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GENDER IN HISTORY

Global Perspectives Second Edition

MERRY E. WIESNER-HANKS

~WILEY-BLACKWELL A John Wiley&. Sons, Ltd., Publication

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This second edition first published 2011 © Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks 2011

Edition history: le (Blackwell Publishing, 2001)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wiesner, Merry E., 1952- Gender in history : global perspectives/ Merry Wiesner-Hanks. - 2nd ed.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-8995-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Sex role-History. 2. Social history. I. Title. HQ1075.W526 2011 305.309-dc22

2010003198

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in 10/12pt Saban by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Singapore

7 2016

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CHAPTER FIVE

Religion

·.livery culture appears to have developed ideas about supernatural forces that controlled some aspects of the natural world and the place of humans

• in it. These supernatural forces often determined basic rules for human existence, which were revealed through human agents who were especially ildept at or trained in knowing the will.of the supernatural forces. Upsetting these rules could lead to chaos in society, so many cultures established struc-

.· tures to teach and enforce such rules, and to shape the relationship between people and the supernatural. These structures take a bewildering variety of forms: some of them focus on ancestors or spirits, while others have clear

·· notions of a single or multiple gods; some of them have sacred texts, while others are passed down orally; some of them require exclusive allegiance, while others allow adherents to follow other belief systems as well; some of

.·•· them are linked to political or kin structures, while others are voluntary ·. {~roups which may set their members against existing political or kin struc- •·. tures. Though some scholars make distinctions and label some beliefs and · practices "cults" or "magic," it is more useful to take a broader view and consider them all religious traditions. ("Religion" sometimes has a negative connotation for contemporary people, who describe themselves as "spirit-

. nal, but not religious" and do not belong to any formal religious institution; · ,mch spirituality often draws on many religious traditions, however, and so .. !s included here.)

The world's religions may have been (and continue to be) extremely var- l¢d in their concepts of and approaches to the supernatural and divine, but 1111 of them are gendered, that is, they have created and maintained differ-

. 1.mces between what it means to be male and female. Conversely, religious /ideas are influenced by gender structures arising from other parts of the ¢µlture, such as the family or the state. Religious traditions have been used bqth to strengthen and to question existing gender structures, providing

.ideas about hierarchy as well as complementarity and equality. Though

I IO Religion

religious leaders have attempted to create and enforce uniformity through specific religious texts, patterns of worship, clerical personnel, court sys- tems, and alliances with political leaders, individuals have often chosen to interpret supernatural instructions and divine will ,regarding gender differ- ently, creating variety not only among religions but within them. Because ideas about gender and religious beliefs are very often at the heart of peo- ple's systems of values, such variety has created tremehdous conflicts, and continues to do so in many parts of the world today.

Animism, Shamanism, and Paganism (from 40,000 BCE)

Religious beliefs clearly predate writing, and both archaeological evidence and studies of more recent nonliterate cultures around the world indicate that concepts of the supernatural pervaded all aspects of life: hunting, plant- ing, sexual intercourse, birth, death, and natural occurrences such as eclipses, comets, or rainbows, all had religious meaning. Special rituals attached to these events involved men and women, but generally not on an equal basis; some rituals excluded women, while others excluded men. In some cultures certain rituals appear to have been conducted by individuals of an indeter- minate or mixed gender, such as two-spirit people in North America, the hijras in India, or the bissu in Indonesia. Along with rituals, certain objects came to have a religious function; they were worn, carried, or viewed, and often represented men or women, or male or female spirits and divinities, engaged in various activities.

Interpreting archaeological evidence about the earliest human belief systems is often very difficult. For example, small stone statues of women with enlarged breasts dating from the Paleolithic period (roughly 40,000-8,000 BCE) have been found in many parts of Europe. Such statues, dubbed "Venus figures," provoke more questions than answers: Are they aids to fertility, carried around by women hoping to have a child - or perhaps hoping not to have another - and then discarded in the household debris where they have been most commonly found? Are they fertility goddesses, evidence of people's beliefs in a powerful female deity? If they are, did this translate into power and authority for real women? (They are one of the sources used for the theory of primitive matriarchy discussed in chapter 1, though images of individual women or female deities are often found in cultures that deny women official religious or other types of authority; the Blessed Virgin Mary, for example, has been one of the most common images in Christianity since the fifth century, though women have until recently been excluded from the priesthood in all Christian denominations.) Or do such images represent the objectification and subordination of women, a conclusion

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Religion 1 I I

drawn from the fact that many of them have no facial features, with some little more than sticks with breasts, reminding one of the numerous

Images of large-breasted women in certain contemporary magazines? If they do, were they carried around by men? Might they have represented different t:hings to different people? Like so much Paleolithic evidence, Venus figu-

'!'ines provide tantalizing evidence about early human cultures, but evidence · that is not easy to interpret. '. Understanding the gender implications of post-Paleolithic religions that ·•·. have been transmitted largely through oral tradition may also be quite dif-

•· ficult. Such religions are often labeled shamanism, tribal religions, pagan- ism, traditional religions, or animism, and underlying many of them was a conception of the universe as divided between a visible world of the living 1111d an unseen world of spirits, the gods, and the dead. The unseen world regularly intervened in the visible world, for good and ill, and communi- cated through messages and revelations sent to spiritually adept individuals

, {>r to ordinary people through dreams and portents. Conversely, the actions of dead ancestors, spirits, and gods could be shaped by living people. The 1:ituals and medicines through which shamans and healers operated were often a closely guarded secret, passed down orally from one individual to rmother, so that it is difficult to gain information about them. Much of our information comes from outsiders who were (and are) hostile to animistic

·• religions, and whose own ideas about gender influenced what they saw and · 1·eported. Thus European missionaries and officials in nineteenth-century

Africa, for example, paid more attention to traditional religious activities • c,arried out by men and neglected those carried out by women because they • nssumed male activities were more important, just as they were in their own Christianity.

· It may also be misleading to assume that religious activities carried out hiday or in the recent past are the same as those from centuries or even dee-

••• «des ago. Tradition is far less static than we often think, with new ideas or · activities described as "traditional" in order to give them validity and

outhority. The zar cult in North Africa and the Middle East, for example, in t which spirits known as zar make women ill and can only be tamed by female

healers, developed first in the eighteenth century and continues to be very · forceful over a wide area today; though it is often labeled "traditional," it iAtew as a form of religious practice for women only at about the same time that Islam began to provide more public worship opportunities for men, and ~ome analysts see the two as clearly related.

Despite great variety, in terms of gender traditional religions often exhibit •· certain similarities, particularly in contrast to text-based religions. The

power to communicate with and influence the spirits is generally regarded ns a natural gift rather than something obtained through formal education or a position in a hierarchy, so that women as well as men in many cultures

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I I 2 Religion

acted (and continue to act) as spirit mediums, shamans, healers, or other types of religious specialists. The Yoruba of West Africa, for example, under- stood certain women to have Aje, strong spiritual power that connected with cosmic creativity and worked as a force for social justice; they brought this power with them when they were taken as slaves to the New World and used it in harming and healing rituals. Communication with the unseen world was sometimes done through group activities, which could serve as a source of power for participants. Among the Anlo of w'hat is now Ghana, for example, young women joined the Nyigbla and later Yewe religious orders because these provided support for their own marital choices and rights to property after marriage.

