestructures the role to be
assumed by each recipient, and this holds true even when texts
appear to ignore their possible recipient or actively exclude him.
Thus the concept of the implied reader designates a network of
response-inviting structures, which impel the reader to grasp
the text. (1980, p. 34)
7. Earlier, I commented that C. Eller (Living in the Lap of the Goddess:
The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America [Boston: Beacon
Press, 1993]), and A. Pryce (“A Post-Christian Feminist Spirituality?”
PhD diss., Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster University,
Lancaster, 1999) register that reading is a resource for introducing
women to feminist and women’s forms of Christianity and post-
Christianity. However, their projects are not primarily concerned
with the activity of reading and therefore do not pursue in detail the
role of reading in women’s spiritual lives.
8. Steven J. Sutcliffe (“The Dynamics of Alternative Spirituality:
Seekers, Networks, and ‘New Age,’” in The Oxford Handbook of New
Religious Movements, ed. J. R. Lewis [Oxford: Oxford University
194 NOTES
Press, 2004]) argues a similar point in relation to the proliferation of

New Age mind/body/spirit texts and readers of this genre.
9. For historical and thematic definitions of the field of religion and
literature, see D. H. Helsa, “Religion and Literature: The Second
Stage,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 46(2) (1980):
181–92; D. Jasper, The Study of Literature and Religion (Basingstoke:
Macmillan Press, 1989); and S. B. Kauffman, “Charting a Sea
Change: On the Relationships of Religion and Literature to
Theology,” Journal of Religion 58(4) (1978): 405–27. For a feminist
critique of the field, see Christ, “Feminist Studies in Religion and
Literature” (1976a) and A. J. Morey, “Margaret Atwood and Toni
Morrison: Reflections on Postmodernism and the Study of Religion
and Literature,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 60(3)
(1992): 493–513.
10. W. K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley, in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the
Meaning of Society (Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1954),
argue that two erroneous beliefs mislead the critic to confound the
text with any apparent ensuing phenomenon. The “Intentional
Fallacy” identifies a failure to distinguish between a poem and its
origins, while the “Affective Fallacy” insists that a literary text must
be considered independently of any outcomes or responses.
11. See appendix A for a detailed account of the feminist methodology
and methods used in this study.
12. See R. Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Authorship: From Plato
to the Postmodern, ed. S. Burke (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1995 [1979]); M. Foucault, “What Is an Author?” Language,
Counter-Memory Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel
Foucault (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977 [1969]); and
chapter 4 of this book.
13. For influential overviews of reader response theory, see A. Bennett,
ed., Readers and Reading (Harlow: Longman, 1995a); A. Bennett,
“Introduction,” in Readers and Reading, ed. A. Bennett (Harlow:
Longman, 1995b); E. Freund, The Return of the Reader: Reader-
Response Criticism (London: Methuen, 1987); R. C. Holub,
Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction (London: Methuen, 1984);
V. B. Leitch, “Reader Response Criticism,” in Readers and Reading,
ed. A. Bennett (Harlow: Longman, 1995a); J. P. Tompkins, Reader-
Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post Structuralism (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980a); J. P. Tompkins, “An
Introduction to Reader Response Criticism,” in Reader Response
Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. J. P. Tomkins
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980b); and S.
R. Suleiman and I. Crosman, eds., The Reader in the Text: Essays
on Audience and Interpretation (New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1980a); and S. R. Suleiman, “Introduction: The Varieties of
Audience-Orientated Criticism,” in The Reader in the Text: Essays
NOTES 195
on Audience and Interpretation, ed. S. R. Suleiman and I. Crosman

(New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980b).
14. Group reading has also been explored in projects including
“Devolving Diasporas” (www.devolvingdiasporas.com/index.htm)
and “Beyond the Book” (www.beyondthebookproject.org/default.
asp). Both have used qualitative and quantitative methods to investi-
gate book groups, mass reading events, and community-based read-
ing (see also D. Pagliassotti, “Beyond the Book,” Participations:
Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 5(2) [2008]: http://www.
participations.org/Volume%205/Issue%202/5_02_contents.htm,
accessed June 2009). Women’s spiritual reading in relation to book
groups is briefly discussed in chapter 5.
15. D. Bleich, Subjective Criticism (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1978); D. Bleich, “Gender Interests in Reading and
Language,” in Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and
Contexts, ed. E. A. Flynn and P. P. Schweickart (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986): D. Bleich, “Epistemological
Assumptions in the Study of Response,” in Reader-Response
Criticism: From Formalism to Post Structuralism, ed. J. P. Tomkins
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980 [1978]);
N. Holland, “Unity Identity Text Self,” in Reader-Response Criticism,
ed. J. P. Tompkins (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1980 [1975]); E. A. Flynn, “Gender and Reading,” in Gender and
Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts, ed. E. A. Flynn and
P. P. Schweickart (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1986); and S. Mills, “Reading as/Like a Feminist,” in Gendering
the Reader, ed. S. Mills (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf,
1994c).
16. J. Hermes, Reading Women’s Magazines: An Analysis of Everyday
Media Use (Cambridge: Polity, 1995); J. A. Radway, Reading the
Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1991 [1984]); and L. Pearce,
Feminism and the Politics of Reading (London: Arnold, 1997).
17. J. Bielo, “Recontextualising the Bible in Small Group Discourse,”
in SALSA XIV: Texas Linguistics Forum, vol. 50, ed. T. Hallett,
S. Floyd, S. Oshima, and A. Shield (Austin: Texas Linguistics
Forum, 2007); J. Bielo, “Cultivating Intimacy: Interactive Frames
for Evangelical Bible Study,” Fieldwork of Religion 3(1) (2008a):
51–69; J. Bielo, “On the Failure of ‘Meaning’: Bible Reading in the
Anthropology of Christianity,” Culture and Religion 9(1) (2008b):
1–21; J. Bielo, “The ‘Emerging Church’ in America: Notes on the
Interaction of Christianities,” Religion 30 (2009): 1–14; M. Jennings,
Dan’s Stories: His Situated Use of the Bible in Reconceptualizing His
Sexual Abstinence Incident as Spiritual Experience (BSA Sociology of
Religion Study Group: Religion and Knowledge, Durham University,
2009); M. A. Pike, “From Personal to Social Transaction: A Model of
196 NOTES
Aesthetic Reading in the Classroom,” Journal of Aesthetic Education

37(2) (2003a): 61–72; M. A. Pike, “The Bible and the Reader’s
Response,” Journal of Education and Christian Belief 7(1) (2003b):
37–51; M. A. Pike, “From Personal to Spiritual Transaction: The
Potential of Aesthetic Reading,” Lecture, Calvin College, Michigan
(2004); M. A. Pike, “Transactional Reading as Spiritual Investment,”
Journal of Education and Christian Belief 11(2) (2007): 83–94;
A. Strhan, Aliens and Strangers: The Struggle for Coherence in the
Everyday Lives of Evangelicals (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2015); A. Village, “Factors Shaping Biblical Literalism: A Study
Among Anglican Laity,” Journal of Beliefs and Values 26(1) (2005a):
29–38; A. Village, “Assessing Belief about the Bible: A Study among
Anglican Laity,” Review of Religious Research 46(3) (2005b): 243–54;
A. Village, The Bible and Lay People (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
18. This assumes that people are actively reading their sacred texts, at a
time when recent research from the 2009 National Biblical Literacy
Survey has suggested a widespread dip in levels of biblical knowledge
(www.dur.ac.uk/news/newsitem/?itemno=8234).
19. Recent studies that do consider women’s reading practices with
their sacred texts, both Islamic and Christian, include Raana
Bokhari “Bihishti Zewar: A Text for Respectable Women?” in
Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred,
ed. D. Llewellyn and D. F. Sawyer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) and
Anne Heng Grung, Researching Women and Religion: Christian and
Muslim Women Reading Sacred Texts (Lancaster: Women Reading
Religious Texts, Lancaster University, 2009).
20. Radway (Reading the Romance, 1991 [1984]) also includes a textual
analysis of the narrative structures of romance novels.
21. Although a high percentage of Radway’s participants were regular
church attendees identifying as Christian, she does not focus on this
aspect of her readers’ identity.
22. See also R. K. Barrett, “Higher Love: What Women Gain from
Christian Romance Novels,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture
4 (Summer) (2003).
23. Women’s experiences is central to much feminist work, what follows
is a succinct reflection on the key works that have informed my use of
this category.
24. The women chose how they would like to be represented in the
transcripts and any subsequent publications, selecting a first name
(sometimes a pseudonym) and naming their spiritual or religious
identity.
25. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, but owing to
time pressures, I used transcribers for five interviews, having sought
permission from participants in advance. However, when presenting
my research, I follow Nicola Slee (Women’s Faith Development: Patterns
NOTES 197
and Processes [Aldershot: Ashgate 2004], p. 57) in editing some of the

paralinguistic features of the interview, the pauses, the “errs,” and the
“ums” that are part of everyday speech but can often make reading
participant’s quotes quite difficult.
26. See Ursula King, The Search for Spirituality (Norwich: Canterbury
Press, 2009), for a comprehensive overview of the applications and
meanings of spirituality, and P. Sheldrake, Spirituality and History:
Questions of Interpretation and Method (London: SPCK, 1991); and
P. Sheldrake, A Brief History of Spirituality (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).
27. There is extensive literature on women, feminism, and spirituality.
Well-established works include (but are not restricted to) A. Carr,
“On Feminist Spirituality,” in Women’s Spirituality: Resources for
Christian Development, ed. J. W. Conn (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press,
1986); C. P. Christ and J. Plaskow, eds., Womanspirit Rising: A
Feminist Reader in Religion (San Francisco: Harper, 1992a [1979]);
J. W. Conn, ed., Women’s Spirituality: Resources for Christian
Development (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986); Eller, Living in the
Lap of the Goddess (1993), U. King, Women and Spirituality: Voices
of Protest and Promise (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1989);
J. Plaskow and C. P. Christ, eds., Weaving the Visions: New Patterns
in Feminist Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper, 1989a); C. Spretnak,
ed., The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays by Founding Mothers of
the Movement (New York: Anchor, Doubleday, 1982); Starhawk, The
Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess
(San Franciso: Harper & Row, 1979), J. Gillikin and A. L. Barstow,
“Spirituality and Religions,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 21(1 & 2)
(1993); and K. Zappone, The Hope for Wholeness: A Spirituality for
Feminists (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1991). See also K.
Aune, “Feminist Spirituality as Lived Religion: How UK Feminists
Forge Religiospiritual Lives,” Gender and Society 29(1) (2015):
122–45; C. Klassen, Feminist Spirituality: The Next Generation
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009a); and the special edition
on “Religion and Spirituality” by L. Thomas and A. Brah, Feminist
Review 97 (2011).
28. For examples of feminist spiritual and religious movements outside
of a Western context, see U. King, ed., Religion and Gender (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1995a), U. King and T. Beattie, eds., Gender, Religion,
and Diversity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (London: Continuum,
2005a), and U. King, “‘Gendering the Spirit’: Reading Women’s
Spiritualities with a Comparative Mirror,” in Reading Spiritualities:
Constructing and Representing the Sacred, ed. D. Llewellyn and D.
F. Sawyer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). A range of feminist spiritu-
alities such as Asian, African, Mujerista, Aboriginal, and others are
described in L. M. Russell and S. J. Clarkson, eds., A Dictionary
of Feminist Theologies (London: Mowbary, 1996), and discussed in
198 NOTES
S. Briggs and M. M. Fulkerson, The Oxford Handbook of Feminist

Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
29. Although “post-Christian” might be used to designate a society that
has moved from Christianity to secularity, this usage too crudely
dismisses the ongoing influence of Christianity (and other religious
and nontraditional religions and spiritualities) within society and
culture. The term has also been explored in relation to Christian
feminism and other “post-theories,” meaning either the temporal
juncture of late modernity, or practices of deconstruction within
feminist theologies (L. Isherwood and K. McPhillips, eds., Post-
Christian Feminisms: A Critical Approach [Aldershot: Ashgate,
2008]). More broadly, in the study of religion, “post-secular” is
sometimes employed to theorize the simultaneous forces of secu-
larization and religious resurgence in the public sphere, but it
is contested J. Beckford, “Public Religions and the Postsecular:
Critical Reflections,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
51(1) (2012): 1–19; E. Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place:
Public Theology in A Postsecular Age (London: SCM Press, 2013);
J. Habermas “Religion in the Public Sphere,” European Journal of
Philosophy, 14(1) (2006): 1–25.
30. In brief, D. Hampson, Theology and Feminism (Oxford: Blackwell,
1990); and D. Hampson, After Christianity (London: SCM Press,
1996) argues that Christianity is untenable. First, because it is
inherently patriarchal and therefore unethical, and second because
Christianity is based on a series of particular revelations (the incar-
nation, miracles, the resurrection) that are incompatible with
the concept of a God that is equally and universally connected to
all of history.
31. When Sophia completed the brief biographical questionnaire during
our interview, instead of specifying a particular spiritual identity, she
drew a line: I use “(—)” to represent this.
32. Amaw is a pseudonym, chosen by this participant.
33. Examples of participants’ spiritual practices include churchgoing;
denominational meetings; prayer; retreats; yoga; tai chi; medita-
tion; cooking and baking; walking and hiking; gardening; exploring
nature; going to gigs, theater, and the cinema; watching television;
writing fiction, poetry, and liturgies; creating rituals; painting, sculp-
ture, and drawing; tarot; astrology; reiki; environmentalism; activism;
charity work; studying and research; ministry; singing; listening to
music; dancing; drumming; running; visiting art exhibits; preaching;
teaching; talking; laughing; travelling; spending time with friends
and family; silence; and reading scriptures and literature. These were
all named, either singly or in combination, as vehicles for exploring
and for acquiring spiritual nourishment.
34. Not all participants claimed a consistent reading habit. Bethany
(Christian) recalls being a “reluctant” reader as a young child, and
NOTES 199
Helen (Anglican) suspended her literary journey for about four years,
after the death of her son, George. She explains:
Through books, you actually can put yourself . . . in the in
the same place as the person who’s at the center of the story,
can’t you— and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t take on board
the emotions . . . I couldn’t actually cope with that . . . it was
an emotional overload for me . . . I’m very, very protective of
myself and about what I read, so what I read can’t be challeng-
ing stuff.
2 Talking in Waves: A Generational and

Secular Metaphor
1. Julia Kristeva’s use of the wave in her essay, “Women’s Time,” in The
Kristeva Reader, ed. T. Moi, also brought the metaphor to promi-
nence (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986b [1979]).
2. See R. Alfonso and J. Triligio, “Surfing the Third Wave: A Dialogue
Between Two Third Wave Feminists,” Hypatia 12(3) (1997): 7–16;
K. Aune and L. Livesey, “Reclaiming the F-Word and Recovering
Dialogue: Younger Feminists, Older Feminists and (Mis)communi-
cation,” Unpublished paper (2007); A. Henry, Not My Mother’s Sister:
Generational Conflict and Third Wave Feminism (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2004); and E. K. Garrison, “Are We on a
Wavelength Yet? On Feminist Oceanography, Radios and Third Wave
Feminism,” in Different Wavelengths: Studies of the Contemporary
3. North American and British third wave feminisms have a simi-
lar chronology, and are often treated as one movement. However,
Kristin Aune (“Third Wave Feminism in the Contemporary UK:
New Feminists, Same Old Issues?” Feminist Transitions [Edge Hill
University, 2009]) has argued that there are two differences between
the UK and US forms. First, US third wavers were born during the
1960s and 1970s, while UK third wavers are slightly younger, hav-
ing come to feminism in the 1990s. Second, in the United States
the third wave has greater visibility socially and academically, while
in the United Kingdom third wave groups, events, and websites are
rarely acknowledged by feminist scholars. Aune makes an important
contrast, and while I would also argue that North American third
wave feminism has “led the way” in discussing the third wave, there
is sufficient theoretical overlap to base my understanding of the
third wave on research from both sides of the Atlantic. For instance,
S. Gillis, G. Howie, and R. Munford, eds., Third Wave Feminism:
A Critical Exploration (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007a; 2007b);
L. L. Heywood, ed., The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia
of Third-Wave Feminism, Vol. 1 (London: Greenwood Press, 2006a);
L. L. Heywood, ed., The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia
200 NOTES
of Third-Wave Feminism, Vol. 2 (London: Greenwood Press, 2006b);

and C. Klassen, Feminist Spirituality: The Next Generation (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2009a) include British and North American
writers in their assessments of the third wave. Where necessary,
I make the distinction between Anglo and American forms of the
third wave.
4. J. Baumgardner and A. Richards, Manifesta: Young Women,
Feminism, and the Future (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2000); S. Budgeon, Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of
Gender in Late Modernity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011);
S. Gillis, R. Munford, and G. Howie, “Introduction,” in Third
Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration, ed. S. Gillis, G. Howie,
and R. Munford (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007b), E. K. Garrison,
“Contests for the Meanings of Third Wave Feminism: Feminism
and Popular Consciousness,” in Third Wave Feminism: A Critical
Exploration, ed. S. Gillis, G. Howie, and R. Munford (Basingstoke:
Palgrave, 2007); J. Gilley, “Writings of the Third Wave: Young
Feminists in Conversation,” The Alert Collector: Reference and
User Services Quarterly 44(3) (2005): 187–98; L. Heywood and
J. Drake, “Introduction,” in Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist,
Doing Feminism, ed. L. Heywood and J. Drake (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1997b); C. Orr, “Charting the
Currents of the Third Wave,” Hypatia 12(3) (1997): 29–45; J.
Reger, “Introduction,” in Different Wavelengths: Studies of the
Contemporary Women’s Movement, ed. J. Reger (London: Routledge,
2005b); D. Ruttenberg, “Introduction,” in Yentl’s Revenge: The
Next Wave of Jewish Feminism, ed. D. Ruttenberg (Seattle: Seal
Press, 2001b); R. C. Snyder-Hall, “What Is Third Wave Feminism?
A New Directions Essay,” Signs: Journal of Women and Culture 34(1)
(2008): 175–96; and R. Walker, “Being Real: An Introduction,” in
To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism, ed.
R. Walker (New York: Anchor Books, 1995b) are examples of writers
who have heralded and examined the third wave, naming the eclecti-
cism, diversity, and contradiction underlying the movement.
5. London Third Wave Feminists is a discussion and activist group. It
was founded in 2002 by Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune, when
mailing list members of the online magazine The F-Word met for the
first time (www.geocities.com/london3rdwave and www.thefword.
org.uk). The Third Wave Foundation is a US-based feminist orga-
nization, established by Rebecca Walker, which funds social justice
projects and advocates young women’s rights (www.thirdwavefounda-
tion.org). Further evidence of a burgeoning third wave is found in its
increasing body of literature, enough to necessitate the publication of
a collection of primary, secondary, and definitional writings by Leslie
Heywood, ed., The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of
Third-Wave Feminism, Volume 1 and Volume 2(London: Greenwood
NOTES 201
Press, 2006a and 2006b). See also C. Redfern and K. Aune’s

Reclaiming the F Word: Feminism Today (London: Zed Books, 2013;
this was originally published as Reclaiming the F Word: The New
Feminist Movement [2010]).
6. Marianne Hirsch, “Mothers and Daughters,” Signs: Journal of Women
in Culture and Society 7(1) (1981): 200–22, discusses the problems
that may arise when theorizing the relationship between mothers and
daughters—a central debate in feminist scholarship. She warns that
the conceptual tools used to explain mothering and sexuality may
be still dependent on male thinkers, and therefore feed, rather than
challenge, patriarchal systems.
7. For a definitional overview of postfeminism and its meanings in
relation to third wave feminism, see J. J. Feinberg, “Postfeminism,”
in The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third-Wave
Feminism, Vol. 1, ed. L. L. Heywood (London: Greenwood Press,
2006); S. Gamble, “Postfeminism,” in The Routledge Companion
to Feminism and Postfeminism, ed. S. Gamble (London: Routledge,
2001b [1998], 43–54); A. D. Lotz, “Theorising the Intermezzo: The
Contributions of Postfeminism and Third Wave Feminism,” in Third
Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration, ed. S. Gillis, G. Howie,
and R. Munford (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007); and S. Gillis and
R. Munford, “Genealogies and Generations: The Politics and Praxis
of Third Wave Feminism,” Women’s History Review 13(2) (2004):
165–78. For critiques of postfeminism, see E. J. Hall and M. S.
Rodriguez, “The Myth of Postfeminism,” Gender and Society 17(6)
(2003): 878–902; G. Greer, The Whole Woman (Peterborough:
Anchor Books, 1999); D. L. Siegel, “The Legacy of the Personal:
Generating Theory in Feminism’s Third Wave,” Hypatia 12(3)
(1997a): 45–74; D. L. Siegel, “Reading between the Wave: Feminist
Historiography in a ‘Postfeminist’ Moment,” in Third Wave Agenda:
Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, ed. L. Heywood and J. Drake
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997b); T. Modleski,
Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a ‘Postfeminist’
Age (London: Routledge, 1991); and I. Whelehan, Overloaded:
Popular Culture and the Future of Feminism (London: Women’s
Press, 2000), especially Chapter 4.
8. See C. Sorisio, “A Tale of Two Feminisms: Power and Victimization
in Contemporary Feminist Debate,” in Third Wave Feminism:
Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, ed. L. Heywood and J. Drake
(Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997) for a fuller dis-
cussion of “power” and “victim” feminism.
9. On June 29, 1998, the cover of Time magazine depicted the head-
shots of four women—Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan, Gloria
Steinem, and Calista Flockhart as the eponymous “heroine” of
the television show Ally McBeal—with the line “Is Feminism
Dead?” The leading article by Ginia Bellafante is critical of the
202 NOTES
contemporary women’s movement for its “flightiness” and obsession

