Women and Religion

An international cross-cultural and multidisciplinary seminar on Women and Death organized and chaired by Evy Johanne Håland at the Centre for Women and Gender Research at the University of Bergen in 2006. The proceedings were later edited and published: Håland, E. J. (ed.): Women, Pain and Death: Rituals and Everyday-Life on the Margins of Europe and Beyond. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2008 (https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/9781847188700). In addition to the introduction, my own contribution outlines my theoretical approach to the theme.

After addressing the evolution of my standpoint as a women's spirituality scholar, I discuss Women's Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Then I propose that an embodied women's spirituality practice can to some extent the divide between science and religion; and that a nature-embedded women's spirituality practice and serve to resolve some of the conflict between anti-essentialist and essentialist women's spirituality scholars.

This article documents one strain of Mormon thought concerning the Woman of Endor narrative in 1 Samuel 28, in which the woman was interpreted as a prophetess enabled to raise the dead through her spiritual gifts. Church leaders eventually condemned this narrative because of its similarities with Spiritualist exegesis and American Christianity's use of the narrative to condemn Spiritualism as necromancy. Through establishing an orthodox reading of the passage, leaders strengthened the boundaries separating the two faiths – boundaries that many Spiritualists had argued were at best blurry and overlapping.

n e w t h e o l o g y r e v i e w • a u g u s t 2 0 1 0 26 B a h a r d a v a r y The Islamic tradition has a rich perception and diverse history of interpretation of Mary. Here, one Muslim scholar offers her reflections on the Qur <an's presentation of Mary, her prophetic qualities, and the role of Mary in popular piety.

Feminine modes of consciousness affect every aspect of Julian's thought, from her epistemology with its grounding in experience and in the body, to her vocabulary of the self, with its insistence on the sensuality of the self, to her theology of the motherhood of God.  It is no accident that this theology of nature and of the body as already grace-filled comes from a woman.  The importance of the body as a non-rational vehicle of divine perception has not usually been seen in Julian's work. This paper seeks to address Julian's bodily experience as an epistemology of the divine, which lays the foundation for her full-blown theology of "sensualyte."

"Several Scripts, Several Scribes: The (Un)Making of Taslima Nasreen" has been published by Sarojini Naidu Centre for Women's Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in their journal "Women's Link" Vol.25, No.2 , April-June 2018 Issue. ISSN 2229-6409

It is apparent today that the issue of the role of women in the Orthodox Church is gaining interest, not only within Orthodoxy, but also by non-Orthodox, who wish to identify the beliefs and practices of the Eastern Orthodox Church.  What is evident in a number of publications and conferences is the fact that we need to hear not only what the Church proclaims on this issue, but how women themselves understand the theology and the tradition of their role in Orthodoxy.  Quoting the same verses from Holy Scripture such as Galatians 3:28 – “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” -, or referring to the same Church Fathers, who show a negative approach to women within the Church, can only take us so far. In order to understand the role of women in Orthodoxy we need to go further; we need to establish their role today, identify the true Orthodox Tradition and examine the history of this matter, on a practical, historical point of view and also theologically.
The fact that other Christian denominations, specifically the Protestant churches and parts of the Anglican Communion, have ordained women to the priesthood and the episcopate, has created many questions, which trouble not only them, but also the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox, who still maintain the traditional approach of ordaining only male members. This is, probably, the most important issue, in regards to the role of women in the Church, in our time. However, it is not the only problem identified. Here we will examine the role of women by looking at the women chanters according to the Byzantine Tradition, deaconesses and ordination of women, the role of women in the Orthodox Church today and the soteriological realities of the members of the Church.

This chapter investigates discussions concerning the role of women in the Orthodox Church in late imperial Russia. It draws from texts written by Orthodox authors in early twentieth-century Russia and dedicated to various themes pertaining to women. A central question in the material concerns the concept of deaconess and how it could be employed to recognize and channel growing female activity in the Church. This chapter shows how the office of deaconess was a contentious issue in late imperial Russia. Moreover, it also demonstrates how various female communities and especially their leaders played a prominent role in Russian religious life of the time, even though they remained somewhat isolated from the majority of male clerics.

Paper done for Religious Studies Old Testament/Hebrew Bible undergraduate course at Indiana University Southeast.  Paper examines and contextualizes Old Testament passage from the Book of Jeremiah.  Explains how its focuses on the ancient Near Eastern goddess Asherah and her place in ancient Hebrew and Israelite religion along with the history of the book itself.

