In our own voices: four centuries of American women's religious writing

Introduction : Gender and the multicultural worlds of women and religion in America / Rosemary Skinner Keller Catholic women / Rosemary Radford Ruether Protestant laywomen in institutional churches / Rosemary Skinner Keller Jewish women / Ann Braude Black women / Emilie M. Townes Evangelical women / Nancy A. Hardesty Protestant women and social reform / Joanne Carlson Brown Women and ordination / Barbara Brown Zikmund Utopian and communal societies / Rosemary Radford Ruether American Indian women / Inés Maria Talamantez Growing pluralism, new dialogue / Rosemary Radford Ruether. Documents: THE COLONIAL ERA: Marie Magdalene Hachard: The Ursulines arrive in New Orleans Margaret Brent: A demand for a seat in the Maryland Assembly WOMEN RELIGIOUS, 1790-1950: Sister Blandina Segale: pioneer nuns on the frontier Sisters of Providence: nuns struggle with bishops over their rights Sisters of Mercy: nurses in epidemics CATHOLIC LAYWOMEN AND SOCIAL REFORM, 1890-1950: Mother Jones: organizing women and the miners Katherine Conway: a leading woman editor rejects women's suffrage Mrs. Francis E. Slattery: Catholic women use the vote to defend the family Dorothy Day: The Catholic Worker, still pacifist in World War II THE BIRTH OF CATHOLIC FEMINISM, 1950-1993: The Grail: from rural utopianism to feminism Patty Crowley: the Christian family movement and birth control Sister Madeleva Wolff: the education of Sister Lucy Leadership Conference of Women Religious: educating nuns for feminist consciousness Las Hermanas: Hispanic nuns confront racism and sexism Rosalie Muschal-Reinhardt: feminist theology claiming ordained ministry Catholics Speak Out: the failure of the bishops' pastoral on women Women-Church: creating feminist communities THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES: "Here hath been much spoken concerning Mrs. Hutchinson's meetings": from her trial in the Massachusetts Bay Colony "Pastors and teachers are but the inventions of men": The New Haven Circle of Women God "can make us good and bold and valiant soldiers of Jesus Christ": Quaker women's meetings To give "account of my conduct as to religious affairs": Sarah Osborn's religious bands Barbara Heck empowers the first extant religious society and becomes the mother of American Methodism "New England, now to meet thy God prepare": the Daughters of Liberty during the American Revolution THE NINETEENTH CENTURY "The little band of pious females": Evangelical Presbyterian women "Cultivating these fields of pious usefulness": the conservative views of women's evangelical activity "If you don't appoint an anxious meeting, I shall die": Charles Grandison Finney defends women's evangelical work for the entire church "Women's work for women": United Brethren define the purpose of women's missionary societies "Let them form an auxiliary to the Woman's Missionary Society": Baptist women develop organizational techniques "The steady and increasing interest in work among our women": African Methodist Episcopal women model a national society The New Woman of Protestantism: Deaconess Institutions, the first professional laywomen's organizations THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: "Are men ready for it?": Helen Barrett Montgomery challenges women ecumenically "College days": the campaign for higher education of Asian women "We are not converts in the strict sense": the relationship of Christianity to interreligious unity in Lutheran medical missions "The spacious living room of our social household": challenging women's organizations to confront social issues "Religion and the Feminine Mystique": early feminist critique within Protestant women's work "Transformation is where we believe the gospel compels us to move": Women's work for women and children at the end of the twentieth century "Equity and opportunity, a continuing challenge": GCOSROW challenges the United Methodist and the Ecumenical Church WOMEN IN THE JEWISH TRADITION: Rebecca Gratz, "Letters to Maria": Women in early American Judaism Anzia Yezierka, selections from Bread Givers Hannah Soloman: The National Council of Jewish Women Henrietta Szold to Haym Peretz: On Saying Kaddish Alice Seligsberg, Address to the 1936 Hadassah Convention Cynthia Ozick, excerpts from "Notes toward finding the right question" Amy Eilberg, excerpts from an interview by Raye T. Katz Judith Plaskow, "Beyond egalitarianism" Shaina Sara Handelman, excerpts from "modesty and the Jewish woman" Elyse Goldstein, "Take back the waters" Susan Grossman, "Finding comfort after miscarriage" BLACK WOMEN, THE COLONIAL ERA: Phillis Wheatley: colonial evangelical piety

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Amanda Berry Smith: conversion through wrestling with the devil

Sojourner Truth: the conversion of a female slave

Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Living in the New Jerusalem

Anna Julia Cooper: women and the regeneration and progress of the race

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: Mary McLeod Bethune: leaving a legacy

Sara Duncan: vital questions

Church of God in Christ: 1941 Annual Convocation Minutes

National Black Sister's Conference: Statement of Purpose

Nannie Helen Burroughs: The Slabtown District Convention

Zora Neale Hurston: The wounds of Jesus

MOVING INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: Toni Morrison: loving the heart

Katie Geneva Cannon: Black women's stories and moral wisdom

Delores S. Williams: speaking black women's tongue?

