Women of Faith and the Quest for Spiritual Authenticity

Women of Faith and the Quest for Spiritual Authenticity
Author: Sara Ashencaen Crabtree
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2021-01-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000361160

Drawn from over fifty-eight individual, in-depth, qualitative interviews with women of faith in Malaysia and Britain, Women of Faith and the Quest for Spiritual Authenticity is a multifaith, multicultural and cross-cultural comparative focus that explores women’s religious expressions, as derived from practising Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Wiccans and Druids among others. Despite social advances towards women’s emancipation and the lacerating critiques from feminist theologians across the Abrahamic religions and beyond, women’s religious experiences remain submerged beneath the weight of patriarchal religious leadership and ongoing masculinised, dogmatic interpretations. Even feminism itself has yet to move the spiritual onto their main agenda of inequity in women’s lives. This extensive, feminist research monograph challenges these exclusions to centre and amplify women’s voices in speaking powerfully of their religious experiences, interpretations and practices. This is an ecumenical and entertaining ethnography where women’s narratives and life stories ground faith as embodied, personal, painful, vibrant, diverse, illuminating and shared. This book will of interest not only to academics and students of the sociology of religion, feminist and gender studies, politics, ethnicity and Southeast Asian studies, but is equally accessible to the general reader broadly interested in faith and feminism.

Where Goodness Still Grows

Where Goodness Still Grows
Author: Amy Peterson
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-01-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0785225730

Declining church attendance. A growing feeling of betrayal. For Christians who have begun to feel set adrift and disillusioned by their churches, Where Goodness Still Grows grounds us in a new view of virtue deeply rooted in a return to Jesus Christ’s life and ministry. The evangelical church in America has reached a crossroads. Social media and recent political events have exposed the fault lines that exist within our country and our spiritual communities. Millennials are leaving the church, citing hypocrisy, partisanship, and unkindness as reasons they can’t stay. In this book Amy Peterson explores the corruption and blind spots of the evangelical church and the departure of so many from the faith - but she refuses to give up hope, believing that rescue is on the way. Where Goodness Still Grows: Dissects the moral code of American evangelicalism Reimagines virtue as a tool, not a weapon Explores the Biblical meaning of specific virtues like kindness, purity, and modesty Provides comfort, hope, and a path towards spiritual restoration Amy writes as someone intimately familiar with, fond of, and deeply critical of the world of conservative evangelicalism. She writes as a woman and a mother, as someone invested in the future of humanity, and as someone who just needs to know how to teach her kids what it means to be good. Amy finds that if we listen harder and farther, we will find the places where goodness still grows. Praise for Where Goodness Still Grows: “In this poignant, honest book, Amy Peterson confronts her disappointment with the evangelical leaders who handed her The Book of Virtues then happily ignored them for the sake of political power. But instead of just walking away, Peterson rewrites the script, giving us an alternative book of virtues needed in this moment. And it’s no mistake that it ends with hope.” — James K. A. Smith, author of You Are What You Love

Resurrecting Eve

Resurrecting Eve
Author: Roberta Mary Pughe
Publisher:
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2007
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781883991708

In this daring and original examination of the Church, authors Roberta Pughe and Paula Sohl endeavor to decriminalize Eve, reimagining her as a modern-day mythic mentor. They explore Eve's bold, self-directed, and inquisitive nature as a model for women today who have been negatively affected by oppressive and hierarchical fundamentalist dogma. Roberta and Paula find Eve's spirit in the teachings of Jesus and his vision of God's domination-free order. Like Jesus, Eve was willing to break the rules in her quest for consciousness, discovering in the process the fullness of both her humanity and her divinity. Jesus' respect for women, his use of story, and his honoring of children and childlikeness were key elements in his ministry of healing resurrection. Filled with profound theological reflections and moving stories of women embracing their spiritual power, Resurrecting Eve offers women a new perspective on gender roles within Christianity. The authors also introduce dance and healing ritual ideas as well as a form of Christian chakras.

Authentic Christianity

Authentic Christianity
Author: Ray C. Stedman
Publisher: Our Daily Bread Publishing
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2011-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1572935596

Ray Stedman's passion encourages you to be an authentic Christian—to move you beyond religion, doctrines, rules, and rituals—and into the life-changing experience of being genuinely and intimately connected with Christ. Authentic Christianity takes a look at 2 Corinthians to show you how to live a life of faith with integrity and regain the purpose, simplicity, and inspiration of genuine faith—the kind of life that compels others to seek its Source.

Bipolar Faith

Bipolar Faith
Author: Monica A. Coleman
Publisher: Broadleaf Books
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1506487106

Overcome with mental anguish, Monica A. Coleman's great-grandfather had his two young sons pull the chair out from beneath him when he hanged himself. That noose remained tied to a rafter in the shed, where it hung above the heads of his eight children who played there for years to come. As it had for generations before her, a heaviness hung over Monica throughout her young life. As an adult, this rising star in the academy saw career successes often fueled by the modulated highs of undiagnosed Bipolar II Disorder, as she hid deep depression that even her doctors skimmed past in disbelief. Serendipitous encounters with Black intellectuals like Henry Louis Gates Jr., Angela Davis, and Renita Weems were countered by long nights of stark loneliness. Only as Coleman began to face her illness was she able to live honestly and faithfully in the world. And in the process, she discovered a new and liberating vision of God. Written in crackling prose, Monica's spiritual autobiography examines her long dance with trauma, depression, and the threat of death in light of the legacies of slavery, war, sharecropping, poverty, and alcoholism that masked her family history of mental illness for generations.