In _Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women_, Susan Starr Sered claims that "emphasis on food and food preparation is one of the clearest and most common themes of women's religions.  Cross-culturally, food is an especially sacred symbol because it is ingested -- incorporated into the body of the believer" (Sered 1994:133).  In this article, I examine the foodways of a Los Angeles organization of Spiritual Feminists who practice what they term "Dianic witchcraft" or "feminist witchcraft" in light of Sered's theories about female-dominated religions, and theories of the gendered nature of food proposed by Deborah Heisley (Heisley 1992).  How does a religious group composed entirely of women and consciously focused on women's lives deal with food within religious rites and outside of them?  What is the place of food within ritual, both public and private?  Do the foods used by Dianic witches reflect any political or spiritual belief systems?  Do they confirm or refute Heisley's findings about foods symbolically categorized as "female" food in her research?  By analyzing the food practices at a large, Dianic community holiday ritual and through interviewing two members of Dianic covens about their personal religious practices involving food, I propose some preliminary findings about the role of food in this emergent spiritual tradition.

This thesis investigates the reception and appropriation of aspects of ancient Egyptian religion by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an exclusive late-nineteenth century British alternative spirituality movement. Initially contextualising the Golden Dawn as standing outside the development of scholarly Egyptology, its direct relationship with the modern Pagan movement is subsequently explained and the implications thereof for contemporary archaeology are outlined. Specific case studies of four Golden Dawn members highlight the order’s imaginative method of obtaining knowledge about ancient Egypt and the erroneous conclusions arrived at thereby. The historically inaccurate, self-serving and misleading picture of ancient Egyptian religion promoted by the Golden Dawn, as well as its unscientific method of obtaining information about the past through revelation rather than reason, is shown to have been adopted by contemporary Pagans who subsequently attempt to impose their erroneous interpretations of the past on to archaeologists, museum curators and heritage workers, to the detriment of archaeology.

This paper examines how women’s roles in pre-modern yoga practices have been represented in tantra and hatha texts. Consideration is given to the shifting notion of yoga and the academic relevance of studying women within this. The texts examined include the Brahmayāmala, a śakta-śaiva scripture that details the participation of women in rituals and represents them in various divine forms; the hathayoga texts from the 12th-15th centuries, the Amanaska, Dattātreyayogaśāstra and Hathapradīpikā. Themes explored include the limiting nature of sources written from and for the male perspective; sexuality and spiritual-sexual practices, specifically the practice of vajrolīmudra; the agency ascribed to women and to what extent representations align with the lived reality of women’s experiences.

Indice
p. 11 INTRODUZIONE
Il r
ecupero di una tradizione
p. 15 CAPITOLO I
M
ary Astell: una seria proposta alle sue sorelle
15 1 Una rivoluzione senza spargimento di sangue
17 2 Donne eccellenti e “femministe” zelanti
23 3 Una Seria Proposta alle Signore
p. 28 CAPITOLO II
Manuali di condotta e Vindications per i diritti delle donne
28 1 La donna domesticate e i manuali di condotta
36 2 Di segno opposto ma con lo stesso obiettivo:
l
e vindication di fine Settecento
p. 42 CAPITOLO III
Catherine Talbot e la teologia pratica in
R
eflections on the Seven Days of the Week
42 1 Creatura “inutile” ma non agli occhi di Dio
46 2 Una semplice biografia o un’agiografia?
49 3 Reflections upon the Seven Days of the Week (1770)
p. 54 CAPITOLO IV
Hester Mulso Chapone e Letters on the Improvement
o
f the Mind
54 1 “Un ornamento utile”: l’educazione razionale
di Hester Mulso Chapone
56 2 Lettere a una nipote:
Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773)
59 3 Un ponte tra Mary Astell e Samuel Richardson
p. 67 CAPITOLO V
Sarah Robinson Scott e la filantropia utopica in
A Description of Millenium Hall
67 1 Le sorelle Robinson e il desiderio di socialità
70 2 Sarah Scott e la sua opera
72 3 La filantropia nel XVIII secolo
77 4 Millenium Hall
p. 85 CRONOLOGIA
p. 95

