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Women in World Christianity: Building and Sustaining a Global Movement

ISBN: 978-1-119-87478-2

July 2023

Wiley-Blackwell

384 pages

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Description

A groundbreaking, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary analysis of women’s experiences in World Christianity

Women in World Christianity: Building and Sustaining a Global Movement is the first textbook to focus on women’s experiences in the founding, spread, and continuation of the Christian faith. Integrating historical, theological, and social scientific approaches to World Christianity, this innovative volume centers women’s perspectives to illustrate their key role in Christianity becoming a world religion, including how they sustain the faith in the present and their expanding role in the future.

Women in World Christianity features findings from the Women in World Christianity Project, a groundbreaking study that produced the first quantitative dataset on gender in every Christian denomination in every country of the world. Throughout the text, special emphasis is placed on women in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the period of Christianity’s shift from the global North to the global South. Easily accessible chapters – organized by continent, tradition, and select topics – introduce students to the wide variety of Christian belief and practice around the world. The book also discusses issues specifically relevant to women in the church: gender-based violence, ecology, theological education, peacebuilding and more. This textbook:

  • Provides a balanced view of women’s involvement in Christianity as a world religion and how they sustain the faith today
  • Introduces students to female theologians around the world whose scholarship is generally overlooked in Western theological education
  • Discusses women’s essential contributions to Christian mission, leadership, education, relief work, healthcare, and other social services of the church
  • Complements the growing body of literature about Christian women from different continental, regional, national, and ecclesiastical perspectives
  • Explores the contributions of contemporary Christian women of all major denominations in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and Oceania
  • Helps students become more aware of the unique challenges women face worldwide, and what they are doing to overcome them

Women in World Christianity: Building and Sustaining a Global Movement is an excellent primary textbook for introductory courses on World Christianity, History of Christianity, World Religions, Gender in Religion, as well as undergraduate and graduate courses specifically focused on women in World Christianity.

About the Author

GINA A. ZURLO (Boston University) is Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity and Research Fellow at Boston University’s Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs. She is the author of Global Christianity: A Guide to the World’s Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and From Nairobi to the World: David B. Barrett and the Re-imagining of World Christianity. She is also co-author of the World Christian Encyclopedia, 3rd edition, and co-editor of the World Christian Database. She was named one of the BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2019 for her work in quantifying religion worldwide.