Bøger i Women and Gender in Religion serien

Explores the role of women in seven unorthodox religious movements in Western culture. Based on interviews and first-hand data, the study illustrates a range of roles: celibate sister, devoted Hindu wife, sexually expressive lover, veiled Nubian bride in polygamy, and asexual shaman.

The story of the ordination of Reverend Betty Bone Schiess, one of the first women priests in the Episcopal church. Throughout the work, Schiess draws parallels to earlier efforts of the suffragettes and abolitionists of Seneca Falls.

A narrative of a Buddhist nun's training and spiritual awakening. In this book, the author relays the challenges a new ordinand faces in adapting to Buddhist monastic life: the spicy food, the rigorous daily schedule, the distinctive clothes and undergarments, and the misunderstandings inevitable between a French woman and her Korean colleagues.

The 19th-century women reformers discussed in this text, including Angelina Grimke and Abby Kelley, rejected the repressive features of the Christianity of their day. Their religiosity, however, was fundamental to their world view. This work explores the dimensions of this evolving faith.

Drawing on archival material from Shaker members, observers, and apostates, this work offers a study of life in two of the oldest, most prominent American Shaker villages: the Harvard and Shirley communities of Massachusetts.

Emma Curtis, feminist and religious entrepreneur, led a life of extraordinary diversity and achievement. This work salutes her life as it explores the route by which she melded spiritual healing, metaphysical idealism, and exotic philosophies into multiple careers of unsurpassed dynamic.

At the close of the nineteenth century, American women missionaries traveled far afield to spread Christianity across the globe. Their presence abroad played a significant role in shaping foreign perceptions of America. This work tells the history of women's foreign missions in Japan.

This work places Sarah Mix (1832-1884) in the context of American religious history, and shows her influence on the emerging faith healing movement and other female healing evangelists, including Carrie Judd Montgomery and Maria Woodworth-Etter.

This work offers a narrative of Indonesian women who find a new and powerful voice in the course of preparing to become Christian pastors and theologians in their native land. By assuming roles of responsibility, these women transform gender ideologies that have governed Indonesian culture.

These essays by Islamic women scholars in the USA give voice to and are evidence of the growing network of Muslim women involved with the issues of women's human rights through ""scholarship activism"". It brings together critical arguments for the fair treatment of women.

Drawing from interviews of fifty ordained and seminary-trained women, Frederick W. Schmidt, Jr. explores the bureaucratic and cultural underpinnings of the church that continues to bar women from positions of authority. Writing as a seminary-trained sociologist, Schmidt concentrates on the roles of clergywomen in five denominations - Episcopal, United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran, Southern Baptist, and Roman Catholic. He maintains that behind the facade of equanimity, women are often relegated to the outskirts of church hierarchy. In compelling stories, we learn about the Episcopal woman denied a job because she was too short; the Methodist women burdened by the old saw of women preachers being like dogs walking on their hind legs; the Evangelical Lutheran who, in protest to her denomination's trickle-down reform, camped outside her bishop's office; and Roman Catholic women who, frustrated and beleaguered by their church's refusal to ordain them, become active reformers. To substantiate his assertion that churches are cultures as well as organizations, Schmidt examines both official policies regarding women's ordination in each denomination and the cultural context in which those policies must play out. Through their stories, the clergywomen remind us that the church influences society whether society acknowledges it or not.

Drawing on archival material from Shaker members, observers, and apostates, noted historian Suzanne R. Thurman offers a scholarly yet eminently readable study of life in two of the oldest, most prominent American Shaker villages: the Harvard and Shirley communities of massachusetts.Even as she delves into the complex fabric of Shaker social life, Thurman challenges traditional perceptions of gender roles within the community. Shaker spiritual and social ethics, she points out, strongly favored women. Celibacy and an androgynous theology, for instance, allowed androgynous social roles to evolve. Another key factor was the lively arena of nineteenth-century reformers and intellectuals in nearby Boston. With admirable detail, Thurman documents the relationship that grew between these forward thinkers and the Believers. Their influence, she argues, enlightened Shaker consciousness and empowered their women of Harvard and Shirley with opportunities denied them in the world at large.The author also explores links, particularly economic, between Shakers and the greater American society. Treating Harvard and Shirley Believers as an idiosyncratic part of the nation rather than a fringe group, Thurman sheds new light on their constant struggle to be in the world but not of it.