In his edicts, the emperor Aśoka Maurya extols brāhmaṇas, usually alongside ascetics (śramaṇas), as deserving honor and generosity, though he never alludes to their connection with ritual, the central theme of early Brahmanical literature. On the other hand, in Rock Edicts I and IX, he disparages sacrifices, and ceremonies performed by women, advocating instead the practice of ethical virtues. Close attention to the wording of Rock Edict IX shows that Aśoka and the Brahmanical Gṛhyasūtras talk about domestic rites in very similar terms, even describing them with the same adjective (uccāvaca). Both of them note the special role of women as a source of knowledge of such ceremonies, and differ only in how they evalute the value of such ceremonial: Aśoka disparages women’s rites, while some Gṛhyasūtras explicitly validate women as authorities in such matters. A comparison of these sources highlights the distinctive role of the term dhamma in Aśoka’s usage in contrast to maṅgala (auspicious folk rites), and may provide some guidance for dating the Gṛhyasūtras. The fact that Aśoka does not explicitly connect such rites with the brāhmaṇas suggests that in his experience at least (i.e., in Magadha) Brahmins’ religious authority had nothing to do with domestic ritual. We may conclude that the Vedic canonization of Gṛhya ritual norms was not yet recognized outside of priestly circles, if it had developed yet at all.

This paper asserts that Women " s entrepreneurial behavior and economic development in North East India has been closely related to religious factors. Religion and culture influence an individual " s inclination to engage in entrepreneurial activity which is rooted in religious beliefs, family background, education level, and language. It is determined that Hinduism, main religions of South Asia, impedes individual " s participation in entrepreneurship in India because of the religious belief that material wealth is insignificant. The impact of religious factors upon the economic development of India can be traced back some 4,500 to 5, 000 years. It is very much true that cultural aspects influence individual " s choice to engage in entrepreneurial activity and the caste system is a cultural structure that forces woman individuals to be self-employed and others to be laborers because of their status in society. This paper will explore the basic criteria of how the sacred traditional religious consciousness facilitate on the women " s entrepreneurial behavior in north east India with a low transformative potential inhibiting women entrepreneurship, with the concomitant possibility of its continuous redefinition and reformulation, with a high degree of social openness among the religiously active groups.

La teología feminista se puede considerar como una de las metodologías de la teología española actual, pues ha realizado un recorrido histórico y eclesial muy significativo. Se ha ido configurando, desde el concilio Vaticano II, como un modelo comunitario e inductivo de hacer teología, desde una mirada solidaria con las mujeres. Su propuestas y transformaciones en el ámbito teológico y eclesial permite una mirada más amplia de los supuestos teológicos porque tiene en cuenta a las mujeres y otros colectivos invisibles. Su trabajo favorece abrir vías de exploración nuevas y creativas contando con la experiencia religiosa de las personas. En este artículo, analizaremos aquellos acontecimientos que han permitido el surgimiento de la teología feminista en España. Definiremos cuáles son las bases de la teología feminista y cuáles son las prácticas feministas que favorecen el quehacer teológico para hacerlo más vivo y creativo. Por último, nombraremos aquellas tareas que la teología feminista española tiene pendiente y está comenzando a realizar, contribuyendo a una praxis teológica más equilibrada, audaz y dialogante de la Iglesia.

Feminist theology can be considered as one of the methodologies of current Spanish theology, since it has had a very significant historical and ecclesial journey. It has been configured, since the Vatican II Council, as a community and inductive model of doing theology, from a view of solidarity with women. His proposals and transformations in the theological and ecclesial field allow a broader view of the theological assumptions because they take into account women and other invisible groups. Its favorable work to open new and creative ways of exploration counting on the religious experience of people. In this article, we will analyze some events that have allowed the emergence of feminist theology in Spain. We will define that the bases of feminist theology and the feminist practices that favor the theological work to make it more alive and creative. Finally, there are pending tasks that Spanish feminist theology has pending and is beginning to realize, contributing to a more balanced, audacious and dialogical theological praxis of the Church.

Gender is at the heart of religion and politics, yet marginalized within religion and politics as separate academic fields as well as within studies that bring these two fields together. Indeed, gender is rarely mentioned in major books on religion and politics (see, for instance, the Routledge series ‘Studies in Religion and Politics’ and the Palgrave Macmillan series ‘Culture and Religion in International Relations’). The field of religion and politics thus mirrors other fields of study when it comes to the relative marginalization of gender. When gender is examined, it is via studies that focus explicitly and often exclusively on the role of gender in religion and politics, such as the edited volume by Bayes and Tohidi, which analyzes ‘the politics of women’s rights in Catholic and Muslim contexts’,  along with more recent edited volumes by Cady and Fessenden  and Reilly and Scriver  which both address the religion-secularism-gender equality nexus in different contexts. Other works, including those by Scott,  and Rosenberger and Sauer,  discuss a single topic such as the politicization of the Muslim headscarf.

