Gendering the Spirit. Women, Religion and the Post-Colonial Response

This book is about the devotional subcultures which women have always created. Its authors draw their evidence and inspiration from the Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic and Christian traditions of Asia, in particular.

Here we find women as healers, goddesses, saints, gurus, nuns and heretics. One thing these remarkable women all share is their defiance of orthodoxy and fundamentalist interpretations oppressive of women. Instead they have created religious alternatives which appeal profoundly to huge numbers of women. Not that these alternatives, as the authors who have written this book show, are accepted by the mainly male religious establishment. Indeed women’s rejection of patriarchal interpretations of religion and their creative revisioning of religion in their daily spiritual practice can be a very dangerous activity.

In addition to fascinating glimpses of little known aspects of the feminine within the great religions, this book is also a reflection of the newly emerging spirituality of women in Asia as they experience and respond to the political and social injustices they confront.

Contents:

Part I: Women and Religion: Alternative Perspectives Introduction: The Last Frontier—Durre Ahmed The Goddess-Woman Equation in Sakta Tantras—Madhu Khanna Women in the Catholic Church—Sr. Mary John Mananzan Women, Psychology, and Religion—Durre Ahmed

Part II: The Hidden Woman and the Feminine The Forgotten Woman in Anuradhapura: "Her story Replaced by ’History’"—Hema Goonatilake Mother Victoria Vera Piedad of Brookside, Pila, Laguna, Philippines: A Study of a Mutya Figure—Grace P. Odal Suprema Isabel Suarez —Sr. Mary John Mananzan Parallel Worlds of Madhubi MA, ’Nectar mother’: A 20th Century Tantric Saint—Madhu Khanna ’Real’ Men, Naked Women, and the Politics of Paradise: The Archetype of Lal Ded—Durre Ahmed

Part III: Perspectives on Violence Righteous Violence and Nonviolence: An Inseparable Dyad of Hindu Tradition—Madhu Khanna Theological Reflections on Violence Against Women: A Catholic Perspective—Sr. Mary John Mananzan Violence and the Feminine in Islam: A Case Study of the Zikris—Durre Ahmed from the back cover.