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Drawn from over fifty-eight individual, in-depth, qualitative interviews with women of faith in Malaysia and Britain, Women of Faith and the Quest for Spiritual Authenticity is a multifaith, multicultural and cross-cultural comparative focus that explores women's religious expressions, as derived from practising Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Wiccans and Druids among others.
Despite social advances towards women's emancipation and the lacerating critiques from feminist theologians across the Abrahamic religions and beyond, women's religious experiences remain submerged beneath the weight of patriarchal religious leadership and ongoing masculinised, dogmatic interpretations. Even feminism itself has yet to move the spiritual onto their main agenda of inequity in women's lives. This extensive, feminist research monograph challenges these exclusions to centre and amplify women's voices in speaking powerfully of their religious experiences, interpretations and practices.
This is an ecumenical and entertaining ethnography where women's narratives and life stories ground faith as embodied, personal, painful, vibrant, diverse, illuminating and shared. This book will of interest not only to academics and students of the sociology of religion, feminist and gender studies, politics, ethnicity and Southeast Asian studies, but is equally accessible to the general reader broadly interested in faith and feminism.
List of contents
1. Searching for the Sacramental: An Introduction
2. Gender and Faith: A Critical Review
3. ‘When Eve Delved’: Fieldwork Reflections
4. What is it to be a Woman of Faith?
5. God the Patriarch and Other Relatives
6. The Sacred, Sacramental and Sex
7. The Damnable, Salvational and Salvageable
8. Conclusions and Contemplations
About the author
Sara Ashencaen Crabtree is Professor of Social and Cultural Diversity at Bournemouth University, UK. She has worked extensively in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and the Middle East and is widely published in the areas of gender, vulnerability, discrimination, disadvantage, cross-cultural issues and belief.
Summary
Drawn from over 55 individual, in-depth, qualitative interviews with women of faith in Malaysia and Britain, this book is a multi-faith, multi-cultural and cross-cultural comparative focus that explores women’s religious expressions.
