ABSTRACT

Women, Religion and Leadership focuses on women from the traditional context of women as leaders with chapters observing various aspects of leadership from specifically chosen religious female leaders and going on to examine the legacies they leave behind.  

This book seeks to identify and analyse the gendered issues underlying the structural lack of recognition for women within the church and to examine the culturally constructed narratives related to these women for evidence of their leadership despite the exclusionary rules applied to force their submission to the dominating forces. Finally this book intends to draw out of these women’s stories the various lessons of leadership that invoke current relevancies among prevailing leadership paradigms.

Written by experts from disciplines as varied as leadership and communication studies to sociology, and history to medievalist and English scholars; Women, Religion and Leadership will prove key reading for scholars, academics and researchers is these and related disciplines.

chapter 1|14 pages

Performing Sanctity

Exemplary Leadership in the Lives of Medieval Female Virgin Martyrs

chapter 2|18 pages

Hilda of Whitby (614–680)

Unexpected Leadership by the “Mother of Bishops”

chapter 3|23 pages

Clare of Assisi (1191–1253)

Breaking Through Societal Barriers for Women

chapter 4|22 pages

Catherine of Siena (1347–1380)

Political Persuasion and Party Leadership of the Intellective Mystic

chapter 5|22 pages

Kateri Tekakwitha (1656–1680)

She Who Bumps Into Things and the Power of Servant Leadership

chapter 6|19 pages

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821)

A Proto-Feminist Servant-Leader 1 for the Nineteenth Century—and Today

chapter 7|15 pages

Catherine McAuley (1778–1841)

Exhibiting Mercy Through Service and Authentic Leadership

chapter 8|21 pages

Katharine Drexel (1858–1955)

Philanthropist and Transformational Leader

chapter 9|23 pages

Edith Stein (1891–1942)

Empathic Leadership: Saint Edith Stein’s Phenomenological Perspective

chapter 10|20 pages

Pauli Murray (1910–1985)

A Person and Her Typewriter