Female Leaders in New Religious Movements [Hardcover]

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 womens 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.

2. Women and NRMs: Location and Identity

3. Gods 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 Naos Ofudesaki

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 Womens Spirituality and Transgender Rights in US Wicca in the 2010s

This book is a lS)