The analysis of how gender, class, colonial status, and other identities shape religious authority and access, using Sor Juana's position as a woman, mixed-race, and colonial intellectual.
Sor Juana's conflict was not only about intellectual freedom but about who was permitted to claim authority in the colonial Catholic church. As a woman, she was categorically denied formal theological study; as a mixed-race person in a racialized hierarchy, her legitimacy was always questioned; as a colonial intellectual, she was marginal to European centers of authority. Religious identity crises are never only spiritual—they intersect with gender, sexuality, race, class, and social location. Those doubting or leaving often discover that their exclusion was systemic, not personal. This concept examines how religious institutions may resist not just particular doubts but entire categories of people. Understanding religious transitions through intersectionality reveals whether one is struggling with doctrine or with an institution that never recognized your full humanity. Sor Juana's life demonstrates this essential complexity.
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