Historiography

Much has been written about Christianity in Europe from its origins to the present day: both politically and socially it is tightly woven into the fabric of the European past and the impact of its institutions on every aspect of life has been an integral part of historical writing. During the past thirty years or so, the growing interest in women’s history has enhanced this work by adding to it scholarly examination of the experience of Christian women. Selecting just a few for mention is an invidious process and inevitably will omit important contributions to scholarship, but among recent works that give us an overview of women’s past, not just of their religious past, those by Lynn Abrams, Gisela Bock and Karen Offen demonstrate clearly the influence, for good or ill, that Christianity and Christian institutions have exerted on women’s lives.5 The work of Callum Brown, already mentioned, has drawn attention to issues relating to women and Christianity, and sociologists of religion such as Steve Bruce, Malcolm Cook and Grace Davie have greatly added to our understanding of more recent devel-opments.6 There is also a considerable literature devoted to European Jewry, and here, too, the growth of interest in women’s history and gender history has prompted interest in the activities of religious women. In addition to the work of Abrams, Bock and Offen mentioned above, that by Ellen Umansky, for example, has contributed to our knowledge of the historico-theological context of Jewish women’s experience, as has that of Jonathan Webber. Subject-specific web sites and discussion lists devoted to the study of Jewish women’s past also proliferate.7 Less has been written about European Islam, although there is a growing literature - an inevitable consequence of the generally increased interest in women’s past but one prompted also by moves to understand and appreciate those new Europeans whose background and traditions owe much to distant cultures. The work of the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi and the Egyptian-born Leila Ahmed, although not dealing with geographically specific issues, have made significant contributions to Western attempts to understand Islam, its history and its demands on women. Yasmin Ali, another sociologist, and Anne-Sofie Roald, a Swedish convert to Islam, have also enhanced the discussion of contemporary Muslim women living in a Western culture.8 Much of the literature originates in the work of Muslim women who are conscious of the impact that the politics associated with their religion has had on the wider political agenda. Ahmed and Mernissi, in particular, draw on their faith’s historical roots in order to make its treatment of women comprehensible to a Western readership: it may well be that their confidence that they can attract sympathetic and interested readers helps to enable them to challenge some of the traditions that have puzzled and sometimes alienated Western commentators. And the recent work by Haifaa Jawaad and Tansin Benn attempts a similar task.9

Although the more general studies have the merit of helping us to understand the importance of religion as just one aspect of women’s experience, specialists focusing on women religious, on women reformers, on women whose faith provided the impulse for philanthropic work and on women who believed their mission field to be the home have further enhanced our insight. Web sites, discussion lists, academic conferences and symposia, supported by scholars from around the world and crossing national and language barriers, are witness to the importance attached to the inclusion of women in our efforts to reconstruct and understand the religious past and the inclusion of religion in the reconstruction of women’s experiences.

Comparatively little has been written about the historical roots common to all three monotheistic religions, in so far as they affect women,10 and in many ways, writing a chapter about Christian Europe would have been an easier task than attempting to take a wider view of the continent’s religious history, and could have been justified as a study of the dominant religious culture as it has affected European women during the past three hundred years. But that would have been to distort the picture and to have failed to give proper weight to the experience of significant minorities of women, particularly since the nineteenth century. The result is an unavoidably superficial study - three hundred years and at least three major religious traditions cannot be examined within the compass of one chapter - but by highlighting areas of common experience it may be possible to demonstrate that, in spite of theological variety, women have frequently experienced in remarkably similar ways the blessings and the disadvantages of their faith and the institutions that seek to guard it.