People judged religious rituals by how well they worked to solve prob- lems or maintain the normal order, and often consulted a number of reli- gious specialists if they had special needs or requests, rather than -staying with one individual or one sex. Sometimes spiritual power is even unwanted or opposed by the individual to whom it comes, with the spirits causing demonic possession, visions, or illness over which the shaman had little con- trol. The connection with the spirit world usually gave shamans the ability to do good or evil, with their evil activities labeled black magic or witchcraft by those outside their tradition. Often their powers were related to gender- specific areas of life, such as menstruation, childbirth, coming of age in men and women, or certain work activities, but some shamans were so powerful that they transcended gender roles and could influence the entire spirit world. The more gender-egalitarian nature of animism has made it popular within the last several decades among people who view most text-based religions as hopelessly patriarchal. They have drawn eclectically from a number of sources - Native American and African religions, the pagan dei- ties of Europe (especially the Great Goddess), nondiabolic witchcraft, psy- chological theory - to create new types of rituals and organizations, often labeled "neopagan" or "New Age." Some of these groups are explicitly feminist or Womanist (a movement which developed among black women), interpreting ambiguous feminine imagery from many traditions in ways that empower women, and many emphasize environmentalism or ongoing reve- lation or communication with the dead.

In some instances, the followers of shamans regarded their power as offering protection from material as well as spiritual dangers. In 1987, for example, Alice Lakwena, a religious leader called the Messiah by her followers, raised an army called the "Holy Spirit Mobile Forces" which opposed the National Resistance Army of Uganda armed mainly with charms of snake bone, beeswax, and shea nut oil provided by Lakwena. They believed these charms would turn into weapons or provide protection against bullets, following a long line of groups in many religious traditions that have regarded spiritual armor as more important than physical. Because her followers saw her as

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Jy inspired, the fact that Lakwena was a woman did not affec:i their . to her, a situation that also shaped people's responses to the fifteenth- y French mystic and military leader Joan of Arc. Spiritual or divine tion could be a source of power for women even in religions with formal patriarchal hierarchies, though this was often regarded with ism or hostility by those with official religious positions; both Alice na and Joan of Arc were charged with witchcraft by men: who opposed

·written Religions in the Ancient Near East (from 3000 BCE)

ny of the earliest human records are religious in nature, providing mnts of how the world began, describing the exploits of the gods, and 'ng up rules for human society. The writing systems of Mesopotamia: Egypt, the first cultures to develop writing, were extremely complex and < many years to learn, so that the ability to write was limited to a very II group of individuals. These individuals often came to have religious writy, and writing was regarded as in some ways a religious activity, irding the deeds of the gods and setting down prayers and hymns. In the cs of Mesopotamia, the temple was also the economic authority, keeping records and organizing work along with developing religious institu-

ls; one performed one's religious duties in Mesopotamia through labor as I as honoring the gods. The gods in Mesopotamia and Egypt included ·h male and female figures, as well as deities that were a combination of man and animal, but the religious personnel were predominantly male. Some scholars interpret archaeological evidence from the Near East as ggesting that sometime before the development of writing, animistic liefs in many spirits were replaced by a religion centering on a mother ddess who gave birth to the world. By the time religious documents were it:ten down, however - beginning in the fourth millennium BCE - this ount of creation had generally changed to one which emphasized the

.. c of a male deity. In Babylon, this god was Marduk, who created the odd by ripping open the body of Tiamat, a goddess with whom Marduk igaged in battle; Babylonian midwives were instructed to retell the story f Marduk to women in labor. For the ancient Israelites, this god was i11hweh- or in the anglicized version, Jehovah -who created the world out . f nothing, simply by the power of his own will. This creator god was to be r:rved by male priests who staffed temples and other religious institutions, ith women's religious activities taking place predominantly at home and ;cused on rituals associated with family events, life passages such as birth

ti.wd death, and healing.

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I I 4 Religion

Though the religion of the Israelites - Judaism -was simil;::i.r to those of other Near Eastern groups in its male god and priests, in other ways it was very dif- ferent. Yahweh is a single god, not surrounded by lesser gods and goddesses; there is thus no female divinity, though occasionally aspects of God are described in feminine terms, such a~''Sophia, the wisdom of God. Though Yahweh is conceptualized as masculine, he did not have sexual relations like Mesopotamian, Egyptian, or Greek male deities did, so that his masculinity was spiritualized, and human sexual relations were a.source of ritual impurity. Despite this, sex itself was basically good because it was part of Yahweh's crea- tion, and the bearing of children was seen in some ways as a religious function. In the codes of conduct written down in the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh - which Christians adopted and later termed the "Old Testament" to parallel specific Christian writings termed the "New Testament" - sex between a married woman and a man not her husband was termed an "abomination," as were incest, bestiality, and sex between men. Men were free to have sexual relations with concubines, servants, and slaves, along with their wives, though a wom- an's having many lovers - the usual word in English translations of Hebrew Scripture is "harlotry" - was often used as a metaphor for the Jewish people's turning away from their single god to worship numerous other deities (e.g., Leviticus 20.5-6; Jeremiah 3). The possibility of divorce was also gender- specific: a man could divorce his wife unilaterally (though community norms frowned on divorce for frivolous reasons) while a wife could not divorce her husband, even for desertion. In general Judaism frowned on celibacy-" chastity" is defined in Jewish law as refraining from illicit sexual activities, not from sex itself - and almost all major Jewish thinkers and rabbis were married.

Religious leaders were important in Judaism, but not as important as the written texts which they interpreted; these texts came to be regarded as the word of Yahweh and thus had a status other writings did not. The most important task for observant Jews was studying religious texts, an activity limited to men until the twentieth century. Women were obliged to provide for men's physical needs so that they could study, which often meant that Jewish women were more active economically than their contemporaries of other religions; their religious rituals tended to center on the home, while men's centered on the temple. This reverence for a particular text or group of texts was passed down from Judaism to the other Western monotheistic religions which grew from it, Christianity and Islam, which gave (and give) the statements about gender in these texts particular power. Those state- ments have been interpreted in various ways, however, and since the 1970s some branches of Judaism have accepted female rabbis and teachers, changed the language of services somewhat, and developed new rituals. Women are increasingly active as interpreters of religious texts in the more liberal branches of Judaism, and there is enormous variation within contemporary Judaism in terms of gender roles.

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Religion 1 1 5

Confucianism and Taoism (from 600 BG)

na and India developed writing systems shortly after the ancient Near , and ideas about the relationship between gender and the social order also central in these. In China, the philosophical systflm known as

tifucianism was theoretically begun by Confucius in the fifth century BCE, ·,built on earlier Chinese ideas an_d traditions and continued to develop d change for many centuries; it became the predominant intellectual force China by the Han dynasty (ca. 200 BCE-ca. 200 CE) and continues to have

!'Ong influence today. Confucianism is often termed a "religion," but it )CS not include specific notions of the deity that adherents must accept; /itead its core is a series of ideas about the cosmic order and the parallel mnan order. The cosmic order is based on the relationship between leaven and earth, a hierarchical one in which Heaven (normally i'!pitalized in Confucianism in the same way that God and Allah are cap-

lized in Christianity and Islam) is the superior, creative element and rth the inferior receptive one; both elements are necessary, however, d .,harmony and order depend on the balance between the two. This

olance came to be expressed also as the balance between yin and yang, ~ 1ith yin representing that which was dark, moist, earthly, receptive, ,,Jdding, and female and yang that which was light, dry, active, strong, }h:iavenly, and male. · Proper human relationships were those that were modeled on those of the ,Heaven and earth, hierarchical and orderly. One of these was the relation- ~l1ip between a man and a woman, especially one which created human life, \vhich was viewed as fundamentally good in Confucianism. This relation- ~hip created the family, which was thus regarded as sacred; there were no JWiests or special houses of worship in Confucianism, so the most important rdigious rituals were domestic ones. All aspects of family relationships had fll'0per etiquette and rituals attached, which became more elaborate over the :t:1mturies and were recorded in books forming the basis of Confucian teach- .fogs, the Five Classics ( of which the oldest and best known is the I Ching, or .,lJook of Changes); these teachings formed the basic moral precepts in which Vhildren and adults were socialized for centuries in China, and continued to . he important even for those who accepted another religious system, such as .laoism, Buddhism, or even Christianity.