with celebrity and popular culture (www.time.com/time/magazine/
article/0,9171,988616,00.html). Most self-identifying third wavers
define themselves against this version of postfeminism (Heywood
and Drake, “Introduction,” 1997b; J. L. Pozner, “The ‘Big Lie’:
False Feminist Death Syndrome, Profit and the Media,” in Catching
a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century, ed. R. Dicker
and A. Piepmeier. (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press,
2003); R. Walker, “Becoming the Third Wave,” in The Women’s
Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third-Wave Feminism, Vol. 2,
ed. L. L. Heywood (London: Greenwood Press, 2006 [1992]).
10. Although these historical connections do not map directly onto the
contemporary lacunae between feminist theory and feminist theol-
ogy, it illustrates how far apart they have drifted.
11. J. Hull, Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness (London:
SPCK, 2013 [1990]); W. Morris, Theology without Words: Theology
and the Deaf Community (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
12. T. Beattie, “Global Sisterhood or Wicked StepSisters: Why Don’t
Girls with God-Mothers Get Invited to the Ball?,” in Is there a Future
for Feminist Theology?, ed. D. F. Sawyer and D. M. Collier (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), T. Beattie, “Religious Identity and
the Ethics of Representation: The Study of Religion and Gender
in the Secular Academy,” in Gender, Religion and Diversity, ed.
U. King and T. Beattie (London: Continuum, 2005); L. Woodhead,
“Feminist Theology—Out of the Ghetto?,” in Is there a Future for
Feminist Theology?, ed. D. F. Sawyer and D. M. Collier (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).
13. Indeed, it was recommended on my Women’s Studies MA course.
14. For example, see J. Kristeva, “Sabat Mater,” in The Kristeva Reader,
ed. T. Moi (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986a [1977]); C. W. M. Kim,
S. M. St. Ville, and S. M. Simonaitis, eds., Transfigurations: Theology
and the French Feminists (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Press, 1993);
M. Joy, K. O’Grady, and J. L. Poxon, eds., French Feminists on
Religion (London: Routledge, 2002); and M. Joy, K. O’Grady, and
J. L. Poxon, eds., Religion in French Feminist Thought (London:
Routledge, 2003) for feminist theological engagements with the
“French feminists” on a range of subjects. In relation to feminist
theology and literature, Heather Walton, in Literature, Theology and
Feminism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007a), has
drawn on Irigaray, Kristeva, and Cixous to revise feminist theology’s
relationship to focus on the alterity of literature, and the potential
this creates for far more radical and creative readings of literature that
are able to disturb and challenge feminist theology.
15. Religion is not the only neglected feature of identity. For instance,
physical and mental ableness are seldom broached within third wave
writings or within feminist theology.
NOTES 203
16. The entries are “Islamic Feminism” (E. R. Wills, in The Women’s
ed. L. L. Heywood [London: Greenwood Press, 2006a]); “Irshad
Manji” (E. R. Wills, in The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia
of Third-Wave Feminism, Vol. 1, ed. L. L. Heywood [London:
Greenwood Press, 2006b]); “Religion and Spirituality” (J. McLean,
Feminism, Vol. 1, ed. L. L. Heywood [London: Greenwood Press,
2006a]); “Religious Fundamentalism” (E. R. Wills, in The Women’s
ed. L. L. Heywood [London: Greenwood Press, 2006c]); “Wicca”
(J. McLean, in The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia
of Third-Wave Feminism, Vol. 1, ed. L. L. Heywood [London:
Greenwood Press, 2006b]); and “Virginity Movement” (J. A. York,
Feminism, Vol. 1, ed. L. L. Heywood [London: Greenwood Press,
2006]). The encyclopedia also reprints two essays on feminism and
Judaism taken from Danya Ruttenberg’s anthology Yentl’s Revenge:
The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism (Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 2001).
17. Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Women, Gender, Religion: Troubling
Categories and Transforming Knowledge,” in Women, Gender,
Religion: A Reader, ed. E. Castelli (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001b,
pp. 3–25), makes a similar point.
18. Feminist religious studies have explicitly drawn on third wave
theory to think about feminist theology’s theoretical and histori-
cal roots (E. Maeckelberghe, “Across the Generations in Feminist
Theology: From Second to Third Wave Feminisms,” Journal of
Feminist Theology 8 [2000]: 63–69); as applied to feminist theories
of embodiment (J. B. Moulaison, “Our Bodies, Ourselves? The Body
as a Source in Feminist Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 60
[2007]: 341–59); and feminist theological methodology (R. Muers,
“Feminist Theology as Practice of the Future,” Feminist Theology
16 [2007]: 110–27); as a lens to read through biblical construc-
tions of gender (D. F. Sawyer, God, Gender and the Bible [London:
Routledge, 2002]; D. F. Sawyer, “Biblical Gender Strategies: The
Case of Abraham’s Masculinity,” in Gender, Religion and Diversity,
ed. U. King and T. Beattie [London: Continuum, 2005]); and to
encourage biblical studies to embrace diversity and multiplicity
(P. Thimmes, “What Makes a Feminist Reading Feminist? Another
Perspective,” in Escaping Eden: New Feminist Perspectives on the Bible,
ed. H. C. Washington, S. L. Graham, and P. Thimmes [New York:
New York University Press, 1999]).
19. See www.redstockings.org/
20. Walker (“Becoming the Third Wave,” 2006 [1992]); and N. Wolf,
The Beauty Myth (London: Vintage, 1990).
204 NOTES
21. Despite this, or maybe because of this, the collection has achieved
an almost fabled status. According to Ednie Kaeh Garrison it was
on library order in at least one American university until 1998 and
“the desire for it is such that people do speak as though it exists”
(“Contests for the Meanings of Third Wave Feminism,” 2007: 249).
22. This point has been made by Garrison, “Are We on a Wavelength
Yet?” (2005); Gilley, “Writings of the Third Wave” (2005); Gillis,
Howie, and Munford, Third Wave Feminism (2007a); L. S. Saunders,
“‘Feminists Love a Utopia’: Collaboration, Conflict and the Futures
of Feminism,” in Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration, ed.
S. Gillis, G. Howie, and R. Munford (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007);
and K. Springer, “Third Wave Black Feminism?” Signs: Journal of
Women and Culture 27(4) (2002): 1059–82.
23. For example, see also b. hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and
Feminism (London: Pluto Press, 1982 [1981]); b. hooks, Feminist
Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston, MA: Southend Press,
1984); A. Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
(Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 2007 [1984]); and C. T. Mohanty,
“Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse,”
Boundary 2 12(3) (1986): 333–58.
24. Luisah Teish, when talking to a group of white feminists, argued that
dominant feminisms had failed to address the material realities fac-
ing women of color: “If you are not caught in the maze that [we] are
caught in, it is very difficult to explain to you the hours in the day we
do not have . . . And when one of those hours is taken away it means
an hour not that we don’t have to lie back and stare at the ceiling or
an hour that we don’t have talking to a friend. For me it’s a loaf of
bread” (G. Anzaldúa, “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World
Women Writers,” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical
Women of Color, ed. C. Moraga and G. Anzaldúa [New York; Kitchen
Table Press, 1983 (1981)], p. 168).
25. The video begins with a montage of pioneering black women, from
Sojourner Truth to Angela Davies (G. D. Pough, “Love Feminism
but Where’s My Hip-Hop? Shaping a Black Feminist Identity,”
in Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, ed.
D. Hernández and B. Rehman [Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2002];
D. Pough, “Do the Ladies Run This? Some Thoughts on Hip Hop
Feminism,” in Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st
Century, ed. R. Dicker and A. Piepmeier [Boston, MA: Northeastern
University Press, 2003]).
26. B. Guy-Sheftall, “Response from a ‘Second Waver’ to Kimberly
Springer’s ‘Third Wave Black Feminism?’’ Signs 27(4) (2002):
1091–94; A. Henry, Not My Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict
and Third Wave Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2004, p. 33; 148ff.); L. Hogeland, “Against Generational Thinking,
or, Some Things That ‘Third Wave’ Feminism Isn’t,” Women’s
NOTES 205
Studies in Communication 24(1) (2001): 107–21; A. F. Marbley,

“African-American Women’s Feelings of Isolation from Third-Wave
Feminism: A Conversation with My Sisters,” The Western Journal of
Black Studies 29(3) (2005): 605–14; and S. Radford-Hill, “Keepin’
It Real: A Generational Commentary on Kimberly Springer’s ‘Third
Wave Black Feminism?’’’ Signs: Journal of Women and Culture
27(4) (2002): 1083–89. Kimberley Springer (“Third Wave Black
Feminism?,” 2002; Kimberley Springer “Strongblackwomen and
Black Feminism: A Next Generation?,” in Different Wavelengths:
Studies of the Contemporary Women’s Movement, ed. J. Reger
[London: Routledge, 2005]) discusses black third wave feminism
and suggests that while women of color, lesbian, and poor women
are underrepresented, overemphasizing the whiteness of the women’s
movement runs the risk of obfuscating the important role that many
black women and women of color have made to feminism.
27. See also F. Maätita, “Que Viva La Mujer: Negotiating Chicana Feminist
Identities,” in Different Wavelengths: Studies of the Contemporary
Women’s Movement, ed. J. Reger (London: Routledge, 2005); and K.
Schilt, “‘The Punk White Privilege Scene’: Riot Grrl, White Privilege,
and Zines,” in Different Wavelengths: Studies of the Contemporary
28. For instance, Walker comments on the production of To Be Real:
When I initially met with contributors, I told them I was edit-
ing an anthology on feminism and female empowerment in
the 90s and asked if they had been thinking about any topic
or theme or experience that seemed appropriate. Generally,
people offered almost generic experiences of being a woman
in a sexist society. When I explained further that I was look-
ing for essays that explored contradiction and ambiguity, that
explored female empowerment from the perspective of what in
your life has been empowering for you—as opposed to what
has been disempowering, and irrespective of what it is sup-
posed to be empowering—then the small voices, the quiet,
never-said-this-out-loud voices, began to speak. (“Being Real:
An Introduction,” 1995b, p. xxxvi)
29. L. E. Cady, “Identity, Feminist Theory, and Theology,” in Horizons
in Feminist Theology: Identity Traditions and Norms, ed. R. S. Chopp
and S. G. Davaney (Augsberg: Fortress Press, 1997); and D. Fuss,
Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference (London:
Routledge, 1989) overview the essentialist and constructivist debates,
and I. Whelehan, Modern Feminist Thought (New York: New York
University Press, 1995) outlines the debate in relation to the develop-
ment of second wave feminist thought.
30. See also hooks, Feminist Theory (1984); and C. Harnois,
“Re-presenting Feminisms: Past, Present, and Future,” NWSA
Journal 20(1) (2009): 120–45.
206 NOTES
3 Filtering the Canon

