Acknowledgments
Introduction Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan and Karen Jo Torjesen
Part I. Women, Family, Environment
1. There Goes the Bride: A Snapshot of the Ideal Christian Wife
Kathlyn A. Breazeale
2. Righteous Anger and Sustaining Faith: Black Women's Activism in the Environmental Justice Movement
Tuere Bowles
3. How Women Relate to the Evils of Nature
Karen Baker-Fletcher
Part II. Socioeconomics, Politics, Authority
4. Beyond Priesthood: Catholic Women Seek Empowerment in a Post-Vatican II Church
Judith Johnson
5. Gender and Society: Competing Visions of Women's Agency, Equality, and Well-being
Pamela K. Brubaker
6. Oppression and Resistance: The Church, Women's Work, and the Struggle for Liberation
Joan M. Martin
Part III. Body, Mind, Spirit
7. Spirit Matters: Body, Mind, and Motherhood
Jean T. Corey
8. Spirituality, Love, and Women
Soyoung Baik-Chey
9. What the Mind Forgets the Body Remembers: Women, Poverty, and HIV
Linda E. Thomas
Part IV. Sex, Power, Vulnerability
10. Sexual Violence: A Sin against Women
Marie M. Fortune
11. An Articulation of a Theology of the Body for Queer Theory
Marie Cartier
12. Sexuality, Politics, and Faith
Shari Julian
Part V. Women, Worldview, Religious Practice
13. Women and Christianity in the Caribbean: Living Past the Colonial Legacy
Althea Spencer Miller
14. Maternal Practices as Religious Piety: The Pedagogical Practices of American Latter-day Saint Women
Amy Hoyt
Suggested Reading
Index
About the Editors and Contributors

This work explores the impact of Christian women-as scholars and leaders representing the ethnic, national, racial, and denominational diversity of Christianity today-on all aspects of life.
Women and Christianity explores the experiences of women and how their daily lives interface with their spirituality and faith. Beginning with a historical overview, the book presents essays grouped under five broad headings: women, family, and environment; socioeconomics, politics, and authority; body, mind, and spirit; sex, power, and vulnerability; and women, world view, and religious practice.
These essays focus on multiple aspects of women's experiences and contemporary Christian realities, involving the interrelatedness of faith, thought, and activism across many strata of global society. They wrestle with the daily experiences and challenges women face integrating their lives as women of faith-as they are advocates, experience agency, and work for mutuality. It shows how in all these roles, women must negotiate power, injustice, and the impact of sexism as they work within systemic oppression amid a patriarchal system, nevertheless championing change and refusing to be severely compromised.

Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, PhD, is professor of theology and women's studies at Shaw University Divinity School, Raleigh, NC.
Karen Jo Torjesen, PhD, is the Margo L. Goldsmith Professor of Women's Studies in Religion, Claremont Graduate School, and initiated two graduate programs, one in women's studies, another in religious studies.