Women's position corresponded to that of earth in the cosmic order, and :women were expected to be subordinate and deferent; these expectations 'were codified as the "three obediences" to which women were subject - to 'her father as a daughter, to her husband as a wife, and to her son as a widow. (A few contemporary Confucian intellectuals view the three obedi- imces as originating outside Confucian teachings, but for millennia they

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I I 6 Religion

have been generally regarded as a central part of Confucian ideology for women.) The Chinese character for "wife" showed a woman with a broom, and the ultimate goal for women was to be regarded as a "Treasure of the House"; the ultimate goal for men w~~Jo become a sage, a highly educated and wise individual who, in Confucius's words, "seeks also to enlarge oth- ers," that is to serve the broader political order.

The three obediences would seem t<;> place women clearly under the author- ity of men, but Confucianism also stressed filial piety, which meant honoring one's mother as well as one's father, and a clear hierarchy of age; both of these mitigated the gender hierarchy somewhat. In addition, ancestor ven- eration, though carried out largely by men, honored female ancestors - at least those who had given birth to sons - along with male. The yin-yang relationship is hierarchical, but both parts are essential to cosmic order, and, as the symbol was elaborated, both parts contain the embryo of the other part within them.

The yin-yang symbol and its notions of male-female complementarity were also part of the other major philosophical-religious system of classical China, Taoism. Like Confucianism, Taoism is viewed as the creation of one man, Laozi, who may not be a historical person, but builds on earlier Chinese traditions, in this case widespread beliefs about spirits and magic; some Taoism is more philosophical and scholarly, and some more religious and spiritual. In Taoism, following nature is seen as the way to happiness, with passivity and motherly love often described as ideals; the way of nature, called the Tao, is often described as the womb of creation, and other femi- nine imagery occurs regularly in Taoist poetry, as does androgynous imagery that talks about balancing masculine and feminine qualities. Sexuality and the body are viewed positively, with no taboos attached to either menstrual blood or semen, and rituals developed that included sexual techniques as part of meditation for both men and women; sexual handbooks were fre- quently part of a bride's trousseau on marriage. Taoism encompassed a huge range of practices and beliefs and incorporated many rituals and ideas from Chinese folk religion, such as shamanism, divination, astrology, and exor- cism, which caused it to be generally denigrated by official historians, who were mainly Confucian. There appear to have been a number of women among its leaders and those who attained the highest levels of meditation, which may also explain why it was frowned upon by court chroniclers.

It may be wrong to separate Confucianism and Taoism, for they shared many ideas and many people followed both of them; in terms of gender structures, it may be best to see them as two ends of a spectrum, with Confucianism emphasizing the hierarchy in male/female relationships, and Taoism the complementarity. Both of them viewed the family and children as central to human life, so that religions which viewed celibacy and chastity as positive were regarded with some suspicion.

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Religion I I 7

Hinduism and Buddhism (from 600 BCE)

:fodia as well as China, gender structures developed in the classical era at lasted for millennia, and which were shaped to a great deg-ree by reli- bus and intellectual systems. In the Brahminic system, which combined ith older and local religious and spiritual ideas to form the complex reli- on later termed Hinduism, the four purposes of life are held to be piety

fdharma), prosperity (artha), pleasure (kama), and liberation (moksha). The family was viewed as the central setting for the accomplishment of the first

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Jhree of these goals, and the three purposes of marriage - religious duties, t1,togeny, and sexual pleasure - derived directly from them. Marriage made Jme fully adult, and all men and women were expected to marry.

.·.· .. · Because Hinduism is the synthesis of many traditions, it often contains 1s:onflicting ideas about gender hierarchy, with some structures and ideas

•;dearly placing women in an inferior position, others stressing the comple- \/11entarity of men and women, and others valorizing women and the femi- nine. The normal life-cycle of a person from one of the upper castes,

•• particularly from the highest caste, the Brahmins, marked women as infe- J·ior. When a boy in one of the three upper castes reached the age of about 8 . or 12, he went through a ceremony giving him the sacred thread to wear

over his shoulders, marking him as one of the "twice born," (This ceremony ls still of great significance for orthodox Hindus.) With this, especially if he

. was a Brahmin, he began a period of study during which he memorized sacred texts and learned rituals, often studying with an individual teacher,

C or guru, or at one of the brahmanic universities that were established during . the classic.al period. At the end of this, generally when he was in his twen-

.. ties, came another ceremony indicating his adult status. At this point he was · cixpected to marry quickly, taking a wife chosen for him by his family or a

matchmaker who was often much younger than he was. They began having children as soon as possible - 10 was regarded as ideal - and he joined, or, if his father had died, led the religious rituals that linked him with past and future male members of his family. After his own children had reached adulthood, he might choose a life as a monk or ascetic, leaving his wife so that he could concentrate on spiritual concerns. On death, if he had lived his life according to proper moral precepts, he would be rewarded with a favo- rable rebirth, or perhaps achieve or attain moksha, the state of liberation, bliss and awareness that freed one from the cycle of birth and death.

By contrast, a girl in the upper castes did not receive a sacred thread, or go through a period of studying sacred texts. During the Vedic age, 1200- 600 BCE, women appear to have been able to study and a few highly edu- cated women are mentioned in the sacred texts known as the Upanishads, such as the philosopher Gargi who engaged in a debate about the True Self.

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I I 8 Religion

In later centuries service to her husband was to replace education for brah- min wonien, so that while her brothers were off studying, a brahmin girl learned housekeeping and domestic religious rituals. Her entry into adult- hood was marked by marriage, not by a separate ceremony, which generally occurred at a much younger age thair'fhat .of her brothers - in her teens or even earlier. She then went to live with her husband's family, and heard the names of his ancestors, not hers, recited in religious ceremonies; if she was a brahmin, she was instructed to worship her husband as i.f he were a god, making and serving him all of his food so that it was pure enough, entertain- ing him, and demonstrating her devotion.

At the end of her life she could expect a period of widowhood, which might be quite long given the disparity in normal ages at marriage for men and women, a dismal time during which she was considered inauspicious, i.e., unlucky, and so not welcome at family festivities or rituals. (During the course of her marriage, she probably performed special rituals designed to prolong the life of her husband, as well as those during the third month of each pregnancy to secure the birth ofa son.) Becoming a monk or an ascetic was not an option, for such individuals lived and traveled alone, which was seen as inappropriate for women. Like the male members of her family, after death she could hope for a favorable rebirth, which might include being reborn as a man. As in China, women's life-cycle was described as a series of relationships of obedience. One of the articles of the Laws of Manu, com- piled between 200 and 400 CE, states: "In childhood a female must be sub- ject to her father, in youth to her husband, and when her lord is dead, to her sons; a woman must never be independent." Restrictions on widows became harsher in the period after about 1000 CE, and the bleak situation still faced by many widows is currently being criticized by women's rights advocates in India. Among some subcastes in particular regions of India, the practice of sati, a widow's self-immolation on her husband's funeral pyre, became a praiseworthy alternative to dismal widowhood. The origins of sati (which means "good wife") are unclear and hotly debated, and it was rarely a com- mon practice, though occasional reports of voluntary and involuntary sati continue today. Reports of the killing of young wives because their families are slow or remiss in making dowry payments are more numerous, and dowry deaths, along with the status of widows, are a central concern of Indian feminists.

