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Women in world religions
188
Book
Reviews
men and that women’s sense of the relationship between themselves and their world is more continuous than men’s, While medieval women’s self-starvation does point to the advent of a preoccupation with bodily experience that is new in western culture, the argument that this preoccupation was life-affirming is unconvincing because it rests too heavily on the mystics’ own belief in God and his suffering. By bracketing out questions about the social and psychological nature of the medieval God as beyond the historian’s purview, Bynum in effect endorses the sanctity of the pain her subjects suffered. And by insisting that female asceticism expressed the continuity women felt between their bodies and their worlds, while male asceticism amounted to a reversal of their world that gave them only an illusion of power and freedom, Bynum overlooks the attempted reversal of nature implicit in women’s self-starvation as well as the psycho-social nature of their God and theirreligious experience. In sum, this book is an accomplished and in many respects insightful contribution to the history of medieval women’s religious experience, but ironically, the historian’s stand against over-interpreting her material leads to some peculiar feminist conclusions. AMANDA PORTERFIELD Syracuse University
Arvind Sharma (ed.), Women in World Religions. Albany, State University of New York Press, 1987, 302 pp. $34.50 hardback, $10.95 paperback. To anyone who self-consciously and deliberately holds the view that women, though perhaps different from men, are no less human than men, the inadequacies of an androcentric methodology are obvious and compelling. A basic paradigm shift that takes account of the fundamental humanity of women and of the fundamental two-sexed or androgynous character of humanity is mandatory. . . . Only with this corrective will we have accounts of societies and religions in which full information about women is integrated into all discussions. The special chapter or footnote momen and . . . can then disappear. Until then we will need chapters and books, such as this chapter and book, that focus directly on information about women. This quotation from Rita Gross’s article (pp. 38-139) in Women in World Religions ably explains the need for still more books on this subject. However, it is only Gross, and Young in her introduction, who attempt to explore the theoretical and methodological issues surrounding the study of women’s experience in the religious traditions, its historical location and meaning. In the early pages Katherine Young explains what she feels to be the ‘special features’ of the book. Among these she lists a phenomenological approach, by women, to women’s religious life (though what this might entail is not made very clear), and an awareness by the contributors of differences in women’s experiences across religions, of the ‘flexibility, ambivalence and alternatives’ for women within the religions, of religious change, and finally of the special characteristics of the religious domain as a subject for historians. Young then goes on to explore the rise of patriarchal religions and the reasons for changes in the role and status of women therein. This leads her to distinguish the place of women in ethnic religions (Judaism, Hinduism and
Book
Reviews
189
Confucianism), universal religions (Islam, Christianity and Buddhism) and those associated with female power (Taoism and Tantra). Young’s aim in the introduction is to undertake a comparative task, leaving the other contributors (and Young herself, on Hinduism) to provide accounts of women in particular religions. The first of these is the most challenging, the contribution by Rita Gross on Aboriginal religion, owing to the attention given to the issues that underlie an analysis of women’s experience in the religions of the world. Among other tasks she sees as fitting for historians working in this area is that of exploring not status questions but the peculiarities of the sex roles within religious traditions, and their ‘complementarity’. Following this contribution is Young’s account of the changing patterns of male dominance and the place of women in Hinduism. Not surprisingly, she’ uses her introductory analysis, of the effect on women’s status of massive societal changes, in the later stages of her account. Owing no doubt to the process of preparation and production of an edited volume of this kind, we find that this analysis, though reflected in Young’s own descriptive account, remains unmentioned elsewhere. The absence of a concluding chapter of any kind adds to the feeling that there are ends untied. However, the other contributions are all extremely interesting and informative in their own ways. Nancy Schuster Barnes writes on Buddhism, Theresa Kelleher on Confucianism, Barbara Reed on Taoism, Denise L. Carmody on Judaism, Rosemary Radford Ruether on Christianity and Jane I. Smith on Islam. These contributions, with their companion bibliographies, will provide important introductory material for students wishing to understand the nature of women’s experience in world religions. Together they constitute a book that will be useful as a text for courses on women and religion, and which, in many ways, is an improvement on earlier studies of a similar nature. Of necessity, earlier works were concerned to expose the effects of patriarchy in the various religions; this book combines an awareness of this with an open recognition that we can now focus more directly on what women have actually done, thought and felt. The editor of the book, the only man involved in its composition and organisation, remains silent. KIM KNOTT University of Leeds
Clarke Garrett, Spirit Possession and Popular Religion From the Camisards to the Shakers, Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, 294 + viii pp. This book offers further insight into the persistence of religious zeal into an age, the 18th century, that can no longer be stereotyped as one of rationality, secular optimism and religious tepidity (Professor Garrett himself shows lingering traces of older generalisations in referring to the 18th century’s ‘religiously tepid Church of England’-the body that produced the Wesleys). Garrett’s work forms a welcome addition to earlier studies, such as Kreiser on the Paris Convulsionaries and Schwartz on the French Prophets, which have helped to draw our attention to the strong survival into the 18th century of religious traits that we usually associate with the 17th-enthusiasm, direct inspiration, prophecy, unpredictable manifestations and, in
