Fifty years ago, virtually no women served as the primary religious leaders in congregations, synagogues, mosques, or temples in the US. Today, a handful of denominations have gender parity, and even those who still exclude women leaders have grassroots advocacy groups agitating for change. This symposium gathers fourteen scholars from across the country and reflects on these changes within contemporary Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities.

Our symposium (March 6-8, 2025) asks the following guiding questions. How do we, as scholars of religion, leaders of religious communities, and participants within religious communities, understand the changes we have observed in the last fifty years? How have women as religious leaders redefined religious leadership? How could the study of women’s religious leadership inform fields that ordinarily do not consider it, such as labor history or political science? And how exactly do we narrate the history of women’s religious leadership within our contemporary age, marked by dramatic polarization and rapid secularization? 

Keynote Speakers


Dr. Celene Ibrahim is a multidisciplinary scholar specializing in Islamic intellectual history, gender studies, comparative religion, and ethics. She is best known for her monograph Women and Gender in the Qur’an (Oxford University Press, 2020). The book won the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies Book Award and was featured by the American Academy of Religion for Women’s History Month. Ibrahim is also the author of Islam and Monotheism (Cambridge University Press, 2022), an accessible primer on Islamic notions of the divine. She is the editor of the anthology One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2019), excerpts of which are featured in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. Ibrahim also writes on spiritual care, chaplaincy, religious leadership, and related themes. She regularly publishes essays and book reviews in scholarly and popular publications. Ibrahim is a trusted voice for media outlets, including NPR, PBS, and Netflix. She offers courses and lectures for educational and civic institutions around the world and is currently a faculty member at Groton School in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy where she also holds an appointment as Muslim Chaplain.

Donyelle McCray serves as Associate Professor of Homiletics at Yale Divinity School. A teacher, writer, and Episcopal layperson, her scholarship focuses on ways African American women and lay people use the sermon to play, remember, invent, and disrupt. She is the author of The Censored Pulpit: Julian of Norwich as Preacher (2019) and a volume on sermon genre, Is it a Sermon?: Art, Activism, and Genre Fluidity in African American Preaching (Fall 2024). She is currently writing a book on the preaching and spirituality of the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Before becoming a homiletics professor, Donyelle served as an attorney focusing on wills, trusts, and estates. This work raised existential questions that led her to seminary and then into ministry as a hospice chaplain.  Human finitude, compassion, and interdependence remain central theological concerns in her scholarship.  

Shuly Rubin Schwartz, Irving Lehrman Research Professor of American Jewish History, a groundbreaking scholar of American Jewish history, and a visionary institutional leader, is the eighth chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary. She is the first woman to serve in this role since JTS was founded in 1886. Chancellor Schwartz was one of the first women on the JTS faculty and played an instrumental role in introducing Jewish gender studies into the curriculum. As a scholar, she brings to light previously overlooked contributions of women to Jewish life and culture over the centuries and continually expands our understanding of American Judaism. Among her publications is the award-winning book, The Rabbi’s Wife, a penetrating examination of the role of rabbis’ wives in the development of American Jewish life.