In many ways women clearly have a secondary status within Hinduism, but there are also traditions that stress the power of women. Many of the Hindu deities are goddesses, who range from beneficent life-givers like Devi or Ganga to faithful spouses like Parvati or Radha to fierce destroyers like Kali or Durga, and may have been viewed as empowering by women. Women also performed religious rituals either on their own or with their husbands, the latter particularly important during the Vedic period when the most

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Religion I I 9

cJh1portant rituals required the participation of a married couple. Beginning 'he eighth century CE, women were active in the bhakti mov:ements, pop- r devotional movements which stressed intense mystical experiences sing on a single god rather than asceticism or scholarship and which

e the most widespread form of Hinduism because they vv,~re open to '(l'Verydne, regardless of caste. ) · Buddhism rejected certain aspects of Hindu teachings about men and {v:oinen, but it also accepted others; like Hinduism, .it incorporated many Jtleas and traditions, some of them contradictory, and later split into differ- tnt branches with different emphases. Buddhism originated in the teachings \1{ the Indian prince Siddhartha Gautama (566-486 BCE), called the Buddha (''awakened one"), who taught that the best way of life is one of moderation

nd meditation, a rejection of worldly concerns and a search for enlighten- ment. In theory, the Buddhist path to enlightenment (nirvana or nibbana) is open to all regardless of sex or caste; one needs simply to rid oneself of all tlesires, which may be accomplished progressively through a series of deaths ltnd rebirths. Gender differences are part of the world that keeps one from Mlightenment and not part of the true nature of existence. Such egalit;irian- . ism conflicted with other teachings, however, for women were also viewed QS a dangerous threat to men's achieving enlightenment and in some writ-

. ings were regarded as not capable of achieving enlightenment unless they first became men. Many Buddhist texts view the feminine as horrific, encour- ilging those who would achieve enlightenment to meditate on images of women's diseased, dying, or dead bodies in order to cultivate detachment from desire.

The conflict between these two notions emerged during the Buddha's life- time. The Buddha taught that renouncing the world in favor of the life of a

>monk or nun made one spiritually superior, and women wanted him to form rm order of nuns to offer women the same opportunities for withdrawal

, from the world that his order of monks (the sangha) had for men. According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha hesitated a long time, and finally estab-

, llshed an order for nuns, but gave them special rules that stressed their sub- ·. ordinate status to monks and placed them clearly under male control. Despite these restrictions, women eagerly joined this new type of religious life, and during the first centuries of Buddhism nuns often sponsored large

· building projects and made donations for spiritual causes. Buddhism spread in all directions from northern India, and split into a

'number of branches. In the first century CE, a series of movements centered around new scriptures arose, calling themselves the Mahayana ("Greater Vehicle"); these became predominant in Tibet, China, Korea, Vietnam, and

• Japan. (Buddhism disappeared in its homeland of India after about 1200 CE ns people returned to Hinduism or adopted Islam.) In Mahayana Buddhism, the ultimate religious ideal is to become a buddha, and multiple buddhas

I 2 0 Religion

can exist at one time. Those on the Buddhist path are termed bodhisattvas, who were also expected to help others on their own paths. In the other major division of Buddhism, Theravada ("Way of the Elders"), which cen- tered in Sri Lanka and most of Southeast Asia, only one buddha could appear in a cosmic age, so the ultimate religious id~al is the arhat, an indi- vidual who achieves full enlightenment and is thus freed from material exist- ence and reincarnation. Women and men could become both arhats and boddhisattvas, some of whom are regarded as celestial beings rather than historical persons and are themselves worshipped. Some Mahayana texts suggest, however, that women must be reborn as men before they can become buddhas, and Theravada Buddhists believe that one of the predic- tions of future buddhahood - a very rare event - is male sex.

Despite the popularity of some female bodhisattvas such as Kuan Yin in China, human women who chose a life of religious devotion as nuns were often regarded with suspicion. The ideal woman in Buddhism - both his- torically and in sacred texts - was more often a lay woman who supported a community of monks or who assisted men in their spiritual progress rather than a nun. By about the fifth century CE in India, nuns appear to have become much poorer and less popular, with the communities of monks who were regarded as spiritually superior receiving more support. In China, nuns were quite influential during the earliest centuries of the spread of Buddhism, before it was fully established, and Chinese women later established con- vents in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. (In fact, convents that trace their history back to Chinese nuns, including several in the United States today, are the only orthodox lineage of fully ordained nuns left in Buddhism.) Convents later lost popularity, however, and the biographies written later about prominent early nuns - a collection called Lives of the Eminent Nuns was edited as early as 516 CE - also transformed them into women who fit better with Confucian ideals. Along with skills in meditation and teaching prized by Buddhists, the Chinese nuns were always portrayed as showing filial piety toward their parents, with their celibacy viewed as a special divine gift, not something that most women could or should emulate. Lives of the Eminent Nuns was written by a male monk, as were most of the other major Buddhist works of history and doctrine, and some scholars have noted that because of its authorship the written record has probably downplayed the role of women and lay people in the development and dissemination of Buddhist teachings. Some contemporary Buddhists are attempting to sepa- rate the more egalitarian teachings from their generally misogynist monastic overlay, both to develop a more accurate view of Buddhism in the past and to make their own spiritual lives in the present more satisfying.

Developing new emphases within Buddhism is a well-established pattern. The Chan school of Buddhist thought developed first in sixth-century China and later spread (as Zen) to Japan, while Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism

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.· developed in fifth-century north India and later spread to Tibet. Chan (Zen) U.uddhism - which has become increasingly popular in Western cultures .Mince the 1960s - centers on intense meditation under the close guidance of n1master teacher, of which a few have been or are currently women. Vajrayana ·Buddhism (of which the followers of the Dalai Lama are the best-known

1p11actitioners) also emphasizes meditation and a close teacher/ptrpil relation- 11hip, and it has elaborate esoteric rituals that are often filled with sexual ci:magery and practices. Both Zen and Tantra hold out the possibility oUull <1mlightenment - described as achieving buddhahood - in this body and this Hfe for both men and women, without the need for cycles of reincarnation. · Ir has always been easier for men to reject the expected path of marriage and : family in order to seek such enlightenment, however, and male teachers con- .. i:inue to predominate in both groups.

Christianity (from 30 CE)

The mixed messages about the relative value of men and women found in Huddhism may also be found in Christianity, which is based on the teach-

· ,ngs of Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ (a Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah meaning "anointed one"), who was apparently exe- (:Uted by the Romans about 30 CE and is believed by Christians to have been resurrected from the dead three days later. Jesus' teachings and life story are recorded in the first four books of the New Testament, called the Gospels, Written several decades after his death. Women figure prominently in the Gospels, listening to and speaking with Jesus; in two of the Gospels (Mark

. and Matthew) they are the first to see Jesus after his resurrection and were · told to give the good news (which is what the word "Gospel" means) to his

other followers. Women took an active role in the spread of Christianity, preaching, acting

us missionaries, and being martyred alongside men. Early Christians 1)xpected Jesus to return to earth again very soon, and so taught that one should concentrate on this Second Coming. Because of this, marriage and

·· normal family life should be abandoned, and Christians should depend on their new spiritual family of cobelievers; early Christians often met in peo- ple's homes and called each other brother and sister, a metaphorical use of

· family terms that was new to the Roman Empire in which Christianity developed. This made Christians seem dangerous to many Romans, espe- cially when becoming Christian actually led some young people to avoid marriage, viewed by Romans as the foundation of society and the proper patriarchal order.

Not all Christian teachings about gender were radical, however. Many of · Jesus' early followers, particularly the Apostle Paul whose letters make up a

I 2 2 Religion

major part of the New Testament, had ambivalent ideas about women's proper role in the church, and began in the first century CE to place restric- tions on female believers. Paul and later writers forbade women to preach, and women were gradually excluded from holding official positions within Christianity. Both Jewish and classical Mediterrl:!,nean culture viewed female subordination as natural and proper, so thatfn limiting the activi- ties of female believers Christianity was following well-established pat- terns, in the same way that it patterned its official hierarchy after that of the Roman Empire.

