Women in New Religions

Women in New Religions
Author: Laura Vance
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2015-03-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1479847992

An in-depth history of selected New Religions that highlights the roles of women in their founding and continual practice Women in New Religions offers an engaging look at women’s evolving place in the birth and development of new religious movements. It focuses on four disparate new religions—Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, The Family International, and Wicca—to illuminate their implications for gender socialization, religious leadership and participation, sexuality, and family ideals. Religious worldviews and gender roles interact with one another in complicated ways. This is especially true within new religions, which frequently set roles for women in ways that help the movements to define their boundaries in relation to the wider society. As new religious movements emerge, they often position themselves in opposition to dominant society and concomitantly assert alternative roles for women. But these religions are not monolithic: rather than defining gender in rigid and repressive terms, new religions sometimes offer possibilities to women that are not otherwise available. Vance traces expectations for women as the religions emerge, and transformation of possibilities and responsibilities for women as they mature. Weaving theory with examination of each movement’s origins, history, and beliefs and practices, this text contextualizes and situates ideals for women in new religions. The book offers an accessible analysis of the complex factors that influence gender ideology and its evolution in new religious movements, including the movements’ origins, charismatic leadership and routinization, theology and doctrine, and socio-historical contexts. It shows how religions shape definitions of women’s place in a way that is informed by response to social context, group boundaries, and identity.

Women and religion

Women and religion
Author: Ruspini, Elisabetta
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2018-07-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1447336372

This edited collection provides interdisciplinary, global, and multi-religious perspectives on the relationship between women’s identities, religion, and social change in the contemporary world. The book discusses the experiences and positions of women, and particular groups of women, to understand patterns of religiosity and religious change. It also addresses the current and future challenges posed by women’s changes to religion in different parts of the world and among different religious traditions and practices. The contributors address a diverse range of themes and issues including the attitudes of different religions to gender equality; how women construct their identity through religious activity; whether women have opportunity to influence religious doctrine; and the impact of migration on the religious lives of both women and men.

Women and Religion

Women and Religion
Author: Elizabeth A. Clark
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 411
Release: 1996-11-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0060614099

" ... a difinitive and most compelling documentary history of the relationship between Christianity and half of its membership ... This new edition ... includes fully updated introductions, newly available source material, and incisive contemporary analysis ..."--Back cover

Women Religion Revolution

Women Religion Revolution
Author: Gina Messina
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2017-10-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1457546396

In a world where women’s issues are political issues, feminism and religion are often scripted as opposing sides. But, drawing on the messages of love and social justice from within their religious traditions, women are leading feminist movements that promote positive social change at both the micro and macro levels. Religion is fueling women’s efforts to revolutionize the world! Women Religion Revolution is a provocative collection of essays written by women who understand that being passive is not an option. Each story resonates with passion drawn from the well of faith, along with a drive to forge a connection with other women. The experiences that can shape a woman’s soul are often negative and isolating—sexual assault, domestic violence, eating disorders, addictions—but in seeking healing, in seeking to effect revolutionary change, women often find that the path leads toward other women, toward a connectedness that strengthens us all. This is a very stimulating book. This volume brings together nineteen interesting articles from women from a variety of religious and social traditions. A good book to read and to own as a resource in women's experience of feminism and religion. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Professor of Theology, Claremont Graduate University This is feminist religious thought at its most courageous and creative. The narratives by these authors offer inspiring, revolutionary, spiritual insights about women’s lives, bodies, and violence. Traci C. West, Professor of Ethics and African American Studies, Drew University Theological School The women in this volume are bold in uncovering persistent problems and rethinking new possibilities for thought and action. Their essays are personal, based on the authors’ own experiences as Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Mormons; but they articulate their insights in ways that reverberate in many different contexts. These essays touch on all areas of concern for women: reproduction, sexuality, body image, violence and abuse, poverty and wealth, spiritual power and women’s ordination, the sacred and the Divine. These essays will inspire you. Margaret Toscano, Associate Professor of Comparative Studies, University of Utah

Women and Religion in England, 1500-1720

Women and Religion in England, 1500-1720
Author: Patricia Crawford
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1996
Genre: England
ISBN: 9780415016971

Patricia Crawford explores how the study of gender can enhance our understanding of religious history, in this study of women and their apprehensions of God in early modern England.Patricia Crawford demonstrates how the consideration of gender is central to our understanding of religious history. Women and Religion has three broad themes: the role and experience of women in the religious upheaval in the period from the Reformation to the Restoration; the significance of religion to contemporary women, focusing on the range of practices and beliefs; and the gendered nature of religious beliefs, institutions and language in the early modern period.

Theory of Women in Religions

Theory of Women in Religions
Author: Catherine Wessinger
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2020-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1479809462

An introduction to the study of women in diverse religious cultures While women have made gains in equality over the past two centuries, equality for women in many religious traditions remains contested throughout the world. In the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints women are not ordained as priests. In areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan under Taliban occupation girls and women students and their teachers risk their lives to go to school. And in Sri Lanka, fully ordained Buddhist nuns are denied the government identity cards that recognize them as citizens. Is it possible to create families, societies, and religions in which women and men are equal? And if so, what are the factors that promote equality? Theory of Women in Religions offers an economic model to shed light on the forces that have impacted the respective statuses of women and men from the earliest developmental stages of society through the present day. Catherine Wessinger integrates data and theories from anthropology, archaeology, sociology, history, gender studies, and psychology into a concise history of religions introduction to the complex relationships between gender and religion. She argues that socio-economic factors that support specific gender roles, in conjunction with religious norms and ideals, have created a gendered division of labor that both directly and indirectly reinforces gender inequality. Yet she also highlights how as the socio-economic situation is changing religion is being utilized to support the transition toward women’s equality, noting the ways in which many religious representations of gender change over time.

Women in World Religions

Women in World Religions
Author: Arvind Sharma
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1987-04-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1438419686

This is a book by women about women in the religions of the world. It presents all the basic facts and ideological issues concerning the position of women in the major religious traditions of humanity: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, and tribal religions. A special feature of the book is its phenomenological approach, wherein scholars examine sacred textual materials. Each contributor not only studies her religion from within, but also studies it from her own feminine perspective. Each is an adept historian of religions, who grounds her analysis in publicly verifiable facts. The book strikes a delicate balance between hard fact and delicate perception, the best tradition of phenomenology and the history of religions. It also demonstrates how much religions may vary over time. Contributors are Katherine K. Young, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at McGill University; Nancy Schuster Barnes, whose Ph.D. is in Sanskrit and Indian Studies; M. Theresa Kelleher, Assistant Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Manhattanville College; Barbara Reed, Assistant Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College; Denise L. Carmody, Professor and Chair, Department of Religion, The University of Tulsa. Also Jane I. Smith, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School; Rosemary Radford Ruether, Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology at the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary; Rita M. Gross, Associate Professor of Comparative Religions at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Clair.

Women in Religion

Women in Religion
Author: Mary Pat Fisher
Publisher: Longman Publishing Group
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2007
Genre: Education
ISBN:

Using extracts, original interviews, and biographies of women past and present, this accessible book makes women's religious experiences and actions come to life in all their richness and variety.

Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, Set

Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, Set
Author: Rosemary Skinner Keller
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 1443
Release: 2006-04-19
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 0253346851

A fundamental and well-illustrated reference collection for anyone interested in the role of women in North American religious life.