Creative Conformity: The Feminist Politics of U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shi'i Women (Moral Traditions series)

This comparative study makes a valuable contribution to feminist efforts to shake up binary assumptions about what it means to be empowered or oppressed. -- Kate McCarthy Religious Studies Review

Catholic Christianity and Shi'a Islam are two religious traditions that, genenerally speaking, have greeted feminism and feminist claims with skepticism or outright hostility. This is especially the case at the level of clerical pronouncements, where papal encyclicals and Ayatollah fatwas are assumed to limit the freedom of Catholic and Shi'a women, respectively. In this highly original work in comparative, cross-cultural ethics Liz Bucar explores how several women within these two traditions adopt strategies of feminist politics to respond to moral issues in their lives. Specifically, Bucar examines how eleven women understand the ethical teachings of their respective religious leaders: Pope John Paul II and Ayatollah Khumayni. What do these two leaders say about the role of women--what "clerical rhetoric" do they espouse--and how do these women accommodate these teachings? Using scriptural analysis and multiple interviews Bucar lays out comparisons over five core chapters. In one chapter she looks at moral exemplars, exploring how women from both traditions recast clerical rhetoric about moral role models into a brand of feminist politics. In another chapter she focuses on the clerical rhetoric of motherhood and childrearing, and how women in the two traditions expand that teaching into a feminist understanding of procreation. Thus her emphasis on "creative conformity": these eleven women manage to remain within the boundaries of their religious traditions, while interpreting clerical teachings in politically creative and feminist ways.