1. See J. Barton, Holy Writings, Sacred Text: The Canon in Early
Christianity (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997);
H. von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible
(Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1972); B. M. Metzger, The Canon
of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); and J. A. Sanders, Canon and
Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism (Eugene, OR: Wipf and
Stock, 2000 [1984]) for assessments of the meanings of canon, and
the history of Christian canon formation.
2. Mary A. Evans, in Woman in the Bible (Carlisle: Paternoster Press,
1998 [1983]), examines the different roles attributed to women in
the Gospel narratives (women in everyday life, the parables, as fol-
lowers of, and conversants with Jesus, and the Passion narratives)
and examines the “household codes” within Acts and Epistles as a
doctrinal source dictating women’s relationships with men and the
community.
3. In the first chapter of Woman in the Bible (1998 [1983]), Evans iden-
tifies the Old Testament as the cultural origin of the early Christian
church, and therefore the cause of the New Testament’s negative writ-
ings about women. However, she suggests that the New Testament
contains a message that can radically transform the place of women
within Christianity (1998 [1983], p. 132). Her approach is overtly
and deeply problematically Christocentric. Evans is guilty of attempt-
ing to defend Christianity by attributing its patriarchal aspects to
Judaism, an uncomfortable anti-Judaic sentiment that is prevalent
in feminist Christian interpretation (J. Plaskow, “Anti-Judaism in
Feminist Christian Interpretation,” in Searching the Scriptures:
A Feminist Introduction, ed. E. S. Fiorenza [New York: Crossroad,
1993a]; R. R. Ruether, ed., Womanguides: Readings Toward a
Feminist Theology [Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1985]).
4. E. S. Fiorenza, But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical
Interpretation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992); E. S. Fiorenza,
ed., Searching the Scriptures, Vol. One: A Feminist Introduction (New
York: Crossroad, 1993); E. S. Fiorenza, Searching the Scriptures,
Vol. 2: A Feminist Commentary (New York: Crossroad, 1994);
E. S. Fiorenza, Jesus—Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet: Critical
Issues in Feminist Christology (New York: Continuum, 1995a);
E. S. Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical
Interpretation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995b [1985]).
5. For instance, Fiorenza’s Searching the Scriptures (1993) contains
hermeneutical approaches from Asian, mujerista, black, African, and
Native American perspectives.
6. On queer approaches to reading the Hebrew and Christian scrip-
tures, see, for example, R. E. Goss and M. West, eds., Take Back the
NOTES 207
Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press,

2000). For an approach to the New Testament that focuses on read-
ing for lesbian difference, see M. R. D’Angelo, “Women Partners in
the New Testament,” in Que(e)rying Religion: A Critical Anthology,
ed. G. D. Comstock and S. E. Henking (New York; Continuum,
1997).
7. The phrase “Jesus Was a Feminist” is taken from an article of the
same name. Written by Leonard Swindler, the essay accumulates evi-
dence from Jesus’s interactions to suggest that he subverted social
mores in his positive treatment of women. The article first appeared in
Catholic World (1971, www.godswordtowomen.org/feminist.htm).
8. J. Fetterley (The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American
Fiction [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978]) examines
the well-known American short stories, “Rip Van Winkle,” “I Want
to Know Why,” “The Birthmark,” and “A Rose for Emily.” She
also critiques Earnest Hemmingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Scott
F. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Henry James’s The Bostonians, and
Norman Mailer’s An American Dream. Fetterley argues that her
choice of texts follows the trajectory of the “immasculating imagi-
nation” of American literature (1978, p. xxvi), as individually and
collectively these works are part of the American, androcentric
literary canon.
9. In Jesus—Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist
Christology, Fiorenza adopts “G*d” to mark the defectiveness of
human language regarding the divine, and because it is “theologi-
cally necessary to visibly destabilize our way of thinking and speak-
ing about G*d” (1995a, pp. 4, 191). I think this device is effective,
but only on the first occasion that a reader comes across it. Personally,
I quickly stopped reading “G*d” and reverted to God.
10. Scarlet explains:
To me it seems like the source of just about every war and
conflict that has ever taken place, for openers, because when
men are in charge they tend to think, “well, alright, we’ll go
and chop each other’s heads off,” and um “God will be on our
side and we’ve every right to do it”. I mean, I just don’t under-
stand how you get to that. It’s a mystery to me and I want
none of it.
4 Reading for Difference

1. See H. Walton, Literature, Theology and Feminism (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2007a); H. Walton, Imagining Theology:
Women, Writing and God (London: T & T Clark, 2007b); and
H. Walton, “Our Sacred Texts: Literature, Theology and Feminism,”
in Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred,
ed. D. Llewellyn and D. F. Sawyer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
208 NOTES
2. The essays collected in A. Diamond and L. R. Edwards’s The Authority

of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1988 [1977]) are examples of authentic real-
ism’s approach to women’s writing.
3. In an open response, M. Atwood (“A Reply,” Signs: Journal of
Women and Culture 2(2) [1976]: 340–41) suggests Christ’s femi-
nist, spiritual reading is interesting, but draws attention to the many
other ways her novel has been interpreted. For instance, Atwood cites
reviews that have claimed the novel as a feminist, ecological essay, or
a political message regarding Canada’s domination by America. In
effect, Atwood warns against reading fiction as a “treatise.” A novel,
Atwood writes, “does not exist for the sake of making a statement but
to tell a story; that storytelling is a human activity and valuable in its
own right.” (1976, p. 340).
4. There are other examples of white feminist theologians using
African American literature without recognizing that their inter-
pretative outlooks differ. For instance, Daphne Hampson (Theology
and Feminism [Oxford: Blackwell, 1990]) uses Shug and Celie’s
portrayal of God (in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991 (1983)]) as an image of the divine
that points to a spiritual dimension, disconnected from institu-
tional hierarchies, that affirms Hampson’s post-Christian position.
However, her discussion takes Shug and Celie out of their (black)
community and extracts them from the cultural context in which the
novel is set (S. Thistlethwaite, Sex, Race, and God [London: Geoffrey
Chapman, 1989]). See also M. D. Kamitsuka’s (Feminist Theology
and the Challenge of Difference [Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007]) critique of feminist theology’s use of The Color Purple, and S.
H. Hughes (“‘Eye to Eye’: Using Women’s Literature as Lenses for
Feminist Theology,” Literature and Theology 16(1) [2002]: 1–26) on
Fiorenza’s appropriation of womanist writing.
5. See note 1.
6. In his essay “What is a Sacred Text?,” R. Detweiler (in Semeia:
An Experimental Journal for Biblical Criticism Reader Response
Approaches to Biblical and Secular Texts 31 [1985]: 213–30) outlines
seven factors that comprise a sacred text: claims to divine inspiration,
revealing divinity, containing hidden meanings, requiring nominated
interpreters, able to transform lives, necessary in founding religious
rituals, and able to evoke a divine presence.
7. See note 1.
8. See, for example, L. Anderson, “Haunting the Margins of History:
Toni Morrisons’ Beloved,” in The Sociology of Sacred Texts, ed.
J. Davies and I. Wollaston (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1993); R. Harde, “Making Our Lives a Study: Feminist Theology
and Women’s Creative Writing,” Feminist Theology 15(1) (2006):
48–69; Hughes, “Eye to Eye” (2002); L. Hogan, From Women’s
NOTES 209
Experience to Feminist Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press,

1995); Kamitsuka, Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference
(2007); Walton, Literature, Theology and Feminism (2007a); and
Walton, Imagining Theology (2007b).
9. In a way that exemplifies the antagonism between second and third
wave feminists, girl culture has been heavily criticized for continuing
to deride and infantilize women, and for trivializing feminist objec-
tives (G. Greer, The Whole Woman [Peterborough: Anchor Books,
1999]; L. Heywood and J. Drake, “Introduction,” in Third Wave
Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, ed. L. Heywood and
J. Drake [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997b]).
10. Along with C. Klassen (ed., Feminist Spirituality: The Next Generation
[Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009a]), these are the first efforts
to explicitly and exclusively consider the relationship between third
wave and religion. D. Ruttenberg’s relatively early collection “shows
us what a little brains and chutzpah can do” (“Introduction,” in
Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism, ed. D. Ruttenberg
[Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 2001], p. xxii) as Jewish third wave women
“have the luxury—and the challenge—of figuring out . . . where they
want to be” (p. xxxii).
11. The ideology of individualism has become of great interest to the
sociology of religion, as one of the factors that appear to be influenc-
ing patterns of belief, practice and adherence within contemporary,
lived religion. I return to this in the following chapter.
12. Here, I am paraphrasing S. Burke, who broadly defines authorship
as “the arena in which culture attempts to define itself” (Authorship
from Plato to the Postmodern: A Reader [Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1995], p. 145).
13. Although some of these texts are part of the literary status quo, and
participants’ often-mentioned established literature, their place in
participants’ spiritual bookshelves was still surprising, and further
testament that the validation of spiritual journey has the most import,
not the genre or author.
5 Reading for Community

1. I would also suggest that the image of the woman reader has a deep
cultural resonance in the visual arts. Despite, or maybe because of,
women’s readership being “belittled” (A. G. Berggren, “Reading
Like a Woman,” in Reading Sites: Social Difference and Reader
Response, ed. P. P. Schweickart and E. A. Flynn [New York: Modern
Language Association of America, 2004], p. 168), artists have chosen
the single woman reader as the subject of paintings and photographs,
documented by Stefan Bollmann’s survey of visual and artistic repre-
sentations of Reading Women (London: Merrell, 2006). See also A.
Manguel, The History of Reading (Bath: Bath Press, 1996).
210 NOTES
2. Smithton is an assumed name Radway gives to the town in the United

