The topic of gender in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American religious life is at once too narrow and too broad. It is too narrow because it implies that the issues of gender are uniquely twentieth- or twenty-first-century issues, and thus lack precedence or a longer history within American religious life, or because it implies that the issues of gender and religion are primarily American issues, exported on a wave of feminist unrest to Europe and beyond. At the same time the topic is too broad; the complexities and contradictions cannot be adequately set out within the scope of even an extended essay. Any attempt to do so must inevitably oversimplify these complexities and thus risk silencing the diverse perspectives and practices, the complex strategies women have employed within religion in America. The most that can be done within this scope is to attempt to draw attention to the varied strategies women have exercised within a representative selection of major religions in America during this period, to draw some connecting lines, however faint, that show this period’s relation to the larger history and the larger world, and to point beyond this essay to additional resources.

This essay will limit itself to issues of women and religion as articulated within Christianity and Judaism. Historically speaking, these two religions formed the loci for the challenges, disputes, negotiations, and resolutions that affected American religions across denominations and religious belief systems regarding women’s roles. These issues are taken up within Islam and Buddhism, for example, and in ways unique to those religions. But the influences there (and elsewhere) draw from the movements centered in Christianity and Judaism.