Book
Reviews
men and that women’s sense of the relationship between themselves and their world is more continuous than men’s, While medieval women’s self-starvation does point to the advent of a preoccupation with bodily experience that is new in western culture, the argument that this preoccupation was life-affirming is unconvincing because it rests too heavily on the mystics’ own belief in God and his suffering. By bracketing out questions about the social and psychological nature of the medieval God as beyond the historian’s purview, Bynum in effect endorses the sanctity of the pain her subjects suffered. And by insisting that female asceticism expressed the continuity women felt between their bodies and their worlds, while male asceticism amounted to a reversal of their world that gave them only an illusion of power and freedom, Bynum overlooks the attempted reversal of nature implicit in women’s self-starvation as well as the psycho-social nature of their God and theirreligious experience. In sum, this book is an accomplished and in many respects insightful contribution to the history of medieval women’s religious experience, but ironically, the historian’s stand against over-interpreting her material leads to some peculiar feminist conclusions. AMANDA PORTERFIELD Syracuse University
Arvind Sharma (ed.), Women in World Religions. Albany, State University of New York Press, 1987, 302 pp. $34.50 hardback, $10.95 paperback. To anyone who self-consciously and deliberately holds the view that women, though perhaps different from men, are no less human than men, the inadequacies of an androcentric methodology are obvious and compelling. A basic paradigm shift that takes account of the fundamental humanity of women and of the fundamental two-sexed or androgynous character of humanity is mandatory. . . . Only with this corrective will we have accounts of societies and religions in which full information about women is integrated into all discussions. The special chapter or footnote momen and . . . can then disappear. Until then we will need chapters and books, such as this chapter and book, that focus directly on information about women. This quotation from Rita Gross’s article (pp. 38-139) in Women in World Religions ably explains the need for still more books on this subject. However, it is only Gross, and Young in her introduction, who attempt to explore the theoretical and methodological issues surrounding the study of women’s experience in the religious traditions, its historical location and meaning. In the early pages Katherine Young explains what she feels to be the ‘special features’ of the book. Among these she lists a phenomenological approach, by women, to women’s religious life (though what this might entail is not made very clear), and an awareness by the contributors of differences in women’s experiences across religions, of the ‘flexibility, ambivalence and alternatives’ for women within the religions, of religious change, and finally of the special characteristics of the religious domain as a subject for historians. Young then goes on to explore the rise of patriarchal religions and the reasons for changes in the role and status of women therein. This leads her to distinguish the place of women in ethnic religions (Judaism, Hinduism and
Book
Reviews
189
Confucianism), universal religions (Islam, Christianity and Buddhism) and those associated with female power (Taoism and Tantra). Young’s aim in the introduction is to undertake a comparative task, leaving the other contributors (and Young herself, on Hinduism) to provide accounts of women in particular religions. The first of these is the most challenging, the contribution by Rita Gross on Aboriginal religion, owing to the attention given to the issues that underlie an analysis of women’s experience in the religions of the world. Among other tasks she sees as fitting for historians working in this area is that of exploring not status questions but the peculiarities of the sex roles within religious traditions, and their ‘complementarity’. Following this contribution is Young’s account of the changing patterns of male dominance and the place of women in Hinduism. Not surprisingly, she’ uses her introductory analysis, of the effect on women’s status of massive societal changes, in the later stages of her account. Owing no doubt to the process of preparation and production of an edited volume of this kind, we find that this analysis, though reflected in Young’s own descriptive account, remains unmentioned elsewhere. The absence of a concluding chapter of any kind adds to the feeling that there are ends untied. However, the other contributions are all extremely interesting and informative in their own ways. Nancy Schuster Barnes writes on Buddhism, Theresa Kelleher on Confucianism, Barbara Reed on Taoism, Denise L. Carmody on Judaism, Rosemary Radford Ruether on Christianity and Jane I. Smith on Islam. These contributions, with their companion bibliographies, will provide important introductory material for students wishing to understand the nature of women’s experience in world religions. Together they constitute a book that will be useful as a text for courses on women and religion, and which, in many ways, is an improvement on earlier studies of a similar nature. Of necessity, earlier works were concerned to expose the effects of patriarchy in the various religions; this book combines an awareness of this with an open recognition that we can now focus more directly on what women have actually done, thought and felt. The editor of the book, the only man involved in its composition and organisation, remains silent. KIM KNOTT University of Leeds
Clarke Garrett, Spirit Possession and Popular Religion From the Camisards to the Shakers, Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, 294 + viii pp. This book offers further insight into the persistence of religious zeal into an age, the 18th century, that can no longer be stereotyped as one of rationality, secular optimism and religious tepidity (Professor Garrett himself shows lingering traces of older generalisations in referring to the 18th century’s ‘religiously tepid Church of England’-the body that produced the Wesleys). Garrett’s work forms a welcome addition to earlier studies, such as Kreiser on the Paris Convulsionaries and Schwartz on the French Prophets, which have helped to draw our attention to the strong survival into the 18th century of religious traits that we usually associate with the 17th-enthusiasm, direct inspiration, prophecy, unpredictable manifestations and, in