Religious Ethics and the Spirit of Undomesticated Dissent

The field of religious ethics contributes to practices of resistance and hope in broader society. In advancing my claim that religious ethics contributes to practices of resistance and hope today, I first tell a story about the changing demographics in the field of religious ethics and why this demographic shift is important. I next focus on womanist religious scholarship as an exemplary discourse in religious ethics and how it has contributed to practices of resistance and hope in the academy and within contemporary society. While a few scholars in JRE over the last 50 years have cited and engaged womanist ethicists like Katie Cannon and Emilie Townes, I want to offer a more explicit argument on how the womanist idea has contributed to practices of resistance and hope. I maintain that womanist religious scholarship embodies the practice of undomesticated dissent and that such dissent might be understood as a contribution to larger humanistic inquiry within the academy. Finally, I briefly consider an objection to my argument through engaging Stanley Fish's claim that the purposes and ends of institutions of higher education should not be oriented toward activism.