Her Voice, Her Faith: Women Speak On World Religions - Softcover

Young, Katherine; Sharma, Arvind

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813342570 ISBN 13: 9780813342573

Publisher: Westview Press, 2004

Synopsis

They say religion is a personal and private affair. But when a woman believes in a tradition, she has a relationship to that faith beyond her sacred space. Religious traditions' historically poor treatment of women has lead many to question why they believe. How has their tradition either embraced and enlightened, or excluded and confined women throughout history? Her Voice, Her Faith presents the personal and historical perspectives of women who not only live their faith day to day, but who also know their religion's history with women in general.

About this title

About the Author:

Katherine Young

From Publishers Weekly:

This collection of essays is worthwhile in concept. Eight experts with solid scholarly credentials examine the roles played by women in world religions, adding a first-person perspective from their own religious experiences to their essays about women's historically underappreciated and underdocumented participation in religions. This fine idea is, however, unevenly executed, producing essays of mixed quality that suffer from either narrow focus on material from a tradition or underexplained references to a tradition's complex pantheon, teachings or history. Rita Gross's essay on women in Buddhism most successfully mixes discussion of canon, religious teachings, historical practice and contemporary issues. By contrast, Riffat Hassan's essay on women and Islam, with limited scholarly citation and argument about the meaning of pivotal but nonetheless highly selected Qur'anic passages, does not do justice to the vast history of participation by women in this major world religion. Wendy Griffin's piece on goddess spirituality is the most seriously flawed. Its unquantified assertions ("More covens formed"; "More and more women came") about the growth of a minority movement mostly in the past 30 years do not add up to proof of impact on, and reflection of, women's lived experience-96 footnotes notwithstanding. An essay on new religious movements-including modern goddess spirituality-or world indigenous religions would have offered a more capacious and scholarly framework for documenting women's religious practices, beliefs and leadership across the boundaries of time and culture.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Westview Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0813342570
• ISBN 13: 9780813342573
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336