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Abstract
The concept of ‘religious citizenship’ is increasingly being used by scholars, but there are few attempts at defining it. This article argues that rights-based definitions giving primacy to status and rights are too narrow, and that feminist approaches to citizenship foregrounding identity, belonging and participation, as well as an ethic of care, provide a more comprehensive understanding of how religious women understand and experience their own ‘religious citizenship’. Findings from interviews with Christian and Muslim women in Oslo and Leicester suggest a close relationship between religious women's faith and practice (‘lived religion’) and their ‘lived citizenship’. However, gender inequalities and status differences between majority and minority religions produce challenges to rights-based approaches to religious citizenship.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Esmeranda Manful (UK) and Beatrice Halsaa and Hanna Helseth (Norway) who, as part of the Work Package 4, Strand 2 team of the FEMCIT project, conducted the interviews with religious women. She also thanks the editors of the journal and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and very useful comments and suggestions. Preliminary project findings were reported in a working paper submitted to the European Union (see Nyhagen Predelli et al. Citation2010).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The time-lag between data collection and writing is due to the length of the overall research project.
2. The Church of England changed its rules in 2014 and the first woman bishop was appointed in December that year.
3. In 2008, American Professor Amina Wadud led a gender-mixed Muslim congregation in Oxford.