Some of Christianity's most radical teachings about gender also came to have negative consequences for women. In its first centuries, some women embraced the ideal of virginity and either singly or in communities declared themselves "virgins in the service of Christ." Many church leaders were uncomfortable with such a clear rejection of Roman family models, particu- larly as they were attempting to make Christianity more socially acceptable. They asserted that women who chose a life of virginity were not to use this as a reason for escaping the normal restrictions on women. Some of these leaders also advocated a life of virginity for men, but this led to a strong streak of misogyny in their writings, for they saw women and female sexual- ity as the chief obstacles to this preferred existence; because they wrote far more than women and their writings were preserved, their opinions came to be much more influential than those of the women who chose virginity. The most important theologian in the western Christian Church, St Augustine, linked sexuality clearly with sin by viewing sexual desire as the result of disobedience to divine instructions by Adam and Eve, the first humans. The tendency to sin was passed down, in Augustine's opinion, through sexual intercourse, so that even infants were tainted with this Original Sin. Christian Scripture offered positive comments about marriage and procreation - Jesus himself had blessed a wedding with a miracle - so that Augustine could not reject them completely, but he and later Christian writers clearly regarded virginity as the preferred state of existence and particularly condemned any sexual activity which could not lead to children, such as homosexual acts or masturbation.

Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, and gradually spread throughout all of Europe and the Mediterranean. As was the case with Buddhism, women were often active in spreading Christian ideas, especially within their own families, and women's monastic communities were under the leadership of female abbesses; Jesus' mother Mary became an important figure of devotion, as did female as well as male saints. Outside of women's monasteries, however, all Christian offi- cials were men, who were increasingly expected to follow a distinctive life- pattern, though this differed slightly in the two branches of the Christian Church, the Orthodox Church of eastern Europe and the Roman (Catholic)

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Religion I 23

u-rch of western Europe. In eastern Europe, married men could become ests, though a man who was unmarried when orqained as a priest was ected to remain unmarried and married priests could not move up the rch hierarchy and become bishops. In the twelfth century, church coun- jn the Roman Church forbade all priests to marry anµ ,declared mar- es which did exist invalid, driving priests' wives and children from their es; at the same time it condemned homosexual activities more sharply.

e.policy of clerical celibacy proved difficult to enforce, and for centuries iests and higher officials simply took concubines. (Though in doing this ey.were technically "celibate," a word that actually means "not married" ther than "chaste.")

:fo the thirteenth century, church councils expanded the power of priests, ~creeing that they had the power to absolve sins through confession and to

nge bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ to be consumed believers during the Eucharist, the central ritual of Christianity (a trans~

_rmation termed "transubstantiation"). Thus priests, who were all male, d powers that no woman (or nonordained man, including kings) had, a

tuation that continues to today within Roman Catholicism. The special wers of the priest make the conflict over the ordination of women espe-

ally heated within Roman Catholicism, with many observers predicting at the Catholic Church will admit married men as priests long before it

tlccepts women. (Such admittance actually began in 2009, when the Catholic Church agreed to accept traditionalist Anglicans, including their married iriests, who had left the Anglican Church because of its acceptance of women and openly gay men as priests.) _ Clerical celibacy was rejected by the religious leaders in western Europe ,who broke with the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century and eventually formed their own churches, later labeled Protestant. Protestant denomina- tions - Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist, and later Methodist, Baptist, and many others - differed on many points of doctrine, but they agreed that the dergy should be married heads of household and that monastic life had no value. Thus there was no separate religious vocation open to women, who were urged to express their devotion within the family as "helpmeet" to their husband and guide to their children. Protestantism proclaimed fam- ily life as the ideal for all men and women, and unmarried people of both sexes were increasingly suspect. This ideal was communicated to people through sermons and printed books (the printing press was invented in Germany shortly before the Protestant Reformation), and the Catholic

•. Church responded by promoting its own promarriage literature, some of · which predated the Protestant Reformation. Scholars differ sharply about the . impact of Protestantism; some see it as elevating the status of most women in ·· its praise of marriage, others see it as limiting women by denying them the opportunity for education and independence in monasteries and stressing

1 2 4 Religion

wifely obedielllee';rcahd still others see it as having little impact, with its stress on marri~gi,1Jll:liesponse to economic and social changes that had already occurredjwliUtdtnbt'. a cause of those changes.

At ai1'ocuf;; the same time as the Protestant Reformation, European ChtJsllialftsifii,l lhoth Protestants and Catholics - became increasingly concerned abcdutr,witthes in their midst. They combined traditional ideas about witch- cra;£tJJ6und in almost all cultures - that witches are individuals who use their connection with the spirit world to do harm - with specifically Christian ideas - that witches are individuals who make pacts with the Devil and do his bidding. Especially in central and northern Europe, this combination led to the interrogation and trial of many people, and the execution of perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 individuals. The gender balance varied in different parts of Europe, but in Europe as a whole about 80 percent of those questioned, tried, and executed for witchcraft after 1500 were women. The reasons for this are complex: women were viewed as weaker and so more likely to give in to the Devil's charms or use scolding and cursing to get what they wanted; they had more contact with areas of life in which bad things happened unex- pectedly, such as preparing food or caring for new mothers, children, and animals; they were associated with nature, disorder, and the body, all of which were linked with the demonic. Europeans took their notions of witch- craft with them to the New World; a few people, most of them women, were executed for witchcraft in the European colonies in North America, and in the Andean region of South America, older native women who had fled to mountainous areas and refused to become Christians were charged with witchcraft and idolatry. Some European thinkers even blamed witchcraft on the explorations, asserting that demons had decided to return to Europe from the Americas once Christian missionaries were there, and so were pos- sessing and seducing many more people than they had in the Middle Ages.

Since the sixteenth century, Protestantism has continued to splinter into more and more groups, with extremely diverse ideas about gender. Some of these, such as the Quakers, allowed women to preach as early as the seven- teenth century, while others, such as the Amish, Southern Baptists, and Wisconsin synod Lutherans, continue to view patriarchal leadership as essential. Some Protestant groups developed radically different family forms and sexual patterns: Moravians determined marital partners by a lottery, Shakers saw complete chastity as a way to make men and women equal, Mormons (whose religion is based on the Bible along with other texts) prac- ticed polygamy. In the twentieth century, many Protestants began to term themselves "fundamentalists," downplaying more complicated issues of doctrine and largely supporting a conservative social agenda. In the United States, this came to focus in the 1980s on the issues of abortion, gay rights, prayer in schools, and what were labeled "traditional family values." Fundamentalist groups often broke from the Protestant denominations that

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Religion I 2 5

loped in previous centuries to form nondenominational community , though some denominations, such as the Baptists, were also

damentalist. At the same time, some Protestant denominations, idual churches within them, became increasingly liberal on gender Uowing not only women but also actively practicing homosexuals as

rAt the beginning of the twenty-first century, mil~Y seminaries in the , States were training more women than men tol,e pastors, and it is It to predict how this will affect Christianity in future. • Protestant Reformation occurred concurrently with the beginning of .ean colonization, which took Christianity around the world. Indeed, nversion of indigenous people was one of the primary justifications for ering new territories. Christian officials tried to impose European gen-

, l!ttterns - monogamous marriage, male-headed households, limited ( or fqliv:orce - but where these conflicted with existing patterns they were • •modified and what emerged was a blend of indigenous and imported ,foes. Such syncretism typified other aspects of Christian beliefs and · ces as well, for conversion was not a single event, but a process in

lch new beliefs and practices were selectively adopted, blended with exist- 011es, and openly, unknowingly, or surreptitiously rejected. In some areas, has the Andes of South America and the Philippines, women had been

rtant leaders in animistic religions, and they were stronger opponents )11version than were men; this pattern was enhanced by male missionar- . ocus on boys and young men in their initial conversion efforts. In other s, women became fervent Christians, confessing and doing penance for · sins so intensively they harmed their health, and using priests and rch courts to oppose their husbands or other male family members. ost scholars of colonization and imperialism view the activities of

ristian authorities and missionaries as leading to a sharpened gender .rarchy, for religious leaders paid little attention to women's activities and

ther misunderstood or opposed women's power. They were also complicit ·· the establishment and maintenance of the racial hierarchies we traced in 1apter 2, regulating marriage and other types of sexual activities so as to itintain boundaries. In the immediate postcolonial period, Christianity as often rejected as a remnant of the colonial past, but this began to change the late twentieth century, and the formerly colonial world now has the

~test growing Christian churches, many of them nondenominational and mdamentalist rather than more traditional Catholic or Protestant; in 2010,

nearly two-thirds of the world's Christians live outside Europe and North America. These churches are appealing to people whose cultural values are

;11haped by animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and various other religions, and the norms they are establishing in regard to gender also draw on many tra- ditions, with churches often deciding individually how they will handle i~sues such as polygamy, child marriage, remarriage of widows, and other

12 6 Religion

issues in which local traditions conflict with traditional Christian teachings. Because Christianity is declining in importance in Western society - except for the United States - it is clear that what is regarded as "traditional" in Christianity may also change, and that bet~.use of migration, these debates will be played out not only in the former cofonies, but in Europe and North America as well.

