Two Words

On April 9, 2024, NPR's Morning Edition covered the prior day's release of a new Vatican document entitled “Infinite Dignity” (National Public Radio 2024). Despite its title, the document denied the dignity of many people—in particular those involved in surrogacy or abortion, all trans people and allies, and no small number of academics—by terming our actions and perspectives “threats” to human dignity as the document defines it. Transness was targeted in part through a befuddling phrase that has become familiar to many Vatican observers in recent years: “gender theory.” In a conversation with hosts Leila Fadel and A Martínez, decorated religion reporter Jason DeRose offered thoughtful and balanced coverage of the statement, focusing especially on reactions from advocates for LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion. And then he said this: “What gender theory argues is that a person's gender identity or self-understanding can be different from the sex that person was assigned at birth.” Gender theory, of course, argues nothing of the sort. As a complex and decades-old set of methods and tools for understanding how groups and cultures define, structure, and enforce the relationship between certain kinds of embodiment and certain roles in the world, gender theory does not argue any specific thing. It is a school of thought, not a “theory” or theorem that can be proven or disproven, accepted or rejected. Yet, like other complex and multivocal schools of thought (“CRT,” anyone?), it has been twisted and flattened for public consumption, created in the meme-like negative or reverse image of those who find it useful for their own ongoing efforts at nonconsensual domination.1 So how did an experienced and highly respected reporter get this so wrong, and why has NPR offered no corrections or more complex coverage? The stakes of this question are quite high since Morning Edition claims an audience in the millions, and what might appear to be a simple factual error, in fact, plays into a trans antagonistic logic that undergirds the ongoing r/ejection of trans and nonbinary people from many socially conservative spaces and communities. A glance at DeRose's bio on NPR's website shows national awards for coverage of religion, Native American issues, and LGBTQ+ issues. He majored in religion and English in college, holds a Master's degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School, and has taught journalism at DePaul and Northwestern. This is an impressive record, indeed. What is missing? Anything at the intersection of religion, gender, and sexuality studies. This recent incident encapsulates my answers to the questions posed for RSR's 50th anniversary paired set of special issues: what the discipline looks like today; where it is going theoretically, topically, and thematically; what issues are critical to address; and why the study of religion remains a vital part of the academy and of undergraduate education. There are, of course, many answers to these questions, which is why two special issues are necessary for a robust conversation. There are many answers I would give and many others from which I will learn once the special issues are published. We have been asked, though, to speak from (not to) our own areas of specialization; although I also have a number of those, I will be focusing here on the perspectives on religious studies that are afforded by the rapidly growing and interconnected fields of queer and trans studies in religion. From these angles of approach, four key themes come into relief: transdisciplinarity, positivism, advocacy, and affect/embodiment. Religionists have spilled quite a few pixels arguing over whether our work represents a discipline in and of itself, a collection of various and sundry specialties, or an interdisciplinary field. Interdisciplinarity remains one of the more popular answers to this question; indeed, my own department is housed in our college's “Interdisciplinary Building” (so named for lack of a donor, which may be fortuitous). Yet my own experiences with this administrative buzzword of the 1990s, along with perspectives I have learned from other departments who share this designation, have led me to side with those who prefer the term transdisciplinary. Inter-, after all, commonly means between. Being trained as an interdisciplinary scholar in an interdisciplinary department consisted, for me, largely of studying with teachers from various disciplines and becoming, myself, a chimera located between disciplines, who was only vaguely recognizable at times to those hailing from any of the disciplines that spawned me. Yet, in trying endlessly to explain the study of religion to my interlocutors (and countless uncomprehending search committees) in gender and sexuality studies, I began to realize just how alike those two fields are. I often frame these similarities by explaining that whereas many disciplines make use of a single, specialized set of tools to study a wide variety of aspects of existence, both religious studies and gender and sexuality studies draw on a wide variety of theoretical and methodological tools to study one specific aspect of existence. In toggling between these many tools, each field—and perhaps each scholar in these fields—creates a methodological bricolage that is itself a different kind of method, a sort of methodological found-object art. Transdisciplinarity describes this bricolage and the term's implicit connection to transness places it in a space of crossing. We share that location with fields like gender studies, sexuality studies, ethnic studies, Indigenous studies, and even, at times, studies of the arts like art history, music, critical dance studies, and performance studies. Like those fields, at times, we revel in our transdisciplinarity and build from its strengths. But at times, we also revert to an anxious defense of our disciplinary status, our self-definition as a science as described in the initial name of the field: Religionswissenschaft, science of religions. Consider, for instance, the principled insistence on “nonconfessional” approaches and methodological atheism or, more recently, agnosticism. On one hand, the principle of noninterference here is important: it is indeed not the task of a religious studies scholar to declare religious Truth or to determine the orthodoxy of certain practices over others, any more than it is the task of a gender studies scholar to declare certain gender identities authentic and others misled. On the other hand, though, the concept of nonconfessional scholarship is in practice applied much more broadly, often with punitive results, especially for minoritized scholars, and it has historically led to strong resistance to, even exclusion from the field of, some of the core principles shared by our cousins in interdisciplinarity. Feminist methods, for instance, require a certain level of self-disclosure on the part of a scholar because