Religious, Feminist, Activist: Cosmologies of Interconnection

What does it mean to be both religious and feminist? This book is about people who combine feminism, progressive political engagement, and religion, deep commitments often taken as fundamentally incompatible by others. Focusing on feminist political activists in Toronto, Canada, activists who also identify as United Church Protestant, Catholic or contemporary Pagan, this project contributes to new conversations about what it means to be both religious and politically engaged. Drawing on personal interviews and participant-observation across public protests, community rituals, and social justice work, this ethnography places such activists in historical context as religiously motivated advocates for social change and explores what their actions reveal about the public significance of religion in the pluralistic context of North America today. This interdisciplinary work engages wide-ranging scholarly conversations, including the academic study of religion, anthropology, ritual studies, political science, women and gender studies, ethics, North American religious history, and new religious movements. Yet in its “lived feminism” approach, it also reveals intimate encounters with sacred worlds based in social justice. In doing so, the book persuasively argues for a new analysis of traditional categories, such as secularity, religion, and spirituality, as reflecting outside assumptions, rather than actual women’s lives.