Abstract
Butler (Gender trouble and the subversion of identity. Routledge, New York, 1990) has famously argued that gender is performed and that being female is a socially constructed and constantly negotiated identity. Knott (The location of religion: a spatial analysis. Equinox, London, 2005a; Spatial theory and method for the study of religion. Temenos 41(2):153–184, 2005b) similarly argues that space is socially and dynamically constructed. With Thomas Tweed (2006), I argue in this chapter that religions are also socially constructed, dynamic ‘sacroscapes’ (61). In the margins of these intersecting social constructions, other, non-normative, identities may be performed which challenge and sometimes deconstruct the centre. I examine how one non-normative identity group, Christian feminists, negotiate, subvert and reconstruct gender, feminism and religion in (and out) of the space(s) of UK liberal Christianity. This negotiation and performance is complexified by their belief in the location of the divine within the ‘church’ as both built environments and broader institutions. Christian feminists thus highlight the politics of the construction of the sacred, gender and place. Although they may be marginal in the churches, they are indicative of larger social trends (including secular feminism) which Brown (The death of Christian Britain. Routledge, London, 2001) and others argue are central to the fate of the churches in the West. Methodologically, this chapter points to the recent ways human geography and spatial theory is shaping other social science disciplines, notably sociology of religion.
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Notes
- 1.
I am aware that geographers have made various distinctions between ‘space’ and ‘place’, but also that feminist geographers have critiqued this division as gendered (see, e.g. Rose 1993; McDowell 1999), so that ‘space’ has been treated as abstract yet dynamic (and hence implicitly ‘male’) and ‘place’ has been treated as local, passive and associated with nature (and hence implicitly ‘female’). Since I have no wish to uphold such hierarchical and falsely dualistic distinctions, I have here treated the concepts as interrelated spheres that interact with one another and cannot easily be teased apart. In general, I follow the lead of my informants who use the terms almost interchangeably.
- 2.
The Christian informants in my study came from the Church of England (Anglican), Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Unitarian and United Reformed churches.
- 3.
By ‘received’ or ‘given’ space I mean spaces such as churches which have histories of particular ideologies and symbol systems, which the people who use such spaces inherit and must engage with on some level whether through acceptance and continuance or through subversion and change.
- 4.
Ruether and others have shown how women have been conflated with the natural or material world (and opposed to the male who has been associated with the cerebral and spiritual).
- 5.
Only one participant specifically mentioned attending a church in which the built environment could reflect her egalitarian, liberation theology. Julie’s Catholic Church is a twentieth century ‘in-the-round’ church, a built environment conceived on an egalitarian ideology. It is perhaps this egalitarian space that helps Julie cope with the difficulties she identifies in Catholic hierarchy and language.
- 6.
Since the time of our interview, Phillipa has stopped attending her Catholic Church, in part because of her dismay at Catholic sexual abuse scandals. She still occasionally attends a Church of England Cathedral and is involved with the Catholic Women’s Network, which she views as her church community.
- 7.
Since the time of this communication, Sherri has moved into hospital chaplaincy, in part because the politics of remaining in the church grew too personally and professionally painful.
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Vincett, G. (2013). ‘There’s just no space for me there’: Christian Feminists in the UK and the Performance of Space and Religion. In: Hopkins, P., Kong, L., Olson, E. (eds) Religion and Place. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4685-5_10
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