long-standing feminist epistemological principles understand knowledge as multiple, perspectival, and contextual. Rather than make the positivist claim to (potential) omniscience through the application of supposedly neutral, “unbiased” methods, feminist methods, along with womanist, queer, trans, decolonial, and critical race methods, insist on the perceptible presence of the scholar in the research. Such presence, they argue, is more realistic and methodologically sound than the studied effacement of the scholar practiced by many fields that still hold stock in the concept of objectivity. What I have come to call (with a nod to Foucault) the “anticonfessional imperative” in the study of religion mires us in the latter camp, treating any scholarly presence within research as suspect and any hint of the scholar's own relationship to the world beyond the human as heresy. As I have argued elsewhere (Wilcox 2024), this is why religious studies has long held many of our transdisciplinary kin at arm's length (and they have returned the favor) while more religiously engaged approaches have blossomed through their engagement with and in those fields. The unspoken commitment to positivism that still threads through religious studies pushes the field all too often into a rigid position against advocacy, which also contributes to the resistance to deeper engagement with other transdisciplinary fields. Expanding the principle that it is not our role to determine religious Truth, many in the field also resist those who speak truth to power (see Clements 2021 for a discussion of Foucault's differentiation between these two in the posthumously published fourth volume of History of Sexuality); conveniently, this seems to apply especially when the power is held by the resistant scholars themselves. Lacking the nuance to distinguish between passing judgment and naming harm, the field as a whole continues to regard methods and perspectives that focus on power and justice as tainted, in some way, by confessionalism. Instead, it prefers more “neutral” and “objective” descriptions and analyses of religious phenomena, which can be easily demonstrated and empirically proven from a safe distance. Scholars who engage in advocacy for racial justice, gender justice, sexual justice; those who reveal too much of ourselves in our research (particularly if we are minoritized in one or more ways); and perhaps especially those who also argue that certain religious perspectives or practices cause harm and injustice often face challenges within the field to the propriety, even the authenticity, of their work as religious studies scholars. And that is only with the inclusion of their perspectives; affect and embodiment add yet another layer to this picture. Like many fields rooted in the Enlightenment—in other words, like most of academia—the study of religion distinguishes sharply between the bodies and affects of scholars and those of our “subjects.” Religious bodies have long been a source of fascination in the field, especially those at more of a (perceived or literal) distance from scholarly bodies, while scholarly bodies and affects in the study of religion, as in most academic fields, are effaced. There are glaring exceptions to this rule of bodily and affective effacement for scholars, of course: all of those bodies for whom academia and academic spaces were not designed, whose original and intended locations in the ivory tower were among the exhibits and objects of study. We experience all too often a kind of bodily and affective hyper-presence in religious studies spaces, betrayed by the double glance or longer gaze, anxious and seemingly last-minute inclusion of communities or theoretical perspectives presumed to be “ours,” silencing of our insights, apologetics (in both senses of the term), violations of personal boundaries, or studied ignorance and refusal to engage. Many of us respond to this involuntary hyper-presence by effacing our own bodies from our research, maintaining a dispassionate presence, or artfully expressing our own realities through those of others who are more “properly” the objects of study. Yet, like the broader elision of the scholar's locations and contexts, this effacing, in fact, undermines our scholarship—in different ways depending on our locations and contexts, to be sure, but inevitably for all of us. It also leaves our field in the position of enacting increasing irrelevance, when, as we all know, our subject matter suffuses the world, and our field is therefore critically important to academic knowledge, public knowledge, and education. The state of affairs I have described above—“what the discipline looks like today” from the vantage point of trans and queer studies in religion—is as dire as the future of some religious studies departments seems to be. Yet things are shifting, although at the lumbering pace of institutional change, held back by the bone-deep conviction instilled in many of us that there is an unclearly delineated yet nonetheless sharp line we cannot cross if we wish to retain our credibility within the field. Where we are going may be anyone's guess; what interests me more is where we ought to go and how such developments can better assist those beyond our field in understanding what we already know about the central relevance of the study of religion. For decades now, the linked fields of trans and queer studies in religion have been building an increasingly deep and complex interaction between the three areas of study whose crossroads they inhabit. From an initial tendency to focus on cataloging or additive approaches (what I jokingly term the ‘Look! Queers!’ and ‘Add queers and stir’ methods), scholars have steadily developed an increasingly robust and thorough engagement with—and now, slowly, between—queer studies, trans studies, and the study of religion. In moving past a cataloging or additive approach to more deeply analytical and intertwined ones, this scholarship has contributed to the growing chorus of voices from historically minoritized scholars and communities that is bringing increasingly provocative and revolutionary challenges to our shared field and from that field to those we're in conversation with. This is a key direction for the future of religious studies as a whole. Since a thorough discussion of these interwoven shifts would be a book in I would that we while even a set of would inevitably key me to in here of the and future that are from scholars who work in trans studies, queer studies, and the study of religion. For over a and feminist have sharp of the of and created and largely by has been that any knowledge that perspectives is both and in the past such have a number of which with the study of religion and which has us some of our most the “objective” effacement of the scholar in their work to to own that all knowledge is and is by the these fields with their research methods and an that at the will be in their work and in their Many