This page lists helpful publications related to the topics covered on this website. The materials here are not a comprehensive list and are intended to serve as starting points for research.
General
The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past edited by Catherine Brekus
This book provides a helpful introduction to the many ways that women’s history and religious history have always been intertwined. It identifies contributions that women and women’s rights activists have made to American religious life over the past several centuries.
Transforming the Faiths of Our Fathers: The Women Who Changed American Religion edited by Ann Braude
This book features a collection of personal narratives from sixteen women who shaped the religious feminist movement in the twentieth century, including theologians, congregational leaders, and activists. It covers topics such as liturgical reforms, women’s ordination, and inclusive language across a variety of religious traditions.
Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America edited by Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether
This 2-volume set provides information about a wide variety of women’s roles in religious institutions, movements, and events. It includes work by over 150 scholars.
Feminism and Religion by Rita Gross
This book offers an overview of feminist theology’s development, key figures, and impact. It generally focuses on changes within academia, but also includes helpful information about academia’s relationships with social movements.
Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement by Mary Henold
Henold highlights the origins of the Catholic feminist movement in the 1960s and ’70s, with a focus on the organizing role of women religious and laywomen who were already active in the Church. This information offers insight into early religious feminism more broadly.
Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women’s Liberation Movement by Joyce Antler
Antler provides an overview of Jewish women’s contributions to both the broad American feminist movement and its religious subset. It primarily features biographical narratives of key figures, especially those active in Boston, Chicago, and New York.
Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America by Cynthia Eller
This book provides an overview of the feminist spirituality movement and its many components, including Neopaganism and Goddess-worship. It highlights similarities and differences between various spiritual groups and beliefs systems, and how they challenged established religious traditions.
Thematic Topics
Reproductive Rights
After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate by Mary Ziegler
Although not focused exclusively on religious activism, Ziegler offers an overview of reproductive rights and the abortion debate after the 1973 Supreme Court case. It is incredibly useful for understanding the environment that many religious reproductive rights organizations operated within.
Abortion and America’s Churches: A Religious History of ‘Roe v. Wade’ by Daniel Williams
This book examines the history of American Christian thought on abortion, in terms of both institutional stances and the opinion of the laity. Williams’ work is especially useful for understanding the complex tension both within denominations and between Christian groups regarding reproductive rights.
“The Pastoral Was Political: Religious Rights and Reproductive Freedom Before Roe” by Gillian Frank
Published in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 93 Issue 2. Frank offers an overview of the political climate that pro-choice religious leaders faced before 1973, and describes their work. He focuses on Jewish and mainline Protestant efforts to provide access to contraception, abortion counseling, and support.
Good Catholics: The Battle Over Abortion in the Catholic Church by Patricia Miller
Miller traces the history of both the Catholic Church’s anti-abortion stance and the development of explicitly Catholic pro-choice activism. She focuses on the organization Catholics for Choice, and describes their growth since 1973.
Creating Choice: A Community Responds to the Need for Abortion and Birth Control, 1961-1973 by David Cline
This collection of oral histories offers insight into the specific work of reproductive rights activists, such as religious leaders. It focuses on individuals in Western Massachusetts, including Rev. Richard Unsworth of Smith College.
LGBTQ Equality
Homosexuality and Religion: An Encyclopedia edited by Jeffrey S. Siker
This book offers an expansive overview of various religious groups’ responses and relationships with LGBTQ communities and individuals throughout history. It covers the intersection of LGBTQ identities and religion both within and outside of religious life.
Gay Religion edited by Scott Thumma and Edward R. Gray
This book analyzes the spiritual and religious lives of LGBTQ individuals throughout the country, both within and outside of traditional religious institutions. It highlights religious discrimination, community building, and the development of alternative spiritual traditions.
Radical Love: Introduction to Queer Theology by Patrick S. Cheng
Cheng traces the development of Christian queer theology, offering a historical overview of its influences, advocates, and impacts on both American religion and the LGBTQ movement. He redefines traditional Christian theological concepts, such as revelation and the Trinity, through a queer theological lens.
Feminist Theology
New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views edited by Mary E. Hunt and Diann L. Neu
This collection of essays works to redefine Christianity, and rejects the traditional patriarchal structure of the religion. It features work by theologians, leaders, liturgists, and activists.
Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation by Mary Daly
This is one of Daly’s key texts, in which she outlines her understanding of feminist theology. She rejects androcentrism in Abrahamic religions, and argues that religion is a necessary aspect of the broader feminist movement.
Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology by Rosemary Radford Ruether
Ruether analyzes the history of religious patriarchy, and critiques its impacts on modern religious life and wider society. This book is a key text in the history of religious thought, and established an influential framework for Christian feminist theology.
Standing Again at Sinai by Judith Plaskow
This book was the first full-length Jewish feminist theology, and analyzes the role of women in Jewish history and thought. It provides a solid introduction to Jewish feminist theology.
The Spiral Dance by Starhawk
This book was a foundational text for the modern Neopagan and spiritual feminist movements in the United States. It discusses Wicca, the Goddess movement, ecofeminism, and modern witchcraft.
Congregational Leadership
Incompatible with God’s Design: A History of the Women’s Ordination Movement in the U.S. Roman Catholic Church by Mary Jeremy Daigler
Daigler articulates how women’s ordination became a primary goal of many Catholic feminists over the past half-century, rather than just increased participation. She also highlights the roles of organizations like the Women’s Ordination Conference in advocating for allowing women to enter the priesthood.
She Preached the World: Women’s Ordination in Modern America by Benjamin R. Knoll and Cammie Jo Bolin
This book uses survey data and personal interviews to explore the impact of women’s ordination on modern religious life throughout the country. It highlights the politics of women’s ordination, in both the twentieth and twenty-first century.
The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate edited by Rebecca Einstein Schorr and Alysa Mendelson Graf
This anthology captures a variety of perspectives on how women’s ordination as rabbis has shaped American Jewish life. It also offers some helpful background on early female rabbis, as well as the struggle for women’s equality within Judaism.