Sacred Sisters focuses on five saints: the four female Irish saints who have extant medieval biographies (Darerca, Brigid, Íte, and Samthann), and Patrick, whose writings -- fifth-century Ireland's sole surviving texts -- attest to the centrality of women in Irish Christianity's development. Women served as leaders and teachers, perhaps even as bishops and priests, and men and women worked together in a variety of arrangements as well as independently. Previous studies of gender in medieval Ireland have emphasized sexism and sex-segregated celibacy, dismissing abundant evidence of alternative approaches throughout the sources, including in the Lives of Ireland's female saints. Sacred Sisters places these generally marginalized texts at its center, exploring their portraits of empowered, authoritative, compassionate women who exemplified an accepting and affirming ethics of gender and sexuality that would be unusual in many mainstream Christian movements in the present day, let alone in the Middle Ages.

A unique workbook to help women cultivate their full potential through the lives and lessons of the heroines of world spiritual traditions. Filled with exercises, anecdotes, quotes, and inspiration, Pythia Peay's Soul Sisters is designed to help women foster the traits that can be found in the great spiritual traditions of the world, and that are most needed in contemporary life. Each chapter shows how to cultivate the five "divine qualities": Courage, Faith, Beauty, Love, and Magic. Soul Sisters offers an abundance of examples of different female figures from the spiritual past and present who have embodied these characteristics in a distinctly feminine way. Through the road they have walked, readers can learn to discover their own individual heart-path to these strengths. Both an immensely practical workbook and an education in spiritual ideas, Soul Sisters is a companion for a lifetime.

In this fascinating and path-breaking work--comparing 12 women's religions--Sered investigates how women's religions differ from those dominated by men. She then reveals how these religions relate to the special ways women around the world experience reality. 19 halftones.

Listen to a short interview with Sarah McFarland TaylorHost: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & CraneIt is perhaps the critical issue of our time: How can we, as human beings, find ethical and sustainable ways to live with one another and with other living beings on this planet? Inviting us into the world of green sisters, this book provides compelling answers from a variety of religious communities. Green sisters are environmentally active Catholic nuns who are working to heal the earth as they cultivate new forms of religious culture. Sarah Taylor approaches this world as an "intimate outsider." Neither Roman Catholic nor member of a religious order, she is a scholar well versed in both ethnography and American religious history who has also spent time shucking garlic and digging vegetable beds with the sisters. With her we encounter sisters in North America who are sod-busting the manicured lawns around their motherhouses to create community-supported organic gardens; building alternative housing structures and hermitages from renewable materials; adopting the "green" technology of composting toilets, solar panels, fluorescent lighting, and hybrid vehicles; and turning their community properties into land trusts with wildlife sanctuaries. Green Sisters gives us a firsthand understanding of the practice and experience of women whose lives bring together Catholicism and ecology, orthodoxy and activism, traditional theology and a passionate mission to save the planet. As green sisters explore ways of living a meaningful religious life in the face of increased cultural diversity and ecological crisis, their story offers hope for the future--and for a deeper understanding of the connections between women, religion, ecology, and culture.

Religion is often denounced as one of the tools used by patriarchal societies to maintain the status quo, and especially to persuade women to accept subordinate roles. This does not explain, however, the existence of many religious groups in which women are both leaders and the majority of participants. How are these women's religions different from those dominated by men? What can we learn from them about the special ways in which women experience their unique reality? In this fascinating and pathbreaking work--the first comparative study of women's religions--Susan Starr Sered seeks answers to these compelling questions. Looking for common threads linking groups as diverse as the ancestral cults of the Black Caribs of Belize, Korean shamanism, Christian Science, and the Feminist Spirituality movement, Sered finds that motherhood and motherly concerns play a vital role in these female-dominated groups. Nurturing and concern for others are at the center, as are healing arts and ways of dealing with illness and the death of children. Religion not only enables women to find sacred meaning in their daily lives, from the preparation of food to caring for their families, but an offer intense and personal relationships with deities and spirits--often through ecstatic possession trance--as well as opportunities to celebrate and mourn with other women. By examining the shared experiences of women across great cultural divides, Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister offers a new understanding of the role gender plays in determining how individuals grapple with the ultimate questions of existence. In the process, it not only highlights the profound differences between men and women, but the equally important ways in which we are all alike.

Updated with nearly forty new selections to reflect the tremendous growth and transformation of scholarly, theological, and activist religious environmentalism, the second edition of This Sacred Earth is an unparalleled resource for the study of religion's complex relationship to the environment.

In this enlightening and entertaining work, Charles Panati explores the origins of hundreds of religious rituals, customs, and practices in many faiths, the reasons for religious holidays and sacred symbols, and the meanings of vestments, sacraments, devotions, and prayers. Its many revelations include: * Why the Star of David became the Jewish counterpart of the Christian cross * What mortal remains of the Buddha are venerated today * How the diamond engagement ring became a standard * That the first pope was a happily married man * How Hindu thinkers arrived at their concept of reincarnation * Why Jews don't eat pork, why some Muslims don't eat certain vegetables, and how some Christians came to observe meatless Fridays Sacred Origins of Profound Things is an indispensable resource for all those interested in the history of religion and the history of ideas--and an inspiring guide to those seeking to understand their faith.

"This is a book about change and about people changing. It is a book abaout women, American Catholic sisters, in passage. It tells of the radical transformation that has been underway among sisters for the past four decades, redefining their identities and their way of life." [Preface].