States where she conducted her research.
3. The majority of the Smithton women were married, with children
under the age of 18, living in the suburbs, with 42 percent in full-
or part-time employment, while 38 percent were full-time house-
wives (J. A. Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and
Popular Literature [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1991 (1984)], pp. 50–59).
4. See, for example, G. Greer, The Female Eunuch (London: Flamingo,
HarperCollins, 1993 [1970]: 192–212) and S. Firestone, The
Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (London: Women’s
Press, 1979 [1970]: 139–47) for vociferous critiques of the genre of
romance, across films, television, and fiction and their women read-
ers. This is also an example of the determined rhetoric, associated
with the some figures of the second wave, which third wave feminism
has judged as prescriptive and dogmatic.
5. This finding is replicated in the joint research project “Women’s
Watershed Fiction” (L. Jardine and A. Watkins [London: BBC Radio
4 Women’s Hour, The Orange Prize for Fiction, 2004]) undertaken
by the Arts and Humanities Research Board Centre for Editing Lives
and Letters at Queen Mary University in partnership with organi-
zations including Orange, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, and The
Guardian. The project asked women to name the book that had
given them strength, reassurance, and confirmation, and many
respondents included books they had first read at school, as teenag-
ers, or in their early adult years (www.orangeprize.co.uk/research/
research2004.html).
6. Mary remembers the first time she read this poem:
This was something that was on the wall of the retreat house
and it was something that I’d given to women at things when
I’ve met them. Don’t know who it’s by, it was sent from some-
where and somebody found it and put it up on the wall.
7. Membership of one interpretative community does not disqualify
membership of another.
8. Pearce takes “structure of feeling” from Raymond Williams, Marxism
and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). It refers to
our subjective experiences of the world that are not grounded in cog-
nitive knowledge, but in the emotional.
9. Karin Littau (Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies and Bibliomania
[Cambridge: Polity, 2006]) argues that bodily, physical responses to
reading have been excluded from reading theory, figuring the reader
as sense-making (the cognitive interpreter) rather than sensuous.
Using feminism’s interest in the body, and the history of the reader
as a feeling being, she suggests that text-reader relationships are, at
least in part, a physical connection between two material bodies:
book and reader. When put alongside the third wave focus on the
NOTES 211
body, Littau’s work suggests a further possibility for researching the

corporeal aspects of reading within women’s contemporary lives,
with either sacred or literary texts, as an expression of the reader-
text relationship.
10. The interview continued:
Dawn: Why do you think it was so healing?
Amaw: Being through what’s she’s been through and it must have
been sheer and utter hell at times, [she] has come to terms with
herself. As probably, balanced the same way as I am . . . it sort
of integrated me forever . . . it was an inside thing, of the sort
of realizing that I feel sane. That was good.
11. For example, see P. Heelas, The New Age Movement: The Celebration
of Self and the Sacralization of Modernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996);
and W. C. Roof, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the
Baby Boom Generation (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1993).
12. Briefly, S. Bruce, “Religion in Britain at the Close of the Century:
A Challenge to the Silver Lining Perspective,” Journal of Contemporary
Religion 11(3) (1996): 291–75; K. Flanagan and P. Jupp, eds.,
A Sociology of Spirituality (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); P. Heelas et al.,
The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2005); G. Lynch, The New Spirituality: An
Introduction to Progressive Belief in the Twenty-First Century (London:
I. B. Tauris, 2007); W. C. Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers
and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999); R. Wuthnow, After Heaven: Spirituality
in America since the 1950s (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998); and L. Woodhead and P. Heelas, Religion in Modern Times
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
13. Cited in M. M. Wilcox, “When Sheila’s a Lesbian: Religious
Individualism amongst Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
Christians,” Sociology of Religion 63(4) (2002): 497–513.
Conclution: Keep on Troubling the Waves

1. Privilege checking is associated with the work of Peggy McIntosh
(1989). In her essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible
Backpack” (https://www.isr.umich.edu/home/diversity/resources/
white-privilege.pdf [accessed June 2014]), McIntosh names white
privilege as “an invisible weightless knapsack of assurances, tools,
maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emer-
gency gear, and blank checks.” She goes on to reflexively examine,
and therefore make visible, the ways her whiteness is an advantage
in everyday situations, such as: “If a traffic cop pulls me over or if
the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled
out because of my race.” For a fourth wave articulation of the term,
see H. Freeman (“Check Your Privilege! Whatever That Means,”
212 NOTES
The Guardian, June 5, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/

society/2013/jun/05/check-your-privilege-means [accessed
June 2014]).
2. Recent work includes, for example, the Journal of Religion, Media
and Digital Culture (http://jrmdc.com/), M. B. Bittarello, “Reading
Texts, Watching Texts: Mythopoesis on Neopagan Websites,” in
Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred,
ed. D. Llewellyn and D. F. Saywer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); H.
Campbell, Exploring Religious Communities Online: We Are One
in the Network (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005); H. Campbell, When
Religion Meets New Media (London: Routledge, 2010); P. H. Cheong
et al., “The Chronicles of Me: Understanding Blogging as a Religious
Practice,” Journal of Media and Religion 7 (2008): 107–131; P. H.
Cheong, “Religious Leaders, Mediated Authority and Social Change,”
Journal of Applied Communication Research 39(4) (2011): 265–71; S.
Hoover, Religion in the Media Age (London: Routledge, 2006); M.
Lövheim and G. Lynch, “The Mediatization of Religion Debate: An
Introduction,” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal
12(2) (2011): 111–17; T. Hutchings, “Contemporary Religious
Community and the Online Church,” Information, Communication
and Society 14(8) (2011): 1118–35; and K. S. Moody, “The Desire
of Interactivity and the Emerging Texts of the Blogosphere,” in
Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred, ed.
D. Llewellyn and D. F. Saywer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
3. www.beyondthebookproject.org/default.asp and www.devolving-
diasporas.com/index.htm
4. For instance, the reading group Kate (Christian) belonged to was
based in her parish.
5. https://www.facebook.com/TwitterYouthFeministArmy and @_TFYA
6. Increasingly, methodologies for studying the development of
gendered, religious, and national identities have been developed,
such as Eva Midden’s (forthcoming) exploration of forums for
Dutch Muslim women (“Gender, Religion and New Media in the
Netherlands: Rethinking the Position of Dutch Muslims through
Critical Multiculturalism and the Postsecular,” in Religion,
Equalities and Inequalities, ed. D. Llewellyn and S. Sharma
[Aldershot: Ashgate]).
Appendix A: Reader-Centered Feminist

Research: Methodology and Methods
1. It is useful to draw the distinction (albeit contested) between meth-
odology and method. Methodology refers to the theories under-
pinning the research process, which subsequently informs the
methods, which are the specific techniques used to conduct the
NOTES 213
research (S. Harding, “Is there a Feminist Method?,” in Feminisms,

ed. S. Kemp and J. Squires [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997
(1986)]; A. Gray, “I Want to Tell You a Story: The Narratives of
Video Playtime,” in Feminist Cultural Theory: Process and Production,
ed. B. Skeggs [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995];
L. Stanley, “Methodology Matters!,” in Introducing Women’s Studies:
Feminist Theory and Practice, ed. V. Robinson and D. Richardson
[Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997]).
2. Many of the methods first sanctioned by feminism (interviews,
reflexivity, participant observation, focus groups, and grounded
theory) have their origins in nonfeminist research (L. Kelly et al.,
“Researching Women’s Lives or Studying Women’s Oppression,” in
Researching Women’s Lives from a Feminist Perspective, ed. M. Maynard
and J. Purvis [London: Taylor & Francis, 1994], p. 46).
3. See, for example, G. Bowles and R. D. Klien, eds., Theories of Women’s
Studies (London: Routledge, 1983).
4. While there was a time when feminist research meant research by
and about women usually through qualitative methods, this has been
problematized, and mixed methods are now often used in feminist
research (M. M. Fonow and J. A. Cook, “Back to the Future: A Look
at the Second Wave of Feminist Epistemology and Methodology,”
in Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research, ed.
M. M. Fonow and J. A. Cook [Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2005]; T. E. Jayaratne and A. J. Stewart, “Quantitative and
Qualitative Methods in the Social Sciences: Current Feminist Issues
and Practical Strategies,” in Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship
as Lived Research, ed. M. M. Fonow and J. A. Cook [Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991]; L. Kelly, et al., “Defending the
Indefensible? Quantitative Methods and Feminist Research,” in
Debates and Issues in Feminist Research and Pedagogy, ed. J. Holland,
M. Blair, and S. Sheldon [Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1995
(1992)]; Kelly et al., “Researching Women’s Lives or Studying
Women’s Oppression,” 1994; P. Lather, “Feminist Perspectives
on Empowering Research Methodologies,” Women’s Studies
International Forum 11(6) (1988): 569–81; M. Maynard, “Methods,
Practice and Epistemology,” in Researching Women’s Lives From a
Feminist Perspective, ed. M. Maynard and J. Purvis [London: Taylor
& Francis, 1994]; A. Oakley, “Gender, Methodology and People’s
Ways of Knowing: Some Problems with Feminism and the Paradigm
Debate in Social Science,” Sociology 32(4) (1998): 707–31; Stanley,
“Methodology Matters!,” 1997).
5. For a clear articulation of this orthodoxy, see R. D. Klein, “How to
Do What We Want to Do: Thoughts about Feminist Methodology,”
in Theories of Women’s Studies, ed. G. Bowles and R. D. Klein
(London: Routledge, 1983); and S. Reinharz’s (Feminist Methods in
214 NOTES
Social Research [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992]) endorse-

ment of interviewing as a feminist method.
6. See N. Fielding, “Qualitative Interviewing,” in Researching Social
Life, ed. N. Gilbert (London: Sage, 1993); T. May, Social Research:
Issues, Methods and Process (Milton Keynes: Open University, 1997);
J. Mason, Qualitative Researching (London: Sage, 2002); J. Ritchie
and J. Lewis, eds., Qualitative Research Practice: A Guide for Social
Science Students and Researchers (London: Sage, 2003); T. Wengraf,
Qualitative Research Interviewing: Biographic Narrative and Semi-
Structured Methods (London: Sage, 2001); and D. Silverman, Doing
Qualitative Research (London: Sage, 2005).
7. I would only add that it might also provide the opportunity for mini-
mizing hierarchical relationships between any researcher and research
participant.
8. While rapport is thought to be more easily cultivated when the
interviewer and the interviewee already know each other, this is not
always the case. The advantages and disadvantages of knowing (and
not knowing) participants have received some attention (A. Oakley,
“Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms,” in Doing Feminist
Research, ed. H. Roberts [London: Routledge, 1981]; Reinharz,
Feminist Methods in Social Research, 1992, pp. 26–30). During my
fieldwork, levels of rapport varied and this did not always depend on
whether I already knew the participant.
9. For instance, examples of sensitive research in guides to social
research include sexual harassment (Reinharz, Feminist Methods in
Social Research, 1992), bullying in the workplace (P. Oliver, The
Student’s Guide to Research Ethics [Maidenhead: Open University
Press, 2003]), HIV counselling (Silverman, Doing Qualitative
Research, 2005), and obvious examples such as “sex, financial
problems, bereavement, relationship breakdown or serious illness”
(Legard et al., “In-Depth Interviews,” in Qualitative Research
Practice: A Guide for Social Science Students and Researchers, ed.
J. Ritchie and J. Lewis [London: Sage, 2003], p. 161).
10. A rigid understanding of feminist research theories and practices
mimics, as Mary Daly might say, “the tyranny of methodology”
(Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation
[London: Women’s Press, 1985 (1973)], p. 11). To aver that only
certain procedures or topics count as feminist research and knowl-
edge impedes questioning and the development of fresh perspectives,
and creates new orthodoxies (L. Stanley and S. Wise, Breaking Out:
Feminist Consciousness and Feminist Research [London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1983], p. 26).
11. U. King, ed., Religion and Gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995a);
U. King and T. Beattie, eds. Gender, Religion, and Diversity: Cross-
Cultural Perspectives (London: Continuum, 2005a); K. Knott,
“Women Researching, Women Researched: Gender as an Issue in the
NOTES 215
Empirical Study of Religion,” in Religion and Gender, ed. U. King

(Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); D. F. Sawyer, God, Gender and the Bible
(London: Routledge, 2002); and D. F. Sawyer, “Biblical Gender
Strategies: The Case of Abraham’s Masculinity,” in King and Beattie,
Gender, Religion and Diversity (2005).
12. U. King, “‘Gendering the Spirit’: Reading Women’s Spiritualities
with a Comparative Mirror,” in Reading Spiritualities: Constructing
and Representing the Sacred, ed. D. Llewellyn and D. F. Sawyer
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); and N. Watson, “A Feminist Critical
Reading of the Ecclesiology of ‘Lumen Gentium,’” in Is There a
Future for Feminist Theology?, ed. D. F. Sawyer and D. M. Collier
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).
13. T. Beattie, “Religious Identity and the Ethics of Representation: The
Study of Religion and Gender in the Secular Academy,” in King and
Beattie, Gender, Religion and Diversity (2005); M. M. Fonow and J.
A. Cook, Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991b); and N. Slee,
Women’s Faith Development: Patterns and Processes (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2004).
14. Kelly et al., “Defending the Indefensible?” (1995 [1992]); L. Stanley
and S. Wise, “Feminist Research, Feminist Consciousness and
Experiences of Sexism,” Women’s Studies International Quarterly 2
(1979): 359–74.
15. J. Holland and C. Ramazanoglu, “Coming to Conclusions: Power
and Interpretation in Researching Young Women’s Sexuality,”
in Researching Women’s Lives from a Feminist Perspective, ed.
M. Maynard and J. Purvis (London: Taylor & Francis, 1995);
P. Lather, “Feminist Perspectives on Empowering Research
Methodologies,” Women’s Studies International Forum 11(6) (1988):
569–81; J. Stacey, “Can There be a Feminist Ethnography?” Women’s
Studies International Forum 11(1) (1988): 21–27; and C. Thomas,
Female Forms: Experiencing and Understanding Disability (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999).
16. S. Reinharz, Feminist Methods in Social Research (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992); and A. Oakley, “Interviewing Women:
A Contradiction in Terms” (1981).
17. See Gray, “I Want to Tell You a Story” (1995); B. Gray, “Putting
Emotion and Reflexivity to Work in Researching Migration,”
Sociology 42(5) (2008): 935–52; Maynard, “Methods, Practice and
Epistemology,” (1994); and B. Skeggs, “Situating the Production of
Feminist Ethnography,” in Research Women’s Lives from a Feminist
Perspective, ed. M. Maynard and J. Purvis (London: Taylor Francis,
1994).
18. Gray, “Putting Emotion and Reflexivity to Work in Researching
Migration” (2008); N. Hoel, “Embodying the Field: A Researcher’s
Reflections on Power Dynamics, Positionality and the Nature
216 NOTES
of Research Relationships,” Fieldwork in Religion 8(1) (2013):

27–49; H. Meads, “Insider Research into ‘Experiment with Light’:
Uncomfortable Reflexivity in a New Field,” Quaker Studies 11(2)
(2009): 282–98; Skeggs, “Situating the Production of Feminist
Ethnography” (1994); W. S. Pillow, “Confession, Catharsis or
Cure? Rethinking the Uses of Reflexivity as Methodological Power
in Qualitative Research,” Qualitative Studies in Education 16(2)
(2003): 175–96; L. Presser, Negotiating Power and Narrative in
Research: Implications for Feminist Methodology,” Signs: Journal
of Women and Culture 30(4) (2005): 2067–90: Stanley and Wise,
“Feminist Research, Feminist Consciousness and Experiences of
Sexism,” (1979): H. Sampson et al., “A Price Worth Paying? Consider
the ‘Cost’ of Reflexive Research Methods and the Influence of
Feminist Ways of ‘Doing,’” Sociology 42(5) (2008): 919–33, and
M. Trzebiatowska, When Reflexivity Is Not Enough: Doing Research
with Polish Catholics (Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen, 2009) have
explicitly addressed the emotional costs and benefits of undertaking
feminist fieldwork across a variety of subjects and disciplines.
19. This issue of “othering” participants in research has been very well
documented: A. Fontana and J. H. Frey, “Interviewing: The Art
of Science,” in Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials,
ed. N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (London: Sage, 1998); Oakley,
“Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms” (1981); Oliver,
The Student’s Guide to Research Ethics (2003); Mason, Qualitative
Researching (2002); Reinharz, Feminist Methods in Social Research
(1992); Skeggs, “Situating the Production of Feminist Ethnography”
(1994); and Stacey, “Can There be a Feminist Ethnography?” (1988).
20. Although it is impossible to fully anticipate how the research process
will unfold, informed consent is the guiding principle that partici-
pants should be made aware of so they know what they “are letting
themselves in for.” To this end, prior to meetings, participants were
asked to complete a consent form detailing the research, the volun-
tary nature of the project, and their right to refuse questions and to
withdraw at any time.
21. For instance, the British Sociological Association’s statement of ethi-
cal practices states:
The anonymity and privacy of those who participate in the
research process should be respected. Personal information
concerning research participants should be kept confiden-
tial. In some cases it may be necessary to decide whether it
is proper or appropriate even to record certain kinds of sen-
sitive information. (http://www.britsoc.co.uk/equality/
Statement+Ethical+Practice.htm#_anon)
For further discussion, see Fontana and Frey, “Interviewing: The
Art of Science” (1998); J. Lewis and J. Ritchie, “Generalising from
Qualitative Data,” in Qualitative Research Practice: A Guide for
NOTES 217
Social Science Students and Researchers, ed. J. Ritchie and J. Lewis

(London: Sage, 2003); D. Llewellyn and “Helen,” “Coming
Clean in Researching Twelve Step Programmes: Anonymity,
Disclosure, Transparency and the Reflexive, Recovering
Researcher,” Unpublished paper (2012); Mason, Qualitative
Researching (2002); Oliver, The Student’s Guide to Research Ethics
(2003); and Silverman, Doing Qualitative Research (2005).
22. This was an interesting process. Participants chose names of loved
ones, factual or fictitious heroines, or names they felt were more
attractive or pleasing than their own or middle or confirmation
names. This was left to the end of the meeting, when participants
were aware of how much information they had disclosed and there-
fore could make an informed choice as to whether a pseudonym or
their own name was more appropriate.
23. The situation was resolved easily and I accepted her change of my
spelling of “mom” to “mum.”
24. Mason, Qualitative Researching (2002); Lewis and Ritchie,
“Generalising from Qualitative Data” (2003); D. Silverman, ed.,
Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice (London: Sage,
2004); and Wengraf, Qualitative Research Interviewing (2001).
25. See appendix C for a brief introduction to these groups.
26. See C. Eller, Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality
Movement in America (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993);
L. S. Neal, Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational
Fiction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006);
L. Pearce, Feminism and the Politics of Reading (London: Arnold,
1997); A. Pryce, “A Post-Christian Feminist Spirituality?” PhD diss.,
Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaster
(1999); Slee, Women’s Faith Development (2004); and G. Vincett,
“The Fusers: New Forms of Spiritualized Christianity,” in Women
and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization, ed. K. Aune,
S. Sharma, and G. Vincett (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
27. With hindsight, the initial email should have been more precise, out-
lining more clearly its introductory nature. Although this would have
slowed down the sampling process by adding another stage, it would
have allowed more time to reflect on how closely the groups suited
and/or challenged the research objectives.
28. S. Arber, “Designing Samples,” in Researching Social Life, ed.
N. Gilbert (New York: Sage, 1993); and Gray, “I Want to Tell You a
Story” (1995).
29. Such networks can be sites of interest. However, off-line networks
may be easier to study as they depend on person-to-person connec-
tions but can result in a narrow sample of individuals connected for
very specific reasons. Online networks, in theory, can be limitless.
The audience is difficult to fully detect and more complex, as asso-
ciations can have interconnecting lifelines in and out of cyberspace.
218 NOTES
For instance, Sanctus 1 works across their website and blog, as well as
regularly meeting to worship.
30. This might have added another dimension to the research and a
point of contrast, particularly with regard to the “meaninglessness”
of reading as an activity in women’s daily lives (J. Hermes, Reading
Women’s Magazines: An Analysis of Everyday Media Use [Cambridge:
Polity, 1995]). However, my focus on reading and women’s spiritual
lives is already a broad category.
Appendix C: Groups, Networks,

and Organizations
1. I also have a more personal connection with Sanctus 1. A close friend
who participated in the fieldwork is a founding member of this
group.
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Inde x
activity of reading, 18–21, 120 see also Barthes, Roland; “death

see also Radway, Janice; reading of the author”; Foucault,
actual readers. See reader-centered Michele; gynocritics, Miller,
research; real readers; turn to Nancy, K.
readers “autokeonony” (self in community),
Alcoff, Linda, 52, 60 61
Alfonso, Rita and Jo Trigilio, 39, awakenings, 15, 160
190n5, 199n2 Christ, Carol, P., 93–7
Anderson, Benedict, 116, 133, 141 participants’ literary awakenings,
see also imagined communities; 120–2
reading for imagined
communities “backlash,” 3, 33, 36, 38–9, 154
anti-essentialism, 21–3, 50–62, 90 Baumgardner, Jennifer, 3, 154, 157
see also essentialism Baumgardner, Jennifer and Amy
Armour, Ellen, 12, 54 Richards, 33, 34, 48, 58, 61,
Atwood, Margaret, 10, 15, 93, 102, 200n4
94–5, 112, 191n3, 191n4, Beattie, Tina, 44, 45, 202n12,
194n9, 208n3 215n13
Aune, Kristin, 34, 190n21, 199n3, Bellah, Robert, 144
197n27 Bible, 65–7
Aune, Kristin and Catherine “archetypal biblical paradigm,” 72
Redfern, 200n5, 201n5 in the Christian community,
Aune, Kristin and Louise Livesey, 74–5
34, 37, 40, 102, 190n5, “depatriarchalized,” 71
199n2 and feminist hermeneutics,
London Third Wave Feminists, 68–74, 203n18, 206n2
200n5 “immasculation,” 81–3
authentic realism, 93, 99, 208n2 as an instrument of power, 79–80
authors masculine imagery in, 65–7, 68,
as friends, 136–40 77, 82, 83, 84
participants’ relationship to, patriarchy in, 10, 65–7, 68, 69,
134–5, 136–40 71, 76–8, 83
as “textual others,” 134–5, post-Christian reading of, 79–81
136–40 post-Christian rejection of, 69,
women’s authorship, 10–12, 17, 76–8
90–3, 96, 97, 98, 100–1, reading, qualitative studies of, 19,
106–9, 112 20, 151–2, 195n17, 196n17
252 INDEX
Bible—Continued spiritual themes in women’s

