ABSTRACT

Taking the notion of embodiment as a starting point, this volume maps the interconnecting relationships between religion, gender and sexuality.

The chapters highlight how the body – its location, the narratives that surround it, its movement and negotiations – is central to understanding these multifaceted relationships. The contributors recognise the ways in which gender and sexuality are crucial to how we embody religion and encourage a more complex and nuanced understanding of embodied religion. The material is organised according to three central themes: (1) the relationship between the religious and the secular; (2) power, regulation and resistance; and (3) the symbolism of gendered bodies.

Cutting across a range of disciplinary perspectives, Embodying Religion, Gender and Sexuality will be relevant to students of sociology, anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, theology and religious studies.

chapter 1|17 pages

Introduction

Embodying religion, gender and sexuality

part I|74 pages

Troubling religious and secular dualisms

chapter 2|18 pages

Contested embodiment

The use of prayer in public displays of anti-abortion activism

chapter 3|18 pages

Speaking the body

Examining the intersections of sexuality, secularity and religion in Dutch sexuality education

chapter 4|19 pages

Embodied conversions and sexual selves

New Jewish, Christian and Muslim women in the Netherlands

chapter 5|17 pages

Embodying religion, gender and citizenship

A case study of Muslim girls playing football in a Dutch urban neighbourhood

part II|69 pages

Power, regulation and resistance

chapter 6|15 pages

Letting the juices flow

Reclaiming the body through witchcraft

chapter 7|19 pages

Living an ‘orgasmic’ life

The spiritual and religious journeys of practitioners of orgasmic meditation

chapter 9|17 pages

Appropriate, enigmatic, aspirational

The construction of femininity in online videos for evangelical women’s conferences

part III|72 pages

The symbolism of gendered bodies

chapter 10|18 pages

The empty womb, the unanswered prayer

Female infertility and involuntary childlessness in British Mormon communities

chapter 11|17 pages

Premarital pregnancy and embodied femininity

Women policing women in Nigeria’s Christian communities

chapter 12|17 pages

Tangled layers

The female body in the Maghreb at the intersection of religion, history and culture

chapter 13|18 pages

Tying the turban

Gendered religious fashion among Sikh diaspora