Sara Ashencaen Crabtree - Women of Faith and the Quest for Spiritual Authenticity

Drawn from over fifty-eight individual, in-depth, qualitative interviews with women of faith in Malaysia and Britain, Women of Faith and the Quest for Spiritual Authenticity is a multifaith, multicultural and cross-cultural comparative focus that explores womens religious expressions, as derived from practising Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Wiccans and Druids among others.

Despite social advances towards womens emancipation and the lacerating critiques from feminist theologians across the Abrahamic religions and beyond, womens religious experiences remain submerged beneath the weight of patriarchal religious leadership and ongoing masculinised, dogmatic interpretations. Even feminism itself has yet to move the spiritual onto their main agenda of inequity in womens lives. This extensive, feminist research monograph challenges these exclusions to centre and amplify womens voices in speaking powerfully of their religious experiences, interpretations and practices.

This is an ecumenical and entertaining ethnography where womens narratives and life stories ground faith as embodied, personal, painful, vibrant, diverse, illuminating and shared. This book will be of interest not only to academics and students of the sociology of religion, feminist and gender studies, politics, ethnicity and Southeast Asian studies, but is equally accessible to the general reader with a broad interest in faith and feminism.

Sara Ashencaen Crabtree is Professor of Social and Cultural Diversity at Bournemouth University, UK. She has worked extensively in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and the Middle East and is widely published in the areas of gender, vulnerability, discrimination, disadvantage, cross-cultural issues and belief.

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Edited by Lucas Gottzn, Margunn Bjrnholt and Floretta Boonzaier

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Selina Gallo-Cruz

Multiple Gender Cultures, Sociology, and Plural Modernities

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Edited by Heidemarie Winkel and Angelika Poferl

Women of Faith and the Quest for Spiritual Authenticity

Comparative Perspectives from Malaysia and Britain

Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-in-Gender-and-Society/book-series/SE0271

Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

First published 2021

by Routledge

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2021 Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

The right of Sara Ashencaen Crabtree to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-43675-9(hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-00493-6(ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Newgen Publishing UK

I am deeply indebted to all those named and unnamed who helped me towards the completion of this book by providing information, guidance, practical help, enthusiasm and endless cups of calming tea (and sometimes even cake). First, my deepest thanks go to all the participants who gave up their valuable time to speak so candidly to me about such profound, personal matters. My fulsome gratitude goes to my helpmate and husband, Professor Jonathan Parker, for his encouragement, theological knowledge, editorial eagle eye and terrific cooking. Warm thanks to Professor Azlinda Azman, Dean of Social Sciences at Universiti Sains Malaysia and her wonderful colleague, Madam Nirmala, my gatekeeper and guide. Applause is showered on all my Womens Academic Network convenor chums, particularly Dr Lorraine Brown at Bournemouth University, for creating the perfect space and place for my work at a critical juncture. A big sisterly hug for Professor Candida Yates and Professor Heather Savigny for their clever tips and our sanity-saving, lockdown cocktail hour. Greetings and thanks go to my long-time friends and helpmates: Professor Hew Cheng Sim, Gabriel and Molly Chong in Malaysia a blessed light shine on your journeys always. My appreciation and thanks to Bournemouth University for providing financial support for the Malaysian part of the study. Finally, a big thank you to the Commissioning and Editorial Team at Routledge for their astonishing alacrity, efficiency and help; heres looking at you Emily Briggs and Lakshita Joshi.

This book is concerned with the subject of women and faith; to be precise, with women of faith. However, a simple statement of this sort fails to delineate the actual scope of the work. Multifaith in scope, feminist in its focus and global in its concerns, this book is original in both conception and undertaking in seeking to present a multicultural, international and multifaith exploration of womens religious beliefs.

In developing this expansive investigation, research findings were drawn from scores of separate, in-depth qualitative interviews in Malaysia and Britain, commensurate with an international comparative analysis. The individual interpretation of religious forms and the construction of a personal faith forms the main inquiry underpinning the study, in which participants explore their own gendered conditions and particular pathways of piety together with associated ritualised practices.