What follows is a copy of
ENI's story from yesterday about
the role of women as religious leaders in Japan. It gave me many interreligious insights I didn't previously have and was a bit of an Eastern echo of our own Daughters of Dissent project.
You can find details of the book itself
here. If copying the article mention must be made of ENI.
First though here is a bit from the book's blurb
The book is divided into four sections devoted to an in-depth study of different types of apostolates: nuns (women who took up monastic vocations), witches (the women leaders of the Shinto-Buddhist tradition who resisted Jesuit teachings), catechists (women who engaged in ministries of persuasion and conversion), and sisters (women devoted to missions of mercy). Analyzing primary sources including Jesuit histories, letters and reports, especially Luís Fróis' História de Japão, hagiography and family chronicles, each section provides a broad understanding of how these women, in the context of misogynistic society and theology, utilized resources from their traditional religions to new Christian adaptations and specific religio-social issues, creating unique hybrids of Catholicism and Buddhism. The inclusion of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese texts, many available for the first time in English, and the dramatic conclusion that women were largely responsible for the trajectory of Christianity in early modern Japan, makes this book an essential reading for scholars of women's history, religious history, history of Christianity, and Asian history.
By
Hisashi YukimotoTokyo, 24 April
(ENI) - Women played a key role as religious leaders in the middle ages in Japan, a recently published book shows.
"I wanted to introduce forgotten voices of women, especially those of religious leaders," the Rev. Haruko Nawata Ward, the author of "Women Religious Leaders in Japan's Christian Century, from 1549 to 1650", told Ecumenical News International.
She said ,"I also wanted to pursue the question of the inculturation of European Christianity in non-European contexts during the Reformation period."
The author, a church historian at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia, in the United States, noted, "The Christian Century in Japan gave me a suitable frame in which I can pursue both of these tasks."
Nawata Ward told ENI she used the term "Christian Century" in the book "because it captures the brief moment of Japanese history in which Christianity flourished between the time of its introduction by [Saint] Francis Xavier and its disappearance under its total ban by the Tokugawa government."
Ashgate, the publisher, explains that the book "outlines how women provided crucial leadership in the spread, nurture, and maintenance of the faith through various apostolic ministries".
The publisher notes on its Web site, "The author's research on the religious backgrounds of women from different schools of late medieval Japanese Shinto-Buddhism sheds light on individual women's choices to embrace or reject the Reformed Catholicism of the Jesuits, and explores the continuity and discontinuity of their religious expressions."
Nawata Ward, an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA), said, "I hope that the stories of creative and resilient women leaders from the past may give hope and courage to today's women leaders in carving out their own voices.
"Networking with these women predecessors from the past in their imaginations might empower today's women leaders in their resistance against familial, social, religious, and political misogyny."
"Also, Christian women leaders might carefully find some enriching resources in Japan's Buddhist and Shinto cultural traditions while being critical in assessing what it means to be Christian leaders in a predominantly non-Christian environment," she added.
In writing the book, she became aware that there had been many women leaders who were part of earlier mission movements who created their own ministries.
Nawata Ward added, "I would like to have a network of scholars, researchers and leaders from the ecumenical Church who might be interested in resurrecting these women leaders' stories from Goa, Macao, Manila, China, Vietnam, Brazil, Ethiopia, England, Canada, and perhaps in other places that I have not even imagined during the early modern period and beyond."
:: Ashgate Web site:http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&pageSubject=1115&title_id=10039&edition_id=11248
:: Nawata Ward's profile:
ctsnet.edu/Files/Directories/Faculty/Resumes/Ward_Haruko_08.pdfENI featured articles are taken from the full ENI Daily News Service. Subscribe online to the Daily News Service and receive around 1000 full-text articles a year. Unless otherwise stated, ENI featured articles may be re-printed, re-posted, re-produced or placed on Web sites if ENI is noted as the source and there is a link to the ENI Web site www.eni.ch
My friend Jen Baker launched the Sophia Network a while back - a forum and website aimed principally at women in Youth work, but with all 