The End of Religion: Feminist Reappraisals of the State

Edited by Kathleen McPhillips and Naomi R. Goldenberg

Feminist theory has enhanced and expanded the agency, influence, status and contributions of women throughout the globe. However, feminist critical analysis has not yet examined how the assumption that religion is natural, timeless, universal and omnipresent supports sexist and race-based oppression. This book proposes radical new thinking about religion in order to better comprehend and confront the systematic disempowerment of women and marginalized groups.

Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions

Goldenberg gives the reader a unique overview of feminist thinking and writing on Biblical tradition. She shows that Freud, despite his sexism, warned against reliance on a male god, believing that it led to Oedipal stagnation and stunted personal growth. She contends that myths and religious beliefs perceived as having inward as opposed to external reality still serve an important purpose and retain power.

Religion as a Category of Governance and Sovereignty

Trevor Stack, Naomi R. Goldenberg and Timothy Fitzgerald

Religious-secular distinctions have been crucial to the way in which modern governments have rationalised their governance and marked out their sovereignty – as crucial as the territorial boundaries that they have drawn around nations. The authors of this volume provide a multi-dimensional picture of how the category of religion has served the ends of modern government. 

Resurrecting the Body: Feminism, Religion, and Psychotherapy

Asserting that the reverse of the biblical text “And the Word was made flesh” is true, that it is in and through the flesh that every philosophy, every discourse, is born, Goldenberg explores her own divided identity as feminist, atheist, and Jew. “Through a series of insightful, passionate, and sometimes humorous essays, Goldenberg examines the way (feminism and psychoanalysis) interact with, contradict, and deepen one another”. – Hypathia.