Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women

349 Pages·1994·12.16 MB·English

by  Susan Starr Sered

Priestess, Mother,
Sacred Sister
Priestess, Mother,
Sacred Sister
RELIGIONS DOMINATED
BY WOMEN
Susan Starr Sered
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York Oxforda
For Yishai
Oxford University Press
Oxford NewYork
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Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1994 by Susan Starr Sered
First published in 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1996
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sered, Susan Starr.
Priestess, mother, sacred sister: religions dominated by women / Susan Starr Sered.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-508395-4
ISBN 0-19-510467-6 (Pbk.)
i. Women and religion—Cross-cultural studies.
2. Women—Religious life—Cross-cultural studies. I. Tide.
BL 458.545 1994
200'.82—dc20 93-35557
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
PREFACE
The impetus for this study grew out of the fieldwork projects that I have
conducted among Israeli women. During the past decade I have investigated
women's rituals at Jewish and Christian shrines in Bethlehem, observed and
participated in the religious world of elderly Jewish women who came to Israel
from Kurdistan, and listened to the fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, and post-
partum rituals and beliefs of women in a maternity hospital. By choosing to
work with populations and situations in which there is a great deal of sexual
segregation, I tried to maximize my contact with women's own concerns,
ideas, and rituals.
While conducting my own fieldwork, I also endeavored to seek out studies
of other societies in which women have been able to develop some of their
own religious rituals and interpretations. Many of the themes that I found
relevant to Jewish women's religious lives in Israel resonate strongly with
those described in the literature on Christian women in Europe and Latin
America, Hindu women in India, and Islamic women in the Arab world. It
became increasingly clear to me that when women have opportunities to ex-
press their own religious ideas and rites, themes peripheral to men's religious
lives emerge as central to women's religiosity.
My work in Israel led me to wonder if similar themes are important to
women who have even more control over their religious lives—women who
lead or join women's religions (as opposed to women who have some freedom
to maneuver within men's religious structures). This book was written in
order to explore that question.
In the course of researching this book, I learned about women who have
developed or participated in religions that enhance their lives, validate their
concerns, sacralize their bodies, and meet their gender-specific needs. I hope to
share with readers of this book some of the excitement I felt in finding out
about religious situations so different both from the one in which I was raised
and from those I encountered in my fieldwork.
Jerusalem, Israel S. S. S.
August
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book that covers diverse examples and draws upon more than one
discipline is always a risk. Many people helped me reduce that risk by taking
the time to check the accuracy of my work. In particular, I wish to thank the
following people who were kind enough to read sections of this book that deal
with their areas of expertise. I. M. Lewis and Yoram Bilu helped me sort out
my ideas on spirit possession (Chapter 9). Daphna Izraeli explained the funda-
mentals of organizational sociology to me (Chapters n and 12). Kaja Finkler
offered important comments regarding women's illness and healing (Chapter
5). Judith Lorber took the time to read and help me organize the material on the
secular benefits that accrue to women who belong to female-dominated reli-
gions (Chapter 13). Shimon Cooper demonstrated how classical anthropolo-
gists treat social structure and lineality (Chapter 2). And Joel Gereboff offered
me a theologian's insights into immanence and transcendence (Chapter 7).
Special thanks go to the experts who were both generous and broadminded
enough to share their time and expertise with me. The following people helped
me verify the accuracy of my information. Teigo Yoshida and Cornelius
Ouwehand (Ryukyu Islands), Melford Spiro (Burma), Eric Cohen and Gehan
Wijeyewardene (Thailand), Laurel Kendall (Korea), Steve Kaplan and Janice
Boddy (zar cult), Esther Pressel (Afro-Brazilian cults), Starhawk and Julie
Greenberg (Feminist Spirituality Movement), Priscilla Brewer and Stephen
Stein (Shakers), Virginia Kerns (Black Caribs of Belize), Susan Setta (Christian
Science), and Carol MacCormack (Sande).
A number of people read all or parts of the manuscript. In particular, I wish
to thank Ross Kraemer, Carol MacCormack, Rosemary Ruether, and Adele
Reinhartz. And finally, I continue to appreciate the ongoing inspiration that I
receive from Harvey Goldberg and Zvi Werblowsky.
My deepest appreciation to Ariella Zeller, Laini Kavalovski, and Cynthia
Read, all of whom helped me pull together this often unwieldy project.
CONTENTS
Introduction 3
1 The Examples 11
2 The Social Contexts of Women's Religions: Gender Disjunction,
Matrifocality, and a Critique of Deprivation Theory 43
3 Maternity and Meaning 71
4 When Children Die 89
5 Misfortune, Suffering, and Healing 103
6 Rituals and Relationships 119
7 The Sacred in the Profane 145
8 No Father in Heaven: Androgyny and Polydeism 161
9 Summoning the Spirits 181
10 Gender Ideology 195
11 Leaders and Experts 215
12 Women, Sacred Texts, and Religious Organization 243
13 Spiritual Gifts and Secular Benefits 257a
Conclusion 279
v APPENDIX A Alphabetical Summaries of Key Examples 289
APPENDIX B Alphabetical Summaries of Auxiliary Examples 291
REFERENCES
Key Examples 293
General 305
INDEX 317
Priestess, Mother,
Sacred Sister

Introduction
Ethnographic and historical studies of women and religion have thoroughly
documented patterns of women's exclusion from positions of significant reli-
gious leadership. In many societies women have active religious lives, yet
ecclesiastic hierarchies rarely include women, and official or "great tradition"
religious concepts generally reflect men's and not women's priorities and life-
experiences.
Scattered throughout the world and the centuries, however, are instances of
religions dominated by women—in which women have been the leaders, the
majority of participants, and in which women's concerns have been central.
Through analysis of religions dominated by and oriented toward women, this
book explores the questions: What are the cultural, structural, and historical
circumstances most likely to allow women to develop autonomous religious
systems? What are the salient characteristics of women's religions? Does the
fact that women control a religious system mean that there is anything "fe-
male" about the content or structure of the religion? These intriguing questions
have not yet been seriously addressed by either social scientists or historians of
religion.
The key examples developed in this book are ancestral cults among Black
Caribs in contemporary Belize, the indigenous religion of the Ryukyu Islands,
the zdr cult of northern Africa, the Sande secret society of Sierra Leone, ma-
trilineal spirit cults in northern Thailand, Korean shamanism, Christian Sci-
ence, Shakerism, Afro-Brazilian religions, nineteenth-century Spiritualism,
the indigenous nat cultus of Burma, and the Feminist Spirituality Movement in
the twentieth-century United States.
These twelve examples are particularly appropriate for a number of reasons.
First, they are all unquestionably female dominated both in terms of leadership
and membership; that is, the majority of their leaders and members are
women. In none of these religions is there discrimination against women on
any level of leadership or participation. Additionally, in all these examples an
awareness exists on the part of leaders and/or members that this is a women's
religion. And finally, in each case there is some sort of recognition that this