The Quest for Authenticity

The Quest for Authenticity
Author: Michael Rosen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Distilling the teachings and thought of Rabbi Simha Bunim, one of the foremost figures in the Przysucha school of Hasidism, this study sheds light both on what students of the Pryzsucha tradition believed as well as on its influence on Polish Hasidism at large. Pryzsucha Hasidism believed in a service to God that demanded both passion and analytical study, and sought to understand the human being, rather than God himself. This exploration of Rabbi Bunim's thought illustrates how the spiritual leader was able to transform Przysucha Hasidism into a genuine movement and, in doing so, become the dominant personality in the Hasidic community in Poland during the early part of the 19th century.

The Joy of the Gospel

The Joy of the Gospel
Author: Pope Francis
Publisher: Image
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0553419544

The perfect gift! A specially priced, beautifully designed hardcover edition of The Joy of the Gospel with a foreword by Robert Barron and an afterword by James Martin, SJ. “The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus… In this Exhortation I wish to encourage the Christian faithful to embark upon a new chapter of evangelization marked by this joy, while pointing out new paths for the Church’s journey in years to come.” – Pope Francis This special edition of Pope Francis's popular message of hope explores themes that are important for believers in the 21st century. Examining the many obstacles to faith and what can be done to overcome those hurdles, he emphasizes the importance of service to God and all his creation. Advocating for “the homeless, the addicted, refugees, indigenous peoples, the elderly who are increasingly isolated and abandoned,” the Holy Father shows us how to respond to poverty and current economic challenges that affect us locally and globally. Ultimately, Pope Francis demonstrates how to develop a more personal relationship with Jesus Christ, “to recognize the traces of God’s Spirit in events great and small.” Profound in its insight, yet warm and accessible in its tone, The Joy of the Gospel is a call to action to live a life motivated by divine love and, in turn, to experience heaven on earth. Includes a foreword by Robert Barron, author of Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith and James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage

Dissident Women, Beguines, and the Quest for Spiritual Authority

Dissident Women, Beguines, and the Quest for Spiritual Authority
Author: Catherine Lambert
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2024-11-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1040251633

Dissident Women, Beguines, and the Quest for Spiritual Authority focuses on the responses of a group of twenty-first-century women to the lives and writings of thirteenth-century beguine mystics, and reveals how the struggle to discover their own inner spiritual authority connects two groups of women across centuries. For contemporary women who are disenchanted with the institutional church and who seek spiritual direction, models deeply rooted within the tradition may not be the most helpful. The author explores the value of exemplars from the fringes, ushering Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete into the spotlight. The contemporary women studied developed a relationship with the beguines that transformed and influenced their own journeys. Their encounters underline the importance of re-membering the beguine mystics, the value of contemplative engagement with historical mystics, and the need for explicit validation of the richness of the edges of tradition within spiritual direction. Dissident Women, Beguines, and the Quest for Spiritual Authority will be of particular interest to scholars of mysticism and spirituality as well as practical, pastoral, and feminist theology.

The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Women’s Studies in Religion

The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Women’s Studies in Religion
Author: Helen T. Boursier
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1538154455

The handbook offers interreligious and multicultural perspectives on women’s studies in religion in conversation with specific contextualized gender-biased justice challenges. Contributing authors address 25 current and trending themes from their diverse socio-cultural-religious backgrounds. Themes move across the spectrum of women’s studies in religion, blurring the boundaries beyond “religious studies” to include perspectives from ethics, philosophy, sociology, economics, and law as. Religious diversity addresses challenges for women’s studies through the lens of Wicca, Buddhist, Asian Trans Pacific, Hinduism, Judaism, Muslima, and Christian. The handbook is practical, contemporary, and relevant as it moves theory to practical application in the section on challenging and changing system gender injustice with chapters on sexual violence and the #MeToo movement, femicide and feminicide, a Mohawk response to colonial dominion and violations to Indigenous lands and women, and a religio-politico witness for love and justice, include how to engage the theories of women’s studies in religion in the public square through civic engagement to create empowerment for actual, practical change. It shows the future movement of the becoming of women’s studies with chapters digital activism, reimagining women’s mosque spaces online, minoritized sexual identities, and spiritual homelessness, and charges readers to see “hope now” by challenging and changing gender injustice.

Atchison Blue

Atchison Blue
Author: Judith Valente
Publisher: Ave Maria Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2013-09-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1933495596

In this meditative spiritual memoir, Judith Valente, celebrated PBS religion journalist and celebrated poet, invites readers along on her transformative pilgrimages to Mount St. Scholastica monastery in Atchison, Kansas. The Benedictine sisters who invited Valente presented her with a view of monastic life and wisdom that brought spiritual healing to her fast-paced life--and promises to do the same for her readers. The first time Judith Valente arrived at Mount St. Scholastica monastery, she came prepared to teach a course on poetry and the soul. Instead, she found herself the student, taking lessons from the Benedictine sisters in the healing nature of silence, how to cultivate habits of mindful living, and the freeing reality that conversion is a lifelong process. With the heart of a poet and the eye of a journalist, she tells how her many visits and interviews with the Benedictine sisters forced her to confront aspects of her own life that needed healing--a journey that will invite readers to healing of their own. A beautiful and heartfelt work that crosses The Cloister Walk with Tuesdays with Morrie, Atchison Blue will resonate with readers of Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Mary Gordon, and Anne Lamott.