Fundamentalism And Gender

This text depicts the long-running battle within the fundamentalist movement over the roles of men and women both within the church and outside it. Drawing on interviews and written sources, the author surveys the interplay between fundamentalist theology and fundamentalist practice.

The essays in this book examine the connection between fundamentalism and gender.

As regards both academic historians and popular understandings since the rise of the Religious Right in the 1980s, analysis of American fundamentalism has neglected a large body of literature about gender roles and social conventions. Betty A. DeBerg's groundbreaking study fills that important gap, analyzing the roots and character of fundamentalism in light of rapid changes and severe disruptions in gender-role ideology and actual social behavior in America between 1880 and 1930. Unlike interpreters such as George Marsden -- who has seen the contemporary Religious Right's concerns over feminism, abortion, and the breakdown of the family as recent developments -- DeBerg convincingly argues that these concerns were central in the "first wave of American fundamentalism."--Back cover.

Women in Fundamentalism examines the striking similarities in three extreme fundamentalist religious communities in their views about and treatment of women

During the past two decades, the surge of religious fundamentalism in the United States and in the Muslim world has resulted in many studies of the status of women and other family issues. This volume is a cross-cultural study of women's social status in Iran, Egypt, and in the U.S. during different stages of religious fundamentalism. In each of these countries, women have been active participants in fundamentalist movements, and this study shows that such participation enables women to reexamine their relationship to power in the family and in society and increase their group solidarity and feminist consciousness. The author combined quantitative, historical, and interview techniques in her analysis, gathering data by administering a questionnaire to middle-class women in the three countries. In Iran, she interviewed selected women leaders about future gender roles in the Islamic Republic. Students in women's studies, Middle Eastern culture, religion, history, sociology, and psychology, and political science will be interested in this publication.

In this fascinating book, the author surveys the complicated interplay between fundamentalist theology, which is dominated by the search for order and hierarchical gender roles that have women subservient to men, and fundamentalist practice, which often depends on women in important ways to further the movement's institutional growth. Illustrations.

This anthology addresses the topic of "fundamentalism and gender" from inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives. By referring to three major themes--"Literalism, Religion, and Science," "Nation, State, and Community," and "Body, Life, and Biopolitics"--the book focuses on the analytical diversification of the term "fundamentalism" and on intersections between religion, gender, sexuality, race, and nation. International scholars in cultural history and theory, religious studies, Christian theologies, Islamic studies, history, social sciences, anthropology, comparative literature, and women and gender studies examine the historical and current specifics of religious as well as of secular forms of fundamentalism. They also take a critical look at the Western discourse about religious fundamentalism and the ambivalent role feminism plays in this context, considering questions such as, Why do all religious fundamentalisms claim normalizing definitions of sexuality, gender roles, and intergender relations? In what way do gender and sexual politics play a role in secular criticism of religious fundamentalism? And how are forms of secular fundamentalism characterized by gender constructs and sexual politics?

One of Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic Books of 1998 Fundamentalist women are often depicted as dedicated to furthering the goals and ideas of fundamentalist men and thus of ancillary importance to the movement as a whole. Godly Women, Brenda Brasher's groundbreaking ethnographic study, reveals the paradox that fundamentalist women can be powerful people in a religious cosmos generally understood to be organized around their disempowerment. Brasher spent six months as an active participant in two Christian fundamentalist congregations to study firsthand the power of fundamentalist women. In addition to the narrow set of religious beliefs that constitute each congregation, she discovered that gender functions as a sacred partition which literally divides the congregation in two, establishing parallel religious worlds. The first of these worlds is led by men and encompasses overall congregational life; the second is a world composed of and led solely by women. Brasher explores how and why women become involved in this highly gendered religious world by examining women's ministries, Bible study groups, and conversion narratives. She discovers that women-only activities create and sustain a parallel symbolic world within and among congregations, which improves women's ability to direct the course of their lives and empowers them in their relationships with others. The women develop intimate social networks that act as a resource for those in distress and provide the basis for political coalition when women wish to alter the patterns of congregational life. Brasher's study sheds new light on the ideas and faith experiences of fundamentalist women, revealing that the religiosity they develop is not as disempowering as one might think. Brenda Brasher is an assistant professor of religion at Mount Union College.

Dialogue on the conflict between religious fundamentalism and women's rights is often stymied by an 'all or nothing' approach: fundamentalists claim of absolute religious freedom, while some feminists dismiss religion entirely as being so imbued with patriarchy as to be eternally opposed to women's rights. This ignores, though, the experiences of religious women who suffer under fundamentalism and fight to resist it, perceiving themselves to be at once religious and feminist. In Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights of Women , Howland provides a forum for these different scholars, both religious and nonreligious, to meet and seek common ground in their fight against fundamentalism. Through an examination of international human rights, national law, grass roots activism, and theology, this volume explores the acute problems that contemporary fundamentalist movements pose for women's equality and liberty rights.

This fascinating book depicts the long-running battle within the fundamentalist movement over the roles of men and women both within the church and outside it. Drawing on interviews as well as on written sources, Margaret Lamberts Bendroth surveys the complicated interplay between fundamentalist theology, which is dominated by the search for order and hierarchical gender roles that have women subservient to men, and fundamentalist practice, which often depends on women in important ways to further the movement's institutional growth. Bendroth begins by describing the earliest days of the fundamentalist movement, when there was a general acceptance of women in ministry roles as teachers, missionaries, and even occasional preachers. She then traces fundamentalism's growing identification with masculine concerns after World War I and its battle with the forces of modernity (such as the rebellious flappers of the twenties). Bendroth explains that in the years before World War II women were able once again to make substantial contributions to the movement, but that during the cultural turn toward domesticity in the 1950s, fundamentalist leaders urged women to retreat to their "ordained" roles as submissive helpmates and encouraged men to fill the teaching and organizational positions the women vacated. Bendroth brings this conflict up to the present, examining the fundamentalist and evangelical rejection of contemporary feminism and investigating how our cultural norms of equality affect these movements' teaching on gender roles. - Publisher.