Women in Religions
Скачать книги из серии Women in ReligionsWomen in Buddhist Traditions
A new history of Buddhism that highlights the insights and experiences of women from diverse communities and traditions around the world Buddhist traditions have developed over a period of twenty-five centuries in Asia, and recent decades have seen an unprecedented spread of Buddhism globally. From India to Japan, Sri Lanka to Russia, Buddhist traditions around the world have their own rich and diverse histories, cultures, religious lives, and roles for women.Wherever Buddhism has taken root, it has interacted with indigenous cultures and existing religious traditions. These traditions have inevitably influenced the ways in which Buddhist ideas and practices have been understood and adapted. Tracing the branches and fruits of these culturally specific transmissions and adaptations is as challenging as it is fascinating. Women in Buddhist Traditions chronicles pivotal moments in the story of Buddhist women, from the beginning of Buddhist history until today. The book highlights the unique contributions of Buddhist women from a variety of backgrounds and the strategies they have developed to challenge patriarchy in the process of creating an enlightened society. Women in Buddhist Traditions offers a groundbreaking and insightful introduction to the lives of Buddhist women worldwide.
Women in Japanese Religions
Scholars have widely acknowledged thepersistent ambivalence with which the Japanese religious traditions treatwomen. Much existing scholarship depicts Japan’s religious traditions as meremeans of oppression. But this view raises a question: How have ambivalent andeven misogynistic religious discourses on gender still come to inspire devotionand emulation among women?In Women in Japanese Religions, Barbara R. Ambrosexamines the roles that women have played in the religions of Japan. An importantcorrective to more common male-centered narratives of Japanese religioushistory, this text presents a synthetic long view of Japanese religions from adistinct angle that has typically been discounted in standard survey accountsof Japanese religions.Drawing on a diverse collection ofwritings by and about women, Ambros argues that ambivalent religious discoursesin Japan have not simply subordinated women but also given them religiousresources to pursue their own interests and agendas. Comprising nine chaptersorganized chronologically, the book begins with the archeological evidence offertility cults and the early shamanic ruler Himiko in prehistoric Japan andends with an examination of the influence of feminism and demographic changeson religious practices during the “lost decades” of the post-1990 era. Byviewing Japanese religious history through the eyes of women, Women in Japanese Religions presents anew narrative that offers strikingly different vistas of Japan’s pluralistictraditions than the received accounts that foreground male religious figuresand male-dominated institutions.Additional Resources
Women in Christian Traditions
Women in Christian Traditions offers a concise and accessible examination of the roles women have played in the construction and practice of Christian traditions, revealing the enormous debt that this major world religion owes to its female followers. It recovers forgotten and obscured moments in church history to help us to realize a richer and fuller understanding of Christianity.This text provides an overview of the complete sweep of Christian history through the lens of feminist scholarship. Yet it also departs from some of the assumptions of that scholarship, raising questions that challenge our thinking about how women have shaped beliefs and practices during two thousand years of church history. Did the emphasis on virginity in the early church empower Christian women? Did the emphasis on marriage during the Reformations of the sixteenth century improve their status? These questions and others have important implications for women in Christianity in particular, and for women in religion in general, since they go to the heart of the human condition.This work examines themes, movements, and events in their historical contexts and locates churchwomen within the broader developments that have been pivotal in the evolution of Christianity. From the earliest disciples to the latest theologians, from the missionaries to the martyrs, women have been instrumental in keeping the faith alive. Women in Christian Traditions shows how they did so.Additional Resources
Women in New Religions
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