Jacquelyn Grant: the Bible and Jesus in womanist tradition

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes: Afrocentric appropriation of the Bible

EVANGELICAL WOMEN: Osie M. Fitzgerald: The joy of the Lord filled my heart

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: The way to salvation was short and simple

Sarah Grimke: Solely on the Bible

Antoinette Brown (Blackwell): the propriety of the expedience of woman's becoming a public teacher

Frances Willard: Christ hath made women free

Phoebe Palmer: Lay your all upon the alter

Osie M. Fitzgerald: the Holy Ghost sanctified me wholly

Carrie Judd Montgomery: the prayer of faith

Maria Woodworth-Etter: the laying on of hands

Agnes Osman (LaBerge): The gift of the Holy Spirit

Hannah Whitall Smith: the Christian's secret

John R. Rice: bobbed hair, bossy wives, and women preachers

Kathryn Kuhlman: distinctions in masculine and feminine roles are ordained by God

Daughters of Sarah: Christianity and feminism are inseperable

A WOMAN'S PLACE: Lucretia Mott: why shouldn't a woman be a reformer?

Mrs. J. T. Gracey: evangelical organizing

REFORM AS AWAKENING: Abigail Abbot Bailey: reform as individual empowerment in the eighteenth century

Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke: educating for reform

TO REFORM THE NATION: Angelina Grimke: abolition

New York Female Moral Reform Society: prostitution

REFORM AS CHALLENGE: Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Christianity as oppressor

REFORM AS VISION: Anna Howard Shaw: freedom and rights for the oppressed

Frances E. Willard: the new woman

FAITH, FEMINISM, AND THE FUTURE: National Association of Colored Women: racism and rights

Vida Dutton Scudder: Christian radicals and revolutionary forces

Georgia Harkness: peace

Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights: the right to choose

CLOUT, Christian Lesbians Out Together: celebrating identity

WOMEN AND ORDINATION: The Reverend Luther Lee: women's right to preach the gospel

C. Duren: woman's place separate not equal

The New York Times: pros and cons on women in ministry

The Woman's Pulpit: reflections on the status of Methodist women preachers

Phoebe Palmer: a supposition on the promises of the father

The Lutheran Quarterly: shall women preach?

Elizabeth Wilson: Anglicans debate the advantages of ordaining women

Committee to Study the Proper Place of Women in the Ministry of the Church: Episcopalians examine the issue of marriage

World Council of Churches: women's ordination as an ecumenical issue

Jarena Lee: black women wrestle with the call to preach the gospel

Joel Roth: the ordination of women as conservative Jewish rabbis

Blu Greenberg: orthodox women rabbis?

THE ANDROGYNOUS GOD AND THE NEW HUMANITY: The Shaker Bible: Androgynous deity and the dual order of Christ

A Rappite Hymn: to Sophia, the Harmonist's goddess

Rebecca Jackson: a black evangelist empowered by the Mother God

The rebirth of the goddess in women's spirituality

ALTERNATIVES TO THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY: Ephrata Cloister: the Order of the Rose of Sharon

Oneida: complex marriage and family planning

The Mormons: Joseph Smith commands Emma Smith's assent to polygyny

FEMALE FOUNDERS AND LEADERS: Jemima Wilkinson: Public Universal Friend

Frances Wright: the vision of equality at Nashoba

Barbara Heinemann Landmann: Amana inspirationist Werkzeuge

GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN'S WORK ROLES: The Women's Commonwealth: autoemancipation

The Farm: spiritual midwifery

Twin Oaks: labor credits and gender equity

SEEING RED: Meredith Begay: an Apache medicine woman

Ines Hernandez-Avila: land base and Native American religious traditions

Pilulaw Khus: Chumash culture

The presence of 'Isanaklesh and Apache female initiation

Espiritualista initiation in southern California and Mexico

GROWING PLURALISM, NEW DIALOGUE: Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza: feminist hermeneutics for women-church

Toinette Eugene: Womanist theology

Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz and Yolanda Tarango: Mujerista theology

Judith Plaskow: Jewish feminist hermeneutics

Riffat Hassan: Muslim feminist hermeneutics

Rita Gross: Buddhist feminism

Starhawk: Wiccan thealogy.