Contemporary Christian-post-church and post-Christian feminist religion in England :
General Material Designation
[Thesis]
First Statement of Responsibility
O'Rourke, Karen JanineO'Rourke, Karen Janine
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
University of Leicester
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
1990
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
Thesis (Ph.D.)
Text preceding or following the note
1990
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
The first Chapter of this Thesis explores recent feminist critical methods: polemical works, language and linguistics, feminist literary criticism and psychoanalytical works. The second Chapter offers a critique of the androcentrism of Phenomenology of Religion and an appreciation of the "new-style Phenomenology" of Jacques Waardenburg, which stresses the need for constant methodological self-awareness by the scholar and the importance of the explicit and underlying religious intentions of the subject of research. In both Chapters, the author stresses the expediency of her own pluralistic and "wholistic" method which is controlled by her understanding that feminism brings an inevitable and enriching paradigm shift to the Study of Religion. The rest of this Thesis is an application of the methodology discussed in Chapters I and II. The third Chapter includes a description of the three groups of women who were the subjects of this research. The fourth and fifth Chapters discuss their cosmology and relationship to the Object of Religion. The sixth Chapter discusses the dynamics underlying their religious expression, including the following: dynamics of sexuality, gender and religious tension, the religious legitimation of sex and gender stereotyping, and current changes in the religious legitimation of sex and gender stereotyping. The final Chapter is a discussion of the world of religious phenomena of the three groups of women outlined in Chapter III. These are discussed under the headings of Sacred Space, Time, Community, Persons, Word and Action.