New and shifting configurations of gender, religion and politics require us to examine how nation states as well as international and global governance structures (e.g., the European Union; the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; the United Nations) deal with gender equality issues that are highly contested (e.g., abortion, contraception, divorce, prostitution, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, honor killings); how national, international and global government institutions relate to religious stakeholders and actors (e.g., the Catholic Church); how faith-based and secular voluntary organizations mobilize in relation to gender equality issues; how religious communities deal with gender equality and women’s rights issues, and how religious women and men perform and negotiate gender relations in their everyday lives. Highlighting the stable and shifting relationships between religion, politics and gender, this chapter focuses on the relationship between religion, politics and gender at global, national and local levels.

From a feminist point of view, politics is not simply about states, governance and the electorate, but also about communities, civil society groups, families and intimate aspects of individuals’ ‘lived citizenship’.  A feminist notion of politics points to the artificial and often imposed distinction between ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ spheres as untenable, as politics are intertwined with our everyday lives as economic, social, gendered, racial and ethnic, sexual and intimate, religious or secular citizens. Moreover, while status, rights and duties are central aspects of lived citizenship, so are our identities, our sense of belonging, our caring for each other, and our participation in a multitude of social contexts.  Politics intersect with gender and religion at all of these levels and also with other forms of difference and inequality such as class, ‘race’ and ethnicity, and sexuality. Women’s political activism that addresses inequalities, discrimination and marginalization is at times primarily based on the mobilization of gender, while at other times it is based on a mixed mobilization of gender together with ‘race’ and ethnicity, sexuality, or religion. Furthermore, gender-based political activism may be anti-religious, indifferent to religion, or pro-religion, while religiously based political activism may support conservative or progressive forms of gender relations. The following three sections of this chapter address the issues of religion, secularization and gender politics; multiculturalism, feminism and religion; and women and religious activism.

This article won the "Honorable Mention Award" of the Association for Women in Psychology for 2020.

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The article presents the feminist discourse on Lilith and asks why she has returned to the centre of activity and creation? It begins with Lilith’s Integrative Myth – a description of the classic Lilith myths – whilst trying to define her image’s central characteristics. Following, I offer one integrative myth: a complex essence that contains contrasts, and stems from a variety of sources, each contributing to the formation of Lilith’s story’s numerous aspects. Lilith’s Revival is discussed, surveying the different ways in which Lilith appears in today’s feminist spiritual discourse, while presenting some of the ways in which her story is re-interpreted and used towards contemporary feminist needs. A feminist Jungian outlook on Lilith’s Myths is included, deciphering Lilith as a symbol of the life-death-life cycle, which leads to a summary of the Jungian analysis’ implications.

Author: William B. Bowes
Publisher: CBE International

Amid the patriarchy of the ancient world, early Christianity had a particularly liberating and redemptive place for women, one significant enough to be mentioned by Christianity’s first major critic, the second-century philosopher Celsus.

María Magdalena aparece pocas veces mencionada en los Evangelios Canónicos. Sin embargo, algunas comunidades cristianas de los primeros siglos sentían veneración por ella, considerándola la discípula más amada de Jesús y autora de un evangelio, conocido como Evangelio de María. Los textos de la biblioteca de Nag Hammadi, hallados en Egipto a mediados del siglo XX, de contenido místico y esotérico, hablan a menudo de María Magdalena y dan de ella una imagen complementaria a la que se encuentra en el Nuevo Testamento. En estos textos María aparece, no sólo como una de las mujeres más cercanas a Jesús, sino como receptora y transmisora de sus enseñanzas secretas, por lo que es objeto de la envidia de los apóstoles, sobre todo de Pedro. La Iglesia consideró estos textos apócrifos, pero hasta el final de la Antigüedad la memoria de María Magdalena perduraba en los ambientes cristianos gnósticos y seguía siendo objeto de polémica.

