Home Nancy A. Hardesty Memorial Scholarship Ashley Starr-Morris – 2025 Nancy A. Hardesty Memorial Scholarship Recipient
Ashley Starr-Morris – 2025 Nancy A. Hardesty Memorial Scholarship Recipient
The twelfth annual Nancy A. Hardesty Memorial Scholarship, sponsored by Christian Feminism Today, has been awarded to Ashley Starr-Morris, a doctoral student studying at Claremont Graduate University (CGU) in Claremont, California.
After graduating from the University of Redlands, summa cum laude, with two bachelor’s degrees (in archaeology and religious studies), Starr-Morris was employed as the university’s assistant director of admissions and currently serves as an adjunct professor in the religious studies department. She also works with Dr. Nicola Denzey Lewis as her research assistant at CGU.
In an interesting twist, Ashley’s PhD advisor, Dr. Lewis, holds the Margo L. Goldsmith Chair in Women’s Studies in Religion at CGU. Margo L. Goldsmith was a long-time and much beloved member of CFT.
“Through each stage of my life, service has remained at the heart of my journey—an ever-evolving commitment to fostering connection, equity, and understanding in every community I am privileged to be part of.”
In her applicant essay, Starr-Morris noted that Dr. Hardesty was a significant influence on the development of her work and study.
“Dr. Hardesty’s revolutionary work in exposing the historical complicity of Christian traditions in women’s oppression directly informs my research, particularly in examining the ways evangelical structures reinforce gendered submission and perpetuate systemic barriers to autonomy.”
Starr-Morris’s dissertation focuses on people marginalized by evangelicalism, especially women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial minorities, who have become dissatisfied with the evangelical experience and left the movement but still identify as Christian. She explores how this group, referred to as exvangelicals, finds ways to reconstruct their faith based on feminist and social justice-oriented values. Dr. Nicola Denzey Lewis describes Ashley’s work thus:
“Ashley’s dissertation is not a sociological study requiring anthropological or sociological fieldwork but rather a deep dive into memoirs and scholarship produced by modern evangelical women. She is captivated by stories, by personal narratives produced under challenging crises of faith, and by the impact that these stories of women leaving their religion have on readers and listeners.”
Importantly, she is fearless in her assessment that evangelical gender norms and purity culture are damaging, causing spiritual trauma.
“… religious trauma, particularly as it relates to the experiences of exvangelicals and those deconstructing their faith, must be acknowledged and addressed. Many individuals who leave conservative religious spaces carry deep wounds from teachings that suppressed their identities and autonomy.”
Her work is designed to expand Christian feminism’s “reach by integrating the study of religious disaffiliation, trauma, and reconstruction.” She hopes her dissertation, highlighting the voices of those who have become disaffected by evangelicalism, will “contribute to a growing body of scholarship that challenges religious institutions to reckon with their histories of exclusion and harm.” The ultimate goal of the work is not to simply deconstruct but to “advance Christian feminism’s commitment to justice, ensuring that faith is not a mechanism of control but a means of liberation.”
“I am a bedtime-story-teller extraordinaire, an eminent laundry stain inspector, a master of writing in fifteen-minute increments, a distiller of complex topics for young college students, and an overall rabble-rouser who is always up for a good feminist discussion of just about anything. As a doctoral student working as an adjunct professor, who is also the mother of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, and the sole caretaker for my independent-ish yet aging parents, time to pursue outside interests is, well, limited. At this time, my most significant extracurricular activity is grant writing! But whenever I can find the time, I am getting pretty darn good at cake-making.”