Islam (from 600 CE)

If the interplay between gender and religion is an issue in contemporary Christianity, it is even more of an issue in contemporary Islam, and all sides draw on history to buttress their position. The debates always go back to the very beginning of Islam, which was founded in Arabia by the religious reformer and visionary Muhammad (ca. 570-632 CE). Muhammad's revela- tions were written down by his followers during his lifetime, and shortly thereafter organized into an authoritative text, the Qur'an, regarded by Muslims as the direct words of God to his Prophet Muhammad and there- fore especially revered. (These revelations were in Arabic; if Muslims use translations in other languages, they do so alongside the original Arabic.) At the same time, other sayings and accounts of Muhammad, which gave advice on matters which went beyond the Qur'an, were collected into books termed Hadith, which are second only to the Qur'an in authority. In these works, marriage is recommended for everyone, heterosexual sex is approved for both procreation and pleasure, and homosexual acts are condemned; the emphasis on marriage has meant that unmarried men are not accepted as teachers, judges, or religious leaders in traditional Muslim societies, and that men who are attracted to other men often marry and have children as well.

Many scholars note that the Qur'an holds men and women to be fully equal in God's eyes; both are capable of going to heaven and responsible for carrying out the duties of believers for themselves. They argue that restric- tions on women under Islam came from pre-Muslim practices and are thus not essential to the faith; men veiled their wives on marriage, for example, as early as the third millennium BCE in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys (present-day Iraq). They note that Muhammad's first wife, Khadijah, con- vinced him to take his religious visions seriously; she was never veiled and the Prophet did not marry other wives until after her death. Other scholars poini: out that the Qur'an does make clear distinctions between men and women; it allows men to have up to four wives and to divorce a wife quite easily, sets a daughter's share of inheritance at half that of a son's, and orders that the Prophet's later wives be secluded.

Debates about how to interpret the Qur'an are extremely important in Islam because of the book's special stature, but gender structures also have

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Religion I 2 7

:rnher bases, including religious law - the shari'a - which is regarded as lrnving divine authority. Though women played a major role in the early tievelopment of Islam - as they had in Christianity - and appear to have

rayed and attended religious ceremonies in public, after the first generation lw seclusion of women became an official part of the shari'a. Men are to 11lfill their religious obligations publicly, at mosques and other communal

therings, and women in the home, though they generally have access to a parate section of the mosque unless they are ritually unclean (because of

_lmmstruation or childbirth). The shari'a views marriage as a reciprocal rela- tionship in which the husband provides support in exchange for the wife's · .1bedience; this support is to continue - at least in theory- even if he divorces

m·. Along with the shari'a, the words of religious leaders - termed mu/las I' imams - carried (and continue to carry) great weight, particularly among e branch of Islam termed Shi'ite, which regards Muhammad's cousin and n-in-law Ali to have been designated by the Prophet as the first such

ivinely inspired imam. The statements of a mulla on such issues as proper lothing for women, the treatment of law-breakers, or the guardianship of hildren after divorce often shaped gender on a day-to-day basis more than

the words of the Qur'an or the shari'a on which they are based. Islam spread quickly throughout northern Africa and the Near East in the tury after Muhammad, and then more slowly to other parts of Asia,

frica, and Europe. Intermarriage between Arab traders and local women t1S often essential to its growth, with women providing access to economic nd political power through their kin networks and serving as brokers ctween indigenous and imported cultures. Islamic law and practices mixed •lch existing traditions, creating a broad range of marital practices, rituals, nd norms of behavior. for men and women. A few cultures, such as the 1areg in western Sudan, adopted Islam without veiling women, but in gen- al by the fourteenth century, Muslim women were veiled. By this time as ell the tradition developed that mentioning a woman's name dishonored ,I.', so that men referred to their own wives simply as "my home" or "the eak one." In India, both Islam and a stricter Hinduism favored the seclu-

.~lon of women - termed purdah - although the strictness and exact rules of this varied according to social status and location; wealthy urban women were generally the most secluded, while poor rural women - the vast major- ' y of the population - worked alongside male family members.

Recent research has indicated, however, that even wealthy women may have been more active economically and legally than the rules of seclusion juggested, particularly in the large area controlled by the Ottoman Turks ivho conquered Arab lands and much of southeastern Europe in the early

xteenth century. Islamic law grants women less inheritance than their broth- 'S; but this remains theirs and does not pass to their husbands upon mar-

'i.1ge as it did in most Christian societies until the mid-nineteenth century.

I I

12 8 Religion

Thus wealthy Muslim women often used their money to establish schools, hospitals, or mosques, invested it in business activities, or passed it on to their female relatives. In addition, women of the lower classes often devel- oped their own rituals within a Muslim framework centered on the home; Iranian Shi-ite women, for example, practiced a food ritual called Sofreh designed to establish connections with Muhammad's daughter Fatima and other female saints. (Saints ip Islam do not go through a formal process of canonization as they do in Christianity, but are recognized because of mirac- ulous deeds or post-mortem communications with the living; some saints are venerated over a wide area and others only locally.) Women in Saudi Arabia served as spiritual healers and developed their own religious rituals when they were excluded from the sacred precincts of the mosque with the spread of conservative Wahhabist Islam. In some areas, such as in China during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Muslim women even had their own mosques and female religious leaders.

Women often combined (and continue to combine) animistic and Muslim beliefs in rituals to ward off evil spirits and invoke the assistance of both good spirits and Muslim saints; religious officials denigrate such practices and periodically attempt to prohibit them, but both men and women who consider themselves good Muslims believe firmly in their efficacy. For many centuries women and men have also been attracted to Sufism, a mystical movement within Islam that emphasizes direct union with God.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Muslim world was part of the process of colonialism and anticolonialism that will be discussed in more detail in chapter 5. Particularly in countries such as Egypt and Turkey intent on modernization, men and women debated the extent to which the shari'a could be reformed to allow greater gender equality in such issues as divorce and inheritance, or whether women's liberation inevitably meant a weakening of Islam. In some countries, reform-minded women, usually of the urban middle classes, adopted Western dress and began to attend universities in the early twentieth century; both women and men were active as demonstrators, organizers, and even fighters in the twentieth- century nationalist movements in the Islamic world and a few legal reforms were enacted. During the 1970s and 1980s, many of these reforms were revoked as more conservative religious leaders gained power in many Muslim countries, most prominently Iran. This movement of fundamental- ist activism within Islam has made a conservative view of gender a primary symbol of Islamic purity against Western cultural imperialism and commer- cialism; it has proven attractive not only to men, but to women who view it as providing them with greater security, and affirming their social, moral, and religious values. Muslim women in many parts of the world have adopted the veil or other types of covering dress as a way to work or travel outside the home without being subject to male harassment. They regard