“Carnivalesque” is perhaps the best, if not the only way to describe what was going on at the Bab al-Saghir Cemetery that hot summer afternoon in 2008.  In front of the graves of the Prophet’s wives, Shi‘i pilgrims could buy Viagra, sex-enhancement creams, and massage oils.  Sexual mores were normally strictly guarded in Syria and medicines were usually available only at pharmacies.  Yet, there in one of the most historically and religiously significant cemeteries in Damascus, makeshift vendors sold an array of sex-related items.  In order to analyze this phenomenon, this article draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “carnivalesque.”  First, it provides a short background of Twelver Shi‘ism in Syria and explains how Shi‘i religious tourism encouraged the development of black markets.  Then, it examines how Shi‘i pilgrimage, which occurred all year around, but peaked during Muharram, fostered an attitude that liberated Shi‘is from prevalent social norms and emphasized “grotesque” imagery and practices, including blood, death, and sex.  In short, it follows Michael Taussig’s call for anthropologists to attend to the transgressive aspects of religious ritual.

Clara de Asís tuvo a lo largo de su vida una relación muy especial y directa con la enfermedad. Revisamos aquí cuatro aspectos fundamentales. 1) Su práctica del ascetismo radical en relación con su espiritualidad y su irradiación social. 2) La actividad sanadora que ejerció, tanto con sus compañeras de comunidad como con personas del exterior. 3) Su condición de enferma crónica, cómo vivió personalmente la enfermedad durante años y de qué modos pudo compatibilizarla con su vida religiosa y comunitaria; cómo, incluso, protegió a su comunidad de San Damián y a la entera ciudad de Asís estando muy enferma. 4) Su agonía final, fase en la que mantuvo activos sus vínculos con el papado y la curia y siguió ejerciendo el magisterio espiritual con sus religiosas.
Clare of Assisi had a very special and direct relationship with disease throughout her life. Here we review four fundamental aspects. 1) Her practice of radical asceticism in relation to her spirituality and her social irradiation. 2) The healing activity that she carried out, both with her sisters in the community and with people from abroad. 3) Her condition as a chronic patient, how she personally experienced the disease for years and how she knew how to reconcile it with her religious and community life; how she even protected her community of San Damiano and the whole city of Assisi when she was very ill. 4) Her final agony, a phase in which she maintained her links with the papacy and the curia and continued to exercise spiritual teaching with her spiritual sisters.

Hendrina Hospers (1880-1968) was a home missionary of the Women’s Board of Domestic Missions of the Reformed Church in America (RCA). She grew up in a Dutch-American Protestant colony led by her father,
Henry Hospers. The colony, centered in Orange City, Iowa, was built round church and school, and Hendrina participated in both. She graduated from the Northwestern Classical Academy (affiliated with the
RCA) in 1897. She taught in public schools until both her parents were dead. From 1907 to 1946, she worked as an RCA home missionary, first with the Chiricahua Apaches around Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and briefly
around White Tail, New Mexico, then with the Jicarilla Apaches around Dulce, New Mexico. Her missionary career can be at least partially reconstructed from reports she made to denominational publications and from photographs. She embodied the piety instilled in the first American-born generation of the Dutch Reformed colonists who settled in the Midwest and West in 1847 and after. Moreover, she illustrates the understudied importance of single women, Protestant and Catholic, in expanding and sustaining American Christian mission work—domestic and foreign—in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. Finally, and beyond being a type, she lived into both sides of a paradox. One the one hand, she was an integral part of the overturning of the lifeways of particular Native American peoples. Yet on the other hand she was integral to the adaptation and survival of those same peoples. She was neither simply a white cultural disrupter nor a white cultural transformer. She was a woman of her time and culture who also managed to partially transcend these through the “lowly service” of living much of her life among Apaches.

During the onslaught of the Islamic caliphate on Kobanî, Syria, media outlets across the globe broadcast pictures of brave and often unveiled Kurdish women fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a quintessentially male force of destruction. The images of women fighting Islamist male aggressors aroused outrage, admiration, and pity among observers. But had all Kurdish fighters been male or had women fought for ISIS, viewers might have reacted differently. To examine some of the most widely disseminated gendered pictures and videos of the Syrian uprising in the media, this article draws on Mohja Kahf’s three categories, which typify how Muslim women, Arab women, or both are perceived by the Anglophone reading and viewing public: the first is victims; the second, escapees; and the third, pawns of patriarchy and male power. While this typology helps in examining gendered images of the Syrian uprising, it also obscures the socioeconomic realities on the ground.

