Gender, Sexuality, and Religious Authority: Global Feminist and Queer Reinterpretations of Sacred Texts

چکیده

This article presents a qualitative metasynthesis of global feminist and queer hermeneutical approaches to sacred texts, examining how these reinterpretations challenge, subvert, or reconstruct traditional religious authority. While religious institutions have historically employed rigid gender binaries and heteronormative frameworks to legitimize patriarchal hierarchies, a growing body of transnational scholarship demonstrates that sacred texts are not static repositories of oppression but contested sites of meaning-making. Drawing on peer-reviewed studies published between 1990 and 2021 across Islamic, Christian, Jewish, and Hindu traditions, this metasynthesis identifies four primary interpretive strategies: excavatory readings recovering erased figures; translation-centered critiques exposing androcentric biases; contextual hermeneutics prioritizing justice and lived experience; and postcolonial queer exegesis decentering Western frameworks. Findings reveal that feminist and queer reinterpretations do not uniformly reject religious authority but rather re-theorize it as relational, accountable, and democratized. Key tensions emerge between universalizing liberal feminist approaches and decolonial queer critiques that problematize “liberation” itself. The analysis further identifies a significant gap: scholarship focuses heavily on Abrahamic traditions, with comparatively fewer metasyntheses incorporating Indigenous, Afro-diasporic, or Zoroastrian textual reinterpretations. The study concludes that contemporary religious authority is increasingly negotiated through fractured, pluralistic hermeneutical communities rather than monolithic institutional structures. These findings have implications for interfaith dialogue, theological education, and social justice movements. The article argues for a radical hermeneutical hospitality that legitimizes subjugated knowledges without demanding doctrinal rupture.