Womens Spirituality

The Lofthus revolt and the Thrane movement are die political movements under study, and the Hauge movement and Norwegian Methodism are the religious movements. Within each movement, two issues are considered. First, there is an examination of the differential participation of women in the movements, where consideration is given to how the religious movements were more successful in mobilizing women. Second, the effects of female participation in the religious movements are assessed in relation to recruitment and stability.

In the empirical analysis, primary and secondary historical sources related to the period between 1780 and the decade of the 1860s are utilized. The main findings are: ideological inducements for women to participate and available roles for women in the organizational structures are important explanations for female participation in the religi ous movements; female participation within the religious movements led to more widespread diffusion and recruitment; and women provided the religious movements with a relatively high degree of stability, because they enabled the use of family formation as a movement strategy and secured continuity through the socialization of new members.

With all her rich cultural antiquity, diversity and heritage, India has also been a country that has suppressed her women. It is ironic to say the least, because Indians have always worshipped their country as a janani or mother. On the one hand they worship this mother, and on the other they disregard their sisters, daughters, mothers, and wives. Articles on these pages discuss issues concerning women.

All this now seems like another world, as remote as Pluto or Neptune. The Douay Bible has become a recusant relic, replaced by the Jerusalem, NEB, or NAB versions; the Liber Usualis is of interest mainly to universities with big budgets for their departments of ancient and medieval music; the Short Breviary has given way to Christians at Prayer or some other book of "the hours." Not even monasteries, at least in the United States, make much use of the Solesmes editions of the antiphonal, the gradual, or the kyriale. What used to be regarded as a "liturgical spirituality," rooted in meditation on the Mass texts proper to the day, seems to have vanished along with Gothic vestments and baldachinos. Visually, acoustically, and linguistically, today's liturgy appears to some to have lost its majesty, mystery, and awe. It is planned by committees, "presided over" by smiling celebrants, participated in by somewhat bewildered congregations, and evaluated by teams of specialists invited to the parish from distant cities.