Women's leadership in Spiritualism and Christian Science / Ann Braude -- The feminism of "Universal Brotherhood," women in the Theosophical Movement / Robert Ellwood and Catherine Wessinger -- Emma Curtis Hopkins, a feminist of the 1880's and mother of new thought / J. Gordon Melton -- Myrtle Fillmore and her daughters, an observation and analysis of the role of women in Unity / Dell deChant -- Woman guru, woman roshi, the legitimation of female religious leadership in Hindu and Buddhist groups in America / Catherine Wessinger. -- Part 3. Contemporary women as creators of religion: Ritual validations of clergywomen's authority in the African American Spiritual churches of New Orleans / David C. Estes --. - Twentieth-century women's religion as seen in the feminist spirit.

In this book, historians of religion and gender studies explore the biographies of a number of female leaders, and the factors within their groups and cultural contexts that support these women’s religious leadership. New Religious Movements have been supportive of women taking roles of leadership for a long time. Authors of this book examine issues of gender and female leadership from diverse theoretical and methodological standpoints. The book covers a broad range of groups both with regard to time and place, covering Paganism, Hindu guru groups, Christian organizations, esoteric/ mystical movements, African churches, and a Japanese NRM. The common focal point is the powerful, prophetic, charismatic women who have founded and/ or led New Religious Movements.

This authoritative collection brings together the latest thinking on women's leadership in early Christianity. Featuring contributors from key thinkers in the fields of Christian history, it considers the evidence for ways in which women exercised leadership in churches from the 1st to the 9th centuries CE.

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.

This collection of lively Q&A interviews with key contemporary female religious leaders focuses not only on the discrimination faced by women in religion, but documents the emerging leadership of women in several faith traditions.

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. Additional Resources

The Annual Review of Women in World Religions represents a polymethodic, interdisciplinary, and multitraditional approach to the study of women and religion, emphasizes the comparative dimension, and establishes a dialogue between the humanities and the social sciences. In this volume, contributors examine the concept of immanence in a wide variety of theological and cultural contexts. Volume V includes the following contributions: "Immanence:" Catalyst for Women's Theologies by Mary Farrell Bednarowski; Immanence and Transcendence in Women's Thea/ologies by Cynthia Eller; Immanence and Relatedness: Psychological and Ontological Reflections by Linda E. Olds; Immanence and Transcendence in Women's Religious Experience and Expression: A Non-Theistic Perspective by Rita M. Gross; Women-Church: Re-Imagining Immanence and Transcendence by Rosemary Radford Ruether; Immanence as Music Incarnate: Prelude to a Feminist Theology of Music by Heidi Epstein; "The Secret of Jewish Feminity:" Immanence, Ritual Purity, and Domestic Romance by Natalie Catherine Polzer; and Image and Immanence: The Domestication of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Pamela Kirk.