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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s 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\u2019s religious leadership within our contemporary age, marked by dramatic polarization and rapid secularization? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n