Epistemic Justice and Religious Authority

Sor Juana's most famous work, "Response to Sor Filotea," defends her right to pursue knowledge and theology against a bishop's claim that such intellectual ambitions were unseemly for a woman religious. She asserts that her direct observation, study, and reasoning constitute valid knowledge that need not be validated by male ecclesiastical gatekeepers. This concept of epistemic justice applies directly to religious identity transitions: those experiencing doubt, leaving traditions, or reconstructing belief often find their testimony dismissed as immature, wounded, or spiritually shallow by those who remain. Sor Juana's precedent insists on the epistemic authority of the doubter, the leaver, the one in transition. Their experience of religious constraint, inauthenticity, or untruth is genuine knowledge, not mere emotion or rebellion. Their questions deserve engagement rather than dismissal. Granting epistemic justice to those in religious transition means recognizing that they may understand their own tradition and their own conscience better than institutional authorities who have every incentive to retain them.