20 FEMINISM AND ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Sarah Coakley
The relation between analytic philosophy of religion and feminist thought has to date
been a strained one. To the extent that most analytic philosophers of religion have
attended to feminist theory or feminist theology at all, their acknowledgment has
generally gone no further than a belated concession to the use of gender-inclusive
language. More substantial issues raised by feminist philosophy or theology have in large
part been ignored in the standard literature. Although there have been certain notable
exceptions to this “rule,” it is undeniable that analytic philosophy of religion remains
predominantly “gender blind” in its thinking, and thus, no doubt unsurprisingly, when
feminist thinkers have troubled to comment on the discipline, their criticisms have tended
to be severe.
The primary purpose of this chapter, then, is to probe the reasons for the mutual
incomprehension between the disciplines of analytic philosophy of religion and feminist
thought, and to chart—and assess—the feminist criticisms leveled against analytic
philosophy of religion for what is claimed to be its covert “masculinist” bias.^1 Although
there is now a burgeoning literature in the genre of “feminist philosophy of religion,”^2
most of the woman scholars involved have no truck with analytic philosophy of religion
at all, and are primarily engaged with French feminist thought, or American pragmatism,
or both. But as the focus of
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this chapter is the potential interchange between feminist thought and analytic philosophy
of religion, I shall concentrate on the two feminist thinkers who have recently devoted
book-length accounts to a critique of analytic philosophy of religion: Pamela Sue
Anderson (1998) and Grace Jantzen (1998). Some of their criticisms overlap, but they are
by no means in agreement about what, if anything, can be salvaged from the project of
analytic philosophy of religion as far as future feminist work is concerned. A critical
comparison of their views will thus prove instructive in highlighting what the prospects
are for a rapprochement between feminist thought and analytic philosophy of religion. As
we shall see, much depends here on whether analytic philosophers of religion are already
prejudiced from the outset against post-Kantian continental traditions of philosophy,
psycholinguistics, and social theory. A complete refusal to learn from these traditions will
certainly also prevent fruitful interaction with feminist thought.
The second, and much shorter, purpose of this chapter is more speculative. It is to suggest
some ways in which future philosophy of religion in the analytic tradition might
usefully—and indeed, creatively—take up the task of responding to the challenges of
such feminist critique without altogether abandoning its own most cherished goals.
Because such qualities as clarity, logical incisiveness, generalizable philosophical
persuasiveness, and a commitment to a realist theory of truth are commonly deemed
prime desiderata by analytic philosophers of religion, it will be clear following our