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Religion l 2 9

n dress as a means of empowering themselves, while others - both s and non-Muslims - have viewed it as an example of women's

sion. As with other types of religious symbols involving gender, the arly has multiple meanings that vary with the individual and with the

ial setting.

ition to the religious traditions dis<;ussed here, there have been and nue to be many others around the world: state religions that no longer such as those of the Aztecs, Incas, or Romans; state religions that con-

-'to exist, such as Shinto in Japan; South Asian religions that developed urrently with Hinduism, such as Jainism, or later, such as Sikhism; ons that seek to unite all world religions, such as the Baha'i faith; reli-

nsthat center on more recent charismatic leaders and their ideas, such as Mormons, Christian Scientists, or Unification Church. Originally many

i'hese religions were highly localized, but with steadily increasing migra- .11 of people throughout the world, adherents now often live next door to ti another. Some of these other religions, and many groups within the ijor world religions discussed in this chapter, are also very successful in cir conversion efforts. In contrast to native language, skin color, or ethnic ckground, religious adherence is to some degree changeable and chosen, rh converts often the most vocal advocates for their new faith. Thus the

. ntemporary religious picture is very complex, with variety and conflicts frhin groups and among them, some of which are the basis for civil wars 1d other types of violence. Every religious tradition has ideas about proper gender relations and the lative value of the devotion and worship of male and female adherents; cry one stipulates or suggests rules for the way men and women are to act.

II many, however, these messages are contradictory and ambiguous, with dherents often able to find support for their own views within them. Thus ithin most religions there is a fundamentalist wing, advocating stronger

gender distinctions and hierarchy, and a more liberal wing, advocating greater gender egalitarianism. At the end of the twentieth century, fundamentalism

:was more politically and socially powerful within Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam, with advocates of patriarchal gender relations sometimes uniting .across faiths. Catholic and Muslim delegates at the Fourth United Nations , Congress on Women in Beijing in 1995, for example, joined together in oppo- • Nition to provisions on reproductive rights, sexuality, and women's health. The gender implications of this fundamentalism also evoked strong criticism, however, and more liberal adherents ofmany faiths searched their texts and traditions for less restrictive messages, finding in them ethical grounds for women's liberation. The ultimate outcome of these developments is, of course, uncertain, but it is clear that religion will continue to be one of the strongest shapers of gender structures in the future, as it has been in the past.

130 Religion

FURTH~R READING

Collections of articles are a good place to begin, for they allow you both to look closely at one religious tradition and to make comparisons. Arvind Sharma has edited four excellent collections, Women in World Religions, Religion and Women, Todqy's Woman in World Religions, and Feminism and World Religions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987, 1993, 1994, 1999), which cover women's roles in many of the world's religions in both past and present; many of the essays are written by scholars from within the tradition they discuss. This is also true of Arlene Swidler, ed., Homosexuality and World Religions (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993 ). Other useful collections include Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Ellison Banks Findly, eds., Women, Religion and Social Change (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985); Clarissa W. Atkinson et al., eds., Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985); Caroline Walker Bynum et al., eds., Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986); Ursula King, ed., Feminist Theology from the Third World: A Reader (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994); Stephen B. Boyd et al., eds., Redeeming Men: Religion and Masculinities (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1996); Gary David Comstock and Susan E. Henking, eds., Que(e)rying Religion: A Critical Anthology (New York: Continuum, 1997); Nancy A. Falk and Rita M. Gross, Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives in Non-Western Cultures (2nd edn., San Francisco: Wadsworth, 1999); Stephen Ellingson and M. Christian Green, eds., Religion and Sexuality in Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2002); Inger Marie Okkenhaug and Ingvild Flaskerud, eds., Gender, Religion and Change in the Middle East: Two Hundred Years of History (New York: Berg, 2005). Susan Starr Sered, Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) is a fascinating study of 12 religions currently being practiced that are dominated by women, some of which are over a thousand years old. Serenity Young, ed., An Anthology of Sacred Texts by and about Women (New York: Crossroad, 1993) is a wonderful collection of sources, covering everything from ancient pagan- ism to contemporary voudon, with long selections from the major text- based religions; another fine source book is Shawn Madigan, Mystics, Visionaries and Prophets: A Historical Anthology of Women's Spiritual Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1998).

David Leeming and Jake Page, God: Myths of the Male Divine and Goddess: Myths of the Female Divine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) are two brief overviews of stories about divine figures from prehistory

to the Femi1 Press,

Th, 1984, in We studie thoug

Discu godd1 religi1 Allen Othe; Unive Anthi Harn: Wom, Rutge Wom, of W Ritua Starr (New Moth Liten sis of and tJ Ohio and< Corn Mexi, Marti Politi Press,

Cot Adler, andC Paula · Indiai Plask<

Religion I 3 I

lo the present, while Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Jiciminine: A Western Religious History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) provides a deeper analysis.

The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, which began publication in l984, always contains the most current research, as does the series Gender in World Religions published by the McGilt University faculty of religious Undies; there are also many websites that discuss gender and religion, though their focus is usually contemporary rather than historical.

Animism, shamanism and spiritual healing

iscussions of Paleolithic animism may be found in the works on the 1ddess noted in chapter 1. Studies of gender in more recent shamanistic •ligions include Diane Bell, Daughters of the Dreaming (Sydney: George lien and Unwin, 1983); Laurel Kendall, Shamans, Housewives, and

>ther Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life (Honolulu: lniversity of Hawaii Press, 1985); I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: An llthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism (2nd edn., :Hmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1989); Carol Shepherd McClain, ed., omen as Healers: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (New Brunswick, NJ: 1tgers University Press, 1989); Janice Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits:

1omen, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan (Madison: University f Wisconsin Press, 1989); Marla N. Powers, Oglala Women: Myth, itual, and Reality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Susan tllrr Sered, Women of the Sacred Groves: Divine Priestesses of Okinawa

ew York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Teresa N. Washington, Our fothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Aje in Africana ,iterature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005). For an analy- is of Alice Lakwena's movement, see: Heike Behrend, Alice Lakwena nd the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda, 1985-1996 (Athens, OH: hio University Press, 2000). Studies of the interaction between animism

nd Christianity include Ramon A. Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the :orn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New foxico, 1500-1846 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991) and 1artha Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the 1olitics of Power in Colonial Guatemala (Austin: University of Texas

.. Tess, 2002). Contemporary animism and paganism have been explored in Margot

Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess- Worshippers i'ind Other Pagans in America Today (2nd edn., Boston: Beacon Press, 1986); J1imla Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American !Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986); Carol P. Christ and Judith J'laskow, eds., Weaving the Vision: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality

I 3 2 Religion

(New York: Harper and Row, 1989) and Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (2nd edn., New York: Harper and Row, 1991).

Near Eastern religions ,Ji

Studies of ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean mythology all discuss stories of various gods, goddesses, and other mythical figures. For more focused studies, see Mary Lefkowitz, Women in Greek Myth (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Barbara S. Lesko, ed., Women's Earliest Records: From Ancient Egypt and Western Asia (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989); Lynn Roller, In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Jamsheed K. Choksy, Evil, Good, and Gender: Facets of the Feminine in Zoroastrian Religious History (New York: Peter Lang, 2002); Susan Guettel Cole, Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space: The Ancient Greek Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Maryline Parca and Angeliki Tzanetou, eds., Finding Persephone: Women's Rituals in the Ancient Mediterranean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). A fine source collection about women and religion in the ancient world is Ross Kraemer, ed., Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics: A Sourcebook on Women's Religions in the Greco-Roman World (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988).

