Women's Studies 2050sPRING 2003
Week 13- Women and Religion
Readings: Chapter 12
Internet resources
From Academic Info: http://www.academicinfo.net/religwom.html
A Women and Religion Bibliography: http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~women/bibs/rel.html
Women and Religion: Web Resources by Kathleen O’Grady, Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies, University of Toronto: http://www.aarweb.org/syllabus/syllabi/o/ogrady/women_and_religion_web_resources-ogrady.html
From WSSLINKS, a project of the Women's Studies Section of the Association of
College and Research Libraries, is a list of links on Women and Theology:
http://www.earlham.edu/~libr/acrlwss/wsstheo.html
For research reports on women in religion from the Hartford Institution: http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/research_women_religion.html
Mother Goddess
Ecofeminism is a rich web site created by K. Nichols which includes links to many topics in women's spirituality, including the mother goddess (not all hyperlinks are active): http://www.pittstate.edu/engl/nichols/flora.html
K. Nichols has created the Goddess Project: http://www.pittstate.edu/engl/nichols/goddess.html
Religious Tolerance.Org has a section on mother goddess:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/goddess.htm
Women and Islam
From the Islamic Server: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/humanrelations/womeninislam/
From Jannah.org, resources about Muslin Women: http://www.jannah.org/sisters/
Additional materials: http://www.islamzine.com/women/
Women and Buddhism
Women Active in Buddhism: http://members.tripod.com/~Lhamo/
From BuddhaNet, a list of links: http://www.buddhanet.net/l_women.htm
The Woman's Christian Bible by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
A summary: http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/w_bible.html
About.Com has an excerpt from Stanton's re-write of Genesis: http://womenshistory.about.com/homework/womenshistory/library/etext/blwomansbible02a1.htm
Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy
Created by the Church of Christ Science a web site on Eddy: http://www.tfccs.com/gv/MBE/MBEMain.jhtml
A short biography of Eddy: http://website.lineone.net/~cornerstone/eddy.htm
Shakers and Mother Lee
From a class on new religious movements, a summary of Shaker history and links: http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/Shakers.html
A site describing the differences between Quakers and Shakers: http://www.rootsweb.com/~quakers/shakers.htm
Quakers
Published by Suite 101.com, an article about Quakers and Women, including short biographies of prominent quaker women: http://www.i5ive.com/article.cfm/quakerism/9442
A web maintained by the Society of Friends: http://www.quaker.org/
From Religious Tolerance.Org: http://www.religioustolerance.org/quaker.htm
An exhibit about Quakers and the Political Process, currated by the Society of Friends: http://www.pym.org/exhibit/
An independent list of links on the Quakers: http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/~wking/blair/friends.htm
From Notable Women Ancestors, short biographies of women religious leaders: http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/religious.html
For a short biography of religion scholar Karen Armstrong: http://www.islamfortoday.com/karenarmstrong.htm
An interview from PBS Religion & Ethics: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week602/armstrong.html
Consider works by these scholars:
Marija Gimbutas: http://www.kindredarts.com/kindredarts/articles/gimbutas.html
Karen Armstrong: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2001-03-21.htm
Her published works include: The Gospel According to Women (1987), Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today's World (1991), The English Mystics of the 14th Century (1991), and A History of God (1993).
Riane Eisler: http://www.partnershipway.org/html/subpages/eisler.htm
Elaine Pagels: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/pagels.html
Gerda Lerner (Creation of Patriarchy, 1986): http://www.portalwisconsin.org/gerdalerner01.cfm
Lerner's analysis of the creation of patriarchy includes these points:
- Women’s sexual and reproductive capacity was appropriated and commodified by men.
- The archaic states were organized in the form of the patriarchy and supported the patriarchal family. Menl earned to dominate other men, institutionalizing slavery, from their practice dominating women. Women’s subordination was institutionalized in the law codes of the archaic states and enforced by the state. Women were tied sexually to men, who gave them access to material resources, creating women’s sexual and economic subordination. ">A man’s social class was the result of his relationship to the means of production, whereas a woman’s social class depended on their ties to a man who gave them access to material resources. ">Long after women were legally subordinated to men, supernatural female figures, such as goddesses, were still worshipped for their power to give life.
- The powerful goddesses were dethroned and replaced by a dominant male god in most Near Eastern societies following the establishment of a strong and imperialistic kingship.
- The emergence of Hebrew monotheism took the form of an attack on the cults of the fertility goddesses by ascribing creativity and pro-creativity to an all-powerful male god. Female sexuality for any purpose but procreation was associated with sin and evil.
- In the establishment of the Hebrew covenant community the basic symbolism and actual contract between God and humanity assumed as a given the subordinate position of women and their exclusion from the covenant community. Their sole function was as mothers.
- “This symbolic devaluing of women in relation to the divine becomes one of the founding metaphors of Western civilization. The other founding metaphor is supplied by Aristotelian philosophy, which assumes as a given that women are incomplete and damaged human beings of an entirely different order than men. It is with the creation of these two metaphorical constructs, which are built into the very foundations of the symbol systems of Western civilization, that the subordination of women comes to be seen as ‘natural,’ hence it becomes invisible. It is this which finally establishes patriarchy firmly as an actuality and as an ideology.” (Lerner, 10)
You might also be interested in seeing the syllabus for Alicia Ostriker's class "The Bible and Feminist Imagination": http://www.aarweb.org/syllabus/syllabi/the_bible_and_feminist_imagination-ostriker.htm