rejecting, 69, 76–9 writing, 14–15, 17, 93–7,
rejecting and reading, 76–81 194n4, 191n4
resisting and reading, 81–7 stories, 13
The Woman’s Bible, 68 text-centered approach, 14–17
women’s limited access to, 17–18 thealogical consciousness, 14–15
see also canons; filtering women’s spiritual quest, 15, 93–7
The Bible and Culture Collective, 12 Christ, Carol P. and Judith Plaskow,
biblical literacy, 196n18 3, 24, 190n2
Bokhari, Raana, 152, 196n19 on feminist spirituality, 24,
book groups, 124–5, 128, 152–3, 190n2, 197n27
174, 195n14 on women’s writing, 11
Bruce, Steve, 144, 145, 151, Cochrane, Kira, 153, 154, 155,
211n12 156, 157, 159, 189n3
Butler, Judith, 73, 107, 162 Collier, Diane, M. and Deborah F.
Sawyer, 45, 161
Cannon, Katie, 11, 101, 192n4 Collins, Patricia Hill, 56, 158
canons The Color Purple, 1–2, 4, 149. See
filtering the biblical canon, also Hampson, Daphne;
66–74 Walker, Alice
formation of, Christian, 206n1 in feminist theology, 1–2, 10–11,
limits of, 71–4 12, 101, 208n4
reader-centered canon-in-canon, in womanist theology, 101,
6, 74–87 189n1, 192n4
theologian-centered canon-in- Cooey, Paula, 50
canon, 6, 68–74 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 56, 158
Western literary canon, 82, 97, Crites, Stephen, 12–13
98, 112, 207n8
see also Bible; filtering Daly, Mary, 3, 37, 43–4, 53, 69,
Carrette, Jeremy and Richard King, 77–8, 190n2, 214n10
145 post-Christian, 24–5
Christ, Carol P. “death of the author,” 19, 90,
on Atwood, Margaret, 15, 93, 106–8, 194n12, 209n12,
208n3 209n13
on Chopin, Kate, 15, 93, 94–5 see also authors, Barthes,
essentialism, 96–7 Roland; “death of the
and gynocriticism, 91, 93–6 author”; Foucault, Michele;
implying the reader, 14–16 gynocritics; Miller, Nancy,
on Lessing, Doris, 11, 14–15, K.
93, 95 Detloff, Madelyn, 36
reading for sameness, 93–7 Detweiler, Robert, 98, 208n6
as a real reader, 15 Dicker, Rory and Alison Piepmeier,
on Rich, Adrienne, 15, 93, 95 36, 55, 59, 202n9, 204n25
Shange, Ntozake, 15, 93, 95, disciplinary disconnections, 4, 5,
96–7 32, 42, 46, 47–9
INDEX 253
Dufour, Lynn Resnick, 75–6 resisting and reading, 81–7

theologian-centered canon-in-
Eagleton, Mary, 72 canon, 6, 68–74
Eagleton, Terry, 16 see also canons
e-books, 151 Findlen, Barbara, 33, 55, 56
“either/or,” 49, 50, 56, 57, 61, 64, Fiorenza, Elizabeth Schüssler,
66, 115, 160, 162 44, 68, 69, 70, 72, 79, 82,
Elam, Diane, 61–2, 115, 175 206n3, 206n4, 206n5,
Eller, Cynthia, 14, 23, 43, 193n7, 207n9, 208n4
197n27, 217n26 first wave feminism, 3, 33, 42–3,
essentialism, 12, 21–3, 50–62, 96 44
“strategic essentialism,” 22 Fish, Stanley, 132–3, 134
“women’s experiences,” 15, 21–3, Flint, Kate, 18, 123
50–62 Fonow, Mary Margaret and Judith
see also anti-essentialism A. Cook, 168, 213n4,
Evans, Mary, 61, 206n2, 206n3 215n13
Foucault, Michel, 106, 107,
Faludi, Susan, 33, 38 194n12
feminism see also “death of the author”
see first wave feminism; second fourth wave feminism, 3, 149, 150
wave feminism; third wave activism, 153–4, 155, 157, 158
feminism; fourth wave anti-academy, 157–8
feminism; wave metaphor; generational conflict, 157–8,
wave zero 159–60
feminist “click,” 2, 4, 62, 66, generations, 154, 156–7, 159–60
189n2 intersectionality, 155–6, 158
feminist generations, 32–41, 154, as a new feminism, 154
156–7, 159–60 origins of, 153–4
conflict within, 35–7, 157–8, privilege-checking, 156, 211n1
159–60, 209n9, 210n4 religion, 160–2
“matraphor,” 35 use of the Internet, 155, 156,
feminist spirituality, 23–4, 190n2, 158–9, 160
197n27 Fuller, Danielle and James Proctor,
feminist theology and literature, 146
10–12, 14–18, 66, 93–101, Fuss, Diana, 22, 205n29
108, 112–13
feminist theology’s reservedness, Gamble, Sarah, 38, 39, 201n7
4, 5, 32, 45–6, 50, 71–4, Garrison, Ednie, 34, 37, 41, 150,
161–2 190n5, 199n2, 200n4,
Fetterley, Judith, 81–3, 207n8 204n21, 204n22
“fictional devotion,” 20 Gillis, Stacy, Gillian Howie, and
filtering the biblical canon, 66–74 Rebecca Munford, 33, 57,
reader-centered canon-in-canon, 199n3, 200n4, 201n7,
6, 74–87 204n22
rejecting and reading, 76–81 Goldenberg, Naomi, 10
254 INDEX
Greer, Germaine, 33, 36, 37, 201n7, household codes, 70, 85, 206n2
209n9, 210n4 Humm, Maggie, 44
“groundless” solidarity, 61
Grung, Anne Hege, 152, 196n19 implied reader, 14–18, 73, 74, 86,
gynocriticism, 6, 17, 89ff, 136, 162 90, 150, 174, 193n6
and Christ, Carol, P., 91, 93–7 interpretive communities, 132–4
in feminist theology and intersectionality, 55–8, 60, 73, 115,
literature, 93–7, 100, 12 155–6, 158
overturning gynocriticism, Irigaray, Luce, 44, 73, 100,
102–13 202n14
questioning gynocriticism, Iser, Wolfgang, 193n6
97–102
women’s authorship, 90, 91–101, Kaplan, E. Anne, 153
136, 137 Kelly, Liz, Shelia Burton, and Linda
Regan, 166, 169, 213n2,
Hampson, Daphne, 10, 24–5, 69, 213n4
77, 110, 189n1, 198n30, King, Ursula, 17, 24, 43, 122,
208n4 197n26, 197n27, 197n28,
The Color Purple, 10, 189n1 214n11, 215n12
post-Christian, 24–5 King, Ursula and Tina Beattie,
Haraway, Donna, 59 197n28, 214n11
Harding, Sandra, 169, 170, 213n1 Klassen, Chris, 43, 46, 48, 197n27,
Harnois, Catherine, 41, 205n30 200n3, 209n10
Heelas, Paul, 144, 151, 211n11 Klein, Melanie, 57
Heelas, Paul and Linda Woodhead, Kristeva, Julia, 44, 100, 115,
144, 151, 174, 193n5, 199n1, 202n14, 202n14
211n12
Henry, Astrid, 31, 33, 35, 51, 54, Legard, Robin, Keegan, Jill, and
190n5, 199n2, 204n26 Kit Ward, 167, 214n9
Hermes, Joke, 16, 19, 21, 195n16, Lessing, Doris, 10, 11, 14–15, 93,
218n30 95, 112
Heywood, Leslie, 47, 199n5, The Four Gated City, 14–5
200n5, 202n9, 209n9 Lewis Jane and Jane Ritchie, 169,
Heywood, Leslie and Jennifer 174, 214n6, 214n9, 216n21,
Drake, 34, 37, 39, 38, 47, 217n21, 217n24
52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, Littau, Karin, 16, 123, 210n9
200n4 Long, Elisabeth, 19, 124, 128, 152,
“holistic milieu,” 174 153
Holland, Janet and Caroline Lorde, Audre, 10, 53, 204n23
Ramazanoglu, 164, 173, Lövheim, Mia, 160, 212n2
215n15 Lynch, Gordon, 144, 151, 174,
Holstein, James and Jaber F. 193n5, 211n12, 212n2
Gubrium, 166
hooks, bell, 35, 54, 58–9, 204n23, Magee, Penelope Margaret, 31, 42,
205n30 44, 46, 49
INDEX 255
Mason, Jennifer, 164, 169, 174, Radway, Janice, 18, 19, 119–20,
175, 214n6, 216n19, 123, 124, 195n16, 196n20,
217n21, 217n24 196n21, 210n2, 210n3
Maynard Mary and June Purvis, reader response criticism, 16, 19,
167–8, 213n2, 215n15, 194n13, 195n15
215n17 reader-centered feminist research,
Miller, Nancy, T., 107 163–8
Mills, Sara, 16, 82–3, 93, 195n15 anonymity, 171, 216n21
Mills, Sara and Lynne Pearce, confidentiality, 171
190n1 conversations, 166–7
Modleski, Tania, 17, 39, 123, data analysis, 22–3, 173
201n7 duty of care, 167
Moi, Toril, 97, 98, 199n1, 202n14 ethics, 166–7
Moraga, Cherríe and Gloria feminist methodologies, 164,
Anzaldúa, 53, 55, 204n24 167–73
informed consent, 170–2,
Neal, Lynn, S., 20, 118, 164, 216n20
217n26 interviewing, 164–8
New Criticism, 16 power, 170–3
qualitative approaches, 164–5
Oakley, Ann, 21, 164, 213n4, reflexivity, 168–70, 177
214n8, 215n16, 216n19 sampling, 173–7, 185–7
Osiek, Carolyn, 69–70, 76 diversity, 174–5
snowball, 176
participants’ biographies, 23–6, theoretical, 173–7
181–3 sensitive research, 166–7
and feminism, 62–4 thematic analysis, 177
Pearce, Lynne, 132–4, 140, 151, transcribing, 171
190n1, 195n16, 210n8, readers
217n26 real readers, 4, 5, 9, 10, 15,
Peay, Pythia, 3, 157 18–21, 67, 71, 90, 146, 149,
Plaskow, Judith, 3, 11, 44–5, 46, 150, 174, 193n6
96, 190n2 turn to real readers, 4, 5, 19,
Plaskow, Judith and Carol Christ, 18–22, 150, 163–5
1, 190n2, 191n4, 197n27, visual images of, 209n1
206n3 see also qualitative approaches
“political generations,” 40–1 to reading; reader-centered
post-Christian, 24–5, 43, 69, research
193n7, 198n29, 208n4, reading
217n26 for community, 115–47
postfeminism, 38–9, 59, 201n7, in community, 128, 146, 152
201n9 for difference, 5, 89–113, 115,
postmodernism, 3, 37, 38, 56, 57, 116, 149
61 for escape, 117–20, 122–3
Poulet, George, 117 as a free space, 119–20
256 INDEX
reading—Continued religion and literature, 12–14, 194n9

