Women of Faith and the Quest for Spiritual Authenticity

Drawn from over fifty-eight individual, in-depth, qualitative interviews with women of faith in Malaysia and Britain, Women of Faith and the Quest for Spiritual Authenticity is a multifaith, multicultural and cross-cultural comparative focus that explores womens religious expressions, as derived from practising Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Wiccans and Druids among others. Despite social advances towards womens emancipation and the lacerating critiques from feminist theologians across the Abrahamic religions and beyond, womens religious experiences remain submerged beneath the weight of patriarchal religious leadership and ongoing masculinised, dogmatic interpretations. Even feminism itself has yet to move the spiritual onto their main agenda of inequity in womens lives. This extensive, feminist research monograph challenges these exclusions to centre and amplify womens voices in speaking powerfully of their religious experiences, interpretations and practices. This is an ecumenical and entertaining ethnography where womens narratives and life stories ground faith as embodied, personal, painful, vibrant, diverse, illuminating and shared. This book will of interest not only to academics and students of the sociology of religion, feminist and gender studies, politics, ethnicity and Southeast Asian studies, but is equally accessible to the general reader broadly interested in faith and feminism.