different approaches to scholarly presence have from this from the or a collection of identities to various of and Yet for those of us in by the or History of school of of the scholar's presence has It has indeed over to a depending on the scholar's and but even the most scholarship at the own perspectives on and experiences with the world beyond the from trans studies, queer studies, and the other fields on what the of to our approach, and we would as a field to to such questions I would in What are we so of in our the vaguely scholars to our presence in our own research and in fact, a or only a research has more of a presence in the study of religion, as with the presence of the scholar in research, this approach has most in such areas as and and much so in the fields most by the of The latter fields still have a tendency to distance from the communities they or ways that both from and the in which many of our are I for I more in a recent (Wilcox 2024), that such back to the positivist that are in the field through the of the Yet it also to religion in the field that are rooted in and the of embodiment and As a growing number of and world were to the of (see bringing with people by many scholars those or in the It is that the more a History of scholar may appear to be with the communities from or the more they are to that through of or even to the of the such is not in itself and queer studies, the other interdisciplinary fields, us to the of knowledge and to the of our studies on the communities we're about or on communities our work is or more with our focus on the beyond the to be even more not to how our research the communities research is not or at not because of knowledge in which the communities have a are a key for research the of power in any research relationship also us to understand that there is no rule for a scholar's relationship with the they for the of power may a different set of We are though, with these what engagement with the or its in the study of we also have a to those who this beyond the The of the scholar and the anxious it not only us from the communities whom we have but also make it for us to distinguish between religious and truth to This has for an and often unspoken approach to the of increasingly come with the one is the to of some religions. Yet, while critically to about religion is scholars to they are the between and There are indeed complex questions but queer and trans studies us to understand that there is a between advocacy and Truth, between naming harm and a or perspectives or it may religion is an that the and and to which we epistemological in those cause or harm, we also hold a to that an from queer and trans studies in religion, it is to name the by even to and the logic that such approaches those who for to be or the to a positivist though, us to advocacy with in ways that us in and the field from the it be. The three in many ways to this and as scholars, most of us ourselves to our academic Yet trans, queer, and other research to the minoritized communities with which we work or whom our work all scholars often claim that such our efforts at but from the of fields that to be a for is critically necessary to our work from back into the of research that have the academy at since the And the question we are engaged with communities in which the beyond the human are does our at the of the Such questions also the of Despite our transdisciplinarity, for the most to and methods, among may be especially because of how it the and there are some methods that have such as the use of or when with but many methods that and the like into the through the face studies and queer studies, along with their us to the ways in which our and analyses what we might we come to understand if more of us studied how they or their as might we if we on our and In what ways would the field if more of us engaged in or our knowledge through other The questions by all these have the to not just methods in the study of religion, but the field might us better ways to with the of the field, to from the of this and elsewhere to new or even to other fields, other more Consider, for instance, what might be the of the approach to religion as gender studies, queer studies, critical race studies, and the like to the they both the of the at the of their fields and the of those on (and us. would it the field if we the beyond the human as many of our conversation perhaps as more of us than we would to What would a religious studies be like that minoritized than their knowledge, respected and engaged with the beyond the human that are for It is to but I it is Since of course, on religious studies, I have in the that trans studies, queer studies, and other fields to the study of religion in of methods, and Yet, a the go both and trans as have largely accepted the recent that our and are and have been and there is of a in both to make suspect as the of In as has queer in the are into the through that even queer and trans scholars and have Religious studies, challenges trans and queer studies to religion to to sexuality and gender in the beyond the human as as in our to religious identity and religious practice among the key to to more to and to world and to approach the and of religion with just as much and nuance as we use to approach gender, and the In a recent for I was how I the future of trans studies in religion. the future I in to the one I in the of 2024, I quite that it is a future where trans studies are in the study of religion. This is not because I scholar to study trans in fact, I not that to because the of scholars are to work in and ways with trans The holds for queer studies. But trans studies and queer studies both us to approach gender, and embodiment in and studies, for instance, has to some scholars that about gender a of sex and gender both past and cultures where the may be more complex and queer studies has us to sexuality and in all of their and and as we critically about religion. why is the study of religion still vital to the academy and to undergraduate Gender perspectives on religion, and gender, few observers can the of recent I to but the and trans can be but gender theory is a to human only is the study of religion vital to the but the other transdisciplinary fields and the of power that at their core are vital to the study of religion. Religionists are of that religion is So are gender, field not only all of these in just like the focus of religious studies, but also the the academy between the world most of us experience and the beyond the human that many human communities. we the in the face of and through the of the more transdisciplinary fields. The these fields can are increasingly in a world that seems more on the of to over beyond in the face of the of and

Linguistics · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Gender, Feminism, and Media · History · Philosophy · Psychology

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