The equal dignity of woman with her male counterpart is not merely a postmodern feminist prank to dismiss but divine truth to be reclaimed and lived out for anyone claiming the name of Christian and Catholic. This paper claims that European colonial Catholic missionaries sacralised the teaching that women are inferior to men in the Church, as a mechanism to assist the enslavement of Africans but today, via Vatican II documents and Africae Munus, the Catholic Church provides tools to make the reclaiming of woman's identity as in the Image of the Creator possible. It proceeds in four sections: first, it uncovers how women’s identity is culturally distorted as Imago vir using scripture and Catholic tradition, to serve the enslavement of Africans and thus offers possible reasons why the church in Africa is slow in reclaiming women’s identity; Next with Church history, proper exegesis and Vatican II documents the paper offers the principle of human consubstantiality as the
measure to choose authentic interpretations amongst variant ones, to assert the need for the retelling of identity myths, new ways of speaking about women and attitudes towards women. The paper then proceeds to root the dawn of the papal-requested institutionalized change in the attitudes
of two prominent Africans: Blessed Iwene Tansi of Nigeria and Methodist Theologian Mercy who flourish in African values akin to Catholic teaching. The paper ends by recommending some concrete steps the Nigerian local church may immediately adopt.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is both a concurrent and historical practice, manifesting in geographically diverse regions and across different religious groups. Wherever it is practiced, the ritual cutting of female genitals is an act designed to undermine a woman's personal sexual autonomy and identity, as well as reify patriarchal power relations. Although historically practiced in Islamic communities, records of female genital mutilation predate Islam, and the validity of Quranic references to the practice are contested by modern Islamic scholars. The recent incidents of FGM reported to have occurred in expatriate Muslim communities in Western European and North American nations reveal an ancient tribal practice that has acclimated itself to notions of modern Western medical authority. In fact, there is evidence for the presence of FGM in Western culture since the nineteenth century, in a context distinct from Muslim communities or Islamic religious influence. The history and current iterations of FGM in the West conform closely to Foucauldian theories of sex and power, and echo Foucault's assertion, discussed in The History of Sexuality, that power relations must successfully conceal their own mechanisms in order to maintain viability within society. Consequently, patterns associated with twenty-first century FGM analogize the construction of "religious violence" as a cultural category in Western discourse. When gendered violence is categorized as "religious," it is inevitably subjected to a process of othering that serves to further embed its practices as part of the collective social reality.

Liberal states are struggling to find ways to deal with strong religion in a manner that would enable them to give due respect to the religious beliefs of citizens while adhering to core liberal values, such as respect for human rights and avoidance of undue entanglement of religious and state authority. One solution is granting authority and autonomy to private religious tribunals, for example, in the area of religious family law. Another solution is creating a direct link between state law and some religious obligations, as in the New York Get Laws (“NY Get Laws”). Some people have criticized these solutions as deviating from the pattern of religion-state relations suitable for the liberal state, while others have embraced them. This Article rejects the tendency to view these solutions as similar and claims that they differ in both the structure of religion-state
relations that they advance and in their compatibility with human rights. It argues that only the latter solution, exemplified in the NY Get Laws, is a proper solution for the challenge of strong religion in a liberal state that aims to respect the rights of all, including weaker members of the community, such as women. In order to clarify the important differences between the two solutions, in terms of both structure and rights, this Article employs a wide comparative perspective on religion-state relations, analyzing such relations in both liberal and non-liberal countries and offering a typology of three distinct approaches that states take towards religion – nationalization,
authorization, and privatization. It assesses the advantages and
disadvantages of these approaches in responding to the challenge of strong religion and their compatibility with liberal religion-state structure and with liberal human rights. It then employs this analysis to highlight the significant differences between the two solutions to the challenge of strong religion, rejecting the calls for the authorization of private religious
tribunals and embracing the careful and conditional incorporation of religious considerations into civil law, as in the NY Get Laws. This Article argues that the latter is an appropriate and essential means for respecting both strong religion and liberal values since it enables the liberal state to acknowledge the importance of religious belief in people’s lives, while at
the same time protecting the rights of all its citizens.