for imagined community, 4, 116, religious individualism, 144–6,
141, 133, 140–3, 147 211n13
for individuality, commonality, “Sheliaism,” 144
and community, 5, 6, 7, 28, rereading, 80, 86, 136
29, 32, 58–62, 62–3, 64, 68, resisting reader, 81–3, 207n8
113, 146–7, 149–50 (see also “re-vision,” 11, 15
third wave feminism) Ribbens, Jane, 168, 171
for intimate community, 7, 116, risky readings, 109–12
132, 133, 134 Ruether, Rosemary, 17, 66, 69, 70,
with the author, 136–40 161, 192n4, 206n3
with the text, 134, 135–6 Ruttenberg, Danya, 47, 49, 103,
for isolation, 117–20 200n4, 203n16, 209n10
for pleasure, 85, 119–20, 122,
123, 152 sacralization, 144
qualitative approaches to, 18–21, sacred/secular divide, 4, 31, 32,
150–3, 164–5, 195n14, 42–50, 46, 50, 64, 66, 67,
194n15, 194n16, 194n17, 90, 150, 161, 162
195n19 Sawyer, Deborah, F., xi, xii, 70, 71,
and recommendation and 73, 192n4, 196n19, 202n12,
discussion, 124–32 203n18, 215n11
as ritual, 26 Sawyer, Deborah, F. and Diane
for sameness, 90, 93–102, 105, 111 Collier, M., 45, 161
as “social glue,” 146 Schuster, Julia, 159
as “social infrastructures,” 124 Scott, Joan, W., 22
for spiritual nourishment, 26–8, Seale, C, 169–70
83–7, 102–3, 104–6, 108–9, second wave feminism, 3, 32, 33,
109–13, 115, 118–19, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 44, 49,
120–2, 125–7, 134–6, 137, 123, 154, 155, 205n29,
142–7 210n4
as a spiritual practice, 10–14, community, 51–4
19–20, 26–9 essentialism, 50–2, 57, 60, 90
see also reader-centered research; generational conflict, 35–7,
real readers; turn to real 209n9, 210n4
readers and participants, 62–3
Redfern, Catherine, and Kristin postcolonial critique of, 52–5
Aune, 201n5 secularization, 143, 198n29
Reger, Jo, 39, 63, 190n5, 199n2, Showalter, Elaine, 6, 89, 91–3, 97.
200n4, 205n26, 205n27 See gynocritics
Reinharz Shulamit, 165, 213n5, Siegel, Deborah, 60, 201n7
214n8, 214n9, 215n16, sifting, 75–6
216n19 see also filtering
religion. See also spirituality Skeggs, Beverley, 168, 172, 177,
neglecting religion, 43–5, 47ff 213n1, 215n17, 216n18,
participants’ understandings, 25 216n19
INDEX 257
Slee, Nicola, 9, 14, 121, 174, 177, third wave feminism, 3, 31–2,
196n25, 215n13, 217n26 190n5, 199n2, 199–200n3,
speculative reader, 16 200n4
“spiritual literacy,” 122 anti-essentialism, 6, 50–4, 55–7,
spirituality, 23 58, 59, 60, 115
contemporary spirituality, 143–6 “backlash,” 33, 38–9
feminist spiritualities, 14, 23–4, black third wave feminism,
25, 48, 191n2, 192n4, 49, 52, 55, 53, 204n23,
197n27, 197n28, 200n3, 204n23, 204n24, 204n25,
209n10, 217n26 204n26, 205n, 214n22
“holistic milieu,” 174 feminist generations, 6, 32–42
participants’ spiritual practices, conflict within, 35–7, 209n9,
198n33 210n4
participants’ understandings of and feminist hermeneutics, 73
spirituality, 23–6, 102–4, and feminist theology, 47–50
113, 143 identity, 48, 56–7, 141
“progressive spirituality,” 174 individualism, 48, 55–62,
women’s spiritual quest in Christ, 102–4
Carol, P., 15, 93–7 London Third Wave Feminists, 33,
Spivak, Gayatri, 22, 108 200n5
Stacey, Judith, 168, 171–2, 173, neglecting religion, 43–5, 47–50,
177, 215n15, 216n19 160
Stanley, Liz, 213n1, 213n4 as new feminism, 34–5
Stanley, Liz and Sue Wise, 168, origins of, 32ff
169, 214n10, 215n14, popular culture, 54, 57, 155,
216n18 204n25, 215n27, 209n9
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 37, 42–3, postcolonial origins, 52–5
44, 68 religion, 47–50, 102–4, 203n18,
Stone, Alison, 44, 51 209n10
Sutcliffe, Steve, 151, 193n8 search for individuality,
commonality, and
Taylor, Charles, 144 community, 6, 7, 28, 29, 32,
texts 58–64 (see also reading)
as friends, 134–5 spiritualities, 102–4, 113, 143
“meaning of the text,” 18–21 Third Wave Foundation, 33,
participants’ collections of, 200n5
104–6, 108–9, 112, 124–7, Thistlethwaite, Susan, 2, 101,
134–6 191n4, 208n4
sacred texts, 10, 17, 66–7, 93–4, Thomas, Carol, 22, 169, 215n15
98–101, 206n1, 208n6 Tompkins, Jane, 19, 117, 194n13,
text-centered approaches, 14–17, 195n15
18–20 Trible, Phylis, 70, 71, 190n2,
“textual others,” 134–5 190n3
as author, 136–8, 140 Trzebiatowska, Marta, xii, 32, 161,
as text, 134, 135–6 216n18
258 INDEX
victim feminism, 38 as a secular narrative, 4, 31–2,

42–50, 64
Walker, Alice, 35, 54, 112, 191n3, wave zero, 3
208n4. See also The Color Weaver-Zercher, Valerie, 19, 20,
Purple 150
Walker, Rebecca, 33, 35–6, 37, Weedon, Chris, 22, 98
48, 50, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, Western literary canon, 91–3, 98
200n4, 200n5, 202n9, Whelehan, Imelda, 38, 201n7,
202n20, 205n28 205n29
Walter, Natasha, 34 “whitefeminism,” 54, 55
Walton, Heather, 11–12, 93, Whittier, Nancy, 40
98–100, 101, 106, 108, 110, Wilcox, Melissa, 144, 145, 211n13
189n1, 192n4, 192n14, Wolf, Naomi, 38, 52
207n1, 209n8 Women’s Watershed Fiction, 210n5
wave metaphor, 3, 31. See also first womens’ writing
wave; second wave; third see authors; feminist theology
wave; fourth wave; wave zero and literature; gynocriticism;
generational conflict, 35–7 sacred texts
generational meanings, 31, Woodhead, Linda, 25, 45, 144,
32–42, 62, 63, 64, 149, 202n12
156–8, 199n1 Woodhead, Linda and Paul Heelas,
imagery, 31, 40 211n12
as linear narrative, 4, 31, 37, 40,
157 Young, Iris Marion, 59
“matraphor,” 35
as radio waves, 41 Zack, Naomi, 56, 115

(Breaking Feminist Waves) Dawn Llewellyn (Auth.) - Reading, Feminism, and Spirituality - Troubling The Waves-Palgrave Macmillan US (2015)

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Breaking Feminist Waves

LINDA MARTÍN ALCOFF, Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center

Appendix A: Reader-Centered Feminist Research:

Breaking Feminist Waves is a series designed to rethink the conven-

Waves provides a forum for comparative, historical, and interdisci-

It is very overwhelming to think back over the care, encourage-

Sociological Association Sociology of Religion Study Group, and

Perspectives, edited by E. Arweck and M. Guest. Aldershot: Ashgate,

During my third year as an undergraduate in 1997, reading Systematic

Susan Thistlethwaite (1989, p. 90) has dryly noted the prevalence of

It is about the experience of women, their everyday living and how

I now cringe when I read this journal, and think of my 20-year-old-

I had inherited from my Catholic upbringing and theological stud-

where they belonged, and where I belonged as a young(er) feminist in

reading as a third wave practice. As the third wave seeks commonali-

Crucially, when the third wave overlooks women’s experiences

themes across Christian and post-Christian spiritualities, chapter

Reading, Feminism, and Spirituality

The Practice of Women’s Spiritual Reading

Feminist Theology and Literature

There is depth and vibrancy to feminist theology’s interaction with

spiritual experiences to counteract the androcentricism of the estab-

Reading as a Spiritual Resource

The stories within which he [sic] has awakened to consciousness must

Further evidence that reading is a spiritual activity is suggested in

The Implied Reader in Feminist

to put into words were expressed in Lessing’s story of Martha Quest.

Christ discovered The Four Gated-City while searching for “religious

woman reader in feminist theology and literature is fulfilled by the

to be investigated and assessed in relation to its potential to be part

Women’s limited input as writers (of scripture, ecclesiology, or theol-

the world’s religions androcentric, but also their readings: “Reader

Turning to Real Readers

the textual interpretations that participants construe from their own

instrumentally as a channel that submits access to the women’s spiritual

Using “Women’s Experiences” 23

contradictory interpretations guaranteed by social interests” (Weedon,

McRobbie argues, “representations are interpretations” (1982, p. 51)

Introducing the Readers

It draws on many religious traditions, but answers to none. It has

primary characteristic of feminist spirituality is variety. For virtually

Christ and Plaskow (1992a [1979]) demonstrate this diversity

The Role of Reading

reading led me to other networks of people and has made me inter-

The centrality of reading to my participants’ spiritual journeys was

It’s something that . . . I can do at times which I can choose when to

Another basis for the high incidence of reading is the overall,

community, through commonality. However, before I begin to use

It is almost impossible to speak of feminist history without “talking

spiritual lives. Although the early stages of the women’s movement

Aging the Wave: Generational

Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake’s (1997a) Third Wave Agenda:

In order to be a feminist one must live in poverty, always critique, never

For Walker, when a new wave is instigated it brings a freshness and

In the panel discussions that followed . . . third wave dissenters were

antagonism toward contemporary feminism, Mary Daly (1998,

Just when record numbers of younger women were supporting feminist

The backlash includes the range of hostile responses to feminism that

has passed, as gender injustice and women’s oppression in the public

I join London Third Wave or be a Riot Grrrl in my forties? These

These criticisms have forced feminist thinkers to recast the wave

pp. 509–10), as a representative of second wave radical writing (Kemp

and already recognized disciplinary divide occurring across feminist