ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book attempts to bring women's religiosity into dialogue with secularization theories. Secularization theorists often point to the schism of the churches in the West, which began with Luther in the sixteenth century, as the first of the multiple threads that led to secularized modernity. The gendered, or feminist, critique of secularization is less well known that is, what happens when women's experiences are taken as the standpoint from which to examine secularization. Significant to women and secularization is the feminist movement. During the rise of second-wave feminism from the 1960s, most secular feminists rejected traditional religiosity as irredeemably patriarchal. David Martin has suggested that high levels of religiosity amongst such communities reflect their desire to differentiate themselves from their Christian neighbours by building strong religious communities. The book opens the Islam section with quantitative data from recent UK surveys.
