Boundaries and Silences in a Post-Feminist Sociology

But I do think there should be a place for feminist critiques of religion that are not apologetic, that treat issues of power relationships within marriage and family as inherently public, and that move past a pre-occupation with conservative religious subcultures to focus attention on a wider range of questions. Most self-confidently feminist treatments of religion and family have to do with issues like domestic violence, about which one expects no serious disagreement with the proposition that anything encouraging such behavior is bad (Nason-Clark 1997). But post-feminism has forsaken any theoretical ground from which to address issues of power in areas upon which there is no such taken-for-granted feminist consensus.

This way of thinking about the world sets boundaries around the kinds of questions that are even asked in the literature on religion and family, leading to systematic silences. Is the familism of mainstream (moderate and liberal) religious groups good for women, children, and men? It leads, research shows, to stable (even faithful) marriages, to satisfaction in family relationships, to well-adjusted children. In short, it is functional. Again, one would seem churlish to rail against such positive outcomes; it is rather like attacking kittens or chocolate, self-evident goods.

On the other hand, more women than men report feelings of stress and anxiety over balancing work and family, report high levels of guilt regarding their relationship with their children, and report having no free time for themselves. Does religiously-based familism support the idea that problems which arise in managing work and family life are disproportionately women's problems, for which they are responsible for providing private, individual-level solutions? [8] I never hear that question asked, perhaps because those doing the asking tend to come from within a mainstream religious tradition, or at least from the socioeconomic location from which it springs. Hence, "the other" (evangelicals, fundamentalists, "marginal" religions [9]) prove sociologically interesting, while groups closer to home remain relatively unexamined.

There are other kinds of silences, too. In the face of new forms of family that are radically different than the male-breadwinner couple around which the last great religious expansion was built, [10] are churches of all kinds changing what they define as a good family? A few are questioning the idea of "the family" as the fundamental organizing unit of local ministry, and are including the rising numbers of long-term singles and childless persons in local religious life. [11] But these congregations exist in the same communities where other lay leaders and pastors still complain about the volunteer shortage that occurred, about 20 years ago now, when women "went to work;" these congregations are still struggling to find new forms of programming for women, children, and men that meet contemporary needs.

The huge variation in how congregational leaders think and talk about these issues has prompted me to ask how changes in men's and women's relationships at work, in the family, and in the church have transformed the gendering of local congregations. It has also made me question the link between changes in work and family and the proliferation of alternative religious spaces, including those like the Promise Keepers which focus explicitly on reclaiming a masculine Christianity. Has the "pluralization" of the family, as Furstenberg (1999) or Skolnick (1991) might call it, driven the pluralization of local religious cultures? Or the pluralization of commitment styles? Research has focused on the "gender gap" in women's and men's church attendance (Hertel 1995). But I want to ask if the meaning of religious involvement has changed for men and women after a period of rapid change in the work and family roles around which so many congregations have been organized for the past 45 years.