Editors’ Introduction

One of the lessons that is the most challenging for people to absorb is that large, multivocal, diverse systems often contain both good and evil. Countries, political movements, religions, universities, and populations have the potential to offer great benefits and inflict significant harm. Usually they’re doing both at the same time. This issue of the journal demonstrates that complexity through a focus on religious institutions. The contributors explain that faith communities have, on the one hand, caused pain and suffering through cultures of sexual and spiritual abuse. Religious communities have also facilitated nuanced and ethical interactions with scripture while providing a space of empowerment and healing. The authors in this issue highlight how people wrestle with this reality.

Each year, we honor submissions from scholars who are less than four years postgraduation with the Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza New Scholars Award (NSA). This year’s winner of the NSA is Anneli Loepp Thiessen. Her article, “‘Reckless Love’: Sexual Violence, Gendered Interpretations, and Intimate and Aggressive Language in Contemporary Worship Music,” explores how language in contemporary Christian music affects worshippers who have experienced abuse. Thiessen observes an interesting shift in worship music over the last several decades. While worship music has historically drawn on intimate and loving language, earning it the nickname “Jesus is my boyfriend” music, more recently musicians have used aggressive language such as “reckless” or “jealous” to refer to relationships with Jesus. Given the impact that worship music has on the Christian formation of its listeners and the complicity of the church in pastoral and partner abuse, Thiessen argues that a reconsideration of the language used in worship music is necessary in order to facilitate healing and prevent further abuse. The current issue of the journal opens with this article.

This issue includes one other article. Tazeen Mir Ali’s “Embodied Experiences and Islamic Feminist Ethics: Gender Equality and Abortion in US Muslim Women’s Interpretive Communities” analyzes khutbahs, or sermons, at the Women’s Mosque of America (WMA), an all-women’s congregation in Los Angeles. In her analysis of the khutbahs, Ali considers how US Muslim women cultivate an Islamic feminist ethics by drawing on their lived experiences. While some interpret their experiences solely within the context of qur’anic verses, others utilize hadith and the Islamic legal tradition as well. In her powerful demonstration of this Islamic feminist hermeneutic, Ali examines a khutbah about abortion, which incorporates women’s embodied experiences and reproductive justice, along with qur’anic verses and Islamic jurisprudence. Ali notes the significance of the timing of this khutbah, in March 2021. She writes, “US Muslims in these kinds of spaces are weighing in on urgent national conversations. Put another way, contentious political conversations about abortion are being had at the WMA at a time in the US when women’s bodily autonomy is being stripped from them” (38).

Following the articles, this issue contains three special features: a Living It Out essay, an Across Generations interview, and a Roundtable. These special features demonstrate the range of feminist scholarship published in the journal. All three highlight both the potential harm and healing contained within religious communities.

In Kristina Meyer’s essay, “The Burden of Proof, the Power to Claim,” she pushes back against feminist impulses to valorize and romanticize religious communities as spaces of collective healing. Instead, she reminds readers that sometimes it is those very communities that are harmful. Meyer draws on her own experiences and advocates for cultivating intentional communities that can facilitate “theological reconstruction” (41).

Naomi Goldenberg has spent her entire adult life at the intersection of politics, religion, and feminism. In this Across Generations interview, Peggy Schmeiser interviewed Goldenberg about her long academic and activist career. Through a particular focus on psychoanalysis and mythology, Goldenberg initially thought that feminism would mean the end of religion. Goldenberg’s views reflect a shifting historical context while her publications demonstrate the evolution of her thinking.

The final section of this issue examines clergy sexual abuse at Covenant Fellowship Church (CFC) through feminist narratives. A roundtable of Korean American and Asian American scholars, including AHyun Lee, Nami Kim, Christine J. Hong, Boyung Lee, Junehee Yoon, and Keunjoo Christina Pae, analyzes different feminist responses to the discovery of abuse committed by CFC pastor Min Joshua Chung. Over two decades, church leaders and bystanders concealed the sexual, spiritual, psychological, and spiritual abuse while allowing Chung to avoid accountability. As lead author AHyun Lee argues, “This case highlights intricate power abuse dynamics driven by dominant discourses concealing and rationalizing clergy sexual abuse” (74). Challenging these systems of concealment, the Instagram account @letters_from_rahab tells the stories of victims-survivors. AHyun Lee opens the roundtable by introducing the account. On May 2, 2021, this account was launched with stories of abuse from victim-survivors. AHyun Lee argues that @letters_from_rahab empowers victim-survivors and presents a counterdiscourse wherein marginalized voices are centered and the concealed abuse moves into the light. As an example of a feminist narrative, @letters_from_rahab preserves intersectionality and multivocality and presents Asian American feminist theological perspectives as valid and true.

The roundtable proceeds with five shorter essays addressing different aspects of the abuse at CFC from feminist perspectives. Nami Kim’s essay explores the role of male clergy bonding in forcing victims into silence. Kim argues that this act of silencing is a form of “spiritual warfare” that reflects the impact of militarism on Korean Christianity. Next, Christine Hong analyzes @letters_from_rahab as a form of pedagogical solidarity. Hong argues that the dominant pedagogical framework at CFC has been one of silencing. @letters_ from_rahab presents a counterpedagogy wherein moderators publish anonymous stories of abuse, silencing, and the confessions of bystanders. Hong refers to this as public-facing pedagogy, wherein accountability and restoration are possible. Boyung Lee’s essay about CFC as a campus ministry follows. Korean American campus ministries foster leadership and offer a safe place for students who are racial minorities, but they are also organized around hierarchical and patriarchal models of leadership found in campus ministry movements in Korea. Lee demonstrates that this cultural context enables the abuse and silencing as seen at CFC. In “Saving Holiness for the Silenced,” Junehee Yoon problematizes the theological framework that promises holiness to victim-survivors who maintain their silence for the sake of the community. Yoon argues instead for a feminist, queer holiness that encourages victim-survivors to speak out against abuse. The roundtable concludes with Keunjoo Christina Pae’s “Farewell to the Community.” Drawing on her own experience of sexual and spiritual abuse in South Korea in the 1990s, Pae argues that a feminist narrative community like @letters_from_rahab can help victim-survivors mourn the loss of their faith communities. In this way, @letters_from_rahab is not just about calling for accountability at CFC but also about helping victim-survivors leave CFC and mourn that loss collectively.

Saying goodbye to a beloved community, friend, or colleague is never easy. This issue marks the end of Hilary McKane’s internship at JFSR. Hilary has been the submissions editor for JFSR for three years, and now that she is officially Dr. Hilary McKane (!) she will become a member of the JFSR editorial board. So, while we are thrilled to congratulate Dr. McKane on her success, and we look forward to working with her as a member of the editorial board, we will also miss her regular presence and contribution to the journal.

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