The End of Religion ― Toward a Feminist Re-invention of the State

The End of Religion takes seriously the visionary call by Gayatri Spivak and Judith Butler to re-invent the state devoid of nationalisms and fascisms as a feminist goal. There is a need to challenge the creation and positioning of religion by the state as a protected bastion that is shielded from the full force of feminist critique and analysis. The contributors in this volume will draw on recent critical thinking that collapses the accepted boundaries between religion and secularity in order to re-think the function, meaning and histories of religion and its colonial legacies in the modern West. Bringing together critical essays and case studies from North America, Britain, Europe and Australia, the authors strategically position religion as a quasi state within the state. They bring post-colonial and feminist analyses to consider the influences and implications of western binary notions of religion/secular and religion/state on elements of public policy and governance including human rights, social responsibility, violence and economic resourcing.

Naomi Goldenberg is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. Shehas recently co-edited with Tim Fitzgerald and Trevor Stack Religion as A Category of Governance and Sovereignty? to be published by Brill in 2015. Her essay in the collection will be her third publication in a series of articles about theorizing religions as vestigial states. Her work was the focus of the North American Association for the Study of Religion’s presidential panel at the meeting of the AAR in San Diego in November 2014. For the last three years, she has lectured widely on religion as a tool of statecraft in North America and Europe. She is the author of two seminal books in the field of feminism and religion Changing of the Gods (Beacon Press 1975) and Resurrecting the Body (Crossroads 1993) Kathleen McPhillips, University of Newcastle, Australia is a sociologist of religion and gender and has kwritten extensively on women, religion and politics. Her recent work looks at anti-discrimination law and the vestigial state. She was a presenter at the North American Association for the Study of Religion’s presidential panel at the meeting of the AAR in San Diego in November 2014 which responded to theories of the Vestigial State. She has published recently in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (2013) and Feminist theology (2015). She has edited two books Popular Spiritualties (Ashgate 2006 with Lynne Hume) and Post-Christian Feminisms (Ashgate 2008 with Lisa Isherwood)