Brenda E Brasher - Böcker

One of Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic Books of 1998Fundamentalist women are often depicted as dedicated to furthering the goals and ideas of fundamentalist men and thus of ancillary importance to the movement as a whole. Godly Women, Brenda Brasher's groundbreaking ethnographic study, reveals the paradox that fundamentalist women can be powerful people in a religious cosmos generally understood to be organized around their disempowerment. Brasher spent six months as an active participant in two Christian fundamentalist congregations to study firsthand the power of fundamentalist women. In addition to the narrow set of religious beliefs that constitute each congregation, she discovered that gender functions as a sacred partition which literally divides the congregation in two, establishing parallel religious worlds. The first of these worlds is led by men and encompasses overall congregational life; the second is a world composed of and led solely by women. Brasher explores how and why women become involved in this highly gendered religious world by examining women's ministries, Bible study groups, and conversion narratives. She discovers that women-only activities create and sustain a parallel symbolic world within and among congregations, which improves women's ability to direct the course of their lives and empowers them in their relationships with others. The women develop intimate social networks that act as a resource for those in distress and provide the basis for political coalition when women wish to alter the patterns of congregational life. Brasher's study sheds new light on the ideas and faith experiences of fundamentalist women, revealing that the religiosity they develop is not as disempowering as one might think. Brenda Brasher is an assistant professor of religion at Mount Union College.

As the Internet and the World Wide Web overcome barriers of time and space, religion enjoys an ever-increasing accessibility on a global scale. Inevitably, people online have sought out encounters with the otherworldly, launching religion into cyberspace. In this compelling book, Brenda Brasher explores the meaning of electronic faith and the future of traditional religion.Operating online allows long-established religious communities to reach hearts and minds as never before. Yet more startling is the ease by which anyone with Internet access can create new circles of faith.Bringing religion online also narrows the gap between pop culture and the sacred. Electronic shrines and kitschy personal Web “altars” idolize living celebrities, just as they honor the memory of religious martyrs.  Looking ahead, Brasher envisions a world in which cyber-concepts and -technologies challenge conventional notions about the human condition, while still attempting to realize age-old religious ideals such as transcendence and eternal life.As the Internet continues its rapid absorption of culture, Give Me That Online Religion offers pause for thought about spirituality in the cyber-age. Religion’s move to the online world does not mean technology’s triumph over faith. Rather, Brasher argues, it assures religion’s place in the wired universe, meeting the spiritual demands of Internet generations to come.

The female body has been an object of oppression and control throughout history. 'Gender and Apocalyptic Desire' exposes the often-hidden links between the struggles of women and the conflict of good versus evil. The essays examine the collisions between feminist and apocalyptic thought, the ways in which apocalyptic belief functions as bodily discipline and cultural practice, and how some currents of apocalyptic desire can enable women's equality. A wide range of issues are examined, from anti-abortion terrorism to the stigmata of Christ and visions of Mary.