There are, of course, many more analyses of Judaism than of other ancient Near Eastern religions. For two thought-provoking discussions of sexuality in Judaism, see Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978) and Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God's Phallus (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994). For Jewish law see Jacob Neusner, A History of Mishnaic Law of Women (Leiden: Brill, 1980); Rachel Biale, Women in Jewish Law: An Exploration of Women's Issues in Halakhic Sources (New York: Schocken Books, 1984). For collections that range over a long time period, see Judith Baskin, ed., Jewish Women in Historical Perspective (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991) and Ellen M. Umansky and Diane Ashton, eds., Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). Two good studies of gender in medieval Judaism are Tova Rosen, Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) and Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2004 ). For more recent developments, see Susannah Heschel, On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader (New York: Schocken Books, 1983); Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990), and the magazine Lilith, which began publication in the 1970s.

Discussio1 accounts Women ir. Arthur P. Stanford · Religion c Press, 19~ Divine Wi Point Pres Women (I Second Se 2000);Li-l Interpreta; collection Confucian of Califon

There ares Hindu Go Tradition Erndl, Vici Myth, Ritt S. Hawley University Erndl, eds Goddesses actual peo Social and Columbia Gender an, Press, 199] of Hindu. Oxford Ui Sacrificer's Oxford Ur Anthology tionship be Bulletin of Nationalisr

Religion 1s,

Confucianism and Taoism

ussion of gender in Chinese religions may be found in more general 'i.mts of Chinese culture, such as Margery Wolf and Roxane Witker, en in Chinese Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford Un}versity Press, 1975); r P. Wolf, ed., Religion and Ritual in Chinese S'6ciety (Stanford, CA:

ord University Press, 1974); George A.' De Vos and Takao Sofue, ion and the Family in East Asia (Berkeley: University of California , 1984). For more specialized studies, see Edward H. Schaefer, The e Woman: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens (San Francisco: North

t Press, 1980); Tomas Cleary, ed., Immortal Sisters: Secrets of Taoist . men (Boston: Shambhala, 1989); Chenyang Li, ed., The Sage and the •o'nd Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender (Peru, IL: Open Court, 00); Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, Confucianism and Women: A Philosophical

rpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). A good Hection of sources is Susan Mann and Yu-Yin Cheng, eds., Under mfucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History (Berkeley: University California Press, 2001).

South Asian religions

'here are several good studies of Hindu goddesses, including David Kinsley, indu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious :adition (Berkeley: University of California Press~ 1986); Kathleen M. ndl, Victory to the Mother: The Hindu Goddess of Northwest India in yth, Ritual, and Symbol (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); John Hawley and Donna M. Wulff, eds., Devi: Goddesses of India (Berkeley:

. niversity of California Press, 1996); Alf Hiltebeikel and Kathleen M. 'rndl, eds., Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian )oddesses (New York: New York University Press, 2000). For studies of ctual people, see Lynn Bennett, Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters: ocial and Symbolic Roles of High-Caste Women in Nepal (New York; olumbia University Press, 1983); William S. Sax, Mountain Goddess: ender and Politics in a Himalayan Pilgrimage ( Oxford: Oxford University ress, 1991); Lindsey Harlan and Paul Courtright, eds., From the Margins

•·. f Hindu Marriage: Essays on Gender, Religion, and Culture ( Oxford: .. xford University Press, 1994); Stephanie Jamison, Sacrificed Wife/

',Sacrificer's Wife: Women, Ritual and Hospitality in Ancient India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Andrea Major, ed., Sati: A Historical Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). For the complex rela- rionship between gender and nationalism in India, see the entire issue of

. /lulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 25:4 (1993), "Women and Religious Nationalism in India."

J.\i'c;al and contemporary Buddhism, see Diana Paul, ism: Images of the Feminine__ in the Mahayana Tradition Humanities Press, 1979);'"Jose Ignacio Cabez6n, ed.,

ccuality and Gender (Alpany: State University of New York \2?r; Rita Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History,

nstruction, and Analysis of Buddhism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); Miranda Sjlaw, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Bernard Faure, The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Karma Lekshe Tsomo, ed., Buddhist Women across Cultures: Realizations (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999); Ellison Banks Findly, ed., Women's Buddhism: Buddhism's Women: Tradition, Revision, Renewal (Boston: Wisdom Press, 2000); Charlene E. Makley, The Violence of Liberation: Gender and Tibetan Buddhist Revival in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). On gender in Sikhism, see Doris R. Jakobsh, Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Christianity

Good essay collections or overviews include Richard L. Greaves, ed., Triumph over Silence: Women in Protestant History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985); Sherrin Marshall, ed., Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1989); Lynda L. Coon et al., eds., That Gentle Strength: Historical Perspectives on Women in Christianity (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1990); JoAnn Kay McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); R. N. Swanson, Gender and Christian Religion (London: Boydell and Brewer, 1998); Beverly Maine Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker, eds., Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). For the early church, see Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988); Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). For the Middle Ages, see James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food for Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist

(Phi The Chi, Sam 199: Reli. Pres the' Pres and Har (Cat and 170, Reli, 200 Mo£ Rou RigJ 188 and

aul, :ion ed., ·ork ary, · of nen Liz rian ess, -/ity no, :ate ~n's on: bn: ley: ; R. ind

I

id., ~T:

Religion 13 S

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Mark D. Jordati!~ The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago: University .of Chicago Press, 1997); Jane Schulenberg, Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500-1100 (Chica@: University of Chicago Press; 1998); Katherine L. French, The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). For the early modern period, see Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); Lynda! Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994); Joel Harrington, Reordering Marriage and Society .in Reformation Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Leslie J. Lindenauer, Piety and Power: Gender and Religious Culture in the American Colonies, 1630- 1700 (New York: Routledge, 2002); Nora E. Jaffary, ed., Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007); Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice (2nd edn., London: Routledge, 2010). For the modern period, see Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); Susan Juster and Lisa Macfarlane, eds., A Mighty Baptism: Race, Gender, and the Creation of American Protestantism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

. 1996); Rosemary Radford Ruether, Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000); Aurora G. Morcillo, True Catholic Womanhood: Gender Ideology in Franco's Spain (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); · Doris Buss and Didi Herman, Globalizing Family Values: The Christian Right in International Politics

. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003 ); Eliza F. Kent, Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India (New

. York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Cordelia Moyse, A History of the · Mothers' Union: Women, Anglicanism and Globalisation, 187 6-2008 (London: Boydell and Brewer, 2009).

Islam

. An excellent very brief overview is Judith Tucker, Gender and Islamic History (Washington DC, American Historical Association, 1995). Two widely read analyses of the roots of Muslim ideas of gender are Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Jfaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992) and Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam, trans. Mary Jo Lakeland (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991). More detailed

iscussions of Islamic law and traditions are M. E. Combs-Schilling, Sacred

I 36 Religion

Performances: Islam; Sexuality, - and Sacrifice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Amire Ef 1Azhary Sonbol, ed., Women, the Family and Divorce Laws in Islamic History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996); Eleanor Abdella Doumato, Getting God's Ear: Women, Islam, and Healing in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Minoo Derayeh, Gender Equality in Iranian History: From Pre-Islamic Times to the Present. (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2006). For recent collections of articles, see Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron, eds., Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991); Gavin R.G. Hambly, ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety (New York: St Martin's Press, 1998); Sarah Ansari and Vanessa Martin, eds., Women, Religion and Culture in Iran (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 2002); Amira El-Azhary Sonbol, ed., Beyond the Exotic: Women's Histories in Islamic Societies (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005).

Collections that directly compare religions include Kari Elizabeth Borreson and Kari Vogt, eds., Women's Studies of the Christian and Islamic Traditions: Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Foremothers (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993); Kristen E. Kvam et al., eds., Eve and Adam: Jewish Christian and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Jane Bayesm and Nayereh Tohidi, eds., Globalization, Gender, and Religion: The Politics of Women's Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts (New York: Palgrave, 2001).

There is a much longer list of selected readings, along with links to orig- inal sources, on the website associated with this book: www.wiley.com/go/ wiesnerhanks.