Short description:

In this book, historians of religion and gender studies explore the biographies of a number of female leaders, and the factors within their groups and cultural contexts that support these women?s religious leadership. New Religious Movements have been supportive of women taking roles of leadership for a long time.  Authors of this book examine issues of gender and female leadership from diverse theoretical and methodological standpoints. The book covers a broad range of groups both with regard to time and place, covering Paganism, Hindu guru groups, Christian organizations, esoteric/ mystical movements, African churches, and a Japanese NRM.  The common focal point is the powerful, prophetic, charismatic women who have founded and/ or led New Religious Movements.

Long description:

In this book, historians of religion and gender studies explore the biographies of a number of female leaders, and the factors within their groups and cultural contexts that support these women?s religious leadership. New Religious Movements have been supportive of women taking roles of leadership for a long time.  Authors of this book examine issues of gender and female leadership from diverse theoretical and methodological standpoints. The book covers a broad range of groups both with regard to time and place, covering Paganism, Hindu guru groups, Christian organizations, esoteric/ mystical movements, African churches, and a Japanese NRM.  The common focal point is the powerful, prophetic, charismatic women who have founded and/ or led New Religious Movements.

?This book is a seriously important opening statement to what will hopefully continue as a lengthy and well-informed conversation for both participants of new religions and scholars in religious studies alike. This volume deserves a wide readership and is highly recommended.? (Carole M. Cusack, Nova Religio, Vol. 22 (4), May, 2019)

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction.- 2. Women and NRMs: Location and Identity.- 3. God?s Messenger: Ellen G. White.- 4. Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Gender, Sexuality and the Divine Feminine.- 5. ?Where there is true love, anything is effortless?: Mata Amritanandamayi: Divine Mother and Religious Entrepreneur.- 6. Mother and Father of Oneness: an Intersectional Reading of the Shared Leadership of Amma and Bhagavan.- 7. ?I, Jehovah?: Mary Ann de Grimston and the Process Church of the Final Judgment.- 8. Olivia Robertson: Priestess of Isis.- 9. The Power of Writing in Deguchi Nao?s Ofudesaki.- 10. Females? Subversive Interventions in the Religious Field in Ethiopia.- 11. Female Leadership in Mudzimu Unoera Sect of Guruve, Zimbabwe.- 12. The Politics of the Goddess: Radical/Cultural Feminist Influences of Starhawk's Feminist Witchcraft.- 13. The Chalice and the Rainbow: Conflicts Between Women?s Spirituality and Transgender Rights in US Wicca in the 2010s.