[with Liliane Dulac], “Affective and Cognitive Contemplation in Christine de Pizan’s Heures de contemplacion sur la Passion de Nostre Seigneur Jhesucrist,” in: Christine de Pizan et son époque, ed. Danielle Buschinger, Liliane Dulac, Claire Le Ninan und Christine Reno (Amiens, Presses du "Centre d’études médiévales", Université de Picardie - Jules Verne (Médiévales, 53), 2012), p. 56-71.

Examines the nature of Christine's "cerebral" devotion in her contemplation of Christ's passion.

Women’s participation in traditional religions is often explained in terms of their victimization and/or their opportunities for empowerment. This paper seeks to use Mormon women as a framework in order to explore some of the consequences of this phenomenon and to advocate for the creation of multiple, complex spaces where traditional religious women may be understood beyond the paradigm of victim/empowerment. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the LDS or Mormons, maintains a cosmology that is based upon highly differentiated gendered practices. A belief in a female deity, Mother in Heaven, and a related belief that all pious Mormon men and women have the ability to become gods and goddesses in a post-mortal existence are central to
the Mormon gendered cosmology. Despite these beliefs, Mormon women generally resist feminism because they perceive feminism to be at odds with motherhood and family. Ironically, their belief in a female divine and their potential divinity strengthens their commitment to interdependence
through maternal practices and kinship.

There seems to be almost universal agreement that Paul restricted women’s role in ministry, largely based on two texts—1 Cor 14:34-35 and 1 Tim 2:11-15.1 Pauline authorship is not crucial to the interpretation of these texts on the role of women. In fact, one of the significant obstacles to authenticity and Pauline authorship is the traditional reading of the 1 Timothy passage as antagonistic to ministry roles for women. This makes many scholars uncomfortable—as perhaps it well should.

Nowadays human beings are extremely cruel selfish and inhuman in their behavior to other human beings. As a result peace becomes rare in society. But human nature is pure. Indifference to religious teachings and lack of morality work as prime reasons behind this situation. Religion provides lessons on pacifism, nonviolence, tolerance, moderation and holism to its followers. The heart of all religions is ‘love one another’. Religion encourages virtues such as self-restraint, patience, forgiveness and compassion. Similarly Religion discourages bad conducts and evil deeds. By practicing the moral teachings of religion, people can  make the ideal social behavior that ensures a peaceful environment. As a religion, Islam urges its followers to practice appropriate and tasteful social behavior at all times to maintain a peaceful society and a peaceful world.

The view that rebirth as a woman is the result of bad karma has caused problems for the realization of gender equality in Buddhist families and societies. Differences of interpretation of doctrine and practice exist in Asian Buddhist communities, but a gender imbalance in social praxis remains very strong. The roots of this view can be traced to elements of patriarchal culture that have been assimilated in Buddhist societies and the ambiguities regarding women that appear in numerous texts in the
Buddhist canon. For instance, in the Saddharmapundarika Sutta and the Bahudhatuka Sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya, the Buddha states that a woman cannot become a Buddha without first taking rebirth as a man. In the Sagatha Vaggas and the Soma Sutta, woman is portrayed as the personification of Mara’s children. In the vinaya, the Buddha is quoted as saying that the entry of women into the sangha would reduce the
duration of the Dhamma to 500 years. On the other hand, the Buddha also said that a
daughter could become an even better offspring than a boy. In the
Saddharmapundarika Sutra, the Buddha says that all beings can become Buddhas.
Short stories are a reflection of the worldview of a given society. Through an analysis of the content of short stories written in bahasa Indonesia, this paper investigates the issues of image, status, and characterization of women in contemporary Indonesian Buddhist society. The aim of this exploration is to gain insight into the world of youthful Indonesian Buddhist women through their short stories in Buddhist magazines.

Con la emergencia de hospitales católicos durante el porfiriato, se dio inicio a una reconfiguración del ala femenina de la Iglesia. El hospital católico, en este marco temporal, debe ser entendido como una estructura compleja que confería alteridad a sus ocupantes, como puente conector entre dos realidades sociales virtualmente antagónicas: una secular escenificada en el mundo exterior, y la otra religiosa, como una suerte de margen protector. Al adentrarse en el circuito interior, la narrativa de las religiosas pone en evidencia que el hospital como comunidad y como habitación resulta de cierta tensión entre la congregación y los agentes de un mundo secular. Los relatos de espacio implican para el análisis una vía de dos caminos, la evocación de una práctica, y una práctica en sí; ambos elementos permiten dimensionar el establecimiento de un orden y una ley del lugar entre fronteras y transgresiones a la hora de su escritura.

