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.
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, goddess, saints, gurus, nuns and heretics. One thing these remarkable women all share is their defiance of orthodoxy and fundamentalist inspirations 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.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: The Last Frontier by Durre Ahmed
2. The Goddess-Woman Equation in Śākta by Tantras Madhu Khanna
3. Women in the Catholic Church by Sr Mary John Mananzan
4. Women, Psychology and Religion by Durre Ahmed 153
PART TWO
5. The Forgotten Women of Anuradhapura
‘Her Story’ Replaced by ‘History’ by Hema Goonatilake
6. Mother Victoria Vera Piedad of Brookside, Pila,
Laguna: A Study of a Mutya Figure by Grace Odal
7. Suprema Isabel Suarez by Sr Mary John Mananzan
8. Parallel Worlds of Madhobi Ma, ‘Nectar Mother’
A 20th Century Tantric Saint by Madhu Khanna
9. ‘Real’ Men, Naked Women, and the Politics of Paradise:
The Archetype of Lal Ded by Durre Ahmed
PART THREE
10. Righteous Violence and Non-violence:
An Inseparable Dyad of Hindu Tradition by Madhu Khanna
11. Theological Reflections on Violence Against Women
(Catholic Perspective) by Sr Mary John Mananzan
12. Violence and the Feminine in Islam:
A Case Study of the Zikris by Durre Ahmed