Wilde, M.J.; Al-Faham, H. Believing in Women? Examining Early Views of Women among America’s Most Progressive Religious Groups. Religions2018, 9, 321.
Wilde, M.J.; Al-Faham, H. Believing in Women? Examining Early Views of Women among America’s Most Progressive Religious Groups. Religions 2018, 9, 321.
Wilde, M.J.; Al-Faham, H. Believing in Women? Examining Early Views of Women among America’s Most Progressive Religious Groups. Religions2018, 9, 321.
Wilde, M.J.; Al-Faham, H. Believing in Women? Examining Early Views of Women among America’s Most Progressive Religious Groups. Religions 2018, 9, 321.
Abstract
This paper examines the most prominent “progressive” American religious groups’ (as defined by those that liberalized early on the issue of birth control, circa 1930) views of women between the first and second waves of the feminist movement (1930-1965). We find that some groups have indeed had a long and outspoken support for women’s equality. Using their modern-day names, these groups, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Church, and to a lesser extent, the Society of Friends, or Quakers, professed strong support for women’s issues, early, and often. However, we also find that prominent progressive groups –the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Presbyterian Church, were virtually silent on the issue of women’s rights – even as the second wave of the feminist movement was picking up steam – as late as 1965.
Keywords
religion; feminism
Subject
Social Sciences, Sociology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