During the Middle Ages, Mary`s passionary dimension went through a significant  development. The Planctus Mariae for the death of her son located a suffering mother at the center of devotional phenomena. Her mourning embodied the morphology of mortuory rites deeply-rooted in Western culture. Since they clashed with the mourning models that the Church was trying to impose, royal, local and ecclesiastical authorities prohibited these rites, that were efficiently lead by women. From this framework, this article intends to analyze the place accorded to the Planctus Mariae in the religious culture of 15th and early 16th centuries. It argues that some of the elements found in Mary’s passion at that time derive from traditional mourning rituals, particularly those related to the ability for co-suffering through the figure of compassion —a figure warmly received in women’s religious circles. It also contends that some elements of Mary’s mourning —and by extension women’s—, are a form of ritual agency whose efficacy lies on anthropological patterns of emotional nature. Consequently, this the Planctus Mariae may be considered a ritual oriented to mediate in irreversible processes and situations.

This seminar presentation draws on material from the final chapter of my forthcoming book, _In Christ’s Stead: Benedictine Women’s Ministries in England, 900–1225_. It analyzes the portraits of women religious as exemplary intercessors rendered in saints’ lives, miracle collections, manuscript illuminations, and seal images produced in the late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman periods. All of the portraits examined were ultimately fashioned by male writers, painters, and engravers, but many still bear the marks of the women who inspired, commissioned, and shaped their fashioning. This presentation highlights the collaborations between artists and patrons and interrogates the internal motivations and external contingencies directing their efforts: memorializing the past, modeling prescribed practices, promoting the cults of saintly foremothers and the intercessory powers of the present community, and soliciting donors and new members. The very survival of a monastic house depended on the spiritual prestige it could claim over neighboring religious communities. Claims to prayers answered and miracles performed could persuade donors of means to grant gifts of land, money, and other material resources, but these claims had to be proven and publicized by oral and written testimonies and physical evidence in order to attract sufficient attention and patronage. And so captivating portraits of intercessors had to be fashioned.

Anáil an Bhéil Bheo brings together a stimulating range of interdisciplinary essays considering the connections between orality and modern Irish culture. From literature to song, folklore to the visual arts, contributors examine not only the connections between oral and textual traditions in Ireland, but also the theoretical concept of “orality” itself and the corresponding significance of oral texts in Irish society. Featuring work by emerging scholars in the fields of history, literature, folklore, music, women’s studies, film and theatre studies and disciplines contributing to Irish Studies, this multifaceted volume also includes contributions from scholars long engaged with issues of orality such as Gearóid Ó Crualaoich and Henry Glassie.

Every theocratic state needs religious boosters to survive as a totalitarian state. It can be seen regularly happening in Pakistan. It came into being on August 14, 1947 as an Islamic State but the first formal dictator General Ayub Khan (1958-69) realized that Pakistan needed a booster dose of Islamism so many of democratic rights of women and minorities, both religious and linguistic, were curtailed. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the worst dictator (1978-88) declared that Pakistan, already an Islamic state, would be governed under 'Nizam-e-Mustafa' (Rule of the Prophet). Though fond of 'nautch'  he introduced high octane Islamic laws making Pakistan a hell for women and traditional minorities like Christians, Hindus, Shias and Ahmedyas. Interestingly, the dreaded Blasphemy Laws followed by Zia were introduced by a so called democratically elected ruler, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1971-77). Bhutto introduced Hudood Laws turning women and minorities as sub-human beings. Democratically elected ruler Benazir Bhutto (1988–90 and 1993–96) also adhered to Islamism and continued giving booster dozes of Islam. In a framework of an Islamic theocratic state they all played their pre-destined roles.
You are grossly mistaken if you believe that it is happening in Pakistan only, a theocratic state. The Hindutva organizations working over-time to convert India into a Hindu theocratic state have been supporting bashing of Hindu women in a more organized manner. The largest organization in the world to circulate literature on Hindi way of life has a popular title both in English and Hindi namely 'How to lead a Household Life' and 'Grahsth Mein Kaise Rahen' by Swami Ramsukhdas. This book is in question-answer format and is a kind of help book for imbibing Hindu way of life.
The largest publication house publishing anti-women literature is GITA PRESS, GORAKHPUR.
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